Consider Your Ways

Haggai 1:6 Consider your ways ...

The Jews in Jerusalem had been sent back from Babylon for the express purpose of rebuilding the temple almost 20 years before these events in Haggai.  They had started well, but the work on the temple rebuild had lapsed for several years.

That is why God sent the prophet Haggai to the people with a special message: 

                   Consider your ways.

The people were telling one another, "The time has not come to rebuild" (Haggai 1:2). How was it that they would say that if the main reason for their return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon had been to rebuild?

There were some good reasons why they might say this, and why the work of rebuilding the temple had been delayed. Those reasons are all listed in Haggai 1:6:
           1. They were tired; the work was hard.

           2. They needed food and water.

           3. They needed clothing.

           4. They needed to make money.

Sounds like pretty good reasons to me. After all, we all need shelter, clothing, food, money.

But the problem in Haggai was not that they did not need food and shelter; it was that they had let those needs and efforts take precedence over the temple to the extent that they ignored the main reason for their return in the first place.  

Their priorities were off balance. 

The temple was the sign of God’s presence and preeminence in their lives, so not working on that structure was an indication that they had gotten off-track spiritually.

So God sent them several reminders. The message of Haggai 1:6 was to remind them: You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

“Consider your ways,”  God says through the prophet Haggai. 

Haggai was saying to them: “STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN.”
           1. STOP what you are doing
           2. LOOK at what is happening
           3. LISTEN to what God is saying

Ask yourself these questions:

*What are you working for? Haggai 1:4 says, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? "

*Why are you working?  Haggai 1:8: "Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord."

*What are your expectations in life? Haggai says in 1:9, "You looked for much, and behold, it came to little". 

I must keep my priorities straight if I want God's blessing on what I do. God's message to the Jews in Haggai's time is His message to me in 2023:

"Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts." ~ Haggai 2:4