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Devotion by John Piper
Work on the temple began, and things have not gone well. Evidently, the attitude of the people is that mere contact with the temple makes them clean in God’s sight while, in fact, they are living in sin. The holiness of the temple is not rubbing off on them. On the contrary, their sin is desecrating the temple. That’s the meaning of verses 11–14, a kind of parable applied in v. 14 to the people like this: “So it is with this people and with this nation before me, says the Lord; and so with every work of their hands; and what they offer there is unclean.” So, even though they have begun to obey the Lord by working on the temple, their work is unclean because of sin in their lives.
So what Haggai does in response to this imperfect obedience is point the people back to the great turning point in their experience when they began to work on the temple. Verses 15–17 tell the people to consider what they should do now, in view of how life was for them before they started building the temple. “Pray now, consider what will come to pass from this day on (i.e., how you should live now, remembering) . . . I smote you and all the products of your toil with blight and mildew and hail; yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.” In other words, recall how miserable and frustrated you were in your disobedience before you began to lay stone on stone in the temple. The implication is: surely it is utter folly to go on in sin now, if it cost so much then. So verses 15–17 call the people to consider what they should do now, in view of how life was for them before they started building the temple.
Verses 18–19 are more positive: they call the people to consider how they should live now, in view of how life has been for them (not before, but) since they began to build the temple. “Since that day,” the prophet asks in verse 19, “is the seed yet in the barn? Do the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree still yield nothing? From this day on I will bless you.” I think what he means is this: it has only been three months since you began to build. The seed is not in the barn but in the ground. The time for fruit-bearing is coming. I am not against you. I am for you and will help you. So consider your ways. Cleanse your hands, and keep working on my house. I promise to bless you.
Haggai’s first and third messages are similar in that both of them seek to motivate the Jews to build the temple by showing them how frustrated they were before they began to obey, and how many blessings they can expect from God if they press on in their work with clean hands. What is at stake is the manifestation of God’s glory, not merely brick and mortar and timber.