Hag. 2:10-19: So It Is With This People

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1)     vv. 10-11

A)   2:10 – Dec. 18, 520 BC

1)     This is 112 days from Haggai’s first word (nearly 4 months), and 89 days from when the people responded and got busy (about 3 months).

2)     This text sounds like God is actively rebuking this people. There is instruction in here, but when we get to the very end of v. 19, we’ll see that this is ultimately a promise of blessing and hope.

3)     We’ll talk about this date later in this lesson.

B)    v. 11 – Ask the priests

1)     Lev. 10:10-11 – The Levites were supposed to know these things and teach God’s people.

2)     Mal. 2:1-7 – They did not.

2)     vv. 12-14

A)   v. 12 – Scenario 1

1)     Description of the scenario

(a)   A person has just offered their sacrifice, they’ve wrapped it up in their clothes, and they’re on their way home.

(i)    This probably refers to a peace / fellowship offering (Lev. 3:7-11). Some was burned, some was left for the priests, and some was taken home to eat with your family. Meat from burnt, sin, and guilt offerings were all left at the temple.

(ii)  This is important because the person in this scenario has just offered a sacrifice to God (a thanksgiving, a vow, or a freewill offering).

(iii)          NET Notes – “This is probably not an appeal to the Torah as such but to a priestly ruling.”

(iv) That ruling is likely rooted in Lev. 6:27 (“Whatever touches its flesh shall be holy”).

(v)   ESVSB – “It was assumed that holiness could be transferred from a consecrated object to a person or other object.”

(vi) We will just assume this is true for now.

2)     Question

(a)   The holy meat touched your clothes and made them holy.

(b)   So if your clothes touched your bread, stew, wine, oil, or any kind of food, does IT become holy?

3)     Answer: No.

(a)   POINT: If a person has done something good (i.e. sacrificed), that person’s holiness cannot be transferred to someone, or something, else.

(b)   Illustration: This is like trying to catch someone’s good health. I can’t just hang out with a healthy person and wear their work out clothes and give them a high-five and expect to become healthy because I was in contact with them.

(c)   Holiness means to be totally set apart and dedicated exclusively to God. You can’t just passively catch that from someone or something else because you touched (and everybody understands this).

B)    v. 13 – Scenario 2

1)     Description of the scenario

(a)   A person has been in contact with a dead body, and now they are unclean.

(b)   Question: If that person touches any of these things, do they become unclean?

(c)   Answer: Yes.

(i)    Num. 19:11-13 – Not only are you unclean for seven days, you need to actively take steps to become clean again (not just wait it out).

(ii)  Num. 19:14-15 – You are unclean even if you go into the same room.

(iii)          Num. 19:16ff. – Contact in an open field.

(iv) SUMMARY: Num. 19:22

(a)   Level 1 – If an unclean person touches a cup, then that cup will be unclean.

(b)   Level 2 – AND if a person touches the unclean cup, then that person will be unclean.

(d)  POINT: Defilement is contagious. Holiness is not.

(i)    Picture a doctor who has just spent 3 minutes scrubbing his hands getting ready for surgery. If he touches something dirty, the dirty thing doesn’t become clean. Rather, the clean thing gets dirty.

(ii)  cf. Paul tried to help the Corinthians understand this.

(a)   1 Cor. 5:6 – “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”

(b)   1 Cor. 15:33 – “Do not be deceived: Bad company ruins good morals.”

(c)   2 Cor. 6:14-7:1 – “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers…”

(iii)          e.g. Parents and kids.

(a)   Parents cannot transfer their holiness to their kids. We spend our entire lives trying to raise them to WANT to be set apart for God’s service. It’s very hard to do this.

(b)   And then, all it takes is one small negative influence in their lives to corrupt them and completely undo your entire life’s work.

(iv) Negativity, sickness, dirt, corruption, rumors, defilement, and sin all spread effortlessly.

(v)   Purity, health, integrity, and holiness have to be intentionally cultivated and protected (hard).

(vi) Summary: Defilement is contagious. Holiness is not.

3)     v. 14 – “So it is with this people.”

A)   “nation” = Heb. goy

1)     LTW – This is one of the two main words used in the OT to describe people groups. In most uses it reflects a common sociopolitical identity that can be defined by ancestry, language, land, and government. It sometimes refers to Israel as a nation (Josh 5:8) or to all nations including Israel (Exod 34:10), but as Israel’s national identity becomes more clear in the OT the majority of the occurrences use some form of the plural to refer to the surrounding non-Israelite nations. Most of these references view the non-Israelite nations as outside the covenant, worshiping foreign gods and subject to God’s wrath (Psa 59:6). At the same time, a future hope is revealed for these nations (Psa 22:27).

2)     DBL – 1. people, nation; 2. a population of an animal; 3. the Gentiles, i.e., a national group or groups that are not Jewish, with the associative meaning of being uncultured, pagan and heathen.

B)    “And what they offer there is unclean.”

1)     Ezra 3:1-6, 10

2)     If I was in the crowd listening to Haggai, I might have said, “We are not unclean pagans. We have been offering sacrifices on the altar for the last 15 years.”

3)     Haggai’s response is, “Yes. But you have been doing that on the site of the ruined and rotting corpse of the unfinished temple.

(a)   You have been selfish, spending all of your time and resources building your own fancy houses.

(b)   And you have completely ignored God’s house.  

4)     POINT: Don’t think for one second that the holiness of your daily sacrifices will transfer to your life, and your home, and your nation while everything else around you is defiled and not set apart for service to God.

5)     Defilement is contagious, and everything they touched with their greedy, selfish and disobedient hands, INCLUDING THEIR SACRIFICES, were unclean before God.

(a)   The sacrifices did not make the people clean.

(b)   Rather, the people’s sin made their sacrifices unclean.

4)     Application

A)   The OT has a lot to say about this.

1)     See Logos note at 1 Sam. 15:22.

2)     1 Sam. 15:22-23; Ps. 40:6-8

B)    Our faith is not some kind of magic eraser checkbox.

1)     So long as you show up and offer your sacrifice you don’t actually need to change your heart, or your sinful habits, or your selfishness and greed, or your financial priorities. Just go ahead and keep ignoring God’s house, so long as you check the church box on Sunday morning and go through the motions.

2)     Your sacrifice doesn’t make you clean.

3)     Your defiled life makes your sacrifice dirty.

5)     But now, the people have listened to Haggai and they are devoted to building God’s house.

A)   vv. 15-17 – Consider how things went for you while you were neglecting God’s house. How did you fare? (cf. 1:5-6)

1)     “In a subsistence farming economy, under the heavy taxation of the Persian Empire, a 50 to 60% crop failure is an apocalyptic event. It means mass starvation. It means watching your children go hungry. It means desperate poverty. And in the ancient world, when you couldn't pay your debts, you had to sell your land, and eventually you had to sell your own children into debt slavery just to survive.”

2)     “yet you did not turn to me”

(a)   cf. Amos 4:6-12

3)     “When a society’s or an individual's core priorities are entirely selfish, when the foundation of your life is spiritually rotten, the entire system breaks down. The environment, the economy, your mental health, your community, it all fractures. You simply cannot build a prosperous, healthy, enduring life on a foundation of spiritual neglect and selfish ambition. When society's hands are muddy with selfishness, every economic system they touch, agriculture, trade, justice gets stained. You can't just plant more seeds to fix a soil problem. It is a profoundly holistic view of the universe. When you are out of alignment with the Creator, you are out of alignment with the creation. The physical world fights back against your selfishness.”

B)    vv. 18-19

1)     v. 10 = Dec. 18, 520 BC

(a)   It’s cold and wet, the summer harvest was terrible, and the winter wheat and barley have has been planted. The barns and silos are empty, and we wait and hope.

2)     “But from this day on I will bless you.”

(a)   The people have turned back to God, and they are rebuilding his temple, so he tells them that he will bless them.

3)     “Think about that moment in your own life when you finally make the hard, agonizing, correct choice. You finally break that addiction. You walk away from the toxic relationship. You stop lying. You commit to the right path. You start the difficult project. You finally make the apology you've been avoiding for years. Your physical circumstances might not magically fix themselves overnight. The barns are still empty. You might still have massive credit card debt. You might still feel the emotional pain of the past. You might still be staring at the bare branches of a ruined career. but the trajectory of your life has fundamentally, permanently changed. The curse of your own selfishness is broken. You have moved from a trajectory of decay to a trajectory of blessing simply because the foundation has been reset. It requires an immense, radical amount of faith to look at an empty barn and truly believe that you are blessed. But that is the core of Haggai's message, and it's the core of the prophetic worldview. The blessing isn't the grain itself. The ultimate blessing is the restored relationship with the Creator who provides the grain.”