Note: Devotion based on last Sunday afternoon's sermon on Haggai 1 (no audio yet posted).
Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways
(Haggai 1:5).
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways (Haggai
1:7).
Only two chapters in length, Haggai is the second shortest
book in the Old Testament. Only Obadiah is shorter.
We don’t know a great deal about the prophet Haggai. He is
mentioned by name in the OT, outside his own prophetic work, in just two other
places: Ezra 5:1; 6:14. His name means “festal.” Some have suggested he was
born during one of the Jewish feasts. The Roman equivalent of this name is “Festus.”
The name is fitting, because Haggai’s primary prophetic
ministry, alongside his fellow prophet Zechariah, was to urge those who had
returned to Jerusalem from their Babylonian exile to rebuild the temple. He was
a restoration prophet. They had rebuilt their own homes but neglected the LORD’s
house.
Twice in chapter one Haggai urges them, “Consider your ways”
(vv. 5, 7).
In Haggai 1:6 he describes in Solomonic style the futility
and emptiness of a life without worship of the one true God:
Ye have sown much, and bring in little;
Ye eat, but ye have not enough;
Ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink;
Ye clothe you, but there is none warm;
And he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag
with holes.
The
prophet now speaks to us through the written Word. Have we neglected the things
of God in the pursuit of things that will not satisfy?
Haggai
is in many ways the OT equivalent to Hebrews 12:24-25 in which the apostle
exhorts those who had forsaken the assembling of themselves together in worship,
urging them to “consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.”
Let us, therefore, consider ourselves and turn in new obedience to
our Lord.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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