Bad lives don’t produce good results – they spoil the things we’re trying to do.
Read: Haggai 2: 10-19
The bit in this passage about holy objects touching things but not making the touched thing holy may be a bit obscure to us. When I was younger I heard it said, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.” Or another way we might think about it is that holiness isn’t like a virus you can catch from another person…it doesn’t matter how much time you spend with a holy person like Mother Theresa, that won’t by itself make you holy….
On the other hand, if I have a virus, then everything I breathe on and everything I touch is likely to be contaminated…I can be a danger to others as bad stuff can be passed on.
Haggai says that if the people are sinful, their motivations and the results of everything they do will be contaminated and spoiled by their evil. It didn’t matter how much work the people carried out on the Temple, how much outward show they made of their service and worship of God, if their lives were not right with God, their service and worship of God were a sham, and the Temple was being built on dodgy foundations.
Jesus once said, in Matthew 7:20 NLT “Just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.”
He also said, in John 15:16 NLT “You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name.”
Back in the time of the rebuilding of the Temple, God promised the people that if they will faithfully turn back to him he will bless them, from the richness of the harvest they will bring into the renewed relationship they have with him through the Temple.
Today we know that having a relationship with God is only possible through trusting in Jesus, which transforms us from the inside out. Then we have a hope of producing good fruit that lasts, or to put it another way, our actions and our lives will be part of God’s good plans to demonstrate his love for all of humanity; we’ll cease to be part of the problem and become part of God’s solution.
How might we sometimes serve God out of wrong motives, potentially spoiling what we do for him? When the church goes through barren and fruitless times, what lessons might we learn from Haggai to encourage us?
Pilgrim Traveller 