SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/25/2016 9:17 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Believe God’s Promises
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Haggai 1:5-6, 9-11
Message of the verses: “5 Now therefore, thus says the LORD of
hosts, "Consider your ways! 6
"You have sown much, but harvest little; you eat, but there is not
enough to be satisfied; you drink, but there is not enough to become drunk; you
put on clothing, but no one is warm enough; and he who earns, earns wages to
put into a purse with holes.’” “9 “You
look for much, but behold, it comes to little; when you bring it home, I blow
it away. Why?"
declares the LORD of hosts, "Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house. 10
“Therefore, because
of you the sky has withheld its dew and the earth has withheld its produce. 11
"I called for a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on
the new wine, on the oil, on what the ground produces, on men, on cattle, and
on all the labor of your hands."”
We have gone
over what I am about to write in earlier Spiritual Diaries and it has to do
with the conditional convents that God made with Israel before they entered the
Promised Land. We can find much of these
in three different chapters, one in Leviticus 26 and the other in Deuteronomy 27-28. As mentioned these are conditional covenants
that God had made with Israel, meaning that if Israel did what God put into the
covenant then He would bless them, but if they failed to do what was in the
covenant then they would be cursed by God.
We can see by these verses in Haggai that God was not giving His
blessings to them because they have failed to keep the things that He has told
them to do. In the NASB we see the word “consider”
in verse five but in the NIV it is translated “give careful thought to.” When I looked up the word in the
Hebrew/English dictionary that is on my Online Bible program there were
actually three Hebrew words to look up with many different meanings.
Let us look
at Leviticus 26:18-20 and also Deuteronomy 28:38-40 “18 ’If also after these
things you do not obey Me,
then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. 19 ’I will also break
down your pride of power; I
will also make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze. 20 ’Your
strength will be spent uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce and
the trees of the land will not yield their fruit.” “38 “You shall bring out much seed to the
field but you will gather in little, for the locust will consume it. 39 “You
shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor
gather the grapes, for the worm will devour them. 40 “You shall have olive
trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with the oil,
for your olives will drop off.” These
verses remind us that it is God who is in total control of our world.
The things
that we see in these verses from Leviticus and Deuteronomy were exactly what
was happening to the Jews who had returned from their exile and God says that
they were more interested in building their own houses with fine paneling than
building the house of the Lord. The Jews
during this time seemed to have holes in their wallets as things became scarcer
then things became higher in price. Dr.
Wiersbe writes “While I don’t believe that the Old Testament tithe is demanded
of the New Testament believer (Acts 5:1-4), I think that tithing is a good
place to start when it comes to systematic stewardship. After all, if an Old Covenant Jew under Law
could gladly give tithes to the Lord, should a New Covenant believer under
grace do less? But the tithe is only a
start! The principles laid down in 2
Corinthians 8-9 encourage us to give offerings to the Lord and trust Him for
all that we need (see 2 Cor. 8:9).”
We can see
that the Jews must have thought that their returning to the Promised Land would
bring a blessing from the Lord, then they were sadly mistaken for they were not
in obedience with the Lord and as we look at this spiritually in the New
Testament times we have to give to the Lord because we love Him and not just so
He will bless us if we are doing it in a “business arrangement.” Dr. Wiersbe quotes R. G. LeTourneau who said “If
you give because it pays, it won’t pay.”
In our
world today and this has gone on for some time now preachers are preaching a
health and wealth gospel, and just as the Pharisees had the wrong idea of what
the Law was all about, especially their view on the Sabbath, these preachers
are only out for the money in our world today.
God has never promised us to become rich financially, but spiritually
rich should be our goal as we obey the Lord because of our love for Him for
after all He gave His life so we can receive eternal life. Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 6:10 “as poor, yet
making many rich.” I have heard it many
times that you never see a U-Haul following a hearse to the graveyard.
3/25/2016 9:52 PM
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