SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/1/2016 11:19 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Looking within: Contamination
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Haggai 2:10-19
Message of the verses: “10 On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month,
in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to Haggai the prophet,
saying, 11 "Thus says the LORD of
hosts, ’Ask now the priests for a ruling: 12 ’If a man carries holy meat in the
fold of his garment, and touches bread with this fold, or cooked food, wine,
oil, or any other food, will
it become holy?’" And the priests answered, "No." 13 Then Haggai said,
"If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become
unclean?" And the priests answered, "It will become unclean." 14 Then Haggai
said, "’So is this
people. And so is this nation before Me,’ declares the LORD, ’and so is
every work of their hands; and what they offer there is unclean. 15 ’But now,
do consider from this day onward: before one stone was placed on another in the
temple of the LORD, 16 from that time when one came to a grain heap of twenty
measures, there would be only ten; and when one came to the wine vat to draw
fifty measures, there would be only twenty. 17 ’I smote you and every work of
your hands with blasting wind, mildew and hail; yet you did not come back to Me,’ declares the
LORD. 18 ’Do consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the
ninth month; from the day when the temple of the LORD was founded, consider: 19
’Is the seed still in the
barn? Even including the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate and the
olive tree, it has not borne fruit. Yet from this day on I will bless
you.’"”
Now the
focus that I have in this Spiritual Diary is the name of the second main point
from the second chapter of the book of Haggai and we will only look at this
introduction in this SD and then will look at the questions that are found in
these verses in our next SD’s from the book of Haggai. We are coming fairly close to the end of our
study in this book but will not hurry through it but try and see what the Lord
has for us as we study this book to the end.
Dr. Wiersbe
reports that the date given in the first verse is December 18, which is two
months after the Lord has spoken to Him from the last time and the message that
the Lord is giving through Haggai is about sinfulness, and about being clean or
unclean. Cleanness is very important to
the Jewish people who were under the Law as the Law had much to say about being
clean and also what it meant to be unclean.
Cleanness from the Law is seen a lot in the book of Leviticus and Dr.
Wiersbe has this to say in an endnote:
“In the Authorized Version of Leviticus, words relating to ceremonial
cleanliness are used 71 times, and words relating to ‘unclealiness’ are used
128 times. ‘Unclean’ is used 31 times in
Leviticus 11, the chapter that details what the Jews were allowed to eat. Of course, ‘unclean’ refers only to
ceremonial defilement and not the condition of the heart. No amount of washing or sacrificing could of
itself make the inner person clean. For
inner cleansing, there must be repentance, confession, and faith (Ps. 51).”
In these
verses Haggai goes to the priests and asked them two questions, and he did not
do it because he did not know the answer, but for the benefit of the people who
were present at the hearing. As stated
we will begin to look at these two questions to see what the Lord has for us
from them.
4/1/2016 11:37 PM
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