Mining the Minors: Haggai (5)

Exactly three months after the returned exiles of Judah obediently began to rebuild the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem following a hiatus of at least seventeen years, the prophet Haggai delivered yet another message from the Lord to his people. Unlike the previous two, which were messages of undiluted encouragement, this one did not seem designed to spare anyone’s feelings.

Sometimes we need an accurate assessment of our spiritual state in order to move forward.

5/ Defilement and Blessing

Haggai 2:10-14 — Holy and Unclean

“On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: Ask the priests about the law: If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches with his fold bread or stew or wine or oil or any kind of food, does it become holy?’ The priests answered and said, ‘No.’ Then Haggai said, ‘If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?’ The priests answered and said, ‘It does become unclean.’ Then Haggai answered and said, ‘So is it with this people, and with this nation before me, declares the Lord, and so with every work of their hands. And what they offer there is unclean.’ ”

This little parable is based on the provisions of the Law of Moses that deal with holiness and defilement, and it does not paint a flattering picture of the moral condition of Judah during this period. The images themselves are quite simple.

Holiness and Transmissibility

First, you have holy meat, which is to say meat that has been offered to God, and then a portion given to the priests who labor at the altar. This is dedicated food of which only members of the serving priesthood and their families were permitted to partake. This meat is being carried in the fold of a garment, which then touches other everyday food items: bread, stew, wine or oil. And the question is, can food dedicated to God transmit its holiness to these other items? The answer is that it cannot. These food and drink offerings would have to be dedicated separately. They were not in themselves inappropriate offerings, but any holiness they might acquire would have to come from individual dedication, not from mere contact.

The same is true of saving faith, isn’t it. It’s not transmissible by living in a Christian family, going to church or having everyday relationships with believers. Each individual must exercise faith in order to please God. And daily sanctification doesn’t leap from person to person because of proximity any more than salvation does.

Defilement and Contamination

The second parable concerns contact with a dead body. According to the law, anyone who had any contact with the dead was considered ceremonially unclean, and had to live outside the camp in the wilderness until his seven-day period of defilement had run its course and the priest had sprinkled him with the water for impurity. The question is again posed, if such a person were to touch the same food items as in the first parable — bread, stew, wine, oil, etc. — would these items be considered contaminated? The law says they would.

So then, spiritual defilement is much more contagious than personal holiness. It transmits itself far more effectively. In New Testament terms, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” William MacDonald quotes Donald Campbell to the effect that “Work and worship do not sanctify sin, but sin contaminates work and worship.”

A National Indictment

Haggai asked the priests of Israel these two questions and they gave their verdict, presumably in a public place where everyone could hear what they were saying. In doing so, the spiritual leadership indicted their nation. The Lord confirms the verdict by driving home the lesson: “So it is with this people.” The holiness of the devout among them could not sanctify the nation or make the dead works of others palatable to God, but the defilement of the profane in Judah was contaminating “every work of their hands”. The offerings of the nation were unclean because its people were unclean, even though they had been hard at work on the temple for three months already.

Haggai does not detail the nature of Judah’s defilement for us at this point. Some commentators suggest the uncleanness was related to the unfinished temple, and that until the temple was complete, the nation would be unclean. If true, this would be a difficult pill to swallow, because the temple was a major project. It would not be completed until the sixth year of the reign of Darius, almost four years later, and there was no conceivable way to expedite the process. If the absence of a completed temple is what offended the Lord even though his people were obediently working away at it to the best of their ability, there was no way to remedy the situation. Works could not make the nation holy.

Contact with the Dead

I suspect the reason God calls the nation defiled lies elsewhere. The problem, if we pay attention to the parable, was contact with the spiritual equivalent of a dead body.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah highlight at least three then-current issues defiling Judah. When the Passover was finally celebrated in the newly dedicated temple, Ezra writes, “It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by every one who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.” The peoples of the land and their way of life were the equivalent of a dead body contaminating the worship of the returned exiles.

Ezra 9 and 10 are all about the large number of Israelites who had married women from the surrounding nations, including even the priests and Levites, who of all people should have known better. Their children were defiled, not even speaking the language of Israel, let alone knowing its God. This problem was not addressed completely until some time later, but the intermarriages were certainly going on when Haggai prophesied. Nehemiah 5 is concerned with the oppression of the poor that was taking place during this same period, Jew against Jew, after the pattern of their neighbors, and Nehemiah 13 with the ongoing breaking of the Sabbath in order for foreigners to sell their products in the city of Jerusalem.

In all these ways, the people of Judah had taken on the habits of the nations around them. As a dead body ceremonially defiled those who came in contact with it, Judah was morally defiled. Its daily conduct was influenced by the pagans around it and inconsistent with its worship.

Haggai does not go into such specifics, but with the historical record of that period available to us, there is no real reason he needed to.

Haggai 2:15-19 — Unmerited Favor at Work

“Now then, consider from this day onward. Before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the Lord, how did you fare? When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were but twenty. I struck you and all the products of your toil with blight and with mildew and with hail, yet you did not turn to me, declares the Lord. Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the Lord’s temple was laid, consider: Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing. But from this day on I will bless you.”

Marvelous Grace of our Loving Lord

There’s a very New Testament flavor to the blessing of God in Haggai. The people have just been working away for three months because Haggai told them that their selfish priorities were displeasing to God and that they needed to put his house before their own houses. They have been proceeding in faith. As God says here, there has been precisely zero evidence of blessing to date. “The vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing.” The people of Judah cannot point to a single material reason to keep working other than that God has commanded it. Yet they believed Haggai and kept going to work anyway.

Without faith it is impossible to please God, including in the Old Testament. Faith pleases him now, and it pleased him all through history.

God now intends to bless his people, but he will not bless them on the basis of their works. It’s all grace. He is blessing them for acting in faith despite their ongoing defilement issues. So he first makes clear to them that their works are contaminated. Nothing about their work product is intrinsically satisfying to the Lord. They have earned nothing by obeying, yet their obedience shows a believing heart. On that basis, God is prepared to shower them with blessings they absolutely don’t deserve.

Sound familiar?