'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.'--HAGGAI i. 6
A large emigration had taken place from the land of captivity to
Jerusalem. The great purpose which the returning exiles had in view was
the rebuilding of the Temple, as the centre-point of the restored
nation. With true heroism, and much noble and unselfish enthusiasm, they
began the work, postponing to it all considerations of personal
convenience. But the usual fate of all great national enthusiasms
attended this. Political difficulties, hard practical realities, came in
the way, and the task was suspended for a time. A handful remained true
to the original ideas; the rest fell away. Personal comfort, love of
ease, the claims of domestic life, the greed of gain, all the ignoble
motives which, like gravitation and friction, check such movements after
the first impulse is exhausted, came into play. Like every great cause,
this one was launched amidst high hopes and honest zeal: but by degrees
the hopes faded and became nothing better than 'godly imaginations.' The
exiles took to building their own ceiled houses, and let the House of
God lie waste. They began to think more of settling on the land than of
building the Temple. No doubt they said all the things with which men
are wont to hide their selfishness under the mask of duty:--Men must
live; we must take care of ourselves; it is mad enthusiasm to build a
temple when we have not homes; we mean to build it some time, but we are
practical men and must provide for our wants first.'
This wisdom of theirs turned out folly, as it generally does. There
came, as we learn from this prophet, a season of distress, in which the
harvest, for which they had sacrificed their duties and their calling,
failed: and in spite of their prudent diligence, or rather, just because
of their misplaced and selfish attention to their worldly well-being,
they were poor and hungry. 'The heaven over them was stayed from dew,
and the earth from her fruit.' Haggai was sent by God to interpret the
calamity, and to urge to the fulfilment of their earlier purposes.
His words apply to a supernatural condition of things with which he is
dealing, but they contain truths illustrated by it and true for ever.
For us all, as truly as for those Jews, the first thing, the primary,
all-embracing duty, is to serve God, to obey, love, and live with Him.
The same selfish and worldly excuses have force with us: 'We have
business to look after; men must live; we have no time to think about
religion; I have built a new mill that occupies my thoughts; I have
found a new plaything, and I must try it; I have married a wife, and
therefore I cannot come.' So God and His claims, Christ and His love,
are hustled into a corner to be attended to when opportunity serves, but
to be neglected in the meantime. And the same result follows, not by
miracle, but by natural necessity. Haggai puts these results in our text
with bitter, indignant amplification. His words are all the working out
of one idea-the unprofitableness, on the whole and in the long-run, of a
godless life. He illustrates this in the clauses of our text in various
forms, and my purpose now is simply to apply each of these to the
realities of a godless life.