“Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean.”
This again, remember, is not a question put to all the people, but a question directed at the priests only. We have seen that holiness does not impart holiness to whatever it touches, but now let us see that uncleanness clearly does impart uncleanness to whatever it touches. In other words, uncleanness contaminates. This is the principle taught by God, upheld by the priests, and brought to our attention in the last days of Haggai. We saw in Leviticus the teaching regarding the dead body, that all things mentioned in the law which were dead, which had not the life of Christ in them, render us unclean if we put our hands to them to touch them. But what the prophet of the last days is stressing is the things which have been contaminated – the bread, the portion, the wine, the oil and the meat. These are all things that pertain to the house of the Lord. So we are shown, or rather the priests are shown, that the communion table and the fellowship and the joy and the spirit and the doctrine are contaminated because we have put our hands to dead things, we have dragged the dead things of this world into the life of the Church, thereby rendering the things of the Church and of the holy priesthood unclean in the sight of God whose standard is Holiness unto the Lord, and whose instruction is , “Be ye holy for I am holy, saith the Lord.”
“Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before Me, saith the Lord; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean.”
Up till now the emphasis has been on building the house, but enough has been said to teach us what we must do to build the house again and restore it so that God can add His glory to it and His silver and gold to it. At the same time the word of the Lord is directed to the priests. This people, this nation, their works and their offerings are all unclean in the sight of the Lord. The priesthood is responsible for the holy things, so that contamination may not occur, and we have been wickedly lax in fulfilling our responsibilities. We have watched our people turn to the dead things of this world and failed to comment. We have dragged these dead things into the house of the Lord and thought ourselves clean. We have failed to prohibit those who are unclean from touching the bread and the wine, the oil and the pottage and the meat. We have turned our head away when we realized that certain ones were a contaminating influence in the house of the Lord, and as priests we have behaved ourselves very badly indeed. It is not that outsiders are unclean – we know that anyway – but it is “this people, this nation” which is unclean and every worm of their hands and every offering is unclean today. If the people are instructed to build up the house of the Lord, then the priests are the ones who are instructed to clean up the house and purify it.
“And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord: …”
We are the living stones which are built up to form the Church proper, the house, the temple of the Lord. When God is addressing the people He refers to the house, but when He is addressing the priests He refers to the temple. Even the mode of address is different here. No longer is it simply, “Consider your ways” but, because it is the day of grace, “And now, I pray you, consider …” or even, “I beseech you, consider.” God is asking the priests to consider, He begs them to consider, He beseeches them to consider. Will we refuse yet again in these last days to consider in spite of the pleading of the Lord our God? The message takes us back to Calvary, back to the foundation of the Church, back to the day “from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord.” The appeal is to the priests to turn their thoughts back to Calvary, to consider from that day and upward, to see these last days in the light of that day, to review in their thoughts what the Church is today and consider it in view of what its founder intended it to be. If the word to the people in our day is, “Go up to the mountain and bring wood,” then the word to the priests is, “Consider from this day and upward.” What day? The day our Lord was crucified, the day He rose from the dead, “from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord.” What think ye? Will you consider, or not?
“since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.”
Since those days – since the first golden flush of love and joy and zeal in the early Church the sparkle has not been seen again. With the decease of the apostles the enthusiasm seemed also to die, to be replaced by a soberer note, a sense of chores to perform, of duty rather than love, of responsibilities rather than excitement, of endurance rather than joyous hope. The priesthood adopted black as their color of choice, and the Church put on her widow’s clothes. No longer was the life a new way of abundant living, but when one came to a heap of twenty measures there were but ten, and instead of the overflowing of joy and gladness that characterized the early Church, now it seemed that when one came to draw fifty vessels from the pressfat there were but twenty. There were exceptions, of course, and history records many mighty men of God, but the description of verse sixteen fits perfectly the overall picture of the Church – “since those days were.” Indeed to anyone studying the New Testament accounts of the first days with its heaps of twenty measures and its bursting pressfats full of wine, the discrepancy is obvious. The Church has endured, certainly, to this present hour, but half the enthusiasm appeared to be lost very early in the life of the Church proper.
“I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to Me, saith the Lord.”
Very obviously the Church had settled on her own course in history and was determined to follow it. Occasionally great men of God arose who refused to go along with this idea and sought to turn the Church back to God, and many succeeded during their own lifetimes, yet so brief is the span of a man’s life that little was effected by the most zealous, and for all their efforts God has to say, “Yet ye turned not to Me, saith the Lord.”
“I smote you,” says the Lord, as many chastened ones can testify, “with blasting and with mildew and with hail.” The mighty rushing wind at Pentecost that filled out the sails of the little new-launched barque and bore her along on wings of power became later a blast that shook her from stem to stern as she turned against the wind. “With mildew” – when the rot set in, and divine wisdom was set aside in favor of man’s thinking, when the traditions of men were substituted for the commandments of God. “And with hail” – when God’s wrath was openly displayed against the Church, when the harvests failed and the vines yielded no fruit for God and no satisfaction for His people, and many were sick and many died, and wrath was more in evidence than blessing in the Church.
“I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to Me, saith the Lord.”
