Haggai 2

¹⁰ 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, ¹¹ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Ask the priests about the law: ¹² ‘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.” ¹³ 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.” ¹⁴ 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. ¹⁵ Now then, consider from this day onward. Before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the Lord, ¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ 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. ¹⁸ 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: ¹⁹ 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.”

In G.R. Evans’ very interesting biography of John Wycliffe (the 14^thcentury Christian who is sometimes called “The Morning Star of the Reformation”), she talks about the questions that common Christians had at that time about transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the Roman Catholic belief that the substance of the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Jesus in the eucharist. That is, while it still looks like bread and wine in its externals, its substance is “transubstantiated” into something new, the body and blood of Jesus. And this belief gave rise to some very interesting questions.

For some centuries people are known to have asked awkward common-sense questions [about transubstantiation], such as where the substance of the bread ‘went’; how the whole of Christ’s body could be contained in a wafer; or conversely, how all the wafers consecrated over the centuries were not much greater in quantity than the real body of Christ; or how Christ’s body could be ‘all there’ in one place, parish after parish, when a number of Eucharists were celebrated all at the same time; or what happened when a crumb fell to the ground and a mouse ate it.  (Was there some salvific effect upon the mouse?)[1]

That last question—would a mouse be saved if a crumb fell to the ground and the mouse ate it?—reveals some of the absurdities that a “magical” view of Christianity can bring about. We rightly chuckle at the idea that mere physical contact with the elements of the Lord’s Supper might have some saving effect on the soul. And, of course, we do not believe that the supper itself has saving properties. We believe, rather, that it points us to the Savior, Jesus, who alone saves.

But that kind of magical approach is more common than we think. If I step into a sanctuary, does that not make me holy? If I sing the hymns does that not make me a Christian? If I take the offering plate and put something in it does not that have some kind of effect on my soul? These are the “does the mouse get saved?” questions of modern Baptists.

This hope for some kind of magical, physical, talismanic relationship with God is as old as the Fall. In Haggai 2, we see that it was present also in Israel’s life. Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps we should not be surprised that some began to think that their mere physical proximity to and work on the temple would render them right before God. Obviously some began feeling this because in Haggai 2:10-19 the Lord addresses this very issue.

It is easier for fallen humanity to infect than to heal.

Haggai 2:10-19 is, at first glance, a very odd text that seems to be asking very odd questions. To modern ears, that is certainly the case. Yet these initial odd questions are asked to get us to some very basic and fundamental spiritual realities.

¹⁰ 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, ¹¹ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Ask the priests about the law: ¹² ‘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.” ¹³ 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.”

There are two questions here, one dealing with holiness and one dealing with uncleanness. The first is this: “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 first question we might ask is why would somebody be carrying holy meat in the fold of his garment? The IVP Bible Background Commentary offers a helpful explanation.

The situation pictured here may have been quite common at this time. The altar had been rebuilt within a few years of the return (535), but the temple had not yet been built. This means that meat from the sacrifices could not be eaten in the regular temple precincts, as was the norm. Instead, the food would have to be transported to the eating place.[2]

Thus the question. Is the holiness of the sacrificial meat transferable through a garment to whatever the garment touches? And the answer is, “No.” In other words, holiness does not work like that. You cannot take a holy object, reduce it to a magical talisman, a magical object, and then go around rendering things holy by physical touch.

On the other hand, consider the second question: “If someone who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?” Unholiness, uncleanness, can contaminate others.

While we are dealing here with ritual holiness and uncleanness, there is a powerful point to be made: it is easier for fallen humanity to infect than to heal.

Warren Wiersbe sums it up nicely when he writes of these verses that “you can transmit defilement from one thing or person to another, but you can’t transmit sanctity. The same principle applies in the area of health: you can transmit your sickness to healthy people and make them sick, but you can’t share your health with them.”[3]Ralph Smith agrees and summarizes it like this: “Holiness is not transferable…But impurity is transferable.”

The looming question over all of this is this: why would this point need to be made? And the answer is that it appears that many of the Jews who were rebuilding the temple had come to believe that their mere contact with and proximity to the holy and sacred temple made them holy, that just by virtue of their putting stones on top of one another and building the building they were having holiness and a right standing with God zapped magically into them!

Can a mouse become a Christian if he eats the Lord’s Supper?

Can an Israelite become a true child of God if he works on the temple?

Do you see how this works?

Ralph Smith writes:

Haggai seems to be saying that just restoring the temple building is not enough. The temple was no fetish. Its presence did not guarantee God’s blessings. Jeremiah in his temple sermon made it clear that the people’s right actions and attitudes brought security and blessing (Jer 7).[4]

It is a strange thing, but in this fallen world sin is more contagious than holiness.

Being right with God is a matter of internal transformation notexternal proximity.

Just as a garment carrying sacred food cannot render something holy simply by touching it, so too the Israelites were not rendered holy merely by virtue of their work on the temple.

¹⁴ 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. ¹⁵ Now then, consider from this day onward. Before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the Lord, ¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ 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. ¹⁸ 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: ¹⁹ 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.”

It is possible to work on the temple of God, to be in close proximity to the holy, and yet be as unholy as you were before you started working, before you drew close. Why? Because proximity does not equal transformation. It is the changed heart that is rendered right! It is the redeemed heart that is saved!

Kenneth Hoglund, in commenting on our text, writes that “the point…is that other items do not become holy by contact with something that is consecrated; it takes an intentional action of devoting something to God to impart holiness.”[5]That is so. Israel needed that “intentional action of devoting [itself] to God.” So do we!

Again, Rex Mason summarizes this text thus:

It is a warning to the community engaged in the rebuilding that the mere presence of the temple would not automatically guarantee the holiness of the community. In the manner of the earlier prophets Haggai would be saying that repentance and a right way of life alone would invest the temple and its worship with true meaning.[6]

How is your heart? Are you truly walking with the Lord Jesus Christ or are you contenting               yourself with merely being around the things of God? Has the church become for you what the temple had obviously become for Israel, even in this stage of renewed rebuilding: a talisman, a supposed magical item nearness to which, you think, can render you right with God?

Hear the warning of Haggai! The mouse that eats the crumb is just a mouse eating a crumb! There is nothing magical there!

The Israelite piling stones on top of one another is just an Israelite piling stones!

The Baptist with his Bible might just be a lost person who owns a Bible!

Proximity is not transformation!

Taking the Lord’s Supper does not magically render you saved.

Going to church does not magically render you a child of God.

Singing the hymns does not mean that the truths you are singing have taken root in your heart.

Putting money in the plate does not mean you are carrying your cross.

Church, hear me: it is not enough to be near the things of God and it is not even enough to be busy with the things of God. We must be God’s child to be saved! We must be born again!

Some years ago Richard John Neuhaus reported on a fascinating and troubling statement by a church authority about people being reminded of their sinfulness at the Lord’s Supper table.

In the United Kingdom, a new Methodist Book of Worship has just appeared…Excluded is the “prayer of humble access” at Holy Communion, which begins, “We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord.” The liturgical committee thought the prayer was too “grovelly.” Said the Rev. Norman Wallwork, speaking for the committee, “An overriding element of the Eucharist is to be lifted up by the healing of God. We do not want people to be brought down at this holy moment and reminded they are a sinner.” Maybe he is making a point about the collective nature of sin, or maybe his grammar is as muddled as his theology.[7]

Ah! If there is anything about which we need to be reminded, it is that we are sinners in need of grace! That fact of the matter is we cannot be “lifted up” until we realize that we have been brought low by sin and shame. Without a deep awareness of the tragedy of the unredeemed heart we will fool ourselves into thinking that other things—crumbs, or wafers, or stones, or offerings—might just save us. But they never will! They never will!

What is better than building the temple? Serving the Lord of the temple! If you truly give Him your heart, you will serve Him. But if you seek to serve without giving Him your heart, you will trick yourself into thinking that you have something you do not have: an actual relationship.

Jesus Christ calls to us to come to Him. Do not confuse your service for your Savior or nearness for relationship. Bow the knee and heart to Jesus Christ, and you will live!

 

[1]G.R. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality(Downers Grove, IL:  IVP Academic, 2005), p.187.

[2]John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p.797.

[3]Warren Wiersbe, Be Heroic. (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook Communications Ministries, 1997), p.77.

[4]Ralph L. Smith, Micah-Malachi. Word Biblical Commentary. vol.32 (Waco, TX: Word Books, Publishers, 1984), p.160-161.

[5]Kenneth Hoglund, “Haggai.” Zondervan Illustrated Bible Background Commentary. Gen. Ed., John H. Walton. Old Testament, Vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), p.197-198.

[6]Rex Mason, The Books of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The Cambridge Bible Commentary (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p.22.

[7]RJN, “While We’re At It,” First Things. June/July 1999.