টীকা বর্তমানে শুধুমাত্র ইংরেজিতে উপলব্ধ। বাংলা অনুবাদ চলছে।
Haggai 1 — Consider Your Ways
In the second year of Darius, the prophet Haggai stirs up the post-exilic remnant in Jerusalem. They have returned from Babylon but neglected the rebuilding of the temple — busy with their own houses. The Lord says: consider your ways. The drought, the small harvest, the unfilled purse — these are because His house lies waste. Zerubbabel and Joshua and the people obey. The work resumes.
“Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways.”
— Haggai 1:5
- v.1-2 The people say the time is not come
- v.3-11 Consider your ways — the cause of your scarcity
- v.12-15 The people obey; the Lord stirs their spirit
Cieled houses. Paneled houses — finished, decorated, comfortable. Meanwhile God's house is in ruins. The contrast is the prophet's point.
When the believer's personal home is renovated luxuriously while God's work limps, the priorities have inverted. Not that comfortable houses are wrong — but that they should not be built at the expense of God's house being neglected.
The refrain of the chapter, repeated in verse 7. Consider your ways. The first step of reformation is honest reflection on the direction of one's life.
Many a believer drifts because they will not stop to consider. The verb implies setting your heart upon. Stop. Look at where you are walking. Where is it leading?
A picture of life with God's priorities out of place. Effort that yields nothing. Earning that does not satisfy. Wages disappearing through holes in the bag.
Many modern lives experience the same. Hard work, real income, increasing comfort — and a sense that the life is leaking somewhere unseen. The bag has holes. The diagnosis is in verse 9: God's house lies waste while we run to our own.
Five words: I am with you. The promise that changes everything. The same Lord who rebuked them now stands with them in the rebuilding.
Genuine repentance is met by genuine fellowship. The God who calls His people back does not stand at a distance once they have turned. He moves with them into the work.
The Lord stirred up the spirit. Repentance and obedience are themselves works of God. The same God who calls is the God who awakens the will to respond.
Philippians 2:13 — it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. The stirring up came from heaven. The work continued at human hands. Both were necessary; both were God's.
Consider your ways. When was the last time you stopped to look honestly at the direction of your life? Where is your effort going? What is being built at the expense of what? The believer who never considers stays on a path no one has chosen. Today is a good day for the question.
The temple Haggai rebuilt would itself be replaced by the greater temple — the body of Christ Himself (John 2:19-21), and ultimately the church which is His temple (1 Corinthians 3:16; Ephesians 2:21). The Lord who stirred up Zerubbabel's spirit still stirs the hearts of His people to build His house — now not of stone but of living stones (1 Peter 2:5).
The time is not come. The convenient excuse for procrastination. The post-exilic Jews had been in the land for sixteen years and still had not finished the temple foundation laid in Ezra 3.
The same delay attacks every generation. The work God called you to feels like not yet. Comfortable houses are built; God's work lingers. Haggai's sermon is preached to every generation that has known what to do and not done it.