Consider Your Ways

Consider Your Ways

Haggai 1:2-11

The prophet Haggai prophesied to the people of Jerusalem, some 5 Centuries before Christ, after they’d returned from the Babylonian Captivity.

God’s people were home! Filled with hopes and a future! They’d begun rebuilding the temple, but opposition and discouragement caused the work to stop. Sixteen years passed.

During that time, the people focused on their own houses, their own comfort, their own prosperity.

All the while, the house of God lay in ruins.

Into that situation, the Lord speaks a piercing command: “Give careful thought to (Consider) your ways.”

Literally, the Hebrew means “set your heart upon your ways.” In other words, stop and seriously reflect on the direction of your life.

In Reformed theology, we recognize that we naturally drift away from God. Because of indwelling sin, our hearts tend toward self-interest rather than toward the glory of God. It’s why God’s Word repeatedly calls believers to examine themselves.

The apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 13:5): “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.”

The people in Haggai’s day were not in open rebellion against God. They hadn’t erected idols... they weren’t bowing to false gods. Instead, they had simply reordered their priorities. God had moved from the center to the margins.

Of course, that’s how spiritual apathy most often begins—not with dramatic rebellion but with quiet neglect.

We’re told:

They sowed much but harvested little

They ate but were not satisfied

They drank but were still thirsty

They earned wages only to lose them

Haggai was painting a picture of God’s providential discipline in action.

God’s Word is clear: every circumstance of life falls under His providential rule... His sovereignty. Blessings and hardships alike come into our lives at the pleasure of God’s grace.

God’s people in Haggai’s day were NOT the victims of their circumstances. Their situation had nothing to do with a bad economy or politics or institutional religion.

Their dissatisfaction was not happenstance—it was a purposeful discipline from a covenant God.

“I called for a drought on the land…” (vs 11)

John Calvin said: “Whenever we are pressed down by adversity, we ought immediately to recall our ways to mind.”

The Lord sometimes empties our hands so that we will return to Him with our hearts.

Notice the tragic irony in the passage.

The people were working hard:

+planting crops + earning wages + building homes

Yet all their effort was producing emptiness. Why?

Because they had embraced the illusion that life could be ordered around themselves rather than around God.

We live with the same delusion today. Our culture believes fulfillment comes from: MORE!

More income, possessions, comfort, achievement!

But God’s Word teaches something radically different. True satisfaction is found only when God occupies His rightful place in our lives.

As Augustine famously prayed: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Without God at the center, life becomes like money placed in a bag that filled with holes.

We gain—but we never keep.

We pursue—but we never attain.

We consume—but we are never satisfied.

But notice something: even though the priorities of God’s People were dis-ordered... God does not abandon them.

Instead, He confronts them. Not in anger... but in love. God’s mercy is so great that he uses any means necessary to get our attention and to bring us back to him.

But then, that’s what a Covenant God does: He disciplines those whom He has chosen and loves.

Hebrews 12:6, “The Lord disciplines the one he loves.” Just as any parent who truly loves their children will discipline, correct, rebuke (when needed), God disciplines, too.

Giving “careful thought” is all about priorities, and keeping “first things first.” Sometimes the most gracious thing God does in our lives is disrupt our false peace, false security, false hope.

Of course, all of this leads us to Christ. Haggai warned God’s People not to neglect God’s house, the Temple. While they were living in “paneled houses” God’s house was left in ruin.

Now consider this: in the New Testament, Jesus said in, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). He was speaking of Himself! Christ is the true temple where God meets His people.

And thru His death and resurrection, you and I (along side countless other believers) become the temple of the Holy Spirit.

All of this means, the call to “consider your ways” ultimately leads us to the cross.

When our lives are disordered, when God has been displaced from the center, the solution is NEVER more government, more laws, more social reform. The solution is repentance, and renewed faith in Christ. The gospel restores what sin has disordered.

So... maybe we should ask ourselves, is Christ the center of our lives, or is He an “add on”? Something extra that we give a little “wink and a nod” from time to time, but has no real impact on our day-to-day living. Christ will not play second fiddle! He will be first, or nothing.

God’s greatest gift is not prosperity.

It’s His presence.

For the believer... true satisfaction and lasting contentment will never be found in what we build, earn, or possess. It will only be found in the God who dwells among His people, in Christ.

And when He is at the center, even the simplest life becomes full.