Haggai 1:9

There was diligence for themselves; but what was the result? Bitter disappointment must always come to the people of God who live for themselves instead of trusting Him who especially looks after the faithful. Our business is to care for His things; His gracious work is to care for us in our things, and indeed in all things.

They had returned to the promised land. God had been faithful and gracious to them, but they were settling down in comfort while God's house still lay waste. No wonder things went wrong! God's word to them, and perhaps also to us, is "Consider your ways." They earned good money, but it trickled away as if into a bag full of holes. No doubt they blamed the recession, the political instability of the time, the abnormal weather conditions. It never occurred to them that God was trying to get through to them.

In the next three verses (9-11) the Lord reminds the people that He is chastening them because of their indifference to His house. God was drying up the source of every earthly blessing. He "blew" upon their crops and withheld the dew. He called for a drought on the land, the mountains, the grain, and everything the earth produced. The drought fell on men, on cattle, and on all the work of their hands. And why did He send this universal blight upon all their work and all their expectations? Let us write the answer on our hearts: "Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house." Is there no voice in these words for believers today? God is still God, and He has His objects now as He had then. If His objects are not ours, is it any wonder that we suffer from spiritual drought and barrenness?

We may excuse ourselves by saying the time is not right. But the real reason for indifference to the principles of God's house is that we are occupied with our own things. Even in the Apostle's day we read of believers that "they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 2:21). One has said, "It is an unavoidable alternative — we must be occupied either with the Lord's things or with our own."

Notice, too, that our own houses often come into competition with the Lord's house... So we need to think much about this truth: all our "building" is completely in vain unless we do it as the Lord's work.

Many among us feel ashamed, and with good reason, at the exaggerated importance we attach to our own things. Meanwhile the interests of the house of God — the church of the living God — occupy so little of our attention. The Lord often shows us where we fall short. He lets us see that even with all our concern for self we still miss what we aimed at... The Lord deals with His people on a principle of retributive justice. These words express it: "whatever one sows, that will he also reap" (Galatians 6:7). This way of dealing takes nothing from the believer's perfect acceptance in his person through grace. It does not touch his standing in grace either.

Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the remnant of Israel came back from captivity in weakness. They at once busied themselves with God's house. They set up the altar as their protection, and then they laid the foundation of the house. But opposition discouraged them, they stopped building, and sorrow and trouble came upon them... But as soon as they began to build the Lord's house, God commissioned the prophet to say, "From this day on I will bless you."