Haggai 2:15

God could not bless them while staying true to His holiness and His love for His people — not while their hearts were turned away from Him, and not while they were using His grace, which had brought them back from captivity, as a way of gaining their own ease and comfort. So He dealt with them in judgment. He disciplined them, to wake them out of their spiritual dullness, and to teach them the lesson God's people always need: their true blessing and prosperity can only be found in the Lord's ways, not in their own. This explains the prophet's words, "And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward" — that is, look back over the past, since "upward" here means taking a backward view.

A second lesson is this: God's ways of government with His people aim to make them take their condition to heart. That is why He uses His rod... Every stroke of God's rod should set off deep searching of heart. Where it does not, it is a sure sign that heavier discipline from His hand is coming.

Just as an unclean man makes unclean what he touches, so the nation of Israel defiled whatever they took up. All their works and offerings are unclean. A person must be clean himself before he can act or offer rightly.

the common notion that we can cleanse the world by association with it, or help the people of God by association with the corrupt systems in which they may be found, is a fallacy, and worse, for to act thus is not only no help to others, but we ourselves become defiled — for that which is unclean defiles by association.

It is striking to notice that the Lord did not begin to bless them until the foundation was in place. He waited through those three months to test His people's hearts and the reality of their return to Him. He was working in them a sense of what their past condition had been, and so preparing them to receive the blessing He was about to give. It is always like this in His ways with His people. His heart towards them never changes, but how His heart shows itself must depend on their condition. His heart is always to bless, and if He holds back blessing, it is only because of their spiritual state.

There cannot be a more striking fact than this — the blessing God has given goes far beyond what their largest thoughts ever looked for... To many it was just a practical matter of doing the will of God, and so a settled duty of keeping clear of what dishonours the Lord. But who ever expected what He has given since: the opening up of His word, the recovery of forgotten truth, and the enjoyment of His presence...? The blessing has come and will come beyond all our thoughts, if by grace we simply hold to the Lord with full purpose of heart.