Our theme for this month: “Wisdom”
Our Bible verse for today: “Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, the Lord of Hosts says this: “Think carefully about your ways.” Haggai 1:4-5 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Wise people put the Lord first.”
I’m sure the people of Haggai’s day would have claimed that the Lord was first in their lives, but the evidence proved otherwise. In their case they had been tasked by God to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem but instead they left the temple in ruins while they focused on building their own homes, tending their own crops, and pursing their own interests. They were busy people with full lives and although they would have claimed that God was number one in their lives, He wasn’t. And as a result, they were missing some of God’s best blessings.
So Haggai challenged them to consider the true quality of their lives. While they were so obsessed with their homes and jobs and recreational activities, their lives were still coming up fairly empty. He wrote:
“You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough to be satisfied. You drink but never have enough to become drunk. You put on clothes but never have enough to get warm. The wage earner puts his wages into a bag with a hole in it.” Haggai 1:6
Despite their obsessive pursuit of worldly concerns their crops were minimal, their clothes gave little real warmth, all their food and drink failed to truly satisfy them, and so Haggai’s message was clear: “If you shortchange God He will withhold His blessings from you.”
Oh, they had material abundance that’s true, but Haggai’s point was that deep in their hearts there was still an emptiness, an unfulfilled longing.
Sadly, their story is our story. We cram our lives full – right to the outer edges with all sorts of things that have little or nothing to do with God. We allow careers, recreational activities, and the expectations of others to monopolize the majority of our time until we have little left for God and His people. We spend all we make to acquire material possessions, go into debt to acquire even more, and then claim we can’t afford to give God the 10% that is rightly His. More is never enough. And when it’s all said and done, when we’ve worked as many hours as we could, played until we dropped, spent until there was nothing more to spend, we discover that there’s still a whole in the middle of our heart that all that activity and stuff didn’t fill for us.
The French philosopher Pascal once observed that, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the human heart which can only be filled by God.” He was right, but sadly many of us have yet to learn that lesson.
A person who is wise in the ways of God will put God first – really put Him first. When we do, we discover that He Himself meets our true needs, fulfills our deepest longings, and our lives are suddenly richer, fuller, more satisfying than they ever were before. And, God will often then throw in a bunch of the other blessings as well. Wise people put the Lord first in every area of their lives.
God Bless,
Oak Hill Baptist Church 