Haggai 1:5-7 - Homiletics

Considering one's ways.

I. AN EXALTED PRIVILEGE . The faculties of introspection and reflection, which enable man to consider his ways, constitute a lofty endowment, which places him incontestably at the apex of creation.

1 . It distinguishes him from the lower animals. These may Do possessed of capabilities which enable them to perform actions in some degree resembling the fruits of intelligence—it may even be conceded are, in some instances at least, endowed with faculties of memory, imagination, and judgment; but they are wholly devoid of the powers of self-introspection and reflection here ascribed to man. Of the noblest of brute beasts it still remains to be proved that it ever said to itself, "I communed with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search" ( Psalms 77:6 ); or "I thought on my ways" ( Psalms 119:59 ).

2 . It sets him in the neighbourhood of God. The Hebrew psalmist conceived the ideal man as a being only a little short of Divinity ( Psalms 8:5 ); and though the basis on which he rested this conception was man's manifest dominion over the creatures, yet this arose, as he well knew, out of the fact that man, as distinguished from the lower creatures, had been made in the Divine image ( Genesis 1:26 ); which again, in part at least, consisted in his capacity to consider his ways, or to look before and behind in whatever way he was treading. "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world" ( Acts 15:18 ); "He declareth the end from the beginning" ( Isaiah 46:10 ); and though the Preacher affirms that "no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end" ( Ecclesiastes 3:11 ), yet to each man has been granted the ability to consider the way in which he himself goeth ( Ecclesiastes 5:1 ), and in this high capacity of pondering the path of his feet he possesses an endowment that in him a finite Doing corresponds to the omniscience of the infinite God.

II. AN URGENT DUTY . The consideration of one's ways required by two things.

1 . Divine commandment. In addition to the twice-repeated exhortation here addressed to the builders, the admonition frequently occurs in Scripture ( Psalms 4:4 ; Proverbs 4:26 ; 1 Corinthians 11:28 ; 2 Corinthians 13:5 ; Galatians 6:4 ) to commune with one's own heart, to search and try one's ways, to examine carefully into one's spiritual condition. And this to a good man is enough to constitute an imperative obligation. "Where the word of a king is"—much more where the word of the King of kings is—"there is power."

2 . Present safety. No one can travel long securely or comfortably along the path of life who does not ponder well at the outset from what point the course he is pursuing starts, who does not frequently pause to notice whither it is tending, and who does not always have an eye upon the where and the how it shall terminate. The man that lives purely by haphazard, that rushes on blindfold into whatever enterprise he takes in hand, whether in business or religion, is sure to come to grief, if not to fall into the ditch.

3 . Future responsibility. There might be less need for attending to this duty if the issues of our ways and actions always exhausted themselves on earth and in time. But they do not. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and give an account of the deeds done in the body, whether these be good or whether they be bad" ( 2 Corinthians 5:10 ). The ways of every man project themselves into the unseen beyond. Every man is making his future by the, ways he is travelling and the deeds he is doing in the present.

III. A PROFITABLE EXERCISE . Apart altogether from the duty of it, the advantages to be derived from it should go far to recommend this practice.

1 . Self-knowledge. No one will ever attain to a trustworthy or valuable acquaintance with his own heart who does not frequently undertake a review of "the issues of life" ( Proverbs 4:1-27 :28) that proceed from it. Yet next to the knowledge of God and Christ, which constitute the essence of "life eternal" ( John 17:2 ), the knowledge of self is the highest attainment to which one can rise.

2 . Moral discernment. The power of distinguishing between right and wrong, which belongs to all as an intuitive endowment, is nevertheless susceptible of improvement or deterioration, according as it is exercised or neglected. It may be clarified, intensified, quickened, strengthened; or it may be dulled, darkened, weakened, deadened. Through diligent personal culture the soul may become sensitive to nicest distinctions of right and wrong as an aneroid barometer to smallest variations in the atmosphere; or, through want of use, it may become hard as a fossilized organism or as a petrified log of wood.

3 . Spiritual improvement. No one is likely to make progress in religion without an intimate acquaintance with his own ways. Without this one may even not suspect that his religion is defective. In proportion as one knows what in himself is dark and needs illumining, or feeble and requires strengthening, or low and demands upraising, or deficient and calls for supplementing, or wrong and wants correcting, will one advance in moral and spiritual attainment.

Learn:

1 . The dignity of man.

2 . The responsibility of life.

3 . The duty of circumspection.