{"id":7779,"date":"2021-09-06T06:40:11","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T11:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/?p=7779"},"modified":"2021-08-23T14:15:27","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T19:15:27","slug":"devotional-on-haggai-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-haggai-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Haggai"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
2013 – LeFleur’s Bluff State Park, Jackson, MS<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nSorting out a passage and finding at its core: grace
\nHaggai 2: From now on you can count on a blessing.
\n\u201cTemple fever\u201d is sweeping the nation as governor Zerubbabel and his people give themselves to the rebuilding project. One group that\u2019s especially energized is the priests who’ve served without a Temple. They\u2019re sure things are going to be much better once the Temple is restored. Haggai comes teach them a core spiritual truth and he does so by asking two questions. Question number one has to do with imparted holiness. If meat from a sacrifice is put into some priest\u2019s pocket, it will make his robe holy, but what about other foods then touched by the robe? The priests respond that there\u2019s no ripple effect concerning what other foods the robe might touch. Therefore, those foods remain unholy. The second question concerns the flip side of things. If a person touches a corpse, becoming ceremonially unclean and then touches various foods, do they also become unclean? The answer is \u201cyes\u201d \u2013 the \u201cuncleanness\u201d is imparted to whatever that person touches. Haggai then tells them that the sacrifices they\u2019ve been making haven\u2019t been proper because of their spiritual failure. The sin of not rebuilding the Temple has impacted all they’ve done, making them all worthless. Even as a person who touches a corpse makes all they touch unclean, so has their disobedience concerning the rebuilding of the Temple had a negative impact on all their religious practices. The flip side, which I wish Haggai had more clearly stated, is just as disturbing. Just offering proper sacrifices in the rebuilt Temple isn\u2019t going to have the hoped for ripple effect of making the entire nation holy. It\u2019s like the robe touched by the sanctified meat. It\u2019s made holy but that\u2019s as far as it goes. Touching other things with that robe won\u2019t make them also holy. In other words, rebuilding the Temple isn\u2019t a cure-all. Still, the prophet has some wonderful, and educational, news. From the moment they returned to God he began to bless them. His blessings weren\u2019t a result of their making the right kind of sacrifices; in fact, they weren\u2019t the right kind. Rather the blessings were the result of his grace. As I read this especially confusing little passage I come away with a better grasp of this truth: sin has contaminated our entire lives, making us exempt from any hope of self-manufactured holiness. Even when I return to God, my renewed commitment to him will still come up short because of the contamination of sin that has ruled my life. However, I\u2019m not without hope because of God\u2019s grace. He blesses me, not because I\u2019ve managed to restore all that was broken but because he chooses to respond to my surrender to him with wonderful grace.
\nTake Away: The blessings of the Lord are the result of his grace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorting out a passage and finding at its core: grace Haggai 2: From now on you can count on a blessing. \u201cTemple fever\u201d is sweeping the nation as governor Zerubbabel and his people give themselves to the rebuilding project. One group that\u2019s especially energized is the priests who’ve served without a Temple. They\u2019re sure things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1499,6,7],"tags":[129,518,554,564,940,1054],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7779"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7779"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15543,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7779\/revisions\/15543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}