Haggai 1.3 Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways.
God raised up the prophet Haggai to awaken His people out of spiritual slumber and selfcenteredness. Here is the long and short of it. The people had been wonderfully delivered out of captivity by Jehovah, but when they settled in, instead of making the house of God their number one priority, they began building and remodeling their own homes, sparing no expense in the process. The result? Let God speak for Himself. “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.” Emptiness. Rather than a sense of satisfaction and comfort, discontent.
That is why Jesus tells us to seek first His kingdom and righteousness. First doesn’t means that He is your number one God, followed by God number two, etc. It means that The Lord Jesus Christ, His kingdom and His will must be what our lives revolve around. His agenda is now mine. His will is now mine. My fulfillment in life is wrapped up in fulfilling His will and doing those things that are pleasing in His sight. Selfishness is never godliness. When a person is living in sin, they are only thinking about themselves and not the will or things of the kingdom of God.
This morning beloved, consider your ways. Take spiritual inventory. God is watching. Consider your ways by looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. He didn’t die for us to enrich ourselves or to build heaven on earth. He dies for us in order that whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living. Lordship living, not selfishness, is the only life that satisfies, and that is what we were redeemed for, beloved.
