Haggai 1:6-11 - Homiletics

Hard times.

I. A FREQUENT OCCURRENCE . Poor harvests and profitless trade, famine and idleness, lack of bread and want of employment, nothing to eat, and nothing to do. The two commonly go together. Examples of famines were in ancient times those which occurred in Canaan ( Genesis 12:10 ), in Egypt ( Genesis 41:54 ), in Samaria ( 1 Kings 17:2 ; 2 Kings 6:25 ), in Jerusalem ( Jeremiah 52:6 ); in modern times those which have taken place in India, China, and other parts of Asia.

II. A SORROWFUL EXPERIENCE . When the husbandman has laboured, and, perhaps through long continued drought, has obtained an altogether insufficient return for his labours. When through deficient harvests the people of a country are reduced to a state of semi-starvation. When through this failure in the sources of wealth the wheels of a nation's industry are stopped. When strong men who would willingly work can find no work to do. When wages already scanty are eaten up by exorbitant prices.

III. A PROVIDENTIAL JUDGMENT . Hard times:

1 . Are of God ' s sending. To say that bad harvests and dull trade are the results of natural (physical and social) laws does not show them to be disconnected with God. The Almighty is behind both nature and society, Jehovah claimed that the state of matters in Judah after the exile was his doing.

2 . Have their occasions, if not their causes, in sin. Haggai's countrymen had been made to suffer because of their indifference to religion and devotion to self-interest (verse 9). Were modern nations to reflect more deeply, they might discover connections between their characters and their conditions, their sins and their sufferings.

IV. A SALUTARY DISCIPLINE . Intended as all chastisement is:

1 . To arrest attention. Inconsiderateness a principal sin of men and nations.

2 . To convince of sin. A remarkable proof of depravity that moral perceptions require to be awakened by physical corrections.

3 . To excite repentance . Though confessions under the lash are not the same thing as penitence, yet they may and should be, and often are, accompanied by penitence.

4 . To promote amendment. Though punishment is not exclusively reformatory in its character, yet it is mostly (on earth at least) inflicted with design to benefit the sufferer.

LESSONS.

1 . Religion in individuals and nations the best defence against hard times.
2 . Repentance and prayer the best resort in bad times.