Haggai 1:5-6. Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. 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.
Those people did not prosper: they were very prudent after a worldly sort, but somehow they did not get on. No! it is not what we do so much as God’s prospering us that will make us really succeed. It is vain to rise up early and sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness. God must give us prosperity, and he often withholds this where he sees it is not right. A man will not trust a bad steward, and though God hath trusted many and many a bad steward for wise reasons, yet among his own people he often gives chastisements, and deprives them of worldly comfort, when they use not what they have for his service. I think I have heard some people say that ministers never ought to talk about money in the pulpit. The prophet Haggai did, however; and it is because ministers say so little about the consecration of their substance to God’s cause that this most important part of true piety is often treated with levity, and with some even by disgust. Nay, brethren, we must speak often. The great sin of the Christian Church is withholding from God. Now is it the sin as in the days of Haggai. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways." If you considered your ways, you would see that you have been losers by your attempts to gain. Consider your ways practically by altering them.
Haggai 1:5-6. Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. 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.
Those people did not prosper: they were very prudent after a worldly sort, but somehow they did not get on. No! it is not what we do so much as God’s prospering us that will make us really succeed. It is vain to rise up early and sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness. God must give us prosperity, and he often withholds this where he sees it is not right. A man will not trust a bad steward, and though God hath trusted many and many a bad steward for wise reasons, yet among his own people he often gives chastisements, and deprives them of worldly comfort, when they use not what they have for his service. I think I have heard some people say that ministers never ought to talk about money in the pulpit. The prophet Haggai did, however; and it is because ministers say so little about the consecration of their substance to God’s cause that this most important part of true piety is often treated with levity, and with some even by disgust. Nay, brethren, we must speak often. The great sin of the Christian Church is withholding from God. Now is it the sin as in the days of Haggai. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways." If you considered your ways, you would see that you have been losers by your attempts to gain. Consider your ways practically by altering them.