Consider Your Ways
In the manual: Come, Follow Me lesson 50, “Holiness unto the Lord,” on Gospel Library
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“Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough” (Haggai 1:6). Haggai’s people worked hard and never seemed to have enough.
Read Together
The king of Persia had let the Jews go home to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:2–3). They laid the foundation, and then the work stopped for years (Ezra 3:10–11; 4:24).
4Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste? 5Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. 6Ye 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.
8Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.
What It Teaches
The people said, “The time is not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built” (Haggai 1:2). They had found time to finish fine wood-paneled houses for themselves (verse 4). Twice the Lord told them, “Consider your ways” (verses 5 and 7).
They earned wages and put them “into a bag with holes” (verse 6). Everything they worked for seemed to leak away while the Lord’s house sat unfinished. Jesus taught the same order of things. Seek first the kingdom of God, and the other things we need will be added (Matthew 6:33).
The Lord’s instruction was plain. “Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house” (verse 8). Within about three weeks the people were back at work, and the Lord told them, “I am with you” (Haggai 1:13–15).
In 1833 the Lord rebuked the early Saints in Kirtland, Ohio, for the same delay with their temple (Doctrine and Covenants 95:3). They began work on it within days.
Talk About It
Haggai told the people to consider their ways. If we looked at how we spent our time this week, what would it say about what comes first?
Take to Church
Haggai’s people worked hard and still put their wages into a bag with holes. When they put the Lord’s house first, he told them, “I am with you.”