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T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
May, 1640
1 b surely a wrong attitude. We are to bear our testimony faithfully and seek to arrest the tide of unbelief, no matter what the outcome may be. We are re sponsible to do the will of God here and now, and to leave the results to Him. 3. “ Your ceiled houses” (v. 4). The word “ceiled” is better rendered "wains coted” or “paneled,” referring to walls as well as the ceilings, suggesting not only comfort but luxury in their own personal dwellings, in contrast to the sad state of affairs in the Lord’s house. Golden Text Illustration H e b r ew s 10:24, 25 Can one live a Christian life outside the church? The answer to this ques tion is in the affirmative, but one can not live as good a Christian life out side the church as he can live within it. I once saw an orchard with all its trees, well pruned and cultivated. There was a high fence around it. There were no weeds growing within that fence. No
horse or cow roamed about inside the orchard. There was an abundance of fresh, fine fruit . . . Just over the fence stood an apple tree . . . Weeds and grass had grown all about it. Horses and cows had rubbed ft . . . Its limbs were broken and bruised by horns :and teeth of animals. There were a few small, knotty apples on the top limbs. Yes, it was an apple tree outside the orchard, but it was a very poor one. If one can live a Christian life outside the church, he can surely live a much better one inside.—J. S. Hodges. MEMORY VERSE: “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord” (Psa. 122:3). APPROACH: One of the sweetest words we know is “home,” isn’t it? Home is a place where families aré together, and every one in the family loves the o t h e r s . The place where ijj their Own homes— 5 ’ b i v i s i o n making them com fortable and lovely —while all the time they were forget ting about the house where they wor shiped the Lord ? That is just what happened in the days of Haggai, the prophet we are to study about today. LESSON STORY: Haggai knew that the people had been having a hard time, that many of them had been car ried away into captivity, and that, even when some of them had returned to Jerusalem and wanted to rebuild the temple, they had found the work was not easy. He knew they had grown discouraged and forgetful, so, as the Lord’s prophet, he urged them: "Con sider your ways” (1:5,' 7). He pointed out to them that some of their suffer ing had come to them as a warning from the Lord to make them see how selfish they had been in paying atten tion to their own homes, and forget ting the place of worship. The story has a happy ending. When the leaders and the people heard Hag- gai’s message, they “ obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet” (1:12). Of course they were happy when they did that. And while we know that today we do not need to go to any particular building in order to worship God, since we can worship Him anywhere through Jesus Christ our Saviour, yet we, too, will have special joy, as Haggai’s friends did, when we have a real love for the house of the Lord. Our Church B o o k o f H a g g a i God’s children meet HIM (we call it the church) should he even more precious to them than their o w n h o u s e s are. Wouldn’t it be sad to see people pay ing a t t e n t i o n to
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