The Contagion of Sin and the Pivot of Grace Text: Haggai 2:10-19
Introduction: The Logic of Uncleanness
We live in a world that has forgotten the grammar of holiness. Our secular age thinks of good and evil as matters of personal preference, like a taste for different kinds of ice cream. But the Bible operates with a far more robust and realistic logic. The Scriptures teach us that sin is not static; it is a contagion. It is an active, aggressive, polluting force. Holiness, on the other hand, in its creaturely and ceremonial forms, is not nearly so transferable. A drop of poison can contaminate a gallon of pure water, but a drop of pure water does nothing to a gallon of poison.
This is the object lesson God gives to His people through the prophet Haggai. The returned exiles had been laboring under a divine curse. Their fields were barren, their harvests were cut in half, and their work was fruitless. They were putting their wages into bags with holes in them. And the reason was simple: they had been prioritizing their own paneled houses while the house of the Lord lay in ruins. After Haggai's first sermon, the people repented and began the work. But now, three months later, God sends Haggai again, this time to teach them a deeper lesson about why their previous efforts, even their religious efforts, had been so thoroughly defiled.
God wants them to understand the spiritual physics of the world He has made. He wants them to see that their own uncleanness was contaminating everything they touched, their crops, their food, and even their sacrifices. Going through the motions of religious observance while your heart is set on disobedience does not make you holy. Rather, your disobedient heart makes your religious observances unclean. This is a hard lesson, but a necessary one. Before God can announce the great pivot of His grace, "From this day on I will bless you," He must first diagnose the depth of their disease. He must show them that their problem was not just neglected stonework; it was a contaminated heart.
The Text
On the twenty-fourth of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of Yahweh came to Haggai the prophet, saying, “Thus says Yahweh of hosts, ‘Ask now the priests about the law: If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches bread with this fold or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy?’ ” And the priests answered, “No.” Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?” And the priests answered, “It will become unclean.” Then Haggai answered and said, “ ‘So is this people. And so is this nation before Me,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and so is every work of their hands; and what they bring near to Me there is unclean. But now, oh set your heart to consider from this day onward: from before one stone was set on another in the temple of Yahweh, from when it was that one came to a grain heap of twenty measures, then there would be only ten; and from when one came to the wine vat to draw fifty troughs full, then there would be only twenty. I struck you and every work of your hands with scorching wind, mildew, and hail; yet you did not come back to Me,’ declares Yahweh. ‘Oh set your heart to consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month; from the day when the temple of Yahweh was founded, set your heart to consider: Is the seed still in the barn? Even including the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree, it has not borne fruit. Yet from this day on I will bless you.’ ”
(Haggai 2:10-19 LSB)
A Priestly Quiz on Contamination (vv. 10-13)
God begins this oracle with a pop quiz for the priests, the designated teachers of the law.
"Thus says Yahweh of hosts, ‘Ask now the priests about the law: If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and touches bread with this fold or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy?’ ” And the priests answered, “No.” Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?” And the priests answered, “It will become unclean.”" (Haggai 2:11-13)
The first question is about the transfer of holiness. If a priest is carrying consecrated meat from a sacrifice in his garment, and that garment touches some ordinary food, does the ordinary food become holy? The priests give the correct answer: "No." Ceremonial holiness is not contagious in this way. You cannot become holy by casual, accidental contact with a holy thing. Holiness requires intentional consecration. It is not something you catch like the flu.
The second question reverses the scenario. What if someone is ceremonially unclean because they have touched a dead body, the highest form of ritual uncleanness under the Mosaic law? If that person touches ordinary food, does the food become unclean? Again, the priests answer correctly: "It will become unclean." Uncleanness, unlike ceremonial holiness, is highly contagious. A touch is all it takes. Sin and defilement spread easily.
This is a fundamental law of spiritual reality. Goodness is hard-won and must be cultivated with diligence, but corruption spreads like a virus. Think of a garden. You must labor to cultivate fruit, but the weeds grow all by themselves. A healthy person cannot transmit their health to a sick person by a simple touch, but a sick person can certainly transmit their sickness. This is the logic God is establishing. He is laying a theological foundation before He brings the hammer down with the application.
The Sobering Diagnosis (v. 14)
Having established the principle, God now applies it directly to the people of Judah.
"Then Haggai answered and said, “ ‘So is this people. And so is this nation before Me,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and so is every work of their hands; and what they bring near to Me there is unclean.’ ”" (Haggai 2:14)
This is a devastating verdict. God says that the people themselves are unclean. And because they are unclean, everything they do is unclean. The "work of their hands," whether that was farming their fields or laying stones for the temple, was contaminated. Even more pointedly, "what they bring near to Me there is unclean." Their sacrifices, their offerings, their attempts at worship, were all polluted. They were like the man who had touched a corpse. Their spiritual deadness, their years of covenant rebellion and misplaced priorities, had rendered them unclean. And so, everything they touched became unclean.
They might have thought that by finally starting to work on the temple, their religious activity would make them clean. They had it backwards. Their internal uncleanness was making their external activity filthy. This is a direct assault on all forms of dead religion. It is a rebuke to anyone who believes that merely showing up to church, or being busy with religious projects, can somehow sanctify a disobedient heart. It cannot. An unclean source pollutes the entire stream. God requires truth in the inward parts before He will accept the work of our hands.
Consider Your Ways: The Curse in Retrospect (vv. 15-17)
God now commands them to reflect, to connect the dots between their disobedience and their hardship.
"But now, oh set your heart to consider from this day onward: from before one stone was set on another in the temple of Yahweh, from when it was that one came to a grain heap of twenty measures, then there would be only ten; and from when one came to the wine vat to draw fifty troughs full, then there would be only twenty. I struck you and every work of your hands with scorching wind, mildew, and hail; yet you did not come back to Me,’ declares Yahweh." (Haggai 2:15-17)
The phrase "set your heart to consider" is a summons to serious, theological reflection. God wants them to look back at their recent history, before they started rebuilding, and understand that their economic frustration was not bad luck. It was His hand. He was the one shorting their harvests. They expected twenty measures of grain and got ten. They expected fifty measures from the winepress and got twenty. Their productivity was cut by more than half.
And it was not just poor yields. God says plainly, "I struck you... with scorching wind, mildew, and hail." These are the very curses for covenant disobedience that Moses warned about in Deuteronomy 28. God was being faithful to His covenant threats. He was disciplining His people to get their attention. But notice the heartbreaking conclusion: "yet you did not come back to Me." The discipline was intended to produce repentance, but they had remained stubborn. They felt the pain of the consequences but refused to diagnose the cause. They were treating the symptoms without ever acknowledging the disease of their sin.
The Great Turning Point: The Promise of Blessing (vv. 18-19)
But now, everything is about to change. God again tells them to "consider," but this time looking forward from a specific, pivotal day.
"‘Oh set your heart to consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month; from the day when the temple of Yahweh was founded, set your heart to consider: Is the seed still in the barn? Even including the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree, it has not borne fruit. Yet from this day on I will bless you.’ ”" (Haggai 2:18-19)
God pinpoints the exact date: the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. This is the day they recommitted themselves to the foundation of the temple. This is the day their obedience began in earnest. And on this very day, God makes a monumental promise. He asks them a rhetorical question. Look around. Is the seed for next year's crop still in the barn? Yes. Have the fruit trees produced anything yet? No, it is the middle of winter. There is no natural, agricultural reason to expect a sudden reversal of fortune. The curse has been evident for years, and there is no visible sign that anything has changed.
But God's promise transcends the natural course of things. He declares, "Yet from this day on I will bless you." The blessing is not a result of a completed temple. It is not a wage earned for work finished. The blessing is a gift of grace that begins the very moment they align their priorities with His. Obedience does not earn the blessing, but it does put them under the spout where the blessing is poured out. The curse is lifted, and the flow of covenant favor is restored, not based on the visible results of their work, but on the invisible orientation of their hearts, demonstrated by their work.
The Gospel Reverses the Contagion
This entire object lesson in Haggai points us to a far greater reality in the Lord Jesus Christ. Under the Old Covenant, uncleanness was contagious, but holiness was not. A touch from a defiled person spread defilement. This was our condition as sinners. We were unclean, and everything we touched was stained by our sin. Our best efforts, our religious works, our sacrifices, were all unclean because we were unclean.
But then Jesus came. And in Him, God reversed the flow. When the leper, the ultimate picture of uncleanness, came to Jesus and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean," what did Jesus do? He reached out His hand and touched him (Matthew 8:3). According to the logic of the ceremonial law, Jesus should have become unclean. But that is not what happened. Instead, Jesus's holiness proved to be contagious. His cleanness flowed into the leper, and the man was healed. The flow was reversed.
When the woman with the issue of blood, who had been unclean for twelve years, touched the hem of His garment, she was not punished for defiling Him. Instead, His power, His cleanness, His life flowed out of Him and into her, and she was made whole (Mark 5:29). In Christ, holiness has become the aggressor. His purity is the contagion. His righteousness is the all-consuming fire that burns away our dross.
The people in Haggai's day received the promise of blessing the day they began to work on the foundation of the temple. We receive every spiritual blessing the moment we are founded upon the true Temple, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the foundation stone. And when we are united to Him by faith, we are no longer unclean people offering unclean sacrifices. We are made clean by His blood. We become the temple of the Holy Spirit. And because He is clean, and we are in Him, God now accepts the work of our hands, not because our work is perfect, but because the one for whom we do it is. "From this day on I will bless you" is the promise of the gospel to all who repent and believe. The curse is broken, and the blessing of God is ours in Christ.