Sermon Tone Analysis

There are somethings that just have to be clean and pure.

We want to trust that when we buy premade food that the kitchen that the food is being cooked in is clean, or the place where the food is packaged is clean.

We also tryst that there are kitchens where the food is pure when it is prepared, like the packages that say they are gluten free.

Dirty surfaces and improper handling of food can make one sick, and gluten (or other allergen) can have deadly consequences.

I’ve seen pictures of the places where they make computer chips, and they are not just immaculately clean, but the people working in them don’t just wear regular clothes into the manufacturing space, they wear dustless suits.

The purpose is that a small piece of dust can render a chip inoperable.

When we buy computers, cell phones and all sorts of other things with computer chips we want them to work.

The Bible speaks of the idea of clean and unclean, though not quite in the way as a sterile and uncontaminated location.

Rather it is unclean or clean in relationship to standing with or before God.

The prophet Haggai delivers a message to the people of Judah that their offerings are unclean before God, and tells them what they must do to offer clean offerings.

We too can offer clean and unclean offerings to God, and so we need to learn from what Haggai says to the people of Judah.

Haggai 2:10 - 19

I. Can the Clean Make the Unclean Clean?

A. What makes something clean

1.

Not just lack of dirty

2. Set apart for holy purpose

3. A member of a clean class

B. The answer to the question

1. No!

2. Clean cannot pass on its state

3. Cannot change the class

Nothing clean can touch the unclean and make it clean!

II.

Can the Unclean Make the Clean Unclean?

A. Number of unclean things

1.

Things used for ordinary purposes

2. Things of an unclean class

B. The answer to the question

1. Yes!

2. It cannot change the class

3. It can defile

a. Touching something dead

b.

Sitting on a couch that a woman on her period sat on.

c.

Mouse droppings on seed

d. the list could go on and on.

We don’t live by the same sense of ritual purity and impurity, be there can still be uncleanness, and one of those it in motive.

And the area we see this in is the same area of which Haggai is speaking, offerings!

III.

Offerings

A. Unclean

1.

If we are unclean then our offerings are by nature unclean

2. One of the ways that we are impure is sinfulness

3. Damaged relationships with others –

Matthew 5:21 - 25

4.

This affects all areas of our approaching of God

a. Worship

b.

Communion

c. Tithes and offerings

B. Clean

1.

To offer clean offerings, one must do the work of becoming clean.

2. To the Jews this might include

a. washing

b. washing and waiting

c.

Special sacrificial offerings

d. a combination of the latter 2 or the first and last.

3.

For the Christian this means:

a. Repentance

b.

Asking for forgiveness

i. from God

ii.

From others whom we have harmed

c.

Acts in line with repentance

i. Zacchaeus gave half of his possessions