Haggai 1:4 [Is it] time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house [lie] waste?
Ver. 4. Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, &c.] Not covered only, but ceiled with cedar (as the Chaldee here hath it), arched and garnished, as the Greek, carved and trimmed, as Ambrose rendereth it (Lib. 3. epist. 12). Sure, either your beds are very soft or your hearts very hard, that you can not only come into the tabernacles of your houses, but give sleep to your eyes, or slumber to your eyelids, before ye have found "a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob," Psalms 132:4,5. Good David could not find in his heart to dwell in a house of cedar when the ark of God dwelt within curtains, 2 Samuel 7:2. Valiant Uriah deemed it altogether unfit and unreasonable that when the ark, and Israel, and Judah, abode in tents, he should go to his house to eat and drink, and to take his ease and pleasure, 2 Samuel 11:11. Solomon first built a house for God, and then for himself. The Christian emperors, Constantine, Theodosius, Honorius, &c., exceeded in building churches, which, from their stateliness, were styled Basilicae, or places for a king. The very Turks to this day, though content to dwell in mean and homely houses, yet their Mosques or meeting houses are very sumptuously built and set forth. It is a principle in nature, that the things of God are older and more to be respected than the things of men (τα του Yεου πρεσβυτερα η τα των ανθρωπων. Herodot.). A professor of the Turks' laws proclaims, before they attempt anything, that nothing be done against religion. This is better than that which was written over the gate of the senate house in Rome (which yet is not to be disliked, in its place and order), Ne quid detrimenti Resp. capiat. Let nothing be done to the harm of the republic. Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's: but with all, and above all, Give unto God the things that are God's. The Greek article is twice repeated by our Saviour, when he speaketh for God, more than when for Caesar (τα του θεου τω θεω, Mat 22:21); to show that our special care should be to give God his due, to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," and then all other things shall seek us. Caetera aut aderunt, aut caetera non oberunt The rest either will happen or the rest will not harm. (Cicero). But most people are so busied about their own houses, their cottages of clay, 2 Corinthians 5:1, the body, that God's house, the soul, lies waste and neglected; the lean kine eat up the fat; the strength of the ground is spent in nourishing weeds. Earthly mindedness sucketh the sap of grace from the heart, as the ivy doth from the oak, and maketh it unfruitful. Men are so taken up about the world, that they think not of God's kingdom: as the Duke of Alva told the French king, who asked him whether he had observed the recent great eclipse? No, said he, I have so much to do upon earth, that I have no leisure to look toward heaven. But is not one thing necessary, and all others but side businesses? And have we not in our daily prayer five petitions for spirituals and but one for temporals? Are we not taught to make it our first request, that God's name may be hallowed, though our turn should not be served? Is not Esau stigmatized for selling his birthright for a mess of broth? Hebrews 12:16. And is not Shimei chronicled for a fool, who, by seeking after his servants, lost his life? Pope Sixtus for a madman, that sold his soul to the devil, to enjoy the Popedom for seven years? "What shall it profit a man to win the world and lose his own soul?" to win Venice, and then be hanged at the gates thereof, as the Italian proverb hath it? Surely such a man's loss will be, 1. Incomparable, 2. Irreparable; for "What shall a man give in exchange of his soul?" Matthew 16:26. It was no evil counsel that was given to John III, King of Portugal, to meditate every day a quarter of an hour on that Divine sentence. It would be time well spent to ponder as often and as long together on this text, "Is it time for you, O ye," that are so sharp set upon the world, so wholly taken up about your private profits, your pleasures and preferments, to sit in your ceiled houses, as Ahab once did in his ivory palace, or Nebuchadnezzar in his house of the kingdom (as he vain gloriously calleth it, Dan 4:30), and God's house lie waste, and his service neglected, to whom we ourselves owe, 1 Corinthians 6:19, our lives, Matthew 16:25, our parents, children, friends, means, Matthew 19:29, our gifts and abilities, 1 Corinthians 4:7, our honours and offices, Psalms 2:10,12, all that we are and have? How justly may God curse our blessings (as he threateneth these self-seeking, God neglecting Jews both here and Mal 2:2), scatter brimstone upon our houses, dry up our roots beneath, and above cut off our branches, drive us from light into darkness, and chase us out of the world with his terrors, Job 16:15,21. Surely such are the (ceiled) dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him that knoweth not God, that inverteth the order appointed of him, by coveting, not the best gifts, 1 Corinthians 12:21, but an evil covetousness, Habakkuk 2:9, by setting his affections, not on things above, but on things on the earth, by seeking their own things, every man, and not the things of Jesus Christ, Col 3:2 Philippians 2:21 .