The Lord's House and Our Own Houses by John Norton Loughborough

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 29, 1885

The Lord's House and Our Own Houses.

By John Norton Loughborough

THE apostle Paul, when addressing the Philippians, made a statement fairly illustrating the tendency of the natural heart. Speaking of Timotheus, he said, "I have no man like minded, who will naturally care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." Phil. 2: 20, 21. The lingering desire of the carnal heart leads a person to regard that which is pleasing to himself, while the indwelling of the Holy Spirit establishes in him another nature. While under the influence of God's Spirit—partaking of the divine nature—there is a caring for the cause of God more than to please self. So long had Timotheus shared the spirit of the Master, it had become natural to him to look out for the interests of the cause of God, even though it might diminish earthly pleasures, and retard the accumulation of this world's goods.

This earthly tendency of the carnal heart, is graphically illustrated and reproved in the Lord's instruction to the Israelites in the days of Zerubbabel. The Lord's house languished for the lack of their care and attention. He sent to them the prophet Haggai with these words: "Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste." Hag. 1:4. He represented them as saying, "The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built." Verse 2. It appears from the above language that then, even as now, when the servants of God were urging the people on to forward movements to advance the cause of God, those whose thoughts and affections were mostly on their own houses, feared that the leaders were moving too fast, and calling for too great an investment in the work. Indeed they thought they had a most plausible excuse for neglecting to contribute for the building up of the Lord's house. Notice what the Lord said of their situation, by his prophet: "Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye 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." Hag. 1:5, 6. Again he said to them: "When one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten; when one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty." Hag. 2:16. Their financial situation, as above set forth, was certainly not a very flourishing one.

I doubt not if many who profess the truth at the present time had been there, they would have said, Surely people meeting with such reverses cannot do anything to help the cause. In these hard times, when some have received from their labors only one-half, or two-fifths of what they had anticipated, they are much inclined to say, if they do not really say it, I am certainly excused from bearing financial burdens in the cause, for I have no more than I wish to use for my family. Let us see what the Lord said to that people under their peculiar circumstances: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways. Go 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." Hag. 1:7, 8. Instead of the Lord accepting their excuses for neglecting his house, even under such apparently forbidding circumstances, he gave them an explanation of their losses very adverse to their excuses. He, in fact, showed them that the very reason they were in such financial embarrassment was because of their selfishly withholding from his cause: "Ye looked for much, and lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit." Hag. 1:9, 10. Again, "I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labors of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the Lord." Hag. 2:17.

Under this reproof they decided to take hold of the work of building the Lord's house. He at once made them very encouraging promises, in these words: "Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider it. Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, . . . hath not brought forth; from this day will I bless you." Hag. 2:18, 19. The above shows that when we are in apparently adverse circumstances, thinking that we can do little or nothing to advance the finances of the cause, it may be that the Lord has permitted adversity to overtake us because of our lack in sacrificing as we should to build up his cause.

The prophet Malachi, in his description of the people living in the time when the coming of the Lord to judge the world is near charges them with "robbing" God "in tithes and offerings." On the other hand he speaks of great blessings, both spiritual and temporal, that shall be poured upon those who "bring all the tithes into the storehouse." We are living in that time when the Lord is soon to come; when his Holy Spirit is soon to be poured out. If we would share in that refreshing, and be partakers of that blessing which "there shall not be room enough to receive," we must comply with the conditions, and cease to "rob God" in tithes and offerings.

In former articles I called attention to our institutions, such as our publishing houses, and schools. I trust our people on this coast will be faithful in paying their tithes and offerings to the Conference funds, and, as rapidly as possible, redeem all their pledges to the cause, in all its branches. In addition to what I mentioned in former articles, there is one enterprise I will speak of in this article; it is the city missions in the California Conference. As the work is being carried on in these missions, with the distributors for papers, tracts, etc., it requires a constant inflow of means. Considerable has been pledged for this purpose. Let these pledges be paid as fast as possible, that this part of the work may develop equally with other branches of the cause.

I trust with each of us there will be a prayerful and careful study of the financial wants of the cause. What is our duty? What pledges have we made? What can we do in these hard times to redeem our vows and pledges? In all our financial planning let us obey our Saviour's injunction to "seek first the kingdom of God," that we may not be numbered with those who run to their own houses, while they leave the Lord's house to lie waste, nor of those who shall only regard their own personal wants and interests, while they leave the cause of God to languish.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.