Charles Spurgeon Commentary Haggai 1:5-6

"Now therefore thus saith Jehovah 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." — Haggai 1:5-6 (ASV)

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.

Those people did not prosper: they were very prudent in a worldly way, but somehow they did not succeed. No! It is not what we do so much as God's prospering us that will make us truly succeed.

It is vain to rise up early and sit up late, and eat the bread of anxious toil. God must give us prosperity, and He often withholds this when He sees it is not right.

A man will not trust a bad steward. And though God has trusted many and many a bad steward for wise reasons, yet among His own people He often gives chastisements and deprives them of worldly comfort when they do not use what they have for His service.

I think I have heard some people say that ministers should never talk about money in the pulpit.

The prophet Haggai did, however. It is because ministers say so little about the consecration of their substance to God's cause that this most important part of true piety is often treated with levity, and by some even with disgust.

No, brothers, we must speak often. The great sin of the Christian Church is withholding from God. It is the sin now, just as it was in the days of Haggai.

Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.

If you considered your ways, you would see that you have been losers by your attempts to gain. Consider your ways practically by altering them.