Reflections on Haggai 1

Haggai 01 (Contemporary English Version)


1. On the first day of the sixth month of the second year that Darius was king of Persia, the LORD told Haggai the prophet to speak his message to the governor of Judah and to the high priest. So Haggai told Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua
   
2. that the LORD All-Powerful had said to them and to the people: You say this isn't the right time to build a temple for me. But is it right for you to live in expensive houses, while my temple is a pile of ruins? Just look at what's happening.
   
3. (SEE 1:2)
   
4. (SEE 1:2)
   
5. (SEE 1:2)
   
6. You harvest less than you plant, you never have enough to eat or drink, your clothes don't keep you warm, and your wages are stored in bags full of holes.
   
7. Think about what I have said!
   
8. But first, go to the hills and get wood for my temple, so I can take pride in it and be worshiped there.
   
9. You expected much, but received only a little. And when you brought it home, I made that little disappear. Why have I done this? It's because you hurry off to build your own houses, while my temple is still in ruins.
   
10. That's also why the dew doesn't fall and your harvest fails.
    
11. And so, at my command everything will become barren--your farmland and pastures, your vineyards and olive trees, your animals and you yourselves. All your hard work will be for nothing.
    
12. Zerubbabel and Joshua, together with the others who had returned from exile in Babylonia, obeyed the LORD's message spoken by his prophet Haggai, and they started showing proper respect for the LORD.
    
13. Haggai then told them that the LORD had promised to be with them.
    
14. So the LORD God All-Powerful made everyone eager to work on his temple, especially Zerubbabel and Joshua.
    
15. And the work began on the twenty-fourth day of that same month.
    

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Haggai's prophecy is very different from most other prophets of Israel and Judah. Most of the prophets came before Judah's exile to Babylon and their prophecies were pointing toward the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and exile of the people. Haggai came after the exile had taken place. King Darius came to rule in Babylon, and due to his more generous policies, many of the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and began to rebuild the temple. Haggai came on the scene as a prophet at this point. While the Jews had gathered many materials for the rebuilding project, they had become sidetracked and lost their desire to complete the rebuilding project. Instead, they were wrapped up in rebuilding their own homes and tending to their crops. Haggai's task was to get the people back on task in rebuilding the temple.

Was it unfair of God to expect the people to put their personal lives on hold while they tended to His temple? Such thought arise from our own perverted thinking that makes ourselves the center of the universe. It was God who made us and everything there is and has allowed us to enjoy what is essentially His - not ours. But He invites us to join Him and be His partners in the use and maintenance of this world. And it is at this point we get in trouble. We try to deal Him out and do it ourselves as if it is our world and it is our lives to do with as we please. What we fail to see in this 'it is our lives and our world to do with as we please' attitude is that when we join God and see it from His perspective, He makes possible what we can never accomplish on our own. Rather than controlling our lives and the world in which we live, we actually have no control at all that God does not allow us to have. All we really have control over is our choices. And if we choose to leave God out of the picture we set ourselves afloat in a perilous sea.

Back to the Jews and their return to Jerusalem. They had spent years as exiles in a foreign country because they had dealt God out of their lives. Now that they were allowed to return to their homeland it would seem the prudent thing to also return wholeheartedly to their God. They made some semblance of such a return with the gathering of materials to rebuild the temple, but it was not wholehearted. They were defaulting back to their old ways of doing their own thing and dealing God out. Haggai's task was to nudge them away from their selfish ways and back to God and the task at hand. If they would do this, God would enable them to also rebuild their lives and their homes and to prosper. As it was, they were trying to rebuild their personal lives on their own and were again leaving God out of it. As a result, God was thwarting their efforts. Instead of helping them, His was hindering them. They planted crops to sustain themselves and God allowed them only a meager harvest. He allowed them enough so they didn't starve, but as verse 6 points out, "You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough to be satisfied. You drink but never have enough to become drunk. You put on clothes but never have enough to get warm. The wage earner puts his wages into a bag with a hole in it." They were choosing to deal God out and this was the outcome of their choice.

Then Haggai delivered this message, "The LORD of Hosts says this: "Think carefully about your ways. Go up into the hills, bring down lumber, and build the house. Then I will be pleased with it and be glorified," says the LORD. (verses 7-8) Haggai was one of the few prophets who saw a positive response to their message. Verse 12 says, "Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak, and the entire remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the LORD their God and the words of the prophet Haggai, because the LORD their God had sent him. So the people feared the LORD." Judah's intended lesson to be learned through her exile in Babylon had not been totally missed. Maybe their failure to rebuild the temple to this point was not an intentional act of rebellion but simply indicated their need to learn once again what it meant to be a people of God.

Due to the positive response to God's message through Haggai, God then had Haggai give to them this declaration, "I am with you." Now they could flourish, both in rebuilding the temple and in rebuilding their lives.