Four Days, Three Months, and Four Oracles
Haggai
Main Idea: The Lord’s past faithfulness brings present comfort in His future promises.
I. Stirred to Faithfulness (1:1-15)
It was not a remarkable year in terms of the secular history of the time, but it was a spiritual watershed in the history of God’s people and the unfolding of the divine plan of redemption. God sent the prophet to stir up the community in Jerusalem to new obedience, and his ministry was blessed with revival. The record of those months is a memorial to God’s grace and a challenge to the obedience of subsequent generations.
~ John l. Mackey, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: God’s Restored People
1 Peter 2:4 - 5: As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
II. Strength for the Work (2:1 - 5)
The work of building God’s kingdom can often seem “as nothing” in our eyes. Periods of difficult and apparently unfruitful ministry might cause those with long memories to hark back to the “glory days” of old, de-energizing ministry in the present.
~ ESV Expository Commentary
III. Security for the Future (2:6 - 9)
Ezra 6:6–10: Now therefore, Tattenai, governor of the province Beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai, and your associates the governors who are in the province Beyond the River, keep away. Let the work on this house of God alone. Let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. Moreover, I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God. The cost is to be paid to these men in full and without delay from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province from Beyond the River. And whatever is needed—bulls, rams, or sheep for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, or oil, as the priests at Jerusalem require—let that be given to them day by day without fail, that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons.
John 1:14: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 2:18–22: So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
Ephesians 2:13–22: But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
