Haggai 1 1-15

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Haggai 1:1-15

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In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of theLORD came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest:

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This is what the LORD Almighty says: "These people say, 'The time has not yet cometo rebuild the LORD's house.' "

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Then the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai:

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"Is it a time for youyourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?"

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Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways.

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Youhave planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."

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This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways.

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Go upinto the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored," says the LORD.

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"You expected much, but see, it turnedout to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?" declares the LORDAlmighty. "Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy withhis own house.

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Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and theearth its crops.

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I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, thenew wine, the olive oil and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock,and on all the labor of your hands."

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Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and thewhole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the LORD their God and the message of the prophet Haggai, because the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared theLORD.

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Then Haggai, the LORD's messenger, gave this message of the LORD to the people:"I am with you," declares the LORD.

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So the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabelson of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began to work onthe house of the LORD Almighty, their God,

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on the twenty-fourth day of the sixthmonth.

Remember God’s House

Introduction: The Book of Haggai and the rebuilding of the temple(a little bit of background here).Brothers and sisters,One of our jobs as Christians is to be students of Scripture. Tostudy the word and all of its parts to see how God speaks in the past and too the present. In some cases this job is easy – where the

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message speaks to our own situation directly and the story is wellknown.In other cases the job is difficult. Sometimes the message of Scripture is hard to find because we don’t know the context of themessage. The history is a little more obscure. The story isunfamiliar.When we deal with these minor prophets this is often the positionwe find ourselves in. We find ourselves a little bit lost becausethere is a story around the story that we just don’t know. But still,our job is to be students of Scripture, even the difficult parts. Andthis morning, and over the next few weeks, we are going to work through the prophet Haggai.The prophet Haggai is one of the books of the Bible where it isvery useful for us to know that story around the story. In terms of where we find ourselves in history the year is The year is 520 BC.In world history this places us after the brutal Babylonian Empireand a few decades into the reign of the Persians.In the Bible story we find ourselves in the time period of the booksof II Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. We find from the book of Ezra that Sixteen years earlier, in 536 BC, the Persian emperor Cyrus had issued a decree permitting the Jewish exiles in Babylonto return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:2-4).In response, nearly 50,000 people returned under Zerubbabel whowas of the Davidic line, and the newly appointed governor of Judah, and the high priest, Joshua.In the book of Ezra we find that when they arrived They clearedthe temple of rubble; replaced the altar; and began daily sacrifices.This was in the fall, and by the spring of the next year, they hadlaid the foundations of the temple.

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At this point in history opposition to the work began. Neighboringtribes within the Empire, especially the Samaritans, began tooppose the rebuilding of the temple. Then, as the opposition was building Cyrus died in battle, and his successor, Cambyses, alsocalled Ahasuerus (Ezra 4:6), bowed to the pressure and stopped thework..And so this is where we find ourselves in the Book of Haggai – with a prophet who is speaking to these Israelites 16 years after they have returned from exile and living in Jerusalem.

I. This morning as we begin looking at the Prophet Haggai weshould consider what life was like for these Judeans…

I think that it would be very safe for me to say that few of us havethe experience of being an Israelite in 520 BC. We may feel thatold sometimes – after playing some volleyball with some of our younger folks yesterday I am certainly feeling like it this morning – but the reality is that what they were going through is outside of the realm of many of our experiences.Politically, Israel is about 100 years out of being a nation. Theydealt with the Assyrian empire who controlled a majority of Israeland even came to the doorstep of Jerusalem. The Assyrians werereplaced with the Babylonians and Jerusalem was sacked. Theyhad lived in exile and many of these 50,000 who returned hadnever been in Jerusalem.Within the Persian empire many of them had also began to prosper – gaining wealth for themselves and living quite comfortably. Stillthey were strangers among the Persians and longed for the landthat they were connected to. And so when they had the opportunityto return to Jerusalem they took it.

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