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We find ourselves with the Lord speaking directly to the leaders of the people, Zerubbabel who was the governor of Judah, and Joshua who was the high priest.  They were basically the two most influential and important people in the land of Israel.  He begins speaking with them in vs.4 in the same exact way that we see it depicted in I Chronicles 28:20 where David speaks to Solomon as he is about to build the temple and says: “Be strong and of good courage, and act.  Do not be afraid or dismayed; for the Lord  God, my God, is with you.”  In the same way the Lord says to Zerubbabel and to Joshua, and we also see to all the people of Israel who were gathered: “Now take courage…for I am with you.”  

What a great way to leave this 90 Day Challenge with these words from our Lord who tells us in our big and small projects, whether we are building the temple or trying to fill the usher list for Sunday, “Take courage for I am with you.”  I want this to be your mantra as you make your way through life these days.  Don’t allow the cultural message of fear and anxiety pervade your style of life so that all of your decision making is impacted and affected by a fear of what could be.  Allow it to be directed by the promise of what will be given to us by our Savior: Take courage for I am with you.

As a result of that promise the people of Israel were able to face their future in the midst of just returning from captivity to rebuild their nation to a point of the Lord saying that He would overthrow all of their enemies.  When we face life with the courage and the confidence that the Lord instills within us then we do not need to fear, we do not need to wonder “what if?”, we simply need to live our lives to the fulfillment of what God has in store for us.  Let’s do that together in community.  See you next 90 Day Challenge and thanks for following!

The word Hag in Hebrew means festival and so maybe the author and the one depicted in this book of the Bible was someone who either was born on a festival day…, or just liked to party.  When we read about this king Darius in the first verse we are able to get a pretty good indication of when this was written.  Darius was the one who dedicated the temple after it had been rebuilt.   So we are talking about around the years 515 BC.  Let’s look at the content. 

We see the prophet speaking to the people about how is it that you can live in such nice beautiful houses while the house of the Lord, the temple, lies in ruins?  They were convicted and we see that in vs.12 the people mobilized and set off and did what they needed to do in order to put the house of the Lord back in shape.  They worked hard to do it.  The mobilization of the people happened from the top down in this example.  First it was the ruler and the chief priest, and they spoke to the people, and the Spirit of the people rose up.  It was top down, but it doesn’t always work that way.

I will never forget spending time in Latin America, not just Honduras but primarily, and all the  countries between there and here.  I  was often shocked by the abject poverty which surrounded me and yet the place of worship in the town, a church, would be a place of utter wealth and splendor.  It was shocking, it was troubling, and I sensed a disconnect which was obvious and appalling as someone who  professed faith in Jesus Christ, but the Jesus that I believed in would not be caught dead in that church.  He would have been sleeping on the streets in the filth with everyone else.

What is interesting about this prophet, that is Haggai, is that he speaks  and the people respond overwhelmingly.  In almost  all the other books of the Bible that we have read  we see  the prophet speak and it has to be about doom and gloom because the people absolutely refuse to respond to the message.  But not here.  They respond  and in the next, read last, chapter we will see what comes of that response.

This final chapter is more of a song and it is designed to be used in a house of worship.  You can see that from the very beginning to its intermediary Selah stances after vs.3, 9, and 13 that this was meant for a choirmaster  to put it together to song and musical instruments.   When we read about  Shigionoth in vs.1 we find that name also mentioned in Psalm 7.  We don’t know what it means, but again, it is another piece of evidence that this “prayer” was supposed to be put to some music.  

So we finish this book of the Bible and we also finish another 90 Day Challenge.  We find ourselves with only 16 books left out of 66 books of the Bible.  We are almost there!

So the prophet asked God a question in chapter 1, where are you when things are really going bad, and now we find in chapter 2 that he is waiting for an answer.  The depiction we get is that of a sentinel on a tower waiting for the word of the Lord which he expects to come which will answer that question.  Right away in vs.2 we see that the Lord answers the prophet.  Look at vs.4 and we find a Scripture which is taken up in Romans 1:17,  Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38-39.  Go ahead  and look them up and read them.  What we read is that the righteous will live by faith.  

So the answer God gives is wrapped up in taunts to the wealthy.  Those  nations who are ravaging the Israelites will meet their doom.  The enemy nations which are causing so much grief to the prophet and his people will meet their demise at the hands of those that they have persecuted.  Basically the question of where are you when it hurts is answered with vs.3, if revenge tarries, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not delay.  Wait, but it is delaying which is why I’m calling out to you.  I don’t feel like you are doing anything, I’m getting impatient.  The answer: wait for the Lord.  Look at Psalm 27 and you can see a similar theme.  Actually if you look at Psalm 27:13-14 you hear the author convinced that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  So that would be here and now.  If we would just wait for the Lord.  These two themes go well together.