Day 232 – Haggai & Zechariah

• Today we have a detour from Ezra as we take a quick look at two of the minor prophets. The word “minor” refers only to the amount they wrote, not because they are less important! We’ll flick to Zechariah again next week, along with Malachi, but we won’t read much more than that from these books.
• In the opening verses of Ezra 5, we read that Zerubbabel and Jeshua are involved with restarting the work on the temple. About 15 years have elapsed since the work was halted, which was a long time – longer than Harry and Jonah have been born! Why did they start rebuilding again?
• Look at the opening five verses of Haggai 1. What does God say in these verses? You know that God doesn’t “live” in the temple. What is God communicating, therefore, in Haggai 1:4?
• How had God responded, according to Haggai 1:9-11, to the stopping of the temple building, in regards to the prosperity and harvests of the people?
• All these verses show us Israel’s preference for their own personal gain over what God wanted, and so God didn’t bless the people’s labours. We are told that we are to put God at number one, aren’t we. Israel didn’t do that, and the people suffered.
• The words in Zechariah offer us some hope though, as well as a ticking off! Basically God is saying “return to me, and I’ll return to you”. As the exile becomes a memory, and the people return to living in the land of Israel, these words show us God inviting the people to renew their commitment to Him.

The people had been too worried about the voices of the challengers around them and hadn’t prioritised God and His work enough. That’s a challenge for us all, isn’t it? What one thing can you think about for a moment where you know that you haven’t got the right balance in your life? Pray about it specifically.

Zechariah 1 shows us God’s warning about what happened to the people before the exile. They had warning after warning and refused to turn away from their sinful ways. God was very angry (verse 2) with the people in the time of the kings. God reminds them that they have now gone (verse 5) – nothing can change what happened. But Zechariah 1:3 is great comfort – if the people now returned to putting God number One, God will “return to them”. God’s judgement during the exile had been completed, and now He is willing to reconcile those who turned to Him.

What a wonderful example of grace!