Haggai 2

God is in the house

This message in Haggai comes during a building project in Jerusalem. The people were rebuilding the temple and had undergone 18 years of delay.

God used the prophet Haggai to encourage and push them to complete the task. During times like those (and these) we shouldn't say "We did it!". No, the truth of projects for the gospel is that God does it.

Haggai's message was simple: build the house of God before your own. The people had their priorities wrong. They saw the rubble and thought that there could never be anything like Solomon's original temple.

After more delays, Haggai preached again. He encouraged them to build with the presence and promise of God. The building seemed like nothing and they had lost hope. Their expectations had been shattered. But Haggai reminded them that the glory of the new house would outmatch the former. Our past can be a great asset to us. But if we are not careful then the past can be our greatest liability. Some things can weigh us down and hold us back from God's mission. So we must learn to let go and embrace God's future. Feeling like "It's not like what it was in my day" can lead us to be disengaged from God and His people. If we allow that to sink in we become the barrier to God's project in our lives. We cannot grow like He wants us to if we are in that mindset.

Haggai gave two incentives to the people stuck in that mindset: