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When Haggai looked at the big world, the prophet saw a God who is shaking the heavens and the earth. Big events are happening. Things are changing rapidly. Nations are on the move. Empires are rising and falling. In the midst of this, there is tiny Judah with a handful of people. What significance do they have? What do they matter in this big, turbulent world?
One of the amazing things about human life is that though we are small, we can see really big. We can consider the events in the wider world. We can even look out into the universe and contemplate the hundreds of thousands of stars and galaxies.
We can’t help but ask from time to time, what does each one of us matter in the big scheme of things? As the heavens and earth shake and move, do our decisions on a daily basis matter at all?
The book of the prophet Haggai answers that question. It tells us that God is doing big things in this big world, and He invites and commands us to join Him. When we do so, God assures us that we matter to Him and that what we do makes a big difference, even when it seems like it does not. Haggai wanted to tell the people that they mattered. We will see their important place in God’s plan through Haggai’s challenge, the people’s obedience, and Haggai’s encouragement.
Haggai’s Challenge
In order to understand Haggai’s challenge to the people, we have to understand the context of this book. Remember that in the previous prophetic books that we have considered, the people of Israel were threatened first by Assyria and then by Babylon. In the end, Assyria took the people of the northern kingdom into captivity, and Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, took the people of the southern kingdom into captivity. He also broke down both the walls of Jerusalem and the temple of Jehovah. You can read about these sad events in the last 16 chapters of Jeremiah.
The kingdom of Babylon was eventually defeated by the kingdom of the Medes and Persians and their great leader Cyrus. Cyrus decided to let the people return to their lands. The Persians had a very different policy from that of previous empires. You can read about this in the book of Ezra. Under Ezra, many exiles returned to their homeland and began the worship of the Lord again in Jerusalem.
At that time, God raised up several leaders to lead the people back to the land and to restore its broken-down cities. Two of these are mentioned in this book in addition to Haggai. Their names are Joshua, the High Priest and Zerubbabel, a descendant of David. Joshua was the religious leader and Zerubbabel was the political leader.
Haggai prophesied about 18 years after the decree of Cyrus. Many Jews had returned, but the temple was not rebuilt. Why? “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house’” (Hag. 1:2). Why was it not yet time? One reason was that they working on their own houses. “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” (Hag. 1:4). Their focus was on the lives of their families and their own houses to the neglect of the Lord’s house.