Haggai 1:2 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

Navigator

Haggai 1:2

Comments

‘Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come.’ It is very interesting the way this is expressed. The people were saying these things emphatically, and their words seem to be clothed with authority. These are the words of people who appear to have considered the issue, and so they make something of a pronouncement: ‘Now is not the time.’ Implied is: ‘We do intend to get on with this task and to obey God and build a temple. Although we are fully committed to this, we have considered this, and we come to this very sensible conclusion that now is not the time’.Note that it is not, ‘I say’, but ‘they say’, so that God distances himself from their conclusion. They say this not because they had received no clear instruction to start building. The proclamation of Cyrus, recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder stored in the British Museum, had commanded the building work to begin (Ezra 1), and the work had commenced in 536 BC, sixteen years earlier. At that time Zerubbabel and those with him had laid the foundation stone (Ezra 3:8-10). The reason they say this is because of local circumstances that had developed since then. Really, it was their own unfaithfulness that was the problem. The trouble was they had given way to feathering their own nests and adorning their own homes in preference to building the Lord’s house. It did not horrify them as it should have done, that no house was built for the Lord. They hid behind the excuse of the difficulty of the work.

Application

Excuses by even Christian people today to not do this or that for the Lord, or to not comply with the Lord's standards in one thing or another, are very often clothed with great consideration and authority. ‘This is not the time’ – this is my deeply considered view. ‘Now is the time for me to build up home and family.’ This was the reasoning of the Jews long ago. ‘The Samaritans are going to hinder us’, they thought, but would there to ever be a time when the Samaritans would not hinder them? Nevertheless, here is the excuse of the people, and clothed with authority. We, of course, are not building a physical temple, but we are doing the New Testament equivalent of this and building up the church of God. We too have enemies who try to discourage us, we too have those who would infiltrate us and try to subvert the work, so that they can take it off course or stop it completely.

Questions

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Haggai 1:2 Commentary and Bible Study