Haggai: Building God’s Churchናሙና

As we journey through the Book of Haggai, we’re tracking the Jewish people’s experience of rebuilding the ruined Temple. Let’s recap what’s happened so far.

Freed after decades of slavery, the Jewish people head back to their hometown with a mission from God to reconstruct the Temple, but they decide to delay God’s plan while they rebuild their homes and businesses first.

So God sends the prophet Haggai to spur them on.

They take Haggai’s message to heart and get to work building the Temple’s foundation… only to give up again, this time discouraged by the magnitude of the task.

As we pick up the story there, in the second half of the second chapter, we know that work on the Temple has resumed. In fact, it’s going so well that the people have grown a bit proud of themselves and the work they are doing on God’s behalf.

It’s at this point that God sends Haggai a second message to share with the people. Haggai goes to the priests and asks two questions. For those of us not familiar with Jewish law, what Haggai asked might seem odd, but these questions about consecrated and defiled food were meant to remind the people of an important point: God’s law says there is no transfer of holiness. In other words, you can’t catch or create perfection.

The Jewish people, laboring day and night on the Temple, had begun to believe that their work was somehow earning them God’s favor—that it was making them holy. They had forgotten that God had already declared them holy—perfect—His treasured people.

It’s the same mindset that many of us have slipped into, that somehow our obedience to God makes us more pleasing to God. That our church attendance, Scripture reading, and good works earn us God’s love.

Like the Jewish people, God has already declared us holy… through Jesus.

Today’s verses in Ephesians 5 describe how that happened. Jesus gave Himself up for us—the church—in order to cleanse us and make us holy. We cannot create our own perfection or holiness through good deeds. Jesus did it for us.

It’s out of gratitude for that gift that we obey and serve. It’s then—with our hearts and motivations in the right place—that we experience God’s promise in verse 19: “From this day on I will bless you.”