SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/29/2016 10:54 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Discouragement
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Haggai 2:1-3
Message of the verses: “1 On the twenty-first of the seventh month,
the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet saying, 2 "Speak now to
Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of
Jehozadak, the high priest, and
to the remnant of the people saying, 3 ’Who is left among you who saw
this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Does it not seem to
you like nothing in comparison?”
In today’s
Spiritual Diary we begin the second and last chapter of the book of Haggai and
there are some titles that I want to give to you from Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary
beginning with the title he gives this chapter “Keeping the Work Alive,” and
then the first main section which covers the first nine verses he entitles “Look
up: God is with us.” The first main section
is the one we are looking at this evening and it is entitle “Discouragement,”
and when you look up the meaning of the word “encouragement” according to what
I remember that Dr. David Jeremiah said it means to “pour courage into a person,”
so perhaps discouragement could then mean taking courage from a person. Now I want to quote from the last paragraph of
Dr. Wiersbe’s introductory commentary so we can better understand where we are
going as we look at this second chapter of Haggai. “The rebuilding of the temple was a very
special task, for it meant the restoring of true worship in Jerusalem; and
completing the project would please the Lord and be a great testimony to the
unbelieving nations who were watching the remnant in Jerusalem. Haggai delivered three more brief messages to
encourage the laborers to complete their assignments. In each message, he asked them to look in a
specific direction to learn what God wanted them to learn.”
Now as we
look at the introduction to this first main point Dr. Wiersbe writes “When the
foundation of the temple had been laid sixteen years before, some of the older
men had looked back in sorrow as they remembered the glory and beauty of
Solomon’s temple (Ezra 3:8-13). It’s likely that Haggai was a member of the
older generation and had seen the temple before it was destroyed, but he
certainly didn’t weep with the rest of his peers. He rejoiced that the work had begun, and he
wanted to see it complete.”
Now along
those lines I remembered when I studied the book of Ezra in July of 2011
something that Dr. Wiersbe had written about the tears that some of the remnant
shed after seeing the foundation laid for the temple: “After the foundation was laid there were
some older people began to weep because the temple was smaller than the one
Solomon, yet the younger men began to shout because the task was finished. When one thinks about it this temple would be
there when the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth and He came into it and taught
in it.
“Dr.
Wiersbe writes about how these different generations reacted differently after
the foundation was complete: “It’s
unfortunate when the unity of God’s people is shattered because generations
look in opposite directions. The older
men were looking back with longing while the younger men were looking around
with joy. Both of them should be looking
up and praising the Lord for what He had accomplished. We certainly can’t ignore the past, but the
past must be a rudder to guide us and not an anchor to hold us back. God’s people are a family, not a family album
filled with old pictures; they’re a garden, not a graveyard covered with
monuments to past successes.
“We have
similar generational disagreements in the church today, especially when it
comes to styles of worship. Older saints
enjoy singing the traditional hymns with their doctrinal substance, but younger
members of the church want worship that has a more contemporary approach. But it isn’t a question of accepting the one
and rejection the other, unless you want to divide families and split the
church. It’s a matter of balance; the
old must learn from the young and the young from the old, in a spirit of love
and submission (1Peter 5:1-11). When
they were new, many of our traditional hymns were rejected for the same reasons
some people reject contemporary praise choruses today. ‘But each class (the
young and the old) should try to understand the other’s feelings,’ said
Alexander Maclaren. ‘The seniors think the juniors revolutionary and
irreverent; the juniors think the seniors fossils. It is possible to unite the shout of joy and
weeping. Unless a spirit of reverent
regard for the past presides over the progressive movements of this or any day,
they will not lay a solid foundation for the temple of the future. We want the old and the young to work side by
side, if the work is to last and the sanctuary is to be ample enough to embrace
all shades of character and tendencies of thought.’” (Maclaren, Alexander. Expositions of Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1974 vol. 1, 77)”
Now we will
look at verses 1-3 of Haggai chapter two to see what things we will discover in
them. We have dates given in these
verses, and the dates show us that Haggai picked an important do to give his
message. October 17, which was the last
day of the Feast of Tabernacles, and this feast was devoted to the praising of
the Lord for the bountiful harvest and also it was to remember the children of
Israel’s walking in the wilderness.
Leviticus 23:3 4-43 speaks of this feast.
Dr. Wiersbe
points out “But the important thing about the date was this: it was during the Feast of Tabernacles that
King Solomon had dedicated the original temple (1 Kings 8:2), and Haggai wanted
the people to think about that. The
restored building had nothing of the splendor of Solomon’s temple, but it was
still God’s house, built according to His plan and for His glory. The same ministry would be performed at its
altars and the same worship presented to the Lord. Times change, but ministry goes on.”
Yes times
do change, but we know from God’s Word that He will never change as this is one
of His attributes. I for one am thankful
that God never changes for He is not like people who can wake up and be in a
bad mood and change something that they said would happen before they went to
bed.
3/29/2016 11:24 PM
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