Excuses from Haggai 1:1-2

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/22/2016 9:50 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                                  Focus:  Excuses

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                                   Reference:  Haggai 1:1-4

            Message of the verses:  “1 In the second year of Darius the king, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the LORD came by the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, saying, 2  "Thus says the LORD of hosts, ’This people says, "The time has not come, even the time for the house of the LORD to be rebuilt."’" 3 Then the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, saying, 4 “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate?"”

            We will have to a bit more introduction before we look at these verses, but needless to say we are off and running in this second shortest book of the Old Testament. 

            Now we have mentioned that the building of the temple is the theme of this prophet’s book and the foundations were laid in the year 536 BC.  There were a different mixture of ages of the 50,000 people who returned from Babylon to go to Jerusalem, and I might add that there could have been more people return, but some of those who should have returned had made home in Babylon and they did not want to leave.  I believe that the book of Ester speaks of those who had stayed behind in Babylon.  The older people were a bit upset at the size of the temple that was being built by the returning exiles as it was smaller than Solomon’s temple, and the younger people were full of joy when the foundation was built for they had not known the size of Solomon’s temple, but we can believe that Haggai, even though he was older was joyous to see the foundation laid. 

            The problem was that after a while the zeal that these younger people had seeing the foundation laid was lost after a while, that human tendencies you know.  What happened along with losing their ecstasy, or perhaps the cause of it was the enemy was at work, that happens you know when God’s people make some headway the enemy starts to work harder until at times he wins a battle.  Dr. Wiersbe writes “The temple lay unfinished from 536-520 when Haggai and Zechariah brought God’s message to Zerubbable and Joshua.

            “In the first message, the prophet gave four admonitions to the leaders and to the people to encourage them to get back to work and finish rebuilding the temple.”

            Our first sub-point, “Excuses” is a part of the first main point “Put God first in your lives,” and it is the first of four admonitions to the leaders and also to the people to encourage them.   Here are a couple of definitions of the word excuse:  “the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie,” is how Billy Sunday puts it.  Benjamin Franklin wrote “I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else.” Noticed the highlighted phrase from verse two “’This people says, "The time has not come, even the time for the house of the LORD to be rebuilt."” 

            In his commentary on this section Dr. Wiersbe tells the story of his first pastorate where the people gave a ton of excuses on not building a better building to conduct their church services, and some of the excuses were probably given by those in Jerusalem who were suppose to be building the temple.

            One more thing that I want to leave with you as far as the importance of this second temple that was being built by the exiles and that is that this temple was more important than the first one for this temple would see the Lord Jesus Christ come into it many years later.  Some would call the temple that He went into a different one or Herod’s temple, but as far as I know it was just the remolded one that the exiles built for after all it was some 500 years later when Christ came into it.