Haggai 1:15

Scripture records the date when they started their work again … twenty-three days after Haggai began to prophesy (compare verse 15 with verse 1). Three short weeks were enough for the people to recover from their backsliding. When God acts in power His work is soon done, and He makes His people rejoice in His restoring grace and pardoning mercy. The record of the date shows how He delights in the obedience of His people. How longingly He watches over His saints, and how closely He notices the first movements of response to His word!

We should also notice the source of the power for their labour. It was not in the people, but in the Lord. It was He who stirred up the spirit of His people and pressed them to go forward in His service. He had done the same at the first, when He "raised" their spirit to go up from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. It takes us a long time to learn that there is no power except in the Lord. In the Lord's work, human energy, will, or persistence not only count for nothing. They are real barriers in the way of divine strength.

And the place where power comes is most instructive. It comes not before obedience but after it. It is also tied to the assurance of the Lord's presence among His people. Grasping this would clear away a mistake many hold, and sometimes say out loud: that we must wait for power before we can obey. It is not so. On obedience the Lord gives power. First comes the obedience of faith. Then He gives power to walk in the divine paths.

Having obeyed the LORD, they can count on the presence of the LORD: "I am with you, declares the LORD." How much blessing is wrapped up in this short message!

They did not begin to build again because the king's decree reached them. They built because they feared the Lord and did not fear the king's command, as seeing Him who is invisible. God was no more to be feared under Darius than under Cyrus or Artaxerxes. The source of their weakness was that they had forgotten God.

The striking fact here is that they built without waiting to hear that the king approved. They did the work because it was the LORD's message, not because it carried the king's signature. The king's approval came later. They had already gone ahead in confident faith, acting on the word of the LORD and waiting for nothing else. And the Lord did not fail to work for them. Israel had lost, for the time, their public place in the world, but the Lord still tested, guided and blessed the faithful. His righteous government goes on just the same in these times when Gentile powers rule.

Comparing Haggai 1:13-15 with this passage, we see that it was exactly three months from the day the people started work on the Lord's house to the day the foundation was laid. It is striking that the Lord did not begin to bless them until that foundation was laid. He waited through those three months to test His people's hearts and the reality of their restoration. He worked in them a sense of their past condition, and so prepared them to receive the blessing He was about to give. It is always so in His ways with His people. His heart towards them never changes, but the showing of His heart must depend on their condition.