Key Learning from Wednesdays
October 2024
Middle of the Week Bible Study
Haggai is the first prophet after the Babylonian captivity and the 10th of the minor prophets. Minor only in the length of their writings, not in their message. This book illustrates the problem of focusing on self-serving priorities to the neglect of God's priorities. It also shows how God rallied this community of faith to accomplish and important work, which united them in hearing God's Word.
Haggai 1
⁃ Place your hearts above your ways
• Set your sights on righteousness not unrighteousness
• Put yourself above what you do
⁃ Fear of the Lord
• Respect and reverence towards God (TLSB 1001)
• Unbelievers probably hear be scared
⁃ Kings of Persia
• Cyrus the great (Conquest on the night of Belshazzar’s fest) foretold by Isaiah 150 Years before Cyrus’s birth.
• Darius the Great (Different from Daniel and the Lions den)
• Xerxes son of Darius and grandson of Cyrus (Book of Esther)
⁃ Zerubbabel
• In the genealogy of Jesus
• God’s chosen servant to restore His people to their land, to right worship
- Covenant - I will be your God, you will be my people (Exodus 19:5-6)
•We are redeemed by God
- The glory of the old house < new because the new is Christ
- Sin is contagious
• Don’t rely on relics. Rely on God.
• Choices matter - a life of faith matters
• There is such of as the means of Grace
- Works without faith is worthless
- Zerubbabel
• Signet ring = kingship, for I have chosen you
• Genealogy of Jesus
• Matthew through Joseph (legal Father)
• Luke through Mary
• Jesus’ linage converges on Zerubbabel (Matthew & Luke)
• Jehoiakim's curse (Jeremiah 22:24-25) the last of Davidic royal line.
• Lenski (on Matthew) - Shealtiel (grandson of Jehoiakim) was Zerubbabel's legal father, not his biological father.
• Lenski (on Luke) - Pass by the problems as to Rhesa, Neri, Cainan, and other names.