God’s Grace

“From this day on I will bless you.”

Haggai 2:19

The work on the temple had continued in earnest now for two months. Problem was, the workers were not living nor worshipping in obedience to God’s commands: “Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled” (2:14). Hence Haggai’s third prophecy from the LORD, 2:10-19.

In general, the Israelites’ disregard for God’s Law (2:11-13) had seeped into their worship and their relationships. Consequently, they had not prospered (2:15-17).

Consider how difficult it is to pause and look back, to be confronted with your ungodly mistakes, your unjust ways, your lack of worship and caring and forgiveness and love. Frankly we’d rather not go there. But it is regret and humility that lead us to lament, to grieve well, to change our ways. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time (1 Peter 5:6).

And in better than due time God did just that for those workers. He didn’t wait for the temple to be completed nor for their ways to be tested further: “From this day on I will bless you” (2:19). Consider then His grace—His grace to them for future blessings, His grace to us for the ultimate blessing of Jesus, His ultimate grace at the end of time.

God’s grace truly engulfs His providence—His “absolute power over all the works of his hands.”* He could have abandoned those early builders to their oppressors during the rebuild; but when they cried out to Him He “heard from heaven, and in (His) compassion (He) delivered them time after time” (Nehemia 9:28).

And then, in love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves (Ephesians 1:4-6).

God is full of grace. That’s just who He is:

  “Grace, grace, God's grace,
   grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
   Grace, grace, God's grace,
   grace that is greater than all our sin.”

    —Julia H. Johnston, 1910, Hymnary.org

Nancy P

*Thomas Constable, Sonic Light online

All Scripture quotations are from the NIV Translation 1973, 1978, 1984, unless otherwise noted