True & Beautiful Things About the Bible--Old TestamentSample

Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: Let’s go home.

The prophets at the very end of the Old Testament could tell you the stories.

The captivity was over. God’s discipline was complete. Those whom God loved could now come back to Israel. Beginning in 528 B.C., the people from Judah, called now, “the Jews,” returned home in three separate waves. The prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi all served the Jews, coming home to rebuild their nation.

But once the adrenaline wore off, there they were, back in the land, but it wasn’t at all what they hoped it would be.

First, the temple was in ruins. They tried to rebuild it, but it fell short of the glory of what the older folks remembered it to be (and they didn’t mind reminding them of the difference.) So, when the rebuilding was far from complete, they got distracted and decided to work on their own houses, first. More than 16 years go by and still the temple isn’t built. God sends Haggai to stir them up to good work. He was just the man to do it, too. Practical. Helper. A hammer in his hand and his feet on the ground. God’s priorities were at the top of his to-do list. Gratefully, the people listened to him.

Zechariah served at this same time with his eyes not on the ground, but in the sky. Born in Babylon during the captivity, Zechariah traveled back to the Land with Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple, but instead, he focused on motivating the Jews to invest in God’s long plan. Our Messiah is coming, he said. In fact, Zechariah says more about Jesus Christ, His work, and His glory than all the other minor prophets combined.

And finally, Malachi. The last book in the Old Testament was written around the same time as the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem (under Nehemiah). Yet in all these years since the Jews’ return to the land, their hearts had not returned to God. They didn’t care about His Word. They didn’t think it mattered that they brought leftovers to sacrifice to God. And they openly criticized how He ran the world. They were God’s people in name only. In addition to addressing some of these issues, Malachi pointed the people to a Messiah coming to save them. But they openly slandered God.

Through it all, God’s love for them (and for us) never changed.

But His method did.

And that’s where the New Testament begins.