The Word of God energizes us. Notice what the Word says: then Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel and the spirit of Joshua and the spirit of all the remnant of the people (Haggai 1:14). The Word of God stirred up! No sooner was there this response of willingness and obedience than God stirred up his people to begin the work on the temple, with a word that energizes them. What was it that stirred them up? I think you have the clue at the end of Haggai 1:13. It was after that rebuking word that Haggai preached to them, and after that responsive obedience, then there is this encouraging word: Yahweh says, I am with you (Haggai 1:13b). That was the word. And the first part of Haggai 1:14 can easily be translated – so Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel and Joshua and the rest of the people. So he stirred them up, but how did he stir them up? By that promise, I am with you. You may object to that. You may say, Oh, how could those simple words and that simple promise ever energize and fortify God's people? You might say, that is too common! It may well be. You know, we use those words almost like a cliché in our prayers. If we do not know how to pray for someone or perhaps we are just not thinking very hard then we say, Lord, be with them, be with this person, be with so and so, and it almost becomes a kind of trite cliché, and we empty it perhaps of its meaning.
Haggai says that Yahweh says that he will be with you, but how is the Lord going to be with them? Well, I don't know; I don't really care too much about God's precise methods, but I do care whether I have the assurance of his Personal Presence. And I would have rather have that covenant promise from the God of the Bible, I am with you, and go into any darkness having that promise, than having any elaborate plan of precisely what method he will use to show his Presence with me. I do not need that. But I do need to hear him say, I am with you. That matters. You might say that it is too simple. No, I don't think that it is too simple. It is precisely this kind of promise that has nerved and fortified God's people as they have gone through all their circumstances. That is what has energized and stirred them to endure. That is what happens: not just when you have to build a temple like these people had to do, but just as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:1–40, when each Christian lives out his or her Christian life in the circumstances in which God has placed him or her. Just in your ongoing daily Christian life, there is nothing that holds you up like having the Word of the living God that says, I am with you. Even when you are at the end of your life, this is all that sustains you and stirs you and energizes you.
It was Richard Cecil, a minister in Britain in the late 1700s, who was at the deathbed of his mother. And as he was there, he said to his mother, are you afraid to die? And he received a resounding No! He was a bit puzzled and he said,
Dale Ralph DavisWell, given the fact that you're going and there is such an uncertainty about what's going to be after death. Aren't you disturbed even a bit?She said, No! Why? Because God has said, fear not; when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. She quoted Isaiah 43:1–28, but is it not the same promise? It is what makes you able to stand on the edge of life and say,I don't fear,only because when you pass through the waters, God says, I will be with you! That is the word that fortifies and nerves you and holds you up.1
13 Aggée, envoyé de l'Eternel, dit au peuple, d'après l'ordre de l'Eternel: Je suis avec vous, dit l'Eternel.