Encouragement in God’s promise: I will be with you

Haggai, though sympathetic, is saying not to go back to past memories in this case. He is saying to them to go back to past promises; cling to God's old promises. Don't worry about the fact that Solomon’s temple was far more glorious than this thing that we are building now. Do not let that hamper you. Do not get back to old nostalgia but get back to old promises. And what is that promise? Well, he gives it to them when he says

take courage… t, and do the work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. It is the promise which I cut with you when you came out of Egypt, and my Spirit remains among you do not be afraid!  (Haggai 2:4–5)

That is the promise: I am with you. That is not so simple, as we have seen before, yes, but that is always the promise. The Lord says in Haggai 2:5, it is the promise which I cut with you—that is a literal translation—when you came out of Egypt. When he says that it is a promise that he cut, he is referring to what is called cutting a covenant in the Bible. The cutting of a covenant took place when you you sacrificed an animal as a part of that covenant or treaty, and the cutting of that animal signified, among other things, that if the one making the promise in that covenant did not fulfill his promise, then the same thing that happened to that animal would happen to that person. It was a curse that was taken upon one: If I do not fulfill my promise, then may the same thing happen to me; may I be cut up as that sacrifice has been cut up. It was the strongest way in which the Lord could say that when he makes a promise, it will indeed stand.

You see, this is where Haggai wants to take us; that is where the Lord of hosts wants to take us: back to that promise which he made even in Exodus 3:1–22 to Moses, when he brought up all those objections about why he should not be the one to go to Egypt to get Israel released from bondage: But the Lord said, but I will be with you. And then he said, in essence, to Moses now Moses, I am going to give you a code word to sum up that promise I will be with you—in this Name that is mine, Yahweh—and it signifies what that promise means: I will be with you, Yahweh. I am the Lord: Yahweh, the God who is present with his people in whatever their situation is.

You may say, But that is an old promise. You may say, Why is it that the Lord takes us, New Testament Christians, and grabs us by the shoulders and pulls us back all the time through the New Testament and the time between the Testaments, and through all the thin Bible paper and the black Bible-ink and the center column of references, and plops us down again and again in Egypt, in Exodus. Why is it that he always says, Now there is my covenant I made to my people Israel, and it is valid for you, as old as it is, and the covenant promise is simply this, I will be with you—that is summed up in my Name Yahweh. My Spirit abides among you; do not be afraid. That is the only reason that some of us have any reason for encouragement and for being strong, for keeping going. It is because we still cling to that old promise that is always contemporary; the living God says that he is with us, so do not be afraid.

There was every reason for God's people in 520 BC to be afraid. They were only a remnant that came back and their enemies around intimidated them. They could well have thought that God is going to allow them to be wiped out. They may well have thought that because they had been rebuked by Haggai, that basically they had been abandoned by God, that perhaps he had cast them off. They may have thought that because their work was so insignificant that that perhaps had been a sign, or their lack of prosperity had been a sign that God was deserting them. They may have thought that God in his impatience was perhaps flushing them down into the sewer line of history to be heard of no more. But Haggai, under God's direction, said, No, the Lord's Word to you here is, I am with you; do not be afraid. That is the promise some of you need to hear, simple as it is.¹

Dale Ralph Davis