Through Haggai, God is responding to something like what happened in London when the English architect Sir Christopher Wren was constructing a new cathedral, and one of the reporters around thought he would interview some of the workmen. And so he went to one of the workmen and asked him what he was doing, and he said,
I am cutting stones at ten shillings an hour.He went to another and asked him, and he said,I am putting in ten hours a day on this job.He went to a third and asked him what he was doing and he said,I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build one of London's greatest cathedrals!It was all about a difference in perspective there. And the Lord is saying to us through this - just as that remnant builds such a seemingly despised temple, and yet it is the very beginning of what I am going to do in bringing the fullness of my Kingdom, so our insignificant labor is as Christian believers may seem miniscule, but you do not know how God will bless that to the furtherance and the glory and the splendor of his Name and his Kingdom. That is the idea! What difference then does that make? Well, it puts a whole different understanding on many things, in particular, on this thing called public worship. Why? Every Sunday we come here to public worship, although some of you I suppose think that that is a little bit too formal, and then there are others that think we are too informal. But when you come here, and when you really mean those prayers we pray and the hymns we sing, and we listen attentively and actively to the preaching of the Word, when we mean our confession of our faith, then we do our best to make sincere and devoted worship week after week.Do you realize that our public worship is a dress rehearsal of what you will be doing when you join the crowd in Revelation 4:1–11, and cast your crowns before him lost in wonder, love and praise? You will not be reading your Bible then. You will not be praying then. But you will be in that final Kingdom, worshiping and adoring the Lord your God with the 24 elders and all the rest of the brothers and sisters. Well then, every week becomes dress rehearsal. You may not think that it is significant. How dare we do a slovenly job of it then! Then these little episodes of weekly worship in church, they have great significance then.1
Dale Ralph Davis
6 Car ainsi parle l'Eternel des armées: Encore un peu de temps, Et j'ébranlerai les cieux et la terre, La mer et le sec;