Welcome to a year in the Bible with daily grace. The Bible tells one big story of

redemption and we want to spend five minutes every day journeying through the Bible from start to finish, and exploring how all of it

points to Jesus. Hi friends and welcome back to a year in the Bible with Daily Grace. My name is

Shelby Turner. I'm one of your hosts for this podcast and today we are

covering the entire book of Hagai. It's a short book,

only two chapters and 38 total verses. Hagai was most likely written by the Prophet Hagai.

It's a minor profit book and it

follows the same structure and message as most of the other minor profit books in the

Bible. It takes place in about 520 BC.

This is 18 years after Ezra led the first wave of exiles

back to Jerusalem, and six years after Nehemiah showed up

to rebuild the wall,

just to give you a little bit of context.

This book begins with Hagai rebuking the people.

Though they have inhabited Jerusalem

for almost two decades now, they have yet to rebuild the temple,

the place where God's presence dwelt with them.

Instead, it says each person has been focusing on building their own homes, their own gardens, taking care of their own clothes.

Simply put, their focus is on using their time and energy to build their own kingdoms,

but God wants them to focus on building his kingdom. The people respond to Hagai's

rebuke with repentance and they begin to build the temple, but it's a lot smaller

and a lot simpler than it was previously in Jerusalem before its

...