Readings:
Ezra 3
Haggai 1-2
2 Timothy 3

Ezra 3

They erected an altar to God for sacrifices but they failed to build the temple. This changes when Haggai confronts them with his prophecy that’s in the other Old Testament passages we’re reading today.

Haggai 1-2

The book of Haggai contains the prophecies of the aforementioned prophet. It’s unlikely that he wrote this himself, because of the way he’s referred to repeatedly in the third person. It was probably written by a follower of his that wanted to record his oral prophecies.

The prophesies in this book are almost entirely focused on the rebuilding of the temple. It’s not that God required a house to live it, like he was bound to the temple in some physical way, but that it showed what their priorities were. They came home and rebuilt their own homes and planted crops and began to return to life as normal, but they didn’t rebuild the temple. God is trying to tell them that he shouldn’t be one among many, he should be the primary focus.

The temple is being rebuilt but not nearly as glorious and beautiful as the first temple built by Solomon. This is why the older men who had seen the first temple are sorrowful in the reading from Ezra.

God promises that if they just continue to work he will do the rest, and he will restore the temple to an even greater splendor than before. Many would think this was fulfilled in the renovations of Herod, but really I see this as a messianic prophecy because in the new Jerusalem there will be no temple building because God himself is the temple.

2 Timothy 3

Paul tells Timothy that in the “last days” all the vices that were currently prevalent in the Roman world are going to only increase. The last days being that long stretch of time between the incarnation and the second coming.

He attributes this to the fact that false teachers and false doctrines will increase with time, and these false teachers always had some sort of moral lapse that was at odds with the religion of the apostles. Paul points out that these false teachers seem to avoid persecution, unlike himself and other apostles. This is probably because they are willing to change things that are objectionable to avoid getting on the bad side of the authorities and their disciples. A false teacher is more than happy to comprise revealed dogmas for the sake of being popular, just take a look and many denominations in the 20th century and you can see evidence of exactly what Paul is saying.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Ezra 4-6
2 Timothy 4