The exiles who returned from Babylon were not impressed with what they had built. The new temple was smaller than Solomon’s. The economy was wrecked. The walls were broken. The old men who had seen the first temple wept when they saw the foundations of the second, because the second looked so plain. And into that disappointment, three prophets — Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi — closed out the Old Testament with a promise the returning exiles could not yet see all the way through.
Walter Kaiser Jr. notes that Haggai’s word from the LORD was not just to finish the temple, but to know whose temple it actually was. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come. The temple they were building, plain as it looked, was about to receive someone the whole world had been waiting for without knowing his name. Zechariah saw the same thing — a Branch, a King coming on a donkey, a Shepherd pierced for his people, the Spirit poured out. Malachi closed the book with the promise of the Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in his wings, after a four-hundred-year silence in which God had not, in fact, been silent. He had been preparing.
“The Desired of All Nations”
No one was to despise the day of small things begun in the name, power, and plan of God.
“Despise not the day of small things” is the underlying logic of all three of these short books. The temple looked small. The community looked small. The future looked small. And God’s response was: you have no idea what I am preparing. The thing being built in front of you is connected to the thing I have been planning since Eden, and the world will eventually pour its glory into a house you currently think is humble.
This is the closing word of the Old Testament. Not despair. Not fatigue. Anticipation. Malachi ends with a promise — the Sun of Righteousness will rise. The forerunner will come. The covenant will be fulfilled. And then four hundred years of apparent quiet — during which God was, in fact, arranging the entire ancient world for the moment a child would be born in Bethlehem, exactly where Micah said he would be born, exactly when Daniel said he would arrive, into a temple Haggai had foretold would receive him. The “small things” that the returning exiles thought were unimpressive were the platform for the most important arrival in human history.
You have probably been despising the small things in your own life. The job that feels too ordinary. The faithfulness no one is noticing. The discipline you have been practicing for years with no apparent result. Haggai’s word over the rebuilt temple is the word over your unspectacular obedience — what looks plain is part of something the world will eventually need.
God is rarely impressed with what we are impressed with. He is patient on a scale we are not. The “small thing” you are tempted to abandon is often the seed of something whose harvest you will not see for years — and the harvest is not the point. The faithfulness is the point. And the One who promised to fill the small house with glory is the One who is also working in your small place, on his timeline, for purposes that are bigger than what you can yet see.⁹³
Where have you been about to give up on something small because it has not produced the result you wanted — and what would change if you trusted that God may be preparing something larger than you can yet see?
Someone in your life is discouraged because their effort feels invisible. They are doing the right thing in the right place at the right cost — and nothing is happening. Or what is happening looks small. They are about to walk away from something God is in the middle of using.
Your job is not to flatter their work into looking bigger than it is. Your job is to remind them what Haggai said when the temple they were building looked plain. The day of small things is not the day to despise. It is the day to keep going. Tell them what the Old Testament’s last three books say to anyone in their season: God is preparing what no one yet sees, and the people who keep showing up are the people who are still standing when the thing arrives.⁹⁴
Who in your life is about to walk away from something God is using — and how could you remind them not to despise the day of small things?
The household of disciple-makers raises people who can wait. Not passively — actively. Not without struggle — with struggle. But who can keep showing up, in obedience, in seasons that look small, because they have learned what Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi taught a discouraged remnant: the One who promised to come is still coming, and what looks ordinary is being made ready.
Teach the people you disciple to read the last three books of the Old Testament not as a fade-out but as a runway. The Sun of Righteousness is rising on the other side of four hundred years of waiting. That is the kind of patience the household of God has always needed. And that is the kind of patience your household will need to model for the people coming up behind it.
What have you been waiting for that you assumed would be small — and what would change if you believed God was preparing something the whole world would eventually want?
Write down three “small things” in your life right now — the unspectacular places where you have been faithful without obvious return. Then write Haggai 2:7 next to each one, and ask God to do in those places what only he can do, on his timeline.
⁹² Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Promise-Plan of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), Chapter 9: The Prophetic Era.
⁹³ “The Fruit of the Spirit: Patience,” vimeo.com/kathykoch.
⁹⁴ “The Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness,” vimeo.com/kathykoch.