On Wednesday evening in Kilskeery Free Presbyterian Church prayer meeting, the minister, Rev Samuel Fitton brought a challenging word to us all from Haggai chapter 1.
That message may be listened to with profit by accessing the church website on Facebook.
As a preacher, it is impossible for me to look at a passage of God’s Word without seeing an application of it to the circumstances that prevail around us.
1. Please notice that the call for a ‘considering of their ways’ was directed to the leaders of the work of God in that day.
“In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying,” verse 1.
These men, the governor of Judah and the high priest, had for some seventeen or eighteen years been presiding over a ‘dying work and witness’!
Jacob van Loo (1614–1670)
Doubtless, both attended to some duties attached to their offices. I cannot but think that Joshua, the high priest never missed a service, but all that time the work of God was dying under their hands!
2. They had to have the careless ways of the people drawn to their attention by the Lord!
“Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’S house should be built,” verse 2.
The leaders were blind and deaf and indifferent to the spirit that presided amongst the people. The neglect of God’s house was surely most obvious! It surely could not have gone on for some ‘seventeen or eighteen years after the proclamation of Cyrus for the Jews to return to their own land’ as has been pointed out by the learned, Bishop Ussher. And yet the leaders did nothing!
If we look back ‘seventeen or eighteen’ years from today, we find ourselves in the midst of the aftermath of poor Dr Paisley’s foolish decision to enter a power-sharing arrangement with Sinn Fein/IRA.
That was a major incentive for many to feel free to turn their backs upon ‘the old paths’ of Free Presbyterianism! That drift is abundantly evident today.
But as it was with Zerubbabel and Joshua, our leaders today need to have this wicked neglect drawn to their attention by the Lord.
Objections!
I might suggest that had not the Lord empowered the prophet and applied His Word to Zerubbabel and Joshua, then I am sure the prophet would have been given a hard time, for no one likes to be told their faults or have their negligence pointed out!
That is clearly seen in the reactions within our Presbytery!
3. It has to be noted that the consequences of the leaders’ failure to deal with the people’s carelessness, was clearly evidenced.
“Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes,” verse 6.
Drought and famine prevailed and yet the leaders did not seem to notice, or if they did, they treated the dire circumstances with indifference!
Parallel
I suggest that we are seeing a parallel situation in our Free Presbyterian Church in recent times! We are NOT enjoying the fruitfulness of former times nor, indeed, the fruit of present day faithful labours!
BUT our leadership apparently does not wish to have this pointed out! It is maintained that the denomination is unchanged. Only someone NOT wishing to see the true state of affairs would dare say that!
4. The response of Zerubbabel and Joshua is very absent today.
When the prophet declared the Word of God: “Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?” verse 4, there was not the response that we have witnessed of late in our denomination.
When Rev David Linden and myself pointed out two evidences of a departure that had taken place most publicly from the Word of God and the distinctives of our separated denomination, the sin was not dealt with, but rather it is both of us who are subjected to ‘a commission of investigation’.
Attitude
That has been the attitude adopted for quite a few years now.
I have highlighted the brazen departures from the Word of God and drawn the attention of the Presbytery Office Bearers to such only for it to be ignored.
Ignoring sin was the SIN of Zerubbabel and Joshua!
5. What a blessing followed the obedience of the two leaders!
“Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the LORD,” verse 12.
We should note the order in which the Lord was obeyed. “Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God.”
There would be changes for the good if our leaders were to act like Zerubbabel and Joshua in response to God’s Word. These two Israelites recognised their neglect in tolerating the careless way the honour and glory of the Lord had been ignored by the people and how their indifference to this sin gave endorsement to the people’s dishonouring of the Lord.
The Holy Ghost
However, things changed when the attitude of the leaders changed. And that change came about by the moving of the Holy Ghost!
“And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the LORD of hosts, their God,” verse 14.
That is what our Free Presbyterian Church so greatly needs today BUT it will not come until our ‘Zerubbabels and Joshuas’ do what is right!
Then the work of God and the house of God, will advance and be built up as we have enjoyed in former times.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Thursday 11th June, 2026