Do Not Despise the Day of Small Things: God Takes Pleasure in Faithful Work

One of the most fitting verses for our homes is one you will almost never see on a plaque or wall hanging: Zechariah 4:10, which warns us not to despise the day of small things. Most of our days are filled with small, ordinary tasks, and we are tempted to look right past them. Yet this is exactly the trap the returning Jews fell into while rebuilding the temple—until God sent the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to tell them He took pleasure in the very work they thought was insignificant. We often think the verses worth framing are the familiar favorites—"Trust in the Lord with all your heart" (Proverbs 3:5–6), "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10), or "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15). But the verse that speaks most directly to the ordinary rhythm of our lives is the one that reminds us God rejoices over faithful work that looks small in our eyes. https://youtu.be/CvaztkjwCmg Table of contentsThe Context: A Small, Struggling CommunityLesson One: We Obey for God's Pleasure, Not Our BenefitZechariah's Vision of the LampstandLesson Two: God Supplies the Strength for the Work He CommandsThe Promises Attached to the WorkWhy the Temple Looked So SmallLesson Three: God Finds Pleasure in the Small, Ordinary Things We DoThe Significance of Our Ordinary WorkPointing to Christ The Context: A Small, Struggling Community We have been working verse by verse through the book of Haggai, so let me set the scene. The Jews had returned from exile and begun rebuilding the temple, but then stopped for sixteen years. God raised up Haggai and Zechariah to get them working again. In Haggai 1:6 (ESV), God describes just how poorly life was going for them: "You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes." Nothing was working out. They planted much and harvested little. They ate but stayed hungry. They drank but stayed thirsty. They dressed but stayed cold. They earned wages, but the money seemed to disappear into "a bag with holes." Into this discouragement, God gave a command in Haggai 1:8 (ESV): "Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD." When we looked at this verse last week, we focused on the command: start rebuilding the temple. But I deliberately saved the second half of the verse for this study, because it holds a surprise. Lesson One: We Obey for God's Pleasure, Not Our Benefit Here is a question worth pausing on. Because things were going so badly for the Jews, how would you expect the second half of Haggai 1:8 to read? Something like this, perhaps: "Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that…your lives will be better." You would expect God to promise full barns, satisfied stomachs, warm clothing, and a wallet that finally holds its money. But that is not what He says. God told them to build "that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified." And that brings us to our first lesson: we should primarily obey for God's pleasure rather than our own benefit. Let's be honest about why we sometimes obey. If you are anything like me, the inner logic often sounds like this: "If I have my devotions, my day will go better." "If I give, God will protect my finances." "If I serve, my family will be blessed." Now, God often does bless obedience. Later in this same book, He tells these very people, in Haggai 2:19 (ESV), "From this day on…I will bless you." But being blessed should not be the primary motive. Consider the problem with obeying merely to be blessed: what happens when we obey and the blessing does not come? We lose our motivation, and we may even feel shortchanged, as though God failed to hold up His end of the bargain. But when God's pleasure is our aim, we will always be motivated to obey. Paul lived this way. In 2 Corinthians 5:9 (ESV), he writes, "Whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him." An aim is a target you point at. Whatever Paul was doing—tentmaking, traveling, preaching, sitting in prison—the target never moved. Enoch's entire life is summarized in a single phrase in Hebrews 11:5 (ESV): he "was commended as having pleased God." Imagine your whole life summarized in five words. Could there be a better five? And here is what stands out to me most: the LORD of hosts, who commands the armies of heaven, said that the obedience of this small, struggling community would bring Him pleasure. That is deeply encouraging, because it means my little obedience can please God too. Zechariah's Vision of the Lampstand Haggai and Zechariah were contemporaries, prophesying at the same time, and Zechariah was making a strikingly similar point. God gave Zechariah eight visions, and we are looking at the fifth. It begins in Zechariah 4