Haggai 2:1-9

The first problem was that the people needed to order their priorities and begin again the work on the needed place to worship.  Once the work was started there arose another problem.  This “2^nd Temple” was not very fancy in comparison to the first one built by Solomon.  And furthermore, there were people around who had seen the first one before it was destroyed by the Babylonians.  Given the importance of the building itself this led to discouragement on the part of some and potential division between those who had seen the first and those who hadn’t.  How would God encourage them?

The first way is the same way He encouraged them in Haggai’s first message: God said that He was with them in this project no matter what it looked like (2:4-5).  It’s the same Mosaic Covenant relationship that God had with the people, a covenant that called for God to indicate the specific place where the people would carry out their worship.  So as God was with Israel when Solomon built the temple, so His Spirit was with them now.  

We should consider this.  The value of our service for God depends on whether or not God is in it.  If it is His work then we should find great satisfaction being involved in it, whether it appears to others to be grand and glorious.  That is a truth for our age when bigger is always assumed to be better, where glitzy is equated with glorious.  If you know anything of the life of Christ you know that neither of those assumptions can be counted on.

But speaking of Christ, God did something else to encourage the people, something quite amazing.  He made a promise that the glory of this second house (the literal translation of temple in 2:7) would exceed that of the first (2:9).  How could this be?  Consider the prophecy of Haggai 2:6-9.

·        First God says He will once more shake creation and all the nations as one would shake a ripened fruit tree.  The result would be that they would come to the Desire of All Nations.  God had just shaken Babylon so that the people of Israel had returned to Jerusalem.  So we believe the next shaking would also bring His people back.

·        Who or what is this Desire of All Nations.  Some seek to deny that this is a truly amazing reference to the Messiah.  But I would say that connecting Messiah with the nations is at the very core of the mystery of God, that promise of God that drives history to this day, a promise found in Psalm 2:6-9.  But further consider this from Charles Feinberg as to how plain it should be to see Christ in all this (The Minor Prophets, Moody Press, 1976, p242):

We do well to remember that from earliest times the majority of Christian interpreters have referred this passage to the coming of Christ.  Jewish tradition also referred it to the Messiah.  Without being dogmatic we should like to point out that the desire of all nations can only refer to the longing of all nations for the Deliverer, whether they realize it or not.

As is often the case (e.g. Zech. 9:9-10; Isa. 61:1-3; Daniel 9:24-27) Haggai blends what we now see as the first and second comings of Christ.  The glory of this temple is that the Desire of Nations will be present there, this One who will give peace in this place.  

Again there is something for us to consider in application today.  What makes ministry glorious is that it exalts Christ.  All that needed to be said in Haggai’s day is that what you are doing will lead to the exaltation of the Messiah.  That is all that should be said about whatever we are doing today as well!  And we can put the two lessons together: if God is in it, then it will exalt His Son because that is exactly what He is doing on this earth.