Haggai: Rebuilding the Temple
Part 4
5th April 2014
As we've seen, around 520 BC God spoke through the prophet Haggai, calling His people to repent of their selfishness in treating their own homes as more important than His temple. They responded and began work on God's house, but they were soon discouraged when they realised the scale of the task they had to restore the temple to its former glory. God spoke to them again, promising to be with them in the work, and urging them to keep going.
God then gave them this amazing promise:
Haggai 2v6-9
"This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth,
the sea and the dry land.
I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,'
says the LORD Almighty.
'The silver is mine and the gold is mine,' declares the LORD Almighty.
'The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,' says the LORD Almighty.
'And in this place I will grant peace,' declares the LORD Almighty."
It seems to me that this is a single prophecy and should be understood as such.
God promises to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. This surely means that God was going to shake everything, that all of creation was going to change.
And God would shake all nations. This shaking would include humanity as well as the rest of creation. Those who understand Hebrew much better than I do tell me that "the desired of all nations" is plural. This means it must refer to the silver and gold that would be restored to the temple. (I sort of wish it was singular, so it could refer to Jesus, but it must be wrong to wish God's infallible word was different from what He wrote, as if we could have written something better). I'm also told by people who claim to know this sort of stuff that the second temple was completed in 516 BC, damaged when Pompey the Great conquered Jerusalem 63 BC and further damaged in the following decades, then restored by Herod the Great and finally completed in 64 AD and that it was, eventually, more splendid than Solomon's temple.
Nonetheless, the temple's greatest glory was when the King of Kings entered it in 30 AD, a few days before He was crucified. That week, everything changed. God truly shook the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land and all nations. Now that the Son of God has risen from the dead, offering forgiveness and eternal life to all who will believe in His atoning sacrifice, heaven is being populated with untold millions of redeemed people; the gospel is working its way through all the nations on earth; and men, women and children are being born again as children of God every day.
So both in the material sense and in the spiritual sense, the glory of "this present house", the second temple, was indeed greater than the glory of "the former house", Solomon's temple.
And Haggai prophesied that "in this place I will grant peace, declares the LORD Almighty". Jesus Christ, the prince of peace, died in Jerusalem to give peace with God to all who put their faith in Him. That's why the Gospel is called "the Good News of peace" (Ephesians 6v15) and it's why, when Jesus was born, the angels told the shepherds:
Luke 2v14
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests."
When Jesus died He made the perfect sacrifice, so no more sacrifices were needed. The second temple had fulfilled its purpose. God let it be destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, as Jesus had prophesied in Matthew 24. Now God has a new temple, not built with stones in Jerusalem but built with living stones - people (1 Peter 2v5) all over the world. The temple now is the church - you and me. Or don't you know that? (1 Corinthians 3v16). And with all its flaws, all its imperfect people, God's temple is more glorious than ever, because Jesus lives there by His Holy Spirit.
Appreciate it.