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Haggai Chapter
Two
Haggai 2
Chapter Contents
Greater glory promised to the second temple than to the
first. (1-9) Their sins hindered the work. (10-19) The kingdom of Christ
foretold. (20-23)
Commentary on Haggai 2:1-9
(Read Haggai 2:1-9)
Those who are hearty in the Lord's service shall receive
encouragement to proceed. But they could not build such a temple then, as
Solomon built. Though our gracious God is pleased if we do as well as we can in
his service, yet our proud hearts will scarcely let us be pleased, unless we do
as well as others, whose abilities are far beyond ours. Encouragement is given
the Jews to go on in the work notwithstanding. They have God with them, his
Spirit and his special presence. Though he chastens their transgressions, his
faithfulness does not fail. The Spirit still remained among them. And they shall
have the Messiah among them shortly; "He that should come."
Convulsions and changes would take place in the Jewish church and state, but
first should come great revolutions and commotions among the nations. He shall
come, as the Desire of all nations; desirable to all nations, for in him shall
all the earth be blessed with the best of blessings; long expected and desired
by all believers. The house they were building should be filled with glory,
very far beyond Solomon's temple. This house shall be filled with glory of
another nature. If we have silver and gold, we must serve and honour God with
it, for the property is his. If we have not silver and gold, we must honour him
with such as we have, and he will accept us. Let them be comforted that the
glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the former, in what
would be beyond all the glories of the first house, the presence of the
Messiah, the Son of God, the Lord of glory, personally, and in human nature.
Nothing but the presence of the Son of God, in human form and nature, could
fulfil this. Jesus is the Christ, is He that should come, and we are to look
for no other. This prophecy alone is enough to silence the Jews, and condemn
their obstinate rejection of Him, concerning whom all their prophets spake. If
God be with us, peace is with us. But the Jews under the latter temple had much
trouble; but this promise is fulfilled in that spiritual peace which Jesus
Christ has by his blood purchased for all believers. All changes shall make way
for Christ to be desired and valued by all nations. And the Jews shall have
their eyes opened to behold how precious He is, whom they have hitherto
rejected.
Commentary on Haggai 2:10-19
(Read Haggai 2:10-19)
Many spoiled this good work, by going about it with
unholy hearts and hands, and were likely to gain no advantage by it. The sum of
these two rules of the law is, that sin is more easily learned from others than
holiness. The impurity of their hearts and lives shall make the work of their
hands, and all their offerings, unclean before God. The case is the same with
us. When employed in any good work, we should watch over ourselves, lest we
render it unclean by our corruptions. When we begin to make conscience of duty
to God, we may expect his blessing; and whoso is wise will understand the
loving-kindness of the Lord. God will curse the blessings of the wicked, and
make bitter the prosperity of the careless; but he will sweeten the cup of
affliction to those who diligently serve him.
Commentary on Haggai 2:20-23
(Read Haggai 2:20-23)
The Lord will preserve Zerubbabel and the people of
Judah, amidst their enemies. Here is also foretold the establishment and
continuance of the kingdom of Christ; by union with whom his people are sealed
with the Holy Ghost, sealed with his image, thus distinguished from all others.
Here also is foretold the changes, even to that time when the kingdom of Christ
shall overthrow and occupy the place of all the empires which opposed his
cause. The promise has special reference to Christ, who descended from
Zerubbabel in a direct line, and is the sole Builder of the gospel temple. Our
Lord Jesus is the Signet on God's right hand, for all power is given to him,
and derived from him. By him, and in him, all the promises of God are yea and
amen. Whatever changes take place on earth, all will promote the comfort,
honour, and happiness of his servants.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Haggai》
Haggai 2
Verse 3
[3] Who is left among you that saw this house in her first
glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as
nothing?
That saw — Near fourscore years ago.
This house — The temple built by Solomon.
Verse 5
[5] According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye
came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.
My spirit — Of strength and courage, of
wisdom and understanding.
Verse 6
[6] For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a
little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the
dry land;
Yet once — After many confirmations of the new covenant, one
more, remains to be made.
A little while — Tho' above five hundred years,
yet this was but a little time compared with that between the promise to Adam
and Christ's coming.
I will shake — Whether it be metaphorical or
literal, it was verified at the time of Christ's coming into the world. After
the return of the captivity, by the commotions among the Grecians, Persians,
and Romans, which began soon after this time; this was metaphorically
fulfilled. And it was literally fulfilled by prodigies and earthquakes, at the
birth, death, and resurrection of Christ.
Verse 7
[7] And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all
nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of
hosts.
All nations — Which was literally fulfilled in
the overthrow of the Persian monarchy by the Grecians, in the civil wars, and
succeeding troubles among Alexander's successors, the growth of the Roman power
by subduing their neighbours, and their dissentions and home-bred wars.
The desire — Christ the most desirable, to all
nations, and who was desired by all that knew their own misery, and his
sufficiency to save them who was to be the light of the Gentiles, as well as
the glory of his people Israel.
With glory — The first temple had a glory in
its magnificent structure, rich ornaments, and costly sacrifices; but this was
a worldly glory; that which is here promised, is a heavenly glory from the
presence of Christ in it. He that was the brightness of his father's glory, who
is the glory of the church, appeared in this second temple.
Verse 8
[8] The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD
of hosts.
The silver — The treasures of both: doubt not
therefore but I will give enough to build this house.
Verse 9
[9] The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of
the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith
the LORD of hosts.
In this place — In my house, a type of Christ.
Peace — A spiritual, internal, and heavenly peace.
Verse 11
[11] Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ask now the priests
concerning the law, saying,
Concerning the law — What the law saith in
this case.
Verse 12
[12] If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and
with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall
it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No.
Holy flesh — Part of the sacrifice, legally
sanctified, or made holy by the altar on which the whole was sanctified.
In the skirt — In the lap of his garment, or in
any other cloth, and if this cloth touch any common thing as bread, etc., shall
that become legally holy?
Verse 13
[13] Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body
touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It
shall be unclean.
Said — Now the second case is proposed.
These — Bread or pottage, wine or oil, or meat.
Unclean — Shall that which the unclean doth touch, become
unclean? Though a mediate touch of what is holy will not make holy, yet will
not a mediate touch of what is polluted defile?
Verse 14
[14] Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and
so is this nation before me, saith the LORD; and so is every work of their
hands; and that which they offer there is unclean.
So — Polluted persons, touching what is clean, pollute it,
so polluted Jews, polluted God's ordinances, while the outward performing of
legal duties, left them as unholy in themselves, as they were before: somewhat
more then is to be done. The soul is first to be purified, that they and we may
offer up a pure offering.
The people — The body of the Jews.
Every work — Whatever they do, they pollute
all by polluted hands.
Offer — What they bring to the altar with impure hearts, is
polluted by them.
Verse 15
[15] And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward,
from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the LORD:
Upward — Through past years.
Before — Before you would set upon the re-building of the
temple after you had intermitted it.
Verse 16
[16] Since those days were, when one came to an heap of
twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw
out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.
Since — All the while the temple lay neglected.
When one came — Men are disappointed half in
half.
But ten — Which he expected would prove twenty measures, ephahs
or bushels. It proved but half your hope, thus your corn failed, and your oil
much more.
Verse 17
[17] I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail
in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the LORD.
Blessing — Burning, and scorching winds.
All the labours — In your plowing and sowing, in
planting of olives and vines.
Verse 18
[18] Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and
twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the
LORD's temple was laid, consider it.
From the day — When you began to build on the
old foundation.
Verse 19
[19] Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and
the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth:
from this day will I bless you.
Is the seed — Your seed for the next harvest is
yet in your barns.
Hath not brought forth — No sign yet appears
what vintage you shall have, what store of wine, oil, figs, and pomegranates.
Yet in the word of God I tell you, you shall be blest in them all, and have a
large produce.
Verse 23
[23] In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, will I take thee,
O Zerubbabel, my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the LORD, and will make
thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith the LORD of hosts.
My servant — A type of him who was God's most
beloved servant.
As a signet — Which is very highly valued, and
carefully kept. So shall the antitypical Zerubbabel, the Messiah, be advanced,
loved, and inviolably preserved king, and supreme over his church. He is indeed
the signet on God's right-hand. For all power is given to him, and derived from
him. In him the great charter of the gospel is signed, and sanctified, and it
is in him, that all the promises of God are yea and amen.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Haggai》
02 Chapter 2
Verses 1-9
Verse 1-2
Came the Word
of the Lord by the prophet Haggai.
Encouraging the people
The recovery of
the Jews from the disasters attending the Babylonian Captivity was necessarily
slow and painful. The handful of patriots who returned with Zerubbabel were
poor, weak, and despised. They found Jerusalem and the temple heaps of ruins,
covered with weeds and rubbish. The first two years witnessed the rebuilding of
the altar, the re-establishment of the burnt sacrifices, and the laying of the
foundation of the second temple amid the liveliest conflict of emotions. Just
at this point a second oracle, full of Divine encouragement, came to Haggai.
Weak hands were strengthened, timid hearts were cheered, religious faith and
patriotic zeal were kindled into a glow of enthusiasm that never failed until
the work was done. We note four considerations by which the prophet wrought
this happy change in the temper of his people.
I. Jehovah’s abiding presence. Regarded from a merely human point of
view there were many and cogent reasons either for an abandonment of the work,
or for its postponement until a more auspicious time. The hostility of the
neighbouring peoples showed itself in persistent plots to harass the returned
exiles, in fomenting discords among them, and in discrediting them at the
Persian court. In comparison with the number, wealth and influence of their
adversaries, were not the Jews themselves weak and contemptible? Only a few
years had passed since their return to a ruined city and a desolate land. In
their poverty and distress would it not be audacious folly to undertake the
rebuilding of a structure that had taxed the resources of the kingdom in its
meridian glory and power? Had not this generation borne burdens enough without
being crushed under another? Why not relinquish this enormous load to a better
equipped posterity? Moreover, since they returned from Babylon, had not the
Lord withheld the legitimate increase of the fields and vineyards? In these
straitened circumstances did not the care of their families demand all their
time and substance? It might be a pardonable, but was it not a rash enthusiasm
in the prophet that had incited them to waste a month of labour on this
hopeless task? Religious leaders are always unreasonable! These discouraged
Jews could have invented a hundred excuses for abandoning the work.
Self-justification is easy when one is eager to recede from an unwelcome task
or duty. All human objections, however, are as chaff before an explicit Divine
command. The voice of prophecy, re-awakened after long silence, had spoken the
authoritative word. However sore the discipline to which their sins had subjected them, they
were His people still, a “holy seed,” a “very small remnant” indeed, but one
over whose preservation He had watched with jealous care. With loving
reiteration Jehovah exhorts them to forget their own weakness in joyful
recognition of His omnipotence; to assure themselves that “the hope of Israel,
the Saviour thereof in time of trouble, is not as a sojourner in the land, nor
as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night.” As He covenanted
with them when they came out of Egypt, so “His Spirit abideth among them.” “Be
strong and work, saith the Lord of hosts; for I am with yea, and fear ye not.”
There is no better ground for victorious confidence than that. His presence is
infinitely more desirable than unlimited worldly wealth and power. We,
likewise, face the depressing problems of our own day, grappling with them as
we can, only to be overwhelmed by the consciousness of our inability. Through
repeated failures we learn that without Divine help we can do nothing. We are
overmatched in the battle. “All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth;
and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”
II. Jehovah’s exhaustible resources. What if Jehovah’s people are
poor, insignificant, despised? He who is in the midst of them is the rightful
owner of the world’s treasures. The silver and the gold are His. He will
“shake all the nations, and the costliest things of all the nations shall come”
into His sanctuary. Now, see, when the people really trusted the Lord and went to work
(Ezra 6:3-9), how wonderfully the prophet’s word was fulfilled; how the
expense of rearing the massive walls, and the cost of the wood-work were
defrayed from the treasury of the Persian Empire; how the priceless vessels of
silver and gold, that Nebuchadnezzar had carried to Babylon for his own glory,
as he thought, but really for safe keeping during the exile, were all restored
again; how the adversaries of the Jews, who had plotted against them, were
compelled by the royal decree to furnish them day by day with young bullocks,
rams and lambs for sacrifices, and with wheat, salt, wine, and oil as the
priests had need. Not only this, but from the very day (Haggai 2:19-20) when the rebuilding of the temple began, Jehovah would bless
their land with affluence, instead of smiting it with blasting, with mildew,
and with hail. God’s work never stops for lack of means when men are willing to
obey Him, and to launch out confidently on His promises. The silver and the
gold are forthcoming, not by miracle, but through natural channels, as
surprising sometimes as actual miracles. Is the time ripe for carrying the
Gospel into the heathen world? See how the millions are poured every year into
the Lord’s treasury. If men will not give spontaneously, as did Darius, to the
furtherance of God’s purposes, He compels them to bring the best of their
substance, as the Samaritans were forced to do. God scatters His resources
neither extravagantly nor in conformity to the whims of men. The law of
parsimony withholds Him from giving so freely as to make unnecessary the discipline
of anxiety and struggle. Even when social and moral reformations are greatly
needed He does not purchase transient success by lavish expenditures. Moral
results are not permanently secured by material agencies. God could have
supplied the early Church with means enough to have freed every slave in the
Roman Empire. Instead, He projects into humanity two lofty ideals, the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, confident that these ideals will
ultimately and for ever accomplish what neither gold nor force can do. Nor does
He waste His resources in perpetuating institutions that have survived their
usefulness. Local churches, as well as individual saints, are but temporary
factors. “Holy relics” He suffers with absolute indifference to moulder into
common dust.
III. Jehovah’s gracious purposes. Haggai prophesied in a transition
period. The older men who heard him had witnessed the wreck of the Jewish
monarchy. The return of the captives to Jerusalem was the glimmering dawn after
a dark and stormy night. The glory of the past was a memory; that of the future
a dream. Transition periods are always charged with doubts and fears, with
peril and pain. The sorest trials are alleviated by an assurance that they lead
to higher and richer experiences. And yet men would often forego these if they
could thereby escape the trial. They cling to long-cherished errors because
they dread the effort and pain of adjusting themselves to new truths. Hoary
abuses linger in the community, in the State, in the Church, because men shrink
from the sharp but transient evils attending a crisis. Modem science,
philosophy, criticism,--the forces that are continually precipitating these crises--are
not enemies but friends. God’s purposes do not move backward. A new and better
world always emerges from the chaos of the old. So long as God’s hand directs
the development every transition will be, not toward darkness and anarchy, but
toward truth and order. Haggai encouraged his people with the assurance that
their sufferings were not meaningless. Painful as their national discipline had
been, it was but an unavoidable step in the evolution of a sublime purpose. Not
only did he assure them that Jehovah, their covenant-keeping God, was still in
the midst of His People; not only were His resources inexhaustible, and ready
to be poured out in their behalf; but He had also a purpose of grace concerning
them and the whole world, immeasurably exceeding the brightest memories of the
past. Despicable as this new house might appear to those who had seen the
splendours of Solomon’s temple, the new would nevertheless outshine the old.
Greater shall be the latter glory of this house than the former, saith the Lord
of hosts.” Observe that it is the “latter glory” (R.V.) and not the “latter
house” (A.V.); for whatever be its material condition, Jehovah knows of but one
abiding dwelling on His holy hill of Zion. That messianic day, moreover, will
be characterised by universal peace. For “in this place will I give peace,
saith the Lord of hosts.” Peace, first of all, between man and God, that which
every true heart yearns for supremely, but which is not found in the world.
Peace also between man and man. Inter national rivalries, the ambition of
conquerors, royal greed of power will no longer hurl nation against nation in
bloody strife. Peace, finally, between man and the wild beasts of the field (Isaiah 11:6-9). The distrust between them will cease. As nature has shared in
man’s curse, so it will share in the benefits of man’s redemption.
IV. Jehovah’s “little while,” Some of the despondent ones might have
retorted, “Such glowing pictures were painted by the older prophets, but they
are as far from realisation as ever.” “No,” says Haggai; “it is only one period
more, a very brief one, and then Jehovah will work signs and wonders among the
nations to arouse them from indifference, to turn them unto Himself, and thus
prepare for the golden age.” In a measure His utterance was fulfilled at once,
but in its larger signification it still awaits complete fulfilment. The
centuries after the Exile were really a brief preface to the messianic period
which began with the coming of Christ into His temple, and which still
continues. Men are impatient at the moderate pace of events in the kingdom of
God. They wonder why He does not force men into swift obedience by stupendous
displays of power. Because love and obedience are not wrought by force. Love
conquers the kingdom of hatred only inch by inch. Viewing these things by and
by from the side of eternity, men will see that earth’s longest periods are
only Jehovah’s “little whiles.” The world is ripening faster than we think. Who
knows but that the full glory of the messianic time may be close at hand?
Whether near or far, every man’s supreme duty to God and to his fellow-man is
so to live, by the Holy Spirit’s help, as to make the world better, and thus to
hasten the advent of that golden age. (P. A. Nordell, D. D.)
God’s message to His
people by Haggai
1. The Divine message often comes from one man to many. It now came
by Haggai.
2. All temples but the temple of nature are to be built by man
himself. God could have studded the world with temples; but He has honoured
human nature by leaving it to men.
3. Any postponement of duty is opposed to the will of God. All duty
requires the utmost promptitude. The Jews were now dallying with duty. The
subject of these verses is--God requires human labour purely for religious
objects. True labour in every form should be religious.
I. This labour should be stimulated by the view of religious
decadence. The temple, once the glory of the country, was now in ruins, etc.
Into what a low state has genuine religion sunk in our country! It is cold,
formal, worldly, conventional.
II. That this labour should be performed by the most vigorous
exertion. “Be strong, O Zerubbabel, be strong, O Joshua, be strong, all ye
people of the land.” Why?
1. Because it is right, and therefore you may throw your conscience
into it.
2. Because it is worthy of all your faculties. Call out and honour
all the faculties of your nature.
3. Because it is urgent. The highest interests of your countrymen and
your race depend upon it.
III. This labour should enlist the co-operation of all. It concerns
all--young and old, rich and poor.
IV. This labour has a guarantee of divine assistance. “For I am with
you, says the Lord of hosts.” (Homilist.)
Verse 3
Who is left among
you that saw this house in her first glory?
The contrast between the
two houses
A despondency,
such as the Israelites must needs have felt, is very apt to come over those who
have begun to engage in a good work, after the first flash of their zeal has faded
away. When we are labouring for ourselves, indeed, our carnal heart urges us
forward; but when we are doing anything for the good of our brethren, or in the
service of God, our carnal heart lies like a heavy drag upon the will. This is
especially the case at first. It is long before we grow humble enough to labour
diligently, although the fruits of our labour are not to be seen even by our
own eyes. For example, when our hearts have been moved to undertake any work
for the strengthening or spreading of Christ’s Church on earth, and when we
have been thus led to look round and consider what she is, must not our hearts
faint within us as we think how she is nothing in comparison with her first
glory, in the time of the Holy
Apostles? How do we see the Church of Christ now? Is she not almost as nothing
in comparison of her primitive glory? The same question may be asked with
regard to man in his natural state. At first made in the image of God, and
unsullied by sin, how do we see him now? When we compare these two pictures
together in thought, fallen man, in his best and most flourishing estate, may
seem to us as nothing by the side of his first glory. Let us cast our eyes on
our own selves. They who watch the growth of the young must often have seen a
time in their history which was like the teeming and blossoming of spring. And
they will also have seen how the blossoms have fallen off, without leaving any
fruit, even if they have not been wholly blighted. The prophet says, “And now
be strong.” How were they to find strength? Not in the thought which had just been so forcibly put
before them, that their work was as nothing in comparison with the first
temple. Such a thought will never strengthen a man, will never make him work.
Nor will it strengthen us, and make us work, to call to mind how far the Church
of Christ has fallen back from the zeal and holiness of the primitive ages, or
how far human nature has fallen from what it was in the Garden of Eden. Where
are we to look for strength? Not to ourselves. Not to friends. The prophet
gives this assurance from God, “For I am with you.” This same assurance is
granted to all who earnestly desire to build up the house of the Lord, either
in the world around them or in their own hearts If they will work, they shall be
strong; for the Lord of hosts is with them. We have God’s covenanted word that
He will be with us. God does not give His Spirit like a gleam of sunshine
bursting for a moment through the clouds. His Spirit remaineth with those to
whom it is given. He has remained with the Church from the day when the Father
and the Son sent Him down from heaven; and He will remain with it unto the end
of the world. The first lessen we are to draw from this assurance is, that we
are to be strong and work. Many foolishly think that if the Spirit is with
them, irresistible impulse will stir them to work without and against their
will. It is through the power of the Spirit they who work continually in His
strength do truly become strong. The second lesson is drawn from the words,
“Fear ye not.” They who work and are strong in the strength of God’s Spirit
abiding with them may boldly say, “The Lord is my Helper: I will not fear what
man can do unto me.” They may even say, “I will not fear myself, what I can do
to myself, having this Helper against myself.” Even the fear of God, if we felt
that His Spirit remains with us, would by degrees lose all that is painful and
oppressive and repelling in fear, and would be transfigured, by a constant
living communion with Him, into reverent, dutiful love. (Julius C. Hare, M.
A.)
Glory of the new temple
Just as in the
second year of the return from Babylon, when the foundation for the temple,
which was about to be rebuilt, was laid in the reign of Cyrus, many old men,
who had seen the temple of Solomon, burst out into loud weeping when they saw the new
foundation; a similar feeling of mourning and despair appears to have taken
possession of the people and their rulers immediately after the work had been
resumed under Darius, and doubts arose whether the new building was really
well-pleasing to the Lord, and ought to be carried on. The occasion for this despondency is
not to be sought in the fact that objections were made to the continuance of
the building, and that the opinion prevailed in consequence that the works
ought to be stopped till the arrival of the king’s authority. This view not
only has no support whatever in our prophecy, but is also at variance with the
account in the Book of Ezra, according to which the governor and his companions,
who had made inquiries concerning the command to build, did not stop the
building while they sent word of the affair to the king (Ezra 5:5). Moreover, the conjecture that the people had been seized with a
feeling of sadness, when the work had so far advanced that they were able to
institute a comparison between the new temple and the earlier one, does not
suffice to explain the rapid alteration which took place in the feelings of the
people. The building could not have been so far advanced in three weeks and a
half as that the contrast between the new temple and the former one could be
clearly seen, if it had not been noticed from the very first; a fact, however,
to which Ezra 3:12 distinctly refers. But although it had been seen from the very
beginning that the new building would not come up to the glory of the former
temple, the people could not from the very outset give up the hope of erecting
a building which, if not quite equal to the former one in glory, would at all
events come somewhat near to it. Under these circumstances their confidence in
the work might begin to vanish as soon as the first enthusiasm flagged, and a
time arrived which was more favourable for the quiet contemplation of the general condition
of affairs. This explanation is suggested by the time at which the second word
of God was delivered to the congregation through the prophet. It was the feast
of tabernacles, the great festival of rejoicing. The return of this festal
celebration, especially after a harvest which had turned out very miserably and
showed no sign of the blessing of God, could not fail to call up vividly before
the mind the difference between the former times, when Israel was able to
assemble in the courts of the Lord’s house, and so to rejoice in the blessings
of His grace in the midst of abundant sacrificial meals, and the present time,
when the altar of burnt sacrifice might indeed be restored again and the
building of the temple resumed, but in which there was no prospect of erecting
a building that would in any degree answer to the glory of the former temple;
and when the prophecies of an Isaiah or an Ezekiel were remembered, according
to which the new temple was to surpass the former one in glory, it would
be almost sure to produce gloomy thoughts, and supply food for doubt whether
the time had really come for rebuilding the temple, when after all it would be
only a miserable hut. In this gloomy state of mind consolation was very
necessary, if the hardly awakened zeal for the building of the house of God was
not to cool down and vanish entirely away. To bring this consolation to those
who were in despair was the object of the second word of God, which Haggai was
to publish to the congregation. (C. F. Keil, D. D.)
The Sorrow of the old men
How was it that
the people became negligent after they had begun their work? Even because it
grieved the old men to see the glory of the second so far inferior to the first
temple. For though the people animated themselves by the sound of trumpets, yet
the old among them drowned the sound by their lamentations. As this temple was
in no way equal to the ancient one, they thought that God was not as yet
reconciled to them. Had they said, that so great an expense was not necessary,
that God did not require much money to be laid out, their impiety should have
been openly manifested; but when they especially wished that the splendour of
the temple would be such as might surely prove that the restoration of the
Church was come, such as had been promised by all the prophets, we doubtless
perceive their pious feeling. We are thus reminded that we ought always to
beware of the intrigues of Satan, when they appear under the cover of truth.
When our minds are disposed to piety, Satan is ever to be feared, lest he
should stealthily suggest to us what may turn us aside from our duty; for we
see that some leave the Church because they require in it the highest
perfection. They are indignant at vices which they deem in tolerable when they
cannot be corrected; and thus, under the pretext of zeal, they separate
themselves, and seek to form for themselves a new world, in which there is to
be a perfect Church; and they lay hold on those passages in which the Holy
Spirit recommends purity to the Church, as when Paul says, that it was
purchased by Christ, that it might be without spot or wrinkle. In all this
there is some appearance of piety. How so? Because they would have God to be
reverenced so that they would have the whole world to be filled with the fear
of His majesty; or they would have much wealth to be gathered, so that
sumptuous offerings might be made. But Satan cunningly insinuates himself; and
hence we ought to fear his intrigues, lest, under plausible pretences, he
should dazzle our eyes. The best way of caution is to regard what God commands,
and so to rely on His promises as to proceed steadily in our course, though the
accomplishment of the promises does not immediately correspond with our
desires; for God designedly keeps us in suspense in order to try our faith.
Though then He may not as yet fulfil what He has promised, let it yet be our
course to attempt nothing rashly, while we are obeying His command. It will
then be our chief wisdom, by which we may escape all the crafts of Satan,
simply to obey God’s word, and to exercise our hope so as patiently to wait the
seasonable times when He will fulfil what He now promises. (John Calvin.)
Thoughts of the past
The glorious
past is never disdained. There ought not to be any past in the sense of
exhaustion or annihilation. The past should be the most vivid and graphic
influence in the present. Because we have seen greatness we shall see glory,
should be the tone of every man who undertakes to teach the mysteries of the
Divine Kingdom, and lead the charprises of the elect and consecrated Church.
The house, indeed, had gone down; in that sense it was nothing in comparison
with the house in its first glory. There is a past that humbles the present,
that makes the present insignificant and worthless; but the Lord never regards
that past as the end of His own opportunity; it is rather the occasion of the
beginning of new revelations of His omnipotence. The Lord never stops His
kingdom in its darkest hour and says, thin is all. The Lord never interrupts a
prayer at the point of confession; He listens until the prayer glows with
thankfulness, until it becomes violent in sacred ambition, until it would seize
the treasures of the kingdom, and appropriate them all with a grateful heart.
It is thus that God leads us and educates us. He takes us at our best point,
not at our worst. The Lord promised that the house should assume a glory to
which the first glory was as nothing. Here is a principle in the Divine
economy; it is a principle of development, of progress, of gradual and assured
consummation. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Verse 4
Work: for I am
with you, saith the Lord of hosts.
An incentive to work
When Darius
Hystaspes began to reign, Haggai and Zechariah urged that the work of
rebuilding the temple should be renewed. The ever-recurring plan which they
urged on the people was that they should work because the Lord of hosts was
with them. Since then times have altered. Religion has become a more personal
matter. Its sphere has been shifted from temples made with hands to what Milton
calls “the upright heart and pure.” Religion has been shifted from the outward
to the inward realm. “The kingdom of God is within you.” That is the true
shrine, from which influence may reach out to wider realms. And since the
sphere has changed, the work of rearing the temple has also changed. Then the
work was hard, but it only tired the hand. Now the heart, rather than the hand, needs to be
engaged. The tax is on the spirit rather than on the limbs. To labour in the
invisible is far more trying than in the visible realm. The highest things
cannot be weighed in scales and set down in columns. What is true of the work
within is also true of the spiritual work we attempt in the world. It is invisible--wrought in
the hidden chambers of the heart. It is true that the fruit sometimes becomes
Visible in the life. But the spiritual temple we are seeking to rear may be
growing in strength and beauty, and we see it not, or only catch momentary
glimpses of the growing building. Now and then we are permitted to see that our
work is not in vain in the Lord. The higher the realm, the less visible or
tangible are the results. Manual work is more visible than intellectual.
Intellectual work is more visible than spiritual. But the thinker accomplishes
more than the artisan; and the spiritual more than the intellectual teacher. This
is the true incentive to work--“the Lord is on our side.” The conviction that
God is with us will make us work. (W. Garrett Horder.)
Encouraging the people
The people had
grown indifferent and neglectful of God, as is the case with all who are not
earnestly engaged in religious activities, giving their attention to fitting up
and adorning their own dwellings, while the house of the Lord was left unbuilt.
Haggai was sent to reprove them for their neglect, to call their attention to
the blighting curse upon them because of this neglect, and encourage them to
resume the work on the temple of God. The new temple was to be of the same
dimensions as the old. But it was not to be overlaid with gold, or to have such
imposing accessories for worship. It seems that the ark had been lost, and the tables,
and the mercy-seat. There was no visible glory, and no Urim and Thummim. Hence
the lamentations of the ancient men, who could make contrasts. We have narrated
here sadness and rejoicing over the same thing. But such is life all round the
world. Age made unfavourable comparisons, while youth, whatever the
comparisons, delighted in the new and promiseful. The aged naturally, and
almost inevitably, live in things behind them; the young in things around them,
and before them. The danger is, that echoes of the past will mar the music of
the present, and that the music of the present will mar the echoes of the past.
Haggai’s encouraging reference to God as with their fathers, and pledge of the
same God as with them, was to the people a revelation and inspiration. It,
however, seemed to this people that the times had changed. The prophet,
therefore, is sent to encourage them with assurances that God is with them in
their work, as truly as He was with their fathers. They may miss something of
the grandeur and glory of the former temple; but what of this if God is still
their God? The Divine presence would be in the new temple more manifestly than
in the old. Therefore they should resume their work in confidence and rest in
peace. We fall into the same false ways of judging. When present possessions
and conditions seem to compare unfavourably with past possessions and
conditions, we grieve and murmur and lose heart. Human lives do not always run
in the same channels. Change after change is the lot of universal man. Where is
rest? Where is inspiration? In the assurance that God is with us as He was with
our fathers, and as He was with us in former times. At that very moment when
the Jews were repining God had in mind a temple whose glory should far outshine
the old, and He had all power to bring in this glory. He was to accomplish
convulsions in the earth, and bring in the “Desire of all nations.” Five stages
in human history were then passed, from Adam to Noah; thence to Abraham; thence
to Moses; thence to Solomon’s temple, and thence to the Captivity. Only one
stage remained--thence to the kingdom of the Messiah. These halting, hesitating
Jews saw not that kingdom, and hence they were heavy-hearted. We are often
blind, hence heavy-hearted. What we need to remember is that we have a present
personal God, whatever the age of the world, or whatever the wants of our
lives. Memories of blessing should make us glad instead of sad, even though
present conditions may seem less favourable than former ones. Everything in
heaven and earth is under the control of God for the perfection of human
character, and for the world-wide end of righteousness and peace. Christian
workers ought never to be discouraged. Whatever the present seeming, this world
is not going from bad to worse, but from better to better; and best of all, the
best things await every true child of God. We set you in the midst of memories,
and let you enlarge upon them.
1. Think of self.
2. Think of associated lives and labours.
God never
failed those loved ones who are now at rest and out of sight. Beacon fires have
blazed on all the mountain-tops. They shall burn on until far lands have been
lighted up, and the new temple of peace and truth shall have completion; when
He who was the glory of Israel’s temple shall come again for crowning. (Sermons
by Monday Club.)
Encouraging the people
A ruined church
is oftentimes a sad comment on religion; an unfinished church is a sadder one.
What had arrested the work that began so auspiciously?
1. The enthusiasm of the people was but a transient fervour.
Steadfastness is a cardinal virtue. The reward is to him that over cometh.
2. Then they began to question and calculate. Might it not be that
the project was premature? The altar was restored, why could not the temple
wait? Some said, “The time is not come, the time that the Lord’s house should
be built.”
3. Meanwhile there was the natural concern as to temporal affairs.
One by one the workmen left the temple walls, and turned their energy to affairs
of more personal moment. Perhaps if they had continued to devote themselves to
God’s sanctuary, He might have devised some plan for providing for their wants.
4. There were other things that conspired to arrest the work. The
adjacent tribes had set themselves against it Not until Darius came to the
throne did the Jews pluck up courage to resume the work. Haggai’s prophecies
are brief and fragmentary, consisting of three addresses all delivered within a
period of three months. In the first he admonished them that self-seeking at
the expense of the Lord’s work is a losing venture. Their own prosperity had
suffered. It may seem that Haggai appealed to a low motive, but the Jews were
always sensitive at this point. They had ever an eye to the main chance, and
they have to this day. The Lord knew how to move their sluggish natures. When
Darius issued an
order endorsing the original permission to build, Haggai delivered his second
address. The resources seemed inadequate to a great enterprise, and it seemed
hardly worth while to build what must be an inferior house. Haggai is to assure
them that God was with them, and the glory of the latter house should surpass
that of the earlier one. How could that be?
(1) God would here manifest Himself in the outpouring of His power.
Sublime messages of truth, announcements of Divine faithfulness in the
fulfilment of old-time shadows, flaming prophecies of ultimate glory were to be
heard amid these rising walls.
(2) But, better still, Messiah Himself was to worship at the altar,
and walk among these porches. If the light of the golden candlesticks was
quenched, what mattered it? The Light of the World was here to shine forth.
(3) If God were so minded He might adorn the second temple with
wealth incomputable. “The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine.”
(4) Still further, the latter house was to be beautified with
salvation. “For in this place will I give peace.” With such considerations as
these did the prophet encourage the builders. Then came Haggai’s third message.
He began by admonishing them that sin disqualifies for holy service. Then he
touches upon their sordidness and want of faith. Let them turn and trust God.
Still it holds true that godliness, obedience, simple trust, is profitable unto
all things, having promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is
to come (1 Timothy 4:8). On the same day when this address was made to the people a
special word of encouragement was sent through the prophet to Zerubbabel.
Haggai’s work was soon ended. His work was to encourage the builders, and he
did it. What more could be asked of any man? God has a commission for every
one. To heed and endeavour is to make an assured success of life. This is the very
best that can be written of any mortal man, that he had something to do, and
did it for God. (D. J. Burrell, D. D.)
Encouraging the people
For sixteen
years, just because of a little opposition, the Jews had left God’s house to
lie waste. In the first chapter of this prophecy Haggai rebukes them for this
neglect in vigorous language. He accuses them of putting off their duty by the
plea, “The time is not come, the time for the Lord’s house to be built”; and
points with sarcasm to the ceiled houses which they had been building for
themselves in Jerusalem and its suburbs. Stirred by his words, Zerubbabel,
Joshua, and all the remnant of the people set to work, while the prophet
encouraged them by the message, “I am with you, saith the Lord.” After a month had
been thus occupied, and when the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles had
arrived, Haggai was sent to his countrymen with another message. It is
contained in the first nine verses of the second chapter of his prophecy. There
is no rebuke in it, nothing but mercy and encouragement; for rebuke had
accomplished its purpose, the people had willingly offered them selves for the
work, and it was courage and hope that they needed in order that they might
conduct it to a successful issue. God deals with us according to our attitude
toward Him, and according to our need. If we climb the steep path of obedience He sends us
smiles, helps, benefactions, so that the steepness is forgotten, and the hearts
that resolved in fear and weakness are made to sing with joy. There were three promises
given by the prophet in God’s name for the encouragement of the people.
I. The promise of God’s abiding presence. “Be strong, for I am with
you.” Their history had taught them by many illustrious interpositions and
widespread calamities that in God was their hope. When they continued in His
ordinances with willing hearts He crowned them with mercies. Blessings of the
field and blessings of the flock were theirs, because He ordered all things for
them, and protected them from their enemies round about. But when they forsook
the Lord, and turned aside to idolatry, He visited them with His judgments. The
mildew and cankerworm, hail and earthquake, devastated their land, while their
foes rejoiced on every side. The exile from which they had just returned had
fixed deep in their souls the truth that if God withheld His favour they were
helpless and exposed to oppression and disaster. So that this promise, “I am
with you,” was better fitted than any other to make them strong and brave. And the
prophet supports the promise by an appeal to God’s past faithfulness, and to
His covenant which could not be broken. “According to the word that I
covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt.”
II. The promise of miraculous interposition. “I will shake the
heavens.” “I will shake all nations.” The Jews had already encountered
opposition, and they were likely to meet with more. But God, who possessed all
resources, who had displayed His energies at Sinai, would again rise and put
forth His power on their behalf. God would not leave them to the operation of
ordinary forces and the vicissitudes of hurrying events. He would Himself be
the chief Actor, as in the days of old, when He brought them out of Egypt with
a high hand and an outstretched arm.
III. The promise that, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, the latter
glory of the temple should be greater than the former. The old men had wept
when the foundations of the temple were laid, because of its inferiority to the
temple of their memory. They were deceived partly by the illusion of fancy
which surrounds what is past with a halo, which it never had at the time, and
partly by that disposition, common enough to man, which sees nothing in that
which is passing, and which is before their eyes. But God’s message to them and
to us is one of hope. The golden age, which pagan and heathen nations put in
the far-off past, God puts into the future. “God goes forward and not back, and
is never so baffled as to be compelled to suspend progress. Let us not despise
our own work nor our own generation. It also has a place in the history of
God’s work in the world.” (T. Vincent Tymms.)
Inspiring anticipations
1. Men are always prone to be deluded by externals, and to suppose
that the absence of outward splendour is indicative of the absence of God’s
blessing, forgetting that God often chooses the weak things of the earth to
confound the mighty, that no flesh may glory in His presence (Haggai 2:3).
2. The presence of God with His people is sufficient ground for
encouragement to work in His service, whatever be the external difficulties,
and sufficient comfort in distress how great soever be the calamity (Haggai 2:4).
3. The covenant of God, and the Spirit of God, are the great grounds
of hope to His people, in engaging in His service, and the promises made to the
fathers may be pleaded by the children (Haggai 2:5).
4. The kingdoms of the world are but the scaffolding for God’s
spiritual temple, to be thrown down when their purpose is accomplished (Haggai 2:6).
5. The uncertainty and transitoriness of all that is earthly should
lead men to seek repose in the everlasting kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ (Haggai 2:7).
6. The various changes of life in both individuals and nations are
designed to lead them to bring their choicest offerings, and dedicate them to
God.
7. The New Testament in all its outward lowliness has a glory in its
possession of a completed salvation, through the atoning work of a crucified
Saviour, far above all the outward magnificence of the Mosaic dispensation (Haggai 2:9).
8. The kingdom of Christ makes peace between God and man, and in its
ultimate results will make peace between man and man, and destroy all that
produces discord and confusion, war and bloodshed on the earth (Haggai 2:9). (T. V. Moore, D. D.)
Verse 5
My Spirit
remaineth among you; fear ye not.
The patience of the Spirit
Some, more
especially the older men of the nation, remembering the magnificence of the temple
of Solomon, and contrasting with it the meanness of the present temple, were
continually discouraging the builders; so the Lord sent His prophets again the
second time to say,--“My Spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.” So we are
often tempted to give up in despair, because our efforts seem so puny and so
weak; hut God’s message comes to us to-day with this encouragement, “My Spirit
remaineth among you.”
1. There are those
who are continually putting off. They are busily engaged in their own pursuits,
but are putting off the demands and claims of Almighty God. The text ought to
speak to such some heart-searching and heart-breaking appeals. Is not the
patience of the Spirit wonderful? To think that the Holy Spirit of God should
still keep on waiting while we were saving to God,” When I have a convenient
season I will call for Thee.
2. There are men who profess to be Christian men. But they seem
satisfied with being sure that they have escaped the damnation of hell. They
are like the returned exiles who were satisfied with having an altar, and were
not anxious about getting a temple. Yet God’s Spirit is still waiting. Do not
trust in any fancied security.
3. There are those who feel that unless they are found working for
Christ they cannot reasonably hope that they have been saved by Christ. If
God’s Spirit is with us He reveals to us that we are in this world to do some
good to our fellow-men. If we are despondent as we think how little we have
done, the assurance of the text is encouraging, “My Spirit remaineth with
Trusting in the patient, abiding, indwelling Spirit, may we be more and more
respired, m spite of every temptation to despondency, to rise and build the
temple of our God. (E. A. Stuart, M. A.)
The presence of God’s
Spirit in the Church
The conduct of
God towards His Church in ancient time is an ennobling and a comforting study:
ennobling because it brings His character before our view in a light in which
we cannot see it in the fields of nature and in the works of creation;
comforting because it brings to our view God in all those glorious relations
which nature has no know ledge of. The ancient Jewish Church was set apart by
God for the purpose of illustrating those deeper and, if I might dare so to
speak, final aspects of the Divine nature. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s
presence and power in the Church is not less vital to her interests than the
doctrine of salvation by the finished work of Christ.
I. The promise itself. “So My Spirit remaineth among you.”
1. The indispensability of the blessing here spoken of. “The Spirit
of God.” The doctrine of spiritual influence was not so prominently taught, nor
was it so clearly understood, under the old economy as we know it, and as it is
taught to us. There was so much that was external, formal, and typical that the
great truth of the absolute necessity of spiritual influence was apt to be laid
aside and forgotten. That doctrine was not, however, altogether kept out of
sight. It is not a doctrine exclusively confined to the Christian economy, as some
have supposed. We have a more full and copious display of the Spirit’s power in
the Church of Christ now than there was in those olden times. There is no
single believer who is not himself the possessor of the Holy Spirit’s
influence. We have the Holy Spirit not only as a Teacher, but as a Comforter.
We all know the difference between the reading of the Word of God without
Divine illumination, and with it. The Spirit takes of the things of Christ, and
brings them home to us. He deadens us to the things of the world, and quickens
us to all Divine realities. Without the Spirit of God within us there can be no
real holiness. There may he external consistency. The Spirit is the only agent
that can dive deeply down into the secret recesses of the human heart, that can
command the energies and feelings of the soul one by one, and bring them all
into a loving subjection to the obedience of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the
Revealer also to us of the glories of our future inheritance. The things which
the eye hath not seen, and the ear hath not heard, and the heart of man hath
not conceived of, are made known to us by the Spirit of God.
2. The Divine mercy as displayed in the giving of the promise. On
what ground could that Spirit have been given to the children of Israel except
on this?
3. The adaptation of the blessing to all times and all circumstances.
The gift which the text promises I should desire most for the welfare of this,
or any other church. As Jehovah Himself lives ever, so His Spirit shall follow
us ever through all the changing scenes of time.
4. The certainty of the blessing. We are told that this promise of
the Spirit was covenanted. The covenant assures us a new heart and a right
spirit.
II. The great truth which this promise forces upon our attention.
“Fear not.” “There is nothing for you to fear now I have given you this
promise,” says Jehovah.
1. Fear no local change.
2. Fear not personal apostasies in the history of the Church.
3. Fear not, for the existence of God’s Church among you is of some
importance to the surrounding locality. (W. Barker.)
The presence of the Holy
Spirit in the Church an antidote to her fears
The Lord showed
great favour to His Church during the Old Testament Dispensation, in the
frequency with which He revealed to her His mind and will, and in His special
appearances for her preservation and deliverance. At the return of the Jews to
their own land at the termination of the seventy years’ captivity the Lord was
very gracious to His Church, against which He had had indignation so long. At
that time the prophetical, priestly, and kingly offices were all filled by
eminent men. The prophets were Haggai and Zechariah, the son of Barachiah. The
governor was Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and the high priest was Joshua,
the son of Josedech. By the instrumentality of the two prophets who have been
mentioned the Jews were encouraged to begin to rebuild the house of God, and to
persevere in the work till it was accomplished. Although the people began the
work with ardour, so soon as they had laid the foundation they began to be
discouraged. There were various reasons for this, such as the vexatious
opposition which their enemies carried on against them, and the mean appearance
of their work in comparison with the grandeur of the former temple built by
Solomon. In order to encourage them to persevere the Lord sent the prophet with
a new message, which we have in this chapter from verse 2 to 9. The words which
precede the text contain a supplement by the translators which give a good sense.
But they may be read more forcibly in connection with the preceding verses
without the supplement, thus, “For I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts, I,
the Word that covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so My Spirit
remaineth among you: fear ye not.” These words may be regarded as the language
of God in the Person of the Son or of Christ. In them Christ assures His
ancient people that He was now graciously present with them by His Spirit, and
exhorts them not to be afraid. Most important is the presence of Christ by His
Spirit in the Church. It is essential to the Church’s vitality, increase, and
general spiritual prosperity.
I. We are to mention some evidences of the spirit’s remaining among a
people, or in the Church of Christ. One evidence of this is--
1. Purity of doctrine and of worship enjoyed in the Church. God has
been pleased to grant unto His Church a supernatural revelation of His will
which we possess in the completed Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It
is the duty of the Church thus favoured so to receive that Word as to embrace
the whole system of revealed truth. The Holy Spirit delights to dwell only
where truth and purity reign. Purity of doctrine and worship is also spoken of
by Christ as the effect of His Spirit’s presence in the Church, when He says of
Him, “He shall glorify Me for He shall take of Mine and shall show it unto
you,” and “He shall testify of Me, and shall lead you into all truth.” Men may
be as zealous as they choose, and as fervid and fervent about their own devices
and inventions in God’s worship as they will; but, departing from the rule of
the Divine Word, they are under the guidance only of their own spirits. Another
evidence is--
2. Unity in the maintenance of a scriptural profession and purity of
Church fellowship. As the Church of Christ is a society separated from the rest
of the world for the service and glory of God, it has an essential unity
belonging to it; and this unity ought to be manifested by it, both in its
profession of faith and in its holy practice, for it is the will of its Divine
Head who hath founded and stablished it, that is the rule in respect of both.
The presence of the Spirit in the Church causes the members of it to speak the
same things and to walk by the same rule. We are aware that there are some who
imagine that such unity in the truth, and purity of Church fellowship, is too
chimerical an idea to be realised “It is not possible” say they, “unless we are
to conceive men to have only one mind, and to be divested of volition and of
independence.” But we reply that all the sacred writers disprove this, for they
has volition and independence, and yet spoke the same thing. The state of the
early Christian Church disproves it, when “the multitude of them that believed
were of one heart and of one soul.”
3. Power accompanying God’s Word and ordinances.
4. The exercise of grace, and the cultivation of a holy walk and
conversation evidences the remaining of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit resides in
every believer as the spirit of life, of light, of holiness, and of comfort. He
not only carries on all those operations in the soul which recover it from
ignorance, and enmity, and unhappiness, and bring it to the knowledge, love,
and enjoyment of God, but He carries on the good work which He has begun,
until, it is perfected in complete conformity to the Divine image.
5. The abounding in prayer.
II. To show what fears the spirit’s remaining among a people or in the
Church is calculated to remove. Generally, the Spirit’s remaining in the Church
may remove all fears about the maintenance and success of the Lord’s work and
cause. But, more particularly, the Spirit’s presence in the Church is fitted to remove--
1. The fear occasioned by open and secret enemies to the work and
cause of God. The Jews were greatly discouraged in building the second temple
by the number and power of their enemies, and by their open hostility, secret
plots, and contrivances to defeat them in the work in which they were engaged.
So great, indeed, was their power, that they prevailed for a season to induce
Artaxerxes, King of Persia, to put a stop to the work altogether. And so, when
the Lord’s people have His Spirit remaining among them, they have no reason to
fear that the work and cause of God shall be overthrown, either by temporal or
by spiritual enemies. Whatever may be their number, influence, or power,
however great their malice and crafty their devices, the Spirit of God is able
to defeat them, for He is almighty, omniscient, and omnipotent, and He is
possessed of every infinite perfection.
2. The fears occasioned by the falling away of professed friends.
When the Jews were engaged in building the temple and city they were tried by
the desertion of some who once professed themselves to be friendly, and this
was followed, as often happens in such cases, by open opposition. Among those
who acted so basely the most conspicuous were Sanballat the Horonite, and
Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite. In a similar way the people of God have been
tried in all ages.
3. The fears occasioned by the removal of true friends of the work
and cause of God. There are various ways in which the true and tried friends of
the cause and work of God may be removed. In His providence they may be placed
at a great distance from their brethren, so that they cannot be with them, as
they were wont, nor so serviceable to them as they used to be. Sometimes
affliction detains them for a long time from countenancing and encouraging by
their presence those who delight in their company, and hold them in high esteem
for their steadfast attachment to the truth and fidelity to the cause of
Christ. The removal is sometimes, however, more permanent, and the separation
more painful, for death takes them away from the world and from the Church
below. But they are gone! And surely not without cause do we weep. We have not,
we fear, improved our privileges aright, nor rendered unto the Lord according
to the benefits we have received; and in judgment the Lord has recalled His
gifts. Who, we well may ask, fill their places? But while we wish to lay to
heart the Lord’s dealings, and justly fear that His servants are taken away
from the evil to come, we ought not to give way to desponding fears as to the
Lord’s cause and work. If the Lord’s Spirit remain among us we have no cause to
be afraid. He is able to give a double portion of His Spirit to those who
remain, and to raise up Elishas upon whom the mantle of Elijah has fallen. We
shall only add--
4. The fear of sufferings and of trials which the people of God may
meet with in their adherence to the cause and work of the Lord. In prosecuting
the work and cause of God His people are often called by Him in His providence
to make many sacrifices of their own ease and comfort, and of their worldly
substance; they have also to bear much reproach and scorn for the truth’s sake,
not only from the world, but from those who bear the Christian name. These
things are apt to discourage and fill them with fear. But the promise and
evidence of the Spirit’s remaining among them is an antidote to this” fear. He
will not allow, any trial to befall them without making His grace sufficient
for them. His promise is, As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”
In conclusion--
1. This subject teaches us that the Holy Spirit is the very life of
the Church and people of God.
2. This subject teaches us, further, that the Spirit’s presence among
His people is sufficient to remove their fears about the maintenance of the
Lord’s cause and the continuance of His work. So long as the Spirit remains
among His people they may rest assured that He will continue His work and
maintain His cause in spite of all opposition and hindrances.
3. Again, this subject teaches us that there are many sad evidences
of a great departure of the Spirit and withdrawment of His gracious influences
at the present day. The withdrawment of the influences of the Spirit, and His
departure through being grieved, is an evil that the Church and people of God
ought greatly to fear. (J. Ritchie)
Verse 6-7
Yet once . . .
and I will shake the heavens.
Divine shakings
What are these
shakings? They have generally been referred to the establishment of the New
Testament dispensation, from the text in Hebrews. This interpretation we cannot
receive, because--
1. The designation of the interval before their commencement as “yet
only a little while” leads us to look for a nearer future than five hundred
years.
2. The force of the Hiphil participle here is properly to denote a
continuance of shakings for an indefinite time.
3. The same phrase in verses 22, 23 obviously refers to something
outside of the Messianic kingdom, and not inside of it.
4. The usual meaning of this symbolical act is that of a visitation
of vengeance on the enemies of God, and not an unfolding of His dispensations
of mercy. And--
5. The future establishment of the Messiah’s kingdom would not be as
directly comforting to them as the nearer and more closely connected even to
which the prophet alluded. This event was the speedy shaking of the social and
political systems that were around and above them, before and beneath which
they were in such dread as to hesitate about going forward in their work. That this fact would
be an encouragement to them is obvious. They trembled before the consolidated
power of Persia, and the craft of Samaria that might bring that power upon them
again in restraint, if not in vengeance. The prophet assures them that they
need not tremble, for in a little time this stupendous fabric would totter, and
others be thrown up in its place. As these powers were soon to be prostrated,
the people of God need not fear before their enemies, that were so soon to fall
before them. This gives the key to all history. God will allow men to rear the
loftiest fabrics, as individuals and as nations, but He will shake them down,
that they may then seek for some immovable basis on which to rest. (T. V.
Moore, D. D.)
The shaking of the nations
They who know
that the Spirit of God remains with them, will not fear when God shakes the
earth. What will a wise man fear? Nothing but that which would draw him away
from God. Least of all would he fear that which is meant to bring him nearer to
God. But this is the very purpose for which God shakes the earth, that He may
burst the doors of our earthly prison, and the chains which bind us to the
earth. This is the end for which God will overthrow a man’s health, that he may
learn how fleeting a possession bodily health is, and may seek that spiritual
health which will abide with him for ever. It was by shaking the earth and the
nations that God brought Israel out of Egypt, and established a people upon
earth who were to be the shrine of His presence, the tabernacle of His law. It
is by the shaking of our hearts and souls that the Son of God is made manifest
to us. He shakes our earthly riches that we may be led to desire heavenly
riches, which will never make themselves wings and flee away. This is the one
great lesson which we may learn from our text, that they whom God shakes, if
the Spirit of God remains with them, will not fear; because they know that,
through this shaking, the desire of all nations will come to them, and fill
their souls with His glory. (Julius C. Hare, M. A.)
The nations shaken, and
the desire of all come
Three things
are foretold in this remarkable prediction.
1. Great commotions and tribulations in the earth.
2. Wonderful and unexpected revolutions.
3. The glorious and happy issue of all these commotions, in the final
triumph of Christ and His Gospel.
He is properly
called the “desire of all nations,” because the whole creation groans for
deliverance from guilt, for an interposing Mediator, who can make atonement for
sin, satisfy Divine justice, and give peace to a wounded conscience. To Christ,
therefore, and to His religion, this prophecy belongs.
I. Text refers to the period when Jesus was manifested in the flesh.
To prepare the way for this grand event, we may see the omnipotent Jehovah shaking the heavens,
earth, and seas.
II. View text as receiving its accomplishment in our own day.
1. He is shaking many kingdoms by awful judgments and unexpected
revolutions. Concerning the shaking of the nations, note three things--
(1) They are from God.
(2) To the nations visited, the judgments of God are in wrath, and
correctors of iniquity.
(3) The effect of these visitations will be either unfeigned
repentance and reformation, or utter ruin and destruction.
2. Though the shaking of the nations bring deserved calamity on
guilty lands, yet the final issue of all will be the wide extent of our
glorious Redeemer’s kingdom, and the universal triumph of His Gospel. These
predictions are now being fulfilled. All these present tumults and desolations
are connected with events which shall bring peace, and righteousness, and joy
to the whole earth. (A. Bonar.)
The nations shaken
We find here
two things spoken of--
1. The arrival of Him who is called “the desire of all nations”: and
2. The introductory circumstances, “I will shake all nations.”
The one of these clauses was meant historically to be introductory and
precursory of the other. We have, in this verse, a set of antecedent
circumstances, and a given result and fulfilment.
I. Those national convulsions which preceded the advent of Messiah.
The expression.. “the shaking of the nations,” is put to signify other things
besides mere national and mere political convulsions, but it clearly includes
these. Sometimes it means those mental commotions that over spread the minds of
individuals. We all know what is meant by a person being “disturbed in
thought.” “That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled,” etc. Sometimes
it means a removal of religious dispensations, as in Hebrews 12:1-29. Apply to the five centuries which lay between the utterance of
this prophecy by Haggai, and its fulfilment in the coming of our Master. What
changes were there, both political, mental, and religious, precursive of the
Christian dispensation. Give account of the Medo-Persian Empire, of Alexander’s
conquests, of the military power of Rome. Great thought-leaders arose in this
period, and their opinions always bred convulsions. Philosophical schools were
always at enmity with one another. Opinions held by some were utterly
repudiated by others. As far as intellect was concerned, there was a desperate
shaking of the nations. And as to
religion, everything seemed to tell that Judaism was fast passing away. It was
doubted by its own adherents.
II. The connection of Christ’s advent with these shakings. One great
object of Christ in coming to the world was the establishment of peace. He was
to be the Prince of Peace. He designed to establish a reign of peace. All His
teachings go to the same point. How is it then, that though eighteen centuries
have passed, the empire of peace has not come? The answer is that the world has
not accepted the principles of Christianity. It is one thing to say that a step
is taken towards the effectuation of an object, and another to say that the
object has been effected, because there may be impediments put in the way of
the effectuation which, while they hinder the fulfilment, by no means at all
nullify the statement that the original intention was to produce that effect. A
second object of our Master’s coming was, the resolution of all those doubts
and misgivings that keep the minds of men in perpetual agitation, If the Master
came to resolve doubts, why do doubts still exist? Because men love darkness
rather than light. Another object of our Saviour’s coming was to do away with
Judaism. This was to be accomplished by an act of supplantation. When instead
of a Jewish priest there came a real priest; when instead of the typical
sacrifice there came the real sacrifice; when instead of the prostration of
body there came the sanctification of the spirit, the substance of Judaism was
reached, and the type of Judaism might pass away. Learn--
1. That though we are living in times of great disturbance, we may
take this comfort, as convulsions introduced the first advent, so other
convulsions may introduce the second.
2. There may be some whose hearts are disquieted, distressed,
disturbed by many anxious spiritual cogitations; and we tell you to cease to be
your own master, and let God’s Bible teach you. Make it your comfort, stay,
director, instructor. There is a time coming when mystery shall be dispelled,
for it is written in the page of Scripture, “Then shall I know even as also I
am known.” (Archibald Boyd, M. A.)
The desire of all nations shall come.
Christ the desire of all
nations
As the
prophet’s affirmation was not verified in a material sense, Christian
commentators of all schools have generally agreed that it must refer to the
actual presence of the Redeemer in the second temple. The title, “Desire of all
nations,” requires some explanation. It is reasonable to suppose that it has
some respect to the design of the Father in sending Him into the world. The
Jews could not believe that salvation was intended for any but themselves. But
this fond conceit was at variance with their own Scriptures. While Christ has
not, up to this time, been the actual desire of all of every nation, nor even
of all of any one nation, yet very many-of different nations have owned and
adored Him as their Lord. A spectator of that scene at Pentecost could scarcely
have repressed the feeling, “Surely, the desire of all nations has come.” He is
the only being that has appeared in the world of whom this could be affirmed.
Every nation, pagan, Mohammedan, and Christian, has its heroes and sages.
Within their respective countries they have received general homage--in some
cases, indeed, a world-wide celebrity. But for none of them could it be claimed
that he was the desire of all nations in the sense in which this title is
challenged for Jesus of Nazareth. Christ is the one paramount desire of those
who have scarcely anything else in common. Men who are the poles apart on other
topics,--on questions of literature, of politics, of trade, of metaphysics, of
Church government,--use the same language when they bow before the mercy-seat,
sing the same psalms of praise to the Redeemer, and labour with the same zeal
to make Him known to others. Where He is concerned, all their hopes and
aspirations coalesce, like needles pointing to the same pole. This, however,
seems to apply only to those who have a personal knowledge of Christ as their
own Redeemer. Is He, in any wider sense than this, the desire of all nations?
He cannot be the conscious desire of nations who have never heard of Him, but
He may be, He is, their unconscious desire. He is their desire--
1. Inasmuch as they long for a competent and infallible Teacher. The
love of truth is natural to man. There is a latent yearning that is not to be
pacified until it finds the truth which God has appointed as its nutriment.
Left to their blind guides the nations have lived and died, wandering sadly
through the mazes of error. Worn and wearied with perpethal disappointments,
humanity has longed for the advent of one who could resolve its doubts, allay
its fears, and re-inspire its hopes, by unfolding to it immortal truth.
2. They long for a clearer manifestation of the Deity. Man must have
a God. If he cannot have the true God, he will fashion gods for himself. Man
has hoped, in some way, to behold God as a sharer of our humanity. This
universal yearning is alone met in the mission of Jesus Christ.
3. Christ is the desire of all nations in His redeeming work.
Universal is the sense of sin and danger: a feeling of exposure to penalty; the
dread of an offended Deity. The needful expiation has been made, once for all.
In the Cross of Christ is that which will satisfy even these yearnings--the
deepest, the saddest, the most abiding, the most universal known to fallen
humanity. Then--
1. No nation can enjoy true and permanent prosperity except by
receiving and honouring Him.
2. The cause of missions deserves our support as the great interest
of earth. If Christ be the desire of all nations, what is He to us
individually? (Henry A. Boardman, D. D.)
The desire of all nations
The ancient
Jews regarded this prophecy as relating to the advent of the Messiah. It is
remarkable that the prophet should describe the Messiah as the desire of all
nations. He foresaw a salvation which Should reach to the end of the earth.
I. The need all nations had of a Redeemer. No one can look abroad
into the state of the world, either as it is recorded in history, or reported
by travellers of the present day, without seeing with grief and horror their
general ignorance of God; their devotion to idolatry; their ignorance of a
future state; and their vicious practices, particularly their impurity and
cruelty. If we lead you to the morality of the heathen, how dreary, or how
disgusting is our report! In these things, in which the nations of the world so
greatly needed a Divine instructor, the religion of Jesus was peculiarly
calculated to supply their wants; to remove their ignorance, to purify their
hearts, to soften their ferocity. With the preaching of the Gospel a change was
effected, like that which is wrought by the mightiest powers of the natural
world. Both Jews and Gentiles had need of One who should reconcile them to God,
and bring them to the knowledge of the truth. That One is found alone in
Christ.
II. The expectation of a Redeemer which subsisted previous to Christ’s
appearing. We find everywhere prevailing an idea of the need of a mediator
between God and man, either to reveal the will of the former, or to render the
prayers and offerings of the latter acceptable. The wisest philosophers confess
that the Deity must Himself reveal His will if it is to be known. This idea the
Almighty suffered to be promulgated by means of oracles, auguries, divinations.
Everywhere is the desire to propitiate the Deity by offerings and sacrifices.
As proofs of an actual expectation of this Divine Person, take the testimonies
of two Roman historians, Suetonius and Tacitus. Both say that “some One coming
out of Judea should possess the empire.” Some rays of Divine light illuminated
even the thickest darkness; some remains of a former promise lived in the minds
of the heathen; some Divine impressions showed them their wants, and their
inability to supply them; some gracious communications instructed them whither
to look for deliverance from ignorance and superstition. These faint gleams
were lost in that glorious light which burst upon the earth when the Sun of
Righteous ness rose to bring wisdom, and sanctification, and redemption. But
they served to guide many a wandering traveller through the thick night which
enveloped the Gentile world, and to preserve the doctrine of a Divine
providence. How glorious|y did our blessed Lord relieve all doubts, and satisfy
all expectations. But the great things which have been revealed kindle in our hearts
a hope of future mercies. (T. Bowdler, A. M.)
Christ the desire and
glory of His Church
I. The time when our Lord was to come. “It is a little while.” Yet it
proved to be five hundred years. A short period compared with the time the
Church had already been kept waiting for the Messiah. It was short in Jehovah’s
own sight.
II. A solemn circumstance that is to attend the Messiah’s coming. “I
will shake,” etc. What is this mighty shaking? The language has been
interpreted as pointing out those political convulsions and changes which
agitated the world between the uttering of this prophecy and our Lord’s birth,
one great empire giving way to another, and that in its turn yielding to a
third. St. Paul applies it, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, to the uprooting and
destruction of the whole Mosaic dispensation. We may put another interpretation
on this prediction. There may he a further reference in it to those moral and
spiritual effects which have ever attended and followed the Gospel in its
progress through the world. Wherever it has come, it has come with a shaking.
It has startled the world, surprised it and changed it. Let the Gospel find its
way into a sinner’s heart, what a convulsion, what a complete uprooting and
change does it often effect there!
III. A description of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The desire of all
nations.”
1. In the sight of God He is desirable for all nations.
2. Some of all nations have desired Him. But we must look forward for
a full explanation of this title.
3. All nations will desire this Saviour. Imagine these prophecies
fulfilled, let this glorious scene be realised, bring before your minds a holy
and rejoicing earth, and then cast your eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ, its holy
and rejoicing King--what would you call Him? Just what the great God, the Lord
of hosts, calls Him here, “The desire of all nations,” the joy of the sons of
men, the one great blessing, hope, and comfort of a regenerated world.
IV. The glorious consequence of the promised Redeemer’s advent. “I
will fill this house with glory.” “The glory of this latter house shall be
greater than of the former.” The former house was Solomon’s. How was this
magnificent promise fulfilled? The promise seemed to have no fulfilment. At
last an Infant enters that
temple, brought thither from a stable and a manger, and borne in a peasant’s
arms. Here in this second temple God Himself was manifest in our mortal flesh.
A twofold application--
(1) It shows us wherein consists the chief glory of any Church. In
the presence and manifestation within it of the Lord Jesus Christ. A real
spiritual presence.
(2) It tells us wherein consists the chief happiness of every really
Christian heart. (C. Bradley, M. A.)
Christ the desire of all
nations
The Church
engages our thoughts both on the first and second advents of our Lord. For we,
like them of old, are “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” We exhibit Messiah as the desire of
all nations with respect to both His advents. There are two kinds of
predictions in the Holy Writings; the one anticipating a dispensation of grace
and mercy, the other speaking of awful and tremendous judgments, seasons of
tribulation such as the world had never before witnessed. Though our Lord was
the Prince of Peace, yet through human perversity the result of His mission was
a sword, tile kindling of the fire of evil passions, the setting of the members
of a household one against another. Whatever we expect hereafter, here we look
not for the fulfilment of our hopes. Knowing the issue, the perpetual feud
between the Church and the world, the weary persecutions by which the faithful
have been harassed, how can the bringer-in of such a dispensation be the desire
of all nations? Still less, seeing what must be the result of His future
manifestation, how can He assume this character as the righteous Judge of an
apostate world? The distinction may be thus made. The prophets do not say that
when He appears, the desires of all nations shall be satisfied; but that He who
is the desire of all nations shall come; He, that is, whom they desire by
anticipation. With respect to His first coming, it is certain that, from the
Fall downwards, the sons of men have ever looked for some mighty deliverer.
However deeply men might err as to the object of faith,--however speculative
their notions as to the nature of the:Eternal Godhead and their own
nature,--however depraved their ideas how they were to propitiate the Supreme
Being,--they could not avoid the conviction that, if they were to be saved at
all, it must be by the advent of a Son of God in human form, as the connecting
link between the Creator offended, and the creature sinning. Such
foreshadowings of the truth, originally impressed upon the human mind, the
sacred oracles confirm. The streams of tradition and Scripture unite in one deep
channel of expectation. But how did He, in whom these anticipations centred,
fulfil them? Not in the way in which the sons of men imagined He would. If,
dwelling on the train of miseries which the destroyer has brought upon the
earth, and unable to reconcile what they saw around and felt within them with
His righteous rule whose offspring they knew themselves to be, they yet had
faith to see that He in whose bands their destinies lay, ever brings good out
of evil, and that every affliction happens to man as part of a discipline of
love, and will one day cease altogether--if such were their thoughts, then
their fulfilment in God’s good time was verily assured to them. The proof that
Christ’s kingdom has been set up, is seen in the rescue of men from the bondage
of slavery and sin; in the daily, hourly, victories gained over the powers of
darkness by those in whose weakness His “strength is made perfect..” The same desires which Messiah so
graciously met, so far as our necessary trial admits, at His first advent, will
receive their full and complete satisfaction only at His second coming. One
point more. It is to the temple of the Lord that the desire of all nations
shall come: it is there that He shall take up His abode. The words of Haggai
end Malachi find their primary accomplishment in the presentation of the infant
Jesus. But the true temple is our humanity. We know that He is with us, whether
we assemble ourselves together to worship and adore Him, to pour out the
plaints of our hearts in holy litanies, to praise Him “in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs,” or whether we bend our knees in the silence and privacy of
our closets. Let me ask you, then, have you such desires as the Lord at His
next coming will be likely to satisfy? Ye have seen what they are. They are
such as earth, and the things of earth, cannot fill (G. Huntington, M. A.)
The desire of all nations
This is one of
the most difficult, yet most interesting texts of the Old Testament. Many
critics would rob the passage of its Messianic element, and degrade the glory
of the temple into material gifts and privileges. They assert that the
translation is not correct.
1. “The desire of all nations” should be “the desirable things of all
nations,” as the LXX τὰ
ἐκλεκτὰ πὰντων τῶν ἐθνῶν. The prophet describes, say they, not the coming of a person, but
the contributions made to the rebuilding of the second temple (Haggai 2:8; Isaiah 60:5), “the forces of the Gentiles (the wealth of the nations) will
come to Thee,” i.e, be brought to Jerusalem. The Hebrew word Khemdath
(from Khamad, to wish or desire) signifies wish or desire (2 Chronicles 21:20), and as applied to persons means the best, the noblest, and most
precious. “A man of desires,” i.e, as the margin, one desired or
desirable (Daniel 9:23; Daniel 10:3; Daniel 01:11). “He is altogether lovely” (Song of Solomon 5:16). In Hebrews the same word as here is used, “all desires,” or object of desires. But
if the term refers to things, the glory of the second temple could not excel
the glory of the first, for it wanted many treasures which the first contained
(cf. Ezra 3:12)
.
2. It is objected that a singular noun is followed by a plural verb
“shall come”; hence the text should be altered and amended by ancient versions.
But if we have any right at all to alter, have we not as much right to change
the verb in number as the noun? The Vulgate agrees with the Eng. Ver.,
“desideratus cunctis gentibus.” Why not take the word as a collective noun, and
understand the Messiah as concentrating all excellences in His person, in whom
the desires of all nations find their centre and satisfaction? This title seems
to suit prophecy concerning Him (Genesis 49:10); and Christ was called by the Jews “the hope of Israel,” “the
blessing of Abraham to the Gentiles” (1 Timothy 1:1; Titus 2:3; Acts 28:20; Acts 26:7-8; Galatians 3:14). It is not likely that the gifts of proselytes and worshippers,
contributions from heathen princes, and the devotion of surrounding countries,
would be esteemed by Jews greater glory than the magnificence of Solomon’s
temple; and is it not unreasonable to think that the prophet would direct men
to material treasures as constituting the “greater glory”? In what can this
august prediction find its fulfilment if not in the Saviour of the world, who
alone could give the “peace” mentioned in verse 9? If we carefully examine its
words and catch its drift, the difficulties may not all be cleared away; but
this sense seems to be furnished by collateral evidence, to agree with the
context, and is in harmony with the spirit of the prophet, and with the
exordium of his prophecy. “The desire of all nations” we believe to be the
Saviour of the world, whom the Magi from the East and the Greeks from the West
desired to see. Moral and physical changes prepared for His coming. The
“greater glory” was exhibited in the presentation, teaching, and personal
ministry of Jesus. The nearness of the time appears to oppose this view. “Yet
once, it is a little while,” or yet a little while, lit., “one little,” only a
brief space. But with the Lord a thousand years are as one day. The Divine mode
of reckoning is not like our own. We are to look beyond the first to the second
temple--from the present to the future--from the beginning to the end of these
grand events. Sacrifices were abolished, the temple ritual was completed, and “peace”
was given in the doctrine, and by the death of Christ. Hence, God’s Spirit
remains with His people (verse 5). Wherever Jesus dwells, He imparts a glory
surpassing the splendour of the Shekinah and the glory of Solomon’s temple. He
can transform the character and beautify the soul. We need Him. Shakings within
must prepare for His reception. He has been once, and He will come a second
time. Do we desire Him? Have we found Him? May Christ dwell in our hearts the
hope of glory! (James Wolfendale.)
The moral progress of the
world
I. It requires great social revolutions amongst mankind. “Thus saith
the Lord of hosts, Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the
heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land.” Revolutions in society
seem to me essential to the moral progress of the race. There must be
revolutions in theories and practices in relation to governments, markets,
temples, churches. How much there is to be shaken in the heaven and earth of
Christendom before the cause of true moral progress can advance! May we not hope that all the
revolutions that are constantly occurring in governments and nations are only
the removal of obstructions in the moral march of humanity?
II. It involves the satisfaction of the moral cravings of mankind.
“The desire of all nations shall come.” The moral craving of humanity is
satisfied in Christ, and in Christ only.
1. Man’s deep desire is reconciliation to his Creator.
2. Man’s deep desire is to have inner harmony of soul. Christ does
this.
3. To have brotherly unity with the race. Moral socialism is what all
nations crave for. Christ does this. He breaks down the middle wall of
partition. He unites all men together by uniting all men to God.
III. It ensures the highest manifestations of God to mankind. “I will
fill this house with glory, saith the Lord.”
1. God will be recognised as the universal proprietor. Silver is
Mine, and gold is Mine,” etc.
2. God will be recognised as the universal peace giver. “I will give
peace, saith the Lord of hosts.” (Homilist.)
Christ the world’s desire
The desire
for a revelation of God is a desire of all nations. Men have never been able to
rest satisfied with the bare knowledge or assurance that God is, they have ever
yearned for some conception of what God is. What are all the gods of the
heathen but human answers to the question, “What is God?” That question has, as
yet, found no true answer. There is still a desire as deep as man’s need, as
universal as humanity itself, to know what God is, to see a revelation of the
Deity. It is fulfilled in Christ. His mission is to satisfy the desire of all
nations to see God. Let us take our place at the feet of the God revealing
Christ. The desire to be reconciled to God is a universal longing in the heart
of man. In Christ is the fulfilment of this desire. In all its stages, here and
in heaven, we see in Christ reconciliation between man and God, so that, as the
way to the Father, He satisfies the desire of all nations. To all men,
conscious of these restless longings and desires, Christ’s invitation is, “Come
unto Me, and I will give you rest.” (Alex. Marshall, M. A.)
The desire of nations
How was this
prophecy fulfilled? The second temple was never equal to the first in outward
appearance. How, then, could the glory of the second temple exceed that of the
first? God incarnate, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, stood in the
second temple, and that made its glory greater. The text foretells the coming
of Christ, and says that coming should be preceded by great commotions. How
truly this prophecy was fulfilled in Christ those who know the history of the
period before His coming will understand. It would seem as if neither civil nor
religious benefits could ever be bestowed upon our world except as preceded by
such commotions. Whether it is that men become so rooted down in old prejudices
in favour of existing evils, that nothing short of bloodshed and evolution will
tear them up, or whether God thus punishes old errors, and by His chastening
produces a reformation, certain it is, that civil liberty and religious
progress have usually dated their most important epochs from seasons of war and
political disturbance. So let us regard the present crisis. Let our eye be
directed upward to Him who rides upon the storm, and our prayer to Him be, that
this, and every other which passes over our globe, may purify more and more,
until earth shall have the very atmosphere of heaven. Scripture teaches that the
millennial day is to be preceded by a great shaking of the nations. The text
has an individual application to ourselves. Christ is, or ought to be, the
desire of every heart. Just as God shakes the nations before the desire of
nations comes, so does He arouse sinners before Christ can enter into their
hearts. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.)
The desire of all nations
The text
foretold a strange phenomenon. It declared that the High and Lofty One who
inhabits eternity would be seen among sinful men.
I. Desire, as referring to the expectation of the whole human family.
It is a fact deserving attention, that among the nations there has ever existed
a widespread, if not universal expectation of a glorious Person, to be the
renovator of mankind, and to impress a new character on the spirit, habits, and
morals of the earth. The expectation was not confined to the Jews.
II. Desire, as referring to the wants of the whole human family.
Wherever a human being is found, there will be found a conscience, a moral
sense. Let men seek by repentance to atone for guilt, it is in vain. Everywhere
the imploring cry is heard for some medium, some mediator between God and man.
To the want produced by guilt, add that created by the corruption which sin
hath shed through our nature.
III. Desire, as referring to the happiness of the whole human family.
Jesus alone can confer true happiness; because the mind of man can rejoice only
in truth, and Christ is” the truth; because the heart of man can only be
satisfied with objects worthy of it; and because God is the life of the soul,
and Christ alone reveals this Being, and reinstates us in His favour and love.
(R. Fuller, D. D.)
Christ the desire of all
nations
I. Why christ may justly be called the “Desire of all nations.”
1. Because of the general expectation that prevailed in the world
previously to His coming.
2. Because all mankind required such a Saviour as He is, whether they
knew Him or not.
3. Because the Lord Jesus is so attractive in Himself, that all would
actually desire Him if they knew Him.
4. Because many, in all nations, have actually desired Him.
5. Because ultimately all the families of the earth shall be blessed
in Him.
II. How did Christ’s presence render the second temple more glorious
than the first? In the second temple Jesus displayed the condescension, wisdom, power, and glory of
the Deity, in such a manner as far more than made up for its want of external
magnificence or internal memorials. The former temple had seen grand men, but
now a sinless man. There is yet another temple which is honoured with the
presence of Christ. Christians them selves are a building, fitly framed
together, and growing unto a holy temple in the Lord. There is yet another
temple which is filled with the same glory, n the temple which is above, and in
which believers serve God day and night. (J. F. Osborne.)
The desire of all nations
Here was a
distinct prophecy of the Saviour’s coming, and it can be appropriately referred
to Him alone. That such a Divine personage was looked for by the Jews is seen
in the uniform testimony of their prophets. He was the “desire of all nations,”
because He only could bestow those precious blessings which the world needed.
Without Christ human nature was guilty, polluted, wretched, lost. He was to be
the regenerator of
that nature; the author of its deliverance, its happiness, and its eternal
rest. The Lord Jesus was, emphatically, “The desire of all nations,” because
all nations shall one day be made happy in Him. His blessed reign is to be that
of righteousness and peace, and the song of universal joy which shall swell
forth at last in harmony with harps of gold, will be, The kingdoms of this
world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” For four thousand
years the accom plishment of the prophecy had been looked for, and at last, in
the fulness of time, the long-expected Messiah came. He appeared--
1. At the very period marked out for His birth.
2. In the very manner which had been foretold.
3. He came for the performance of the very work which had been before
marked out for Him. Certain remarkable events should distinguish the Messiahs
coming.
(1) All nations were to be shaken.
(2) The Jewish temple should be filled with His glory.
In several
important particulars the second temple was far inferior to the first. It was
not in riches, nor in outward splendour that the superiority of the second
temple would consist, but in the personal presence of the Divine Redeemer. He
was the infallible oracle, making known God’s will: the perfect sacrifice for
sin, faintly shadowed forth by the mercy-seat of the ark; the true fire, to
rekindle the expiring flame in the perishing soul. In that second temple the
Prince of Peace appeared, making peace between God and man, and pro
claiming the Gospel of peace, whose provisions of mercy are freely offered to
all. (John N. Norton, D. D.)
The advent of the Lord
ushered in amidst the shaking of the nations
Though heaven
be God’s throne, and earth His footstool, and all space His temple, yet, in
condescension to human weakness, He who fills immensity deigns’ to
manifest Himself in a temple built by human hands.
I. A great Person, the desire of all nations, shall come. There was
no human probability that this part of the prophecy would be fulfilled. Who is
the desired object It can be none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God. Christ may literally be said to be the desire of all nations, inasmuch as
He was the object of their earnest expectation: because to all He was and is
most desirable. That the promise of His coming to the temple was fulfilled, see
the records of our Lord’s visits to the temple, as given in the Gospels.
II. The preparation for Christ’s coming. “I will shake all nations.”
God bids us look for the precursors of His Son in the shakings of nations. This
was prophetical, and has been exactly fulfilled. When God is about to introduce
any great improvement into His Church, any era of light and enlargement, He
generally precedes it by one of trouble and commotion. This often removes
serious obstacles to the establishment and welfare of the Redeemer’s Church.
III. The consequences of the coming of the desire of all nations. “I
will fill this house with glory.” This is prophetical. Any one who had seen the
temple of Solomon, would hesitate in believing that anything could surpass its
glory. Christ now comes to His Church in remarkable dispensations of
providence. As part of the Church visible, we have a great deal to do for
Christ, in endeavouring, both at home and abroad, to prepare the temple for the
advent of the Lord. (J. G. Lorimer.)
Christmas-day sermon
This text is a
prophecy and prediction of our Saviour’s incarnation. The Jews indeed pervert
this text. We apprehend it as a prophetical prediction of that great benefit
and mystery of our religion that the Christian Church doth this day celebrate.
I. What occasions the prophet now to mention our Saviour, and
foretell His nativity? The mentioning of Christ’s incarnation comes in without
any straining or impertinent digression. The prophet finds the people in a low condition,
and the main consolation he ministers to them is this gracious assurance that
the Messias was ere long to be born, and to come among them. This promise of
Christ had a threefold virtue in it that made it seasonable in the time of
distress. It sweetened their sorrow in their present affliction. It revived
their hope of a full restoration. It prevents and removes all doubts and
suspicions that their fear may forecast against their deliverance. Shall their
temple be built again out of so great ruins? There may be doubts whether such a
restoration can be possible, and whether God can be so good as to accomplish
it.
II. What is the nature, condition, and substance of this promise?
Conceive the words as a lively description of our Saviour’s coming.
1. Here is a solemn preparation for it. “I will shake all nations.”
The times before Christ were troublesome times; nation dashing against nation,
and all subdued by the Roman Empire.
2. There was a stirring up of the nations to the expectation, and
looking for, of the Messiah.
3. This Shaking foretells a shaking of all things unto a great
alteration. The coming of Christ wrought a great change.
(1) In statu return.
(2) In moribus dominum.
(3) In mode rituum.
4. This shaking is a powerful drawing of men to a Christian
conversion. The second subject to consider is the gracious performance of this
blessed promise. “The desire of all nations shall come.” Christ is the desire
of all things in heaven and earth, and His incarnation that great work that all
things looked for.
1. He was the delight and joy of His Father.
2. He was the desire of the angels.
3. He was the desire and longing of all creation.
4. The desire of the patriarchs.
5. The desire of the nations.
Desire implies
longing and wishing; attaining and possessing; enjoyment and fruition. This is
not a single promise, but a promise pregnant, it includes and implies other
promises with it. Here is a door set open for the Gentiles: it concerns us
nearly I it is the tenure we hold by. All nations pitched upon one desire; all
expect the same common salvation. Christ’s Church shall be gathered out of all
nations. Desire fulfilled and accomplished turns to joy, and that is the happy
condition of the Christian Church. (Geo. Stradling, S. T. P.)
The presentation of Christ
in the temple
Regard Christ
as satisfying the craving of mankind for a perfect ideal of goodness.
I. Such a yearning universal. Man made to look upward. Distinguished
from lower animals by capacity for indefinite advance.
1. For this advance an ideal is necessary, up toward which men may
struggle. “Intense admiration is necessary to our highest perfection.” Nothing
is so ennobling as looking up.
2. The absence of this upward tendency is a sure precursor of moral
ruin. Too common now, especially among young men. Thought “fine” to crush down
all admiration; to carp and sneer at goodness. This lie against man’s instincts
terribly revenges itself.
II. The power of this instinct proved. By the reverence felt by all
nations for their legislators, philosophers, generals.
1. The abiding power over the human mind of Solon and Lycurgus,
Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed, shows the preparedness of the human heart to
welcome One whose moral standard is higher than its own. The secret of this
influence is that each manifested some features of the desire of all nations,
some rays of the “light that lighteneth every man,” some fragments of the truth
that all are yearning
after.
2. Show in the passionate devotion of soldiers for their generals.
III. But all these come short of the true devotion to the one perfect
ideal.
1. Napoleon’s estimate of the superiority of the influence of Christ.
2. Secret of this universal power--the Incarnation. The “desire of
all nations” must be at once man and God. Nothing short of perfection of sympathy
and perfection of holiness will satisfy man’s demand. In Jesus Christ, “the
second Adam; the Lord from heaven,” etc., we see One whom we can love, adore,
and imitate. The faultless pattern is set before us that we may copy it. In
Christ, our brother-man, we see what God is, and by His Spirit’s help we may
strive to copy Him. (Edmund Venables, M. A.)
Christ the hope of the
world
The words of
the original do not refer at all to Messiah, but to the glory of the second
temple, which was then being erected and into which it is foretold the riches
of the Gentiles should be brought. The words may, however, be used as the motto
of a sermon. Can the words, “the Desire of all nations,” be justifiably
employed in regard to our Lord? None of the names of Christ is more
appropriate. The Messiah has always been the Desire of all nations. More or
less vaguely a Christ was universally hoped for and expected. How noble a
conception we obtain of the relation between an universal Saviour and universal
need!
I. Christ is the world’s grand ideal, for whom it waited, and in whom
it hoped. It is a historical fact that all nations have desired to see such a
person as our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice three ideas in which this desire to
reconcile man to God became embodied.
1. There grew up the doctrine, or tradition, asserting the union of
God and man in
one person. The doctrine of the Incarnation is not peculiar to Christianity.
2. The belief that there would come a time of familiarity between God
and man.
3. That there would come, or had come, a perfect God-man to better
the condition of the human race in this world, and to teach them about the
next. Whole races have
believed that certain men were heaven-sent prophets, Divine teachers. Heathen
records show that birth from a pure virgin has been attributed to several of
these founders of religion. This is related both of Buddha and of Zoroaster.
The story of Osiris is even more remarkable. He is represented as visiting the
earth, suffering and dying, and rising again to become judge of quick and dead.
II. Christ is fitly spoken of as the “Desire of all nations,” because
His work is such as men hoped to see performed.
1. The world hoped that One would come who should establish justice,
peace, and truth in the earth. It was such a moral kingdom that Jesus came to
found.
2. The world was craving deliverance from powers of evil to which
they felt themselves to be in bondage.
3. Men longed for some means of securing pardon of sin. Consider a
summary of the theory of sacrifice among the heathen, and see how it points, in
company with the Mosaic system, to the Lamb of Calvary.
(1) In this act they symbolically offered up themselves.
(2) It was necessary that the life of the victim should be taken,
and the blood must be shed, for “the blood is the life.” Life for life is the
first principle of the theory of sacrifice.
(3) The victim must be faultless when brought to the altar.
(4) More noteworthy still is the fact that sacrifice meant the
giving up of that which was valued and beloved. These views with regard to
sacrifice have prevailed almost universally. The faultless and treasured
offering was to appease the wrath of heaven. It scarcely needs that I remind
you how precisely our blessed Lord is the embodiment of this phase of the
world’s faith.
4. The world longed to see harmony and peace restored in place of the
discords of human life, and in place of apparent incongruities in the natural
world. Men saw so much around them that was problematical. Human life was so
strange a puzzle. “There shall come,” wrote a Persian prophet, a “righteous
King, whose reign shall be universal. At His advent, poison and poisonous weeds
and ravenous beasts shall be expelled from the earth, tie shall make streams
break forth in the desert, and there shall be no more a hot simoom. The bodies
of men shall be unsubstantial, and shall cast no shadows. They shall need no
food to sustain their life. That King shall cast out for ever poverty,
sickness, old age, and death.” What but the work of our King can fulfil
such aspirations? Some argue against the triumph of Christianity, But Christ
shall surely triumph; not one tittle of prophecy shall pass till all be
fulfilled. But not as we expect may it come about. God’s way of governing the
world differs very widely from our very rational-looking theories of how it
ought to be done.
(Edwin Dukes.)
Christ suited to all
nations
If you want to
know what it is that makes the living centre of Christianity, go and ask a
missionary what it is that he finds it best to tell people that gather round
him. Is it not the one story--the universality of sin and the redeeming Christ?
Wherefore we say with confidence, and I wish it were deeper in the hearts of
all of us, that Christianity--not all the minutiae of reticulations of the net
in which we carry it, but the treasure which we carry in the net--that our
Christianity is the only religion on the face of the earth that has got stamped
upon it universality. Mohammedanism bears the stamp of Mahommed, and dissolves
before Western civilisation. It is needless to ask whether Buddhism or
Brahmanism can live beyond certain degrees of latitude and longitude, or
outside certain stages of human thought and progress. They are all like the
vegetation of the countries in which they had their origin. You cannot
transplant palm trees and bamboos into our northern latitudes. But the seed
which the great Sower came to scatter is like the bread-corn, an exotic
nowhere, and yet an exotic everywhere, the bread of God that came down from
heaven. All these other religions are like water that is strongly impregnated
with the salts or the mineral matters which it has dissolved out of the strata
through which it rises; but the river of the Water of Life that proceedeth from
the throne of God and of the Lamb has no taste of earthly elements in it, and
in spite of all the presumptuous crowing of some whose wish is father to the
thought, it will flow on till it covers the earth, and every thing shall live
whithersoever the river cometh. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Christ expected
1. There was spread over the whole of creation a universal
expectation of some One called in this place the “Desire of nations.” Three
great wants were pressing upon the minds of men, and these wants became
fulfilled in the advent of our Master.
1. A distinct knowledge of the true God.
2. Answer to the question, “How can man be just with God?”
3. Light on the mystery of the future world.
Put these wants
together--the true nature of God; the true nature of an expiation; and a true
knowledge of immortality, and you see the void, or vacuum, in the human soul.
2. How far was this threefold want met by the Lord Jesus Christ in
His advent? Outside of Jesus Christ no true and adequate knowledge of God can
be possessed. When Jesus Christ came to the world as Mediator between God and
man, Be fulfilled all the required conditions of expiation. The resurrection of
the Lord Jesus gives the satisfying light on the mystery of immortality. Christ
thus met the world’s needs, and we may say, the “Desire of all nations” has come.
(Archibald Boyd, M. A.)
And I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.--
The glory of the presence
of Christ
The glory here
spoken of was not any external splendour, pomp, and beauty, for in this respect
the second temple fell vastly short of Solomon’s. It must therefore refer to
the presence of Christ, His personal appearance again and again at the temple;
which was a greater glory to it than any external ornaments could possibly be.
It was not, however, the mere bodily presence of Christ, but the heavenly
doctrine which He preached, and the miracles which He wrought there; the pains
He took to rescue the Divine law from the corruptions of the Jewish teachers,
and especially the spiritual blessings which He so freely offered to all who were
willing to receive them. It was, in one word, the manifestation of the goodwill
and mercy of God made by Him, and the influence of His Spirit, which
accompanied His preaching and miracles, to turn men from darkness to light, and
bring them to repentance, faith, and holy obedience. Infer, that the brightest
ornament and truest glory of any place of worship is the spiritual presence of
Christ in it; or, the influences of His Spirit, accompanying the means of
grace, to make them effectual for the edification and comfort of the souls of
men. The thing to be anxious about, as a Christian Church, is, that we may have
the special and gracious presence of Christ with us, to fill His house with His
glory. The evidences of this presence are--regular and careful attendance upon
all the ordinances and institutions of Christ; serious and devout behaviour;
worship of the Father in spirit and in truth; singing God’s praises with
understanding and lively devotion; fixing the attention and engaging the
affections with Divine truth. Particularly when, at the Lord’s table, the
thoughts are fixed upon the sufferings and love of Christ, and grateful
affections are excited towards Him; and when their souls are filled with love
of the brethren. (Job Orton.)
Divine agency
1. Divine agency in the affairs of the world. “I.”
2. Divine order. “I will shake.” Disturbance precedes repose; war,
peace; death, life. This law is seen in the operations of nature, in the
government of nations, in individual life, and in the Church of God. The
prophecy of the text was fulfilled. The wars of Alexander the Great, of his
successors, and of Rome, shook the world. Political, social, and religious
convulsions prepared the way for the Desire of all nations.
3. Christ’s advent. When He appeared the temple of Janus was closed.
The world, weary
and worn, was unconsciously longing for His presence. The cry of all religions
was reconciliation with God. For this, temples were erected, altars built,
priests maintained, sacrifices offered. Christ alone is the Reconciler,
Mediator, Prince of Peace.
4. Christ the glory of the temple. The old men wept at the
inferiority of the second temple. But of it God said, “I will fill this house
with glory.” The Jews say five signs of Divine glory were in the first temple, which
were wanting in the second,--Urim and Thummim. Ark of covenant. Fire upon the
altar. The Shechinah. And the spirit of prophecy. But in Christ all these signs
of the Divine glory were united and signally manifested. Thus by His coming to
the second temple Haggai’s prophecy was fulfilled. And He is still coming m
like manner to hearts, to churches, and to nations; but He will come yet more
gloriously. All changes, revolutions, and convulsions are preparing the way for
His triumphal chariot. (The Study.)
The presence of the
Messias, the glory of the second temple
The modern Jews
will by no means have this text to be understood of the Messias. The ancient
Jews did so understand it. The Messias is He whom all nations had reason to
desire, because of those great blessings and benefits which He was to bring to
the world. Show how the several parts of this prediction agree to our blessed
Saviour, and to no other.
I. There should be great changes and commotions in the world before
His coming. This was fulfilled in a most remarkable manner between the time of
this prophecy and the coming of our blessed Saviour. In those four hundred
years happened greater commotions, and much more considerable revolutions, than
in above two thousand years before, and in almost two thousand since.
II. The world should be in a general expectation of Messias at the
time of his coming. The Jews were in general expectation. Their tradition was,
that Messias would appear at the end of the second two thousand years. Some
Jewish doctors determined that the Messias would come within fifty years of
their time. And Suctonius and Tacitus voice the heathen expectation.
III. He who is foretold, was to come during the continuance of the
second temple. Not long after Christ’s death this second temple was destroyed
to the ground. Then it could have been no other than Jesus who “filled this
second temple with glory.”
IV. The coming of Messias was to be the last dispensation of God for
the salvation of men. “Once more” implies “once more only.” The inference may
be thus expressed, “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh.” What could God
have done more for us than He hath done? (J. Tillotson, D. D.)
The glory of the second
temple
I. Wherein the glory of the former house consisted. Properly
speaking, there were three temples in Jerusalem. From Joshua to Solomon there
was no permanent edifice. The tabernacle was fitted to the needs of a wandering
people. Nearly five hundred years passed before the project of building a
permanent house for worship could be carried out. Solomon’s temple is familiar.
It was destroyed after an existence of over four hundred years. The second
temple was founded by Ezra. The third was built by the munificence of Herod. It
was strictly no new house, only a reparation of the old. Notice the
magnificence of the first temple with regard to its materials. The whole world
was laid under contribution, so to speak, for the erection of that magnificent
edifice. Notice the contents of this temple. There were three of surpassing
magnificence--the ark, the altar, and the light. Each of these was symbolical
of a deeper and more recondite truth. Consider its dedication by the coming to
it of the sign of God’s presence--the cloud symbol. One other fact added to the
magnificence of the temple. It was the spot where God chose to hold communion
with man.
II. Wherein did the greater glory of the latter house consist? Here we
find there is a passing from the material to the spiritual. Things symbolical
and things material were in no respect to constitute the glory that belonged to
the second temple. The peculiar glory of the second temple consisted in this-
the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. The material glory, the splendour of the
former house, was all eclipsed in this consideration, that to the second temple
came God manifest in the flesh. It was in the second temple that the world’s
peace was made. In the first temple the voice of prophecy was heard, but in the
second it was altogether silent. At last the voice of prophecy came. The Master
said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He hath anointed Me to preach the
Gospel to the poor.” Jesus Christ, in uttering His prophecies in that temple,
made that temple still more glorious by the character of those utterances. His
word came with power. The subject teaches the manifest glory of the spiritual
over the material. (Archibald Boyd, M. A.)
The glory of God’s house
The glory
of Israel consisted in God’s visibly dwelling in their midst. The rabbis remind
us that the second temple was inferior to the first in five essential
particulars:--
1. The original ark of the covenant, containing the two tables of
Sinai, and the Mercy-seat, were lost.
2. The Shechinah, or Divine presence, appeared no more.
3. The Urim and Thummim, connected with the miraculous breastplate of
Aaron, had vanished.
4. The holy fire, which God Himself had kindled upon the altar, and
which was ever kept burning, and from whence the sacrifices were to be ignited,
was extinguished for ever.
5. The Holy Spirit of prophecy spake no longer as in times past; it
was silent for four hundred yeasts after Malachi’s removal. These causes
conspired to damp the fervour of the people in the work of restoration. Haggai
was bidden to acknowledge the visible inferiority of the second temple; but he
was to say that the deficiencies were only apparent. The true essentials of
worship, the veritable consciousness of God’s faithful guardianship, the unseen
consolations of His Spirit, should more than compensate for the absence of the
former tokens of His proximity. And to this, at present, unpretending shrine
the Lord of hosts Himself would come; the Prince of peace should adorn it with
His own life-giving presence. The
dearest aspiration of all nations--for that is the meaning of the
Hebrew word translated “the Desire of all nations”--should be realised in the
person of Jesus the Messiah. Here, then, was true glory; here was substantial
consolation! Here was consolation amply sufficient to counterbalance the
absence, not only of material splendour, but also of the gorgeous symbolism,
the departed externals of God dwelling in their midst. The consolation offered
by Haggai consisted in the assurance that the temple which they were rebuilding
should witness the arrival of the promised Saviour of the world, even of Him
who should “gather together in one all the children of God that were scattered
abroad.” Salvation, and not the symbols and types thereof, is the one thing
needful. (Joseph B. McCaul.)
Verse 8-9
The glory of
this latter house shall be greater than of the former.
The superiority of the
latter house
The prophet’s
declaration that the silver is the Lord’s and the gold is the Lord’s is full of
comfort to those who are disquieted about their own work, if they will receive
it rightly. You who are poor, who have no gold and no silver to give, is it not
a comfort that God does not need silver and gold from you? Rich as some may be
in the eyes of the world, and in their own eyes, in God’s eyes they are
miserably poor, and only the poorer the richer they deem themselves. If our
riches be our own, it is poverty; if our knowledge is our own, it is ignorance;
neither can be true unless it be God’s already. As the prophet’s words are
meant to cheer those who are troubled by a false humility, so do they cast down
our pride, which always lies at the bottom of such false humility. What, then,
are we to give to God? Only the things which are especially our own, our own
hearts and souls. How could the glory of the latter house be greater than that
of the former? It is declared that the Lord of hosts would “fill His house with
glory.” The manner in which this should he done is set forth thus--“The Desire of all
nations shall come.” Through the coming of the Desire of all nations what had
waned and decayed may be restored and renewed, until the glory of its latter
state is greater than that of its former. The condition of man after the Fall
was as nothing in comparison with his first glory. In Christ human nature,
regenerated by the power of His Spirit, is raised to a far higher state of
glory than that from which man fell. So too it is with each individual man.
Under the dominion of natural impulses and passions, he may look with shame on
his early years; but they who have been truly and effectually regenerated by
the Spirit of Christ know how, here again, the glory of the latter house is
greater than that of the former. Such is the glory which we see in St. Paul’s
life after his conversion. (Julius C. Hare, M. A.)
The presence of Christ in
the temple
From the
earliest period of time particular places were set apart for the peculiar
worship of God. The shady grove and the elevated mountain were at first chosen
by most nations as places of devotion. David first formed the design of
building the temple. Though in many respects inferior, there was to be in the
second temple a brighter glory than was in the temple of Solomon. It is the
presence of Christ in it which more than compensated for the want of other
things. The great truth for us to consider is, that the presence of Christ
constitutes the chief glory of any Church. How is His presence in a Church
displayed, and the building rendered glorious by His presence?
1. By the faithful preaching and the cordial reception of His Gospel.
2. If the ordinances of religion are regularly administered and
properly prized.
3. When the professors of religion are distinguished for holiness and
spiritual joy, and where sinners are converted. (H. Kollock, D. D.)
The glory of the second
temple
The great
and overpowering honour of the building which Solomon raised was this, that it
was the only building on earth erected to the true God. By what peculiarity,
then, was the second temple distinguished? The second temple was built by the
children of the Captivity when they returned poor, dispirited, and feeble from
the oppression of Babylon. It never approached m outward magnificence and real
grandeur the original temple. And the emphatic glory of the first temple was
awanting in the second. There was no visible symbol of the Divine presence; no
awful cloud of brightness. There the Son of God was made manifest in the
likeness of human flesh. We are to seek, in the appearance of the Son of God in
our flesh, for the circumstances that were to constitute the superior honour of
the latter temple. Give the occasions when our Lord visited the temple. And
also, the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former,
inasmuch as the manifestation of God in the flesh has brought down the
character of God to the level of the understanding and the sympathies of men.
The cloud of glory in the former temple did not immediately address itself
either to the understandings or to the hearts of the people. But the nature of
the Godhead has now been embodied in human flesh. We are now privileged to look
upon God as He was seen in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.” We see the doings
of the Eternal One when we see the actions of Christ Jesus. And the glory of the latter
house is greater inasmuch as there the Son of God was manifested as the
messenger of mercy and reconciliation to sinners. “In this house will I give
peace.” (J. Bannerman, D. D.)
A dedicatory sermon
Comparing the
two structures, the prophet saw, in the vision of the future, what was far more
glorious than the splendour of the former house. It is in allusion to the
advent of Christ that God says, “I will fill this house with glory.” This was
the one transcendent event which made the second temple more glorious than the
first. The tabernacle and the temple, as the dwelling place of God on earth,
continue still to be the central symbols of all the higher forms of human
organisation. The sanctuary stands to-day--the visible throne of the Deity
among men, the house of Divine authority and Divine worship, the fountain of
light and life, of health and blessing, to all generations.
1. How and in what respects does Christ become the glory of the
sanctuary?
(1) In due time Christ withdrew His bodily presence, that His
spiritual presence might abound.
(2) Christ, in the sanctuary, survives every change and outlives
every foe.
(3) Christ, in the sanctuary, draws after Him the whole range of
human intelligence and culture.
(4) He propagates Himself and His Spirit in the souls of all
believers; and
(5) He adds new dignity and grandeur to human souls in themselves,
both for the present and the future life.
2. What is the demonstration of this manifested glory of Christ in
the sanctuary?
(1) Every house of Christian worship is a testimony that God exists,
and that His promises continue.
(2) Every Christian temple is a visible protest against all forms of
infidelity, and opposition to the Gospel scheme of redemption.
(3) It is a sign of that everlasting covenant of peace which God has
made with His people.
(4) It is a dwelling-place of a spiritual Christ on earth.
(5) It is a witness of the faithfulness and constancy of God’s
providence over His people. (B. Sunderland, D. D.)
The glory of the latter
house
The temple of
Zerubbabel was inferior to the temple of Solomon in architectural beauty.
Wherein, then, was its greater glory? The Kingdom of Christ rose out of the
ruins of the old dispensation, and is become the eternal order of worship (see Hebrews 12:27-28).
I. The greater glory of the Gospel appears in the wider area it
covers. The tabernacle and temple were objects of national interest. Palestine
was the only bright spot among all the countries of the world, and so great was
the exclusiveness that the light did not travel beyond its boundaries, as if a
wall had been built round it as high as heaven. It was the partition wall which
Jesus came to break down. There was a breadth in the teachings of Jesus diametrically
opposed to the prejudices of His countrymen. We, whose lives have fallen in the
nineteenth century, can now survey the area of the latter temple better than
they could.
II. The greater glory of the Gospel appears in the greater stability
of the church. The temple of Solomon seemed a permanent building, but it was
razed to the ground. The temple of Zerubbabel gave way to that of Herod. Three
stages are visible in the development
of the spiritual. God in creation was power and wisdom at some distance from
us. God in the temple was nearer, and[assumed the personal living form which
communed with the people from the Mercy-seat. The Spirit of God in us is the
last stage, when all manifestations have given way to the real presence.
III. The greater glory of the Gospel will appear in the greater results. Our lot is
fallen in the “last days.” We see the march of intellect and civilisation. We
see kingdoms bowing to the authority of the Messiah. A succession of
revolutions has brought us forward to the Gospel dispensation. We see another
temple looming in the promise, the temple of God and the Lamb. (T. Davies,
M. A.)
The greater glory of the
latter house
1. The absolute dominion of the riches and splendour of the world
belongs unto the Lord, who hath all these things in His power to dispose of as
He pleases, and who is to be eyed, acknowledged, and submitted unto by every
man in his portion or lot according as He dispenseth it.
2. It may satisfy the people of God in their wants to consider that
God hath all they want at His command, and would not with hold it unless He saw
such a dispensation tending to their good.
3. When the Lord withholds any glory or splendour from His people and
work, it is for their advantage and flows from a purpose to give what is better,
if they had eyes to see it; for when He withholds silver and gold, which they
so much desired, He purposeth that “the glory of this latter house shall be
greater than of the former.”
4. The spiritual things of Christ’s kingdom do far surpass all the
legal administrations in glory, and do put more real splendour on any place
where they are administered, than all the pomp of the world beside can do.
5. As peace and reconciliation with God is the allowance of Christ’s
subjects, which outshines all the splendour and glory of the world, so it is
the great glory of the Gospel administrations that by them peace may be had
through Jesus Christ, which was attainable by none of the works or ceremonies
of the Law being rested on; therefore instead of their wonted splendour, and in
opposition to former administrations, it is promised, that by Christ’s coming,
His death and doctrine, “in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of
hosts.” (George Hutcheson.)
The glory of the second
temple
Fifteen years
after the commencement of the second temple Haggai uttered this prediction.
Progress had been hindered by the indifference or the despair of those who were
building it. Their hands became slack, and their hearts waxed faint in the work
of the Lord. To furnish a stimulus and encouragement to them, Haggai was
commissioned to utter this prediction. By the “former house” is to be
understood the temple erected by Solomon. The great and overpowering honour of
the building which the king of Israel raised was this, that it was the only
building on earth erected to the true God. And God there vouchsafed to make
visible to the very eyes of flesh a display of His uncreated majesty and glory.
The prophet says that the “glory of the latter house” of the second temple was
to be greater than the glory of the former. By what peculiar glory, then, was
the second temple distinguished? In architecture or material there could be no
comparison between the two. And the visible symbol of the Divine presence was
never to be seen in the “latter house.”
1. The glory was greater inasmuch as there the Son of God was made
manifest in the likeness of human flesh. He was brought to this latter house as
an infant for presentation. He visited it as a youth of twelve. He taught in
its courts. He made public entry into Jerusalem, and exerted authority in
purifying the temple. The simple fact of the Son of God assuming human nature
is calculated to awaken a feeling of more profound admiration and awe than any
such visible display of the Divine Majesty as that which dwelt of old above the
mercy-seat.
2. As the manifestation of God in the flesh has brought down the character of God to the
level of the understanding and the sympathies of men.
3. As there the Son of God was manifested as the messenger of mercy
and reconciliation to sinners. (J. Bannerman, D. D.)
The future glory of the
Church
The second
temple was to be more glorious than the first. The temple spiritually is the
Church. There being two temples among the Jews prefigured the fact that there
would be two spiritual temples, two great churches among the Christians, the
first and the second Christian Church. The first was given to the apostles, but
has degenerated into mystery and superstition; the second is the Church meant
by the New Jerusalem. The first would be destroyed by the spiritual
Babylonians; the second would have greater glory than the former, but chiefly
in this, that the Lord Himself would be more intimately present therein; there
He would be Immanuel (God with us). Explain in what this greater glory
consists. The glory of a Church is its wisdom. The glory of the New Church now
forming by the Lord under the name of the New Jerusalem surpasses the glory of the former Church
in the grand and beautiful character of its disclosures on all subjects, but
chiefly on the following--the Lord; His Word; the life which leads to heaven;
death; the life after death. The chief glory, or the chief misfortune of man in
the religion of thought, is his idea of God. He is infinite love and infinite
wisdom in a Divine human form. The whole Divine trinity is in Him, as a human
trinity is in a man. He is our Father. There is in all forms of nature a
resemblance to humanity. All nature is human, and must have come from a Divine
human Creator, a Divine Man in His infinite essence of love, wisdom, and power,
from eternity, whom, therefore, it is not incredible to behold descending as a Divine
Man in last principles as the Blessed Jesus. The Word of the Lord is glorious
as seen in the light of the New Jerusalem. It is Divine wisdom clothed in human
language. In all its sacred pages, whether they are history, prophecy, parable,
or vision, there is a spiritual sense. The outside of the Scriptures is their
least valuable part, the lowest step of the ladder. The Lord, the Church, the
soul are everywhere the subjects. For want of a knowledge of the spiritual
sense a large portion of the Bible is, to many readers, a dead record, and
another large portion quite unintelligible. Then look at the life which leads
to heaven. In many professors of religion the conduct of life has a very minute
place. Much has been made of creeds, and but little of life. The great
redeeming powers of religion have been held off by the prevalence of the dogma
that good works do not contribute to salvation, but rather tend the other way.
Religion, having been severed from the world, has made a sour, narrow religion,
and a bad world. The spirit of love and the spirit of truth, like two guardian
angels, should preside over every act of life, and sanctify the whole. Justice,
in its widest sense, and religion, are the same (Micah 6:8). Never will the world’s work be rightly done until its labourers
derive their motives from love to God and love to man. Now we come to death.
What has the old dispensation to say about death? It speaks hesitatingly about
the soul, as to whether it is in any shape or not. What becomes of it after
death it cannot tell. The New Church teaches that the spirit is the man in
perfect human form. It formed the body to itself, and whatever life the body
had, it had from the spirit. Free from the body, the spirit will live more
perfectly than before, because it will be no longer clogged by a body unequal
to its wants. What about the life after death? The spiritual world is an inner
sphere of being, filling the natural world as the soul does the body; visible
to spiritual sight, and perceptible to all the spiritual senses, as the natural
is to bodily sense. Into the realities of that world we come when we awake
after death. (J. Bailey, A. M.)
The glory of the two
houses
By the “glory”
is here meant the Shechinah, or bright cloud, emblematic of God’s presence and
protection, which hovered over the Holy of Holies.
I. The two permanent buildings which the Jews erected. David was
grieved because, while he was accommodated in a palace of cedar, the Divine
presence dwelt within curtains. He made preparations for a magnificent and
durable temple. By the building of this structure, in the time of Solomon, an
important promise was faithfully performed. At the consecration of it the
personal Jehovah descended His radiant cloud, which filled the house as an emblem of His
taking possession of it. In a night vision He assured Solomon that He had
chosen this house as the home where His honour, His glory should dwell.
Solomon’s temple subsisted upwards of four hundred years, when it was utterly
demolished by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. When the captives, returned to
Jerusalem they began to rebuild the temple, but were discouraged and delayed.
To cheer them Haggai was sent, and he was to give this assurance, “The glory of
this latter house shall be greater than of the former.”
II. The circumstances which fulfilled this prediction. It is said to
be clearly proved that Herod reared his temple on the yet standing foundations
of the temple of Zerubbabel. The superior glory of the second temple could not
have been any glory that Herod added to it; it must have rested on something
spiritual. Haggai explains thus.
He who should
be desired and expected by all nations, both Jews and Gentiles,--“shall come,
and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.” Four years
after the superstructure of Herod was fully built upon the foundations of the
temple of Zerubbabel, the infant Jesus was introduced into that temple. The
presence of Christ is the grand circumstance which verified the prediction of
Haggai. Another point in which the glory of the latter house was greater than
the glory of the former was the Court of the Gentiles. The temple of Solomon
had only two courts--that of the priests and that of the Israelites. The
Gentiles were considered as profane; and unless converted, and wholly adopting
the Jewish religion, disregarded and despised. This outer court in the second
temple admitted all men to a certain consideration among the chosen people.
This was a step toward the further admission of the nations into the entire
covenant of peace. (J. Grant.)
Utility superior to beauty
There is an
oriental proverb to the effect that the useful outlasts the beautiful, and I
remember how an ingenious author illustrates this bit of practical philosophy
by allusions to several famous works and names. The tomb of Moses, Israel’s
greatest chieftain, has never been known, but the traveller continues to quench
his thirst at the Well of Jacob. Solomon’s magnificent temple is gone, but the
same king’s reservoirs and conduits are still available. The ancient buildings
of the Holy City are not to be found, but the Pool of Bethesda is clear and
limpid and refreshing to-day. The columns of Persepolis, Persia’s royal
capital, are crumbling into decay, but its cisterns and aqueducts remain
intact. The golden house of Nero at Rome is in ruins, but the Aqua Claudia pours
into the city of the seven hills its bright and healthful stream, Many other
triumphs of grandeur and beauty, that in their time commanded the admiration of
the world, have disappeared, while humbler works of utility of the same period
survive them. Certain it is that in the service of Christ usefulness alone is
immortal. Many a brilliant discourse has been admired and forgotten, many a
thrilling solo from a sacred oratorio has obtained a few days’ enthusiastic
praise, while a humble preacher’s blunt appeal, or an uncultured singer’s
simple hymn, has had enduring results. The former were efforts of human genius,
like the grand edifices adorning once famous cities; the latter were the lowly
channels through which God’s “living water” reached thirsty human souls. (J.
Grant.)
Verse 9
In this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.
The nature, source, and means of spiritual, peace
Inquire--
I. Into the nature
of the peace here spoken of. It includes peace with God, i.e,
forgiveness, acceptance, reconciliation with Him. When this is witnessed to the
soul by the Spirit of God the enmity is removed, or the will is subdued, and
the affections are brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Peace of
conscience, arising from pardon of past sin, and power over sin. A peaceful,
serene, tranquil frame of mind; and peace with all men.
II. The author of
this peace, and the way in which he will give it. It is not ourselves. Our own
works cannot purchase it, nor reconcile us to God. It is not others; not their
absolutions, prayers, or advices. It is the gift of God. He is its Author, and
it comes from Him as a free gift.
III. Who are the
subjects of it, or the persons to whom he will give it? It is purchased by
Christ for all, and offered to all. But it cannot be possessed by the wicked.
It cannot be the portion of the unbeliever. Repentance and faith are both the
gifts of God, and must be sought in the use of prescribed means, such as
hearing the Word of God and prayer.
IV. The place where
he will give it, and the time when. All times and places may be considered holy
under the Gospel. Nevertheless, when and where the Gospel is preached, and
prayer offered to God, repentance and faith are usually given, and Christ in
His Word and Spirit is peculiarly present. (J. Benson.)
God’s gift of peace
The Jews were taught to entertain new and more spiritual ideas of
what it was in which the true glory of God’s house consisted,--that it was not
in the grandeur of its elevation, nor the beauty of its decorations, nor the
costliness of its furniture, though wrought in gold of Ophir, but in the
presence of God there, and in the communication of peace to the contrite and
humble spirit.
I. What is the
peace here spoken of? It is a sense of reconciliation with God. When paradise
was the abode of holiness, it was also the abode of peace; when once sin had
entered, there was no peace to our first parents, so long as the taint of their
disobedience remained unwashed away. The peace for which we are seeking is far
removed from servile fear and bondage, and has in it the very spirit of a
child. There is peace for us when we are enabled to look up to God as our
heavenly Father, who hath begotten us again unto a lively hope through Christ,
II. What is our warrant for
expecting this peace? Whence is it to be obtained? And how are we to know that
it is ours? The Gospel is specially the dispensation of peace; Christ is our
peace. He is “the repairer of the breach,” the way, the truth, the life, the
door which leadeth unto the Father. There are systems full of error which,
nevertheless, hold out fair promises of peace, and pretend that they alone can
secure its possession. The infidel boasts that he can give peace. Our peace
depends on what Christ has done for us, and has promised to do in us, and not
on what we can do in and for ourselves; and our possession of peace depends on
the confidence with which we believe His word and rely upon His power. This is
the teaching which gives peace to the troubled conscience, and we confidently
assert that it is the teaching of our Church. (Bishop Shirley.)
Spiritual rest in political strife
It is Christ who really speaks to us, both out of the Old
Testament and out of the New, this blessed message of the Lord, “In this place
will I give peace.” It is His Spirit which revealed it to the prophet; it is
His Word which is uttered in the Gospel; it is He Himself who gives it to us
now and for evermore. “He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). This was the
glorious prospect lifted up before those who, coming back from the captivity of
Zion, set to work on the restoration of that temple which they had never forgotten
in a strange land. There was much, it is true, to sadden them. The place looked
not like the ancient and beautiful house from which they had been driven
seventy years before. And yet God told them to be strong and work, for He was
with them. “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former,
saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place I will give peace.” Five centuries
passed away, and all the nations were in expectation; and all the nations
happened by Divine appointment to be at peace. This was but an outward thing,
however blessed, compared with that holy rest prepared for the people of God,
and brought into the world by that eternal Son of God, in whom righteousness
and peace kissed each other. That Son of God was made a human babe, and the
angels sang, “On earth peace.” He grew to manhood, and always, though with
warnings mingled, He spake of peace. He sailed upon the stormy waves, and said
to them, “Peace be still.” And so throughout His life. It is His promise
concerning His sanctuary. “In this place will I give peace.”
I. He Himself is
in the midst of us. There is a holy presence here, and this should quiet our
hearts with reverence and godly fear, and yet fill us with peace and joy. We
draw nigh to Him, and He draws nigh to us. We lift up our hearts to Him in
supplication, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding will keep
our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
II. He gives us
here His “Gospel of peace.” Even if the clergyman’s heart is heavy, the lips of
the evangelist utter the blessed tidings, and the word in season helps the soul
of the weary. But the Gospel is only a pleasant song to us, until we act upon
it in penitence and faith; but then obedience is the path to peace.
III. He keeps us
secretly in His tabernacle from the strife of tongues. Though His presence,
realised even in common life, keeps us peaceful in the midst of strife, yet
there is a special calm about His house which gives us pause and refreshment
after we have striven, and before we go again into conflict--a calm which bids
us, on the Lord’s day and in the Lord’s house, set aside all thoughts of party,
all the bitterness of controversy, and, instead, pray for one another, that
thus, as far as lieth in us, we may live peaceably with all men. Then, let all
the occasions of your life, all the changes which you experience, be sanctified
in the place where He, according to His promise, is sure to be found. Christ is
here, so here is liberty and light, here is strength and comfort. Christ is
here, and so when we come before Him with an” humble, lowly, penitent, and
obedient heart,” He meets us with that priceless blessing, “Peace be unto you.”
(G. E. Jelf, M. A.)
Verses 10-19
Verses
11-14
Ask now the priests concerning the law.
Human duty
I. That the question of human
duty is to be decided by an appeal to divine authority. “Thus saith the Lord of
hosts: Ask now the priests concerning the law.” The question, of course,
implies two things.
1. That there is a Divine
written law for the regulation of human conduct. Though the law here refers to
ceremonial institutes which were contained in the Levitical code, there is also
a Divinely written law of a far higher significance--that moral law which rises
out of man’s
relations, and is binding upon man as man, here and everywhere, now and for
ever. It implies--
2. That there are Divinely
appointed interpreters of this law. “Ask now the priests.” Under the old
economy there were men appointed and qualified by God to expound the law to the
people; and in every age there are men endowed with that high moral genius
which gives them an insight into the eternal principles of moral obligation.
The will of God is the standard of moral obligation.
II. That the discharge of duty
requires the spirit of obedience. It was the duty of the Jews now to rebuild
the temple; but that duty they discharged not by merely bringing the stones and
timbers together and placing them in architectural order. It required the
spirit of consecration. The prophet sought to impress this upon the mind of his
fellow-countrymen engaged in this work by propounding two questions referring
to points in the ceremonial law. The first had reference to the communication of
the holiness of holy objects to other objects brought into contact with them.
“If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do
touch bread or pottage, or wine, or of any meat, shall it be holy In other
words, whether, if a person carry holy flesh in a lappet of his garment, and
touched any food in the lappet, it should become holy in consequence? The
priests said, No! and rightly. Mere ceremonial holiness cannot impart virtue to
our actions in daily life; cannot render our efforts in the service of God
acceptable to Him. The second question was this: “If one that is unclean by a
dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean?” The priests answered and
said: “It shall be unclean.” “The sum,” says an old writer, “of these two rules,
is, that pollution is more easily communicated than sanctification; that is,
there are many ways of vice, but only one of virtue, and a difficult one. Good
implies perfection; evil commences with the slightest defect. Let not men think
that living among good people will recommend them to God, if they are not good
themselves. Conclusion. Mark--
1. The transcendent
importance of the spirit of obedience.
2. That man can more easily
communicate evil to another than good. (Homilist.)
If one that is unclean by
a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean?--
The contagion of evil
The warning of the text is not addressed solely to those whose
hearts have always been estranged from God, but also to those who have felt the
power of God, and whose hearts have been lifted up by Him, and who have been
enabled to work for a time in His strength. For even the latter are very apt to
fall back into the notion that they have a spring of strength in themselves.
The warning is taken from the ordinances of the Levitical law. The uncleanness
and holiness spoken of are those pronounced to he such by that law. But the
ordinances of the ceremonial law were designed to be typos and witnesses of
moral and spiritual truths. Indeed, the prophet himself in the latter part of the
text declares this. Thus far we can readily go along with the text. You all
know that if a man’s hand is covered with dirt, it will defile everything it
touches, even that which before may have been clean. In like manner a soul that
is covered with any sort of filth or pollution must defile that which it
touches. As a jaundiced eye sees the reflection of its own jaundice in the
things around it, so does a jaundiced heart. If a soul is full of impurity,
though you pour in clean water, it immediately becomes foul. There is a taint
of sin in your hearts which runs through all your thoughts and feelings,
through all your words and deeds. The first truth we have seen is, that they
whose souls are defiled by some great moral impurity, must carry that impurity
along with them into everything they may take in hand. Sin is itself death,
spiritual death; and the uncleanness from this contact also spreads on
everything around. The second truth is, that we are utterly unable to bring
forth anything, whether in thought or deed, that shall he perfect in the sight
of God. Hereby we betray a secret corruption of our nature, the taint of which
spreads through our whole lives. We have seen that, when a man is unclean, he
makes everything he touches unclean. But alas! the converse does not hold.
Though he were clean, he would not make what he touches clean. We have the
power of defiling; but we have not the power of purifying. In every part of the
land it may he seen how catching vices are: the plague itself is scarcely more
so. Sins will produce sins, rapidly and abundantly, even as the foulest vermin
breed the most rapidly and numerously. There are habitual vices to which each
age and class are prone--this is a proof how catching uncleanness is. What must
the state of the world have been in the eyes of Him who beholds the secrets of
the heart, and to whom every impurity is an abomination? As God abhors all
manner of impurity, He willed to purge it away from the earth. He willed to
speak to the world, “Be thou clean.” He sent His Son to speak that word to the
world, that word which God alone can speak effectively, either to the world at
large, or to any individual soul. It is by the body and blood of Christ that
our souls must be purified and washed from our sins. By the offering up of that
holy body and blood on the Cross a change was wrought in the whole order of the
world. The prince of this world was judged. These truths are full of practical
consequences with regard to the whole regulation of our lives. We shall fly at
once to the Purifier when the sense of our impurity oppresses us; and we shall
be very careful in our choice of companions. Moral disease being no less
catching than bodily, you should be no less careful in shunning vicious
companions. It is indeed the duty of every Christian to go to those who are
unclean, with the purpose of making them clean, through the power of God, and
the Word of God. At the same time, let us pray continually that He, who alone
can purify our hearts, and keep them pure, will vouchsafe to do so, until the
time arrives when all the world shall enjoy the blessed vision promised to the pure in
heart--when all mankind, being cleansed from every idolatry of the flesh and
spirit, shall see God. (J. C. Hare, M. A.)
Pollution
1. Ritualism is the natural
religion of the unsanctified heart, and the same tendencies to it that have created
popery in the New Testament ages, existed also in the Old (Haggai 2:11-13).
2. Pollution is much more
readily given and taken than purity. One drop of filth will defile a vase of
water, many drops of water will not purify a vase of filth. “Evil
communications corrupt good manners” (Haggai 2:11-13).
3. No tithings of mint,
anise, and cummin, will compensate for neglecting the weightier matters of the
law. Obedience is better than sacrifice. A pure hand is necessary to a pure
offering (Haggai 2:14).
4. Men are prone to assign
any other cause for their sufferings than their sins, yet this is usually the
true cause (Haggai 2:15).
5. Disappointment of our
hopes on earth should make us lift our eyes to heaven to learn the reason (Haggai 2:16).
6. Affliction will harden the
heart if it is not referred to God as the author (Haggai 2:17).
7. Pondering the past is
often the best way of providing for the future (Haggai 2:18).
8. We may and ought to trust
God’s promise to bless us, even though we may see no visible appearance of its
fulfilment. “The vision will surely come and not tarry” (Haggai 2:19). (T. V. Moore, D. D.)
Verse
14
So is every work of their hands, and that which they offer there
is unclean.
Works and pure hearts
They who have imbibed the true fear of God, do rightly serve Him
though they may bring only a crumb of incense, and that others only profane the
worship of God, though they bring many oxen; as a heathen poet says, “An
impious right hand does not rightly worship the celestials.” The philosophers ever hold
this principle--that no sacrifice is rightly offered to God except the mind be
right and pure. But yet the philosophers, as well as the poets, adopted this
false notion, by which Satan beguiled all men, that God is pacified by
ceremonies: hence have proceeded so many expiations, in which foolish men
trusted, and by which they thought that God would be propitious to them, though
they obstinately continued daily to procure for themselves new punishments,
and, as it were, avowedly to carry on war with God Himself. The prophet says
that men not only lose all their labour, but also contract new pollution, when
they seek to pacify God by their sacrifices, unaccompanied by inward purity.
Works, however splendid they may appear before our eyes, are of no value or
importance before God, except they flow from a pure heart. The fountain of
works I consider to be integrity of heart, and the design and end is, when the object of men is to
obey God, and to consecrate their life to Him. (John Calvin.)
Verse 15
Consider . . .
from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord.
The house of God
1. These places of worship are strongholds of the religious principle of the community.
The only thing in the form of religious sentiment which can do any good to the
soul is that which recognises God, not as a mere existence, or mere
abstraction, but as the author of life and blessing to all that live. This
religious sentiment may become a religious principle. The religious sentiment,
then, embracing the idea of obligation, is that which the service of this house
is meant to inspire and cherish. What sort of an obligation must it be? If there is a God,
He is a living person, standing in a certain relation to us, and having certain
claims which must be answered. It is an obligation to lead respectable and
decent lives. But is that high enough to reach up to God? The religious
sentiment cannot be rightly felt except in the Christian way--by looking up to
God as our Father with childlike confidence, united with awful veneration. When
a man feels bound to form himself for holiness and heaven, then the religious
spirit is intimately connected with the sweet influences of the house of God.
2. The object of the service of this house is to keep before the eyes
of men a standard of character higher than they meet with in common business
and care. Every one who cares to cherish the religious sentiment in himself
loves the service of the house of God. Our great care should be that our “house
for God” answers
the purpose for which it is set apart,--that of awakening and confirming
religious principle in those who worship within its walls. Without this, the
building will cumber the ground; with it, it will become in very deed the house
of God, and the gate of heaven. (W. B. O. Peabody, D. D.)
Verse 17
I smote you with blasting, and with mildew, and with hail, in all
the labours of your hands.
Blasting and mildew
Very useful and important are the fungi in the world’s busy
household. They are working at “chemical problems which have puzzled a Liebig
and a Lavoisier,” converting the noxious products of corruption into comely
forms and nutritious substances, absorbing into living tissues effete matters
which are fast hastening downwards to join the dark night of chaos and death.
Parasites, most of them, upon dead plants, they economise the gases which would
otherwise escape into the atmosphere and pollute it; and conserve, for the use
of nobler forms, the subtle forces of life which would otherwise pass
unprofitable into the mineral kingdom. It is one of the strangest things in the
world, when we seriously think of it, to see a vigorous life-full cluster of
fungi springing, phoenix-like, from a dead tree, exhausted of all its juices,
bleached by the sun and rain of many summers, and ready to crumble into dust at
the slightest touch. Death is here a new birth, and the grave a cradle. It is
one of nature’s many analogies of the human resurrection. But the resemblance
is superficial and incomplete. Wisely have the fungi been provided, in the
rapidity of their growth, the simplicity of their structure, the variety of
their forms, and their amazing numbers, for their appointed task in the economy
of nature. Not a leaf that falls from the bough, not a blade that withers on
the lea, but is seized by the tiny fangs of some special fungus ordained to
prey upon it; not a spot of earth can we examine, where vegetable life is
capable of growing, but we shall find a vegetable as well as an insect
parasite, keeping its growth in check, hastening its decay, and preserving its
remains from being wasted. And out of the eater, too, cometh forth meat. In
carrying out the wise and gracious purposes for which they have been designed,
the fungi not unfrequently overstep the limits of usefulness, and commit
wholesale destruction. They purify man’s atmosphere, but they also destroy
man’s food. If their ravages could be confined to useless plants; if they were
employed solely in reducing
weeds to decay, they would be welcomed by man as among his greatest helps and
blessings. But nature knows no straight, arbitrary line of demarcation, such as
we draw, between what is useless and what is useful. To every natural good
there is a recoil of evil. The fungi are indiscriminate in their attacks. They
seize upon the corn which strengthens man’s heart, as readily as upon the
thorns and briars which cause him to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow. In
this our fallen condition, we must always count upon the blasting and the
mildew; upon the years to be eaten by the locust, the canker-worm, the
caterpillar, and the palmer-worm, as surely as upon the covenant faithfulness
of Him who promised that seed-time and harvest would never cease. Nature with
reference to nature completely accomplishes her purposes; but nature with
reference to man is not a perfect means to an end. Blasting and mildew were
very frequent in Bible times and lands. So terrible were the ravages committed
by these scourges, so sudden their appearance, so rapid their progress, so
mysterious their origin and cause, that they were universally regarded not
merely as a visitation of God, but as a special product of God’s creative
power. The cause and the effect were confounded. Fear prevented the Israelites
from investigating the nature of the phenomenon. Modern science has given the
true interpretation of the riddle. Blasting and mildew are conclusively
ascertained to be produced by plants,--to be the diseases occasioned by the
growth of minute fungi. Ever since plants have existed, these vegetable
parasites have preyed upon them. They appear in greater or less abundance every
year. They are fostered into excessive growth by certain favourable conditions
of soft and climate, and checked in their development by certain unfavourable
conditions. They are the common place everyday product of nature’s laws. They
are not special creations of God, but the ordinary growths of the vegetable
kingdom. The miraculous element, in connection with God’s judgments, was their
extraordinary development and sudden appearance in immediate connection with
Divine threatenings. As science advances superstition retires, and the
phenomena attributed to supernatural causes are found to have been produced by
the operation of physical law. But the miracles of the Bible are untouched by
this principle. Science may teach us the economy of miracles, but it cannot
persuade us of their unreality and impossibility. A brief glance at the nature
of the fungi concerned in the production of blasting and mildew may be
interesting and instructive. It will teach us that nothing is so weak and small
that the strength and wisdom of God cannot accomplish great ends by its
instrumentality. There are four diseases in corn produced by fungi--smut, bunt,
rust, and mildew. The black heads, covered with a soot-like dust, noticeable in the
cornfields, are caused by a parasitic plant--a true fungus, capable of
reproducing and extending itself indefinitely. The seed-vessels of this plant
are exceedingly minute. One square inch of surface contains no less than eight
millions; and if the seed-vessels be so small, what must the seeds themselves
be? Bunt is even more destructive. It has an intolerable odour, like that of
putrid fish. It is one of the common diseases to which wheat is subject. It
confines its ravages entirely to the grain. It is rare to find any wheat-field
altogether free from rust, or Red Robin. It is sometimes so abundant that a
person passing among the stalks is completely painted with its rusty powder. It
is found upon the wheat-plant at all stages of growth. The term mildew is vague
and unsatisfactory. Properly it should be applied to a disease produced by a
fungus known to botanists as Puccinia gaminis. It is derived from the
Saxon words, Mehlthan, meaning “meal-dew.” it makes its first appearance
in the cornfields in May or June, and first takes possession of the lower green
leaves, which become sickly. When the corn is nearly or fully ripe, the straw
and the culm are profusely streaked with blackish spots, ranging in length from
a minute dot to an inch. These evils are found all over the world, wherever corn
is grown. All these blights and mildews on the corn crops and the green crops
may well be called by God, “My great army.” Individually minute and
insignificant, by the sheer force of untold numbers they are mightier for harm
than storms and earthquakes. It is indeed a fortunate circumstance that they
refuse to grow generally except in stagnant ill-drained places, and under
peculiar conditions of warmth and moisture; for, otherwise if, quick with life
as they are, they were to germinate wherever they alighted, the fig-tree would
not blossom, and there would be no fruit in the vines, the labour of the olives
would fail, and the fields would yield no meat. (Hugh Macmillan, D. D.)
Insensibility under material evil
This insensibility, which prevents people from turning to the
Lord, is a moral evil, and ought to be charged on the guilty.
1. Instances and
examples of this insensibility (Isaiah 5:24-25; Isaiah 9:17; Isaiah 9:20-21; Amos 4:6-11; Jeremiah 5:3; Revelation
9:20-21). Human nature
continues always the same. Some vices have a local and temporary prevalence.
Insensibility is the palsy of the soul; a stupor that with respect to spiritual
things seizeth all its faculties. Hence in its nature it is both immoral and
penal; penal, as a judicial stroke on the minds and consciences of men from a
righteous and provoked God; immoral, as a course of opposition to His Word and
providence, comprehending what Scripture means by stopping the ear, shutting
the eyes, hardening the neck, pulling away the shoulder, walking contrary to
the Lord, and in the way of our own heart. This insensibility is a reigning
principle in natural men. Redemption by Christ from the curse of the law
secures His people against its dominion, and yet it frequently prevails and
hurts the spiritual life.
2. Investigate its
cause. That is atheism, which may be either gross or refined. Though seldom avowed,
gross atheism has a secretly malignant influence on manners in the middle and
lower ranks of society. There is a refined atheism among persons who profess to
know God, and in works deny Him. The truths they hold are not operative and
holy principles.
3. Charge this
insensibility upon the guilty as a moral evil, which prevents them from turning
to the Lord when He smites them with material evil.
(1) Those charged
with it are the Lord’s people.
(2) The charge is
made by a man invested with the authority of a prophet.
(3) The charge is
made in the name of the Lord.
(4) He in whose
name the charge is made knew it to be just.
(5) The charge
was delivered publicly, in the hearing and presence of the guilty.
(6) The charge
was designed to bring former misconduct to remembrance, and to encourage them
to present duty.
Application--
1. Sinners are
destroyers of their own comfort.
2. The course of
nature fulfilleth the purpose and performeth the Word of the Lord.
3. The Lord hath
kind intentions in smiting His people.
4. Sensible and
material things are uncertain property. (A. Shanks.)
Material evil the scourge of moral evil
There are no dispensations prosperous or adverse, with which we are favoured or
chastised, but in the Word of God everything may be found that is necessary to
assist our exercise and regulate our behaviour under them. When people refuse
to hear, they are sometimes smitten on a tender part, and constrained to feel.
1. Deal with
material evil: such as blasting, mildew, and hail.
2. Deal with moral
evil. This must be sin. Such as--
(1) Love to the world.
(2) Neglect of
temple-building.
(3) A notion that
material powers act of themselves, independent of God. This is a branch of
atheism, and a virtual denial of the Divine overruling providence.
3. Show the
efficiency of God in scourging with the one for the other.
(1) The Lord hath
determined to smite and afflict with these evils.
(2) The Lord
createth this evil, and giveth its commission. Till He have occasion for its
service, it doth not exist.
(3) The Lord hath
appointed and always observeth the seasons of smiting. The scourge is neither
taken up nor laid down at random.
(4) Places where
the evil is collected and inflicted are marked out by the justice of God.
(5) A portion of
evil is measured out and allotted for each body of the executioners.
Consider--
1. Moral evils
among us have a striking resemblance to those which prevailed among the Israelites in the days
of Haggai.
2. The Lord would
be just were He to smite us, as He smote them. We have given Him provocation.
Our light is clearer, our privileges are richer, and our iniquities exceed
theirs in number and aggravation. Material evil is still at the Lord’s call,
and ready to fulfil His Word. (A. Shanks.)
Temporal chastisements
The scope of the second part of this sermon is to show that
however God will put difference betwixt workers, and knoweth who are sincere
and who are not, yet to encourage them to be diligent in it, as being a work
which He approves in itself, and which He will reward with temporal blessing,
and a change of His former dispensations.
1. Though the
Lord’s dispensations be visible and felt by all, yet the right considering and
understanding of them is a work of much difficulty, and to which men need
serious stirring up, especially to take up the right cause of them.
2. Famine and
scarcity is one of the public scourges whereby the Lord chastises the sinful
contempt and negligence of His people in His work and service; and He will be
conspicuous in inflicting of it.
3. As it is the usual
plague accompanying common judgments that they do not work upon the hearts of
men, to draw them nearer God, but rather harden them; so such an impenitent
disposition when God strikes, is a ground of further controversy; therefore He
marks by the way their stupidity. “Yet ye turned not to Me, saith the Lord.”
4. However
temporal things are not to be looked on as the chief reward of serving God, nor
as absolutely promised, nor yet are they to be so much looked to under the
Gospel, as the Church of the Jews might under their pedagogy; yet in this the
promise, even concerning these things, holds good, that following God, hath the
promise of this life, in so far as it is for the followers’ good; that God’s
changing adversity into prosperity when a people set about His work, should be
a confirmation to their faith, and strengthen their hands; that whatever
adversity come on the Church, it is not to be fathered on God’s work, as if it
had been the cause of her woe; that as neglecters of God’s work are real losers
in their own affairs, and will prove so in the end, so followers of His work
have a real advantage in it; and, in a word, that God’s work is never followed
without a blessing evidenced some way or other to the godly’s satisfaction.
5. It is a
profitable study to remark the advantages of following God, and to study
encouragement in that duty. So much are we taught by the Lord’s exciting them
to consider the change of His dealing, as trysting with the very day of their
amending their fault.
6. God is so sovereign
and absolute a Lord of all things, and hath times and seasons, blessings and
cursings so in His hands, as He may undertake to do things, whereof there is no
visible probability or certainty in the second causes, and can certainly
perform them: therefore doth He undertake to bless them, when second causes and
the season could speak no such thing.
7. It is the
prerogative of God only to know future contingent events, which depend on times
and seasons, and uncertain second causes, and their influences, but only by
immediate revelation; this is held forth as God’s prerogative, by His
extraordinary prophet, to foretell in the midst of winter, what the succeeding
harvest should produce. (George Hutcheson.)
Verse 19
From
this day will I bless you.
The birthday of
blessing
The
cause of much ill success in life is often to be found in the want of zeal
for God’s house. The temple was a type of that Church of which every individual
believer is a living stone. From the day when the foundation of that temple is
laid, the promise
of the text is ours. When is the foundation day from which the blessing dates?
In one sense it is from everlasting, for God’s people are, in purpose, part of
the building from before all time. But the day of conversion is the day on
which is laid--as far as our experience is concerned--the foundation of our
salvation.
I. A specified day. This blessed day goes by different names in
Scripture. A day of espousals: the day in which Jesus, our heavenly Bridegroom,
wins the heart of His bride. A day of power. It is a mighty act to convert a
sinner, infinitely beyond the power of man, and glorifying even to the
omnipotence of God. The “day of salvation.” This name describes itself.
1. This day often has a cloudy dawning. The day of grace begins
before there is actual light. Just before the light breaks in, the power of
darkness makes its most desperate resistance.
2. The day has often a secret dawning. There are those who cannot say
exactly when or how they were converted. Foolishly they fear they can never
have been converted at all, as they are unable to say it was then, and it was
there.
3. Sometimes this day has an early, and sometimes a long-delayed
dawn. God has no fixed age at which to convert.
4. This day, like all others, has a silent dawn. It is seen, but not
heard.
5. The dawning of this day, like the dawning of all other days, is
irresistible. If it is the work of God, it must stand.
6. The dawn is but the commencement of the day. The morning is the
noon in childhood; the noon is but the dawn fully developed.
II. A declared blessing. It includes all spiritual blessings; pardon,
peace, etc. It rests on all our temporal affairs. It extends to all future
things. (Archibald G. Brown.)
Promises to
bless encouragements to work
1. Concerning the great Promiser, the following considerations are
interesting.
(1) He is Jehovah.
(2) The Promiser is the God of the people to whom the promises are
made.
(3) The Promiser is strong and faithful round about.
(4) The Promiser is Lord of elements and seasons.
2. Concerning the good things which the Lord our God promises.
Comprehended in the term, “bless.” Includes--
(1) The removal of material evils.
(2) Means of fertility and plenty.
(3) A blessing with the means.
(4) A blessing upon the possession and use of those good things
which the Lord produces by the means.
3. The people whom the Lord promiseth to bless.
(1) They were His own people.
(2) A people for whom the Promiser had lately done great things.
(3) A people who had been negligent and slothful in the work which
the authority of the Promiser required, and gratitude to their Redeemer bound
them to perform.
(4) A people whose negligence had been chastised.
(5) A people who were now learning to do well.
4.The day on which the Lord promiseth to bless His people.
(1) A specified day.
(2) The day on which they turned to the Lord, and began to build.
(3) The day on which the promise began to be performed.
Learn--
1. For the good things of this life the people of God have His
covenant and promises.
2. Operations of material power are operations of God.
3. The zeal of the Lord of hosts hath done ,great things for the
house of His name.
4. Building the house of the Lord is connected with blessing. (A.
Shanks.)
The benediction
of Haggai
These
are the words of Haggai, whom the Lord raised up in his old age for the purpose
of calling His people from the sin of religious indifference to the earnest
performance of duty. As God’s prophet, it was his duty to expostulate, to trace
the connection between sinful neglect and its effects, to picture in dark but
true colours the woes of the people, but also to pronounce the promise of
benediction and peace.
I. The promise asserts that in God and from God is the blessedness of
his people.
1. There is nothing we can satisfactorily substitute for the blessing
of God.
2. If we have it we need fear no evil from any other source.
II. The promise directly refers to temporal blessing, but includes
spiritual. The picture presented is descriptive of the people’s estate. We
ought to connect the goodness and love of God with all the material blessedness
of life, as well as with the higher spiritual side of it. There is no
department of life from which God need be shut out. But the promise certainly
includes the higher blessings belonging to spiritual life and development.
III. The promise is given as the result of obedience, the sincerity of
which practical proof has been supplied. We must not try to drive a bargain
with God. The service our Lord wants is the service of faith and love. Let that
be rendered and the blessing may tarry, but come it will, and just because it
has tarried it may be all the richer and better.
IV. The promise is fixed and continuous. “From this day. That is
definite enough. The benediction had been stored up--now it was to fall like
the refreshing ram over all the land. And the blessing is to be continuous.
To-day, and every succeeding day, I will bless you. The premiss is most
reliable. From the words of the promise we look to Him who made it. He is able
to fulfil it. (Adam Scott.)
The day of
dedication to God is the day of blessing
I. The promise--blessing. This blessing of the Lord conveys a promise
that He would not only withdraw the evils under which they suffered, and send
fertility and plenty, but also pour down on them the Spirit of His grace. Esau
was blessed with outward prosperity. Jacob had the full blessing, spiritual and
temporal. He whom God blesses is blessed here and hereafter in body and in
soul.
II. The time of it--“from this day; that is, from the day the
foundation of the temple was laid. On this the prophet lays great stress. Who
has not noticed a turn of providence in favour of those who have returned into
the way of duty; and that, from that very day, God has blessed them? Indeed,
this is aa unchangeable law in God’s government of the world.
III. The reason of this promise of the Lord. It seems that the people
busied themselves with their own temporal affairs, purposing to build the
temple when they could better afford it. God frustrated their selfish policy,
by sending blasting and mildew in their fields, and causing their money to
waste away insensibly, as though it had been put into a bag with holes. But
when they reversed their mode of proceeding, from that very day God blessed
them. God ordinarily proceeds to deal with men as they deal with Him. They who
freely offer to Him their goods to carry on His work are blessed by Him with
increase.
IV. This temple at Jerusalem was typical of the Church of Christ, of
which He is the foundation and the superstructure. In this spiritual house we
are all more immediately interested than in the building of the material
temple. As Christians, we are all members of this spiritual building. Are we
building on Christ, the only foundation? (Alfred Jones, T. A.)
Verses
20-23
And
I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms.
The blessing of
calamities
These
are the concluding words of the prophecies of Haggai. The Old Testament is one
continual declaration and snowing form of this truth, that sin, when it has
conceived, brings forth death, and all the family of death. On the contrary,
the godly, who give themselves up to doing the Lord’s will still find that God
blesses them,--with peace; with all manner of spiritual graces; with the light
of His countenance; and, may be, with worldly prosperity. Whenever God executes
judgment it must be against evil. Nothing but evil can move the wrath of God.
Nor does God ever shake, or overthrow, or destroy anything, except by reason of
evil. The natural man imagines a God who cares not about the life or death of
His creatures, who merely creates them to show forth His power and His skill.
This image is altogether different from the true God, as He has revealed
Himself to mankind in His Word, and by the incarnation of His only-begotten
Son. The true God has no pleasure in the ebb and flow of life and death. He
wills life, not death. The only thing God wilts to destroy is sin--not the
sinner, but the sin. When He destroys the sinner, it is solely for the sake of
the sin. The works of destruction spoken of in the text are part of that
warfare which God is continually waging against sin and all manner of evil, and
accordingly agree in their spirit and purpose with the barrenness and blasting
and mildew sent upon the Israelites, because they had neglected their appointed
work of building the house of the Lord. When God takes in hand a work of
destruction, it is never purely and entirely a work of destruction. Whenever
God executes judgment, mercy is always going along with judgment. Were not this
God’s purpose, He would be giving up the victory to the spirit of evil, and death
would triumph over life. This then is the end and purpose of Haggai’s prophecy.
It speaks of terrible and awful things; but it ends with worlds of comfort and
peace. It says that, while the nations around Judea were to be shaken and
disturbed by wars and divers disasters, and while many were to perish,
Zerubbabel would establish the remnant of God’s people in the land of their
fathers; and so, we know, he did. The coming of Zerubbabel, which is spoken of
as the coming of the desire of all nations, whereby the house of the Lord was
to be filled with glory, was a type of a threefold fulfilment, one of which has
already taken place once for all; one of which has been continually taking
place ever since, and is continually taking place at this day; and one of which
Will take place hereafter: and all these fulfilments are accompained by signs
more or less like those foretold in the text, as ordained to attend the coming
of Zerubbabel. Thus the coming of Zerubbabel was a type of Christ’s coming in
the flesh. Zerubbabel was not really the Desire of all nations, but Christ was.
Zerubbabel could not fill God’s house with glory, but Christ did fill it with
an infinite, undying, heavenly glory . . . Whenever God has purposed to raise
His Church to a higher stage of power and glory, the world has been shaken by
the new life which has entered and taken possession of it. The heart of the
Christian will not fail when he sees the shaking of the nations, or of the
powers of heaven. He will not be troubled or disquieted by fears, as though
evil were about to gain victory over good. Our Lord’s promise is, that, from
amid the clouds and the storm, the sign of the Son of Man shall come forth with
power and great glory. (J. C. Hare, M. A.)
Terrible
revolutions
These
verses remind us--
I.
that
the revolutions amongst mankind are sometimes very terrible. Here we read of
the “shaking of the heavens and the earth,” the “crash of thrones,” the
“destruction of kingdoms,” the “overthrow of chariots,” etc. What the
particular revolutions referred to here are, cannot be determined.” Such
revolutions imply the existence and prevalence of two antagonistic moral
principles in the world--good and evil. These are the Titanic chieftains in all
the battles, the elemental forces in all the convulsions of the world. It is
truth against error, right against wrong, liberty against thraldom, virtue
against vice.
II. That God has to do even with the most terrible of these
revolutions. “I will shake the heavens, I will overthrow the throne,” etc. “I
will destroy the strength,” etc. Inasmuch
(1) As God is eternally against the false and the wrong and the
tyrannic, He may be said to be Author of these revolutions. Inasmuch
(2) As He can prevent them, He may be said to be the Author of these
revolutions. He does not originate them, but He permits them. He could
annihilate all wicked doers by a volition, He allows them to fight themselves
often to death in battling against the right and the true. “The Lord sitteth
upon the flood.” He sits in serene majesty, controlling all the fury of the
battling forces. He “holds the winds in His fist.”
III. That the good man is safe in the most tremendous revolutions of
time. “In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, My
servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith the Lord, and will make thee as a signet:
for I have chosen thee, saith the Lord of hosts.” What is here said of
Zerubbabel suggests three thoughts.
(1) That good men sustain the highest office. Zerubbabel was not
only a servant, but a “chosen servant.” He was selected for the work of
rebuilding the temple. It suggests
(2) That good men will receive the highest distinction “I will make
thee as a signet.” A signet indicates,
(a) Worth. It was a ring with a seal on it, worn on the finger, as an
ornament of great value. Good men are elsewhere represented as God’s jewels. A
signet indicates,
(b) Authority. The signet of an Eastern monarch was a sign of
delegated authority. A good man is invested with the highest authority--the
authority to fight against wrong and to promote right, at all times and in
every place. It suggests
(3) That goodmen will always be safely kept, Jehovah says this to
Zerubbabel. Amidst all evil, “God is my refuge and strength, a very present
help in trouble.” (Homilist.)
The safety of
God’s people amidst the coming commotions
1. Great political convulsions may be expected in the future, as well
as in the past, because the same reason exists for them; the ungodly nature of
existing political forms (Haggai 2:21).
2. Wars, revolutions, and tumults of nations are all working out
God’s designs of mercy to the world, by means of His Church (Haggai 2:22).
3. Amidst all the convulsions of human history, the people of God are
safe, the gates of hell can never prevail against the Church. The past in this
respect is prophet of the future (Haggai 2:23).
4. The best protection for any nation, the surest guarantee for its
political existence, is a living, working Church in its midst, for as long as
the stream of national life carries the vessel in which Christ is carried, that
stream shall flow on in safety. Sodom shall stand as long as a righteous Lot is
found in it (Haggai 2:23). The general drift of this prophecy by Haggai may now be
perceived. His specific work was to urge the rebuilding of the temple. This
work was important, because the temple was the seat of the theocracy, and the
theocracy was the existing form of the great work of redemption. To erect that,
and thus prepare for the reinauguration of the temple-worship, was the great
work of the restoration. To urge them to this work, the prophet tears away
their subterfuges and excuses shows them how they had already suffered by its
neglect; develops to them the real greatness of the work, in spite of its outward
littleness, as a necessary link in the great purposes of redemption; and
guarantees the safety of the theocratic people amidst all the convulsions that
were to come on the earth. All these predictions have been fulfilled to the
letter, proving that Haggai was what he claimed to be, a true prophet of
Jehovah. (T. V. Moore, D. D.)
Verses 20-23
And I will overthrow the
throne of kingdoms.
The blessing of calamities
These are the concluding
words of the prophecies of Haggai. The Old Testament is one continual
declaration and snowing form of this truth, that sin, when it has conceived,
brings forth death, and all the family of death. On the contrary, the godly,
who give themselves up to doing the Lord’s will still find that God blesses
them,--with peace; with all manner of spiritual graces; with the light of His
countenance; and, may be, with worldly prosperity. Whenever God executes
judgment it must be against evil. Nothing but evil can move the wrath of God.
Nor does God ever shake, or overthrow, or destroy anything, except by reason of
evil. The natural man imagines a God who cares not about the life or death of
His creatures, who merely creates them to show forth His power and His skill.
This image is altogether different from the true God, as He has revealed
Himself to mankind in His Word, and by the incarnation of His only-begotten
Son. The true God has no pleasure in the ebb and flow of life and death. He
wills life, not death. The only thing God wilts to destroy is sin--not the
sinner, but the sin. When He destroys the sinner, it is solely for the sake of
the sin. The works of destruction spoken of in the text are part of that
warfare which God is continually waging against sin and all manner of evil, and
accordingly agree in their spirit and purpose with the barrenness and blasting
and mildew sent upon the Israelites, because they had neglected their appointed
work of building the house of the Lord. When God takes in hand a work of
destruction, it is never purely and entirely a work of destruction. Whenever
God executes judgment, mercy is always going along with judgment. Were not this
God’s purpose, He would be giving up the victory to the spirit of evil, and death
would triumph over life. This then is the end and purpose of Haggai’s prophecy.
It speaks of terrible and awful things; but it ends with worlds of comfort and
peace. It says that, while the nations around Judea were to be shaken and
disturbed by wars and divers disasters, and while many were to perish,
Zerubbabel would establish the remnant of God’s people in the land of their
fathers; and so, we know, he did. The coming of Zerubbabel, which is spoken of
as the coming of the desire of all nations, whereby the house of the Lord was
to be filled with glory, was a type of a threefold fulfilment, one of which has
already taken place once for all; one of which has been continually taking
place ever since, and is continually taking place at this day; and one of which
Will take place hereafter: and all these fulfilments are accompained by signs
more or less like those foretold in the text, as ordained to attend the coming
of Zerubbabel. Thus the coming of Zerubbabel was a type of Christ’s coming in
the flesh. Zerubbabel was not really the Desire of all nations, but Christ was.
Zerubbabel could not fill God’s house with glory, but Christ did fill it with
an infinite, undying, heavenly glory . . . Whenever God has purposed to raise
His Church to a higher stage of power and glory, the world has been shaken by
the new life which has entered and taken possession of it. The heart of the
Christian will not fail when he sees the shaking of the nations, or of the
powers of heaven. He will not be troubled or disquieted by fears, as though
evil were about to gain victory over good. Our Lord’s promise is, that, from
amid the clouds and the storm, the sign of the Son of Man shall come forth with
power and great glory. (J. C. Hare, M. A.)
Terrible revolutions
These verses remind
us--
I.
that the revolutions
amongst mankind are sometimes very terrible. Here we read of the “shaking of
the heavens and the earth,” the “crash of thrones,” the “destruction of
kingdoms,” the “overthrow of chariots,” etc. What the particular revolutions referred
to here are, cannot be determined.” Such revolutions imply the existence and
prevalence of two antagonistic moral principles in the world--good and evil.
These are the Titanic chieftains in all the battles, the elemental forces in
all the convulsions of the world. It is truth against error, right against
wrong, liberty against thraldom, virtue against vice.
II. That God has to
do even with the most terrible of these revolutions. “I will shake the heavens,
I will overthrow the throne,” etc. “I will destroy the strength,” etc. Inasmuch
(1) As God is eternally against the false and the wrong and the
tyrannic, He may be said to be Author of these revolutions. Inasmuch
(2) As He can prevent them, He may be said to be the Author of these
revolutions. He does not originate them, but He permits them. He could
annihilate all wicked doers by a volition, He allows them to fight themselves
often to death in battling against the right and the true. “The Lord sitteth
upon the flood.” He sits in serene majesty, controlling all the fury of the
battling forces. He “holds the winds in His fist.”
III. That the good
man is safe in the most tremendous revolutions of time. “In that day, saith the
Lord of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, My servant, the son of Shealtiel,
saith the Lord, and will make thee as a signet: for I have chosen thee, saith
the Lord of hosts.” What is here said of Zerubbabel suggests three thoughts.
(1) That good men sustain the highest office. Zerubbabel was not
only a servant, but a “chosen servant.” He was selected for the work of
rebuilding the temple. It suggests
(2) That good men will receive the highest distinction “I will make
thee as a signet.” A signet indicates,
(a) Worth. It was a ring with a seal on it, worn on the finger, as an
ornament of great value. Good men are elsewhere represented as God’s jewels. A
signet indicates,
(b) Authority. The signet of an Eastern monarch was a sign of
delegated authority. A good man is invested with the highest authority--the
authority to fight against wrong and to promote right, at all times and in
every place. It suggests
(3) That goodmen will always be safely kept, Jehovah says this to
Zerubbabel. Amidst all evil, “God is my refuge and strength, a very present
help in trouble.” (Homilist.)
The safety of God’s people
amidst the coming commotions
1. Great political convulsions may be expected in the future, as well
as in the past, because the same reason exists for them; the ungodly nature of
existing political forms (Haggai 2:21).
2. Wars, revolutions, and tumults of nations are all working out
God’s designs of mercy to the world, by means of His Church (Haggai 2:22).
3. Amidst all the convulsions of human history, the people of God are
safe, the gates of hell can never prevail against the Church. The past in this
respect is prophet of the future (Haggai 2:23).
4. The best protection for any nation, the surest guarantee for its
political existence, is a living, working Church in its midst, for as long as
the stream of national life carries the vessel in which Christ is carried, that
stream shall flow on in safety. Sodom shall stand as long as a righteous Lot is
found in it (Haggai 2:23). The general drift of this prophecy by Haggai may now be
perceived. His specific work was to urge the rebuilding of the temple. This
work was important, because the temple was the seat of the theocracy, and the
theocracy was the existing form of the great work of redemption. To erect that,
and thus prepare for the reinauguration of the temple-worship, was the great
work of the restoration. To urge them to this work, the prophet tears away
their subterfuges and excuses shows them how they had already suffered by its
neglect; develops to them the real greatness of the work, in spite of its outward
littleness, as a necessary link in the great purposes of redemption; and
guarantees the safety of the theocratic people amidst all the convulsions that
were to come on the earth. All these predictions have been fulfilled to the
letter, proving that Haggai was what he claimed to be, a true prophet of
Jehovah. (T. V. Moore, D. D.)
Verse 23
Will make thee a signet: for I have chosen thee.
God’s acceptance of Zerubbabel
This text acquaints us with God’s gracious purpose to
magnify Zerubbabel, and to put honour upon him. Consider it in a threefold
notion,
I. As a prophecy.
Directed to Zerubbabel, acquainting him with the future events in the world,
and what shall betide him, and his people under him. It is the privilege of His
Church, and chosen ones; they have those arcana imperii made known unto
them. It is His care for them to settle, and support them against future
events.
II. As a promise.
It betokens good to him. It is a reward assured to Zerubbabel for what he had
done. He had been zealous for his God, for His temple and worship; a promise of
his future advancement. In a mystical sense the text is understood of Christ.
The text is a Royal Charter made to Zerubbabel Here is the time set; “in that
day.” The person to be advanced; “Zerubbabel, My servant.” The author of the
advancement; that is
God. The advancement itself; “I will make thee a signet.” The ground and
reason; “for I have chosen thee.” The ratification of this promise; it is
sealed with the seal of the living God. Apply this text to ourselves.
1. It is our comfort that we may do so, that we stand in such terms
with God, that the promises to His ancient people may, with good warrant, be
applied and transferred to us,
2. Is it not a blessing and comfort that we have a Zerubbabel to be
prince and captain of this people of God? (By Zerubbabel the preacher here
refers to Charles I.) (Geo. Stradling, S. T. P.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》