Mining the Minors: Haggai (4)

Three old trees of considerable size overshadow my backyard. Between them, they block most of the sun’s rays and tend to kill off the grass near the house. Every year, once the snow is gone and the temperature is regularly above zero, while those big trees are still bare and letting the sun through, I go out with a couple bags of the hardiest, quickest growing grass seed I can find on sale and sow the affected area to catch the spring rains. If the timing is right, I’ll often see little green shoots in a week or two. By June, the whole lawn looks lush.

Next year I’ll have to do it all over again, but that’s how it goes.

I have read that cress or lettuce can sometimes show evidence of germination by day five. Other plants, like bamboo, take years to grow to a useful size. But the one constant with anything you do in your garden is this: you never find out right away whether you have been successful. You sow now and reap later, if you reap at all.

This is also the case with any work we do for God in this life, which probably explains why the Bible’s writers so frequently use planting and harvesting as metaphors for spiritual labor. Like salvation, serving God requires the exercise of faith.

4/ The Temple will be Glorious

Haggai 2:1-9 — The Second Dated Message

“In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet: ‘Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.” ’ ”

Like the one just before it, the Lord’s second dated word through Haggai to the leaders of Judah is a message of encouragement.

Glory vs Aesthetics

There are different kinds of glory, and at least one sort is unrelated to aesthetics. Size and beauty are terribly important to man, and quite uninteresting to God. We know from the synoptic gospels that John was one of only three disciples present during the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus. That was certainly a spectacular moment. But when John writes of his glory, it is not the transfiguration he is thinking about. He does not even mention it. No, it is the words and the character of the Savior he has in mind. “We have seen his glory,” he writes, “full of grace and truth.” This was the same person of whom Isaiah wrote, “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” What he did have was glory of the only sort that really matters to God, and he had it in spades.

Solomon’s temple was glorious by worldly standards. It impressed the visitors from other nations. The older men who had seen it some 66 years prior wept when their children and grandchildren laid the foundation for the new temple. They knew it could never compare. They had neither the resources nor the material Solomon had at his disposal. Perhaps that made it easier to give up building it when their enemies began to discourage them. “If we can’t do it right, why bother?”

What was the problem? They looked for the wrong sort of glory. That sort would come to the temple of the Lord, but not in their day.

The Presence and the Promise

Haggai begins by telling the people that the Lord agrees with their assessment. “How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?” He doesn’t flinch from pointing out the obvious comparative shortcomings of the proposed new structure, but tells them to take heart and build anyway because of the Lord’s presence (“My Spirit remains in your midst”) and his promise (“according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt”). Despite all the failings of his people, nothing had changed about the Lord’s commitment to the place where he has caused his name to dwell.

It’s important, I think, that the Lord goes all the way back to the covenant at Sinai to witness to his continuous presence and perpetual reliability. Moses gave Israel their law, but he also prophesied of both their exile and their return to God’s favor. Nothing that had happened to Judah over the last seventy years was unexpected by God, and none of it should have been unexpected by God’s people. He remained faithful even when they were faithless.

Former and Latter

Some commentators make what I think are unnecessary distinctions between the various incarnations of the temple. They get caught up in the words “this house” in “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former” and start trying to explain how the second temple was actually more glorious than the first because Herod rebuilt it in spectacular fashion toward the end of its tenure, or because the Lord Jesus personally visited and worshiped there.

The second argument is, of course, much better than the first, but both miss the point. In God’s view, “this house” is all one thing. The Pulpit Commentary’s note on verse 9 is particularly good in this regard: “ ‘This house’ means the temple at Jerusalem, regard not being paid to the special building (ver. 3), whether of Solomon, or Zerubbabel, or Herod.” This is confirmed by the fact that the words former and latter are adjectives describing the glory of the house, not the house itself. I suspect the “latter glory” the Lord is talking about is actually the glory of the millennial iteration of the temple when Christ is physically present once again on this earth, rather than Zerubbabel’s version. That house is all one across time, regardless of size or beauty or what may be inside it at any given point. In every age where the nation of Israel is central to God’s dealings in the world, the temple is the place the Lord has put his name.

Shaking the Heavens and the Earth

“Yet once more,” continues the Lord, “in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.”

Some translations of this passage (the King James and NIV are the big ones) have something like “the Desire of All Nations shall come”, making this predication specifically messianic. The overwhelming majority of language experts feel it probably is not, but actually refers to the treasures of the nations being brought into the house. There are arguments from the actual word used for “desire” or “treasure”. There are arguments from common sense: Do the nations really “desire” the coming of the Lord Jesus? It’s hard to see how. And there is the argument from the thought flow of the passage, which goes on to say, “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine.”

Neither side is disputing that Messiah both did and will once more come to the house and fill the various iterations of the temple with glory of different sorts; the first happened historically and the latter is absolutely certain. But if I may be forgiven a paraphrase, I think what the Lord is saying to his people here is something like, “Don’t sweat the relative lack of glory of this version of the temple. One day the temple of the Lord will be full of silver and gold. Every nation in the world will bring the very best it can to this place and pack it with treasure to the rafters.” This is confirmed by other prophets. Isaiah says the nations will stream to “the mountain of the house of the Lord”. It will not just be a Jewish place of worship but a place where all those who worship God from across the world will gather and bring their tribute.

Silver and Gold

When you consider the humiliation Judah had experienced when Solomon’s temple was stripped of its treasures by Nebuchadnezzar prior to its destruction, this statement that “the silver is mine, and the gold is mine” is probably intended to be more specific in scope than yet another reminder that “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the wealth in every mine”, though the latter is certainly true. Ezra tells us both Cyrus’s original edict and the follow-up by Darius years later explicitly called for the repatriation of every silver and gold vessel taken from the house of God in Jerusalem. I think this is probably what the Lord had in mind. Both Cyrus and Darius heavily donated to the cause from their own wealth in hope of receiving the blessing of the God of the Jews, a very prudent move.

But no matter how impressive the contributions of ancient kings to the restored temple, the minor glory of this period cannot be the ultimate fulfilment of the Lord’s statement about the “latter glory” of the house. It still remained for the temple to be destroyed by the Romans, “not one stone left on another”. Surely, Haggai is really pointing us to the millennial reign of Christ. Only then will the glory fill the temple without restraint, and only then will Jerusalem truly be at peace as promised in verse 9.

The Dates of the Messages

I pointed out in an earlier post that dates are very important to Haggai. One reason is the fulfillment of the seventy years of desolations during this period, which Haggai explicitly demonstrates and Sir Robert Anderson highlights. But there is more.

I will not steal his thunder, but Ian Liddle has an excellent series of posts on the significance of dates in Haggai. He has done the work of tying them to the Feasts of Jehovah. The first dated prophecy, he says, which came on the first day of Elul, marks a forty day Jewish season of repentance in preparation for the Feast of Trumpets. The second dated prophecy marks the final day of the Feast of Tabernacles. The third marks the eve of Chanukah, the Feast of Dedication. For those interesting in such details, Liddle does a good job explaining how the day each message was delivered correlates specifically to its content.

Planting and Harvesting

Speaking of dates, this message comes about seven weeks after the original rebuke that got the ball rolling and the men of Judah off to the hills to gather timber for the building of the temple, and a little under a month after the work on the temple itself actually started. Nothing to this point has actually happened in Haggai except words and work. There is no apparent sign of a big new harvest on the way, no greater satisfaction in eating and drinking, and no obvious change to Judah’s economic difficulties. Just words and work.

Back to the original idea I was trying to express at the outset today, and that is the gap between sowing and reaping; that when we start doing something we know to be the Lord’s will, there is often a period of time during which we see no apparent results. All we’ve got going on is obedience and sweat and, if we are fortunate, faith and hope too.

In such moments, we can sure use a little encouragement to keep us going, and that is what the Lord is providing here.