Looking Ahead (Haggai 2:1-9)

The contents of the chapter are divided by three references to a date (vv. 1, 10, 20), although the last two references are to the same date. The divisions are connected to three different messages that Haggai gave. We can consider the first one in which the message is to look ahead.

 

The date of this message, the twenty-first day of the seventh month, was the last day of the annual Feast of Tabernacles, which celebrated the arrival of the children of Israel in the land after the Exodus. The seventh month was also the month in which Solomon had dedicated his temple. It is likely that the people would have considered those events in some way at that time. So there would have been reminiscing taking place.

 

This first message was addressed to the political leader Zerubbabel, the religious leader Joshua, and the people in general. In this message, they are urged to look ahead and anticipate what God would do. Part of the problem that they faced was due to a wrong use of memory. Some could recall what the temple of Solomon looked like. In a visual sense, it was much greater than the temple project in which they now engaged. They assumed that the current temple was nothing. Calvin comments that they regarded it as being like a cottage.

 

What was wrong with their assessment? There are a couple of reasons. First, they forgot what God had done to the previous temple – he had left it. It was easy to say that the Babylonians had destroyed the temple, but they had destroyed a building where God no longer wanted his worship to occur. Many wrong actions had taken place in that temple as we can read about elsewhere in the Old Testament. After all, there is a danger in worshipping the rituals and the location rather than God. And there is the danger of changing the rituals to practices that reflect the taste of the worshippers rather than the desires of God.

 

Second, they forgot that the Lord was with them. What would they rather have? The great temple without God or the smaller temple with God? Because the Lord was with them, they could be strong, and they could work with confidence. His presence meant that they did not need any precise information about future outcomes. All they needed to do was obey his instructions.

 

In what ways was the Lord with them? He was present as their covenant God. His commitment to his people now was as strong as when he helped their forefathers at the Exodus (v. 5). Moreover, the Holy Spirit was present with them (v. 5), which may have been a way of recalling what happened at the beginning of the creation week when he prepared the earth for God to produce lots of life.

 

Third, it looks as if God is saying to them through Haggai that he is going to do something new. This is what happened at the original creation and at the Exodus. On both occasions, God brought something totally new into existence. Verses 6-9 point to that fact. How can the Lord do this? Haggai reminds the people that God has great power, enough to shake the universe. He reminds the people that God’s power extends beyond the inanimate creation to include all the people on the earth. Moreover, he is able to cause those nations to provide the finances that would be needed, which could suggest that those peoples would become God’s people or that they would help in the same way as Hiram of Tyre had helped Solomon when he built the previous temple.

 

In fact, Haggai says that the outcome would be that the new temple would be much greater than the previous one. When will this occur? God points towards the closing days of the new temple – its latter glory, which was a piece of information that said the new temple would come to an end as well. But what glory would come to the temple in its latter times? Since the glory of the temple was the presence of God, the latter glory must refer to how that presence would occur then. We can suggest that there is a hint here of the presence of Jesus in the temple, and there are many references in the Gospels to him visiting it. Also, there is the amazing events of the Day of Pentecost and subsequent when the presence of the Holy Spirit was known in remarkable ways.

 

Fourth, the encouragement that Haggai gives is that there was no need to be afraid or to be reluctant to work on the temple. God was going to do great things, even although those people would not have known precisely what was going to happen or when he was going to do it. But we do, and we can apply that to ourselves as we wonder what great things God may yet do for the current temple, the church, which Jesus is building. After all, if they had not started the building, who would have started it?

 

Fifth, Haggai closes his address by saying that in the temple the Lord would give peace. The prospect of peace was seen in the name of the city, Jerusalem. Yet they had not known much of it. Even Solomon, the prince of peace, had not provided it. But God says that peace will yet come. We know how that happened once Jesus had come. After all, it was going to be in this temple that the curtain would be torn in two in order for everyone to see that there was no longer a barrier into the presence of God, that peace was possible between his enemies and him.

 

Applications

First, we need to be careful how we evaluate the past. Some say it would be good to have lived in the days of the early church because things were perfect then, were they not? No, they were not. What would we do with a church like the one in Corinth? Or the churches in Galatia that turned away from the Gospel? Or the seven churches in Asia, in which only two were faithful, and one of them was going to be severely persecuted?

 

Sometimes, we say something similar about the Reformation and the Puritan era. But they were no more united than are the churches of today. Or we think of the great revival movements, but they also had their excesses and conflicts. Instead we have to value the presence of the covenant God, remind ourselves of his faithfulness, power, sovereignty and promises, and realise that we have no real idea of how great God’s actions in the future will be. Could John Knox and Martin Luther have imagined the vast churches of America or China in our century?

 

Second, we have to participate in the work of temple building, not in a physical temple, but in the spiritual one that is currently being erected. We may not be part of the layer that sees great blessing, but we should remember that it is the same temple – there is only one church. The ruins of current churches say nothing at all about the future – they only speak about the past. We don’t know what God will yet do, but we do know that what he will yet do will be marked by glory. And the ruins do tell us what God did in the past – he left it.

 

Third, we are reminded here that the ultimate goal is peace. This is what the gospel brings to individuals now. But the gospel also says that a peaceful world is coming when God and man will be together in harmony for ever, when once again the earth will be a perfect temple.