Haggai 2:7 – And I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory, says the LORD of hosts.
The post-exilic prophet Haggai ministered to a community overwhelmed by discouragement. The returning exiles had begun to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, but opposition, apathy, and the contrast between Solomon’s magnificent former temple and their modest new structure had brought the work to a halt. God raised Haggai to stir the builders back into action.
The Hebrew of this phrase can be translated as the treasures of all nations or the desirable things of all nations.
Through Jesus, the nations bring their praise, their worship, and their lives into the presence of God. In Jesus, the deepest longing of every human heart is satisfied. Augustine prays: You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You. Jesus is the rest of every restless heart. He is the desire of all nations, whether the nations know it yet or not.
The shaking of all nations is the sovereign activity of God in history, destabilizing human empires, disrupting the comfortable alternatives to divine truth, making room for the coming One. Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven… that the things which cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:26-27). The kingdom of Christ cannot be shaken; it replaces and surpasses everything temporary, including the old temple system.
Jesus was presented in the temple as an infant (Luke 2:22-24). He sat in the temple, astonishing the teachers at age twelve (Luke 2:46). In John 2:16, He said to those who sold doves, ‘Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!’ Later, He said, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,’ speaking of the temple of His body (John 2:19-21). Jesus Himself is the true temple, where heaven and earth meet, where God and humanity are reconciled, and where the glory of the LORD dwells in fullness.
In Christ all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). The glory that filled Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 8:10-11, so overwhelming that the priests could not stand to minister, was a shadow of the glory that dwelt in the person of Jesus. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory (John 1:14). The glory of God, which the post-exilic community feared had departed forever, returned in Jesus Christ.
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16). The promise of Haggai 2:7, I will fill this temple with glory, is being fulfilled in every believer who is filled with the Holy Spirit, and in every congregation that gathers in the name of Jesus. The Spirit has distributed that glory into human vessels.
Physically, the second temple was modest compared to Solomon’s; but spiritually and redemptively, what the second temple hosted – the presentation of Jesus, His teaching, His crucifixion just outside its walls, the early church’s gatherings in its courts exceeded anything the first temple witnessed.
But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple (Revelation 21:20). In the new Jerusalem, no building will be called a temple because the whole city is filled with the glory of God and the Lamb.
When we gather in the name of Jesus, the Desire of All Nations is among us.
Ask God to:
- Build in us and among us a temple of living stones filled with the Holy Spirit and His glory.
- Fill our congregations as He filled the early church.
- Make us people who know and display the One who fully satisfies, and use us to introduce the nations to their deepest desire: Jesus Christ, the Lord.
