The Desire of the Nations Shall Come

Haggai 2:6-7

Haggai 2:6–7 NKJV

“For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; 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.

We now come to season of Advent which is the beginning of the new Christian year. We ended the last year with the Feast of Christ the King in which we are reminded that the LORD shall return and establish His eternal Kingdom. This is the end of history as we know it and the beginning of eternity. Advent, on the other hand, it a time of reflection and preparation for this return. From beginning to end, our gaze is fixed upon the return of Jesus and the establishment of His Kingdom.

It would be good to understand that the season of Advent is not preparing for the arrival of the Christ child in Bethlehem. This happened long ago and was prepared by God for us and our salvation. The life of Christ, His death, and resurrection stands in the center of human time. It lies between creation and Advent. Our sense of time until the recent attempts of secularists divides this time into BC and AD. The world has substituted B.C.E. (before common era) and C.E. (common era). The question I would ask is what event divides B.C.E. and C.E.? Even the secularists cannot get away with removing Christ from the center of history. The life of Christ from the Incarnation to the Ascension is center to out world. This should be celebrated, and it is. Christmas and Easter form the bookends of the center of the Christian year. Advent is the ultimate goal to which we press. The rest of the Christian year from Pentecost to Christ the King Sunday focuses on the life and mission of the Church.

Advent is commonly broken down into four themes. These are hope, peace, joy and love. In the First Sunday of Advent, the theme is “hope.” The passage I have selected for us to read is from the Old Testament Book of Haggai, chapter 2, verses 1 through 10.

Haggai and the Prophet Zachariah were prophets of the restoration of Israel to Israel. Seventy years earlier, in 586 B.C., the first Temple built by Solomon had been burnt to the ground. The people of Judah had been taken into exile in Babylon starting in about 607 BC in several deportations. This was done because the people of Judah had committed rebellion and wickedness in the sight of the LORD. The LORD had warned all of Israel including Judah that if they committed apostacy, they would be carried off captive. The LORD fulfilled His promise, and for seventy years, they languished in captivity. For many who longed for Israel, this captivity was bitter. We see this in the 137th Psalm where the Babylonians mocked the captives and asked them to sing to songs of Zion. They just could not sing these songs in a strange land and hung up their harps on the willow branches and prayed that Yahweh would dash the heads of the children of their Babylonian captors against the rocks.

We should also remember through Isaiah and the other prophets before this exile that this judgment would not be permanent. We see in Isaiah 40 words of comfort and hope for the Jews, It was this hope that sustained the Jewish believers during this bitter time until the Land of Israel had seventy years of Sabbath rest. Then in 539 B.C., God raised up a conqueror named Cyrus who overthrew the Babylonian kingdom. Cyrus allowed the Jewish exiles to return to their homeland and even provided resources to help them rebuild. Psalm 126 records their exuberant joy when they were told they could return home. Unfortunately, many of the exiles were more comfortable in their new home in Babylon and remained. Ezra and Nehemiah record that a relatively small remnant returned in several batches. The LORD had promised that He would bless the captives in Babylon. They seem to have multiplied greatly, so few sought to return.

Psalm 126 also shows that reality for the returned captives was hard and discouragement set in. They asked the LORD to restore the joy they once had when it was announced that they could return. The results of this discouragement could be seen more than twenty years later when Haggai and Zachariah came on the scene, Haggai called out the Jews who had built nice homes for themselves while the house of the LORD, the Temple remained in ruins. They put their own comfort ahead of the faith. Haggai urged the people to resume the building. Apparently, this message was accompanied by judgments from the LORD, one of which was runaway inflation. Haggai uses picturesque language to describe this as putting their wages into a bag with holes in it.

In Chapter 2, in which we read several verses, the LORD promises that yet once more He would shake not just the earth but the heavens as well. The sea and the dry land and all of the nations. He then says that the Desire of the Nations would then come. There is a lot of irony in this. No one desires judgment. This comprehensive judgment that would come would shake everything in this word to the core. Hebrews records this quote in Hebrews 12:26-27:

Hebrews 12:26–27 NKJV

whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Prophecy often has a fulfillment in the time near the time of the prophet. This establishes the validity of the prophet. This may have been true of the prophecy of Haggai as well, although I am not aware of such a shaking in the world oh Haggai’s day. But there are also prophecies which were far into the future such as the prophecy of Isaiah 40 which we mentioned which prophesied the return of the Jewish captives. We must also consider that there is something called dual fulfillment of prophecy which has an immediate as well as a more distant fulfillment of which the Immanuel prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. The context shows that this sign that a young woman would conceive and have a son who would be called Immanuel which means “god is with us.” In Ahaz’s day this would be the son of Isaiah and Huldah named Maher-shalal-hash-baz. We know this because he is referred to as Immanuel in chapter 8 of Isaiah (Isaiah 8:8). The deliverance to Judah in the deaths of the two oppressing kings was limited in scope. Yet God had a greater and broader fulfillment of this prophecy in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ 750 years later.

Whatever fulfillment of Haggai’s prophecy in his day is unknown to us. But it seems to point to a greater fulfillment in the end of time. The verses I quoted from Hebrews shows this. The writer of Hebrews wrote about a great shakeup which was going on in his day. This may have been the shakeup which resulted from Nero’s persecution of the church after the fire in Rome in 64 AD or the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.. But these shakeups were localized as would have been any shakeup in the day of Haggai. The prophet talks about a shakeup of all creation. So the ultimate fulfillment of this shakeup still lies in our future.

Hebrews tells us the purpose of this shakeup is to remove the things that can be shaken so that which cannot be shaken will remain, What will remain is God and His people. So, the shakeup is not desirable but is necessary. It is what comes afterward that is to be desired. He is to be the desire of all nations. The Book of Revelation talks about the nations in that day coming up to Jerusalem with joy to worship, Isaiah talks about this also. Note that the word for “nations” is also translated “Gentiles.” Haggai spoke to issues in His day through the means of the Holy Spirit. The Temple did get built. But the elderly who had seen the former Temple were disappointing that this new Temple did not live up to the glory of the LORD. The desire for this Temple faded. Even two generations later, Nehemiah recorded that the walls of the city had not been rebuilt. He encouraged Israel to complete the work. Herod the Great, who was not even the Jew tried to make the Temple even more spectacular than Solomon’s Temple, a monument to his own hubris. But this Temple was a disappointment. Jesus showed His displeasure of what went on there when He cleansed it and pronounced its coming destruction. Jesus, who is the desire of all nations came the first time as a baby in Bethlehem of Judaea. But the nation was disappointed in Him. He failed to live up to their expectations. Instead of desiring Him they rejected Him and had Him crucified.

This rejection could not prevent Jesus who is the desire of all nations. God raised Him on the third day. He ascended back to the Father after 40 days. We now wait for His promised return, This is what we reflect upon during Advent. We see great shakeups in our world today. We have threats of World War 3 hanging over us, whether it starts in Taiwan. Ukraine, Israel, or some other place. If this is indeed to be the final cosmic shakeup, then it is Israel to which God will put a hook in the jaws of the nations and drag them to Armageddon. We are on the verge of worldwide financial collapse. the Bible speaks about wars and rumors of war as well as the failure of this economy. The entire earth is shaking right now. If it is the end, then the heavens will shake also. The world worries about an asteroid strike. The bible refers to a stellar object called “wormwood” and a third of the stars being cast down. Peter tells us that fire will melt the earth. After these events, the Desire of Nations shall come.

While we wait for Jesus to return, we prepare for that day. As the bride prepares her hope chest for her wedding, we prepare ourselves as the Bride of Christ. We prepare in hope, a hope that will not disappoint like so many other hopes do. It is this hope which keeps us from being shaken from all the troubles of life, even if the return of the LORD is not yet. But it could be. There is a story about St. Francis who was busy planting wheat in the field. He was asked if he knew for sure that the Lord would return that very day, what he would do. The answer he gave was that he would finish planting the wheat. Jesus puts it this way: “Occupy till I come.” (Luke 19:13) We put the day of His return in the Father’s house and set our minds on doing His work.

Do we desire Him above everything else? If we do, we will set our minds on nothing else than the expectation of His return. And whatever we do while we wait, we do that our desire will stand firm. Come Lord Jesus!