Monday Meditation
August 08, 2016
From the desk of A.J. Higgins
The Desire of All Nations
“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.
Haggai 2:7
Morale was low. The temple, taking shape before their eyes, was only a faint reflection of the temple that Solomon had erected. Older men wept at the memory of what once was. Through the prophet Haggai, God encouraged the nation by a promise of what would one day be – the greatness of the glory that would one day fill the house.
But between the “then” and the “now,” God would shake the nations until He brings in the One Whom He describes as “the Desire of all nations,” His Son. At His first advent, Israel could find no beauty in Him that would cause them to “desire” (same root word) Him (Isa 53:2). How wonderful that here, God describes Him as the One Whom the nations will desire.
But in what sense is He the desire of all nations?
What the nations long for is peace and security, the banishment of poverty and crime, the enjoyment of health and longevity. The deepest longings of the human heart are for these elusive qualities. Millennia of wars have stained the earth with the blood of millions. Human cruelty and barbarism have broken lives, destroyed homes, torn families apart, and soaked our world with tears. All the acts of legislatures, all the might of armies, all the talking of diplomats have failed to move the globe any closer to the longed-for goals.
What the masses of humanity crave is all found in a Man; they do not recognize it nor do they recognize Him, but He is really what the nations desire, yet tragically reject. Men chose a murderer to be granted to them; they have chosen sin and self-will; they have opted to follow the god of this age in their pursuit of pleasure and treasure. Yet what they really desire can only be found in our Lord Jesus Christ.
David knew something of this when, considering the covenant God had made with him which looked forward to a coming Messiah, “This is all my salvation and all my desire” (2 Sam 23:5). Asaph breathed out similar longings when he wrote in his perplexity, “There is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee” (Ps 73:25).
Yet when the Lord Jesus was here, He was despised and rejected. The fountain-head of all blessing was scorned and rejected; the stone did not “fit” with the skewed thinking of the leaders, and was set “at naught.” They found Him “undesirable” and rejected Him. The One Whom God found as the source of all His pleasure, humanity found nothing of beauty, nothing to be desired.
God has found everything in Christ. By His grace, we have been brought to find everything in Him. But a day will soon dawn in this world when the nations will find everything in Him. Swords will be beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks. Instruments of war will become implements for work; what has impoverished the world will prosper the world. What has been the weaponry for aggression and destruction will become the tools of agriculture and peace.
What a wonderful day it will be when an entire universe owns that He what they have always desired!
Consider:
1. Look at the various ways the Minor Prophets present Christ, both in His future reign and glory, and in His Shepherd character.
2. A literal reading of Haggai 2:9 is, “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former.” The Shekinah glory filled the house in Solomon’s day (1 Kings 8:10, 11). A greater glory will fill it in the future. What is that glory and how will it eclipse the Shekinah glory?
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