Bible Commentaries

Christ, the Desire of Nations

Haggai 2:6-7

The time when our Lord was to come is here predicted.

I. This prophecy was uttered about five hundred years before the coming of our Saviour. How, then, can it be said to be a little while?

a. It was a little while when compared with the time the people of God had already been kept waiting for the Messiah.

b. It was short in the Almighty's own sight. It is not man's word, for things are measured in it by a standard which man never uses.

II. What is this mighty shaking? This language has been interpreted as pointing out those political convulsions and changes which agitated the world between the uttering of this prophecy and the time of our Lord's birth, one great empire giving way to another, and that in its turn yielding to a third. There may be a further reference in it to those moral and spiritual effects which have ever attended and followed the Gospel in its progress through the world.

III. Our Lord Jesus Christ is described as "The Desire of all Nations". This name is justly applied to Him.

a. It may signify that He is desirable for all nations—all need a Saviour.

b. All would desire Him if they knew the excellence, love, and mighty power which He possesses of blessing and saving.

c. This title may imply that some of all nations have desired Him.

IV. How was this promise fulfilled? At God's own appointed time, an Infant comes to that Temple, brought there from a stable and a manger. As a youth He listens and replies there to the learned teaching of scribes and doctors. As a man He often frequents the Holy Place. But here, in this second Temple, was that God Himself manifest in our mortal flesh, and we may perceive wherein consists the chief glory of any assemblage or congregation of worshippers.

—E. J. Brewster, The Shield of Faith, p163.

References.—II:7.—A. K. H. Boyd, From a Quiet Place, p131. F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i. p1. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p403. II:9.—Bishop Wilberforce, Sermons, p195. Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln's Inn Sermons, p390. J. Bannerman, Sermons, p260.