Bible Commentaries

The Glorious Future

Haggai 2:3).

The glorious past is never disdained. There ought not to be any past, in the sense of exhaustion or annihilation. The past should be the most vivid and graphic influence in the present. Because we have seen greatness we shall see glory, should be the tone of every man who undertakes to teach the mysteries of the divine kingdom, and lead the enterprises of the elect and consecrated Church. The house indeed had gone down, in that sense it was nothing in comparison with the house in its first glory. There is a past that humbles the present, that makes the present insignificant and worthless; but the Lord never regards that past as the end of his own opportunity; it is rather the occasion of the beginning of new revelations of his omnipotence. The Lord never stops his kingdom in its darkest hour and says, This is all. The Lord never interrupts a prayer at the point of confession; he listens until the prayer glows with thankfulness, until it becomes violent in sacred ambition, until it would seize the treasures of the kingdom and appropriate them all with a grateful heart; then he says, This is the prayer you meant to pray, and to this prayer I return a grand Amen. It is thus God leads us and educates us. He takes us at our best points, not at our worst. What he sees in us, not what we see in ourselves, is the explanation alike of his discipline and his inspiration. The Lord promised that the house should assume a glory to which the first glory was as nothing. Here is a principle in the divine economy; it is a principle of development, of progress, of gradual and assured consummation. That is a revelation of the providence of God. Men are to become stronger and stronger, the Church is to become purer and purer, the path of the just is to be as a shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day. What a rebuke is this to our unfaith! We say, What will the world do when certain men are taken away from it? Surely then the world would die if the world were self-created; but, if it were divinely governed, what will God do when he removes the immediate life? Will he say, I can do no more, it does not lie within the range of Almightness to find another Haggai 2:5).

Then no new covenant was written; it was the old promise. We have no revelations dissociated from the past that have come to us on this very moment Every promise that speaks to us this day has travelled all the way from eternity to deliver its sweet gospel. The astronomer tells us that the light which we saw but yesterday has been thousands of years on the way; the beam was shot from the planet five thousand years ago, and only arrived this morning. This is spiritual astronomy. In the Old Testament there are words lying which shot their glorious gospels thousands of years ago, and they did but strike some opening brain this very day, and from that brain they will glance off upon the whole area of the Church, and the Church will say, Behold a new revelation of God! There is no such novelty; the novelty is only apparent, it is only in accident or in transient form: truth can never be older and never be younger; truth and God are of the same age. The mischief is that we are looking for a new writing, a new covenant, a new bond. We have more than a covenant; we have a Spirit, and the covenant without the Spirit would be a dead-letter. Because men have tried to read the Bible without the Spirit, therefore the Bible has been to them a book that has bewildered and confused the intellect that has vainly endeavoured to comprehend its meaning. We do not trust ourselves to the Spirit, the living Holy Ghost; therefore we have lock and bolt under which we keep our orthodoxy; we lock up our deeds in a strong-room, and go to read them to see what it really is we believe—as if a man could keep his faith under lock and key! It has been said by some that guideposts on the mountains are of greatest use to the traveller who never crossed these heights before; so they are. But what is of more use? The living guide, he who walks step for step with the mountaineer and never looks at your painted sign-posts; he has associated with a living soul, a man who knows every inch of the road. Yet there are some persons who cannot keep their misbelieving eyes off the mere whitewashed pole that is called a guidepost Why will we not believe that the old posts are of no use any more, because the God of the mountains is with us, the Holy Ghost that fashioned the hills has undertaken to conduct us over all the acclivities, and bring us safe to the vale of summer, the city of peace? Every lock that is in the house is a condemnation of society. Why this door-locking and window-fastening? What is going to happen during the darkness of the night? You believe that your privacy may be invaded and your property may be stolen? Then you suspect the very society in which you live, and you are justified in your suspicion. But the Church should be fearless, the Church should not live upon its pennyworth of foolscap; the Church should be identified with the ministry of the Holy Ghost, and if men arise who talk a strange tongue, and who utter themselves in sentences that are at first either obscure or vexatious, we may be sure that in proportion as they have sought the aid of the Holy Ghost, and are willing to submit themselves absolutely to his inspiration, all this momentary eccentricity shall be ruled into the softness and the fluency of a perfect astronomic motion. You cannot keep men right by theological constabulary; the Church is not to be protected by men in uniform; the Church purchased with the blood of the Son of God is promised to be pure, mighty, and glorious, and the God of the promise must consummate his own covenant and declaration. Have we the Holy Ghost? Do we seek him daily? Do we live upon him?

Now we come again to the divine action; Zerubbabel is to be "strong;" Joshua is to be "strong"; all the people of the land are to be "strong": now the Lord says:—

"I will shake" ( Haggai 2:6); "I will shake" ( Haggai 2:7):—"I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations."

Here we interrupt the divine action, and say in a pitiful tone of unfaith, See on what troublous times we have fallen; God hath forsaken his people, and the inheritance is given over to the devastations of the wild boar! What foolish talk, what blank atheism! "I," saith the Lord of hosts, "will shake"; the shaking is as clearly a divine action as the birth of peace or the in-bringing of the quiet glory of noontide. Do we suppose that men can shake the heavens and the earth? All they can do is to shake themselves in trying to shake a tree. We behold the tumults of the earth, wars and rumours of wars, and ascribe the great commotion to some action of statecraft. Nothing of the kind; no man can shake a nation; only God can handle the great quantities. We can shake a leaf; we can make a feather feel our tremendous violence, but only God can shake all nations, the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land, and all nations. See God in the controversies of the world; see a divine thought, like a holy sword, rending and smiting and slaying with tremendous and pitiless vengeance.

What is the meaning of it all? "And the desire of all nations shall come" ( Haggai 2:7). It would be profitable to collate the Scriptures in which the expression "all nations" occurs: "All nations shall serve him." "All nations shall call him blessed." "Go, teach all nations"—one of the last words of the withdrawing Christ as he lifted up his hands of power and gave the Church his final blessing. There are those who love to find secondary meanings, and fasten attention upon those meanings as if they were all. Thus we refer the seventy-second Psalm to Haggai 2:7); "In this place will I give peace" ( Haggai 2:9). God always gives with both hands: "I will give glory"; see him making the sun that is to put out all other suns: "I will give peace"; see him creating the tranquillity beside which all other calmness is foam and tumult. He may give these gifts concurrently, or he may give them separately; but we are to be assured of the fulfilment of the promise by these gifts only. If we are sitting in the night time, then we have not entered into the mystery of this prophecy; we are in fear, tumult, and continual agitation; then we have not realized the presence of God. There are those who can never be quieted or at all contented unless they be helping God to keep his truth right. So long as they can be busily engaged wearing themselves out in doing nothing, they suppose that God is safe, and the door of eternity is locked top and bottom, and well guarded by blacksmith's bolts. What poor aid is ours! We say unless we live and write and teach and preach, things will all go wrong. Oh, ye apprentices to the Deity, ye who try to do work for which you seek the admiration of heaven, know ye that God is the builder of his own city, the keeper of his own house, and that not one stone can be touched by fire or by storm, because it is the Lord's building, and he will bring on the topstone with shouting of "Grace, grace unto it!" and he will fill the whole house with glory, as with the very morning of heaven. Whatever we do let us do it quietly, lovingly, simply; and let us know that we do it by permission, and not by any right arising out of our own capacity or brilliance of gift. It is not in man to buttress the sanctuary of God; it is not in man to do any mischief to the sanctuary that shall be of a permanent kind. "The Lord of hosts"; "The Lord of Hosts"; "THE LORD OF HOSTS": by this name doth the King ride forth in this chapter. It is a name of significance; it means not only strength and majesty, it means resource. God's bank has in it gold and silver; God's arm has in it omnipotence. "Oh, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him, and he shall give thee thine heart's desire." Not because of our fighting and controversy and anger and tumult, but because of the divine oath, will the whole earth be filled with the glory of God.