Bible Commentaries

Haggai 2:7

I. Jesus was the Desire of all nations—(1) as the Kinsman of the whole human family; (2) because He only could bestow those precious blessings which the world needed; (3) because all nations shall one day be made happy in Him.

II. He appeared—(1) at the very period marked out for His birth; (2) in the very manner which had been foretold; (3) for the performance of the very work which had been before marked out for Him.

III. The prophet Haggai mentions certain remarkable events which should distinguish the Messiah's coming—(1) all nations were to be shaken; (2) the Jewish Temple should be filled with His glory.

J. N. Norton, Old Paths, p. 11.

I. Once Christ was the Desire of all nations, even though when He came unto His own His own received Him not, and was in very truth despised and rejected of men. Nevertheless, of this there can be no doubt, that the world, by woful experience, had learned its need, had found out its want of a Saviour. His first coming was looked to with desire. Let us ask our consciences whether we look to His second coming with anything but dismay and dread. It took four thousand years to make men feel their want of a Saviour; it has taken but half that time to make one moiety of those who, nevertheless, call themselves by His name, to live in practical unbelief; and the other moiety to regard His second coming with terror, and not with joy.

II. What made Him the Desire of all nations? It was this, they wanted some hope, some refuge beyond this miserable world. Their present was dark; their future was darker still. The pleasures of sin for a season—that made up their life. And death was unredeemed with one single ray of brightness. Remorse they might know; despair might haunt them: but of the peace and consolations of a faithful follower of Jesus they had never tasted. No wonder that a Saviour from themselves, and from sin and death, was the "Desire of all nations."

III. Ours is the last twilight of the world. Ages ago we were warned that we were in the last times, and so we are brought to the thought of that second coming of Him who, at His first coming, was the Desire of all nations. To that we must look; for the signs of that coming we must watch. Are we preparing for it? Are we trying at least to desire our Lord's return? It is only in the way of watchfulness and prayer that this desire can be attained.

E. W. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life, vol. i., p. 1.

I. There is a Desire of all nations; something all human beings are vaguely longing for which would put them right. Many of them do not know it, but it is Jesus Christ. Every human being that ever lived, who felt that this world would not do, and that he must have more to satisfy and give rest, was blindly desiring Christ, was stretching vague hands through the darkness after Him. In old phrase which use has emptied of all real meaning to many of us, He is the satisfying portion of the soul.

II. It is a great thing, if a sorrowful too, about the human heart, that it cannot be satisfied. It marks our Divine original, that we never can for long enjoy the real satisfiedness of ruminating cattle, that have got all they want. What all men seek—unawares seek—is Christ. The happy days that do not come, the quiet content that surely will be reached at last—all are in Him, and in the life and the home to which He would lead us if we would but go.

A. K. H. B., From a Quiet Place, p. 131.

References: Haggai 2:7.—E. Dukes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 248; Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 357, vol. iv., p. 312; G. Huntington, Sermons for the Holy Seasons of the Church, p. 1; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 408. Haggai 2:8, Haggai 2:9.—J. C. Hare, Sermons in Herstmonceux Church, vol. ii., p. 101. Haggai 2:11-14.—Ibid., p. 123. Haggai 2:13, Haggai 2:14.—Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi, p. 362. Haggai 2:17.—Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 218. Haggai 2:19.—A. Scott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 268. Haggai 2:20-23.—J. C. Hare, Sermons in Herstmonceux Church, vol. ii., p. 143.

Haggai 2:9

I. These words refer to the first and the second temple at Jerusalem. The first temple was burnt by the Chaldees, and the wall of Jerusalem was broken down, and the people carried captive to Babylon, and it was more than fifty years after that the foundation of the second house was laid. It was an occasion to stir up mixed feelings among the people. The glory of their nation had passed away. They came back as exiles, by the permission of a foreign power, to the land that their fathers had conquered. Hope and recollection struggled against each other, when they dwelt by turns on the state from which they had been cast down, and on their hopes of restoration. Jehovah would not manifest Himself in the same degree as He had before to a people who were suffering the punishment of their backslidings; and the house they had built Him was but a poor copy of the temple that had perished. Yet Haggai promised that this second temple in its poverty should be more glorious than the first, because the desire of all nations, even Christ Himself, should come to it, and the Lord of hosts should fill it with glory.

II. This teaches us that it is not the house, but the presence that sanctifies the house, that constitutes its glory. It rests with us to hinder or help the work of God according as we seek God here in earnest, or let our hearts go after covetousness.

Archbishop Thomson, Lincoln's Inn Sermons, p. 390.