Remain standing for the reading of scripture. Our New Testament lesson, which quotes our sermon text, comes from Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews 12, and we will begin reading in verse 25. This comes right after that famous section which speaks of what we're doing right now. that in public worship, in the new covenant, because Jesus has ascended into heaven, we have come to the heavenly Mount Zion. But here we have the veil removed and we see what we're doing. We are ascending into the heavenly places. And at the end of that section, we read these words in verse 25. See that you do not refuse him who speaks, for if they did not escape who refused him who spoke on earth, much more Shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, 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. and that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Turn now to the passage that the writer to the Hebrews quoted. And that's Haggai chapter two. Haggai two verses six to nine, which we come to tonight because this is the next verse of scripture that is used and handles Messiah. Again, this is the structure of the evening series. We're considering texts of scripture used in the libretto for Handel's Messiah, and seeing that this is about God's Messiah. This is about the Lord Jesus. Let's read, beginning in verse six. 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. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place, I will give peace says the Lord of hosts. The grass withers, the flower fades. The word of God stands forever. Amen. You may be seated. Comparisons can be discouraging. Comparisons can be discouraging. If you go to your high school or college reunion, that can be a discouraging time for some people because you go and people describe what they've done, what they've accomplished, where they are in life, and maybe you feel that you don't quite measure up to your classmates can be discouraging. You can compare yourself very easily these days by simply having an Instagram account where you can compare your filtered life with other people's filtered, cropped, and at times manipulated lives. And the comparison can be discouraging. Wow. Their kitchen looks immaculate and mine doesn't, at least the way it appears on Instagram. This can, again, we can multiply the arenas where these comparisons take place, but it can be discouraging when you compare your life to someone else's, and that's led the clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, to lay down as one of his rules for life, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. And he says that because he realizes comparisons can be discouraging. Well, I think that we as Christians often compare different periods of church history. We can do this with church history where sometimes we feel as if, if only we could get back to an earlier period of time, things would be so much better. And we indulge that way of thinking. If only we could get back to the early church, even though Corinth was a mess, if only we could get back to the reformers, even though they had blind spots. If only we could get back to the Puritans or whatever. We have a tendency to read the past with rose-colored glasses and to consider the present through what Cornelius Van Til liked to call a jaundiced eye. All is yellow, Van Til said to the jaundiced eye. And that's what we tend to do, the past rose-colored glasses, the present, a jaundiced eye. The past, by comparison, looks so much more glorious than the present, and that can be discouraging. Well, something similar is going on in the book of Haggai. The remnants that was in the Babylonian exile have returned to the land. And we know that earlier than that, the temple had been destroyed under Nebuchadnezzar. And they've come back, and instead of rebuilding the house of God, they focus on their own houses for about 16 years. They have misplaced priorities. God's house is in desolation, and they're focusing on their wood-paneled domiciles. And God sends a prophet, Haggai, to stir up the people to stir up the priest and to stir up the ruler, Zerubbabel, by calling them to consider their ways, consider your priorities. And they do. They repent. Zerubbabel, the governor, son of Shealtiel, Joshua, the high priest, the people, they repent. 24 days after this message goes forth, they get to work on the house of God. However dark the exile has been, things are starting to look brighter. The people are back in the land, the temple has been rebuilt. And at this point, Haggai, we could almost say, ruins everything. Because he draws attention to an uncomfortable reality. He talks about the elephant in the room. He draws a very discouraging comparison. Look at verse three. We didn't read this verse, it's earlier in the chapter. What does he say? Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing?" That's pretty discouraging. They've come back to the land, they've rebuilt the temple, and Haggai is saying, yes, but this temple is nothing like the earlier temple. You don't need rose-colored glasses to know that Solomon's temple was magnificent, and you don't need a jaundiced eye to see that this second temple is not nearly as glorious. It's just a fact, not to mention that they're still living under the shadow of the Medes and the Persians. But Haggai isn't done. Haggai is not finished with his message. He goes on to exhort them to be strong and work. Why does he say that? Well, he gives an initial reason in verse four. For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so my spirit remains among you. Do not fear. Be strong and work because of the covenant promise of God's special presence. Go to work, because I'm still with you. And maybe the exile said, well, that might be true. I'm glad God is with us, but what's God going to do? Because today still looks bleak when compared with yesterday. What's God going to do? Well, in verses six to seven, Haggai tells us, as he told the exiles, what God is going to do. He's going to shake up the world. And three things are going to happen. He's going to shake all the nations. The nations are going to come to the desire of all nations. And then God is going to fill this temple with his glory. This is my father's world, this is my father's house. God is gonna do something. And in the wake of these cataclysmic events, the prophet makes a second and final comparison. Look at verse nine. On the other end of his prediction of the future, he says, the glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts. Now, think about for a moment the shift from verse 3 to verse 9. In verse 3, Haggai says, in comparison with the former temple, this latter temple is as nothing. But in verse 9, he says, the glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former. It's totally reversed. It's flip-flopped. To put it a different way, compared to yesterday, today looks bleak. But compared to yesterday, tomorrow looks brighter than ever. And what makes this possible, what makes this second comparison possible is the coming of the Messiah. the desire of all nations, the cornerstone of the temple, which has been filled with glory, even the glory of the Holy Spirit. Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, comparisons can be discouraging, but my charge to you is that this Christmas, Instead of always comparing the past to the present, let us go beyond that to compare the past with the future. The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former. As one writer has put it, the future is as bright as the promises of God. With Christ, the best is yet to come. This evening, Unpack this passage by focusing on two things that God has done and will do in the coming of Jesus. First, the Lord will shake, and second, the Lord will fill. Shaken and filled. First, the Lord will shake. When things are bad, when the church is in decline, When society is corroded and corrupted, God has a way of shaking things up. Either he stirs up the people to obedience and revival and reformation, he stirs up the spirits of Zerubbabel and Joshua and the people, as he does at the end of chapter one of Haggai, or, and or, He turns the world upside down in judgment. But regardless, when things are bad, God shakes things up. Look at verse six. For thus says the Lord of hosts, once more, it is a little while, I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land. Once more. Done it before, I'm gonna do it again. It is a little while, it's soon. It's near at hand. I will shake. I will shake. I said this, I think, last week, but this is a portion of Handel's Messiah where the great German-English composer uses text painting, where the singer literally shakes his voice as he says the word shake. I will shake the heavens and the earth. And this is paired with the sea and the dry land. It's almost a zoom-in effect where he starts off as broad as possible. Heaven and earth. And then he zooms in on the earth, the sea, and the dry land. All of the cosmos, I will shake. And this is fitting because one of Haggai's favorite titles of the Lord is the Lord of Hosts. The Lord who has at his beck and call heavenly and earthly hosts, even the hosts of heaven, the sun, moon, and stars, that Lord is going to shake them up. The stars are going to fall. The sun's going out. The moon's gonna be turned to blood, tsunamis, earthquakes, cosmic shaking. I will shake. When I say imagery, but what does that imagery mean? What does that look like? A lot of people assume that when Haggai says that God's gonna shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land, he's talking about the end of the world, that it's totally over. He's talking about the end of history, And although that imagery does in some measure speak to the end of all things, often the Bible will use this imagery to speak of the ends of particular orders or eras in the midst of history. And that becomes clear when we look at the parallel expression in verse 7. He just said, I'm gonna shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land, but this is parallel with verse 7, and I will shake all nations. and I will shake all nations. What Haggai is talking about is a coming day of the Lord when God comes in judgment and salvation to bring an end to a particular era or order. He's specifically talking about what we could call a socio-political shaking. He's gonna shake up the nations and he describes this socio-political shaking in terms of a cosmic shaking. And the Bible often does this because in the Bible stars are associated with political rulers. And so when God says the stars are going to fall, and the sun is going out, and the moon is turning to blood, often he's describing the end of an empire. The end of, for instance, Babylon, or Medo-Persia, or Greece, or Rome. In some sense, it's the end of that world. It's the end of that because he's gonna shake up the nations and their rulers. That's how Jesus uses that kind of imagery in the Olivet Discourse. He uses that kind of imagery to describe the downfall of nations, including the destruction of Jerusalem. And that's clear even later in this chapter, in verse 21, where Haggai is told to speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I will shake heaven and earth, I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I will destroy the strength of the Gentile kingdoms. I will overthrow the chariots and those who ride in them, the horses and their riders shall come down. He's gonna shake the nations. Now, obviously, this does speak to the end of all things, this final cosmic shake, but that cosmic shaking of the end plays itself out throughout history by God's shaking up of various nation states and empires. I will shake the nations and their rulers. And you wonder, does that mean God's gonna destroy them? Is he going to annihilate the Gentiles? Well, keep reading verse seven. And I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the desire of all nations. Yes, this language of shaking things up does speak to judgment, but it also speaks to salvation, that as a result of being shaken, the nations come to the desire of all nations. They come to the Messiah. They come to the Lord of glory, even as he comes to them. That Jesus, the Messiah, when he came, broke Nebuchadnezzar's statue, including that silver portion of the empire of the Medes and Persians under which Haggai was living. And when God's Messiah arrives, The shaken up nations are prepared to stream to him. This is the imagery of Micah chapter four or Isaiah chapter two of the nations having been shaken, streaming to Zion, coming to the desire of all nations, bringing their gold and silver, bringing their tributes, bringing the glories of their empires under his dominion at his footstool. That is the picture, not only of defeated nations, but of nations ready to serve the King of kings and Lord of lords. That as God spoke to Abraham, in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. That's what's going on in this passage. Not just a shaken unto judgment, but a shaken unto salvation. Shaken up. so that they're ready to stream to the Lord Jesus, the desire of all nations. And this language of things being shaken up has particular relevance for us. I've talked to a lot of Christians who, looking at the downfall of even American culture, not to mention Western civilization, they see a topsy-turvy universe. They see the collapse of once strong institutions, and it's very destabilizing. Things are falling apart. The sky is falling. But realize that this passage gives us a lens through which to interpret these things. We read Hebrews chapter 12, where the writer to the Hebrews applies Haggai chapter 2 to his own day. to the new covenant era where who's doing the shaking? It's not actually the movers and the shakers. It's not the tech giants of Silicon Valley. It's not certain lobby groups or activists. It's not community organizers. No, the person doing the shaking today, the person who is shaking up the nations, the person who is bringing institutions to the dust, God is the one who is bringing empires of dirt to the ground. God is the one who is shaking up the nations. That's what's going on. This is the judgment of God. This is the purpose of God in history, even in our current events. God is shaking up the nations so that what cannot be shaken will remain. God has a purpose in what he's doing right now. He's shaking things up so that what cannot be shaken remains. For we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Not only that, but I believe that God is shaking up the nations so that they might repent and come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, it's a crisis, but it's the kind of crisis that leads to opportunity. It's the kind of being shaken up that shocks people into reality. God is up to something, and he's up to something good. God is on the move even as he shakes the nations of men. This is what happened just before AD 70. God shook things up, destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, shook up the nations, and what happened? Christianity covered the Roman Empire. This has happened over and over again throughout church history. God shakes things up for a purpose, so that what cannot be shaken will remain. He brings everything to ruin, and lo and behold, the church still stands, glorious as an army with banners. Every other institution fails, and yet somehow, the church remains. Even when she dies, it's the kind of death that leads to resurrection. Over and over again this happens, and it will continue until the end. These kinds of crises that lead to opportunity. And this is just a side note application, but if you read the Bible carefully, you realize that when God shakes things up, he uses and works within the means he has provided. Just to give one example, if you read Revelation chapter eight, We get a window into how this works. And it says in Revelation chapter eight that the prayers of the saints arise like incense from the earth into God's heavenly courts. And when that happens, what do the angels in heaven do? They take a censer and they fill it with fire from the altar and then they pour it out upon the earth. And there's noises, and there's thunderings, lightnings, and earthquakes. What John is telling us in that passage is that often God shakes things up in answer, direct answer, to the intercessions of the saints. The saints are crying out for justice, and the saints are crying out for God to make good on his promises. And we're praying for the conversion of the Jews, and we're praying for the conversion and fullness of the Gentiles. We're crying out to God, and as our prayers ascend into heaven, God hears our prayers, and the angels pour out fire from the altar upon the earth, and things happen. Public worship and prayer changes the course of history from a human perspective. Because although God declares the end from the beginning, God also ordains both the ends and the means. And God really answers prayer. And what we're doing right now in lifting up a lampstand in the midst of this community has a way of actually changing history. We may not be able to make the direct connections between our prayer and that tsunami, or our prayer and that temporal judgment. But when God's people pray, as they did in the book of Acts, God shook that house and He filled it with His Spirit. This is not a bare, formal worship service that we do because it's merely our duty. This is an intersection between earth and heaven. This is a meeting place between the future and the present. This is a place where things actually happen, where God really comes and visits us, and where God hears the prayers of his people. might make you think twice before you pray. God might just shake things up. Well, that's the first thing God does. He shakes. He shakes things up in judgment and in salvation. Before we turn to the second thing God does, I wanna briefly just point out something of the context of this passage that might not be immediately clear, but throughout the book of Haggai, it's not a long book, he makes it clear what month Each of the prophecies comes in and each day of the month. And if you look at the calendar and you put the pieces together, he delivered our sermon text right in the midst of the Feast of Tabernacles. And that's important for a couple reasons. One, the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths was associated with God's mission to the world. that during that feast, Israel would offer 70 sacrificial animals. Why? Well, they'd offer 70 animals for the 70 nations in the table of nations in the book of Genesis. This was a feast that pointed towards Israel's role as a light to the nations. And that's what we've just seen. The nations are going to come to the desire of all nations. But there's a second significance to this festival time, and that is that During the Feast of Tabernacles, each Israelite remembered what it was like to sojourn in the wilderness, and they would construct little booths, little tabernacles that pointed them towards the tabernacle, towards the temple, towards the house of God. And again, that ties in with what Haggai's talking about. the glory of this latter house, this latter temple. And that brings us right into the second thing God's gonna do. Not only is he gonna shake, but the Lord will fill. Look at verse seven. 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. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. Glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts, and in this place I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts. Again, I already brought this out in the introduction, but there is a dramatic shift from the comparison in verse three and a comparison in verse nine. It's a total reversal. And what makes this possible is what God promises He will do. He will fill the latter temple with glory. That's how the latter temple will be greater than the former temple, because God is going to fill it with glory. He's gonna fill his house with splendor. By God's grace, his people built a house for God's name, but God himself is the one who's gonna fill it with his glory. Not just shaken, but filled. And God does this, congregation, over and over again throughout history. In the very beginning, in creation, heaven was filled with the glory spirits. The earth was formed, filled, the glory spirit hovered over the face of the waters. The tabernacle was assembled. And then what happened? God filled it with glory. He did that even as his glory cloud led the people, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Later, on Mount Zion, Solomon's temple was erected, but that wasn't the end of the story because then God filled it with his glory. The temple was destroyed. In Haggai chapter two, that temple is rebuilt, a second temple, but it's not filled with glory. In creation, the heavenly throne room was filled with glory. The tabernacle was filled with glory. Solomon's temple was filled with glory. The second temple was built, but Ichabod, glory gone. That's why this house is nothing like Solomon's. Among other reasons, it doesn't have the glory presence of God. It was never filled. And that's one reason for that discouraging comparison. Formed, but not filled. Built, but not glorified. And yet, it's in this context that the Lord promises, I will fill, and the glory of this latter temple, this latter house, literally, shall be greater than the former. That's an encouraging comparison. Not just comparing the past to today, but comparing the past to tomorrow. The future is as bright as the promises of God. And you might wonder, how can this be? When did this happen? Well, the key to this passage, like every other, is Jesus. Jesus, the desire of all nations 2,000 years ago, came. And when he did, he tabernacled among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And on this earth, he prophesied, you destroy this temple, the temple of his body, and God's gonna raise it again in three days. Jesus died. Jesus was buried. And three days later, the temple of his body was raised. Jesus established his apostles as the foundation of a new temple. He himself, the chief cornerstone. We, his people, living stones within this structure. And then, on the day of Pentecost, what did Jesus do? He filled this new creation, new covenant temple with the glory of the Holy Spirit. 80, 70, that second temple was destroyed. But now we come in the spirit to the heavenly temple, the heavenly original, the pattern of every other dwelling place of God on earth. We come to the real deal. We come to a heavenly Mount Zion. And in this place, the Lord gives peace because the prince of peace reigns. in the heavenlies. That's why when the angels came, they sang, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men. That's why this season, like every other season, we have the assurance of the peace of God, not as the world gives, but the peace of God that passes all understanding, that guards our hearts and our minds through Christ Jesus. God has filled the temple with glory. He has filled us as a new covenant temple with his Holy Spirit and yet even this mighty act of God's, this shaking and this filling awaits its full consummation of which we read in Revelation chapter 21. But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. That's the promise of the future. That's the brightness of the coming glory. Congregation, this Christmas, instead of always comparing the past to the present, let us learn to go beyond and compare the past with the future, that the glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former, that with Jesus Christ, the best is yet to come. Let us pray.