The Smaller House With the Bigger Glory

Long before Nehemiah built the wall and Ezra read the Book in the square, Jerusalem had a half-finished temple and a prophet named Haggai.

Years earlier, the people had come home from Babylon, laid the temple's foundation, and stopped. "It isn't time yet to build God's house," they said, and went off to put fine wooden walls in their own houses. (God noticed. God notices that kind of thing.) God sent Haggai to stir them up, and Zerubbabel the governor, Joshua the high priest, and all the people went back to work.

A month later came the Feast of Shelters, the week when families camped in huts of branches. On the last day of the feast, God gave Haggai a message, and it began with a hard question.

"Who here is old enough to remember this house the way it used to be? How does it look to you now? Like nothing at all?"

A few white-haired people could remember. King Solomon's temple had cedar walls carved with palm trees and flowers, and gold even on the floor. Then the Babylonians burned it to the ground. Now there was rough stone and bare beams, and hardly any gold. When its foundation was first laid, some of these same old people had stood at the edge of the crowd and wept.

God did not pretend it looked better. He said:

"Be strong, Zerubbabel. Be strong, Joshua. Be strong, all you people, and work, for I am with you. My Spirit is still among you. Do not be afraid."

Then the message grew strange and enormous.

"Once more, and soon, I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all the nations, and their treasures will come pouring into this house, and I will fill it with glory. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine."

(God was not worried about the gold. He made it before anybody ever dug it up.)

"The glory of this house will be greater than the glory of the first. And in this place I will give peace."

So they kept building. Four years later they finished it and held a joyful party. But no bright cloud filled the house that day, the way God's glory had once filled Solomon's temple so thickly that the priests had to stop their work. No nations came pouring in.

Long afterward, King Herod covered the old house in white stone and gold, and still the promise waited.

One cold winter day, a young man walked through that same house, along a row of tall pillars called Solomon's Porch. He wore no gold, and no bright cloud came with him. A crowd closed in around him. "If you are the Christ, tell us plainly," they said. He answered, "I and the Father are one."

The glory God promised through Haggai had walked into that house on his own two feet. It was Jesus. And God's great shaking is still to come. When Jesus comes back, God will shake heaven and earth one last time, and all that is left standing will be the kingdom of Jesus, which nothing can ever shake.