You are invited to join the winning team of God's expanding kingdom by establishing yourself in a local church and supporting global missions. Trust that the glory of this present house will be far greater than what you see now, as God gathers living stones from all over the world.
It was in Hebrews, he shook it in in Exodus and now here it is in the prophet Haggai. In a little while, I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations and the "desired of the nations" will come and I will fill this house with glory. What's going on here? Well, they got the law from Mount Sinai.
They were unfaithful. They didn't make it into the promised land. They died in the wilderness. The next generation, Joshua and Caleb's generation took them into the promised land. They begin to have all the battles through the book of Judges, and then they got a king.
Praise God, Saul, he wasn't the right 1, and then David, and praise God, now that God's making a covenant with David and send from your line. And he was talking about Jesus. And then his son Solomon builds the temple. Now there's something about this that has meaning for you today. So let's take a we're gonna we're gonna come back to Haggai's where the meat of the message is today.
But before I finish that, I've got to show you something about Solomon's temple. I hear you've been talking about the presence of God and his holiness. So hold your spot in Haggai-2 and praise God. Let's go take a look at second Chronicles. Let's see.
2 Chronicles-2:17 and 18. Solomon took a census of all the aliens who were in Israel after the census his father David had taken, and they were found a 153,000. He assigned 70,000 of them to be carriers and 80,000 to be stone cutters and 3,600 foremen. Second part of verse 4, he says, he overlaid the inside with pure gold. Verse 8, he built the most holy place and he overlaid the inside with 600 talents of gold.
Later on, it says, the silver in Solomon's time became as plentiful as the stones and it was just about worthless. What I'm telling you is this, so God desired a people for himself and he called out Abraham and his family. He worked with them and delivered them and then he gave them his law. And then he brought them to the land he promised Abraham many years later. He brought them across the Jordan and into the promised land.
Then they wiped out all the enemies on every side, and it took a while. They had to take over the promised land step by step as we are taken over 1 1 block of 1 city, 1 nation, from 1 city, from 1 nation to the next. The kingdom of God is advancing just like they advanced in the promised land, the church is advancing all over the world today. Do you see it? Hallelujah.
So they took it all over and after they took it over, this happened. David got things ready for his son Solomon to build the temple, but let me just throw out 1 of the punchlines for today. When the prophet told David, David, it's not gonna be you that's gonna build the temple, it's gonna be your son. He wasn't really talking about Solomon. He was talking about Jesus.
Solomon's gonna build a physical temple that's gonna be a model, a picture of what Jesus is gonna build in the future. So Solomon built a temple that was the most glorious, beautiful place on earth at that time. It was on Mount Zion in Jerusalem where God prophesied and said, this is where I'm gonna put my name. This is where you're gonna come. I'm gonna meet with you here whenever you have a need, whenever you wanna worship, you come here.
All the people come to Jerusalem and come to this temple, and my presence will be here, and I will be with you. That's why that secret of David, the heart of David, was to bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. Why? Because David's heart, he knew God's heart was to dwell with his people. So he had to bring the ark there because God's presence was between the cherubim on top of the ark of the covenant inside the holy of holies of the temple.
Are you with me? So in Solomon's day, out of all the land of Israel, on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, on that holy mount, which you can still go and see, it's still there, I've been there, he built the most beautiful temple with cedars from Lebanon, with gold and silver and rubies and all the precious things that the world desires, all the stones and the rocks and the gold and the money and things that the world desires, all came into him, and he built the most glorious temple, and behind the thick curtain was the holy of holies, and there the ark of the covenant was, and there the presence of God. And when Solomon dedicated the temple, he dedicated with so much tithes, offerings, everything the people gave, man, and then the smoke of God's glory filled the temple and it shook the whole place and they had to bow down and God's presence was all over the place and this is God's will. This is always his will. This is his plan and his purpose at the end of the story.
God wants to dwell with you, even more so in you. God's goal is to have people from all over the world as the body of Christ and he wants to dwell in you. Now, let me show you what happened. Haggai, go back with me to Haggai. So when here we see how glorious the temple is and just some real quick history.
Now, in Solomon's day, it was a picture of the kingdom of heaven on earth. There was no more wars for 40 years. There was peace on every side. Every king and person around would come to see Jerusalem and come to Solomon's Temple to hear his wisdom because he was like speaking the wisdom of God. And there was no battles or wars because there was peace.
And the presence of God was thick in the temple, and the whole land of Israel was blessed. I'm telling you, in those 40 years, it's a type and shadow, a picture of the kingdom of heaven on earth where God is dwelling with his people and the whole world knows it. Do you see? It's a picture of the kingdom of heaven on earth, but it couldn't last. Solomon fell hard.
I mean, when you get into, you know, the whole church is doing a bible study and they get into set Solomon at the end, he's the wise supposed to be the wisest man on earth, and he was, And yet at the end, he's got 700 wives and 300 concubines, and all the women are mad and saying, why do they call this guy the wisest man on earth? He fell hard. Why? Because it was only a type and shadow of what was coming. It wasn't the real thing.
He still had the sin nature of Adam even though he was looking forward to it by faith. Jesus hadn't come yet. He wasn't born again yet. You see? Hallelujah.
So he fell and he fell hard. So we have to look at that prophetically, praise the Lord, as the natural man, but also the spiritual man and what they were doing. In the spiritual side, it was the glory of God. But in the natural, he fell and when he fell, real quick history, he fell and man, right after he fell, this beautiful, wonderful, glorious nation of Israel that was a model of God's people on earth was now divided 10 tribes to the North, 2 tribes to the South, and you have Israel and Judah, and the rest of the book of Kings and Chronicles is all about all the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah, and very few of them really knew God, and he was fallen. As a matter of fact, it got so bad that God raised up Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar, and they came in and they wiped them out and destroyed.
Solomon's temple came down. All that beautiful gold, silver, and everything was taken away, and the people of Israel were taken captive into Babylon. And that's where you get the story of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and the story of Daniel over there in Babylon, and but Daniel has the scroll of Jeremiah. And Daniel's reading in it. And Daniel's staying faithful to the God of Israel even though he's living in Babylon.
And Daniel sees that there's God, 70 years is what's determined for judgment and God's gonna raise up a king who's gonna let the people go, and Daniel starts seeing it's about time, so he begins to pray the word of God. He prophetically knows what's coming, so he begins to speak it, and it starts coming to pass, and now Cyrus is raised up, and he lets the people go back to Israel, and Israel comes the the nation comes back. Hear me now. I'm going somewhere with this. Y'all okay?
Touch your neighbor and say, hey, remember he said the once more shake. I'm about to get there. This is just history. I'm getting you ready for it. Okay?
So they come back to Israel and they look and men, some of them are 80, 90 years old and they remember Solomon's temple in all its glory, and they come back and they see the whole thing destroyed. There's no gold, there's no silver, there's no precious stones, it's in ruins and they're weeping, yet they start trying to live. They rebuild their houses, they plant their gardens, they get things going and they're living, and then the prophet Haggai comes in 1 page, 1 simple word, he comes to them and he says this, verse 2, this is what the Lord Almighty says, these people say the time has not yet come for the Lord's house to be built. Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. Is it a time for yourselves to be living in paneled houses while the "house of the Lord" remains in a ruin?
Give careful thought to what you're doing. You plant much, but you harvest little. You work hard, but you don't bring home much. What you bring home has holes in your pocket, doesn't happen. While you're doing everything, you've come back to Israel, you've come back to Jerusalem, but in you're just working on yourself, and you're not working on the kingdom.
And it's how's that then he's Haggai pretty much says, how's that working for you? And they recognize it's not. We're not blessed. All this blessing we hear of our God. We've been in Babylon all these years.
Now we come back to Israel expecting all the blessing, and there's nothing but this ruined house here. Well, the hey guy says, think about it. Build the house of the Lord. Start now. Praise the Lord.
And now God's gonna bless everything you touch. Hallelujah. It says they came and began on the house of the Lord Almighty on the twentieth fourth day of the sixth month. It says they began to be blessed. But here's the point of the story.
That's not it. It goes here. Chapter 2 verse 3. Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now?
Does it seem like nothing? Here's what was going on. They came back. They're back in Israel, but they've been in bondage in Babylon for 70 years. Now they're back.
They're kind of been a devastated wandering people. They believe in God. They haven't seen his touch a whole lot anymore. Now they're back and they they're trying and the place is ruined. There's nothing really left.
And they start laying the foundation because the prophet told them to. They start taking what they have and putting it together and laying the foundation. And after the foundation gets built and they and they and they got the stones and it's starting to come together, the the bottom half of the building they're building, they look back and and man, the young people who had never seen it, they're making progress, they're like, wow, we've got the house of the Lord is going up, let's rejoice, praise the Lord, but the older folks who saw Solomon's temple in his glory, they were weeping, And the Bible says here, you couldn't distinguish between the weeping of the old folks and the the praising of the young folks because it was all blending together. And what's going on here? So the old folks are grieving, man, guys, this is nothing like it will former glory.
God's presence, this is nothing. It's not gonna work. And the young people are building, and then the prophet Haggai says this, and here's the word of the Lord for you today. Verse 6, this is what the Lord Almighty says, in a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations and the desired of the nations will come and I will fill this house with glory says the Lord.
And then he says this, verse 8, the silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord, and I'm telling you the glory of this present house, the latter house, the house you're building now will be far greater than the glory of the former house, and in this place I will grant my peace. He says this, the glory of the the desire of the nation shall come. I want you to focus on that line right there in verse the end of verse, praise God, at verse 7. I will shake all nations and the desired of the nations will come and I will fill this house with glory. If I come down, will this thing start squealing or will I be okay?
Might. I'm a try. I can get you a handheld. Okay. I'm a get in front of the speaker.
Hallelujah. He says God says, the silver is mine. The gold is mine, and y'all aren't seeing any of it in the temple you're building right now. He said, but it's mine. So what Solomon got when when he shook the nations at that time, the king of Lebanon and the queen of Sheba and all these people were bringing gold, silver, the trees, the stones, all this came to Solomon's temple.
Man, he had 80,000 stonecutters. You can get a lot done with 80,000 stone cutters. And they brought all this and they built the most glorious, but he's saying, once more today, in your lifetime, right now, 2024, I'm gonna shake the heavens and the earth and the desired of the nations are going to come, and with that, I'm gonna build the temple, but I don't desire gold and silver. I don't desire rubies and money. I don't desire those things.
That was only a type in a shadow in the former of what's coming to the new house where I'm gonna fill the glory far greater than Solomon's temple for what I desire of the nations is you. You are the desired of the nations. I desire the people from Africa. I desire the people from Pakistan. I desire the people from India.
I desire the people from Pinellas County, and I I the desired of the nations will come, and you are now living stones, and together the stones are coming together from Clearwater to Louisiana to Pakistan to all over and together the temple is being built and he is filling this latter house with far more glory than Solomon's day. Now turn to your neighbor and say, you are a living stone. You're a living stone. You are the stones of the temple being built on the foundation of the rock of Jesus Christ. Yeah.
Hallelujah. Now, as David John and you guys together work in Pakistan and Uganda, there are wasted, cracked, broken stones there that are coming alive and joining together with you. Amen. Amen. There are broken stones that have been hurt and put down and lied to about false religions that are being shaken and coming alive.
Let me tell you about the once more shake. 19 84, 5, President Ronald Reagan stood and said, Gorbachev, tear this wall down. And the Berlin Wall shook, but not only did the Berlin Wall shake, the whole "iron curtain" shook and the gospel started going behind that iron curtain into Eastern Europe faster than ever before. I'm telling you, whatever needs to shake politically through a war, through an earthquake, through a government crack, through whatever happens, whatever needs to shake will shake. Why?
Because the gospel's gonna go out because there's burnt, struggling, fallen, broken stones there that God needs to wake up, resurrect, and say, don't want you lying in that gutter anymore. Come, I want you to join the house of God and link together, and praise the Lord, God is filling this temple. And the glory of the church, the body of Christ today is far more glorious than Peter's day or Paul's day or any day in the past because you with unveiled faces, not like the face of Moses, are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus with ever increasing glory. So the glory of the church is increasing, not fading. If you hear words on Facebook, Internet, whatever, that's talking about the church declining or the church falling, don't listen, that's the devil.
The church is growing, the church is alive, the church is coming together with more glory than ever before. That's who we are. Hallelujah. So never criticize the bride of Christ. You might get slapped.
Those that were falling away weren't the church. Amen. Well, DJ, I'm done. Thank you, guys.