Haggai 2:6-7 For thus said the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea… The words of the original do not refer at all to Messiah, but to the glory of the second temple, which was then being erected and into which it is foretold the riches of the Gentiles should be brought. The words may, however, be used as the motto of a sermon. Can the words, "the Desire of all nations," be justifiably employed in regard to our Lord? None of the names of Christ is more appropriate. The Messiah has always been the Desire of all nations. More or less vaguely a Christ was universally hoped for and expected. How noble a conception we obtain of the relation between an universal Saviour and universal need! I. CHRIST IS THE WORLD'S GRAND IDEAL, FOR WHOM IT WAITED, AND IN WHOM IT HOPED. It is a historical fact that all nations have desired to see such a person as our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice three ideas in which this desire to reconcile man to God became embodied. 1. There grew up the doctrine, or tradition, asserting the union of God and man in one person. The doctrine of the Incarnation is not peculiar to Christianity. 2. The belief that there would come a time of familiarity between God and man. 3. That there would come, or had come, a perfect God-man to better the condition of the human race in this world, and to teach them about the next. Whole races have believed that certain men were heaven-sent prophets, Divine teachers. Heathen records show that birth from a pure virgin has been attributed to several of these founders of religion. This is related both of Buddha and of Zoroaster. The story of Osiris is even more remarkable. He is represented as visiting the earth, suffering and dying, and rising again to become judge of quick and dead. II. CHRIST IS FITLY SPOKEN OF AS THE "DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS," BECAUSE HIS WORK IS SUCH AS MEN HOPED TO SEE PERFORMED. 1. The world hoped that One would come who should establish justice, peace, and truth in the earth. It was such a moral kingdom that Jesus came to found. 2. The world was craving deliverance from powers of evil to which they felt themselves to be in bondage. 3. Men longed for some means of securing pardon of sin. Consider a summary of the theory of sacrifice among the heathen, and see how it points, in company with the Mosaic system, to the Lamb of Calvary. (1) In this act they symbolically offered up themselves. (2) It was necessary that the life of the victim should be taken, and the blood must be shed, for "the blood is the life." Life for life is the first principle of the theory of sacrifice. (3) The victim must be faultless when brought to the altar. (4) More noteworthy still is the fact that sacrifice meant the giving up of that which was valued and beloved. These views with regard to sacrifice have prevailed almost universally. The faultless and treasured offering was to appease the wrath of heaven. It scarcely needs that I remind you how precisely our blessed Lord is the embodiment of this phase of the world's faith. 4. The world longed to see harmony and peace restored in place of the discords of human life, and in place of apparent incongruities in the natural world. Men saw so much around them that was problematical. Human life was so strange a puzzle. "There shall come," wrote a Persian prophet, a "righteous King, whose reign shall be universal. At His advent, poison and poisonous weeds and ravenous beasts shall be expelled from the earth, tie shall make streams break forth in the desert, and there shall be no more a hot simoom. The bodies of men shall be unsubstantial, and shall cast no shadows. They shall need no food to sustain their life. That King shall cast out for ever poverty, sickness, old age, and death." What but the work of our King can fulfil such aspirations? Some argue against the triumph of Christianity, But Christ shall surely triumph; not one tittle of prophecy shall pass till all be fulfilled. But not as we expect may it come about. God's way of governing the world differs very widely from our very rational-looking theories of how it ought to be done. (Edwin Dukes.) Parallel Verses KJV: For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; |
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