We all remember the famous scene in the movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costener, when he is walking out in the corn fields one afternoon and hears a voice whispering, "if you build it, He will come". The main actor then discovers that this voice is calling him to build a baseball field out in his back yard and draws in all the dead greats of baseball to play there. How does this have anything to do with Haggai? Well, Haggai communicated God's message to the Israelites who had returned from exile in Babylon and the message was quite similar. If God's people re-build God's temple, He promised to come in an even more powerful and glorious way than with the first temple (Hag.1:8, 2:9). God's promise to the Jews here was a promise that His presence would be among them in a very real way when they re-built the temple.
So what's the big deal with the Temple in the Old Testament and why does it play such a major role? The temple was more than a building where God's people could come together. The temple was more importantly a symbol of God's presence among and with His people. However, just like any structure in the Old Testament, God was using it to point toward something beyond itself…a reality that literally change the course of history forever. The author of Hebrews writes about the entire sacrificial system with its bloody goats and complicated rituals and then adds how these are all, "a copy and shadow of the heavenly things" (8:5) and "a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities" (10:1). So as important as the temple was to God and to God's people, it was not the end-all-be-all. The physical temple pointed toward a day when God's presence would dwell among His people in the person of Christ Jesus and ultimately would indwell His people by the Holy Spirit. In fact, when John begins his gospel account of Jesus, he states in 1:14 that Jesus, "made His dwelling among us", the word literally meaning 'tabernacled'. John is saying that Jesus is the true Temple of God and that God has come to dwell with His people in the person of Christ Jesus. Jesus even said of Himself in John 2:19-22, "…Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up…". So we see it finds its fulfillment in Jesus.
So when God speaks through Haggai to the returned Jewish exiles, He states, "The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former" (Hag. 2:9). Even the glory of this new temple the people were re-building was not too glorious and didn't last forever, but the temple God was referring to was the sending of His only Son to die on the cross for sinners and raise again 3 days later. It was this event of Jesus' coming; His life, death, resurrection, and ascension that was truly more glorious than any stone walls or ornate columns.
In Haggai's account, the people re-build the temple and still left looking forward in anticipation when God promised to overthrow all the kingdoms of this world and set up His King forever. In Haggai's day, God spoke to Zerubbabel and promised this son of David that he would be God's chosen servant to fulfill His task (Hag. 2:20-23). The term God used to speak to Zerubbabel was "my servant"; a clearly Messianic term. Was God confused about who He was calling His servant? No, but He rather was helping us to see that it would be through the Son of David, King Jesus, that God's presence would finally be with us. This temple imagery also prepares us for the way Paul says we're to be "the temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). How can Jesus and us be the temple? Because Jesus indwells believers by His Spirit so that God's presence not only is among them and with them, but also is inside of them.
So here's the question for us: By the way we talk, by the way we treat our spouse's, by the way we work, and by the way we live life….is God's presence flowing out of us to others? When people are around us do they sense the presence of God within us? If you've been born again, you are truly the living and breathing temple of God to others. Praise the Lord, though the temple of Christ's body was torn down, He was raised from the dead three days later never to die again.
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