Haggai 2:9

‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty.”

From Background Notes [BN] for September 8^th & 9^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

According to Haggai, the future glory of the temple will be greater than its past glory. He is saying to his fellow Jews, “Your best days are still to come.” There is no reason to suppose that the future must resemble the past. Indeed, the old temple, built by Solomon, had become the symbol of a highly corrupt regime, staffed by king and high priest.

Far from bringing glory to God, the old temple became part of a royal complex occupied by the king’s palace and a growing bureaucracy. Solomon was the prime accumulator, both of power and wealth. His kingdom represented a fatal compromise, a fatal embrace, between the sacred and the secular. If there was glory in Jerusalem’s temple, then it came from human achievement and not from the gracious presence of God. Attention quickly shifted from a society where there was to be “no poor among you,” to the concentration of capital in the hands of the urban elite. No wonder the prophets shed no tears over the loss of the old temple. In its place a new temple must rise, founded on old foundations stripped to the bare essentials, yet hopeful that God would fill His house with incomparable wealth and His glory.  [BN, 11]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm