At the time of the exile the promise does not cease. It goes, as it were, underground, and all those guys in Matthew 1:12–15, in the genealogy of Jesus, we have never heard anything about them after Zerubbabel. We do not really know anything about any of those guys; it is all underground. But Joseph is in that line of king David, and therefore Jesus is the legal heir of king David and of Zerubbabel. And the promise at the end of Haggai is fulfilled in Jesus, the King, who is as it were God’s signet ring.
And therefore, if we are going to be consistent Christians, we are called to be rebels. We live in a world which is in rebellion against God and we are called to rebel against the rebels. And it is a tough thing to do, because the King we are following, if we are following King Jesus, is not recognized by our world. In the days of the Soviet Union, someone I know made friends with a persecuted dissident poet and playwright in communist Czechoslovakia. Other dissidents knew of him, but he was a man who was harried by the secret police and it was quite hard to visit him. You had to sort of dodge the secret police to see him. His name was Vaclav Havel. One day in 1989, quite suddenly this man, who was really a nobody, became the President of Czechoslovakia. It was not easy to befriend him when he was an outsider and a nobody, but now he is a somebody. It is a little bit like that with the Lord Jesus Christ: that at present to most people he is a nobody and to be friends with him is not going to give you any credits, no credit for acknowledging him to be our King, but one day he will be recognized. I want to encourage us to be rebels.
In the eighteenth century, some people, especially in the Scottish Highlands, used to secretly drink a toast to the king over the water, by which they did not mean the king in London; they meant one of the Jacobite pretenders of bonnie Prince Charlie, or whoever it was at the time in exile of Continental Europe: the king over the water. It is a little bit like that for a Christian. We live in a world ruled by rebels and we are to rebel against the rebels. We are to drink a toast to, as it were, and follow in the footsteps of, the King who is in exile. But one day he will be coming back. I want to encourage us with that at the end of Haggai: that the powers that seem so strong, seeking to squeeze us into their mold, are not as strong as they seem. And the King who seems so weak is actually the rightful King, and one day will be fully King of heaven and earth.1
Christopher Ash
23 On that day, declares the LORD of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel my servant, the son of Shealtiel, declares the LORD, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the LORD of hosts.”