Our sovereign God overthrows kingdoms

Haggai says, look how sovereign God is. That is the first thing: how sovereign God is. Notice what he said to Zerubbabel in Haggai 2:21–22:

I want to shake the heavens and the earth. I shall overthrow the throne of kingdoms. I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations, and overthrow the chariots and its riders.

You say it sounds very quaint - chariot and horses. If he had said flamethrowers and tanks and missiles and stealth bombers, the folks back then would not have understood. If you want to substitute that kind of weaponry, the point is the same: that the Lord is the One who is not just the God of this little people who have run into Judah, but little Israel's God is a majestic sovereign God. Look how sovereign God is: He shakes nations and kingdoms; he overthrows the throne of kingdoms. He is the Lord of the whole earth. That was the first thing that the Lord showed Zerubbabel.

That is often where the living God begins, to comfort not just Zerubbabel, but to comfort any of his people when they are in despair and downcast. You remember what it was that the Lord tried to show to Judah, when the prophet Isaiah was trying to minister comfort to them in Isaiah 40? He came to a despairing people, and what was part of what the Lord said through Isaiah to Judah? Look how sovereign God is, in Isaiah 40:15 and following.  He said,

the nations are like a drop in a bucket, like dust on the scales;
….all the nations are as nothing before him;
they are counted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

Yes indeed, Zerubbabel, Persia seems to be the head hawk in the international scene right now, but if you see that I am the One about to shake heaven and earth, I am the One who will overthrow the throne of kingdoms - that ought to put Persia into perspective for you, Zerubbabel. And though the prophet Isaiah comes to a despairing, discouraged people who think that their God has cast them off, he tries to get them to see how big their God is, in relation to how puny the nations are. Indeed, he goes on to say in Isaiah 40, that God reduces princes to nothing.  He annihilates the rulers of the world:

scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them and they wither
and the storm carries them off like straw.
Look how sovereign he is!

And it is not just arrogant monarchs like Nebuchadnezzar who need to hear this (Daniel 4:17)—not just the monarchs in their pageantry who need to hear it, but all the Lord's people need to realize afresh what God said to Nebuchadnezzar through Daniel: that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he will, and he sets over it the lowliest of men. God's people need to remember that after coups and elections, whenever they occur, this is the sovereign God of Zerubbabel and of God's people.¹

Dale Ralph Davis