Haggai is exhorting us to be encouraged and you will be encouraged: you will be strong. Consider the peace you need to know. Haggai is very emphatic, saying, and in this place [this temple site here in Jerusalem] I will give peace, says Yahweh of hosts (Haggai 2:9). The Revised Standard Version has prosperity and that is okay, but the word that is usually translated here is peace; and in this place I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts. What kind of peace is it? Notice that it is a peace that comes after God shakes the nations (Haggai 2:6–9). He shakes the nations in judgment. He imposes justice on the nations and then there is peace. That is the biblical way. You do not have peace evolving in the world through some social process. You do not have the United Nations making a resolution that brings universal peace. And there will only be lasting peace when God puts things right, and justice is enforced, and then there is peace. Sometimes you hear politicians quoting from Isaiah 2:1–22 or from Micah 4:1–13, where it says, and they (the nations) shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore, and they throw that out as a kind of a flourish in a political speech. But do they read the first part of the verse? What does it say there? It says, He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide for strong nations afar off, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares. What is he saying? He is saying that God, the Lord, brings justice and judgment upon the nations and among the nations. And when He puts things right in the world, then there will be this kind of ongoing peace. It is what it said of the Messiah in Zechariah 9:10 - He will command peace to the nations. but in what context? Well, after He cuts off the chariots and the war horses and the battle bow, when the Messiah puts down his and his people's enemies, then there will be peace. You see, peace has to begin in judgment. Things have to be put right. It is established in justice and it results in security. Now, that is the peace that he has in mind here: this peace that comes after God puts the nations right and judges the nations and shakes the nations. It comes in that context.
But there is something more here. I think in the light of what Jesus Christ has done for us, it is proper to look at the end of Haggai 2:9, that peace is also available for our experience. Notice what he says: and in this place, I will give peace. How can you have that peace in the last days that brings total security? How can you have it already? Because Jesus Christ has already inaugurated that peace for us in this place. Do you remember what happened in Luke chapter 2 forty days after Jesus had been born and his parents came to the temple - in this place - and they offered the sacrifice? And can you not see how the glory began to come on this temple already when the only Son of God was taken into the temple courts. And not only that, but peace began to go from this place. Do you remember what it says in Matthew 27:1–66? At the very moment Jesus died, it says the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Jesus in his death, it was signified in the temple, that he shattered the barrier between God and man and established peace, and he began that last-day peace from that place; in this place I will give peace.1
Dale Ralph Davis
9 La gloire de cette dernière maison sera plus grande Que celle de la première, Dit l'Eternel des armées; Et c'est dans ce lieu que je donnerai la paix, Dit l'Eternel des armées.