“I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come" Haggai 2:7

Written by  - Dr. Ray Pritchard, president of Keep Believing Ministries 

“I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come" (Haggai 2:7).

This fascinating verse apparently has a double meaning. It applies first to the rebuilding of the temple by Zerubbabel. In that sense God promises that the wealth of the nations will flow into the temple in Jerusalem. The rest of the verse promises that God will fill the rebuilt temple with his glory. 

Christians have traditionally seen in this verse a foreshadowing of the coming of Christ because Jesus in John 2:20-21 referred to his body as “this temple,” meaning that in his life, death and resurrection, he would fulfill what the temple pictured through its design, its priesthood, its furniture, and its sacrifices. Jesus is the ultimate “Desire of All Nations” and the radiance of God’s glory. What the temple pictured, Christ fulfilled.

But that’s not all. 

When the writer of Hebrews contemplated the coming end of the age, he quoted Haggai 2:6 and applied it to the coming of Christ:

At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:26-27).

That’s what God is doing in our day. He’s shaking the nations–literally!–so that the world will be ready for the coming of Christ. As Christ’s first advent happened “when the time had fully come” (Galatians 4:4), even so his return to the earth will occur when God has prepared everything just as he promised. 

Jesus is the only one who can fulfill the deepest desires of the human heart. As Pascal said, there is a God-shaped vacuum inside every person. If we do not fill the vacuum with God, we are bound to fill it with the the spiritual junk food of this world, but in that case we will never be satisfied. 

The people of the world desire Christ even though they do not know it for he alone can meet their deepest needs. One of the verses of Charles Wesley’s Hark! the Herald Angels Sing contains a verse that mentions this name of Christ (and several others as well). Though rarely sung, it contains deep biblical truth:

Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head. 

Adam’s likeness now efface,
Stamp thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.

The nations will never live in peace until they know Jesus. Can we be at peace while they live without him?

Lord Jesus, while we wait for your return, help us to make you known in every nation. Amen.

You can reach the author at ray@keepbelieving.com. Click here to sign up for the free weekly email sermon.

Are you "Semi-Churched'?

KEVIN DEYOUNG|5:06 AM CT

The Scandal of the Semi-Churched

This is one of those posts I’ve wanted to write for awhile, but I wasn’t sure how to say what I think needs to be said. The danger of legalism and false guilt is very real. But so is the danger of disobedience and self-deception.

I want to talk about church members who attend their home church with great irregularity. These aren’t unchurched folks, or de-churched, or under-churched. They are semi-churched. They show up some of the time, but not every week. They are on again/off again, in and out, here on Sunday and gone for two. That’s the scandal of the semi-churched. In fact, Thom Rainer argues that the number one reason for the decline in church attendance is that church members don’t go to church as often as they used to.

We’ve had Christmas and Easter Christians for probably as long as we’ve had Christmas and Easter. Some people will always be intermittent with their church attendance. I’m not talking about nominal Christians who wander into church once or twice a year. I’m talking about people who went through the trouble of joining a church, like their church, have no particular beef with the church, and still only darken its doors once or twice a month. If there are churches with membership rolls much larger than their average Sunday attendance, they have either under-shepherds derelict in their duties, members faithless in theirs, or both.

I know we are the church and don’t go to church (blah, blah, blah), but being persnickety about our language doesn’t change the exhortation of Hebrews 10:35. We should not neglect to meet together, as some are in the habit of doing. Gathering every Lord’s Day with our church family is one of the pillars of mature Christianity.

So ask yourself a few questions.

1. Have you established church going as an inviolable habit in your family?You know how you wake up in the morning and think “maybe I’ll go on a run today” or “maybe I’ll make french toast this morning”? That’s not what church attendance should be like. It shouldn’t be an “if the mood feels right” proposition. I will always be thankful that my parents treated church attendance (morning and evening) as an immovable pattern. It wasn’t up for discussion. It wasn’t based on extenuating circumstances. It was never a maybe. We went to church. That’s what we did. That made the decision every Sunday a simple one, because their was no real decision. Except for desperate illness, we were going to show up. Giving your family the same kind of habit is a gift they won’t appreciate now, but will usually thank you for later.

2. Do you plan ahead on Saturday so you can make church a priority on Sunday? We are all busy people, so it can be hard to get to church, especially with a house full of kids. We will never make the most of our Sundays unless we prepare for them on Saturday. That likely means finishing homework, getting to bed on time, and foregoing some football. If church is an afterthought, you won’t think of it until after it’s too late.

3. Do you order your travel plans so as to minimize being gone from your church on Sunday? I don’t want to be legalistic with this question. I’ve traveled on Sunday before (though I try to avoid it). I take vacation and study leave and miss 8 or 9 Sundays at URC per year. I understand we live in a mobile culture. I understand people want to visit their kids and grandkids on the weekend (and boy am I thankful when ours come and visit). Gone are the days when people would be in town 50-52 weeks a year. Travel is too easy. Our families are too dispersed. But listen, this doesn’t mean we can’t make a real effort to be around on Sunday. You might want to take Friday off to go visit the kids so you can be back on Saturday night. You might want to think twice about investing in a second home that will draw you away from your church a dozen weekends every year. You might want to re-evaluate your assumption that Friday evening through Sunday evening are yours to do whatever you want wherever you want. It’s almost impossible to grow in love for your church and minister effectively in your church if you are regularly not there.

4. Are you willing to make sacrifices to gather with God’s people for worship every Sunday? “But you don’t expect me to cancel my plans for Saturday night, do you? I can’t possibly rearrange my work schedule. This job requires me to work every Sunday–I’d have to get a new job if I wanted to be regular at church. Sundays are my day to rewind. I won’t get all the yard work done if I go to church every week. My kids won’t be able to play soccer if we don’t go to Sunday games. If my homework is going to be done by Sunday, I won’t be able to chill out Friday night and all day Saturday. Surely God wouldn’t want me to sacrifice too much just so I can show up at church!” Not exactly the way of the cross, is it?

5. Have you considered that you may not be a Christian? Who knows how many people God saves “as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15). Does going to church every week make you a Christian? Absolutely not. Does missing church 35 Sundays a year make you a non-Christian? It does beg the question. God’s people love to be with God’s people. They love to sing praises. They love to feast at the Table. They love to be fed from the Scriptures. Infrequent church attendance–I mean not going anywhere at all–is a sign of immaturity at best and unbelief at worst. For whenever God calls people out of darkness he calls them into the church. If the Sunday worship service is the community of the redeemed, what does your weekly pattern suggest to God about where you truly belong?

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Hmmm... Stretching...

JUSTIN TAYLOR|7:00 AM CT

Does God Listen to Rap?

Recently a panel answered a question on reformed rap. Brent Hobbs has offered a transcript of the answers offered, along with a nice response to each of the arguments. (See also the responses from Owen Strachan and Mike Cosper.)

For those wanting to explore these issues further—and in my opinion, in a more biblically faithful way than the panelists offered—should consider picking up Curt Allen’s new book,Does God Listen to Rap? Christians and the World’s Most Controversial Music(Cruciform, 2013).

You can read the first chapter here.

And here’s a little video introduction for why you should consider this book:

  

 

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Pastoring a Sending Church: An Interview with Pat Hood

Pat Hood explains what it is like to pastor a "sending church." |Ed Stetzer

Pat Hood is the Senior Pastor at LifePoint Church located at various campuses throughout the Nashville area, and is the author of The Sending Church, which is due out in October.The Sending Church is made up of examples from his own congregation, showing how a church isn't really a church until it leaves the building and expands God's Kingdom in the local neighborhood and around the world.

I had the opportunity to ask Pat a little bit more about his church and how they have transformed into a "sending church" over time.

Tell me about some unique things your church is doing in outreach.

I don't know if we do anything that's really "unique." I would describe our outreach as "simple." I think Jesus' was too. He simply told his disciples, to "Go, make disciples." That's what we teach our people. We challenge them to live sent lives in every domain of their life. We tell our people that we have no marketing campaign. We don't blanket the community with fliers. We don't rent billboards. We tell our people they are the--> Click Here

Is Your Church A Messy Church Or Pretending Church?

Someone asked me how things were going recently. It’s not really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (‘good’ or ‘bad’) question. Life in our congregation is messy. People have a wide variety of problems and many of those problems are out on the table. Are things going well when one of your members has been hauled out of a pub in drunken state? When people admit problems in their marriage? When several people are struggling with depression? And I could go on. Actually I think the answer can be ‘Yes, things are going well’. A key verse for me in recent years has been the first beautitude which I paraphrase as: ‘Blessed are the broken people for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ To working with broken people is to be where God’s blessing is found. I do not rejoice in people’s problems, but I do rejoice that I am working among... Continue reading.

Missionaries to the United States

What about missions over here... in the United States? What does it look like?

Are we doing this to our own people here in the states?

When Pastors and Churches Reject Mission

A man leaves a small village and started his journey to Quito, Ecuador.  He has to walk for 8 hours, catch a small plane for a two-hour flight, and then get on a bus for 10 hours.  He arrives at the big city and begins searching for someone to take up the work he’s been doing with a couple of Shuar Indian Tribes in the Jungle.  His name is José and he has high hopes that he will find someone with a heart for mission, someone with who’s willing to “go the extra mile” to bring the good news, and someone who can continue the work of making disciples.  He spends a few days in Quito visiting various churches and speaking with many Pastors, but finds no one who is even disposed to entertain the idea.
José leaves the big city of Quito having been rejected by every church and every pastor.  They send him to “The Camp.”  The Camp is the area where we work.  The camp is very rural, peppered with poverty, and often inconvenient for daily living... continue