Haggai 2:9 Commentary and Bible Study

It will be greater in every sense. The glory of the church in New Testament days is far, far greater than the glory of the temple. Really? Greater than Solomon's temple which had the Shekinah cloud, and the Ark of the Covenant, and the glory of the Lord in the holy place? Yes, far greater, because under the church, the glory of the Lord is not confined to one physical place on earth, the holy place. It is in the hearts of every believer, and of churches of true believers all over the world. The glory and the power of the church of Jesus Christ will be vastly more glorious than any physical symbolic temple could ever be.The believers in Israel rightly reasoned that since God is the God of all the earth and his power is unlimited, it is inconsistent with his glory that it should be reduced in any way. It was therefore inconsistent with his glory that the second Tabernacle should be smaller, less glorious, than the first. But God’s answer is that he, the Lord, is doing something which they have not yet understood. He is still doing glorious things, but they are so different to what his Old Testament people were familiar with that they were hard to understand. Once they were properly understood, they would indeed see something more glorious than had ever been seen before. The tabernacle that Christ would bring would be far greater than the first tabernacle built by Moses, and greater than the first temple built by Solomon, and this second smaller temple.The trouble was that the discouragement that they would feel on seeing how small the temple would be, was due to the fact that they thought the temple was everything. The temple was significant, but it was not everything. It was only a symbol; it was only a picture. Nothing that happened in the temple was efficacious in taking away sin or in the salvation of souls. It was very important, but it was only a picture intended to teach them and to point to things to come. The message here is going to be, ‘You have got to look beyond the physical building of the temple and consider what it stands for.’ The temple is a prophecy of the perfect temple that will come, that is Christ, and the church that he will bring about in the gospel age. The church is also called in the New Testament, the temple of God, for we are ‘the house of God’, we read in Hebrews 10:21. Christ, and his church, are the true temple and the physical temple, is only a depiction of this. The reality is of course much more glorious than the depiction.