Why the Second Temple’s Glory Was Greater Than Solomon’s (Haggai 2:6–9)

Years ago I told my mentor, Barry Branaman, that there were three temples. He disagreed with me, so I opened my study Bible and showed him the note: Solomon built the first, the returning exiles built the second, and Herod built the third. Barry shook his head and said Herod never built a third temple; he simply enlarged the one that was already standing. He was right, and that small correction opened up something I have never gotten over. It is the key to understanding why the second temple's glory was greater than the glory of Solomon's magnificent house, even though the men who built it wept when they saw what they had made.
Count the temples for yourself and the confusion grows. Scripture points to a rebuilt temple during the tribulation, which would make four. Ezekiel gives the dimensions of a temple during the Millennium, which would make five. So how many temples are there? The answer, believe it or not, is one. Every one of them is the same house, on the same mountain, at the same address, and one Person keeps showing up there.
https://youtu.be/0OB2hVKwUNQ
Table of contentsThere Has Always Been Only One TempleJesus Appeared on Moriah to Abraham and IsaacThe Ram in Isaac's PlaceJesus Appeared on Moriah with DavidGod Will Shake Everything That Can Be Shaken"The Silver Is Mine, and the Gold Is Mine"The One Thing Missing When the Foundation Was LaidThe Desire of All Nations Would ComeWhy the Second Temple's Glory Was GreaterJesus Gives Peace on MoriahOne Mountain, One House, One Person
There Has Always Been Only One Temple
Let me give you the scriptural support before I explain the significance. Look back a few verses in the passage we have been walking through:
Haggai 2:3 — "Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?"
How many houses are mentioned in that verse? One. God does not ask, "Who saw the former temple, and how does it compare to this new one?" He does not ask them to hold the first temple up against the second. He asks how this house looks now, because in His reckoning there is only one house to look at.
The same thing happens at the end of the paragraph:
Haggai 2:9 — "The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts."
God does not say the latter temple will be greater than the former temple. He says the latter glory of this house will be greater than its former glory. One building, two seasons of glory.
Why does God talk this way? Because it is one house on one mountain, and that mountain has a history. So when you think about the temple, do not think only about a building. Think about a location. God had that location in mind before Israel ever crossed the Jordan:
Deuteronomy 12:5 — "You shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there."
Six times in that chapter God says the place. Not a place. He had one address picked out, and this morning we are going to visit it three times, because Christ visited it three times.
Jesus Appeared on Moriah to Abraham and Isaac
Genesis 22:1-2 — "After these things God tested Abraham... 'Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.'"
We know what the test was: whether Abraham would give up his son. But notice that Abraham could have passed that test in his own backyard, and God would not allow it. Abraham was in Beersheba, and Moriah was fifty miles away. Three days of walking, with a boy and a bundle of firewood and a knife. God did not only choose a son. He chose a place.
If you write in your Bible, circle the word Moriah, draw a line, and write 2 Chronicles 3:1, which tells us Moriah is the mountain in Jerusalem where the temple was built.
Then, with the knife in the air, a voice interrupts:
Genesis 22:11-12 — "But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven... 'Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.'"
Read that slowly, because the pronouns are doing something remarkable. We would expect the angel to say, "You fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son from Him," or "You fear Me, seeing you have not withheld your son from Me." Instead He speaks about God and then identifies Himself as the One the sacrifice was being offered to. He does that because He is God. The Angel of the Lord is the pre-incarnate Christ, the Son of God before Bethlehem. That is why He appears all through the Old Testament and seems to vanish in the New. He did not vanish. He came as a Man.
The Ram in Isaac's Place
Genesis 22:13 — "And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son."
Circle "instead of his son" and write two words in the margin: substitutionary atonement. It is one of the clearest pictures of it in the Old Testament. One died so the other could walk down the mountain alive.
Now watch what Abraham names the place:
Genesis 22:14 — "So Abraham called the name of that place, 'The Lord will provide'; as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.'"
At first that makes no sense. God had just provided the ram, so we would expect Abraham to call it "The Lord has provided." Instead he uses the future tense, and four hundred years later, when Moses wrote it down, people were still saying it in the future tense: it shall be provided. Abraham was not looking back at the ram. He was looking ahead to something else God would provide on this mountain. He had already said so on the way up:
Genesis 22:8 — "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son."
God provided a ram that day, but Abraham was waiting on a lamb. And if you want to hear something astonishing, Abraham knew who that Lamb would be:
John 8:56 — "Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad."
Rejoicing to see Christ's day could mean nothing more than looking forward to the promises being fulfilled. But Jesus went further and said Abraham saw it. When? On this mountain, in a veiled and shadowy way, while he was raising a knife over his own son, Abraham glimpsed the true and greater reality: a Father who would give His Son on this same ground two thousand years later.
Jesus Appeared on Moriah with David
Move forward roughly a thousand years to the same address.
1 Chronicles 21:1 — "Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel."
We are not told exactly why the census was sinful. I suspect it was David trusting numbers instead of trusting the Lord, or claiming ownership of a people who belonged to God and not to him. Perhaps it was both. Whatever it was, it was sin, a plague fell, seventy thousand men died, and then the Angel of the Lord turned toward Jerusalem:
1 Chronicles 21:15 — "And God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, but as he was about to destroy it, the Lord saw, and he relented from the calamity. And he said to the angel who was working destruction, 'It is enough; now stay your hand.' And the angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite."
This is the same Angel from Genesis 22. The same Person, on the same mountain, a thousand years later. God told David that for the plague to stop he must build an altar on that threshing floor, so David bought it, built the altar, and offered sacrifices, and God answered him with fire from heaven. Fire falling on a sacrifice happens only a handful of times in all of Scripture, and every time it marks something enormous. Here it marks a location. God was signing His name on that piece of ground.
1 Chronicles 21:27 — "Then the Lord commanded the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath."
Now set the two accounts side by side and follow the pattern:
The same location: Moriah, in Jerusalem.
The same Person: the Angel of the Lord.
The same raised hand: Abraham's over Isaac, the Angel's over the city.
The same voice from heaven: "Do not lay your hand on the boy," and, "It is enough; now stay your hand."
The same rescue: a ram offered instead of Isaac, sacrifices offered instead of the people.
And this is where God chose to put His house:
1 Chronicles 22:1 — "Then David said, 'Here shall be the house of the Lord God and here the altar of burnt offering for Israel.'"
David could not build it, because of the blood he had shed, so his son Solomon did:
2 Chronicles 3:1 — "Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father, at the place that David had appointed, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite."
That one verse ties the whole knot. Abraham's mountain, David's threshing floor, and Solomon's temple all share an address. One mountain. One house. And for the next thousand years, every morning and evening sacrifice was offered on the exact spot where a father's hand was stopped and an angel's sword was sheathed. Which means the rubble those old men were weeping over in Haggai's day was sitting on the holiest ground in redemptive history. And God was not finished with it.
God Will Shake Everything That Can Be Shaken
Now we can turn back to Haggai, where the returned exiles are standing in a half-built house with empty pockets, and everything above was the introduction:
Haggai 2:6 — "For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land."
"Yet once more" means there was a first time, and there was:
Exodus 19:18 — "......