Humanity has tried everything to fix itself and failed. The one thing we never managed to arrange, God did Himself: He came.
Long before Jesus was born, the prophet Haggai spoke a promise that every hungry heart in every generation has been waiting to hear.
For thus says the LORD of hosts: “Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,” says the LORD of hosts.
Haggai 2:6-7 (NKJV)
The Desire of All Nations. In every culture and every age since the fall in the Garden, humanity has been reaching for something we could not name and could not reach. And we have tried everything to get there on our own.
Everything we tried failed
We tried construction. We built our towers of Babel, and the very things we built ended up dividing us, turning brother against brother and nation against nation, until scarcity set in and we fought each other to grab more.
We tried religion. We called on gods of iron and sun and water and land, and the gods turned us against one another until we were killing each other in their names.
We tried leadership. We handed our power to kings and rulers and strong men, and again and again the ones we lifted up used that power to hurt us, to divide us, to crush us.
So in every place and every nation, humanity keeps arriving at the same conclusion: unless God Himself, the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-just, all-good, all-kind God, actually shows up, we have no hope. Ask people in Nigeria what will finally fix that nation and they will tell you only God can. Look honestly at America, at how the rich get richer and the poor poorer, at what is happening in struggling communities, and you know the answer is not a Democrat or a Republican. God Himself must show up. Everywhere you look, the problems are God-sized.
And it is true in your own small world too. Your health, your children, your relationships. In your own way you need a God-sized solution. You need God to come.
And then He came
This is exactly what Haggai's prophecy was pointing to: that God, the Desire of all nations in all ages, would come, and the nations would come to Him. And that prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus came. When Jesus came, God came.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth... No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God... has made him known.
John 1:14, 18 (NIV)
Isaiah had said the same thing almost two hundred years before Haggai, calling out good news to a frightened people: say to those with fearful hearts, be strong, do not fear, your God will come. He will come to save you. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the lame will leap like a deer, and streams will break out in the desert. So here is the gospel, the good news, in one line: because God has come, my life, your life, and the life of our nations can and must be radically different.
The blind can see and find their way home
Jesus met a man born blind, made mud, and sent him to wash. The man came home seeing. Like that man, we are all born blind, born into darkness, completely confused about how to do life. We do not know how to choose whom to marry, where to work, where to live, or how to live. Up looks like down and down looks like up.
But because God has come, you can finally figure out how to do life properly. Your life can have purpose and meaning again. If you feel lost and blind today, hear this: God has come for you. Jesus said, “I have come to seek and to save all who are lost.” Every place you have been groping in confusion, light has come for you to see.
The sick and afflicted can be healed
When Jesus came down the mountainside, a leper knelt before Him and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” Jesus reached out, touched him, and said, “I am willing. Be clean.” That day He healed a leper, a centurion's paralyzed servant, and Peter's mother-in-law, and by evening He had driven out spirits and healed all who were sick.
This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
Matthew 8:17 (NIV)
For this very purpose the Son of God was made manifest, to destroy the works of the devil. The Scripture says God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and power, and He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. Are you afflicted in your body or your mind? Have people told you that you are too far gone to be helped? Here is the good news: God has come, and because God has come, you can be healed and delivered in every place the enemy has afflicted you.
The dead can live again
Jesus once walked up to the gate of a town called Nain just as a funeral was leaving it, a widow burying her only son. He had compassion on her.
Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother.
Luke 7:14-15 (NKJV)
The crowd understood exactly what they were seeing. They were filled with awe and said, “God has come to help His people.” When sin entered the world, death came with it. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. And we do not become dead because we sin; we sin because we are dead. But like that young man being carried out to be buried, we who were dead have had God come to make us alive again. Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly.”
Is your marriage dead? Your business? Your career? Your walk with God? Weep not. Because God has come, everything dead can live again.
He came, and He never left
So now that God has come, what next? When He came the first time, just as Haggai promised, He shook the heavens and the earth. The religious powers and the political powers conspired with spiritual powers to do the unthinkable: to kill God.
Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves... Against the LORD and against His Anointed... He who sits in the heavens shall laugh.
Psalm 2:1-4 (NKJV)
God laughed at them, and He allowed Himself to be killed. If they had understood, they never would have done it, because three days later He rose from the grave, never to die again. And that changes everything. God has not only come; He remained. He never left. He is Jehovah Shammah, the God who is there. He is here right now, alive, wherever you happen to be.
So if right now you feel lost, God is here to open your eyes and show you the way home. If right now you are afflicted, He is here to heal you and make you whole. If right now you have tasted death in some corner of your life, He is here to give it life. Just as people did then, you can do now. Receive Him. Give Him a chance. Come to Him and touch the hem of His garment. Because God has come, and is still here, your life can and must be radically different.