THE FAITHFUL LOVE OF GOD - Malachi 1:2-5

The Setting of Malachi and Israel’s Spiritual Apathy

As the guys are still coming through with the offering plates, go ahead and open up your copy of God's Word to the Old Testament book of Malachi. We're in week two of our study through this Old Testament minor prophet.

If you don't know where Malachi is, go to the beginning of the New Testament, Matthew, and then jump back into the Old Testament. And there you are. It's the very last book in the Old Testament, Malachi.

And we're going to be there in chapter one. And we're going to look at the first five verses. Last week, we saw an introduction. We got to look at verse one. But let's start reading there in verse one on through the fifth verse here of Malachi's book.

He says, the oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi, I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, how have you loved us? It's not Esau, Jacob's brother, declares the Lord. Yet, I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.

I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert. If Edom says we are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins, the Lord of hosts says they may build, but I will tear down and they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever.

Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel. This is the reading of God's word, God's holy, inspired, perfect word. So please bow with me once again. Let's go to the Lord and seek help in understanding and clearly applying his clear, wonderful, precise truth.

Dear heavenly father, we bow before you once again today. We thank you that we've gotten to worship you. We've been able to sing of your love. We've been able to sing of how that love is applied and holding us fast.

We've been able to sing of your holiness that sets you apart. You are altogether separate from your creation. But then showing us your love by entering into your creation, redeeming us, buying us back.

Father, we pray this morning that as we have looked at your word so far, that as we proclaim your word from here forward, God, I pray that it would be an accurate summary of your truth and that it would penetrate into our hearts and minds.

Father, give me boldness. Father, give me clarity of thought. Father, allow those that are here this morning to hear the truth without distraction and that it would be then applied to our lives, that you would awaken our souls to your great love, to your goodness, your kindness in our lives.

Father, Lord, bring about revival in our hearts. God, we ask this morning that you would awaken our spirits to the truth, that we would be hungry for the truth, that we have, many of us have already tasted and seen that you are good, Lord, but that you would use this word this morning to refresh our souls.

We thank you for it. Be honored in our worship through preaching today, God. In Christ's name, amen. Well, last week, I gave you a flyover, really, view of this book of Malachi, an introduction and a bit of a historical context of this Old Testament minor prophet wherein we introduced to you this little-known prophet Malachi and the state of the people of Israel during Malachi's time and how they had come out of exile once again, like the people of Israel find themselves in and out, in and out, and they've come out of exile.

They've seen the rebuilding of the temple that had been destroyed. However, they've yet to experience what the prophets Haggai and Zechariah had told them would happen. They had encouraged them, remember, to build the temple.

Let's rebuild. Let's go back and let's rebuild the temple. And when we do, they had encouraged the people when they did that, once again, to experience prosperity, expansion, peace, and then most importantly, the presence of God returning to the temple where he would dwell with the people.

Essentially, as we said, the covenant blessings over the nation. And here they are with a rebuilt temple. It's happened. But instead, they find themselves struggling economically, obtaining only a fraction of their lands that had been promised to them.

Judah is no longer even a nation. They no longer even have a Davidic king there in Israel. And worst of all, the presence of God has not returned to the temple as they thought. Yet, even in the midst of all of this, they are still going through the motions.

They're carrying out the temple sacrifices, as we saw last week. They are following through with all these rituals that had been passed out down to them from the law of Moses, and then on to these traditions as a people, all the while forgetting what those sacrifices and rituals were pointing to.

They're pointing to the faithful promises of God. They had forgotten that. And subsequently, they had fallen into spiritual apathy, right? Into a spiritual coldness, a spiritual indifference. They had forgotten about the goodness of God.

And this led them to rob God through their tithes. You know, they were following through with the rituals and the traditions and all of that stuff, but they were only halfway doing it because their heart wasn't with them.

And they were withholding their tithes from God the way they should. They would bring their sickly leftover animals for sacrifice. They treated their covenant with God and following the covenant with their wives.

With just reckless abandonment. To not pursue justice. They were blaming God for not being just and not dealing with the wicked out there, but they themselves were not living in a life of justice and carrying out justice among their people.

Essentially, they're going through the motions of religiosity. That sounds familiar, doesn't it? Just going through the motions of, well, here's my checklist. This is just what we do. This is just how we live.

These are the things that we go through. We today, we do that. Many of us grew up here in the South, so we grew up going to church. This is what you did. It's just, it's something that's habit now. And you just, you go to church.

You give a little money to the church. You do all the seemingly right things. Yet, here they are living their lives no different from the pagan nations. They may have looked different on the outside at some level, but they were living just as wickedly as those without God.

And so, God, what does he do? He sends a messenger, as he always does. Praise God, he doesn't leave us to ourselves in those moments. He sends a messenger, Malachi. Remember, that's what his name is, my messenger.

And he starts off with, God just sends Malachi. He comes in, he walks over to the people. And what does he do? He says, thus saith the Lord, what are you idiots doing? Do better, be better, or I'm going to wipe you out.

I've told you what to do. I've given you the law of Moses. I've given you the rules and the regulations. I've told you how you're supposed to live. And you keep failing me time and time again. Let's be honest for a second.

That's how we think God should have responded, isn't it? We see the people of Israel. Come on, guys. You ever read the Old Testament? You're like, come on. The people of Israel, like they're delivered out of Egypt.

And then they immediately in the desert start building a golden calf. And you go, come on, guys. Like, really? Like, you guys deserve God to just a swift kick. Like, he's just got to be done with you.

And if we're totally honest with ourselves, I don't know if you're like me. That's how I often feel and expect God to respond to me. Whenever I fall into spiritual apathy, whenever I fall into sin, I feel like God should respond to me.

Like, you know what, Nathan? I'm done. I gave you chance after chance. I'm kind of sick of this. I've given you everything you need for life and godliness. You're not even paying attention to it. Because you know inside when you fall into that, that our hearts haven't been with him.

We may have carried out the motions. I showed up to church. I may even have showed up and preached one Sunday. I showed up to church. I did the motions, but my heart isn't with him. I've dishonored him with my thoughts and my actions and my speech.

I've dishonored him and how I've treated other image bearers. I've dishonored him and how I've restrained what is already his thinking that it's mine. I've dishonored him in so many ways. And now I'm just waiting for God to smite me.

You ever felt like that? Maybe I'm the only one to be like, you know what, Nathan?

I'm done.

I've given you chance after chance. But that's not how he starts off, thank goodness with us. But particularly here in our text, that's not how he starts off in Malachi, is it?

What does he do?

He sends a messenger into this people that is just total spiritual apathy. They've been robbing him. They've been giving him the leftover animals for sacrifice. They've been cheating on their wives and going and marrying foreign women.

They've been just denouncing the covenant with him all together through their lifestyle. And God sends Malachi, my messenger in. And how does he start? He says, I have loved you. It's different than how we think he should approach us.

By the way, this phrase is not in the past tense as it seems. This is in a present ongoing active tense. What this means is God is saying, I have loved you. I still love you. And I will continue to love you because my love for you is everlasting and unchanging.

God's gonna call them to right living. He's gonna call them to the obedience to his commands. He doesn't just leave them in their disobedience and in their sin, he disciplines them. But here's what we miss about that discipline so often.

It always begins with and flows from his perfect, everlasting, faithful love. In the New Testament, John told us over in 1 John 4, 19, you know the passage. It says, we love because he first loved us.

There is no creation without his love. None of this exists without his love. And there's certainly no child of God. None of us in here are children of God without his love. The scripture says that God is love.

It doesn't say he does love, which it does, but that's not the text that I'm talking about. It doesn't just mean that he does love. It doesn't mean that he just expresses his love. It means that it's who he is.

It's an attribute of God. God is love. And we only know that love because of who he is. And so creation was spoken into existence by the God who is love. All of us, think about that for a second, everything.

Everything that we are, everything that we've seen, everything that we know, all of reality around us in a physical sense is because God is love. We forget that sometimes. We were formed people, we like to focus on the wrath of God, which we should, but we can't neglect this major key element of who God is.

God had created this world because he is love. And when the creature, man, subjected that creation to futility and death through his act of disobedience, the God of love did not wipe them out and start over.

You ever wondered why he didn't just do that? Why didn't he just wipe them out? He told Adam and Eve, he said, you eat of that fruit, that day you shall surely die. No, he had a perfect plan. There's a reason he did not.

He had a plan to display his faithful love to the whole of creation. A plan that was in the heart of the triune God from eternity past. Before you, before me, before this, before the world, before space, before the universe, there was God the Father, there was God the Son, and there was God the Holy Spirit in perfect union.

And they made a covenant with himself. We will create and we will redeem a people to manifest the glory of God. And it all stemmed from the fact that God is love. It's because his love had been set upon his elect.

Even before that creation, we learned that in Ephesians, right? You remember Ephesians 1? In verses 4 -6, even as he chose us in him, chose who? Believers, the saints, in him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

And here it is, in love he predestined us for adoption. This is love. And why? To the praise of his glorious grace.

It's beautiful.

When you see that grand big picture that God had an elect from every tribe, nation, and tongue, that he had said, I love, I have loved, I will love, and I will continue to love, and that will never end, and I will redeem them.

And even though sin had enslaved us, and certain death was imminent upon each one of us, his love was sure. He promised deliverance all the way back in Genesis chapter 3. There, after the fall, he had shown us a shadow, a little bitty glimpse, of the fact that his grand plan was going to cover all of this.

And showing that faithful promise through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Maintaining and keeping a people, the people of Israel that we're reading about today, with his law and his precepts, to ensure the arrival of that Messiah.

I love Romans 5, 6. It says, for while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. I love that phrasing, at the right time. What time? At the perfect time, his time. The exact moment that the triune God had planned before the creation of the whole of the universe to set out and accomplish.

He was going to accomplish, and he was using the people of Israel to carry that out. God's love, his perfect love, was seen in his perfect timing. A couple verses after that one in Romans 5 says,. But God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

It's all stemming from his love. God never starts with do better, be better. He never starts with get your act together. You've heard it before when you go to church, hopefully if you've gone to a gospel preaching church.

You don't have to get all of your ducks in a row and get your life cleaned up before you come to Christ. It doesn't work like that. That's not how God works.

And it's true.

God never asks that. God never says, hey you, clean up your act, because if you could clean up your act, you wouldn't need Jesus. But in the perfect time, while we were still sinners, while we were still rebels to his will, he starts with, I have loved you.

And I have shown my love by sending my son to take the blow of death for you. That's different than religion, isn't it? Religion is do better, be better. Figure out how to make yourself right with the creator.

And God says, child, you're not capable of that. And I know that. You will always reject me. You will always hate me. You will always, always, always run to sin because you're enslaved to it. But I have loved you.

Purchased us from the wrath. God says, I have purchased you from my wrath and to my mercy. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

God's love upon his people, it's where it all starts. It's where it all sets. And it's where it all ends.

Love.

Some of you in here have yet to experience that love. I'm sure of it. We come into church, we think, well, everybody here is a Christian. Everybody here has been purchased by the blood of Christ. That is not necessarily the case.

Maybe some young children who are not yet in the faith. Maybe an adult in here that thinks that they've been walking through all of the religiosity. They've been carrying out all of the things. They say, I go to church, I read my Bible, I pray, I do all the things.

I still, there's a spiritual apathy, there's an indifference towards God. Maybe you've not experienced that love. Well, I would implore you to repent and believe. To lay down your burden of self-righteousness and receive the blessing of his righteousness.

Confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that he is Lord. Because today is the day of salvation.

Amen.

Today is the day. Call upon him while he may be found. Plead with him that he would save you. Confess, I am broken. I am incapable. I do no good. I do nothing right. You did everything. I need that righteousness to cloak and clothe me before the presence of God.

And rest and trust. Well, praise God that many of us in here have already tasted and seen that the Lord is good in that way. Yet, like the faithful remnant within Israel, those that Malachi is speaking to from God, that are actually in the faith, that are part of physical, visible Israel in this time.

Like those faithful remnant, circumstances and the remaining flesh have caused you to lose sight of his great love for you. You feel it? Difficulty. Maybe financial struggles. Maybe prosperity. Maybe life is great for you.

But in the midst of it, you feel a spiritual indifference. Whatever the circumstance is, like the remnant there in Israel, God is here today saying, because these are God's words for God's people, right?

I have loved you. I don't know about you, but that's good for my soul. Because I so often, as I said, I feel like there's no way God could love me right now. Sometimes I go, maybe he does. Maybe he's right.

Maybe he always loves me and his love is for me everlasting. There's no way he likes me. There's no way he's happy with me. But in my weakness, his strength is seen. Because it's not my strength. It's not my ability to do the right thing.

It's his love. And he says, Nathan, I have loved you. Saint, child, I have loved you. And even still we are blinded by our circumstances in this present darkness. They're difficult, aren't they? It's difficult when you suffer loss.

Death is unnatural. I say that all the time. When you suffer the loss of a loved one, it is so unnatural. It is not the circle of life. It is not as it should be and it is not as it will be. And you feel the pain of it.

You suffer. Maybe fear of the future. Many of us in here, we've grown up in a comfortable country to where we've had so many freedoms. And everybody seems to be somewhat morally upright at some level.

And everything seems to be changing at a breakneck speed. And we're like, ah, I'm fearful. What kind of world are my kids going to grow up in? Are they going to lose all their freedoms? Are they going to be financially struggling?

Are they going to be in poverty? Are they going to struggle this way? Are they going to be under the hand of an evil government? Like what's going to happen? You're fearful. Maybe suffering broken relationships, pain, sickness, all that comes with this present darkness.

And then we, like them, respond with, look at what they say. How have you loved us? Don't give me that holy look. You know you've felt like this before. You may not have said those words. Actually, I don't even know if the people of Israel actually said this.

Or if this is God speaking through Malachi, responding because he knows their hearts. Because you know good and well that's in your heart at some level. When you've gone through loss or suffering or your children are wayward or whatever's going on in your circumstances.

And you feel a spiritual apathy. You know there are times where you hear God. God says, I love you. And you say, how have you loved me? I've been here serving you. I'm on the greeter's team.

I serve in the nursery.

And you treat me like this? You're not going to say it in those words. But that's what your heart feels if you're being honest. This is where the people of Israel are in this moment. So that he could, in his love, once again, point them back to the overwhelming evidence and faithfulness of his love.

We lose sight of his love. We intellectually know it. And then we question it because of circumstances. And sometimes God wants to expose that in our hearts. He wants to show you. You think everything's fine.

You're going through the motions. You're doing all the right things. But yet you just say, it's cold. And then God just brings you to the end of it. And he never leaves you to yourself because he chastens those that he loves.

He's going to expose your heart. And here he is. He's showing you that you are like Israel saying, how have you loved us? So that he could respond. Look at what he says in the next part of verse 2. It's not Esau, Jacob's brother, declares the Lord.

Yet I have loved Jacob. Oh, but Esau, I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert. Oh, if Edom says, we are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins.

The Lord of hosts says, oh, they may build, but I will tear down. And they will be called the wicked country and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever.

What?

You're like, how does this help me, pastor? You had me at God's love. I like that part. That made me feel good. But how was this a reminder of God's love? God's reminding the people of Israel how much he loves them by telling them how much he hates.

And is going to smite somebody else. How does that work? What does this look like? I don't know about you, but I don't know if I need my wife to express her love to me by smiting our enemy.

Right?

But this is how God is responding to the people of Israel here. In order to understand what God is reminding them of, we have to understand the story of Jacob and Esau. So turn with me back to Genesis chapter 25.

Genesis 25. While you're turning there, you remember the story of Abraham. God had promised to make him the father of a great nation. And so in his old age, him and his wife are past the age of childbearing.

And he's like, well, you're going to make me the father of a great nation. I don't even have a kid. But God provides an offspring, doesn't he? You remember, what's his son's name? Isaac. Remember Isaac?

So we have Isaac here. And Isaac, he marries a woman named Rebekah. Most of you probably know the story fairly well. But in Genesis 25, look at verse 21. And Isaac here prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren.

Meaning at the moment, she just wasn't able to have children. They were trying to have kids, and it just wasn't happening, right? And the Lord granted his prayer. And Rebekah, his wife, conceived. The children struggled together within her.

And she said, if it is thus, why is this happening to me? So she went to inquire of the Lord. What's going on here is why is there so much turmoil going on within me? What are you doing, God? Like I prayed that you would give us a child.

And then all of a sudden, I've got like a whole war going on inside of me. Some of you mothers may have felt like that at times, right? Look at verse 23. And the Lord said to her. He explains what's happening.

He said, two nations are in your womb. Hold on just a second. For those who think for one second that God doesn't plan and know the future, passages like this don't make any sense. God's not making an educated prediction here.

He's telling exactly what's going on, right? There's two nations in your womb. I've ordained it to be so. And two peoples from within you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger.

You all remember the story Esau was born first and then Jacob? This is the story of these brothers, Jacob and Esau. Two brothers, same parents, same upbringing. And our passage in Malachi says, Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.

You might try and wiggle around some of this and you might say, Oh, I get it. Jacob was the good son. God must have loved him because he was the good son. Esau rejected God and that's why he hated him.

And Jacob was the good one. He accepted the things of God and he did all good things, so that means God loved him. And, oh, by the way, the people over there in Malachi, that's the offspring of Jacob and that's why he loves them.

They're all good people. That doesn't add up, does it? Actually, turn over with me to Romans chapter 9. You all know this passage. This story is addressed by Paul over here and gives us a little bit of clarity there in the New Testament.

Romans chapter 9. It's a very commonly misunderstood chapter. Lots of debate over this chapter and what's going on here, but I think it gives us some clarity to understanding what God is saying to the people of Israel in Malachi's time.

But in Romans chapter 9, look at verse 6. Let's start in verse 6. But it is not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. That's important, right?

Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, right? There's that faithful remnant in Israel, those who are children of Abraham by faith, okay? And not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

Oh, what is he talking about here? Well, let's go on. Let's look. Remember, Isaac is Jacob and Esau's father, right? This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.

Always saying, God said, I will make you the father of a great nation. Like there is an offspring. By the way, y 'all ever sing that song in VBS when you were a kid? Father Abraham has many sons. Many sons have Father Abraham.

I am one of them and so were you. Yeah, that's the idea. We are children of Abraham by faith, right? That's essentially what Paul is saying here.

Look at verse 9.

For this is what the promise said, about this time next year I will return and Sarah will have a son. Who's that? Isaac. And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born, had done nothing good or bad.

Nothing lovable, nothing righteous, nothing better than the other. You get that? Before they were born.

They had not been born.

They had done nothing good nor bad. In order that God's purpose of election might continue. Not because of works, but because of him who calls. Not because of doing good deeds does God love you. Not because you were better than your neighbor does God love you.

Not because Jacob was good and Esau was bad did he love him. She was told the older shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I loved, Esau I have hated. We don't like that version of God, do we?

Pastor, you said God is love. That means he must love everyone equally. That's the only fair way to love, isn't it? It's the only fair way for you to love, me to love. Because we're the creature, he's the creator.

And all that he does is right. If you remember the story of Jacob, you know that he was anything but lovable. As a matter of fact, if you read the story, you begin to think, maybe Esau was more lovable than Jacob.

Jacob was the usurper. He was the weaselly little mama's boy sitting in the house when his brother was the hunter with the hairy arms, bringing home the bacon. And Jacob was in there maybe reading books or something.

And you think, well, he wasn't lovable. He deceived his brother for his birthright. This guy is a total scoundrel. This guy is disgusting. This guy is not a man. This guy is not lovable. There's nothing about him that God should love.

But here's the difference. Esau's no better. That's what we get confused. I've actually heard it preached like that. Well, Esau's a better man than Jacob. Well, maybe in the world standards. He's more of a man, yes, but he's not more lovable.

He's not more righteous. He willingly sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. That's how pagan Esau was. These two give us a clear picture of the state of humanity. Selfish, evil, corrupt, and foolish, every bit of their core, because they are corrupted by sin.

And you see, this is why God is reminding the offspring of Jacob of this story. You're like, well, okay, hold on, bear with me. He's saying, I have loved you. Look at my faithfulness in the midst of your unfaithfulness.

Jacob did not deserve my love. He, like his brother Esau, deserved my everlasting wrath, yet received my everlasting love and mercy. The people of Edom, mentioned there in verse 4 in Malachi in our text, that can be confusing because you think, well, who are the people of Edom?

These are the offspring of Esau. There's a whole, I'm not going to go into it today. I was going to give you more of a historical context. I was like, I do not have time for that. Just know, the people of Edom, these are the offspring of Esau.

And these people had persecuted and ridiculed the children of Israel for centuries. And here they seem, in this particular moment, or building up to this moment, they seem to have been flourishing through the Babylonian and Persian conquest while Israel was suffering.

But God is reminding them of what he said through his prophet, or through his prophets. Jeremiah, Obadiah, and I believe Amos, yep, Amos, all predicted and prophesied, not predicted, but prophesied of the destruction of the people of Edom because of their wicked deeds.

As a matter of fact, in Obadiah 1 .10, he says, because of the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you and you shall be cut off forever. Edom, Esau, got what he rightly deserved, to be cut off from God and rejected fully.

And left in his sin, left in his enmity towards his creator, to carry out the wicked deeds of the flesh, and then reap the recompense due him, just like Jacob deserved, just like the people of Israel at this time deserved, in his loving kindness.

God is saying, trust me, I've proven true time and time again. They may rebuild. You may seem to see the flourishing of the wicked right now. Those people of Edom, they're not my promised people. They're not the ones that I'm bringing the Messiah from.

They're not the ones that I've set my love upon. They may seem to be doing well during this difficult period of time and during this circumstance that I, by the way, have ordained. They may seem to be flourishing, but my wrath towards them is kindled.

They will certainly be cut off. They, unlike the faithful remnant of Israel, will be wiped out. I will do so. You can guarantee. Just as we see in Malachi 1 .5 there, that final verse, your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel.

God's in this for his glory. You may not see what he's doing. You may not see how he's working. Just like the people of Israel didn't see, all they saw was their current circumstances. What they didn't realize is what we talked about last week, that here in a few hundred years, God's faithful promise would most certainly arrive through the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

He was going to show up. He was going to redeem a people to himself. In Edom, there'll be nowhere to be found during that. As a matter of fact, actually, they were used as persecution towards Jesus. It's a long story.

But God wiped them out. Here's the point. If you are a recipient of God's love this morning, it is not because you were lovable. It's not because you chose him when others rejected him. The only difference between Jacob and Esau was the fact that the God of love plucked Jacob out of the mire of sin and said, You are mine.

The only difference between us and our lost neighbor is that the God of love sovereignly chose, sought and found, purchased and redeemed us unworthy rebels of and towards his will. He has proven that love time and time again, ultimately through the sacrifice of his son.