Questioning God's Love

Intro

I used to love to watch Saturday Night Live when I was growing up in the 90’s. I haven’t watched much of it since, but I remember this one skit with Will Farrell where he is a host of a morning show called, “Wake Up and Smile.” The hosts are reading from the teleprompter when it suddenly stops working correctly and the hosts and weatherman are thrown into a panic because they have no idea what to say and, you get the impression, do not have much of a life outside the teleprompter. As the situation devolves, Will Farrell suddenly decides to resort to building a barricade with the furniture and declaring the existence of “the order of the hand.” Things get comically out of control and Farrell ends up fighting with the weatherman in a duel for leadership over the Order of the Hand. It is ridiculously comedic sketch that only the minds of SNL could write but it tells us something about human nature too: we do not like waiting.

We are impatient, especially when promises are too good to be true. We are so impatient that we will settle for something less and talk about the “sham” or the “scam” of the thing that was advertised or promised. God’s people have exhibited that kind of attitude toward God and his promises. We only need to remember the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt and all it took was forty days without Moses for the people to devolve into a mob and make a golden calf. They did not like waiting. Here in Malachi, the people are waiting for God to fulfill his promises of restoration of a Davidic dynasty and the restoration of Jerusalem. They have grown weary of waiting and they have devolved (or remained, depending on how you look at it) into rebellion against God in their hearts. Enter the prophet Malachi.

The prophets tended to function as God’s covenant prosecutors against God’s people who had violated the covenant stipulations. Contrary to popular opinion, the prophets were not merely foretellers of the future. Rather, they were primarily forth-tellers of God’s law revealed through Moses and the covenant curses and blessings that would follow the people’s continued disobedience or repentance. The prophets were sent when things were bad and needed someone to point the people back on the right track.

Malachi is about a people who are off-track and called back to God. However, it is more than that. It is about a people who think they can make their own tracks! God comes to his people through Malachi who functions as a covenant lawyer as God presents his covenant lawsuit against the unfaithful people of Judah who have returned to their promised land and their city of Jerusalem.

As we hear from God’s words this morning, let’s go through the text itself hearing Israel’s accusations and God’s answer, our accusations, and God’s answer.

Israel’s Accusations and God’s Answer

Let us begin with some context. The time is somewhere between 440-430 B.C. The people of Judah have only recently returned to their land and have rebuilt their city of Jerusalem and restored worship through a rebuilt temple. Malachi is contemporary with Nehemiah and Ezra, so the problems they dealt with should be assumed in Malachi (the marriage issues especially), but also we must read the hearts and sins Malachi points out into the books of Ezra and Nehemiah as well.

The Southern kingdom of Judah had been exiled out of their Promised Land because of their own sin and idolatry. Their hearts were corrupt. Although God has promised to return them to the land, and has already begun to fulfill that promise in their return In 536 BC. But life has been hard. The temple that was built was smaller than the one they had heard of under Solomon. There was no gold or shiny things in this temple. God did not even bother to show up in a demonstration of his glory and presence like he did for Solomon. Things were not looking good. The people were feeling like God had shorted their nation in their return. Many left the life that they had in Babylon and Persia only to come back to life that was harder or no better than the life they had in exile, perhaps even worse. The people did not see the great promises fulfilled that the previous prophets had spoken about. Moreover, the people were still worshiping idols. They were still treating each other poorly with all sorts of social injustices from a “no fault divorce” culture to withholding wages, to how they treated the marginalized around them. You can read Malachi 3:5 to see a list of some of these sins the people were steeped in. The seeming lack of God’s plan coming to fruition in their time and their love for their sin lead them to call into question God’s love for them.

God knows their hearts. He knows their sin. He send Malachi to them with a simple first message: “I have loved you…”

Now filter those words through all that has happened, and consider how it sounds to the audience. “I have loved you…” The Hebrew verb is in the perfect tense meaning it “describes an action that occurred in the past, but the impact of that action is still relevant at the time of writing or speaking.”[1] In other words, God is affirming that his love has not changed despite the circumstances the people have been and find themselves in. God. Has. Loved them. He has never stopped loving them

The people respond: “How have you loved us?” I do not think they said this out loud, but their hearts were demonstrated in the way they were currently living in sin and apathy. I can’t help but read certain emotions into the text and an apathetic response from the people. “You’ve loved us? Have you seen our lives? Do you know what our life is like? And you say you have loved us? I’m sorry God, but I just don’t see how you have loved us at all! Where is your love? Look at this place! Look at our homes! Look at our lives and our children. How have you loved us?”

God’s answer comes immediately to them: “Is not Esau, Jacob’s brother?” This history goes back to Genesis 25, as twins are born to Isaac and Rebekah. “Why don’t you look at what happened to Edom, the land and peoples that belong to Esau, the brother of your ancestor Jacob?” God is using the apologetic of history to prove He has been loving his people. He almost wants them to consider “a tale of two countries.” Jacob and Esau are twins, but “Jacob have I loved, but Esau I have hated.”

A quick word about the use of the translated word “hated” here. The Hebrew word does not carry the translated sense of a “intense or passionate dislike” for someone or something. The word, especially when contrasted with “love” means simply to “love less.” For instance, in Genesis 29:31, Leah is regard as “hated” in the ESV but better translated by other translations as “unloved” or “neglected.” The contrast helps us to see that one person, or thing, is chosen over the other. That is the sense that Malachi is using as he is comparing two equals (the twin brothers), but one was chosen for the covenant blessing and the other was not (which is the sense of the historical account contained in Genesis 25:19-23). God is affirming his choice that he made in history to Jacob and his offspring. God has no obligation to Esau or his descendant because he did not choose them. That is the sense of these words and how they were intended by Malachi.

God calls the people to consider that Esau had also fallen into the judgment of God for what they did to Judah and how they helped Babylon spoil Jerusalem and its people. The prophet Obadiah prophesied against Edom and the judgment that would follow those who typified hostility toward God’s people and God himself. Listen to his words:

“Though you soar aloft like the eagle,

Though your nest is set among the stars,

From there I will bring you down, declares the LORD.” (v4)

“Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever…and there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau, for the LORD has spoken (vv10, 18).

Edom had no promises of being restored to its glory days. Instead, it was left to perpetual desolation. “I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.” (v3). The people were meant to consider from recent events that Edom no longer exists as a nation while the Jews have been restored. God’s love has been demonstrated in that while both nations rightfully deserved God’s judgment, it is Judah that comes back to their homeland. It is Judah that has promises from God of blessing and restoration.

“They may build, but I will tear down…” God has set himself perpetually against the house of Esau. “…and they will be called ‘the wicked country,’ and ‘the people with whom the LORD is angry forever.’” (V4)

Summing that up, we could say it this way: “Remember who got judged and who did not. Look at who has already begun their restoration and who will never be able to be restored. “Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, ‘Great is the LORD beyond the borders of Israel!” (V5)

Christianity is not a gimmick. It is not a religion that is all in the mind and not rooted in reality. The ultimate apologetic is history itself. The LORD works in real time and space, working out his will and his wonderful works of salvation. The Bible is God’s recorded history of his saving promises and events of fulfillment. “Your own eyes shall see…” Perhaps Edom was already in the process of trying to rebuild. God reminds his people in the midst of their discontent with him and attitude toward him, that his love will be vindicated as God’s plans are larger than what is going on in their own geographical space. Rather, they will see that God’s greatness extends “beyond the borders of Israel.” That is, God has a larger, world-wide plan. God has plans for the “the nations.”

The people of Malachi’s day are being asked to not be discontent and impatient in their present circumstances but to watch and see how God’s plan of salvation through judgment works out as they wait on God’s promises. They are caught between promise and fulfillment growing impatient and sinning in their impatience, and questioning God’s love in their hearts and attitudes.

Our Accusations Against God

How easy this happens to us when we let circumstances dictate how much God loves us. We falsely suppose that God’s love is revealed in material blessings and through comfort and security. We have come to associate the love of God with “the good life.” When we see hard times, we also question whether God loves us. We question all of God’s goodness. When times get really tragic, we even question the very existence of God. Is this not what the classic problem of evil is all about? An objection to God’s very existence because of the absence of his goodness as we would define it and how we think he should use his power?

Like the people in Malachi’s day, we too are in time between promise and fulfillment. God has promised to make all things new. But we don’t see it right away.

As American Christians, we grow impatient when we don’t see God working the way we think he should or at the speed we think he should. So we come up with interesting “name it and claim it” justifications and interpretations of the Bible. Then we become delusional when we do not see God at work. But the truth is, God has not promised to work when we want or for us. God has not promised to do what we say.

Today, we have people who “deconstruct” from the faith. Deconstruction is not necessarily a bad thing if the right thing is reconstructed. For instance, repentance is a form of “deconstructing” one’s love for sin but love for God has to be built up or else the love for sin will only return. The point, I want to make, is that many “deconstruct” away from Christianity altogether because they do not get what they thought they were getting. They, like the professing believers in Malachi’s audience, look at their circumstances and conclude: “God must not love me because look at the situation I’m in…”

What makes you doubt God’s love for you? What – when it happens – causes you to say in your heart, “God, why are you doing this to me? Don’t you love me?” What is that thing that your heart says, “If I could just have X, I would know that God really loves me and has his favor upon me?”

One of the most common things that people use to gauge God’s love for them is the presence of suffering in their lives. Suffering is its own apologetic force. As mentioned before, the “classical problem of evil” is a very powerful and persuasive argument not only against the existence of God but against the love of God for many people, including professing believers. How many times have professing Christians fallen under hardships only to begin to reason, “God must not love me enough…”

The kind of suffering that I’m talking about is the kind that we have no control over like death, economic hardships, disease and health issues; relationships. These things are common to us all. Everybody is going to face death in one way or another. I saw my grandpa die right in front of me. I can still hear my grandma scream his name when he let out his last breath and closed his eyes. Some of us here have had run ins with death in other ways. All of us here went through the COVID-19 Pandemic and are still feelings its effects socially and economically. All of us here have probably had vehicle troubles, lost a job; have faced uncertainty about the future. Around the world, there is war. Ukraine and Russia have been at war for almost two years. Some people in other countries have only known war. Some people have had to, and still do, suffer under the sins of others. Biblically speaking, this is called oppression. Our own country has known chattel slavery and racism. We have seen in our own history the sinful rule over others because of their skin color. Some people here have suffered heartache from the hands and sin of others. I would ask you to consider reading on the “sins of superiors” in the WLC 130, as well as 151.

All of these variant forms of suffering hit us differently in our different stages of life. As a teenager, I was not worried about vehicle troubles or paying bills. I was worried about sports and girls. It is easy in today’s world to get caught up in wanting or desiring a perfect relationship, the search for love. Television and media (especially movies and songs) often paint satisfying pictures of human relationships. We get fed things like “Love is love” with no guiding direction excepting to “do what is right in your own eyes” as if that has not been tried in history before. This search can lead down many different rabbit trails of heartache and sin. Different stages of life can make us susceptible to different forms and kinds of sin.

This brings us to a topic that most of us do not deal with and that is the topic of idolatry. Most of us are content to think that idolatry has to do with a statue of some sort that one bows down to or worships or prays to or through. And while that is true enough, it is not the whole picture. You see, an idol is anything that you “over-desire.” The Greek word associated with idolatry and our affections is epithumeia which means to “over-desire.” A desire that rules over other desires but that is out of order.

What does that mean? It means, that in God’s good world, there are things that are naturally to be desired but they have an order that God created us to function with. Food is good, but when it is over-desired and indulged in, now you have the sin of gluttony. Power and authority is something built into the structure of the world, but when it is over-desired and person will sin to get it and sin with it. In the world, we see examples of people in office abusing Their power for their own gain or as part of systemic corruption. In the church, we even see ministers of the gospel abuse their power to gain mastery over others. When these desire becomes so intense, it creates what we call an addiction (an “over-desire”).

Augustine, one of the early teachers and doctors of the Church, said that our hearts essentially have a “God-shaped” hole in them that only God can fill. When we try to fill that hole with something that is not God, that thing is an idol. Enter things like money, power, sex, relationships, material things like fancy clothes, cars, lifestyles, etc… The same Augustine argued that our sinful nature creates these “disordered loves.” Remember the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Whatever you love more than God, is your idol. The second commandment is equally important: Loving your neighbor. Whatever keeps you from loving your neighbor (which is also a form of loving God who both commands this and creates our neighbor in his image) is functioning like an idol. You “overdesire” that thing more than loving and obeying God in the moment or as a pattern.

These idols, if it is not clear, are actually good things when they are taken in their right order. Sex is a great thing but only when it is used in marriage as a means of commitment and re-commitment toward your spouse. Sex, outside of marriage, is destructive either immediately or in the long run. Work is a God-ordained task for all humans. But when we overwork and neglect ourselves and our family and other relationships, it is self-destructive. This is not to say that everything we do is idolatry, but that anything in creation can be worshiped which is why the first table of the law concerns itself with our worship, what we bow to and what we are willing to pledge our lives to. The Bible sums what that should be: loving the LORD with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. What do you love?

Paul Tripp described the progression of idolatry in this way. First, you convince yourself that you “need” something that is really a want (Remember that 1st Grade lesson between the differences!). There is an element of self-deception here because we lie to ourselves telling our hearts, “If I could just have X, then I would be happy/somebody/matter/etc…” Once we thoroughly convince ourselves that we “need” this thing, our affections change to a sense of “entitlement.” We usually use the phrase “you deserve to be happy” or something like this to justify our “overdesire.” Then you begin to demand this thing. As you are convinced that you “need” this thing, you begin to judge the love of God based on his willingness to deliver it. Does this sound familiar? This is a pattern of addiction.

If you have watched the Lord of the Rings, that is what the ring of power that Bilbo and Frodo wore symbolized. It is this downward spiral of idolatry that corrupted Gollum beyond human recognition into the shadow of a person that he was.

What is that thing that makes you say with Gollum, “We needs it! We wants it! Must have the precious!” Whatever that thing is that is not God, it is an idol.

To be perfectly blunt about the situation of the audience of Malachi, they were in love with their sin and the idols of their hearts that they had already come to the place in their lives that they challenged the concept of God’s love for them because he had not returned them to the political place of prominence that they enjoyed under David and Solomon. In their drive for restoration and relationships, they had intermarried with women of different religions. They had then divorced both them and the wives who were of the Jewish faith. This was the men in particular of course. Malachi will address the rampant divorce culture that harmed not only their society, but women and children left in the aftermath of a divorce. Remember, women did not provide for a home back then. They were basically abandoned with children if they had them. In their desires for justice, they justified the priests’ and the people’s’ arrogance and self-seeking for wealth. Their attitude was “I’mma get mine!”

This is situation that believers can put themselves in. Remember, this is not an “evangelistic” message that Malachi is bringing. It is a message to the priests and the believers! Consider that. Idolatry can come in many forms and it can blind us from the reality of the love of God.

We must always consider the danger of idolatry. Sin blinds us to many things once we start down its paths. Much like addiction, sin convinces us that we “need” it more than we need God and more than we need to obey God. Sin will make us say – despite all that God has done for his people and for us individually – “God, do you even love me anymore?”

God’s Answer

This would not be the last time that the Jews questioned God’s love based on God’s promises. In the New Testament, the Roman Christians had questioned God’s love for his people since the Jews seemed to be the ones under God’s judgment and not being saved in the light of a growing Gentile church. The apostle Paul uses Malachi 1:2 in Romans 9:13 to declare that God’s loving choice of a people within the Jewish race was still in full effect. The apostle Paul used this exact same passage in Romans 9 to teach the doctrine of God’s unconditional election, not only of Jacob, the undeserved inheritor of the blessings of God, over the rightful heir and older brother Esau, but also the election of individuals that he calls to himself.

God’s choice is proof of God’s love. Many people see the doctrine of election as evidence of an unloving God, but Malachi and Paul see it as evidence of the love of God. God’s redemptive love is particular and corporate Israel was the lone recipient of it in the Old Testament. Remember God’s words in Deuteronomy to the people of Israel as they were about to enter the Promised Land:

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.[i]

God reminds the people that his love upon them is not because they had anything desirable about them or worthy of God’s love. It is simply God’s sovereign choice that set his love upon Jacob and the nation of Israel. Hence, when God points the people to the evidence of God’s love, all they had to do was look back upon their own history and the history of God’s redemptive acts from the choosing of their forefathers to the very redemption out of Egypt.

Here in Malachi, God’s electing love is revealed to the people in the destruction of their enemies. Paul uses Malachi’s words to emphasize God’s right to choose in the New Testament. We should note the slight difference of emphasis. The point being, however, that the people have no right to doubt God’s love for them in their own lives despite their circumstances. The destruction of the enemies of Israel is God’s proof of his love. God’s continuing choice of some from the Jews was Paul’s continued evidence that God was not done with the Jews and their continued existence and conversion of some to Jesus, their Messiah. God’s love has not gone away. In fact, just like Malachi, Paul argues that the judgment of those who do not come to Christ is evidence of God’s love for Jacob and his spiritual descendants. The evidence was not a geo-political domination that the Jews wanted. It was their Messiah!

In Malachi, God asks his people to look at their history and remember where his judgment fell in order to help them think correctly about evidence of God’s love for them. “Remember who got judged and who did not.” Consider asking yourself this same question when you begin to doubt God’s love.

You see, when God chose to love and redeem, God knew that it would cost him the life of his Son, Jesus Christ. On the cross, the love of God is on full display as it was the way the God demonstrated his love for those whom he loves. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”[ii] On the cross, Jesus Christ demonstrated just how much God loves his people and vindicated his faithfulness and justice. On the cross, Jesus was judged for our sin. He was judged as our sin. On the cross, God has also judged our greatest enemies of sin, death and the Devil.

Just as those who are not God’s people will be destroyed and be under God’s anger forever (Mal. 1:4), so will those who are not united to Christ by faith. Things may not look right at this moment, and our circumstances and our own deceitful hearts want to convince us that – right now – God does not love us. But the cross of Jesus is evidence that he does.

What makes you doubt God’s love in your life? Is it your marriage situation? Is it your single situation? Is it your finances? Is it your job? Is it that life is not going how you expected or how you think it should be going? Christians are not beyond the same circumstances that everyone else faces. Some Christians don’t have an ideal marriage. Some Christians live in poverty while others have material wealth and still cannot find happiness. Some Christians live under physical persecution and have had to watch their families be slaughtered before their own eyes. Do these things mean that God does not love his people? Do these things mean that God has abandoned us? Not at all.

Should you ever doubt the love of God because of what you are going through, God not only calls us to remember his loving choice that brought us into covenant with him, but to remember where that choice led him: straight to the cross. At the cross, when you see what Jesus did for you and because of you, no one can say to God, “Do you even love me?” On the cross Jesus became the hated one as he bore the wrath of God that Edom’s judgment was only a preview of. On the cross, Jesus was crushed for our sins.

Moreover, it is the cross that will lead us to say with Malachi and all God’s people, “Great is the LORD beyond the borders of Israel.” The cross gives you perspective.

This is what brings transformation. When you know that God loves you despite what circumstances you are in, you will remain faithful. When we know God loves us, we are changed. We want to be changed. We will want to obey. God’s people needed to know God loved them so they could remain faithful while God is working out his redemptive plan. We need that same encouragement.

The Republican Party does not love you. The Democrat party does not love you. Your addictions do not love you. No other human being can love you like God does. He has the most love to give! When you see Jesus on the cross dying for you out of love for you - to the degree that you see it - you can’t help but be changed and love God back.

“I have loved you, says the LORD.” Indeed, you have, O Lord! And great are you beyond the borders of Israel as we see even here in the Rio Grande Valley. Amen.

[i]Deuteronomy 7:6-8 [ii]John 15:13

[1] Miles V. Van Pelt, English Grammar to Ace Biblical Hebrew (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 65.