Chosen & Loved: Understanding God's Favor

INTRODUCTION

For the next 4 weeks we will be diving into the book of Malachi. mâl•ā•kî which means “my messenger” was written around 450-430 BC. Unlike other minor prophets there is nothing known of this prophet, not his origins or family line, nothing. And his name is not mentioned anywhere else in the Scriptures.

This book differs from all other prophetic writings in its style which uses a dialectical or disputational style of writing. Malachi raises God’s indictments then he offers a response from the people and lastly a response of the response by God.

What is similar to other prophetic books is the message. Covenant blessing requires covenant faithfulness. As people in each generation obeyed the requirements of the Mosaic Covenant, they participated in the blessings founded in the unconditional Abrahamic Covenant. Obedience to the Law was rewarded with blessing in the land of promise. Disobedience, on the other hand, brought a curse on the people and eventually exile. This covenant regulated Israel’s relationship with God throughout the old Covenant.

Now, as we are living in the light of the New Covenant the overall expectancy of faithfulness on the part of God’s people is still the same. You cannot hate God, hate the things of God, hate the people of God, and still be called a child of God.

I know that hate is considered a strong word but do not, like Malachi’s audience, be caught up in semantics. Hatred is not just a word it is an overall attitude that can be measured based on your actions concerning God and His interests.

This four-week series teaches us to love the things that God loves. Through the words of the prophet Malachi, we learn God’s love for his people, his name, his covenant, and his messenger. These same passions are to be present in the lives of his people today.

Imagine receiving a letter from your parent, but instead of it being filled with warm affirmations, it starts with a question: "Do you really know how much I love you?" At first, it might seem strange—why would they feel the need to prove their love? But as you read on, they remind you of the sacrifices they've made, the times they've been there for you when no one else was, and the way their care has shaped your life. Suddenly, that letter becomes a powerful reminder of something you may have taken for granted.

In our passage which is the first 5 verses of Malachi, God opens up with a declaration of love, but this love isn’t soft or passive. It’s a love that fights for His people, disciplines them when they stray, and stands as a just judge against those who oppose them. God’s love is fierce and jealous, rooted in justice and mercy. But it also requires something in return: fidelity and trust.

God is not a doormat. God does not have issues with codependency. God cannot be guilted into acting in a way that is contrary to His own character. And you cannot say you love God and act in a way that is unloving to God and God not call you out on it.

As we explore this passage, we’ll see how God’s love for His people is both deeply compassionate and powerfully just. And we’ll be reminded that our response to such love should be one of gratitude, trust, and faithful living.

Malachi 1:1–5 (LSB)

1 The oracle of the word of Yahweh to Israel by the hand of Malachi.

2 “I have loved you,” says Yahweh. But you say, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares Yahweh. “Yet I have loved Jacob;

3 but I have hated Esau, and I have set his mountains to be a desolation and his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.”

4 Though Edom says, “We have been demolished, but we will return and build up the waste places”; thus says Yahweh of hosts, “They may build, but I will pull down; and men will call them a territory of wickedness, and the people toward whom Yahweh is indignant forever.”

5 And your eyes will see this, and you will say, “Yahweh be magnified beyond the territory of Israel!”

God declares His love for Israel and contrasts it with the fate of Edom. This passage illustrates God’s passionate commitment to His people and calls for a response of fidelity and trust amidst a history of unfaithfulness.

1. Setting the Scene: Love Declared

Malachi 1:1 (LSB)

1 The oracle of the word of Yahweh to Israel by the hand of Malachi.

That first line is filled with significance for the original audience. When we read Scripture, we must be careful not recreate meaning that was never intended. In other words, Scripture can never mean what it never meant. This is why Jesus said,

Matthew 5:17 (LSB)

17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

In other words, I am not telling you something new, but I am removing the obstacles and the misunderstandings so that you will be able to see and do what the word always intended.

So in our passage, we see the words “the oracle of the Word of Yahweh” and must appreciate what that introduction would have communicated to the original audience, what effect it would have had on them so that we can evaluate the significance and the weight that all that we are to learn from this work carries on us, the people of God.

The word mâś•śā which is translated into our English word “oracle” literally means load, or burden would have had a sobering effect on the original audience, because this word introduces messages of a threatening nature about 27 times in the Hebrew Scriptures (Isa 13, 14, 15; Nahum 1; Hab 1; Zech 9, 12). This word give this prophet’s entire message a sense of anxiety.

Furthermore “the word of Yahweh” which appears with frequency as an introduction to a prophesy identifies what follows as a revelation from God and carries His authority. And the fact that His Name YHWH instead of Adonai is being used carries an implicit association with the covenant made with Israel at mount Sinai (with all the light shows).

And since Yahweh is the faithful, loyal, covenant-keeping God, trouble in the covenant relationship can only be because of Israel’s unfaithfulness. The fact that this burden from the Lord came through Malachi must have heightened the sense of imminent rebuke in the minds of the original readers. The priests were supposed to be God’s messengers (cf. Mal. 2:7), but now they were to listen to one whose name means “My messenger.”

There is a lot happening at the time of this writing. The people of God had returned from their exile to Babylon but conditions where not good. There was famine and poverty everywhere and people were questioning where is God in all of this.

God does not leave His people comfortless even in the midst of their unfaithfulness because they came back from exile just as wretched as they were when they went into exile.

God officially announces that He is about to speak and address their concerns and reason with them.

Isaiah 1:18 (LSB)

18 “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says Yahweh, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.

2. Sovereign Choice: Love Explained

Malachi 1:2–3 (LSB)

2 “I have loved you,” says Yahweh. But you say, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares Yahweh. “Yet I have loved Jacob;

3 but I have hated Esau, and I have set his mountains to be a desolation and his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.”

God here says “I have loved you” which in the Hebrew denotes that God has loved Israel since her beginning and still does so. But the emphasis here is on God’s historic love for the nation that He himself formed and created. And this is not the first time God says this.

Hosea 11:1 (LSB)

1 When Israel was a youth I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son.

Hosea 11:3–4 (LSB)

3 Yet it is I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them in My arms; But they did not know that I healed them.

4 I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love, And I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws; And I bent down and fed them.

Hosea 11:8 (LSB)

8 How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I give you over to be like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me; All My compassions are stirred.

Isaiah 43:4 (LSB)

4 “Since you are precious in My sight, Since you are honored and I love you, I will give other men in your place and other peoples in exchange for your life.

I hear people all the time saying we are all children of God He has no favorites. Of course He has favorites. God does not love all of humanity the same and he says it here. I will and have given everyone else up in exchange for you.

God has His favorite people and has nothing to do with with what they have done or not done. He simply chose. This rubs people the wrong way saying, that is not fair. What are you going to do about it? Who are you going to complain to concerning the unfairness of God?

Of all the men in the world which he created he chose one “Abraham” of all of his children he chose one “Isaac” of both of Isaac’s children he chose one “Jacob” turned him into a nation, of the entire nation he chose a remnant. Look what the apostle Paul says. (NLT)

Romans 9:8–16 (NLT)

8 This means that Abraham’s physical descendants are not necessarily children of God. Only the children of the promise are considered to be Abraham’s children.

9 For God had promised, “I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

10 This son was our ancestor Isaac. When he married Rebekah, she gave birth to twins.

11 But before they were born, before they had done anything good or bad, she received a message from God. (This message shows that God chooses people according to his own purposes;

12 he calls people, but not according to their good or bad works.) She was told, “Your older son will serve your younger son.”

13 In the words of the Scriptures, “I loved Jacob, but I rejected Esau.”

14 Are we saying, then, that God was unfair? Of course not!

15 For God said to Moses, “I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.”

16 So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it.

So when the people ask how have you loved us, God says, are you kidding? You are equally evil as everyone else yet I chose you above everyone else. My choosing you explains shows that I have loved you. I made my covenant with you and everyone else outside of my covenant is condemn because all have sinned and fallen short of my glory (Ro 3:23). Both you and Esau were born in sin and shapen in iniquity yet I have picked you up and made a covenant with you. Which ends up meaning that everyone outside of the covenant gets my practical hatred.

What do I mean by practical hatred. Consider what Jesus said,

Luke 14:26 (LSB)

26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

This does not mean low self-esteem. It means that the love you will have for Jesus so far exceeds love for self and those close to you that in comparison it is hatred. (this is practical hatred).

This is what God means when he said he hated Esau in comparison with His choice to uplift Jacob (Israel).

In this the closing of the OT cannon, God reiterates God’s elective love toward Israel which is undeserved and persistent.

God does this again with His new covenant which is not new at all but the natural continuation and fulfillment of the old.

God's love for those with whom He is in covenant remains constant and unchanging, encompassing both the Old and New Covenants. His covenantal love, shown toward Israel under the Old Covenant, finds its fulfillment and expansion in the New Covenant established through Christ.

The New Covenant is natural fulfillment of the Old—the continuation of God's eternal plan to redeem a people for Himself. Just as God chose Israel as His covenant people, He now extends that covenantal love to those elected to be part of the New Covenant through faith in Jesus Christ. This demonstrates that God's covenantal love is steadfast and reaches its ultimate expression in Christ, who fulfills and secures the promises of both covenants." God’s love can be easily identified in His choices,

John 15:16 (LSB)

16 “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would abide, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.

Ephesians 1:4–6 (LSB)

4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love,

5 by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,

6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved.

1 Peter 2:9–10 (LSB)

9 But you are a chosen family, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

10 for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

But the people in the time of Malachi where looking at their own circumstances and unmet expectations and caused them to question God’s intentions and promises toward them.

Just because God has caused you to go through troubled times does not mean that His promises to you are null and void. It does not mean that he has stopped loving you. He loved you in spite of yourself and He will continue to love you in spite of yourself.

Romans 5:8 (LSB)

8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

3. Sure Justice: Love Demonstrated

Malachi 1:4–5 (LSB)

4 Though Edom says, “We have been demolished, but we will return and build up the waste places”; thus says Yahweh of hosts, “They may build, but I will pull down; and men will call them a territory of wickedness, and the people toward whom Yahweh is indignant forever.”

5 And your eyes will see this, and you will say, “Yahweh be magnified beyond the territory of Israel!”

God’s response to his children’s complaint directs their attention toward their neighbors, the nation of Edom (Esau’s descendants). While the nation of Israel was ravaged by the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires, Edom remained fairly intact. While Israel now struggled to rebuild, Edom appeared prosperous. However, God declares that his hand of blessing and his promised presence are only with Israel, whereas his judgment and anger are continually against Edom.

Wealth and prosperity are not always signs of God’s blessing and difficulty is not always a sign of his judgment. God is a loving Father who chastens the children he cares for.

So, from this passage we learn, On the one side was Israel whom God loved and chose to set apart (“holy” means set apart) for covenant blessings. On the other side was Edom whom God had not chosen. Rather she would be destroyed by Him in His wrath. Israel, seeing God’s sovereign dealings with Edom, would have a better understanding not only of God’s love for her, but also of His greatness over all the earth: Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!

God's promise of judgment against Edom reflects His commitment to justice and His protective love for His people. This serves as a powerful reminder that abandoning Him leads to consequences, but embracing His love invites covenant blessings.

Trust in God's long-term plans and justice, regardless of present circumstances, living with faith against opposition.

You must look and recognize the love, mercy, and goodness of God toward his people. And you must respond appropriately to his love. His love requires you to respond to Him with love, regardless of your perceived circumstances because it is not like you deserve the goodness of God.