God’s Electing Love

I want to begin our time together this morning not with an apology but almost with a warning. This sermon for many of you will not be popular. In fact for some of you, you very well may leave this morning unhappy. The doctrine that we will be looking at this morning, many of you may have even be taught the opposite. You have likely thought of this doctrine, if you have thought about it at all, as something that to you is completely unfair. You may have even been taught to avoid and hate this doctrine and yet I would challenge you to let the Word of God speak for itself. Let God speak and my prayer as I was writing this sermon was three fold: that I would speak clearly, that I would speak boldly, and above all else that God would be glorified in my words. What is this doctrine that we will be looking at this morning? It is the doctrine of unconditional election. Election is not a doctrine solely for the seminary graduates or the seasoned professors of religion. It isn’t a doctrine solely for pastors and teachers. It is a doctrine for the spiritually mature but it also a doctrine for the spiritually immature and yet despite the fear, despite the stigma, it is beautiful. I invite you this morning to open up with me to Malachi 1:1-5. It is the last book of the Old Testament so if you have a Bible and are having a hard time finding it, just open up to Matthew 1 and go back a couple of pages. To just give you a quick history lesson as you turn there, Malachi was the last book of the Old Testament to be written and it comes at a very crucial time in Israel’s history. After Malachi’s prophecy ends in Malachi 4, God will be silent for close to 400 years. The question then is, what do these people need to know in the silence and in the waiting? No doubt that they have their own problems and concerns and we will look at those throughout this series. As we look at the people in Malachi’s day, which was in the 5th century, probably around the time of Nehemiah and Ezra, some say 433-424 B.C., we see a people like us. What we will see in these 4 chapters is that we are more like these ancient people than we might realize. What these 5th century Jews were asking was the same thing that so many of us ask of God today: God prove it! How can we know that you are there? How can we know that you care? Aren’t we guilty of asking that? I know that we are. What is God’s answer? That is what we are going to find out this morning and it is in an answer that many of us may not think of. Before we dive into Malachi 1, let me give you our big idea: God’s sovereign choice in election is not a doctrine to dread, ignore, or run from. Election is one of the clearest evidences that we have that God loves us and His love is not based on anything that we do or anything that is in us. God will have compassion on whom He will have compassion. Let’s pray and then we will turn to God’s Word.

Malachi 1:1–5 NASB95

The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi. “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau, and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.” Though Edom says, “We have been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins”; thus says the Lord of hosts, “They may build, but I will tear down; and men will call them the wicked territory, and the people toward whom the Lord is indignant forever.” Your eyes will see this and you will say, “The Lord be magnified beyond the border of Israel!”

A Question of God’s Love

In verse 1 we read that this book is the oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi. There is a lot that we could unpack from that but really just by way of passing, I want to draw your attention to two things. The first is that word oracle. If you have read some of the prophets before, you may have noticed that word in a few places. In Isaiah 13:1, we read of the oracle concerning Babylon. In Habakuk 1:1, we see Isaiah’s prophecy described as an oracle. We also see it in Nahum 1:1 in regards to Nahum’s prophecy concerning Nineveh. What does that word mean? Yes, these are prophetic words that the prophets used, surely they could be described as a prophecy. A word from the Lord to people delivered through the mouth or pen of a prophet but the word oracle here and also in other places like Zechariah 9:1 literally means “burden.” “The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi” is what verse 1 literally says. Now how is this a burden? I thought long and hard about that and I want you to think about the weight of Malachi’s words that we have read. Think about the weight of the words and ministry of a prophet. What was a prophets primary purpose? It was to reveal the word of the Lord, delivered from God Himself and it was often to a people that were defiant, sinful, and aggressive towards the word of the Lord. Here we have a prophet that has a hard word for the people of the Lord. We have a prophet that no doubt loves and mourns for the people and he has the task to deliver this word to them from God. That is a burden. I think that most pastors would admit that the work of ministry can feel very heavy. There are times where we are preparing sermons and we know that if we are to be faithful to the Word, we are going to have to teach our people some hard and difficult truths. The Word of God is weighty and Malachi understands that. The Word of God, while a joy to have, is not always a light and comforting message. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” This is why the prosperity Gospel and seeker sensitive churches makes no sense. The Word of God builds up but it also tears down. The Word of God is not stay as you are, it’s come as you are! If we are to be faithful preachers and a faithful church, we must preach the Word as it is given and within that word is a weighty and sometimes burdensome message. Another word for hell fire and brimstone preachers are Biblical preachers. There have been numerous times where it would be easier for me to not preach what is being taught in a text. There have been numerous times where it would be easier to hop over a topic because it would be easier for the congregation to hear. I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of times where it would be easier if I just preached a message that everyone would love. Yet how important are the words of Paul in Galatians 1:10 “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.” There are far too many man pleasers behind pulpits. The second thing that I just want to briefly mention is the statement that this is the word of the Lord to Israel. If it is the word to Israel, what does it have to do with a 21st century American believer? Paul writes in Romans 9:6–8 “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants will be named.” That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.” It is through the church, that we see this word fulfilled. The church is the greater Israel, the children of the promise. Is this word in Malachi a word to ancient Israel or is it a word for us? Yes. Remember what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:11 “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” What happened in the Old Testament was written down for our instruction. So that was sort of a long introduction but really it’s helpful as we go through this letter over the next few weeks so that we know that there is a weightiness behind God’s Word and this is a Word for His people. It is always relevant, always applicable, it speaks now just as is spoke in the days of Malachi. Let’s look now at verse 2. Notice how the Lord begins His message: with 4 words that say so much: “I have loved you.” How perfect is this love of God? How full and wonderful is this love? From everlasting, God has loved perfectly. God has loved righteously. The love of God is a love stronger, purer, mightier than any human love could possibly be. You know the hymn, “the love of God is greater far than tongue or pen could ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.” Having just taught a 6 week series on love, I was blown away as we looked at 1 Corinthians 13 just how far I am from loving as God loves. There were so many days as I was going through that series where I just kept coming back to the fact that I have not arrived yet. We cannot fully comprehend the vastness of God’s love. “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” John writes in 1 John 3:1 “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.” God has loved His people perfectly. He has loved us so much that Christ Himself would die so that we would be brought in. God has done everything for His people. But look at what the people in Malachi’s day say: “How have you loved us?” These people are saying, “God you say that you love us, now prove it!” They are saying, “God if you love us, why does it not seem like it?” Now the people of Malachi’s day are a people that have returned from exile to their home. It is not a time of prosperity by any means. All there years in captivity, all there years of calamity and rebuilding has let this pit in the stomach of the Jewish people and what they are saying is, “God, I don’t feel loved. You say that you love us but we aren’t feeling it.” They assume that the circumstances that they are in or the circumstances that they have gone through was a sign that God didn’t love them. Don’t we often fall into that? Life gets harder, sickness comes, loved ones are lost, opportunities disappear and instead of looking to God and his past faithfulness, we assume that the present circumstances are a sign that God is against us and no longer loves us. In fact, we would probably say that God’s past love does not make up for the present appearance of love that is lacking. Peter Adam describes it like this: “They were in a state of mind that is very common for churches and Christians today: not brave enough to turn away from God, but not brave enough to love and serve him wholeheartedly. We imagine that we can live in a neutral zone, and avoid decisive action. But there is no neutral zone.” What a statement for the Israelites to make! To just look at the history of the Jews we see that God had chosen their forefathers out of all the peoples of the earth, He rescues them from their bondage in Egypt, He brings them to the promised land despite multiple sins and multiple attempts to go back to the land they just left, He rescues them time and time again from oppressors despite their sinfulness, He gives them Godly kings like David and Solomon to lead them, time and time again He sends prophets to them to bring them back to Him despite their constant rejection, even as He sends the people into exile for their sinfulness, He does not send them without a promise that He would be with them and bring them back to the land that they once lived and then He does it! He has saved this people time and time again, as unworthy as they are, He has loved them despite their hard hearts and rejections. History proves that God loves them and yet the people ask, “How? How have you loved us? How could you possibly say that you love us?” And what an answer that God gives.

God’s Answer

“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? Yet I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau.” What is God’s answer? What does it mean? What kind of answer is that? You see the people of Israel knew the answer to that question. Esau was more than just Jacob’s brother, Esau was Jacob’s twin brother. Esau was Jacob’s older brother, in fact he was the son that Isaac, the father, seems to have loved more than Jacob and this may have been due to the fact that Esau was more like his father than Jacob was. Esau, as the firstborn son, was the one that held preeminence in the family, the inheritance would have been much greater for the firstborn than the second. What is God saying here? He is saying to Israel, “Could I not have chosen Esau over Jacob? Yet I have passed over Esau and I have chosen you.” How has God loved Israel? How has God loved Jacob? With an unconditional, electing love. God freely chose Jacob over his brother. God was not forced to love Jacob, God is under no obligation to love anyone based on what we do or do not do. God’s love to Jacob was His sovereign choice that was totally independent on what Jacob or Esau would do. In fact, Paul uses this argument in Romans 9. Look at Romans 9:10-13

Romans 9:10–13 NASB95

And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

God in His perfect love according to His perfect will chose Jacob over Esau and this was done before either of them had done anything. Friends, we cannot ignore the doctrine of election. Charles Spurgeon said, “Whatever may be said about the doctrine of election, it is written in the Word of God as with an iron pen, and there is no getting rid of it.” God extends grace to Jacob that He did not extend to Esau and He has every right to do that. Continuing with Romans 9:14-18 Paul writes,

Romans 9:14–18 NASB95

What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.

Do you understand that the reason that you are a Christian is because God set His sight on you before you ever looked towards Him? The reason that you are a Christian today is not because of anything that you have done to earn God’s special favor, the reason that you are a Christian is because before time began, God set His sight on you and has loved you with an electing love. God, who is perfect in righteousness, is under no obligation to save anyone. Yet Jacob He loved and Esau He hated. Now you may hear this and you might be thinking, “That’s not fair! How is it fair that God can choose Jacob and reject Esau before they had done anything? How is it fair that God can choose to save this person and not some other person?”

Is God Fair?

You are right, it’s not fair. You want to know what it is? It’s grace and God’s grace is not fair. Let me explain though: it is fair to us, it is not fair to God. It is not fair that in order to save any that the spotless, sinless, eternal Son of God should have to die. It is not fair that despite all the reasons to the contrary to save that God still chooses to save a multitude beyond what can be numbered. When it comes to the doctrine of election, people are asking the wrong question. The question should not be, “Why doesn’t God save everyone?” The question we must ask is, “Why does God save anyone?” That’s the scandal! Do you begin to think that you are more loving or fair than God is? Romans 9:19-23:

Romans 9:19–23 NASB95

You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,

If God’s love is totally conditional, based solely on what we do and not on His sovereign choice, I totally understand verse 3 of Malachi 1 of God hating Esau. That makes perfect sense just by looking at the life of Esau. Esau hated his brother, wanted to murder his brother, Esau was irrational, he was disrespectful to his parents and intentionally married two that brought grief to his parents Isaac and Rebekah. If we’re keeping track of commandments, Esau has already broken several of them, if not all of them. So I get hating Esau; what I don’t get is how on earth does God love Jacob? That doesn’t make sense to me! The trouble isn’t understanding God hating Esau, the trouble is understanding how on earth God could love Jacob! Let’s just quickly take a journey through Jacob’s life. He stole the birthright of his brother Esau, he steals the blessing that was meant for Esau, he lies to his father, he lies and steals from his father in law, he’s a horrible husband and plays favorites with his two wives, he’s a horrible father and makes it known to his sons that Joseph and then Benjamin are the greater loved children, he’s an angry man, he’s a cowardly man, he’s a sinful man and yet God chooses Jacob. The only reason that Jacob was chosen and Esau was not was because God in His sovereignty loved him. There was nothing in Jacob that deserved God’s love and if you think that isn’t fair, keep in mind there isn’t anything in you that is deserving of God’s love. I readily admit that there is nothing in me that is deserving of it. I see in myself every day reasons why God shouldn’t love me. You see my approach to unconditional election changed right around the time I graduated from Liberty with my bachelor’s degree. I owe so much of my spiritual development to my old youth pastor Dave Aubrey. He was and still is reformed in his theology and I kept finding myself coming across verses in the Bible that did not seem to make sense with what I had heard so much growing up. I kept coming across verses like Romans 8:29–30, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” And coming across Ephesians 1:3–5 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,” And of course, Romans 9 that we have already looked at a little bit today. I kept getting to these verses, seeing clear as day God making sovereign choices and I kept running into a wall. I had been taught or I had heard for my entire life that salvation was based entirely on me choosing God first. But that isn’t what Scripture teaches. We cannot choose God and the unconverted man or woman does not seek after God, that is what Paul’s point is in Romans 3, that we do not seek God, no one is righteous and unless God sets His favor on us first, we will never seek Him out. Jesus says in Matthew 11:27, “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” It is impossible to truly know God unless we know the Son and the only way we can know that is if God has revealed it to us first. What was it that busted the whole case of election wide open for me? Really it was this quote from Charles Spurgeon that my youth pastor Dave sent me. This is one of my favorite quotes and I have it saved on my phone and will still go back and look at it every now and again because I am so thankful to have heard it. Spurgeon said, “I believe in the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love.” Spurgeon is right. In my sinful heart, there was nothing in me that desired God. There is nothing in our beings that would have ever wanted anything to do with God. But God chose me as He chose all of His people with a love that you and I cannot comprehend. God’s love surpasses the fallen heart and rebellious nature of these dead sinners and praise be to God for that. Is election fair? Is God’s sovereign choice of one over the other fair? Listen to the words of Michael Horton, “Is election fair? Hardly. But who wants fairness in this matter. After all, if God were to give everybody what is deserved, nobody would be saved. He could leave every one of us in our spiritual death and the condemnation that we have chosen for ourselves. When we talk about what is fair, then, we need to start with the baseline that each and every one of us deserves: eternal death. The amazing thing is that God chooses to save anybody, especially when He knows that the people He has chosen would not choose Him apart from His grace.” We don’t want fairness; we need grace. Before we move on to the rest of these verses, I do want to try and address some concerns that I know some of might have about God’s electing love. I know that there are those that are thinking, “If God sovereignly elects those whom He wills to salvation, what’s the point of evangelism? What’s the point of spreading the Gospel?” First off if God has commanded us to do something, we don’t need any other reason. God uses people with the purpose of bringing them to Himself. I think it might be helpful to quickly consider the case of Joseph and his brothers. Do you remember in the book of Genesis how Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery? Who was responsible for Joseph ending up in Egypt? Was it God or was it his brothers? Look at what Joseph says in Genesis 45:5, “Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.” Joseph’s brothers were responsible and yet God has so greatly worked the wrong for good that God Himself was sending Joseph there working through the negative actions of his brothers. God sovereignly chooses people for salvation yet that message of salvation is brought through the words of His people. God absolutely uses us and it is a grave misconception to think that Calvinists or reformed believers do not emphasize evangelism and missions. In fact some of the greatest missionaries to ever walk on the earth were Calvinists. I can’t think of men that have been more in love with missions and evangelism than men like George Whitefield, David Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards, David Livingstone, Adoniram Judson, Charles Spurgeon, and William Carey. Another misconception that we need to talk about is that no one knows who the elect are and to be honest, for us it doesn’t matter. What we do know is that when John receives his vision in Revelation 7, he sees a great multitude which no one could number from every tribe and nation and peoples and tongues standing before the throne of God. The elect are not a select few but are a vast multitude that God has chosen in grace. Finally, let me just say this if you struggle with the doctrine of election, if you struggle with who is or isn’t chosen, just know this: everyone that is supposed to be there will be there. There won’t be a single soul in hell that was supposed to be in Heaven. The question for each and every one of us is not whether or not we are chosen, the question is whether or not you have heard the voice of the Great Shepherd and have come to Him. Remember the comforting words of Christ in John 10:27–28, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” Have you heard His voice? Know that for all that come to Him, they belong to Him forever.

God Reigns

I know that we need to start wrapping up but to just sort of quickly look at Malachi 1:3-5, we see Edom, the descendants of Esau glorying in themselves. They believe that even though they have been torn down, they will build themselves back up. They believe that no matter what happens to them, they have the ability to raise themselves back up. But God is sovereign. They may build up but God Himself will tear down. This wicked place cannot stand when God is against them. God is telling the people of Israel in verse 5 that they themselves will see this come to pass. The people of Israel will see the glory of God and that He is a God beyond the borders of Israel. We see this truth today. We see in the life of the Church today that God is magnified beyond the border of Israel. God reigns and rules over all things. John Piper said, “Part of what it means to be loved by God is to know that God reigns—that he is great and mighty—even beyond the people called by his name. He reigns in Edom. His purposes are not ultimately frustrated by the wickedness of any people. "Great is the Lord, beyond the border of Israel!" What this means, what we see in Malachi 1 is a reminder that nothing can stop the Lord our God. No amount of wickedness in this nation or any other nation will stop the true Israel of God from seeing and glorifying in He who reigns over all things. When you look out at the world today, know with certainty that God reigns over every square inch of creation. No amount of wickedness, no amount of sin can stop the Lord and His reign. The Christians that serve in America, the Christians that serve in the Middle East, the Christians that serve in Asia, and around the globe, know that your God reigns! Satan himself may rage but God is on the throne. There is our assurance! There is the reminder of the great love for which He has for us, God so loves the world that the world cannot stop the church. Great is the Lord beyond the border of anywhere. So friends, we need to draw to an end. I know that in this room right now there are Calvinists, Arminians, and all sorts of creatures in between but might we all agree that Jesus Christ is the Savior of sinners and all that come to Him in faith will be saved? We may not agree on everything but we must all agree that salvation cannot be found outside of Jesus Christ. Each and every one of must make a decision today of how we will respond to the love of God. Will you come to Him in faith or will you reject him? Come today for a Savior, come today for assurance, come today knowing that you are not here by accident. Today very well could be the day that God determined in eternity past that you would be justified in His eyes. Come today and be saved. And for those of you that are here today that are struggling with the love of God, know that no matter what it is you are going through or what you may be afflicted with right now, that is not a sign that God does not love you. God loves you because He has chosen you. You don’t have to try to earn God’s love. We love because He first loved us and if there is anything that we can do to make sure that you can better know this perfect, electing love, we as the church will do all we can so that you can see God as infinitely lovely and infinitely beautiful. He loves you more than you could ask or think. Josiah Condor, many years ago, wrote this hymn and we will end with these words:

Lord, 'tis not that I did choose you; that, I know, could never be, for this heart would still refuse you had your grace not chosen me. You removed the sin that stained me, cleansing me to be your own; for this purpose you ordained me, that I live for you alone.

It was grace in Christ that called me, taught my darkened heart and mind; else the world had yet enthralled me, to your heav'nly glories blind. Now I worship none above you; for your grace alone I thirst, knowing well that, if I love you, you, O Father, loved me first.

Let’s pray