Malachi 1:1-5

Malachi 1:1 “1 The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.”

Let me read you something out of my commentaries to start. Most teenagers are remarkably similar creatures. For instance, independent of each other, most implement a similar strategy when confronted with an error. It may present itself like this:

A Father walks into his son's room and says, "You did not clean upyour room, so you're not leaving the house tonight"

The teenager replies, What do you mean I didn't dean up my room?" Your mother and I told you to clean this place up, and there are still things everywhere."

"But I organized it all. I know where everything is!"

"There are still dirty clothes piled up in the comer!"

That's better than them being everywhere."

"I said everything had to be off the floor."

"Well, what did you mean by everything?"

Even though conversations like this can be frustrating for the parent, they are needed. Parental parameters are not enforced for cruelty, but for protection. Clothes on the floor is not the end of the world, but the act of picking things up off the floor was not the intention of the parents® mandate. More important than the room being cleaned is the son's practicing obedience, and his practice of obedience allows for more intimate parent-child fellowship. Similarly, God outlined rules and regulations for our protection as well as for intimate fellowship with Him.

When we stray from Him, He lovingly corrects us. Love is not only expressed by words of affirmation and appreciation, it can also come in the form of a rebuke.

Love is a double-sided coin. Love is looking in your spouse's eyes and saying, "You mean the world to me. I wouldn't want to go on without you." But, love could also be a protective warning. When a friend is about to engage in adultery, the loving thing to do would be to say, "STOP! Don't do it!" —even if it means losing your friendship over it.

Throughout Malachi we will see how God, as a loving Father, confronts, corrects, and challenges the people of Israel about straying from Him. No one is excluded.

This book is a deep but short one, and it is easy to gloss over it in our study of the Bible. It contains theologically heavy material, which can be easily understood once certain frameworks are set.

Malachi is a call for Israel to return to God before the Messiah comes to earth, for it was written to a people who lived in expectation of Him, but who had not yet seen Him. We are in a special situation, though: we have the privilege of looking in remembrance, not anticipation, of the Messiah who lived, died, and rose from the dead 2,000 years ago.

Fortunately, the message of Malachi is not only for those who hadn't yet encountered the Messiah, for its message is not merely, "shape up, because the Messiah is coming"; it is, "evaluate yourself, for you are not measuring up to what is required of you." Just as the people in Malachi's day were to introspectively evaluate their walks with God, we must take an inventory of our lives as well.

The author of this book is Malachi and the name can mean two things in Hebrew my messenger or my angel. This book is written between 450bc to 430bc.

Its the last book of the Old Testament that was written making God silent to the people of Israel for close to 500 years.

This book is made up of 6 powerful speeches that we will look at carefully regarding Gods love, the unfaithfulness of the Priests, divorce, divine justice, tithing, and judgement.

Ending off with Observing the Law and Coming of Elijah. This book is full of questions? Then answering a pattern we have seen in our study of Matthew. Why Malachi at this time in our church well simple we need the full council of God..

Malachi 1:2–5 “2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob 3 but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.” 4 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.’ ” 5 Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!””

Verse 2 starts out with the proclamation I have loved you. In fact looking at the Hebrew can be translated I have always loved you.

God chose Israel. Though Israel up until this point had went through so much God loves them. Who was it that he took out of Egypt? who protected them from the enemy. Who did he free from Babylon despite the horrible sin that caused them to be there? And through that freedom he gave them the Word of God to live by? So God loves them.

And the Lord says? How have you loved us> Is not Esau Jacobs brother?

There was probably this forgetfulness to the promises that God had given Israel so he reminds them of that promise using the illustration of Jacob and Esau.

Paul uses it in Romans 9:10–12 “10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.””

God’s election for Israel was based on nothing they did, but all in God’s love for them, and the promises he has made.

Deuteronomy 7:7–8 “7 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, 8 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.”

Whats interesting about Jacob and Esau that according to tradition the one who deserved the blessing was Esau just like Ishmael did, but the promise was given to Isaac and Jacob why because of God’s love and Gods original promise all the way back to you could say, Adam, Noah, Abraham. And while the term election often gives some people weird feelings God uses it to comfort and reassure the people of God.

So what does he do to make the point stronger of his love? the rejection of edom.

What does he say about edom? The land will be destroyed and left completely uninhabited by humans. The land will be possessed by the demonic.

Esau's descendants would be excluded as a nation from that special electing love that would belong to Israel.

Studying for this lesson I found one scholar say this… God's choosing Jacob and his descendants meant that he established a permanent relationship with Israel as a whole, in which he would instruct them with truth, train them with righteousness, care for them with compassion, bless them with goodness, and discipline them with severity; regardless of how often they strayed from him, he would be faithful to them by his grace until his work in them was complete.

Here is a history lesson you may have something like this in your study bibles.. Malachi's prophecy comes to fruition when the Nabataean Arabs force the Edomites to Tensions would continue between the people of Jacob/Israel and the people of Esau/Edom. In 37 BC Herod the Great, an Idumean, began to rule the nation of Israel as a client-ruler of the Roman Empire (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 12.8). The Romans appointed Herod over the land because they recognized the ancestral relationship between Idumea and Israel but did not understand the situation fully. The story of Jacob and Esau is played out in miniature in the interaction between Jesus and Herod. No wonder Herod, the Roman appointee, was worried when he heard of the One “born king of the Jews" (Matt 2:2). Like Jacob, Jesus was chosen by God. Herod was not!

God's love for Israel should not be left to speculation. He pointed the people to a historical event to prove His love: the people of God had been brought back from Babylonian captivity while the land of Edom remained in perpetual ruin.

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 7: Daniel and the Minor Prophets I. The Favor of the Lord (1:1–5)

This evidence of God’s power beyond the borders of Israel will evoke from his people the doxology “Great is the LORD” (v.5).

Now you might be saying what about me? I feel like God loves lots of people but he does not love me? Christian that could be further from the truth. If you feel that way go to Romans 5:8 “8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Now the word election like I said gets so many people upset theologies will fight over its meaning, but all it should do for the believer is cause us to have comfort. I love what one man said… Election, then, is a biblical expression of God's love for us in Christ.

Election is meant to humble us, remove boasting, remove entitlement, remove pride, and eradicate self-reliance.

God's love is unconditional. The nation of Israel did nothing to deserve election or salvation from slavery, and, in the same way, you did nothing to deserve His love. Even when we stray, He runs to meet us, just as the loving father did in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke

15). The father of the wayward son, who represents God in the story, ran to embrace his repentant son, even though the son had asked for his inheritance early (which was tantamount to telling his father, "Hurry up and die already!") and had squandered it! There was no way that the son could have paid his father back, nor did the father wish him to! He wanted nothing but reciprocal love from his son, and this is all God wants from us. We can do nothing good to persuade Him to love us more. Neither can we do anything wrong to make Him love us any less.

questions….

What life situations might lead someone to the conclusion that God doesn't love him?

What evidence of God's sovereign love and grace can you point to in your life?

How would you respond as a parent if your child asked, "How have you loved me?"

How does this passage in Malachi communicate hope? How can the realization that God loves you affect a hopeless situation in yourlife?