God Loves His People

Introduction

Good morning, please turn in your Bibles to the book of Malachi chapter 1 verses 1 through 5 that is the book of Malachi chapter 1 verses 1 -5. If you are using a Bible scattered throughout the chairs that is on page ____ . Again that is page ____.

Today we begin a new book of the Bible for us. The book of Malachi. It is the last book of the OT and as such we need to understand where it falls into the timeline of the Bible. So I want to briefly take a look at some of the events that the Bible covers before the book of Malachi. The begins at the beginning of all things. God creates everything by speaking it into existence in six days and on the 7th day He rest. On the sixth day of creation God creates man, the first man, Adam and the first woman, Eve. They live in a perfect garden in perfect harmony with one another, all of creation, and God. But this does not last long. By Genesis 3 Adam and Eve disobey God’s command to not eat from the tree of good and evil and through their disobedience sin enters the world. They kicked out of the garden and they are no longer in perfect harmony with each other, with creation, or with God. This is problem of sin and separation from God is the critical problem throughout all of the Bible.

Fast forward to Genesis 12 and God chooses a man named Abraham to become the father of a nation. God promises Abraham that he and his descendants will live in the land of Canaan and that through him all of the world will be blessed. Abraham moves to Canaan and has a son named Isaac. Isaac grows up and has twin sons named Esau and Jacob, who our text alludes to today. Jacob to fulfill the promise of God becomes the chosen son that God will use to create this nation he promised to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham. Jacob is later renamed Israel, and this promised nation will take on that name throughout the rest of the OT. Jacob/Israel has 12 sons and these 12 sons with their wives and children are forced to out of the land of Canaan by a famine and move to Eypgt. They stay in Eypgt for 450 years and continue to grow in population big enough to not just be a big family, but 12 tribes that make up one nation. But, instead being an independent nation they are the slaves of the Egyptians. They are poorly treated, they cry out to God and God brings up a man named Moses to lead them out of Eypgt back to the land of promise. The land of Canaan. That even of leaving Eypgt is called the Exodus. They leave Eypgt and after a lot of drama make it to the land of Canaan. Over time they kick out the other people who have settled in this land and establish the land of Israel with a government and permeant temple to worship God.

However, they are unfaithful to God and begin to worship false idols. Their king, Solomon, marries 1,000 women and takes on the gods of his many wives. This sets Israel on a horrific path and after Solomon’s death the nation gets into a civil war. The nation splits into two nations. The nation of Israel or the Northern Kingdom and the nation of Judah or the Southern kingdom. The Southern kingdom has the temple and the original capital city Jerusalem. There are a series of bad kings in both kingdoms with some good ones sprinkled in, but both kingdoms stay on the their path of disobedience and idolatry. Therefore, God punishes the nation of Israel (both kingdoms) by sending first the Assyrians to conquer the Northern kingdom and then the Babylonians to conquer both areas and many of the people of Israel are forced leave their homeland as slaves to go live in various places throughout the Babylonian empire. Think of it like an opposite Exodus. This event, this opposite Exodus is called the Exile. The Exile last for 70 years and during this time the Persians conquer the Babylonians and the Israelites are still in Exile, away from Israel. They are at the mercy of their conquerors. And then in the book of Ezra 1:1–4 “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.”” Ezra, Nehemiah, and others return to Jerusalem rebuild the temple and begin to establish a government in the promised land again and the Israelites are returning to Israel from various parts of the Persian empire, and it is after this rebuilding of the second temple that we have the book of Malachi.

The setting for this book we dive into today is after the second temple is built and the people of God are back in Israel. This is Post-Exilic Israel that is post- after the Exile (Babylon/Persia) And what we see is that after all of this history instead of being pious and zealous for God’s glory they are apathetic and corrupt. That once things start going well, the people of Israel get lazy in their worship, their priest are teaching errors, and marriages are crumbling. And God confronts these people about these very things and what we want to remember in as we study this book is what God says about himself in Malachi 3:6 ““For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”

You see, we want to avoid apathy, corruption, false teaching. Even when things are good and there is temptation to no longer depend on the Lord we want our church to have zeal for the things of God. But, when we fail, and we will from time to time, we must remember that God will not consume those who are his. Why? Because before confronting these God reminds that they are loved by him. As we turn to Malachi 1:1-5 we remember this God loves his people. We will see this morning that God declares this love, demonstrates this love, and that we are to respond to His love. Let’s Read Malachi 1:1-5

A Declaration of God’s Love v. 1-2

Malachi 1:1–2 “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?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob”

This is striking to me. The book of Malachi is confrontational in nature. The prophecies of Malachi are against these people confronting them for this sins, yet before he gets into the confrontation God reminds these people that he loves them. The first oracle, the first prophecy or word of the Lord is “I have loved you.” This is not just a past declaration of love is it a declaration of love that has been true and the past and implies that God will love them into the future. God makes it clear he loves these people.

And question it makes me want to ask, is why? Why does God love a people you have committed idolatry over and over again and even now, they are apathetic and corrupt. Why would God love such a people? Because God’s love is covenantal. God’s love for these people does not depend on their deeds, but rather His promises. God loves them because he promised to love Jacob, their forefather. The foundation of God’s love is not our works, but his sovereign choice to love unlovely people. God has chosen to love this people and nothing will stop Him from loving them. So, when they fail, God acts in love to restore them to himself. That’s what these prophecies are meant to do. They are meant to stir within His people a zeal for His name to deny apathy. They are meant to stir a desire for holiness to deny their corruption of worship and marriage.

This love is rooted in God’s promise to love Abraham and bless the world through his family. It is rooted in God’s declaration to Rebecca the wife of Isaac and father of Esau and Jacob in Genesis 25:23 “And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.”” This promise is made to Rebecca before Esau and Jacob are even born. The works of Jacob are not the basis of God’s love for Jacob. God loves Jacob because of his sovereign grace. God elects or chooses to love Jacob though Jacob has done nothing to deserve that love. God declares I love Jacob. And so now God declares to the post-exilic Israelites “I have loved you” and again he says Is not Esau Jacobs brother? Yet I have loved Jacob.”

So why does God loves us? Because God chooses to, and that is what makes grace, grace. Grace is the unmerited or undeserved favor of God. Grace is no longer grace if it is the result of any kind of merit. If Jacob deserved to be loved, then he would not be loved according to God’s grace. He would be loved according to his own merit. Which is dangerous for the one being loved. If we are loved because of merit then we are always in danger of losing that love. Because if we fail to earn it, we will not be loved. If we no longer merit that love, then we will be rejected by the lover. This is why Paul describes true love (the love of the Holy Spirit) as love that keeps not record of wrongs in 1 Corinthians 13.

Now does this free undeserved love mean that we can just do whatever we want? Not according to the book of Malachi. God loves and therefore God confronts and disciplines his people. In Hebrews 12:6 “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”” and Hebrews 12:10 “… but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.” God’s love for us compels Him to discipline and confront us.

As we get ready to work through this book I must ask, do you believe God loves you? If yes, why do you think God loves you? Does He love you because you have earned it? because are good? Or are you like these people and an object of God’s love because of His sovereign grace? And if that is true are you willing to be confronted by the God who loves you? Are willing to read this book and see that you to are apathetic and your worship is waning. Are you committed to your marriage and the wife of your youth? Are you willing to talk about tithing? These can be hard conversations, but they are the conversations that God is having with his people through the prophet Malachi. And we can take heart in hard conversations because these topics are brought to us by a God who does in fact loves us.

T/S- God declares his love for this people and they do what we also so often do before the Lord. He says I have loved you and they ask, “How have you loved us?” And God rich and mercy answers and demonstrates his love.

A Demonstration of God’s Love v. 2-4

Malachi 1:2–4 ““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 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.’ ””

God demonstrates his love for Jacob/Israel by contrasting him with Esau/Edom. Those two twin brothers we read about in Genesis grow up and Jacob’s offspring become the nation of Israel and Esau’s offspring becomes the nation of Edom. When the babylonians conquered the Israelites just before the Exiled the nation of Edom helped the Babylonians conquer Israel. And these Israelites would have known this. After Israel is defeated the Babylonians turn around and conquer Edom. The Isrealites sang this song of lament during this time in Psalm 137 “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!” O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” I don’t have time today to explain that last verse but we need to know that the nations of Babylon and Edom teamed up to destroy Israel. They were an instrument of God justice. However, God still promised to judge these nations in turn. In the books of Obadiah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel God’s prophets prophesied against Edom and declared their destruction. God would restore Israel, but utterly destroy Edom.

So, God is explaining his love for Jacob/Israel but contrasting how he has dealt with the two nations. Esau or Edom was rejected by God, God hated them. Therefore, God destroyed their nation and even if they attempt to rebuild it, God would not allow for this. And this is just what happens with Edom. They are conquered by the Babylonians like the Israelites, but while the Israelites were permitted to return to their land and rebuild their nation the Edomites were conquered again by the Nabateans, an Arab group of tribes. After this the the Edomites were forced south to Negev where they became the Idumeans. The Idumeans attempt to rebuild and they are conquered by the Hasmoneans (Jews in the 2nd century BC). Then the Romans entered this space and the Idumeans only inhabited a small place south of Judea. Herod the Great was Idumean, but after the AD 70 when Rome destroyed Jerusalem the people group ceased to exist.

The homeland of the Edomites was conquered multiple times, it was left to the desert animals, and they never had a chance to rebuild like Israel did. God loved Jacob but He hated Esau. In the book of Romans chapter 9 the apostle Paul quotes from Malachi 1:2-3 as he explains God’s sovereign choice to save the Gentiles and to not save some of the Jews. Paul has made it clear in the previous 8 chapters that salvation comes through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone. No one is saved because of their ethnicity. He explains this in Romans 9:6–8 “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. (Because in verse 1-5 he talks about the Jews who rejected Christ and his longing for their salvation) For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, (physical offspring) but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 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.” According to Paul the children of the promise are those who respond to Christ in faith. You see, even in Malachi it is not saying that every individual in Israel was loved and every individual in Edom hated, but rather the nations as a whole are judged or saved as a means of displaying God’s justice and grace. Edom’s fate displays His judgement and Israel’s fate His grace. Why? Because of God’s sovereign choice in Genesis 25:23.

Romans 9:9–13 “For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 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— she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”” Paul uses the story of Jacob and Esau like Malachi does. Malachi uses it to suggest that the people of Israel are loved because God has chosen to love them. They can know he loves them because he has intervened for them unlike Edom. Paul tells us, God loves you not because of works you have done. Just as God chose Jacob before he was born and did no right or wrong so God has chosen the children of promise. That is those who respond in faith.

And you can know that God loves you because he demonstrates his love for you in that while you were still sinners Christ died for you. That means he chose to die for you even though you did not earn it. You are saved and loved not because of your deeds, but because of God’s grace. And what is God’s grace? It is God’s sovereign choice to love the unlovely. He loves sinners like us, because He chooses to.

T/S- And what are we to do with this information? How do we respond to the love the God?

Respond to the Love of God v. 5

Malachi 1:5 “Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!””

The “this” that their eyes shall see is not just the destruction of Edom. What they must see, and what we must see is what Edom’s destruction demonstrates. It demonstrates that God has interved and loved His people, while rejecting Edom. God’s rejection of Edom is like the dark backdrop of space on a starry night. The stars shine bright because of the darkness behind them. God’s love for His people is clear because of His rejection of those who reject Him.

I am saying that God is the one making the choice as an act of grace. However, hidden in the mystery of God is the reality that those whom He chooses, choose Him and those whom He rejects, reject Him. We see this in Jacob and Esau. Jacob is chosen before they are born, and he is the one who wants the birthright. Esau is rejected before birth, but he is the one who loses the birthright because he treats it with disregard. No one is condemned by anything other than their own sin. And we must see this truth with our own eyes. We need to personally embrace this truth to avoid being like the unfaithful Israelites who ask “How have you loved us?”

They are responding to God’s love by asking, “What have you done for me lately?” They don’t see his love for them. But God is telling them I do love and you’re gonna see it. And when you do you will respond by saying “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!” When we see the love of God we respond with the angels in Isaiah who cry Isaiah 6:3 “And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!””

You see God declares and demonstrates His love for us so that we will declare and demonstrate his love to all the earth! We do that through right worship, we do that through upholding marriage, we do that through generous giving, we do that by believing that Jesus is the Son of God who died for our sins and rose from the dead!

Conclusion

As we begin this book together we must see what God has done for us and what we are meant to do. He has declared his love for us as a sheer act of sovereign grace. We do not deserve His love and yet we have it. He demonstrates that love even as he judges those who reject Him. And in witnessing his judgement we are humbled and know that Jesus was the one who endured God’s wrath for us. We don’t just look to an enemy nation. We look to the Son of God who endured God’s wrath for our sins and in the dark backdrop of the justice of God poured out on the Son we see the bright rays of grace that shine on us. Do you know that God loves you? Do you look to the cross to prove it. Romans 5:6–10 “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”