Okay we're reading from Malachi chapter 1 verses 1 to 5.
A prophecy, the word of the Lord is to Israel from Malachi.
I have loved you says the Lord, but you asked how have you loved us?
It's not Esau, Jacob's brother declares the Lord, yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have
hated and I have turned his hill country into wasteland and left his inheritance to the
desert jackals.
Edom may say though we have been crushed we will rebuild the ruins, but this is what the
Lord Almighty says.
They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the wicked land, a people always
under the wrath of the Lord.
You will see it will with your own eyes and say great is the Lord even beyond the borders
of Israel.
Good morning on this lovely rainy day.
Before we get into this wonderful text of ours this morning would you please join me
in prayer.
Father God we thank you for the words of eternal life.
This morning as we your people, your covenant people come around your word we would ask
that you give us ears to hear, hearts to understand that we would be built up and edified in our
most holy faith by the work of your spirit in our midst and that Jesus would be glorified
in this sermon.
We ask for this in his name.
Amen.
Good morning if we haven't met before my name is Michael and I'm a pastor here at Grace
Christian Church.
This morning we're starting a new series in the book of Malachi and we'll be looking at
how God is presented to us as our great covenant keeper.
This will be a series that will be in for the next seven weeks and we'll be going through
the entire book verse by verse.
So if you miss out on anything please do make sure that you head to our website that you
jump onto the podcast to catch up with anything that you might miss out on because this book
beautifully builds, it will beautifully build through the weeks a case of just how steadfast
our God is to his covenant and how he keeps it despite our faithlessness.
And that's certainly the big picture of the book of Malachi.
You see by the time Malachi the prophet was sent to Israel it was in a mess.
They were offering blemished sacrifices, the priests didn't care about how they represented
God to the people and the strongest expression of the covenant marriage was thrown to the
wayside.
Not to mention that God's people didn't care about justice or looking after people in need
among them.
In a sentence they were a people who had fallen out of love with God and so God sent his prophet
not to just make them aware of their sin but to make them aware yet again of his great
love for them and how he hadn't forgotten them or forgotten the things that he had promised
to do for them.
That's what we're going to be looking at over the next few weeks.
So with that said let's get into the passage that we have before us this morning which
will set us up well for these great themes that we'll be looking at in this series.
If you have your Bibles with you this morning that will be helpful because we will be in
our text quite a bit.
So look with me just at verse 1 there.
We read a prophecy, the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.
Okay so the first thing that I want you to notice here, if you've never worked your way
through a book of a prophet it might come as a bit of a surprise to you to hear that
they did so much more than just speak into the future.
In fact the work of a prophet wasn't so much a role where one would speak of future things
though that was certainly very much part of their ministry but on how the covenant that
God made with Israel at Sinai and the law was to be understood and applied to their
immediate audience.
Again I want you to notice it, this was the word of the Lord to Israel.
So with that said you might think of Malachi as both a theologian and a lawyer sent by
God with God's words to pull God's people back into line.
That's what prophets were, they were theologian lawyers, mouthpieces that spoke on behalf
of God and who preached into the spiritual state of the nation in whom God had made a
covenant with so that they might realise their ways, repent of what they were doing and experience
spiritual revival in their nation.
And so what was the spiritual state of Israel when Malachi ministered there?
Well we'll look at this in a bit of detail in just a moment but for now it's as we heard
before the root of the tree wasn't producing fruit that was good.
It showed that the people didn't love their God with all of their heart, mind, soul and
strength like the covenant they were in demanded of them.
And we know this because they didn't honour God with the things that he had instructed
them to do out of the law.
And so God sent his man to tell his people his words.
So what was the words that Malachi was to bring?
Well God begins by reminding his people of his great love for them.
Look with me at verse 2.
I've loved you says the Lord.
How beautiful is that?
The very first words of God to his wayward people weren't hey knock it off, what on earth
are you doing?
But he loves them.
That is always love them.
Now to fully comprehend what God is saying here we have to understand the word that underlies
our English translation of this word love.
Because it goes so much more deeper than just an emotional feeling.
You see love as it's used here was a word God specifically chose to remind Israel that
they had a deep personal relationship with him.
That God had a deep personal affection for these people because they belonged to him.
In other words he loved them because they were his chosen covenant people.
To put it simply they were so much more to him than just a nation.
No they were his people whom he'd set apart from all people on the earth, from all other
people on the earth and he loved them deeply and he wanted to remind his people of that
great unwavering love.
So it's interesting what we read here next.
Malachi writes the Lord wants you to know he loves you, he's always loved you but you
ask how has he loved us?
Now if you've been a parent for any amount of time you'll know exactly what that rhetoric
feels like.
You work hard for your children, you sacrifice for your children, you protect your children,
you do all these things that they might not even know about for their best, for their
well-being and safety but then when they don't get their way or they don't get that thing
that they want all of a sudden in the midst of that little tantrum you hear those four
horrid little words that cut to the core.
You don't love me.
Well very much in the same way that's what's happening here.
Israel had a God that deeply loved them who was their father but they didn't feel like
he loved them anymore.
So we might ask why?
Why did Israel not feel loved by God?
Well this is where our immediate context is going to help us here.
You see Israel was a nation of people that was notoriously famous for forgetting what
their God did for them time and time again and thus they would lose trust in him.
You just need to read the first few books of the Bible and you see that God chose and
made a great nation from just one man.
From Abraham came the nation of Israel and though that nation was at one point enslaved
to Egypt, God rescued them because he promised to give them a country and to be their God.
So it's so interesting what Moses warned the generation that was rescued and going into
the promised land.
He warned them all the way back in Deuteronomy 8 that they had to be very careful not to
forget what God had done for them because he warned when they forgot his great work
on their behalf, how he had chosen them from all the people of the earth and how he had
rescued them against all the odds then they would cease to love and trust him with all
that they were.
Now dear ones it would be a complete understatement to say that forgetting God, casting off his
law and losing trust in God defined much of Israel's history which we can read about in
our Bibles particularly there in the Old Testament.
And there's a lot that we could have a look at here this morning but for time's sake Israel
forgot God.
They forgot his covenant, they cast his law off time and time again so much so that it
got to a point that they were eventually kicked out of the promised land.
Now as it's already been pointed out this morning, God loved his people and his love
never wavered for them and so though they were in exile, God's promises of having a
people in this world never ceased.
And so while his people were at this time in Babylon, he started sending prophets to
them, theologian lawyers, mouthpieces, the likes of Daniel and Ezekiel that spoke on
behalf of God and who proclaimed that God wasn't done with his people and that there
would come a day when he would bring them back to the promised land, that they would
rebuild the temple and that they would be the people that God would again use to impact
this world for his glory.
That indeed started to happen.
God indeed started to make a way, he used various circumstances on the world stage for
his beloved people to have a way made so that they could rebuild and return to Israel and
be used of God again.
This was the problem.
Though they'd come back, though God had settled them back in the land, though they had rebuilt
the temple, things weren't turning out the way that they had thought.
I mean if you read through Ezra and Nehemiah who give us a wonderful backdrop to the words
that we're looking at this morning, we quickly see that these people were still a nation
with a leash around their neck from the Persian Empire and financially crippled and the temple
that they rebuilt.
Well it was nothing like what they read about in the days of Solomon.
And so many of the people who were aware of the great promises of God from prophets like
Haggai and Zechariah, well they looked around them and they felt like it didn't quite live
up to what they had hoped for.
In other words, it was a time of religious cynicism.
They were back in the land just like God had promised.
They'd rebuilt the temple just like God had promised, but God they felt wasn't making
them the nation that they thought that they should be.
And so yet again they started to forget what God had done for them and yet again started
to lose trust in his promises.
And church this is why the ministry of Malachi is so brilliant, because he speaks into something
so subtle in all of us.
You see many of the prophets throughout Israel's history were sent to Israel when they were
in a pattern of idolatry or pagan worship.
Yet as we notice here Israel wasn't worshipping pagan gods.
Now they were actually still engaged in doing the things that pertained to the worship of
the true God.
They were in a way following the law, but this is the thing.
They had become cynical and were losing trust in the promises of God.
Their outward worship was becoming ritualistic and rote rather than from the heart and a
deep sense of love for their God.
And God, he could see right through it.
We must confess that's not something that is unique to the people in this context only.
I mean trust and love and worship they all go hand in hand.
God has always looked for his people to worship him in spirit and in truth.
And so to not trust God and his promises but still engage in a life of outward ritual,
we might fool the people around us but to the one we're meant to be worshipping, he
sees right through it.
And brothers and sisters let me just say life gets hard.
We do get disappointed.
Our faith wavers and our trust is tested no doubt.
We can sometimes feel like we've been forgotten.
Does God love us?
Well our Lord doesn't want to leave his people in that place.
And so as we see here, God saw all of this and he did something about it.
He sent his prophet to his people to give them his word, to tell them that he loves
them, that he's always loved them, that they are his precious covenant people.
And though they had the audacity to respond after everything that God had done for them
with how have you loved us?
Well notice it.
God doesn't smack them down but he gently reminds them of his covenantal love and he
points them to his word.
Look with me at verses 2 and 3.
It was not Esau, Jacob's brother declares the Lord, yet I've loved Jacob but Esau I've
hated.
Now to be clear here, as God used the word love to represent a particular nuance to the
covenant he had made with Israel, we must understand that he's using the word hate in
a very similar fashion.
It's not like God is being completely emotional here.
It's not like Esau had done things to God and he ended up hating him for it.
This is the interesting thing, before either of these men were born, God rejected Esau
and he chose Jacob.
That's what's being communicated here.
Love and hate are being used in the context of covenantal categories, in the context of
election and rejection.
Now for Israel, like us, to fully comprehend what's going on here, they had to think back
about this story in their Bibles.
It's a Genesis where this very real historical account had taken place and been recorded
for them.
You see their father Abraham had a son Isaac, a miracle in itself, but when the third generation
of this chosen family came along, when Isaac and Rebekah went to have children, they actually
conceived twins.
Now in that context, the younger would always serve the older, as in the wealth of the family
would fall to Esau naturally because he came out first.
This is the thing, though he indeed come first, God had already told their mum Rebekah that
the older would serve the younger.
Whereas God puts it here, he loved Jacob, he chose Jacob.
What are we to make of this?
Well God is reminding his people, before these two were even born, he chose Jacob.
In other words, Jacob did nothing to earn or deserve God's love.
Think about it, he didn't even know how to breathe or eat or cry before God had set his
covenant love on him and chose him to be his.
And so by God pointing his people back to this event, back to his word asking them the
question, he's focusing them on the fact that before they, before they like Jacob, well
God had already, and we need to notice the language here, notice the language here in
verse 2, he had loved them, he had loved them with the same covenantal love.
Now for anyone who knew their Bibles, this would have been incredibly encouraging because
they knew that when God had chosen, when God had set his love on someone, it was unshakable.
Think about the life of Jacob, he grew up to rip off his brother, deceive his dad, he
favored a son and he played his other sons against one another.
This wasn't exactly a guy that you would say was a prime candidate for God's love.
But that's the thing God wanted his people to think about here.
He chose them and despite their waywardness, despite their faithlessness, his covenantal
love and purposes stood, no matter how they perceived things, God loved them, God chose
them, he has proven himself trustworthy.
This is where things get really interesting.
God doesn't just point them to his word, but he goes on to tell them just how serious he
is about these things by pointing them to how things have worked out on the world stage.
Back in verse 3 and we'll look at verse 4 as well.
I've turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.
Adam or Edom may say, though we've been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.
But this is what the Lord Almighty says, they may build, but I'll demolish.
They will be called the wicked land of people always under the wrath of the Lord.
You'll see it with your own eyes and say, great is the Lord, even beyond the borders
of Israel.
Now to help us understand what's being said here, from Esau came the nation of Edom.
They were essentially next door neighbours and brothers of the Israelites.
Now to say that they had a rocky relationship would be a complete understatement.
For years they've been struggling with one another.
When Israel fled Egypt and needed help, Edom refused.
When David took to the throne, Edom rebelled.
When different kings came along, they would battle and fight with one another.
God continually warned the Edomites of their wickedness by prophets such as Amos and Obadiah.
But the thing that really hit hard and brought them into divine judgement was when Israel
was forced into exile by Babylon.
And the Edomites celebrated and then sacked Jerusalem with a great joy that their kindred
had been ravaged.
Kind of came back on them as God then used smaller tribes to totally take them off the
scene as well.
And though there were attempts to rebuild through the years, unlike Israel, the Edomites
never recovered.
What's going on here?
What are we to make of this?
Well church, God is doing something here for His people.
By using Esau and Jacob, Israel, Edom as the backdrop to this question, He's saying to
them by way of contrast, I've loved you.
I've chosen you.
I've made promises to you that I never made to anyone else.
And now that you're back in the land that I gave you, look around you.
The people I didn't choose, the people I rejected, the people I pronounced judgement
on, these things have really come to pass.
So take heart, how much more will I fulfil the promises that I've made to you, my beloved
people, those whom I have chosen as my precious people, the people I love and have always
loved, the people in whom I have great plans for.
You see, despite Israel's audacious reply and moping like a spoiled child in the text
that we find before us this morning, God did indeed use these people for the most amazing,
awesome purposes, just like He promised them.
As it was through Israel that He eventually sent His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
And by a small remnant of Israelites, against all odds, God established what we now know
as the Church.
This was always God's promise.
He was always going to use His people for this great honour and His glory, as He had
always planned to bring the Messiah through them.
Not because they deserved it, but because God chose to use them in this world for His
glory.
Point being, brothers and sisters, God loves His people more than we could possibly imagine.
And His love, His choice doesn't hinge on our innate goodness.
But rather, the blessing of His people reflects on God's covenant faithfulness.
That's something that I want you to take note of this morning.
Indeed because of God's covenant faithfulness towards His people, we might now proclaim,
Great is the Lord, even beyond the borders of Israel.
Because Jesus Christ, though He came by Israel, He didn't come just for Israel.
No, He came for His people, both Jew and Gentile.
He came for His people from every tribe, nation, tongue and people group.
And the blessings of Christ's life is applied to anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord.
And like we've seen here this morning, His love for His chosen people doesn't waver.
His electing purposes are sure.
And His covenant is steadfast.
What are we to make of this?
Well for one thing, God's love for His people is unquestionably evident in history.
But it's a love that demands a response.
God doesn't drag anyone into heaven kicking and screaming.
No, we must respond to the gospel.
And that response must come from a deep trust in God's promises about His Son, Jesus Christ.
And so I might ask, have you responded to the good news of Jesus?
God rejects no one who comes to Him.
There's a warning in this as well for the church.
You see the problem in Malachi's day was that God had done incredible things for His people.
And for the people right there and then, it wasn't what they had hoped for.
And they thought that God didn't love them anymore.
And that type of attitude must still be guarded against by the people of God here and now.
And so how might we defend ourselves against thinking that God has forgotten us or that
He doesn't love us anymore?
Well we see the answer in the book of Malachi this morning.
The prophet came and stirred God's people by reminding them of good news.
Good news that God had chosen them and that God's blessing towards them was irrefutable
because He had elected them.
Church, that's the same truth that we need to remind ourselves of this morning.
God has irrefutably demonstrated His love for us by sending His Son into this world
to rescue His people.
We have by faith already received the ultimate gift and blessing from God.
We have really and truly passed from death into eternal life and been adopted into the
family of God.
Not because we deserved it.
Not because we earned it.
But because God from eternity past chose to lavish these blessings on His people.
Does that mean we'll always feel loved?
Does it mean we'll always feel warm and fuzzy?
No.
The simple fact of the matter is we're not saved by our feelings.
No, we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and what He's done for us.
And so when doubt creeps in, when trouble arises, and it will, when faithlessness knocks,
when temptation calls, the scripture reminds us not to base facts on feelings and accuse
God of not loving us.
But to stop and recall what God has done for His church.
What God has done for you and me.
Brothers and sisters, while feelings are real, they can be misleading.
And so like our prophet proclaims here, might we understand and base who and what we are,
not on how we feel, but see ourselves in the truth and the light of who God is and His
covenant-keeping love that He has towards all His children.
Let's pray.
Father God, we thank you for this time that you've given us this morning to be reminded
of the good news.
Father, as it's already been said this morning, we don't need to look that far back to see
where we've fallen short, where we've sinned in things that we've done or even left undone.
Father, we thank you that we are able to come to you.
We are able to confess to you and know that your love for us is steadfast, not because
of us, but because of our Lord Jesus Christ who you have sent in our place.
We ask Father that as we go on into our weeks, this coming week, that when our feelings fail
us that we might indeed be reminded of the gospel, that we might stand in awe of the
truth of who and what you are and what you have done for us.
We ask that you would strengthen us by your most Holy Spirit and that our faith would
go from strength to strength and that you would use us to tell your good news to others.
We ask for this in Jesus' name.
Amen.