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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
MALACHI 1:2-5
(Readings: Rom.9:1-29; Ezek.35:1-15; Mal.1:1-5)
The Lord Re-Claims His People!
What a statement verse 2 begins with! And what better thing could you commence with? In a few words isn’t this exactly what the Bible is all about?
This is especially so when we understand that this is not only referring to the past but also very much to God’s ongoing love. ‘His banner over me is love’ goes the chorus. And how much isn’t this the book of love?
Isn’t this love, however, most of all a love for the unlovable? Scripture from start to finish tells how this love is all from one side. When the Lord says, “I have loved you,” that indeed what he’s done and is doing! Because it’s not coming from anyone else!
This won’t be the first such key statement the Lord says through Malachi in this book. There is still another six to go. But there couldn’t be a better one to state the case! In the words of the first aspect to this text, THE DEBATE COMMENCES WITH ‘LOVE’.
Surprisingly for many Christians, God is clearly the God of love right throughout the Scriptures. You see, they think he only becomes a loving God in the New Testament. And how badly wrong they are! In fact, they are terribly wrong! So wrong in fact they miss the whole heart of what God has been doing right through the Old Testament.
You think about it. Why did he choose Israel – of all people? Deuteronomy 7 verse 7 says that he didn’t do that because they were any greater than any other race. It was quite the opposite, actually. Rather, as verse 8 goes on to declare there, it was because the Lord loved them.
This is reaffirmed later in Deuteronomy 10:18. And then later the prophet clearly pronounces in Hosea 11:1, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”
But while that should have been clear to the Jews in Malachi’s time, a bitter scepticism has set in. God’s own people have become wrapped up in their own emptiness and ignorance. You only have to listen to how they respond to the Lord here. “How have you loved us?” they ask.
What?! Are they that insensitive to the love of God? Could they be that far away from the Lord in their evil? Have they forgotten the covenants and the promises?
Mind you, this response is not so unknown to us today. How many around us aren’t saying, ‘Well, if God is really a God of love, why is there so much suffering in the world?’
They look at it also from their own human perspective. They forget that they are able to ask the question in the first place! The selfishness has become so enshrined everything has to revolve around their particular physical comfort zone right then and there!
You know, what should really surprise us here is that God does respond to them in spite of this. Indeed, that itself shows us how much he loves them.
The Lord here goes on to demonstrate the extent of his love for them. He turns to history – the history they knew very well. And a history which right then and there was proving God’s love!
Thus it is we turn to a second aspect in connection with our text. Now we note from the second part of verse 2 and from verse 3 … LOOK AT WHO YAHWEH DOESN’T LOVE.
‘So,’ God says, ‘you are complaining about not being loved! Let me tell you about those I don’t actually love!’
The Lord brings up the story of Esau and Jacob. They were the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah. They were both brought up under God’s covenant with his people.
But it was only one of them who was chosen to be God’s elect. Jacob’s line was the way God set aside a special people to worship and serve him. Through Jacob’s descendants the Messiah would come.
And, yet, Jacob was not even the one who should have had the birthright! He certainly didn’t have any redeeming personal qualities to set him and his apart to be God’s own. In fact, it had nothing to do with those people at all! It was all about what God had planned to do long before they were even on the earth!
This is why in Genesis 25 the Lord says to Rebekah in verse 23, “Two nations are in your womb, and two people from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” Jacob is picked as father of the Church not because of his greater godliness but only because of God’s good pleasure. This is what he points to here.
Now, looking at the descendants of those two brothers from a human perspective, you might well think Jacob’s line had the worst deal. They were exiled and constantly pummelled by Esau’s descendants – the Edomites.
That race at this time had even moved into part of their vacated Promised Land. But that was all completely beside the point! The Lord says, “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated…”
You see, it was the Jews who had been elected and called into the service of the Lord. They were the ones through whom the whole earth would be blessed. Despite however the situation might appear to the returned remnant it was a love wouldn’t change. In fact, it would be through this love for Jacob and his descendants that in the future those of Edom would come to faith also. Already prophets like Obadiah had declared God’s Word to them, telling them they would come under Yahweh’s kingdom rule. Amos 9:12 speaks about the remnant of Edom being possessed and so becoming part of all the nations that will bear his name.
That’s why we have to understand the phrase about hating Esau in the light of God’s electing love. It was simply a matter of choice that Jacob was chosen, and so Esau was bypassed as God’s chosen race. There’s no personal animosity in this.
It was because Esau and his descendants kept up quite a grudge against Jacob and his line that they were punished by the Lord the way they were. Part of this punishment involved being invaded by the Nabateans, which meant that the Edomites moved to the south of Judah. There they had set up their kingdom, with Hebron as the capital. And where they used to be you find that incredibly rock carved cliff city of Petra, which was built by the Nabateans from the fourth century B.C. onward.
So the word Malachi prophesied about Edom’s mountains becoming a wasteland and his inheritance had at least come partially true. And later on we see that they certainly were punished for their brutality against Judah. But the focus here is on the sovereign, unconditional, intimately personal, and discriminating love of God.
This is where we see how much Edom actually pictures all those who stand against the Lord God. Much as they might think they can do the same as the Jews have done – and so rebuild their cities – they are badly mistaken. You see, they cannot hope for any blessing apart from Israel’s covenant God.
And so it is verse 4 tells us something quite different to what they expect. It tells us, in the words of a third aspect, THIS JUDGMENT UPON EDOM GLORIFIES HIM.
The prophet of the Lord shatters the illusions of the Edomites. Much as they might have thought all their bouncing back somehow presumes some luck on their part, they’ve got another thing coming!
You see, while they have rebuilt their kingdom, and it appears they are being blessed, that has got nothing to do with them. What if the Lord allows them to have a moment in the sun? It will only be a moment and as soon as he chooses to remove it so they are quickly taken away also! Then they become no different to so many other nations that have come and gone. And where are those mighty empires now?
This is the message to Judah. She should be thankful for what she’s got – not bemoaning what she hasn’t got!
Mind you, the attitude of the Jews is a common one, isn’t it? Even among Christians there can be much resentment because of how the Lord isn’t blessing us, of how things are going against us, rather than realising the riches we actually do have.
In the same way God says to the Jews that the Edomites will be decimated as a kingdom so he tells us today that this world will pass away. In the same way he tells Judah that Edom – and all against them – will always be under his wrath so he tells us today that those opposing us will have their day!
This is what the Lord Almighty says! But are we listening? Do we thank God not only for what we have but just as much for what we will get?
You only need to see what the Lord calls Edom here to realise what a privileged place his people have. You see, he here calls the Edom ‘The Wicked Land.’
How different is that from the name given Israel by the Lord. For Zechariah 2:12 calls their land ‘the holy land.’ And while Judah would be cleansed, as Zechariah 5, the verses 5 till 11, speaks of in a vision, Edom would be “a people always under the wrath of the LORD.”
You imagine being “always” under the wrath of the Lord! You can’t - can you? Because this is already those set against the Lord experiencing their eternal punishment from the Lord. That is something which we cannot even begin to imagine.
What we have here is God exposing the extent of the hatred of those against him. There is an antipathy they have for God and his people which is beyond rhyme and reason. And yet how much don’t we see this in our day also? The devil and his henchmen are ferociously at work amongst the sons of men to turn everything against the sons of God.
Hebrews 12 describes so well this attitude against the Lord. In verse 16 it says, “See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son.”
But it is because God’s one and only Son showed the supreme example of his love that we see and appreciate this. Through the doing and dying of Christ our eyes have been opened by faith to realise all this. And so it is we come to the fourth aspect in the text before us. Here we note from verse 5, THERE IS A FAR BIGGER PICTURE HERE.
The Jews were far too narrowly focused. This is what happens when you become wrapped up in your own internal difficulties. Instead of looking up and seeing it in God’s light you are wandering around in the darkness made by your own shadow!
God’s people are missing appreciating what he is doing for them. They aren’t truly seeing their situation compared with the nations around. Because it’s easy to whine on and on about what you haven’t got. You will always find something that is not quite right, or that someone else has that you haven’t.
But to have a larger perspective really opens things up. And certainly to place their situation in the whole flow of human history would make them see just how blessed they were.
I mean, which other people have been kept like they have? Considering all that had happened in their history, what other peoples were still together like they were? And which people had every confidence to know they would be kept together?
When the Lord says to them, “You will see it with your own eyes…” it is a sure word. And while their confessing ‘Great is the LORD’ might seem the furtherest phrase from their lips then, believe me, it’s going to be said!
Then with the addition to their confession of ‘even beyond the borders of Israel’ shows that then they see the bigger picture. Then they look beyond their own particular situation into the huge general picture. And it’s then they see just how much the Lord has been loving them!
And also why he is loving them so much. Because it is not really about them! I mean, what have they got to give? Who is loving who here?
This is what the Lord spoke of way back in Genesis 28. There he had said to Jacob in verse 14, “All people on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.”
Why would they be blessed? Well, certainly not through God’s people not acknowledging his love to them. Rather, it is when God’s own witness to all he is, and has done, that others see it too.
It is then that there’s change from apathy to conviction. Then they’ll realise that just as God had brought judgment on Pharaoh and Egypt so that the world might know the Lord is God, so he has also done to Edom. They, and we, can only acknowledge he is to be praised because of all his marvellous deeds!
And how much more don’t we see now of what God has done with the coming of his Son? That was a deed of far greater rescue than the exodus or return from the exile! Indeed, it is through what Jesus Christ has done that the Lord is great far beyond Israel’s borders!
You see, what he does show is his amazing grace! That’s a love beyond working out!
And what is it this love must drive us to do? Pray that it won’t be what we find the Jews doing in verse 2. For that was complete ingratitude.
Rather, may we be those who show thankfulness in all things. Because we are those showing him in all things!
We are those who have received the whole, full, perfect sacrifice of God’s Son as a complete payment for our sins. We are a people elected by him not to suffer eternal punishment. You are the ones who ought to be under the prince of this world but instead you live and sing and shout the praises of the King of Heaven! Every Lord’s Day we are those hearing the good news of the love of God.
Would you dare now to say that you doubt God? And yet where is the proof that you are one of his own?
We have to be very careful we don’t become like the Jews of Jesus’ time. They took their election for granted. They trusted so much in their ethnicity they forgot to look at God and to listen to his voice. They couldn’t even recognise his own Son!
May that not be where we are. Rather, may the love of God be in us as we live out what we now are in him.
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
O Mighty & Marvellous God, how much don’t we thank and praise you for your electing love! You chose from way before human time began to step into this time and call for yourself a particular people.
We are part of those people. We are joined to all those your Son died for on the cursed cross of Calvary. How much don’t we realise we don’t deserve anything from you! It is all of grace – through and through!
O Lord God, help us to so live – showing your live in us. Through the Son of your Lord, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright 2022, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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