Malachi 1 vv 2-5            Memorial          22/10/23          DIY SSK Online 22/10/23

Introduction

I am always really struck by the way you can pick up a Bible book – sometimes an Old Testament book – and find that what it is saying is TOTALLY relevant it what’s going on in us and around us right now.

And I’ve been finding exactly that going on as I’ve been looking again at the OT prophet Malachi in the last few weeks.

We know what’s going on in the world at the moment, in Ukraine of course but now afresh in Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon … no doubt the West Bank too very soon.

In this age of religious cynicism in which we are living, I’m just waiting for the chorus of ‘How can a God of love allow such a thing’ … PEOPLE to do such a thing.

And here in Malachi 1:2 the LORD, the God of the covenant, addresses His covenant people and He says ‘I love you’.

Now He doesn’t say that in a vacuum.

He says it in a context.

He says it against a background, and it is a background that looks very similar to our background in our society as we find ourselves sitting here in Llandovery or Llandeilo wherever else we are this Sunday morning.

Why do I say that?

Because we need to understand the background to actually ‘get’ what it is that Malachi is going on about here.

You see, Malachi (it might be a name, or it might be a description of the speaker but it simply means ‘My Messenger’) lives at a particular point in Israel’s history.

Malachi lived about 60 or 70 years after the Israelites had returned from Babylonian exile … roughly about the same time as Ezra and Nehemiah … and his message was directed to the people who had been living in Jerusalem for some time. 

The book reckons the temple had been rebuilt a while ago, but if you recall the stories in Ezra-Nehemiah, things were not going so well at this time. 

When the first Israelites had returned from exile, hopes were high. 

They anticipated that they would rebuild their lives and the temple, and all the great promises of the prophets would come true pretty much straight away. 

The Messiah (they reckoned) would come fairly promptly and set up God’s Kingdom over a unified Israel and over the other nations, bringing peace and justice and the good life.

But He hadn’t.

‘How could a God of love do a thing like that?’ – they were asking.

Frustrated by the wait for what they’d expected to see promptly from God the Israelites, who repopulated the city of Jerusalem and the surrounding territory, proved to be just as unfaithful to God as their ancestors had been before the Exile to Babylon.

They had lost the enthusiasm of the people who had initially returned to the Land to rebuild the Temple.

Worse than that, though, this was an age of religious disillusionment and discontent.

Does THAT ring any bells for you?

Are we living in such a time as that now, do you think?

Don’t WE often hear people objecting: ‘How can a God of love do THAT?”

Here’s the thing.

This had become a time of advanced religious cynicism, and so has ours.

•   The Temple had been built but where were the crowds that were supposed to come flocking to it from all the Nations, as they felt they’d been promised (see Zechariah 8:20-23)?

•   There were some pretty good promises made to Zerubbabel about the shaking of the Nations in Haggai 2:6-9, 20-23 … but in apparent defiance of those their land was still economically and politically on the back foot.

•   What about the great return of lots of Jews coming back from the dispersion to repopulate and rebuild the place (as in Zechariah 8:7-8)?

As Nehemiah 7:4 shows it really hadn’t worked out like that yet.

•   And perhaps worst of all they were still in effect living under Persian overlords and not free.

How could a God who loved them bring them back to this patch of land and treat them like this?

It’s John L. Mackay who suggests in his commentary that to these Israelites things looked pretty discouraging: “They felt that they had done their part for God, but He had not responded as He had promised.”

As a result, they thought the way to get on was to ignore God and get what they could for themselves … we read about that in Malachi 3:15 which we might come to in due course.

And as a result of all that, as a direct consequence of their falling into religious cynicism, their conduct deteriorated, so that Jerusalem became a place of poverty and injustice once again. 

In the book of Malachi, we find out just how corrupt this new generation had become.

So Malachi is sent to firstly to expose and then to counter the scepticism and the behaviour (the disobedience to God) that was on show in Jerusalem.

And it is in THAT context that Malachi here EXPOSES the state of their hearts with a questioning statement … a BIG declaration of His heart that questions THEIR hearts …

1) The big declaration, v. 2a

V. 2a :“I have loved you,” says the Lord.”

Now the past, present and future tenses that we have for any verb are related to time.

But the Biblical Hebrew tenses, perfect and imperfect, are related to action. 

A Hebrew perfect tense is used to describe a completed action and an imperfect tense is used to express an action that is not completed.

So what God is saying here to this bunch of people whose impatience with God has driven them into dissatisfaction, disappointment and religious cynicism is to contrast their love which has been rather completed … their conduct shows they don’t look like they are loving God very much any more … with HIS love which is ongoing.

Now … that is grace for you.

God is saying ‘I have loved you in the past and I STILL do.’

That love stretched back to the beginning of Israel’s history.

Deuteronomy 7 made clear that this love was not a response to anything good in them but because of something in Him, in His heart.

Their Sovereign God’s love for them was based solely on what He desired and determined and He persevered in the love from the bottom of Sinai where they danced around the golden calf, through all the wilderness wanderings, through the conquest of the Promised Land, through the era of the Judges, the catastrophes of the monarchy with all those DODGY Kings of Israel, through the Babylonian and Persian captivity, through the perilous times experienced by those who returned to Jerusalem in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, Obadiah, Habakkuk and Haggai … throughout all their staggering and stumbling around inside His covenant love.

None of which Holy love did they deserve.

I have LOVED you, said the covenant keeping LORD their God.

How amazing is that?

2) The cynical counter-question, v. 2b

These people, the LORD knows, are NOT amazed by His covenant-keeping love … and in order to heal their wound the LORD exposes it to public view, putting their own thoughts into words in their mouth:

V. 2b “But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’”

Now, this is God exposing their inner attitude, in terms they possibly wouldn’t have chosen themselves, to EXPOSE what is going on inside their deepest most foundational attitudes.

What they may well have been aware of was their sense of disillusionment, their creeping dissatisfaction … possibly without recognising where it was creeping to.

But as people who had been given such great promises by the prophets, they wanted to know why none of them had been realised.

The Temple had been built but the Nations were not streaming to it as Zechariah 8:20-22 seemed to have promised:

“This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Many peoples and the inhabitants of many cities will yet come, 21 and the inhabitants of one city will go to another and say, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the Lord and seek the Lord Almighty. I myself am going.’ 22 And many peoples and powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and to entreat him.”

As Nehemiah 7:4 observed: “the city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it, and the houses had not yet been rebuilt.”

What had happened to the promise of Jerusalem being populated and prosperous (Zechariah 2:4) “another angel came to meet him 4 and said to him: “Run, tell that young man, ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of people and animals in it.” … where had THAT idea gone?

And where was the great and glorious victory the LORD was going to win for them to set them free?

Zechariah 9:14-15 had, after all, promised that.

Do you see?

The community had become disillusioned, doubting, discouraged and cynical.

You know, I reckon there are 27 doubting questions like this to be found in Malachi’s mere 55 verses.

That works out around one question per two verses … but check my maths if you want to be sure of it.

The overall picture is one of impatience leading to disappointment and discouragement and simmering conflict and confrontation simmering away at the bottom of the cauldron of their relationship with God.

So, they questioned God’s goodness, questioned it deep in their hearts though not necessarily in their words … 

But as you read on into Malachi you can clearly see it was all too obvious their behaviour.

They QUESTIONED deep down the value of going on serving their covenant keeping God.

Why?

Two things.

A) Losing their wonder

They had lost all sense of wonder over what God HAD done for them.

God had warned about this in Deuteronomy 4:9 and I’m going to read this for you because I think there’s an important lesson here for us to remember in our age when there is so much religious cynicism about:

(V. 8) “what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?

9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.”

It’s a really good idea to count your blessings, you know?

It’s a really important way to keep your wonder.

There are others, but this is important too.

The wonders of God, His character, His personality, His glory and greatness … these can seem very distant, ethereal, soft and floaty on days when things are a bit hard and gritty.

But what God has DONE are so concrete and can be much easier to grasp on days like that.

They had forgotten Deuteronomy 4 and fallen into cynicism, and as they did so they …

b) Falling into formality

… they fell into formality.

They were satisfied with themselves as long as they performed the outward rites and ceremonies … but honouring God in their hearts fell by the wayside and that also immediately affected their conduct.

·       They offered sacrifices (Malachi 1:7, 8, 13)

·       They professed repentance (2:13, 3:14)

·       They brought vows to the Lord (1:14)

But then even as things were not going as they wished and expected them to, there is no hint that they engaged in self-criticism, no hint that their relationship with God went any deeper.

They just blamed God without searching their own hearts … if things were not as they expected, it had to be God’s fault.

Now if THAT isn’t the spirit of our age, I don’t know what is.

And we live in this age and we can easily be affected by it.

However unwilling we are to voice this out loud, it can easily rub off on us.

The thought that their own behaviour might have been responsible for their unwelcome circumstances doesn’t seem to have crossed their minds at ALL.

The Word of God had warned them- Moses was clear (Deuteronomy 10:12-13 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?”

But they had forgotten Him.

How will God respond to that?

Malachi 1:3

3) Historical covenant love, v. 3

They have been disrespectful.

They have been irreverent.

Their attitude, far from mature in the faith is positively adolescent.

But the covenant-keeping God is gentle with them.

He seeks to bring them to understand the danger the thinking they’d fallen into could be for them.

He reacts to their complaint that He didn’t care for them by raising a lesson from their history that would prove His particular and specific love for them.

A) The engaging question

Bear in mind now that v. 1 emphasises this oracle is from God to Israel.

Israel are the people of Jacob because Jacob was renamed as Israel in Genesis 32:28.

So God engages the people this book’s written to with the question (v. 2c) ““Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord.”

The Hebrew word order puts the word ‘brother’ first to emphasise the closeness of Esau and Jacob, the twin sons of Rebekah … but even before they were born God had told her: ““Two nations are in your womb,

    and two peoples from within you will be separated;

one people will be stronger than the other,

    and the older will serve the younger.”

Well, the engaging question requires the immediate answer ’yes, of course they were brothers’ … which makes the grace shown to Israel and described in v. 3 all the more scandalous …

B) The scandal of God’s grace

Malachi 1:2c-3 ““Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob, 3 but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”

God explicitly did NOT treat these two brothers as custom entitled them by giving preference to the elder brother.

Primogeniture - the inheritance of the eldest - was the BEDROCK of their society at that point in time.

But God over-rode that, showing grace to the far from perfect Jacob … tricking and deceiving his older brother to get the blessing … renewing the covenant promises given to Abraham with the younger brother Jacob (a.k.a. ‘Israel’).

‘What do you MEAN ‘when have you loved us?’, says the LORD. 

I’m very glad no-one choked when I mentioned the SCANDAL of God’s grace … I guess I ran the risk of that … but I want to emphasise here that I’m really not convinced we’ve quite understood the wonder of God’s grace until we’ve plumbed the depth of its scandalousness.

Let’s just follow this tangent a minute then come back on track …

C) The contrast to God’s love in His hatred

These verses paint in the colour of God’s grace by contrasting His love for one brother with His hatred of the other.

Now if that sticks in your craw I have to say it make me swallow too.

WHAT is going on in v. 3?!

Let’s check the Hebrew to see if we can find a way around this one.

OK - the verb here is שָׂנֵא (sa-ne) ‘to hate’ and it occurs about 160 times in the Old Testament.

Scripture clearly has no problem with affirming God hates certain things … 

This isn’t just an Old Testament thing.

Romans 12:9 says “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”

The commendation of Hebrews 1:9 is for those who “have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.”

And the church in Ephesus is commended in Revelation 2  because (says the Lord) “But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.”

But still the Hebrew of Malachi 1:3 says “and I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated.” 

Now there is one view which says that the context indicates this is technical covenant vocabulary in which “love” and “hate” are synonymous with “choose” and “reject” respectively.

And you could go to Deut 7:8; Jer 31:3; Hos 3:1; 9:15; 11:1 to support that argument.

But then again, I find it hard to see the consequences that are then spelled out about Esau in vv. 3-4 as merely being a matter of loving Esau less than Jacob.

Neither does Paul interpret these verses in this way when he quotes them in Romans 9:13 when he is arguing that God sovereignly choses Jacob and passes by Esau …

It takes a bit of getting your head around the love God choses to show to people who don’t deserve it, but we don’t quite grasp the wonder of God’s total grace (and our privilege in receiving it) until we recognise that His mercy does not in any way derive from anything commendable, far less deserving, in the people He decides to show His grace to.

And v. 4 shows that He doesn’t go back on His decisions.

4) Consistent covenant love, v. 4

These verses are all about God demonstrating to these people whose religious cynicism has made them doubt His love the total wonder of the love that He’s shown them.

He has shown them this love from the beginning, but now in v. 4 assures them that His covenant love is both competent, constant and consistent.

Malachi 1:4 “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.”

God is ABLE to act in line with his covenant promise to and love for His people … to make sure it is fulfilled.

God is CONSTANT … He doesn’t swerve from … His covenant promise to and love for His people, He is not deflected from it.

God is consistent to His own loyal, faithful, true character in the way He works out His covenant promise to and love for His people.

So, no plan of man can thwart it.

No human effort or artifice can frustrate it.

Edom can say what it likes, pursuing its engrained rebellion against the Sovereign Lord Almighty … but in doing so they can only oppose the hand that will surely prevail.

Their rebellion is the WRONG response.

What is the right response?

v. 5 finally spells it out

5) Right response to God’s covenant love, v. 5

When God does these things that demonstrate His covenant love and loyalty … “You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!’”

Acknowledgement of what God has done out of His particular love for them, resulting in faithful worship of the Lord God of Israel.

Now, when you stop and think about it, that is the opposite to what Israel had been doing up until now.

Cynicism, doubt, denial of His covenant love will (when they see and recognise what He has done) give way to recognition of His love and to praise for His greatness and omnipotence … sovereignty even beyond the borders of Israel.

He is the Lord of ALL the earth, and the right response to His covenant love is to acknowledge it and worship Him for it.

Conclusion

When you don’t actually FEEL that God loves you … possibly because you are being impatient, possibly because you think the proof of God’s love for you would be His doing WHAT you want WHEN you want … then this short passage in Malachi has some good advice.

Check that you haven’t lost your sense of wonder at God.

Check that you haven’t fallen from close relationship to formality in your spiritual life.

God’s engaging question to someone who has fallen from trust into cynicism focuses a person’s thinking on the historical, personal way God has treated them … things that cynicism and unbelief work to blot out of the mind quite entirely.

Tell out to yourself the mercies of your God … His grace has been so enormous to you it seems totally scandalous!

God’s goodness has been shown to even a person like Jacob … one utterly undeserving of God’s favour and goodness.

God’s promise is that He’ll see that consistently through.

And the right response to the fresh realisation of His undeserved goodness is to displace impatience, disillusionment and cynicism with worship of the One Who has done what you’ve just freshly realised again.

1) The big declaration, v. 2a

2) The cynical counter-question, v. 2b

A) Losing their wonder

b) Falling into formality

3) Historical covenant love, v. 3

A) The engaging question

B) The scandal of God’s grace

C) The contrast to God’s love in His hatred

4) Consistent covenant love, v. 4

5) Right response to God’s covenant love, v. 5

Conclusion