Behold What Manner of Love

Lord, thank you for the opportunity to be in your house. We thank you that your Word is truth. We thank you for the ministry, the Holy Spirit that dwells within our hearts assuring us that we are the children of God and even now as we look in your Word, open up our eyes, that we may behold wondrous things out of thy Word and behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Malachi, and where is that, well you turn to Matthew’s Gospel, and you hang a left. It’s the last book in the Old Testament and this evening we’re gonna hear three words spoken from the heart of God to his bride.

Malachi chapter 1:1-5. 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?” “Was 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.” Now if Edom says, “We’re shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins”, the Lord of host says, “They may build, but I will tear down. They will be called that Wicked Country, and the people with whom the Lord is angry forever. Your own eyes shall see this and you shall say, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel.”

I want to draw your attention to verses 1 through 5 to God’s love as unfolded here in these verses. In verse 1 and 2 we see God’s love declared and then in verse 2 we see God’s love disputed. And then in verses 2 through 4 we see God’s love demonstrated or displayed and then in verse 5 God’s love disperse. Do you remember when you first heard those three special words from the one who is now your spouse. It was a moment that changed your life, changed your will and your world, and it was a start of a new beginning. I remember 50 years ago Caroline and I were walking through the grounds of the old Fincastle Church which had one of those old iron fences with spear-like rods and as we were slowly meandering our way we would stop and talk and then meander a little bit more and we’d stop and talk, and our conversation became romantic you might say, and I was standing to the back of the fence when I heard those special words of endearment. Now you know what I’m talking about don’t you, those three words. Well, when those three words fell from her lips I was elated and not only elated I was elevated, I was leaning against the fence behind me and those spired rods made a dent in my backside and I never forgot those words nor that moment. It was a special moment and one to remember in more ways than one. We have before us in verses 1 and 2, God’s love declared. The oracle of the Word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi, “I have loved you says the Lord.” Malachi is God’s messenger, in fact Malachi means just that, messenger as Pastor Tom pointed out this morning in our study of the angels, the Hebrew word for angel is messenger.

Well, as we look in verse 1, we see that God has singled out Malachi and God calls him to a group of people, the Israelites, who are back in the land of Israel. We find that they have been there now for about a hundred years. Nehemiah was the governor at that time and he served and he went back to Shushan to serve in the palace and while he was gone things began to fall apart in Jerusalem and when he returned he had to take some drastic measures regarding the people and it is possible that at this time that Malachi was called by the Lord to expose the sins of the people and call them back to God. Now this would be the second generation of Israelites after the rebuilding of the temple. We see his message tonight as weighty and substantial. It’s weighty to penetrate the hearts of the people. And what we see in verses 2 through 5 is the first of seven statements between God and Israel in which God questions Israel’s spiritual condition. Beginning with the words you say, and Israel responds with a defensive arrogant answer, and God refutes their reply. And so, Malachi, sent by God to give this weighty message to the children of Israel is that they may return to a vibrant relationship with their Lord. Malachi declares this message, “I have loved you.” These are precious words. Malachi doesn’t start out lambasting the people. Ya know, it’s interesting in verse 1 it says here that the oracle of the Word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. It’s not Words of the Lord against Israel by Malachi. He starts out with this amazing statement, “I have loved you.” Picture in your mind a group of people and singled out and they hear these words by God through his messenger. That word love here implies a relationship. “I have loved you as one that loved in the past, in the present, and will always love”, it’s an amazing statement. God has always loved His people and always will love His people.

Do you remember the first time you heard those words spoken to you by God, “I love you.” For me it was 60 years ago, a little boy in Bible camp. Oh, I had heart the Gospel in church and in Sunday school for the first time the Lord opened my eyes and my heart and I heard those words and I beheld the lamb of God, which took away and takes away the sin of the world. Those words, I loved you and I died for you. What does it mean for God to love us? Well, there’s three aspects that we could suggest in understanding God’s love. We can say that His love is sovereignly bestowed. He choses to love us, He set His love upon His chosen ones from all eternity. He loved us because he chose to do so. Think with me tonight in eternity past, yeah before the world was spoken into existence, God called me by name before I was ever conceived in my mother’s womb, and the same for you. To think way back then God sovereignly bestowed His love in choosing me. His love is unconditional. It’s an act of pure grace. God’s love is not dependent on anything that we have done. He did not see anything in us worth loving and His love is personal, He knows you by name. God set his love upon me long before I ever sought Him. He called me by name, He gave me faith and He keeps me tonight by His power. This is what is implied when Malachi says to the Israelites, “I have loved you.” But notice, this very love declared, bestowed by God is disputed by the very recipients of His love.

Look at verse 2, but you say, “How have you loved us?” Now you would think after hearing God’s messenger reminding them and telling them of God’s love for them, that they would be overwhelmed with this realization. How could these people respond with these words to an expression of God’s love for them especially since they experienced His privilege, protection, and provision and power. Remember what He did for them? He restored the land, He allowed them to reestablish the temple and its worship. He sent revival under Ezra and Nehemiah and He gave them rest from their enemies. What we find here in the Book of Malachi is that the Nation of Israel was acting like a spoiled child, a parent that gives birth to a child, makes sacrifices for the child, takes care of the child, and the child says, “You don’t love me.” Oh remember the words of Shakespeare, “Sharper than a serpents tooth is a thankless child.” You see that was what Israel was doing to their God. It’s almost as if they were saying to Him, what have you done for us?” Israel had become so indifferent, unresponsive to God that they questioned one of his core attributes, His love, and because of their rebellious nature, their hardness of heart and their ingratitude, God would have had the right to pronounce his judgement on their lack of faith. They’re doubting and questioning God concerning his love is that they had a distorted view of love, they thought that if God loved them they should be living in a land full of blessings and everything was going to be bright and cheery, that if God loved them they wouldn’t be experiencing hardships, if God loved them he wouldn’t bother, or the crops and the fruits in the land would not spoil or insects would devour the fruit in the land. If God loved them, they wouldn’t have it so hard. Apparently, the thought had never entered their minds that something might be wrong with them but because God is long suffering he responds in love not judgement. In verse 2 we see to their dispute of God’s love He displays it, He demonstrates it, He unfolds how He loves them, and we see here that in verse 2 he says, “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’re 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 unfolds his love to Israel, displaying His love, first of all by His electing grace and second by His evident goodness to the people. Notice here in these verses, God’s love was demonstrated by the elective choice of Jacob. He starts at the beginning in the choice he made between two individuals, Esau and Jacob, and as the first born of the family Esau should have inherited both the blessing and the birthright, but God gave them to his younger brother Jacob. The descendants of Esau, the Edomites, had their lion assigned to them. They had their portion of the land, but the difference between the Edomites and the Israelites, God gave the Edomites no covenant of blessing as he did with Jacob’s descendants. And looking at this verse, some have trouble understanding in verse 3, “But Esau I have hated, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”

If you will turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 29 and in verse 30 and 33, we see a close parallel found in Jacob and his two wives, Rachel and Leah. We read in Genesis 29:30, so Jacob went into Rachel also, and He loved Rachel more than Leah, and He served Laban for another seven years. When the Lord saw that Leah was hated He opened her womb, but Rachel was barren and in verse 30 we see here that it states that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah. Verse 31 describes Leah as being hated. She was hated in the sense that she came out second best in the rivalry with Rachel. It’s the same thing that our Lord said to his disciples as we read in our New Testament reading in the service, Luke chapter 14 our Lord says to his disciples, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Our Lord was using the word hate in a similar way. Someone had said that a difficult question is now why God would say that He hated Esau, but how could He say He loved Jacob, and old Jacob was a swindler, a liar, and a cheater and yet God sets His love on Jacob. God demonstrated His love in His electing grace in choosing Jacob, which the children of Israel back in the promised land are descendents of His.

And now we see in verse 4 His evident goodness, God’s goodness. Let’s stop and look again at Edom and Esau. Esau’s descendents were the Edomites form the land called Edom and notice what God declares about Edom. He says, “He laid waste his hill country, he left his heritage to jackals of the desert.” The Edomites were an arrogant immoral Godless people who continually oppressed Israel all throughout their history and that’s why God judged them. They arrogantly thought that they could rebuild whatever was destroyed in Edom. They never got the message; you may build but I’ll tear down. They were known as the Wicked Territory and of people always under the wrath of God. Now think how God showed his love to the Israelites. Number one, He spared the Jews who were in exile in Babylon. He moved Cyrus to issue the decree for the Jews to return to build a temple and to worship. He provided the Israelites who returned the leadership of men like Zerubbabel and Joshua and Neamiah and Ezra and He sent prophets to them such as Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Here they were, chapter 1, a century after deportation still alive and flourishing in their restored homeland. The evidence of His love was the fact that Israel survived through the ages, up to the time of Malachi. Had they obeyed the terms of the covenant of the Lord, the Lord would have blessed them even more. God’s answer to Israel’s complaint is this, “I have proved my love by choosing Jacob over Esau. I returned you to your land and destroyed the Edomites, what more evidence do you need?”

Well, in contrast to Edom, Israel will one day witness the glory of the Lord in our own land. In verse 5 we read these words, it says here in closing of this portion, in verse 5 we read, “Your own eye shall see this, and you shall say great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel.” Israel will see the day when the blessing of the Lord will go beyond the borders of just Israel, in fact, even though they are a weak remnant that one day would come when God would indeed honor the covenant he made with Abraham back in Genesis chapter 12:3, he says, “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” and that was often fulfilled in our savior Jesus Christ.

In Galatians chapter 3:16 we read, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring.” It does not say in offsprings, but singular referring to one, “And to your offspring” who was Christ. Malachi called the people of God to repentance in His messages. His very call was just another expression of God’s love to them and God had shown His love for them, but they just didn’t recognize it. He showed how He loved them, in fact Malachi points to Edom and all that happened to Edom, and he reminds Israel of all that has come to her and we find here that Israel still does not take in the message.

I want you to close with me and taken in your hymnals and turning to page number 191. Gods chosen people had sinned, they hadn’t been destroyed, that in itself is an act of God’s love and mercy towards them. This song is written by a song writer whose last name is Bliss, P.P. Bliss. He has written several songs in our hymnals including a song that we sing, Man of Sorrows! What a Name. This writer had attended a meeting where he heard continually sung the words, Oh how I love Jesus and upon his reflections of that meeting that night, he was struck with the idea of how much God loved him in comparison to his love for God and he quickly wrote down the words of this song and take note of that second verse on page number 191. I believe that this second verse captures the theme of Malachi’s message to Israel in chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4, “Though I forget Him and wander away”, that’s exactly what Israel did, “Still He does love me wherever I stray” and that’s why he sent the prophet Haggai and Zechariah and now Malachi. Back to His dear loving arms to I flee, when I remember that Jesus loves me.” I am so glad that Jesus loves me tonight and you as well. Listen to what John tells us in 1 John 3 in closing. In the King James version it says, “Behold what manner of love Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it does not know Him. Beloved now are we the children of God and what He will be has not and what we will be has not yet appeared but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him and when He appears we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is and to everyone who thus hopes in Him, purifies himself as He is pure.” Unfortunately, Israel never took seriously the message of Malachi in the following 400 years he lived without any communication from God until John the Baptist came and the New Testament. Let’s pray.

Loving Lord, we thank you that you love us. We thank you for reminding us that you love us. We thank you tonight that we’ve been chosen in you before the foundation of the world. We thank you tonight that you have provided us with grace and mercy. As the psalmist says, surely goodness and mercy has followed me all the days of my life. Lord, you have given us your spirit that bears witness with ours that we are your children. Oh, what love, what wondrous love that you have poured down upon us. Lord may we be mindful of that love. Lord if we have grown negligent, if we have grown cold, if we have grown apathetic because we have lost our love for you, renew our hearts that we may love you afresh and anew. I ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.