The Relentless Love of God - Pastor Tom Loghry
We start a new series on the book of Malachi covering chapter 1 verses 1-5. In these verses, the relentless love of God for Israel, and for all Christians through Jesus, is on full display.
Transcript:
A prophecy, the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi. I have loved you, says the Lord, but you ask How have you loved us? was 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 a 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'll see it with your own eyes and say great is the Lord even beyond the borders of Israel.
A reading from Malachi versus, chapter one verses one through five.
What is love? We speak of love. We toss the word around, but what does it mean? Well consider this starting point. The Apostle John tells us in First John four, eight that God is love. He doesn't say that God has love or is loving, but that God is in the very substance of his being love. If we know God, we know love.
The meaning of love is disclosed to us in every act of God. We learn the meaning of love by watching God. Over the next several weeks, we're gonna read the book of Malachi. Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament. A long story stands behind it from Adam and Eve to the present circumstances of the book.
We, what we have is a history of divine action. Sufficient to fill out the meaning of love. Now, Malachi is a man that we know very little about. His name means messenger, in effect God's messenger. And this is fitting for a prophet because God used the prophets to deliver messages to his people. Very often not only telling them what would come, but also calling the people to repent, to turn from their ways. Now, Malachi wrote sometime between 458 and 445 BC, so that's close to 500 years before Jesus Christ was on the earth. The setting is Israel after the exile. The short version of the backstory is this, is that God took the Hebrew people out of slavery from Egypt and gave them the land of Israel, the promised land, the land that had been promised to Abraham. Now, the people were not faithful to keep away from the idols and the sins of the surrounding people because when God called the people of Israel to be his people, he wasn't just saying, here, I'm gonna give you a piece of land.
Rather he was saying, I am setting you apart as my own, and so you are going to walk my ways. Unfortunately, they did not walk in the ways of God. Following a period of judges, and then kings, who after David and Solomon became mostly corrupt, the people in the northern part of Israel were sent into exile by the Assyrians.
The people in the south of Israel into exile, exile by Babylon. This was God's judgment upon them for their wickedness. They were expelled from his presence in the promised land. They got the message by the fact that he sent them into exile, that their, the way that they had been living their lives was unacceptable, but he also promised that they would return. And by command of the Persian King Cyrus, the people were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. And we find this story told in the Book of Ezra. Later on, the people also rebuilt the walls of the city as told in the book Nehemiah. And Malachi is set some time between those two books, you'll see that Malachi is a book calling for repentance, but it begins with God through his prophet, reminding the people of the fundamental reality of his abiding love for them.
So we first look at Malachi one verses one through five, and I'm just gonna read, once again, the first several verses. A prophecy. A prophecy, the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi. I have loved you, says the Lord, but you ask How have you loved us? Was 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 a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals. We see as the book opens up that God is deploying through Malachi a sort of disputation style of communicating his message to the people of Israel of a statement followed by response.
The first statement that God makes is this, I have loved you. Fact. End of sentence, I have loved you. But the response that the people would give to that declaration by God, apparently this must have been their attitude at that, at that time was, how have you loved us? In some way or fashion the people were questioning God's love for them, and we can imagine that perhaps it was because of all that had transpired, being sent into exile and the hardships that they had to endure once they returned to the land. And so it's this at this point that God throws them back to the very beginning of when he really began to set them apart as his people.
It takes us back to the time of Isaac. You'll recall if you were here for some of our Genesis series, Isaac was the son of Abraham, the promised son, and Isaac and Rebekah had twins, Esau and Jacob. Now, they were twins, but Esau was the first one to be born, and so as the first born, he deserve, he, tradition would say that he deserves all of the privileges of being the first born, a greater inheritance, the blessing, all of that.
And yet, that was not God's purpose. God's purpose was rather that the one born second, Jacob, was to be the chosen one. The one who would be the father of the people of Israel, because he himself got that name, Israel, from God. And so the nation takes its name from him. And so there was a basic choice that God had made between Esau and Jacob, and it wasn't on the basis of either of their qualities.
Because as we learn about Esau and Jacob, we find that Jacob also has qualities that aren't all that commendable either. He says was not Esau Jacob's brother? declares the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.
God simply loves Jacob and chose him and his descendants to be his people. And God makes this all the more clear that it has nothing to do about their qualities or merits. It has nothing about, to do about who they are as to why God chose them. We see in Deuteronomy seven, verses seven through eight says, the Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples for youwere the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. We go to Deuteronomy 10, verses 14 through 15 says, the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants above all nations as it is today.
It's simply by God's choice, not anything that they had done that they were set apart as God's people. And in Jeremiah 31: 3, we see the Lord recalling his love for the people of Israel through the prophet Jeremiah says. The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love, an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. We see this again and again over the course of Israel's history, of how God's love is truly everlasting, enduring, and how he draws them to himself again and again, in unfailing kindness rather than just obliterating them. And what's interesting is that even around this period of when the people of Israel had come out of exile and had returned to the land, even at that time, they had recognized God's love for them. In Ezra 3:11, when they're laying the foundation of the temple, this new temple that's being reconstructed, says, with praise and thanksgiving, they sang to the Lord, he is good; his love toward Israel endures forever.
Everything else might change. They might go astray, but God's love endures. God is utterly faithful and someone might be asked, you know, they're questioning God's love. How have you loved us? God would just as easily turn the tables on them and say, how have you loved me?
Because God called them to love him with all that they are. In Deuteronomy six verse verse four through six, he says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give to you today are to be on your heart.
This is what God calls for from Israel, and this is what he calls for from all people. Obedience to God is not complicated. It's simply this: love God with everything that you are. Now, the difficult thing is, is we're sinners and so we come up short of loving him in the way that we ought to, but he does not come up short in his love for us. And we see the depths of his love again by his faithfulness to Israel and ultimately his faithfulness to the world in keeping his promises by sending the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ.
And so we have more detail here though about how God's love is shown again by this disparity between Jacob and Esau. Now it says that, he says that Esau's hill country is going to be turned into a wasteland, and then going on into verses four and five says this. 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.
It'll be called the Wicked Land, a 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. Something to understand here is this, is that Edom is the people descendant from Esau. So you have the people of Israel, descendant from Jacob, Edom is the people descendant from Esau. And the word Edom means red, and it's supposed to kind of recall that Esau is kind of a man red, red in color. And what we learn as we read across the Old Testament is that Edom and Israel are bitter enemies. We see in Amos and in Joel and in Obadiah of stories told of their sins. Amos one. It says, because he pursued his brother, talking about Israel, with the sword and slaughtered the women of the land, because his anger raged continually and his fury flamed unchecked, in Joel three 19, but Egypt will be desolate, Edom a desert waste because of the violence done to the people of Judah, in whose land they shed innocent blood. And in Obadiah 1:10 because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you'll be covered with shame; you'll be destroyed forever. And as you look other places, and we won't look at all the passages, we learned of how Israel tried to pass through the land of Edom.
They just wanted to go through, they didn't want to do any, they didn't wanna harm them or anything and Edom gave them a hard time saying, no, you're not gonna go through our land. You'll have to go around us. We have David coming and conquering the Edomites, putting him, putting them under Israelite rule.
And then later on, the Edomites revolt and Edom takes revenge. And just one anecdote. Second Chronicles 28 17 says The Edomites had again come and attacked Judah and carried away prisoners. And so you just see this great division and conflict between the two of them. And so because of this, because Edom had set itself up as this perpetual enemy of Israel, destruction is, is promised to them in this passage and, and elsewhere we see in Jeremiah 49, 10 in verse 18, the Lord says, but I'll strip Esau bare.
I'll uncover his hiding places so that he cannot conceal himself. His armed men are destroyed, also his allies and neighbors, so there's no one to say. And then, and then down in verse 18, as Sodom and Gomorrah were overthrown along with their neighboring town, says the Lord, so no one will live there; no people will dwell in it.
So it's talking about them being utterly vanquished. If you know anything about the Sodom, story of Sodom and Gomorrah, they were a city of wickedness, obliterated by fire from heaven. And Ezekiel 35 verses three through four. Again, it says, this is what the sovereign Lord says, I'm against you, Mount Seir, and this is just another name for Edom, I'll stretch out my hand against you and make you a desolate waste. I'll turn your towns into ruins and you'll be desolate. Then you will know that I am the Lord. Now, this is in fact what happens to Edom. We know that this is what happened. It's happening, in fact, during the time in which Malachi is being written.
You can see here a map of the, the larger red area was some of the territory that the Edomites would've occupied. Around this time, the Nabatean Arabs swooped in and began to push them out. So this would've been somewhere in the air, during the years between 550 BC and 400 bc, and they basically relegate them to living in this darker red area up here that became known as Idumea.
Now, the thing that's interesting is that there is an important man that would come from Idumea, and come to rule Israel named Antipater the Idumean, and his son's name was Herod the Great. So if you're wondering, you know, how the, how does the Herodian family come into play in all of this? They're not Jewish.
They're Edomite in origin, and so it's no, no accident that you see, see them in conflict with Christ. Now, ultimately the Herodian line passes away. And so very much in keeping with these promises altogether, the Edomite people don't exist anymore today. We can't point them out in any place. Now, this brings us back to this comment that was made earlier about how God says, I've loved Jacob but hated Esau, and this maybe this troubles some of you to think about God hating people. Well, the thing that we have to keep in mind here is when we're talking about hatred, we're talking comparatively speaking. Now obviously there's, there's great consequences for God's election and choosing Israel and loving them and showing faithfulness to them because while they survive, despite all their wickedness, Edom is ultimately destroyed.
But we see this idea of, of a, a certain sense of hatred when we look to the teachings of Christ in Matthew 10: 37, and Luke 14:26, this is a very shocking passage to many people. Jesus tells his disciples, anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me.
Is not worthy of me. Okay, that seems fine. But then in Luke 14:26, he says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple. So it's the Luke 14 passage that really, it's like, oh wow, I'm supposed to hate my relatives.
Jesus isn't calling you to hate anybody. He's calling us, comparatively speaking, that we would be so devoted to Christ that comparatively speaking, it would appear as though we hate even our natural relations, which of course we have deep and abiding love for, but all the more, should our love for God be more deep and abiding.
And so when we're thinking about hatred and love when it comes to Jacob and Esau, yes, God absolutely loves Jacob in a very special elective sort of way, setting him apart. Setting them apart as as his people. But that did not mean that he absolutely hated the people of Edom because in fact, God's salvific intent goes beyond the people of Israel.
God intends to bring his salvation to the ends of the earth. Now, in Amos nine verses 11 through 12, we have some hint of this, of both judgment and conquest on the part of Israel, but also a hint of what is to be realized in Christ. It's prophesied there. The Lord says, in that day, I'll restore David's fallen shelter, restoring David's kingdom in other words. I'll repair its broken walls and restore its ruins, and rebuild it as it used to be, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name, declares the Lord, who will de do those thing, do these things. So notice there, Edom's included, but also so much more. Edom and all the nations that bear my name.
What's being anticipated is a messianic kingdom to come in which David's throne will be restored and will cover the face of the earth and include all peoples. Now that rule is absolute, but it's also gracious. We see the graciousness of it in Jesus Christ because he is the promised Son of David, the one to occupy this throne, and who has now brought this invitation of salvation to all people, from Edom to all the nations, that if they would turn, repent of their sins, and put their faith in him, that they might be saved.
It's by this same invitation that we ourselves are included in this kingdom as we respond in faith. And so when we get to verse five, I take it to have sort of a dual meaning here where it says, you'll see with your own eyes and say, great is the Lord even beyond the borders of, of Israel. Now, the first meaning I see is this, basically by the fact that God brings judgment on outside nations beyond the borders of Israel, God is demonstrating his universal sovereignty. It's difficult for us to think about it this way, but in the ancient world, very often they thought that the rule of the gods was circumscribed to certain territories. And so when you're talking about the God of Israel, well he might have say in Israel, but beyond the borders, there's other gods.
And they would have something to say if that, if the God of Israel was trying to, you know, hurt their people. So by God bringing judgment on outside nations, what's being demonstrated is that he's the one true God. So that's the basic first meaning there in terms of judgment. But of course we see how God, God is great even beyond the borders of Israel because of Jesus Christ, of how he brings this salvation to all people so that he is truly the God of all the nations.
What we see really here in this passage is the depths of God's love demonstrated in his radical mercy that he shows, and that radical mercy is, I think, exposed, it's brought to the surface by the juxtaposition between Edom and Israel. They are subject to wrath and it's wrath that they deserve. Now, the truth is, is that Israel also deserves wrath, and yet they receive undeserved love.
And ultimately that is the story for us all, that all of us in Jesus Christ are receiving undeserved love. So we ask, what is love? God shows us. Going on in First John four, the apostle John says this, this is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
This is how he has loved us. The love of God is displayed in his complete magnitude in that he loved us, even when we didn't love him, even while we were denying him our hearts and our souls. He is faithful to the faithless, all so that we might be saved from ourselves, from our own wicked ways. For this reason Jesus calls us to love. He directs us to the example of God himself, in Luke six verses 32 and 35 through 36, he says this to his disciples. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. But love your enemies, do good to them and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.
Then your reward will be great and you'll be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your father is merciful. That's what we see here in this passage. God is addressing their ingratitude. They're ungrateful, how have you loved us? And yet he is kind to them.
He is merciful. And so God fills out for us the meaning of love, kindness, and mercy. If we wanna know what that looks like, we look to God and follow his example. Every call to obedience is set against this backdrop, the bottomless sea of the love of God. He's loved us with an everlasting love. He has drawn us with unfailing kindness.
His hand reached out inviting our grasp. He has loved you. How will you respond? Let's pray.
Dear Father,
you have shown extraordinary love to us, and we say us father, because by faith, we are included with the people of Israel, those who came before us, who received your promises and received your, your kindnesses again and again despite their faithlessness.
Father, we give you thanks for your abiding love and that this love has culminated in the appearance of your son, Jesus Christ, so that not only those among Israel might be saved Father, but that people of all nations from Edom and to all the nations Father, that all of us might be saved in Jesus Christ as we turn to him in faith.
Father, we sim, very simply just give you thanks. And Father, if, if there is any ingratitude in our hearts, if we, if we cannot appreciate the depth of your love for us, if we wrestle with that Father, we pray that you would reckon with our hearts, pierce our hearts Father, so that we appreciate how much mercy you've shown every single one of us.
And may that stir within us, father, love; a deep and abiding love for you in response. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)