Mal 1:2–5 I have loved you, Says the Lord

 

On November 5, 2017, I was invited to preach at Freedom as a pastoral candidate. I began explaining my strange accent. Then, we looked at God’s love for us in Mal 1:2–5. A lot has happened since then. In my personal journey, I have written a 275 page dissertation on these verses. I have grown in knowledge, but more importantly, I experienced something that only happens in community. Being part of this church community, learning together, hearing your stories, sometimes disagreeing passionately with you, I know that God has worked in my life and yours so that we love him more and we love each other more than we did three years ago. When I compare my old and new sermons, I see more love and affection in the content as I have gotten to know you. I have become less concerned about sharing fun facts about the Bible and more concerned that we treasure God more and love all people because of God’s gift to us in Christ’s death and resurrection. I want to end at Freedom on the same note we began, the theme of God’s love for us. Mal 1:2 reads, “I have love you,” says The LORD. SIOS (1) Because God loves us, (2) we must love him, (3) and love all people.

First, we look at what it means that God love us, biblically.

The book of Malachi teaches by using Israel’s history. Mal 1:2 reads, “I have loved you” says the Lord, but there is no explanation. The author expects his readers’ knowledge of the Bible. The prophecy alludes back to Genesis in Mal 1:2–3, “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?... I loved Jacob but Esau I hated.” In Genesis, after the creation of a perfect world, the first sin, and the promise of a savior, God promises to use Abraham’s family. He will multiply them, bring into the Promised Land to live in his presence, and bless them that they would bless all the families of the world. This promise passes down to Abraham’s descendants, but not all descendants: to Isaac, not Ishmael, to Jacob and not Esau. While Rebecca, Isaac’s wife was pregnant with twins, the Lord told her, The older shall serve the younger. 1500 years later, the people of Israel, in Malachi’s day, were to understand God’s choice of Jacob over Esau as God’s love for Israel. This meant that God’s promises to Abraham belonged to Israel. The land was theirs and they would bless the world.

Following God’s choice of Jacob, the exodus shows God’s love for Israel. Jacob’s twelve sons go down to Egypt because the Promised Land is not ready. According to Gen 15:16, the people of the land were not wicked enough yet for Israel to conquer them. Israel went to Egypt, to suffer, and to be delivered. Deut 7:8 describe the exodus as God’s love for Israel, ⁸… it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh….

Relevant to Malachi, in the Prophets, God’s love as the basis for the exodus and bringing Israel into the Promised Land is applied to the Babylonian exile. Following the exodus and the entry into the Promised Land, the people of Israel do not live happily ever after. They practiced the same kind of wickedness as those they replaced in the land, so God removes Israel from the land and sends them into captivity in Assyria and Babylon (2 Kgs 17:7–8). The same way God showed his love for Israel with the exodus, he loves them with the new exodus out of Babylon and into their land. Jer 31:3 reads, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Hos 14:4 anticipates the return from exile with these words I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.” Zeph 3:17 reads, “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” Even though God punishes his people for their sins, his love does not fade. His love is warm, affectionate, and passionate. God rejoices over his people, his treasured possession. He exults over them with loud singing! When God says “I love you” in Mal 1:2, he is saying that he delights in them, they are living in the land again, and they will be a blessing to all the families of the world.

Christians, the Old Testament is incomplete, we need to get to Jesus’ ministry to see the fullest picture of what God’s love looks like. God’s love for Israel culminates in what he does in Christ. Jesus is the Jewish messiah, who came and laid down his life, that they would place their faith in him for the forgiveness of sins, that they would share the gospel to the end of the earth that people from all over the world would become part of God’s international, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-racial people. God’s love for us is summarized in John 3:16 God loved the world this way: he gave his only Son that whoever would believe in him would have eternal life. This is the true new exodus, out of the bondage of sin, and into abundant life! In this room, we have had people of European, African, Asian, and Native American descent who have come to trust a middle-eastern Messiah for the forgiveness of sin. We have inherited the promises of Abraham, we live in God’s presence through the power of his Holy Spirit, wherever we go, he is with us, and we are God’s beloved people to be a blessing to all the families of the world. In the OT, Edom was a nation that also represents all of God’s enemies. This was us, before we were saved. Any individual Edomite could repent and turn to God. The same is true today, for those of us who turned to Christ, and any in our secular society who are all invited to repent and be baptized! God loves us!

We must respond to God’s love by loving him.

Mal 1:2–5 teaches that God loves Israel. The rest of Malachi teaches that God’s people must respond to God’s love by

loving him and loving people. God showed his love for them by remaining faithful to his promises. In response to God’s words, “I have loved you,” the people say, “How have you loved us?” In the rest of Malachi, we see that the people’s actions show that they do not live out of God’s love for them. Their worship suffers. They are not bringing the right kind of sacrifices in Mal 1:6–14. The priests are not teaching the word of God in Mal 2:1–9. They believe that God is unjust, and will not punish the wicked (Mal 2:17–3:5; Mal 3:13–4:3). Their generosity suffers, they are not tithing (Mal 3:6–12). Malachi highlights the people’s delusion. They are shocked when they hear God is not pleased with their actions.

A priest and a taxi driver both died and went to heaven. St. Peter was at the Pearly gates waiting for them. “Come with me,” said St. Peter to the taxi driver. The taxi driver followed St. Peter to a mansion. It had everything you could imagine from a bowling alley to an olympic size pool. “Wow, thank you,” said the taxi driver. Next, St. Peter led the priest to a rugged old shack with a bunk bed and a little old television set. “Wait, I think you are a little mixed up,” said the priest. “Shouldn't I be the one who gets the mansion? After all I was a priest, went to church every day, and preached God's word.” “Yes, that's true. But during your sermons people slept. When the taxi driver drove, everyone prayed.”

The point is that our impression of pleasing God can be wrong. Following every accusation in Malachi against their worship, tithing, words against God, the people were shocked at the charges. They ask in protest to the accusations, “How have we despised the name of the Lord?” “How have we wearied the Lord with our words?” “How have we robbed God?” The question for us is, how can we know that God is pleased with us individually, and with us as a church? These questions can help. (1) Are you transformed by God’s love for you? Are you moved by God’s love for you, and desire to live differently because he loves you? Is God’s love something that you recognize intellectually on a Sunday morning and want to be left alone the rest of the week? This first test is personal. (2) Are the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control visible in your life? The fruit of the Spirit are the evidence of God’s love working in you through his Spirit. (3) As a church do you sense that the songs we sing, and the teachings accurately reflect the Bible? If you are not sure, that is also a problem. Loving God means loving the true God!

Finally, we respond to God’s love for us by loving others.

In Malachi, the people fail to recognize God’s love for them. They fail to love God and they fail to love each other. We will have communion this afternoon. When we take communion we recognize that as different members enjoy union with Christ, we experience union with one another. So we teach that if there are unresolved sins, unresolved conflict, we are not in communion together, and so we cannot take the sign that represents our union. In Mal 2:10–16, we see that the people are acting faithlessly towards one another. The men were divorcing their wives, and marrying non-believers. When we love God, we want to marry someone whose most spectacular trait is their love for God. When we love God, we will love God’s children and be at peace with one another. 1 John 4:20, puts it perfectly, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Have we responded to God’s love by loving others? This is a test. What are we known for? Are we known for our political views? What we stand against? Is our priority to be left alone, and have a comfortable, orderly worship service? Or, are we known for our love for all people because of what Christ has done on the cross for us? Jesus said that his disciples would be known for their love for one another (John 13:35). If God loves us we must love him and others.

Conclusion:

In my three years at Freedom, anyone that has ever visited, as far as I have been aware, has always said that Freedom was a very loving and welcoming church. We sadly have had a stain on us, the stain of racism. A racist attitude shows that a person does not believe that God loves all people, accepts all people, and has sent his Son to die for all kinds of people. It is a sign of not submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. May we obey Jesus: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and love your neighbor which includes those who are different from us and those who oppose us, and love them as we love ourselves. I am so thankful for the PCA really leading us on a good path for hope for the future. Thankful for David and Celia, and the kids, and the families that have joined their core group to want to be faithful making disciples who make disciples of neighbors of the church. I’m thankful for all the freedom members who have put up with my teaching style which at times as looked more like lectures than sermons. I have experienced your love for me, and I know that God will use you to bless these new families and Lord willing more new families to come. I want you to keep this picture in mind: Rev 7:9–10 ⁹After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, ¹⁰and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” God isn’t for white people, black people, brown, or yellow, he is for humanity, which is diverse so heaven will be a diverse place. Not every church is called to be diverse. However, based on where we are located, having the privilege of being in West Charlotte, we get to experience a little taste of heaven every Sunday when we gather to worship our God with different ethnicities!