|
“The Nation Which Has Forgotten God’s Love” (Malachi 1:1 – 5) |
|
2-3 “I have loved you very deeply,” says the Lord. But you retort, “Really? When was this?” And the Lord replies, “I showed my love for you by loving your father, Jacob. I didn’t need to. I even rejected his very own brother, Esau, and destroyed Esau’s mountains and inheritance, to give it to the jackals of the desert. 4 And if his descendants should say, ‘We will rebuild the ruins,’ then the Lord Almighty will say, ‘Try to if you like, but I will destroy it again,’ for their country is named ‘The Land of Wickedness,’ and their people are called ‘Those Whom God Does Not Forgive.’” 5 O Israel, lift your eyes to see what God is doing all around the world; then you will say, “Truly, the Lord’s great power goes far beyond our borders!” Malachi 1:1 – 5 |
|
This book of the Bible was totally unknown to me until I heard it preached on at the Keswick Convention, many years ago, and because of that teaching¸ Malachi is now one of my favourite Books of the Bible.
On the face of it, these are a rather unequal distribution of verses, but that seems a good way to divide up this extremely relevant Book for our current age. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that the Bible is ‘out of date’, because we’ll see over the weeks how appropriate it is for today’s Church, and the world beyond. So, who is Malachi? Well, it’s not a personal name, but simply means ‘My Messenger’, and this is a very good reminder that it doesn’t matter who the preacher is – however good or bad, or indifferent they are – but is he or she bringing God’s message? Clearly the writer of this Book doesn’t want to draw attention to himself (assuming he is male!), but only to the message, which is a very important lesson for us: so much better to go home saying “God spoke to me”, than dwelling on what Mr or Mrs So-and-So said. Scholars seem to agree that it’s quite hard to date Malachi, but some believe that he was probably a contemporary of Nehemiah – a Book which has some similar themes. If these scholars are correct then the best guess at a date would be in the post-exilic period, after 536BC, when the Temple was rebuilt, and the people had returned to Jerusalem with high hopes. However, what they expected to be a time of blessing turned into drought, famine, poverty, oppression, unfaithfulness to spouses and to God. We’ll pick that up when we come to the second part in the series, but as well as unfaithfulness, moral and spiritual laxity, pride, indifference, permissiveness, and scepticism were rife. The people who had returned from exile were discouraged, because they had expected everything to go well for them. They were going through the motions and ritual of worship, but that’s all it was – there was no life or heart in themselves, or what they were doing. Doesn’t that sound very much like the 21st Century?! So Malachi brought a message from God, and verse 1 tells us it was an ‘oracle’, but what’s one of those? Well, it could be several things, but the context suggests a ‘burden’ – definitely not from the people’s perspective, but from God’s – so the messenger brought the burden of the Word of the Lord to Israel. In other words, a divinely inspired message. If you were writing such a letter I wonder how you would begin it? Amazingly, the first thing the Lord said to them (v 2) was that He still loved them. What a great way to start any letter! No matter what they had done, and no matter how far away from God they were, HE STILL LOVED THEM. What an amazing God! Sadly, the people had failed to realise or recognise His love (v 2 again) as they ask the question: How have You loved us?” What a pathetic question! They were God’s chosen people – His special possession. He had loved them from the beginning, and yet they didn’t understand, or acknowledge, or appreciate the Lord, and all that He had done for them, and should have meant to them. Even though God had made the whole world, and everything belonged to Him, He had chosen the Children of Israel as His own special possession. This is sometimes known as ‘the Doctrine of Election’. Let me try and illustrate this to make it as clear as possible. When I go into my study there are books on the shelves – I like to impress – and although they are all mine, I choose a few of them, to help me with a particular topic. I have chosen those few as a special possession for a particular purpose. It doesn’t mean that the other books can be thrown away: it’s just that they won’t serve my purpose at that moment. So God chose these particular people for a special time and for a special purpose. Malachi’s reply (or rather God’s reply through Malachi) to the question “How have you loved us?” is quite startling. Look at verses 2 & 3: “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.” Can the Lord God really hate? Can this God of love that we talk and sing about really HATE any of His creation? No, He can’t, so what’s going on here? Well, hate here doesn’t mean to despise, reject, or be repulsed by, but in Hebrew thinking it means literally to give second place to. Jesus uses the same word – to hate – in Luke 24:26, where He says, “If anyone comes to me and does not HATE his father or mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – He cannot be my disciple.” In other words, the Lord must come first, before anyone, or anything else. What God was spelling out was that He had put the descendants of Jacob in first place, and the descendants of Esau in second place. Even though Jacob and Esau were brothers, and so their relatives were related, we know there was actually bitter strife between them. The rest of this section is about the two kingdoms: the Israelites and the Edomites – those who God has especially favoured, and those He put in second place – and isn’t that a picture of the world today? Christian believers, and those who have no time for God – especially in our own country, and in Europe – those who are doing very nicely without Him, thank you very much! The messenger says that even though the faithless people seek to build and to prosper (v 4 & 5), they will eventually be crushed. To put it more colloquially, you can’t take it with you when you’ve died! In spite of the fact that God hadn’t stopped loving them, they had wandered away from Him; their worship was empty; their ritual was on auto-pilot; they had ‘lost the plot’. No wonder God was burdened by, and for them. They were a nation that had forgotten God’s love. And how many people around us have also forgotten God’s love – if they have ever loved Him in the first place? We’re surrounded by many ‘nice’ people, but they are on the materialistic merry-go-round. Earning more money to buy more things they can’t afford, and don’t need, and living more and more for their own selves. We would hardly describe these people as ‘wicked’, but in the Biblical sense of the word, they are far from God, and however much they may build their personal empires, at the end of the day, when their earthly life comes to an end, they are left with nothing – without eternity with the Living God. Surely this should challenge every Christian and every Church to be engaged in Mission and Evangelism and Discipleship, and be used by the Lord to bring people back to Himself. Some are still going through the ritual and motions of being God’s people – going to church, week after week – but there’s an emptiness, even perhaps an element of despair, as they go home each week completely untouched by God, and unchanged. There are also many Christians who don’t read the Bible anymore, or at least very irregularly, and maybe only in church on a Sunday. There are many so-called ‘Christians’ who don’t go to Church anymore. Many such people will tell you that they haven’t lost their faith in Christ, but in the Church, but I would dare to suggest that they have privatised their faith, and no longer see any need to be part of a worshipping community. The reality is that they are probably going further and further away from God, and Jesus Christ. And still the Lord God is burdened, and sends His messenger to us again, to challenge us, to bring us back to Himself, and to motivate us to be involved in enabling our nation to remember, to experience, and to KNOW God’s Love, which He has demonstrated to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Malcolm Brown |
