Malachi 1:1-5 – Chosen

So we are starting a brand new series today and we are over the

next few weeks we're going to be going through the scroll of the

prophet Malachi. Malachi, if you've got a Bible,

it's at the very end of your Old Testament.

So if you flip to on my Bible, I've got a page that says New

Testament and the page before that is the last few verses of

Malachi. So if you find that we're going

to be in Malachi chapter 1 and we're just really going to be

Malachi 1 · chapter mention

doing the first 5 verses today. Now whilst you find that, let's

tell you a bit about Malachi. Malachi, the word Malachi, it

means my messenger and it comes from the Hebrew word malach,

which in your Old Testament is either translated messenger or

Angel. So every time in the Old

Testament you see the word Angel, the actual word is malak,

which means messenger and now Malachi.

He lived about 100 years after the Jewish nation returned from

exile from Babylon. If you remember the, the, the

story of the Kingdom of, of Israel in Judah, David is made

king of all Israel and he is the king that everyone loves.

And then his son Solomon becomes king after him.

And he's the one who's wise. He's the one who has all the

money and all the wives. And then his son Rhea Bowen

becomes king and he's less wise. Actually, he's an idiot.

And under his rule, the Kingdom splits into two and you have

the, the, the 10 tribes. You have 12 tribes that make up

Israel, 10 tribes split off and they form the northern Kingdom,

Israel. And you have two tribes, Judah

and Benjamin, who form the southern Kingdom, Judah.

And neither Kingdom, though Judah is slightly better, follow

God's law very well. Actually the northern Kingdom,

they just blow it completely. They, they are a chosen people,

chosen by God, but they choose to follow other gods.

Just like we've kind of been talking in our worship today,

God has chosen to to lavish his love upon you.

But as Ian brought right at the start, God doesn't force us to

follow him. So as he pours his love onto

you, how will you respond? Well, the northern Kingdom, they

responded awfully. And God through through

discipline brought the Assyrians who conquered the northern

Kingdom and dispersed them, destroyed the Kingdom, dispersed

the tribes to the four corners of the world.

Judah was saved. But then later on God raises up

a king called Nebuchadnezzar who leads the Babylonians in conquer

of Judah. And he leads the the Judeans,

the Jews off into exile. He moves them from where they

lived in Judah to Babylon. But whilst they're being LED

off, a prophet, Jeremiah says this is only going to be for 70

years and 70 years comes and goes and a new king comes King

Cyrus and King Cyrus, who's a Persian, he allows for the Jews

to go back home to go back to their own lands.

And then we have a story of in Ezra and Nehemiah of of three

different migrations back from from the Babylonian nation to

Judah. And this is where Malachi is

set. He set about 100 years after

that first that first return about the time at the end of

Ezra, Nehemiah and because and when when the when the people,

when the people they first started to return, when they

were given the good news that they could return home, they had

high hopes. They thought, we're going to go

back home. We're going to rebuild our

lives. We're going to rebuild

Jerusalem. We're going to rebuild the

temple. Everything's going to be

amazing. The Messiah is going to come.

He's going to rule and reign not just over Judah, but he's going

to unite the whole nation as it once was over David and extend

the borders to the fill the entire world and rule with peace

and justice. But 100 years on, that hadn't

happened and the people had started to get disillusioned.

You kind of read, if you read the end of Nehemiah, you see

basically the book ends with him being really cross with everyone

and how they're disobeying and rebelling against gods.

And it's to this unbelieving, rebellious generation that

Malachi, my messenger, God's messenger, is sent to the Jewish

people to reaffirm the fact that God truly loves them, that God

is for them, and to ask them to commit to their calling, to

follow him and to be faithful to the one true God.

So let's let's read. Hopefully you found Malachi one

by now. It's going to go up there.

And what on earth? It's not going to go up there

because that's all wrong. So I hope you will have a Bible.

That's not a bad thing is it? Let's do something novel and

read our own Bibles, right? I'm reading from the NIV so it

might differ from yours, but I'm going to read the first 5

verses. It says 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 to

kill as the Lord? Yeah, I have loved Jacob, but

Esau I've hated. 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 and we will rebuild the ruins, but this is what the Lord

Almighty says. They may build up, I will

demolish. They will be called the wicked

land, a people always under the wrath of the Lord.

You will see it with your own eyes, says the Lord great is the

Lord even beyond the borders of Israel.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I want to thank you

so much that you have spoken to us through our time of worship.

God, I want to thank you that you are a God who loves us, Lord

Jesus. And I just want to pray that you

would reveal again today how much how how great your love is

for your people, how much you love us.

And I pray, Lord Jesus, as we I was we've already prayed during

our time of worship that you would you would you would help

shape us, you would help mould us so that we can be a people

who drop everything to say God, I want to follow you.

I want to give my all to you. I love you in return.

Amen, Amen. Let's see what slides I do have,

eh? Let's go with that one.

He says, I have loved you. This is how he starts this whole

prophetic words. I have loved you, says the Lord.

1/2 says Yahweh. Everyone say 1/2.

That's really good. Well done. 1/2.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well done. Go there again.

Yeah. I love it.

I love it. A half, a half 1/2.

It means loved. Everyone say it again.

That's great. You didn't think you knew

Hebrew. You know Hebrew now.

OK, that it means loved in Hebrew it well, it's how we

translate loved in the Bible and it it means the affection that

one person has for another. In some contexts it can mean

physical love. So let's see if you can do this

along with me. In Esther it says that the king

of Persia are halved are halved. Who did he halve?

Esther. It says that.

It says that Abraham take Abraham your son.

Sorry, Abraham take Isaac your son.

Whom you brilliant. It says that Jonathan had 1/2

for David like a brother. It said the Kingdom of Israel

had 1/2 for David, their gloved king.

It says actually that the king of Tyre had 1/2 for David so

much that he gave, he helped King Solomon build the temple.

That was brilliant by the way. Well done, well done.

You don't need to keep doing that now, but well done.

In Deuteronomy 7, it says that God's affection for us is he so

that that's what what how we are described having a half, having

love for one another. But in Deuteronomy 7, it says

God chose, God chose to love the people of Israel not because of

anything they had done, but he chose to love them because he

chose to love their fathers. It says God had affection for

and he had affection, and the reason he chose Israel was not

because of anything they had done, but because he just chose

to love them. See, God loved them ultimately

because He is love, God. Love is a name for God, but it

also is an action. It's a thing that he does.

It's a thing that he chooses to do.

And God is everlasting. God is eternal.

There is no start, There is no end to God.

So therefore his love has no ending.

His love has no measure. There is no ending, no

beginning. His love just is.

And love isn't airy fairy kind of pie, pie in the sky kind of

stuff. Actually, when God inspired the

writings of Hosea, Hosea would write that God's love for his

people is like a husband for a wife or for a mother for a

child. It's one of the strongest

emotions that we can feel for one another.

God loves because he is love and He chooses to love you.

He chooses to love us. Deuteronomy 4 says because he a

halved because he loved your father's.

Therefore he chose their descendants after them and he

brought you out of Egypt with the with his presence, with

mighty power. What he's saying here, or

actually he's not saying here that because you are really

good, because you're really impressive, because you're

wonderful people, he's not saying any of that.

He's saying I chose to love you because I chose to love you.

You are loved because I chose to love you.

I am deeply committed to you, says the Lords.

But do you know that I feel that's kind of the message

that's come through our time of worship.

God says he loves you, but how do you respond to that?

Do you even believe it? Because the people that Malachi

are speaking to, God is saying you are my chosen people, I love

you. But their response is how they

don't believe it. They don't believe that God

loves them. They've become cynical because

it's been 100 years since they've come back from exile and

life doesn't look like how they imagined it to look like.

See, they are basing their criteria for God loves me on

what does my life look like right now?

Does it look like how I imagine it should look like?

No, Therefore God doesn't love me.

And that's really dangerous. It's really dangerous.

I mean, we are so tempted up with people to base reality out

of our feelings, how we feel. We feel good.

We feel like we've got what we want, therefore I am loved.

We don't feel good. We didn't get what we wanted,

therefore I am not loved. It is so dangerous.

Our feelings are not reliable. Just like the ancient Jews, our

feelings are no more reliable, and they can be misleading.

Just think when you're tired. When you're tired, don't you

just feel more overwhelmed? Things that you would just take

in your stride, they just feel more overwhelmed, more

overwhelming. When you're stressed.

The little thing can feel like I just can't do this.

It's not real, but it's because of how you feel.

It's because of your physical reaction to the circumstances.

Sometimes you can be fine. You can be doing great all day

and then someone says something or you're put in a situation

which you've been in before and last time it didn't go well.

And so you're taken from that reality where you are to feeling

back to that past emotion, that past hurt, that past trauma.

It's real, but we cannot let it affect true reality.

How God, what God says about us when we when we don't have all

the information and we never have all the information, what

happens is we fill the gaps with our feelings and often our

feelings are wrong. Anyone watch traitors?

Anyone watch traitors? Yeah.

OK, We love traitors. We're not up to up to up to

speed because it comes on too quickly for us to watch.

But you know, it's traitors. You.

For those who don't know it, you have a group of people, a few.

A few of them are nominated as traitors, unbeknown to everyone

else, but no one knows who the traitors are, and even the

faithful have no idea who the other faithful are.

All you know, if you're in the game, is who you are.

You have no idea who anyone else is.

And at the end of every day, they have to get together and

they vote on who they think. Amongst them are the traitors.

They have no clue, but they go. But some of them are so

convinced because it's all on gut feeling.

And we were watching 1 the other day and and this, this woman,

she was like, you're a traitor because I don't like the way you

spoke to me. I was like, no, I mean,

obviously she's a really lovely person, but that is poor logic.

But we all do it, don't we? We fill in the gaps.

We fill in the gaps. I don't like the way you spoke

to me. Therefore you obviously don't

love me. God, I don't like where I am in

life. I should be healed by now.

I should have a better job by now.

I should have a family by now. I should have.

I should have. I should have and I don't.

And because I don't, you obviously do not love me.

But the truth is that Malachi wants to reveal to us through

Scripture is is God is for you. No matter what your

circumstances may currently be, God is for you.

He loves you. He loves to love you.

He wants you to know His whole purpose in creating you is that

you may dwell in, live in, rejoice in the fact that He

loves you. Dwell in His love so that you

may bask in the joy of knowing Him, so that you may let others

know that He loves you and He loves them as well.

Just think out of everything that is created, all the stars,

planets, moon, the earth, the the sea, the land, the the, the,

the, the plants, the fish, the birds, the animals.

And of everything that's created, God said I chose choose

to love people. I choose to love humanity.

That's what the story of the Bible is, that right at the

beginning God takes a man and a woman and he places them in a

garden paradise to love them so that they may join in this

perfect love that has been forever of Father, Son, and Holy

Spirit. They may join in in that love,

in paradise, and He pours into them, not so that they stay in

paradise, not that they stay where they are, but so they

might fill the whole earth with the glory and knowledge of His

love. But they fail as we all would,

as we all do. They fail to represent God.

They fail to show His. They fail to be faithful to Him,

to receive His love, to respond to his love.

Instead they rebel. And the consequences to that

rebellion, Romans 5 says, is because Adam sinned, death

enters the world. Now as as homework, I encourage

you all this week to read the book of Romans.

I mean, Malachi or Romans there. There's hyperlinks all over the

place between these two books as Paul is writing Romans.

He is, he is. He's just picking from Malachi

all over the place. And and it's Romans where it

says that because of Adam's sin, we all die.

Access to life has been removed. But because of God's great love,

he didn't leave us there. He doesn't leave us there.

He says that I will send a, a, a messenger, I will send someone,

I will send a Saviour to come and rescue you, to free you from

death, to bring you back into glory.

But the problem with humanity is that we continue to rebel.

We continue to turn away from God.

We continue to, to, to to go our own way.

And things get worse and worse and worse and worse until

creation itself is decreated. See our sin, it not only effects

us, it affects those around us and it create, it affects

creation. And it says in Genesis that that

the the world is then flooded, but God doesn't want us to be

wiped out because he loves us so much.

So he sends he sends a saviour in the form of Noah, that all

those who would believe in his message would be saved.

There's no other one who's going to make everything right.

No, you read the end of his stories, end up passed out drunk

in his tent in his son Ham as usurped control of the family.

It's not a good story. And so God pursues us, but we

continue to run away. Even in this new creation.

We continue to run away until we get to this, this place called

Babel where people are not only running away from God, they're

not only disobeying God, they say we want to be gods.

And in in Babel, God ultimately says enough's enough.

I'm washing my hands. And in the words of Romans one,

it says that he gave them over to their sinful desires and

lusts. I mean, that is a terrifying

prospect, but actually Paul tells us in the book of Romans

that God pursues us and pursues us and pursues us.

But if we keep rejecting him, if we keep ignoring him, if we keep

turning the other way, eventually he will let US have

the full consequences of what we deserve.

He will remove his restraining grace from us, not because he

hates us. Paul goes on to say in One

Corinthians 5 and Hosea 6. He doesn't remove his grace from

us to, to to because he hates us.

He removes it from us, as Jesus says in the Prodigal Son, so

that we may get to that place where we are wallowing pig's

muck eating slop and come to our senses and realise life is

better with Jesus than without. That's why he does it.

And let me say, if you're in a place right now where you are

feeling overwhelmed by guilt, that you are just so aware that

you've done stuff that you shouldn't have done, that you've

messed up, God may be letting you feel like that because he

wants you to run to him. He wants you to lay your burdens

upon him. But sadly, the nations of the

world, after Babel, they don't run to God.

In fact, they choose to make gods out of anything and

everything they can. But God doesn't leave them on

their own. God in love, He says, I'm going

to choose two people and I'm going to make a new nation out

of them. So he grabs Abraham, Sarah, 2

Babylonians from ER and he says through you I'm going to make a

new nation supernaturally because they were too old.

He creates a new nation. They have Isaac, who then

actually can't have children of his own, and supernaturally he

has Jacob. God supernaturally creates a new

people, a people that he wants to love, a people that through

loving them, he wants to display his love to the entire world, so

the whole world would come and see and turn back to gods.

And he says to them, this is where we get to a Malachi

because the people of Judah are saying, God, I don't think you

love me, and God saying I love you, I love you.

So don't you know I chose you out of all the nations to be my

people? 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 Hill Country into a

wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert

Jackal. Just pause there.

So God loves, God loves you. God loves all of us.

Who's this Edom Edom guy that he hates?

Is anyone asking that? Who's this Edom guy that God

seems to hate? Esau guy that he hates.

Sorry, Esau. Edom, same thing.

Who is he? Oh yes he is.

On the surface he is the brother of Jacob.

It says Edom, who is Esau may say that through although we

have been cursed, we will rebuild the ruins.

But this is what the Lord Almighty says.

They may rebuild, but I will demolish.

They will call, they will be called the wicked land, a people

always under the raft of the Lord.

You will see it with your own eyes and say, great is the Lord

even beyond the borders of Israel.

So Esau, his nickname was Edom, and that's Edom.

Edom means red, and that's because at one point in his life

he decided to trade his birthright for some red lentil

Stew. And so he gets the nickname

Edom. And now when this is saying Edom

and Jacob, this is not talking about two brothers.

This is talking about the nations that came from them.

And so like we said, on face value, Edom is just the brother

of Jacob. But when we read Scripture, if

you read through the prophets, you see that Edom is more than

just the brother of Jacob. He becomes a symbol, a prophetic

symbol of the archetypical enemy of God and his people.

He is an image of all who would, who would oppose God and His

will. Obadiah 110 tells us this.

Psalm 137 tells us that He is the the people who rejoice in

what God says is evil. And Malachi here 1/4.

It shows us that they are the proud who persist to build what

God said should not be built. And then Obadiah one Isaiah 34

and 63. The prophets make it very clear

that Edom is an image of the entire world, that all the

nations are Edom. Even the word Edom is a

linguistic pun. The in in Hebrew, Edom and Adam

are practically identical. And that's on purpose, because

when you say Edom, you're meant to think of Adam.

You're meant to think of the fallen, rebellious human race.

So does God hate everyone? Who is Edom?

Does God hate the nations? Does God hate everyone unless

they're an Israelite? No.

This is a this love and hate language.

It's a Hebrew idiom, and what it means is Jacob, Israel from all

the nations of the world. I chose to put my covenant

through you. I chose to make myself revealed

through you. Not through Egypt, not through

Japan, not through Nigeria or Romania or Britain or America.

I chose to have myself made known through you.

God chose them so that they would follow Him, so that they

would be a light to the world. He, he chose them.

He plucked them out of slavery. He did many signs and wonders

amongst them, LED them through the waters, LED them into the

wilderness. He fed them bread from heaven.

He took them to a mountaintop and taught them how to live.

But they rebelled. They chose to ignore God.

God said you're mine, I choose you.

And they said I don't want anything to do with you, God.

But 400 years later, the perfect Israelite entered the world.

The perfect Israelite entered into human history and he

performed many signs and wonders.

He went through the waters, He went into the wilderness, He

made bread come from heaven. He went up to a mountaintop and

taught people how to live Jesus Christ.

He was the perfect Israelite. He was the hope to all the

world. And on another mountaintop he

died so that all who believe in him could be added to this

chosen family. They could come and be and save,

be saved, that the curse of death could be lifted.

And from another mountain he ascended into heaven, declaring,

Go tell the world of this good news, that I am a God who does

not hate this world, but I love them.

And I long for them to come into my presence.

I long for them to come into my family.

It says in John 316. It says, For God so loved the

world, those who oppose Him, those who rejected him, those

who loved the ways of evil, You and me were all those and much

more that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes

in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the

world, but to save the world through him.

And see if for those who respond to God's love, those who respond

to him and say, I want to follow you, Lords, you are my Lord and

my Saviour. Paul goes on in the book of

Romans. He says it's like God picks you

up and if God is a tree, he picks you up.

You weren't part of that tree. And he picks you up and he

grafts you in and he places you in to his chosen family.

He says in Romans 9, he says in Romans 9, he says, I will call

them my people who are not my people, and I will call her my

loved who is not my loved one. And in the very place where it

is said to them, you are not my people, there they will be

called children of the living gods.

See, we were once all far off. We were once all far off.

None of us, as far as I know, are native Israelites.

So therefore, in the Old Testament worldview, you weren't

God's people. We were part of this far off,

not his. But but Paul quotes prophecy and

he says God through Christ has said those of us who were once

not his people through his great love are now his children.

If we turn and respond to him, we are called children of God.

So he tells us in the book of Romans that actually not all

Israel was Israel. He says that only those

Israelites who followed, who followed God, who followed

Yahweh, were true Israelites. And again, he uses his picture

of a tree, and he says the Israelites who chose to go

against Yahweh, who to follow Baal, to follow other gods, he

says they would be cut off. But those of the world who

choose to accept his love, who choose to follow him, they would

be grafted in to his family. Because he loves you, because

his desire has always been to have a family made-up of all

nations, made-up of all people. See, Yahweh through the act of

love from the beginning has been pursuing you, has been placing

his hand upon you and saying I want you, I want you, I want to

show my love to you. And he is calling your name,

every single one of you. He is calling your name.

Jesus said I am the Good Shepherd, and the sheep hear my

voice. And he's not whispering.

He's not whispering, he's shouting His name.

Will you respond? Will you choose to respond to

His love? Will you choose?

He doesn't force us to. But will you be a sheep and

respond to His great love and follow Him and hear Him?

Church, how will you respond to the love of God?

Will you continue on with your life as if nothing is different,

as if God is just a Sunday thing?

Or will you follow the Shepherd's voice as He is

calling you, as He is choosing you and choosing to follow Him

is a daily thing. It's a daily thing every single

one of us has to do. See if you are here, if you are

listening to my voice right now, God is calling you.

God is saying I want you and you may be sitting there thinking,

well, I am a Christian. I do love Jesus.

He's saying come, there's more, there's more.

I want to use you. I want to be part of your life.

I want to be an everyday part of your life, not just a Sunday

part of your life. I have chosen you to be in my

family, not just for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning, but

to be in your life every single day so that so that you can have

a great time. Yes, so that more importantly,

the world out there can see that Jesus is good.

Israel was chosen so that the world, the nations around them,

would see how great their God was and come and be added to

their family. They failed in that, but Jesus

has called us now to go in the presence of the Holy Spirit and

declare how great His love is, how great His love is.

So how will you respond? How will you respond to His

love? I'm going to pray and end us

off, but I want you to ask God, how do you want me to respond?

How do you want me to respond? The the disciples and the

apostles throughout the New Testament, they're constantly

encouraging us to finish strong from now till the day we meet

Jesus in glory, to keep running after him, to keep going, not

not resting on how we met with him last year or last week even,

but keep going, church. Will you keep going?

Will you keep pursuing? Will you keep living in the love

that Christ has for you so that your life will be a reflection

of the glory of Christ Jesus? I'm going to pray.

Lord Jesus, I want to thank you that you love us so, so much.

The God that through Jacob you sent your son, you chose Israel

so that your Son would come. And Lord Jesus, through your

Son, through Jesus Christ, you have chosen us to be your

people, God, so that we can enjoy you, so that we can dwell

in your presence, so that we may reflect your goodness and glory

to the world out there. Lord God, I pray right now that

you would challenge us, that you would challenge us.

You would show us how much you love us.

Look, God, right now You would clear the misty lenses that

we're looking through. Lord Jesus, that you would help

us to make that decision to in all things follow you.

Look, I pray that if there's things in anyone's life right

now that they are holding back from you, you would reveal that

right now to them and they would choose to drop that, to let it

go and follow you. Jesus, to hear the sound, I love

you and respond to you in love and obedience.

Lord Jesus, I thank you for how good you are to us.

Amen, Amen. Over the next few weeks, we as a

people, we're going to be looking through what it means to

be a chosen people. God has chosen his church.

We are his chosen people. And over the next few weeks,

we're going to look at what does it mean to live a life according

to being a chosen man and woman Family Church of God.