Malachi 1:1

The Bible says in Malachi 1:1-3, “The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.” God tells Malachi that God has a burden. What is the burden? The burden is the burden of love. God said to the children of Israel in Malachi 1:2, “I have loved you.” We know that God has said to the human race, “I have loved you.” O, the great eternal love of God. Who can know it? Everyone can know this love through Jesus Christ. It says in John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” It says in First John 4:8, “God is love.” Jesus said in John 15:12-13, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

We must also acknowledge that even though God has offered His great eternal love to every soul on this earth, some have rejected His love. Where does that leave them? That leaves them in a terrible place spiritually-speaking. Someone who finally and completely rejects the love of God will ultimately receive the wrath of God. One of the reasons that God offers His love is so that we will not have to face His wrath. There is a hell. There is a place of banishment from the glory of God. Those who reject God, reject heaven; and therefore, they gain the opposite of heaven. Those who reject God, reject His love; and therefore, they gain the opposite of His love. The opposite of love is hate. Anyone who can love can also hate. God hates because He loves. God hates sin. It says in Proverbs 6:16, “These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him.” God hates the deeds and doctrines of false teachers, especially those who come into a congregation of believers to dominate and to control them. Jesus said in Revelation 2:6, “But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” And Jesus also said in Revelation 2:15, “So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.” The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 9:13-16, “As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”

God has this great burden of love for the children of Israel. This truth that the love of God descends from heaven and is showered upon the children of Israel tells us clearly that there are certain individuals upon whom the love of God does rest in a greater way than on others. This is true concerning all of the believers in Jesus. “We love Him because He first loved us,” as it says in First John 4:19. It says in Romans 8:39, “Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It says in Ephesians 5:1, “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.” The word that is translated “dear” means “beloved,” and is translated from the adjective form of the word “agape.” It says in John 13:1, “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” Jesus said in John 14:21, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.” We could quote many other verses, but I think we see the point. Once we become Christians, the love of God is showered on us in a way that goes beyond the love that God has for the rest of the world. One of the lessons that we can learn from Malachi is that because God loves us so much, He wants us to return love to Him. Of course, He does not want us to take His love and benefit from it, and then not return it to Him.

When God loves you, He has a plan for you and your life. That is one of the wonderful things about being a Christian. Every Christian’s life is important because God has a plan that He is going to fulfill in each of us. When we come to know Jesus, one of the benefits is this very fact. No Christian should ever be depressed thinking his or her life is of no purpose. God loves us, and He is either going to fulfill His purpose for us, or He is going to take us off the earth and fulfill His final purpose for us by taking us to heaven to which believers are eternally destined by the grace of Christ. God said concerning Edom, “laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.” What a contrast between Edom’s destiny and Israel’s destiny. Long ago Edom lost its national identity and the peoples were assimilated into those surrounding them. Concerning the land of Edom, it is now only a sparsely populated area with desert-like conditions in the part of the world where Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all come together. God truly has fulfilled Malachi 1:3 at a national level. Israel will always be preserved and has a bright future starting with the return of Christ, but Edom is gone forever.

What God did not do for Edom, but He did do for Israel, is emphasized in the next two verses also. It says in Malachi 1:4-5, “Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.”

In the first five verses of Malachi chapter one the Lord tells Israel how much He has loved them. Through much of the rest of the book of Malachi the Lord is going to point out to the children of Israel how they failed to love Him in return. In Malachi 1:6 God points out that the Israelites do not even give Him the honor that human beings give to one another. God says, “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?” We must remember that Malachi is writing at a time shortly after the temple had been reconstructed following the return of the Israelites from captivity in Babylon. The spiritual problems had already set in. The problem started in the heart. If the heart is not right, nothing else will be right. The Lord said to them, “O priests, that despise my name.” They should have been loving God. If you are not manifesting love for the Lord, then you might be on the path to actually despising God. Some people blame God for the bad things that happen to them. Some people hate God.

Moses told the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 30:16, “In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.” Of course, we remember what Jesus said in Matthew 22:37 (quoting Deuteronomy 6:5) about what is the greatest commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Make sure to keep yourself in the love of God as it says in Jude 1:21, “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

We need to have more love for Christ. We are definitely heading for spiritual problems if we ever have less love than we had before. Jesus warned the Christians in the city of Ephesus in Revelation 2:1-5, “Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” We must guard our hearts carefully or else we will drift away from loving the One who suffered and died in our place. It says in First John 2:15-17, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” We must ask ourselves the same question that Jesus asked Peter after the resurrection in John 21:15, “lovest thou me more than these?”

The Bible says in Malachi 1:7-8, “Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the LORD is contemptible. And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts.” The lesson of these verses is this: we should give our best to the Master’s service. The truth of the matter is this: if He really has our heart, we will give Him our best. There will always be something very different about a spiritual Christian and the people of the world regarding material things. Christians have all of their possessions tuned over to the Lord, and the Christians are simply looking for the Lord’s leading and direction in how to use these things for His glory.

The Bible says in Malachi 1:9, “And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means: will he regard your persons? saith the LORD of hosts.” In the midst of a passage talking about how much the Israelites failed to love God and failed to serve Him as they should, we are reminded of the grace of God. How much we all need and are totally dependent upon the grace of God that is in Christ Jesus. The truth is that in these last days we have all failed to love God and to serve Him as we should. Thank God that there is grace through Christ. Thank God that we do live in the age of grace. It says in Second Corinthians 8:9, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” Paul wrote in Second Corinthians 12:9, “And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” It says in Galatians 2:21, “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” It says in First Timothy 1:14, “And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” It says in First Peter 1:13, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” In describing the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, the Bible says in John 1:17, “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” If you have not experienced the grace of Christ, today you can repent and bow before Him and call upon His name.

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