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Malachi - Prophet of God’s Love – Past, Present, and Future (1 of 3)

Focus Text: Malachi 1.1-5

Malachi’s burden [task] was to show that Jehovah, Israel’s God, was a God of love – past, present, and future. To successfully accomplish his task, the prophet began with an assertion: “‘I have loved you,’ says the LORD.” (Malachi 1.2a). But given the circumstances, a mere proposition was not enough; Israel needed proof!

“Yet you say, ‘In what way have You loved us?’ ‘Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ says the LORD.’ ‘Yet Jacob I have loved…’” (Malachi 1.2 b & c). Through the pen of Malachi, the LORD defended Himself against Israel’s baseless charges that He was a God who had not loved them. All Israel had to do was look at the relative success which Jacob [one of Israel’s other names] had experienced as compared to the descendents of Esau. Never had they, the descendents of Esau, been united; never had they been a lasting regional power; never had they caused foreign nations to sit up and take notice of their accomplishments as did Solomon regarding the Queen of Sheba; never had they had a religion which had influenced the then known world as had Judaism – and on and on the list could go. It was not a question of proof; it was rather a question of which proof do you want cited!

Israel’s forgetting of God’s love for them was not unique to this generation, the last one to hear the voice of a prophet under the umbrella of the Old Testament; previous generations also had “good forgetteries!” In fact, even the very generation that God held by the hand as they crossed over the Red Sea soon forgot His great love and longed to return to the despicable conditions of Egypt. “Then you [Moses] shall say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the LORD, saying, “Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt.” Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the LORD who is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, “Why did we ever come up out of Egypt?”’” (Numbers 11.18-20).

Had Israel but stopped to think and put aside their own greed, they could have clearly seen God’s hand of love in the events of their nation, past and present. Yet, rather than look at the positive evidence of the past, they considered the weight of the present as more compelling evidence and reached faulty conclusions. The fault was not with God or His providential hand; rather, the fault was squarely on Israel’s failure to reason correctly on the facts so clearly set before them. Malachi’s burden was, in that sense the burden of every prophet, i.e. to cause his hearers to reason correctly on the facts before them.

Isaiah put it this way, “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ Says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.’” (Isaiah 1.18). In every generation, those who meet God on His terms find Him a God of love and receive the benefits of that love! It was true then; its true now!

Questions:

1. What does the word “burden” mean in Malachi 1.1?

2. When God asserted His love for Israel, what was Israel’s response? How would you characterize that response?

3. Compare the history of Jacob’s descendents with those of Esau. What proof did Malachi offer from this comparison?

4. What happens when men truly reason with God as compared to reasoning against Him?

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