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
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.
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?
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.
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 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.