Malachi 1:2 I Have Loved You

Malachi 1:2 I have Loved you

In Malachi there are a series of six disputes between God and his people. They had grown skeptical of God's love (1:2), careless in worship (1:7), indifferent to the truth (2:6–7), disobedient to the covenant (2:10), faithless in their marriages (2:15; 3:5), and stingy in their offerings (3:8). (Piper)

The Declaration of God’s Love “I have loved you” says the Lord

God’s declaration from Malachi is to his people Israel. . . .v. 1 to Israel Malachi prophesied after the children of Israel had returned from the 70 year Babylonian exile- 609-539 (Jer 25:11-12, 29:10; Dan 9:1-3, 2 Chron 36:20-23 ), the temple had been restored (Zerubbabel 1:10,3:1, 10, Ezra 6:15-18) and Jerusalem had (specifically the wall surrounding the city) been rebuilt (Neh 6:15). It was a time of peace and prosperity. His first words to them was that he loved them. The Hebrew, aheb, suggests that it is a continual love, “I have loved you ad still do.” (Miller) It is a covenant word. It declares God’s unconditional and eternal commitment to love His people. (Deut 7:6-8). It describes the lover’s attitude toward his beloved, the father’s relationship to his child and a friend’s deep affection. It carries the idea of intensity, totality and a family bond. (Toombs) God declares his unaltered and continuous love. The word used describes action that might be long or short in duration, but the consequences of the action continues into the present, simply, ‘I love you.” God’s love began far back in the history of his people and remained in force through their entire history until the present day. It is God’s abiding love expressed from an unchanging God (Mal 3:6). The love of God for Israel is sovereign and unconditional (Hosea 3:1, Jer 31:3, Lam 3:22-23) (Verhoef). Everything that God does to His people is all love—sometimes the love is a little disguised, but the love is always there! If He caresses, it is love. If He chastens, it is love. If He smiles, it is love. If He frowns, it is love, for God is Love and to His people nothing else but Love—infinite, boundless, eternal, immeasurable, inexhaustible, unchangeable, perpetual Love! Oh, the Lord has indeed loved His people, and He does love them, and He will love them, and must love them forever and forever! (Spurgeon). Here God speaks to his people. He has chosen them unto eternal life. He has written their names in the Lamb’s Book of Life. His well-beloved Son has already bought them with His precious blood, yet look at them—slaves to lust, rioting in sin, or merely hearers of the Word, but not doers of it, still rejecting the Savior and continually going from bad to worse. Oh, could someone only echo in their ears this little message of God, “I have loved you,” could they—would they—remain as they are, without the love of God shed abroad in their hearts, or any desire to be drawn towards Him? God knows all about His eternal love towards them and the choice that He has made of them. And often must He say, as He beholds their heart of stone, brow of brass and neck of steel, “Yes, I have loved you, O you poor foolish creatures. And you shall yet be Mine and shall sing among the angels, though now you are rioting in sin and reveling in iniquity!” I think I hear the Lord thus graciously expressing the inmost feelings of His heart and the very repetition of the message ought to touch all our hearts. Yes, dear Friends, whenever any of the Lord’s people get into a sad, lean, low condition—when they begin to grow cold and to doubt whether they can be the children of God at all—it is well for them to hear the great Father say to them, again and again, “I have loved you. I have loved you. I have loved you. I, who made the heavens and the earth, have loved you. I have loved you from before the foundation of the world. I have not merely pitied you as a man might pity a starving dog, but I have loved you with all My heart. I have loved many others beside you, but, still, I have as much love for you as if there were nobody else for Me to love in all the world.” (Spurgeon)

The Dissatisfaction with God’s Love

He tells them in various ways, “I love you,” and they say, “No you don’t.” They’re accusing God of sinning and failing. They’re accusing God of being unloving. They’re accusing God of saying one thing and doing another. (Driscoll) Every Israelite would recite in their daily prayers the shema (Deut 6:4-5) which is an affirmation to Love the Lord. (Smith) The people were disillusioned because they adversities and experiences seemed to contradict the declaration of God’s love for them. Their recent captivity and calamity so stuck still in their stomachs, that they could not see how he had shown them any love. (Trapp). Their exceptions of a glorious renewal of their national life after returning from exile had been disappointing. The promised kingdom of the Messiah (particularly in Haggai 2:6-7 and Zech 9:1-14:21) had still not been fulfilled and Israel as a nation was not delivered or glorified. They remained under Persian rule (1:8). They were forced to pay taxes for the provision of Persian troops impoverishing the people. They also suffered from pests and plagues (2:17, 3:11-12). (Verhoef). They let their presumptions about God’s plan and their present situation develop their perceptions about God’s person and promises. The exhilaration of the experiences of the return from the exile and the rebuilding of the temple (Ezra 1, 3, 7,8; Neh 7; Hag 2; Zech 1-8) faded into an emptiness where the priests and people were wary of bringing offerings (1:13), tired of trying to do good (2:17) and frustrated in their service (3:14). Sometimes this evil questioning (of God’s love) happens when a true child of God gets sad and depressed. A man may be very brave and full of joy—and the hand of God may be suddenly laid upon him and his spirits may sink almost down to despair. At such times, though it ought not to be the case, yet it often happens that the Christian begins to say, “How can God have loved me? I am so low, so sad, so depressed—it cannot be that He loves me. ” Do not talk like that, dear Friend! Grieve not the Holy Spirit by saying anything of the kind! But turn to your God and say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” (Job 13:15) (Spurgeon) They were struggling financially. They had an economic downturn. Their nation was struggling politically. It was waning in power and prestige. They were struggling morally. There was a lot of rebellion, anarchy, sin, and folly. And these people are not atheists; they’re just angry. And they’re looking at their life, and they’re looking at their finances, and they’re looking at their nation, and they are saying, If God loved us, things would be better. And what he’s saying is this: “You’re horrible kids and I adopted you. What do you mean I haven’t loved you? I’m your Father. What could I possibly do that is more loving than adopting you and being your Father?” Do you get it? Oftentimes, we’re frustrated because we don’t have what we want next, and we forget about what he’s already given. Here’s the big idea: Everybody deserves hell, some people get saved—that’s grace. Everyone who doesn’t get grace gets what they deserve. Esau got what he deserved; Jacob got grace. The Edomites got what they deserved; the Israelites got grace. Everyone who goes to hell got what they deserved; some of us, praise be to God, got grace. We got adopted and forgiven and loved by the Father. (Driscoll). The root of their sin was insensibility to God‘s love, and to their own wickedness. Having had prosperity taken from them, they imply they have no tokens of God‘s love; they look at what God had taken, not at what God had left. God‘s love is often least acknowledged where it is most manifested. We must not infer God does not love us because He afflicts us. Men, instead of referring their sufferings to their proper cause, their own sin, impiously accuse God of indifference to their welfare [Moore]. (Jameson, Fausset, Brown) They say that they cannot see any sign of the goodness of God in their prosperity—they trace all their riches and their increase to their own wit, wisdom, industry and perseverance—they leave God out of the matter altogether! And so, although His mercies stare them in the face and they wear the tokens of those mercies on their backs, and carry them within their physical frame, yet they continue to say to Him, “In what way have You loved us?” Often, when God is hedging up a man’s way with thorns to stop him from going to destruction, he thinks that the Lord is unkind to him, whereas the thorns in the way are the surest tokens of Divine Love to him! Yes, Sir, you were once able to drink greedily from the muddy stream of worldly pleasure and you kept at it as long as you could. I do not know where you might have been by this time had not God struck you down, taken away your power of enjoyment and deprived you of the means by which you indulged yourself in sin! What better service could He have rendered to you? The silly, self-willed child will not thank his father for the rod, but when he becomes a man, if that rod has been really useful to him, he will respect and love the wise and kind father who did not spare him for all his crying! And you, dear Friend, who are in trouble and sorrow, say that God is dealing harshly with you—yet those trials are all sent in love. That sharp affliction of yours is the surgeon’s knife that is cutting away the proud flesh and deadly cancers which, otherwise, would destroy you! God is working for your good in all that He is doing—it is His love that is doing it all. (Spurgeon)

The Demonstration of God’s Love

Jacob and Esau were twins. And not only were they twins, Esau was the elder, which means that by all customary rights and privileges he would be the main heir of the father's blessings., yourselves I could just as easily have chosen Esau as you. But I chose you, and passed him by. His answer is, I have loved you with free, sovereign, unconditional, electing love; that is how I have loved you. My love for you is electing love because I chose you for myself above your brother Esau. My love for you is unconditional love because I chose you before you had done anything good or evil (—before you had met any conditions—while you were still in your mother's womb (Gen 25:24, Rom 9:11-12). My love for you is sovereign love because I was under no constraint to love you; I was not forced or coerced; I was totally in charge when I set my love upon you (Rom 9:16) And my love for you is free because it's the overflow of my infinite grace that can never be bought. (Piper) If you’re a Christian, think of it this way. God is a Father. You have been adopted. Children who are without a father don’t choose their father; the father chooses them to join his family. This is why, right now, no child that is fatherless can adopt a father. Only a father can adopt. And so a father adopts their children. The children do not adopt their father. After the father adopts the child, then the child should love the father, but the father loves first. The father chooses first. OK, this is the biblical teaching of salvation. (Driscoll). God did not choose Esau as he did Jacob; I passed him by, and let him alone, to perish in his corruption and for his sin. And for his posterity, whereas they were carried captives by Nebuchadnezzar (as Israel also was), I have not turned again their captivity, but laid their land desolate; razed and harassed their cities and castles, made them a habitation of dragons and devils; and all this as an argument of my deep hatred and utter detestation of them. True it is, that Judea lay utterly waste during the seventy years of their captivity; the land kept her Sabbaths (50 years 586-536), resting from tillage. Upon the slaughter of Gedaliah, the governor of Judah, all the Jews that were left in the land fled to Egypt: and God kept the place empty, and free from the invasion of foreigners, until the return of the natives out of Babylon (Ezra 1:2,3). Now it was far otherwise with Idumea, the desolation whereof is here described to be both total and perpetual, according to that foretold by Ezek 35:7,15, (Trapp)

The Delight because of God’s Love

"Why do I tell you this?" To humble you. To take away your presumption. To remove every ground of boasting in yourself. To cut the nerve of pride that boasts over Esau as though your salvation were owing to anything in you. To put to naught the cavalier sense of self-reliance that lets you dally in my presence as though you were an equal partner in this affair. To make you tremble with tears of joy that you belong to God. . . . But that is not all. God has another purpose in revealing the greatness of his electing love for Jacob and his judgment upon Esau. . . . part of what it means to be loved by God is to know that God reigns—that he is great and mighty—even beyond the people called by his name (1;5). (Piper) You have assurance of His love toward you and providence over you, when ye see that you are returned to your own land, and can inhabit it, but they cannot do this. (1:4) and you, therefore, praise and magnify My name for this, and you shall say, “The Lord shall be magnified on the border of Israel, i. e., His greatness shall be always manifest upon you;” high above and exalted over the border of Israel which shall retain its name, while Edom shall have ceased to be (Barnes). . . . . you that dwell in the border of Israel shall say, the Lord shall be magnified, or let him be magnified; let greatness and glory be ascribed to him for what he has done: . . . give him praise and greatness because you are dwelling in your border, and their border is desolate; and your border is called the border of Israel, but theirs the border of wickedness; (Gill) You, are restored to your own “borders” in Israel, “from” them shall raise your voices to “magnify the Lord,” acknowledging that Jehovah has shown to you a gratuitous favor not shown to Edom, and so ought to be especially “magnified from the borders of Israel. (Jameson, Fausset, Brown) The Lord hath magnified himself, i.e. hath declared himself mightily to be a great King above all gods, by executing judgment upon these grandees of the earth. Hence it is that "praise waits for God in Zion, his name is great in Israel." He is sent to take the glory of all their deliverances and victories. Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, say they, but to thy name be the praise. (Trapp) The point of this section was to get the Jews of the restoration community, who were thinking that God had abandoned them and forgotten His promises to them, to think again. "Israel needed to consider what her lot would have been if she, like Edom, had not been elected to a covenant relationship with Yahweh. Both Israel and Edom received judgment from God at the hands of the Babylonians in the sixth century (Jer 27:2-8). Yet God repeatedly promised to restore Israel (because of His covenant promises, Deut 4:29-31; 30:1-10), but He condemned Edom to complete destruction, never to be restored (Jer 49:7-22; Ezek 35)." Even though they seemed to be experiencing the same fate as their ancient enemy, the Edomites, God would restore them because He had entered into covenant relationship with them. He would keep His promises, both to the Israelites and to the Edomites, for better and for worse respectively. This reminder of the Lord"s love provided positive motivation for the priests to return to the Lord, and it should have the same effect on all God"s people who read these verses. (Constable) When you once really know His love to you, His redemption of you and His election of you, personally, you will no more say, “In what way have You loved me?” But you will bow, in speechless but grateful reverence, at His dear feet, worshipping and adoring the greatness of His Infinite Love! (Spurgeon). When I first found out the love of God to me, you will begin tracing your whole history, from your cradle up to the moment of your conversion—and you will say, “I can see the Lord’s loving hand there, and there, and there, and there, and there.” You will look upon your trials, your losses, your crosses, your removals from one village or town to another and you will say, “Ah, it was love that watched over me all the while! It was love that was arranging all that happened for my good.” And you will be amazed at the difference that feeling will make in your life! Before you knew the Lord, you could not realize His love, but, as soon as ever you really know Him, you will say, “All His dealings with me have been proofs of His love.” You will put up your hands in wonder and say, “How could I have been such a mad fool as to go on sinning against God in spite of such wondrous love? It really seems to me as if the more I sinned, the more He loved me—and the worse I was to Him, the better He was to me. Over against my black sins He set the whiteness and brightness of His Grace and He seemed as if He conquered me, not by the sheer force of His might, but by the superior power of His boundless love.” (Spurgeon)