This week, we are looking at times in our lives where we can be traveling in relationship with God and decided to take a detour. This summer, we are going to discover that the detours that we can find ourselves taking as followers of Jesus are not new detours; these detours have been around for thousands of years. As a matter of fact, there is a letter that is recorded for us in our Bibles called the book of Malachi that records the many detours that the Jewish people decided to take instead of living in relationship with God.
To fully understand the timeless nature of these detours, however, we first need to understand the context in which the book of Malachi was written. You see, as a result of the refusal of the Jewish people to respond to the repeated warnings by God through the prophets to repent from the selfishness and rebellion that characterized their lives, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.
The Southern Kingdom of Judah, however, failed to learn from what happened to the Northern Kingdom. Instead, they continued to selfishly rebel against and reject God. God responded to their selfishness and rebellion by sending the Babylonian empire to as His instrument to judge the Jewish people. In 589 B.C., the Babylonians began to destroy and capture parts of the Jewish nation. Finally, in 586 B.C., led by King Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian Empire captured and destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple.
Forty eight years later, In 539 B.C., the Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Persian Empire. The next year, the Persian Emperor Cyrus pronounced an edict that allowed the Jewish people to return back to Israel and rebuild their city. By 536 B.C., the Jewish people had rebuilt the altar and began to worship God again through the Jewish sacrificial system.
However, while the Jewish people were building their own houses, they failed to rebuild either the rest of the Temple of the walls around the city of Jerusalem. God responded by sending the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to call the Jewish people to rebuild the Temple. In 515 B.C., the temple was completed. The events leading up to the completion of the Temple are recorded for us in a letter in our Bibles called the Book of Ezra. In 458 B.C. Ezra himself returned from Babylon to Jerusalem and led the Jewish people to repent from selfishness and rebellion that had once again arisen among the people, which resulted in the Jewish people entering into a covenant to follow the Lord.
14 years later, in 445 B.C. Nehemiah traveled to Jerusalem and led the Jewish people to rebuild the walls around the city, which is recorded for us in the book of Nehemiah. After traveling back to Babylon, Nehemiah ended up having to return to Jerusalem in 427 B.C. in order to, once again, confront the continuing selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people.
So, 150 years after being conquered and deported by the Babylonians, where they lived in captivity for fifty years; after being allowed to begin to return to Jerusalem as a result of God’s activity through the Persian Empire; after spending over 100 years rebuilding the Temple and the city of Jerusalem; the Jewish people were still selfishly rebelling and rejecting the Lord. The Jewish people were continuing to take detours when it came to walking in relationship with God. And it is in this context that God sends the prophet Malachi to the Jewish people with a message. Let’s begin to look at that message together. Beginning in Malachi 1:1:
The oracle of the word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi. "I have loved you," says the LORD.
The book of Malachi begins by introducing us to the writer and the reason for the letter. The word oracle, in the language that this letter was originally written in, literally means “a burden”. The Lord was carrying a burden when it came to the Jewish people and decided to pronounce that burden to the Jewish people through a man named Malachi. Malachi, in Hebrew, means “my messenger”. The Lord had a message for the Jewish people that was weighing on Him, so He sent His messenger, Malachi, to deliver that message.
Malachi begins the Lord’s message with four simple words that have profound meaning “I have loved you”. What is so interesting here is that the Lord is not simply saying “I love you now”. This phrase, if communicated in the language we use in our culture today, would sound like this: “I have always loved you. I have always had a warm regard and affection for you as my chosen people”.
You see, the word love in the Old Testament is intimately connected with choosing and with faithfulness. This word literally means to choose to bestow love and affection for someone who is in need. The Lord is “I have always chosen to love you and I have always been faithful to you”. Malachi, then reveals for us the response of the Jewish people to the Lord’s declaration of His love and faithfulness in the second part of verse 2:
But you say, "How have You loved us?"
The Jewish people’s response to the Lord’s declaration of love and faithfulness was doubt and skepticism. The question “how have you loved us” conveys the sense of asking “in what way have you demonstrated that you love us, because we do not feel loved?” As the Jewish people looked at their history, they believed that God was not either loving or faithful.
After all, they had been conquered by the Assyrians and Babylonians. For some of the Jewish people, like Daniel, they had spent nearly seventy years in captivity. And after being able to return to Israel; after spending over 100 years rebuilding the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, they did not feel like they were experiencing God’s love and faithfulness. The Temple was not nearly as splendid and spectacular as it had been in the past. The city of Jerusalem was not nearly as populated as in the past. The Jewish people were not in a position of power and prominence as they had been in the past. And the Messiah that God had promised had not shown up yet.
So, from their perspective, the Lord had not demonstrated that He had always loved them. And how was the Lord being faithful to His promises? From their perspective, the problem was not with them, the problem was with God. And their response was to question whether or not God had really loved them at all. “How have You loved us?”
Tomorrow, we will see God’s response to the Jewish people and their question…
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