This week, we are looking at the opening section of a letter in our Bible called the Book of Malachi. Yesterday, we saw the Jewish people respond to God’s declaration of love and faithfulness with skepticism and doubt. 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?” We see God’s response to the Jewish people and their question at the end of verse 2:
"Was not Esau Jacob's brother?"
Now, to understand what Malachi is communicating here, we first need to understand who Esau and Jacob were and the role that they played in God’s story. In the first letter that is recorded for us in our Bibles, called the book of Genesis, we meet Abraham, who was the father of the Jewish people. Abraham was the head of the Jewish people’s family tree. In Genesis 25, we enter into God’s story as Isaac, who was the son of Abraham, has grown up and is now married. However, Isaac’s wife Rebekkah was also unable to bear children. And it is into this context that we read the following, beginning in Genesis 25:21:
Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. But the children struggled together within her; and she said, "If it is so, why then am I this way?" So she went to inquire of the LORD. The LORD said to her, "Two nations are in your womb; And two peoples will be separated from your body; And one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger."
Rebekah then gave birth to the twins, who were named Esau and Jacob. The oldest son, Esau when he became an adult, despised his birthright, which was the special rights, responsibilities, and privileges that he had as the firstborn. And in Genesis 25, we read that one day, after returning famished from a hunting trip, Esau was manipulated into handing over his birthright and the larger inheritance that the birthright represented by his brother Jacob. Esau, out of selfishness, sold the blessings that come from the birthright to his younger son Jacob for a bowl of soup.
A little later in the book of Genesis, in Genesis chapter 27, we read a story where Jacob deceived his father Isaac in order to receive the blessing that belonged to Esau. Then, in Genesis 28, Esau chose to marry a woman that he knew his parents disproved of in order to rebel against them. Who says that the Bible is boring? You should really read it some time. I mean, we could not make this kind of stuff up, could we? What a dysfunctional family. Deception, manipulation, this is the stuff that could make for a top-flight reality T.V. show. Would we all agree that both Esau and Jacob had significant issues, wouldn’t we?
In the Bible, the descendants of Esau would eventually form the nation of Edom and were referred to as the Edomites. The descendants of Jacob would eventually form the Jewish people. Now, with this background in mind, look at how the Lord responds to the Jewish people questioning His love for them in verse 3:
Yet I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau, and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.
Well that sounds harsh, doesn’t it? I mean what is God saying here? Is God saying that He hates people? The word hated here, in the language that this letter was originally written in, literally means to disregard or reject someone. The word loved, as we discovered earlier, literally means to bestow love for someone who is in need and is intimately connected with the idea of choosing and with faithfulness.
Unlike how we use love in our culture today, Malachi is not simply referring to a warm fuzzy feeling; this is about intention and action and choice. What the Lord is communicating here is that He had chosen Jacob and His descendants to live in relationship with Him while rejecting Esau and His descendants. Malachi is explaining that the Jewish people cannot question whether or not God loves them because of His act of choosing them.
The point that Malachi is making here is not that God loved Jacob more than Esau. The point that Malachi is making here is that He loved Jacob rather than Esau. And this choice of Jacob and rejection of Esau had incredible ramifications. When Malachi states that the Lord had made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness, he is revealing the reality that the rejection of Esau was the result of God’s judgment and punishment.
And God’s judgment and punishment of Esau and his descendants was designed to arouse awe and terror in all who saw and heard. The Bible tells us that the Edomites were a wicked people who rejected God and openly rejoiced when Jewish people were conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. However, only a few years later, the Edomites themselves found themselves being gradually overrun by the Nabateans, who lived in what is now modern day Jordan. But there was a fundamental difference when it came to what happened to the Jewish people and what happened to the Edomites after they were conquered, which Malachi reminds the Jewish people of in verse 4:
Though Edom says, "We have been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins"; thus says the LORD of hosts, "They may build, but I will tear down; and men will call them the wicked territory, and the people toward whom the LORD is indignant forever."
Here we see Malachi reveal for us the reality that God’s rejection of Esau and his descendants was not temporary. While the Edomites believed that they would simply rebuild their nation that had been crushed and destroyed by the Nabateans and return to power and prominence, God had other plans. The prophet explains that the Edomites attempts at rebuilding would be futile; that God would stand in opposition and wreak havoc and destruction upon the nation as a result of their selfishness and rebellion. Malachi then predicts and proclaims that humanity would forever look on Edom as a wicked country whom the Lord has cursed. Edom would always be a people under the wrath of God.
And that is exactly what history tells us happened to the descendants of Esau. First, the Nabeans eventually drove them from their territory. Then, in 185 B.C., Judas Maccabeus led the Jewish people to crush the remaining resistance of the nation of Edom. Fifty years later, John Hyrcanus, the nephew of Judas Maccabeus, forced the Edomites to be circumcised. Finally, the Jewish historian Josephus recorded the end of the nation of Edom in the first century as they had became fully engulfed by Jewish culture.
You see, the Lord wanted the Jewish people to clearly understand from history that He had always loved them. The problem was not with God and whether or not He loved or was faithful to the Jewish people. The Lord had demonstrated His love and faithfulness by bringing them back from captivity in Babylon. The Lord demonstrated His love by His actions toward them and towards the nation of Edom. But this morning, that does not resolve the tension that we all feel from verse 3, does it? When God says “Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated, that seems harsh, doesn’t it? So what is going on here? We discover the answer as Malachi hammers his point home in verse 5:
Your eyes will see this and you will say, "The LORD be magnified beyond the border of Israel!"
To help us understand what Malachi is communicating here, let’s ask some questions about the lives of Jacob and Esau. First, were both Jacob and Esau equally guilty of having a huge problem with God as a result of their selfishness and rebellion? Yes they were. Were Jacob and Esau each equally needy of rescue as a result of their selfishness and rebellion? Yes they were. Did both Jacob and Esau both deserve God’s right and just response to their selfishness and rebellion? Yes they did.
Now here is the big question: was it what they did for God that resulted in them having the opportunity to be rescued and enter into a right relationship with God? No, it wasn’t. Both Jacob and his descendants and Esau and his descendants rebelled against God throughout their history. That is why the Jewish people were conquered and carried off to captivity by the Babylonians. You see, it was not what they did for God that resulted in the Jewish people having an opportunity to be right with God. Both the Jewish people and the Edomites deserved God’s right and just response to their selfishness and rebellion.
But, instead of giving them both what they deserved, God chose to extend grace and rescue Jacob and his descendants from the selfishness and rebellion that they had embraced. And God chose to reject, to not rescue Esau from the selfishness and rebellion that they had embraced. God’s answer to the question: “How have you loved us? In what way have you demonstrated that you love us?” was “look at your history of rebellion and look at my history rescuing you from your rebellion”.
And how the Jewish people should have responded to God’s demonstration of His grace and love throughout their history was to bring glory to God. What they Jewish people should have been doing is proclaiming God’s grace, mercy and love to all the nations. What they Jewish people should have been doing was to respond in a way that revealed and reflected the grace, mercy, and love of God to the world.
But that is not what the Jewish people did. Instead, the Jewish people continued to take detours. The Jewish people kept taking detours from walking in relationship with God that resulted in them getting off track, lost, frustrated, confused. Detours that dishonored God and dishonored others. Detours that we all too often can find ourselves taking today.
During the summer, we will discover timeless detours that lead us away from God and that dishonor God and others. And my hope an prayer is that God would move in our heads and our hearts to equip and empower us to recognize and avoid taking these timeless detours that dishonor God so that we would live our day to day lives in a way that walks with God and reveals His Son Jesus to others.
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