"I Have Loved You, Saith The Lord" (Malachi 1.2)

by J. Miller | Category: General | Aug 1963

Such words were spoken by Malachi, the prophet, to the Remnant of the Jews who had returned from Babylon. They were difficult days for such as feared the LORD and spoke one with another. A great change had come over the Remnant since the days when their spirits were moved, when Cyrus gave freedom to all who wished to return to Jerusalem to build again the temple which had been lying in ruins according to the years of the Jeremiah prophecy, and their spirits had been raised to buy up the opportunity thus afforded. The Remnant for the most part lapsed into the degenerate moral state which had so often characterized the behaviour of their fathers. The arduous labours of their fathers who returned from Babylon did not suit the taste of their now grown-up children. The priests were first in this declension, and God, speaking by Malachi, charged them with the words, "0 priests, that despise My Name", and they with brazen effrontery replied, "Wherein have we despised Thy Name ?" God had to go into detail in regard to their utter failure in their office. They offered polluted bread upon the altar, in that they offered the blind, the lame and the sick. Beasts which were unfit for the governor's table were fit, they thought, in that degenerate time, for the LORD'S altar.

We ourselves are now in the third generation since the time of the separation from Open Brethren, as is being pointed out in the pages of the monthly issues of Needed Truth, and the question arises in the mind, Will there be an adherence to the truths held dear by men of the past, or will there be a general sliding away from the truths which caused saints to leave the old associations? It may be that in some there is more desire for place and prominence than for piety and prayer. We know how the cockerel which flies up and perches on the top spar of the five-barred gate causes the neighbourhood to resound with the noise he makes, but after all it is but a noise to be soon forgotten. People need bread, not bundles of meaningless words, for their souls. To get spiritual food for oneself and others demands a pious mode of living, prayer, and diligent reading and study of the Scriptures. There is no easy way, if we are to prove a means of blessing to many.

God's approach to His remnant people was most touching and affectionate in His assertion, "I have loved you". But in reply they question His love. They asked, "Wherein hast Thou loved us?" If they had taken a glance back on the dealings of God with His people Israel, they would have seen love and grace on His part, and sin and rebellion on theirs. But God goes back to their forefather Jacob and says, "Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob; but Esau I hated" (Malachi 1.1-3). Isaac their father was sixty years of age when his twin sons were born. Twin brothers could not have been more unlike each other, no doubt in appearance, but much more in disposition and character. Thus they are described: "Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain (Hebrew tam, perfect, quiet and harmless) man, dwelling in tents" (Genesis 25.27). The word tam has various meanings; besides those given in the R.V. marg. are "pious and upright". Some said of the Lord "He is a good (agathos, which means amongst other definitions, beneficent, upright) Man", and we know the Spirit's commentary on the Lord's life, that He was "holy, guileless (harmless), undefiled". There was in Jacob's conduct that which spoke beforehand of the Lord, and which fitted him to be one in that noble and spiritual line of men that the Lord loved, the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

But the fact is clear, from Romans 9.11, 12, that God's election of Jacob, who was born under the disability of being the younger son of Isaac and therefore had not the birthright to follow his godly father and grandfather, does not rest on anything good or bad in him or in those whom God chooses, as it is written:

"For the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth, it was said unto her (Rebecca), The elder shall serve the younger. Even as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated" (Romans 9.11-18).

Many have tried to tackle the matters of man's free will on the one hand, and God's free grace and divine election on the other, and to explain the inexplicable, but those who are wise will reach the same results as Paul reached, after he dealt with divine election in Romans 9 and 11, in God's dealings with the Jewish people and the Gentiles, a treatise on divine election as is nowhere else in the Scriptures, he says,

"0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God I how unsearchable are His judgements, and His ways past tracing out For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor?" (Romans 11. 88, 84)

Who can trace out why before Isaac's twins were born God should choose and love the younger son and hate the elder? Jacob was not chosen because of his life after birth, but "that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth" (Romans 9. 11).

Some have had the temerity to say that Jacob acted unfairly towards his brother Esau when he bought his birthright for a mess of pottage. Such as say so, need to have their minds adjusted by such inspired words as Hebrews 12.16, 17, where we are told that Esau was a profane (common) man who had no appreciation of what the birthright involved, both for him and his descendants. Afterwards when he desired the firstborn's blessing, he was rejected, and found no place of repentance, that is, on God's part, though he sought it diligently with tears. All who today despise their birthright, for each born-again person is born with a birthright, I judge, will no doubt have similar grief over what shall never return again to them. The words of Revelation 3.11 run in such a vein, "I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no one take thy crown". It will be sad indeed if in that day of the Lord's coming we find that some other has received the prize that might have been ours, through our failure to hold fast what the Lord entrusted to us; or if through profanity and neglect we failed to set a right value on the things of God.

Though, probably, Jacob never knew what the LORD reveals in the last book in the Old Testament in respect to Esau and himself, his appreciation of spiritual values led him to pursue the course he followed in his mode of living. His brother Esau was more intent on the natural pleasure of the chase, more interested in his stomach than his heart, and in the things of time than those of eternity.

The words of the LORD through Malachi concerning His love for Jacob should have moved the Remnant towards a God-pleasing way of living, but, for the most part, we fear that they fell on deaf cars. But in those days, as in nearly all God's dealings with Israel, there was a remnant, and in Malachi's time there was a remnant within a remnant. Israel was never to be in such a state as Sodom and Gomorrah, which were left without remainder (Romans 9.29). The holy seed was ever the stock of the nation (Isaiah 6.13), a stock to remain and to sprout again in days of more congenial spiritual warmth.

Such a remnant is seen in Malachi. Whilst the words of the wicked were stout against the LORD, "Then they that feared the LORD spake one with another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before Him, for them that feared the LORD, and thought upon His name. And they shall be Mine, saith the LORD of Hosts, in the day that I do make, even a peculiar treasure" (3.16, 17). It was not what these God-fearing people did, but what they said, that God so highly valued. He listened to their godly conversation and had it written in a book of remembrance. It is well for us to think much of the fact that there is another day after the present, a day in which He will make up His peculiar treasure of such as have been a pleasure to Him in their day and time, such as have greatly appreciated that they have been chosen and loved by Him.

"Chosen not for good in me,

Wakened up from wrath to flee ;

Hidden in the Saviour's side,

By the Spirit sanctified;

Teach me, Lord, on earth to show

By my love, how much I owe."

J. Miller | Aug 1963
General