Israel and More are Loved by God

Malachi 1:1-5

1 The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.

2 "I have loved you," says the LORD.

"Yet you say, 'In what way have You loved us?'
Was not Esau Jacob's brother?"
Says the LORD.

"Yet Jacob I have loved;
3 But Esau I have hated,
And laid waste his mountains and his heritage
For the jackals of the wilderness."

4 Even though Edom has said,
"We have been impoverished,
But we will return and build the desolate places,"

Thus says the LORD of hosts:
"They may build, but I will throw down;
They shall be called the Territory of Wickedness,
And the people against whom the LORD will have indignation forever.

5 Your eyes shall see,
And you shall say,
The LORD is magnified beyond the border of Israel.'

Here the prophet Malachi’s name Mal’aki (“My Messenger”) is probably a shortened form of Mal’akya, “Messenger of Yahweh,” that fits the message of the coming of the “messenger of the covenant” in this book who is Jesus Christ our Lord.  This book ended the prophetic messages of God for four hundred years until John the Baptist appears to finish prophecy by pointing to the final prophet (Hebrews 1:1-2) and final word of God who is Christ (John 1:1, 14).  God speaks as the final divine prophet who is Himself and no mere man as before until Malachi.  These prophets all pointed to the Christ as seen in Acts 3:18, 21, 23-24 and Luke 1:69-70 among other places.  No further prophet is therefore required after the Prophet whom we were told to listen to came as the culmination and finality of God’s message to us which is the gospel.  God therefore begins with His love for those whom He chose and called as His own which was to include many from all nations as promised to and through the faith of Abraham (Galatians 3:8-9) in expectation realized at last.  They questioned God’s love because He had not loved Esau the father of the Edomites as much as those of Jacob.  The LORD made it clear that He had rejected Esau who had rejected Him (Hebrews 12:16) because God did not choose him as a vessel of grace, but of destruction as Romans 9:13, 15, 18, 22-24 tells us as the rest of the story.  This is a difficult truth for us to swallow, yet it is what God tells us plainly in the scriptures.  We dare not reject this in disbelief as Esau had done with what God promised as a right to those born in the position to inherit all according to His word.  We are sheep who have been chosen and called out of the world to be His people who once were not His (Hosea 2:22-23, Romans 9:24-26) along with the remnant of the nation of Jacob who was named Israel.  God had given the vessel of destruction over to judgment and desolation just as the unchosen unbelievers are apart from Jesus Christ even now.  Who are we to defy or deny the goodness and severity of God (Romans 11:22) in His choosing?  We are vessels of grace spun on the Potter’s wheel by His choice and design to make us for His glory, honor, and praise and not our own.  Those not chosen but rejected like Edom was long ago will be thrown down and not prosper in any lasting manner because of their inherent wickedness inherited from Adam as the unregenerate sin nature into which we are all born with.  Grace in God’s choice of us is the only difference.  When we see and acknowledge these things then we join together with the remnant of Israel in saying that the LORD is magnified and glorified beyond the borders of Israel into all the nations from which He had called and chosen (1 Peter 2:9-10, Revelation 17:14) us together with them as His own special people.  Israel and more are loved by God as His chosen and called children.  These things we have seen in scripture and now confess with our lips of His salvation in grace for His glory (Romans 8:28, 29-30) by His predetermined choice and not our own free will.  What God has done, nobody can reverse of undo (Isaiah 43:13), so we have complete assurance (1 John 3:19-21) to hold our hearts into eternity.