How can God hate Esau but Love Jacob | EXPOSITION

SUMMIT CHURCH TRANSCRIPT FROM FLORIN LEAHU LISTEN TO THE SERMON HERE .

To help you find where Malachi is located in the bible turn to Mathew and go one book back. That’s right, Malachi is the last book in the old testament. We find ourselves approximately 400 years before the birth of Christ.

Many scholars believe this book was written around the time of Nehemiah. The major theme in view is formalism rebuked. Which is to say going through a form or ritual without the heart behind it.  Now if you remember Israel was in Babylonian captivity for 70 years as a penalty under the law for breaking the law and turning to idols.

God was faithful not only to the good promises for keeping the law but the penalties for breaking the law. Now for a quick observation; Is anyone in hear familiar with the prosperity gospel and name it/claim it theology?

These false teachers often go to the old testament and take the blessings for Israel out of context and apply it to themselves. We must remember that the blessings came with a penalty for not observing the law, a point that is completely ignored.

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad we are not under that system today. Failure came with abundant curses as we read in Deuteronomy 28. We are not promised our best life now but an eternal inheritance. Just keep that in mind because we will come back to that.

God is faithful to Israel and they are brought out of captivity and through much opposition they begin to rebuild the walls under Ezra and Nehemiah. You would expect that Israel would be rejoicing to see their homeland but roughly 10% of Israel actually leaves Babylon to take on the rebuilding project.

Through this we see that God preserves a remnant or a minority of faithful Jews. Now about the writer himself, not much is known about him. The name Malachi means “my messenger” or “messenger of Jehovah.”

The Septuagint gives its meaning as angel. Now angel is a messenger that is either human or spiritual. In fact, another example of this could be found in Revelation 2-3 where Jesus addresses the seven churches and their angel or messenger.

So after this service we will no longer address Ovi as pastor but angel. I like that since pastors are called all sorts of negative names today angel seems to balance the scales of negativity. Of course I am just kidding, don’t call the pastor an angel I wouldn’t want visitors thinking they’ve come into some kind of weird cult.

Lastly, there is a balance between the messenger and the message. We must know that the messenger himself is trustworthy and then we must carefully examine the message.

Even though we don’t know much about Malachi’s personal life we know that his message and prophesies came true in predicting the arrival of John the Baptist 400 years later. Imagine that Malachi is like a radio announcer giving a message and ending with, “the next voice you will hear from is John the Baptist.”

Four hundred years is a long time to wait for the next voice. To put it into context America is 245 years old; almost double the time America has been around!

THE BURDEN OF THE LORD.

Appetizer:

How many of you are looking forward to lunch? How many of you ate breakfast? How many of you are regretting you skipped breakfast? Well to help us out I’ve arranged the verses we will be looking at as a three course meal. We will start with the appetizer, verse 1.

The main course verses 2-3; and lastly dessert verses 3-5. Of course we will have to take a few sips of water in between with some application. Now, let’s get our minds off of lunch and into some spiritual food because man cannot live on bread alone.

Let’s open the word to Malachi 1:1

We’ll stop here for a moment to consider this burden. It seems simple enough; share some word of encouragement or warning from God.

Yet the reality was far different and often came with danger. If you don’t believe me try it today, go out into the streets and yell out, “The end is near” or “God’s judgement is coming” needless to say you won’t have a big crowd cheering you on.

People are not much different than they were 2400 years ago, they want to have good news of wealth and security not repentance and doom. In fact, Jesus even called out the religious leaders of his time for beating and killing the prophets that were sent to them.

By now you’re probably thinking, so what. Well, let me ask you, do you have a message or a burden from the Lord?

Remember Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30,

You might be asking what is this light burden? Well if you recall as believers we are a kingdom of priests. A priest is one that intercedes to God on behalf of a nation or persons. But on top of that believers also act as a prophet.

A prophet spoke to the people a word from the Lord. The burden of the believer is the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think it’s such a beautiful thing to gather with believers on Sunday and remind one another and encourage ourselves in the gospel. After we get our spiritual batteries charged up we can then go out and share the gospel with non-believers.

You may be surprised to hear this but did you know most church going, professing Christians cannot articulate the gospel? Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m not questioning their salvation but they don’t know how to share their faith with others.

This is a scary reality and it ought not be so among us. We live in the most technologically advanced age with information at our fingertips.

On top of that there are many heresies out there and pseudo gospels. So how can we not only avoid falling into deceptions and being effective in our witness?

Well let’s start by learning to articulate the gospel of our salvation. I’ll start by citing 1 Corinthians 15: 1-4,

Believing in the death burial and resurrection of Christ is the message of the gospel. Salvation is not determined by our performance but by His performance. God became a man in the flesh and dwelt among us.

He lived a perfect sinless life that we could never achieve, solving our need for righteousness. Then He took the curses and penalty for our sin although He was without sin.

He became a mercy seat for all those that would put their trust in him. Are you familiar with the theological term, “the great exchange”?

It simply means that the father treated Christ as the most wretched sinner so that He could treat the most wretched sinner as Christ. I’ll make it more plain, Jesus was stripped completely naked so he could put a robe of his righteousness on the believer and our shame would not appear before the Father.

Jesus had a crown of thorns driven through his forehead so that he could place a crown of glory on your head. Jesus became a sponge to soak up the father’s wrath so that it could be said of you, “there is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus!”

What a beautiful burden we have, let us bear this burden for His name sake as he bore a cross for our redemption! I remember last week’s sermon by Lucas on rest and I can’t help but feel rest for my soul and rest from laboring and achieving my righteousness.

I rest in the fact that I have peace with the father by a sacrifice greater than all the cattle on all the hills. I rest on the finished work and blood of Jesus that was shed for me. Are you a great sinner? Christ is an even greater savior. So much more can be said but let’s move on to the main course in the next two verses of Malachi.

MALACHI 1:2 “HOW HAS THE LORD LOVE ISRAEL?”

Main Course:

 So before we start the main course I’d like to highlight some of the themes we will be covering; they include mercy, grace, free will, love and the doctrine of election. You might have gone ahead and read the next two verses and are scratching your head thinking, “how on earth will we getting all of that from two verses?” Let’s treat it as a meal and take it one bite at a time.

Let’s stop here for a moment and observe the style of writing that is known as a dialectic which later became very popular in Judaism. Malachi uses this style in the second verse to show a dialogue between God and his people.

The Lord makes the statement, “I have loved you.” This is remarkable because God waits a very long time before He tells anyone in the old testament that He loves them. In fact, the best that could be said about David or Moses is that they were the servant of the Lord.

Now you would expect the nation of Israel to acknowledge His love but instead they ask, “how exactly?” They want to know the specific way God loved Israel. I must pause here and ask, is this fair?

The answer is, absolutely not! God had chosen the nation of Israel out of all the families of the earth. He swore a covenant to them. And although they were unfaithful to their covenant God remained faithful.

He walked with them through the wilderness, provided food and water for millions of people as they marched for 40 years, gave them the land of the Canaanites, made them the most prosperous nation, preserved them through their captivity and even brought them back into the land!

God was faithful to His promises yet they ask, “in what way have You loved us?” Isn’t their history evidence enough of God’s love? Yes, they served a gracious God and yet they turned to idols, prostitution, child sacrifice, political corruption. The statement would be more fitting if it was reversed, the nation stating, “we have loved you, and God’s reply being, in what way have you loved Me?” This question and answer is completely ironic.

Now, do we ever ask God, in what way do you love love me? I know whole denominations of Christians that believe God’s love and mercy is on the basis of moral performance.

Now it is true that after we are saved we will undergo a process of sanctification in which we progressively kill sin and crucify the flesh but we will not be sinless until the final step of glorification.

If God’s love toward us was on the basis of our perfection who could be saved? We see the example of Israel, although they had failed time and time again God remained faithful to his promises and did not give up on Israel.

The bible says God is rich in mercy. But what is mercy? Mercy is defined as compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.

To put it another way, imagine a criminal who deserves the electric chair but gets released. He did not get what he deserved and mercy was extended. Before I go on to the next part of verse two I’d like to have you consider Titus 3:5,

If you ever find yourself not knowing what to pray for, remember to thank God for being rich in mercy, if He wasn’t I might be in danger but I can rest knowing He has plenty for me and plenty for you by the way.

Malachi 1:2-3, “How can God Hate Esau yet Love Jacob?”

Let’s pick up where we left off friends, Malachi 1:2-3,

I heard a story about a seminary student that told his professor, “I have a problem with the passage because it says God hates Esau. The Professor responded by saying, “I have a problem too but not with God hating Esau but why God loves Jacob.”

This scripture is very controversial indeed but let’s examine it together as a church and do some exploring in God’s word.

First let’s deal with the fact that it says God hates and the object of his hate is Esau. We read in 1John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16 that God is love. Does that mean that God cannot hate?

Well I’ll give you a simply comparison, If I say I love children then I must hate pedophiles. If I love righteousness I must hate wickedness.

In fact, we read that God hates sin and sin cannot be in the presence of a holy God. Proverbs 6 lists seven things that God hates and God is righteous in doing so.

Next let’s notice the object of Gods hatred is not Esau’s sin. It does not say, “Esau’s sin have I hated.” We’ve all heard that Christian cliché, love the sinner hate the sin but at least in this passage we cannot separate the two.

The sin is bound or attached to the sinner. Most unbelievers only know or care to know about two verses. The first is judge not, the other is, God is love.

They twist these scriptures to create a God that is passive and winks at sin and is more of a grandfather that forgives and you can do whatever you please.

This is an idolatry, and if we are to present God in his truest form we must present him as Holy. In fact, one preacher put it, “the train of God’s love runs on the tracks of His Holiness.”

We must also remember that God’s hatred is rooted in His attributes of righteousness, justice and holiness. While our hatred is rooted in pride, jealousy or some form of sin. In this short statement we can lift the veil as it were into the complexity that is our Creator.

Let’s examine the persons Jacob and Esau, and their actions. If you recall from Genesis 25-33 Jacob and Esau were brothers, twins and one preacher referred to them as, “womb mates.”

We see them as an example of God’s divine election, where God chooses one and passes over the other. But before we get to Gods perspective let’s consider what they did and their relationship one to another.

First let’s consider that Esau was athletic, handsome and a man of the field. He is a symbol in scripture of the flesh and his name highlights the flesh because his name means hairy. Jacob on the other hand means heel grabber or deceiver.

He is a picture in scripture of the spirit. A man who struggles but has a relationship and is offered grace from God. Now the best commentary on scripture is scripture so let’s consider what was said about Esau in Hebrews 12:16-17, 

The selling of the birthright is the climax of the brothers’ relationship and it was forever memorialized in scripture. You see this birthright came with an earthly blessing and a spiritual blessing.

The spiritual blessing was a relationship with God and being in the line of the messiah or seed promise that was given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15. Esau being an unbeliever did not care about the spiritual and it was said he despised his birthright.

To illustrate this I’d like to ask what would you easily trade or put no value on? Would it be your socks? To be honest with you I know plenty of people that put so much value on their socks that they cannot throw away a pair of socks with holes in them.

That’s me by the way! Well to Esau, an eternal promise from the creator was more worthless than some of our dirty socks. He despised the spiritual just like unbelievers still do today.

As believers we have the promise of an eternal inheritance and we lose our lives, as it were, in this life for a greater inheritance in the next one. Remember Jesus said, “If you lose your life for my name and the sake of the gospel you will keep it.”

We should all be willing to lose our lives in this world because we rest on God’s eternal promises. A few nights ago my wife and I were talking about these two men and she asked me, “Do you think Jacob was worse than Esau?”

Well, I was reminded of the passage in Hebrews 11:6,

The truth is Jacob is just as bad as Esau. The difference is that Jacob believed in the eternal inheritance of the birthright while Esau did not.

Now that we’ve examined briefly the brothers’ actions, I must ask the question, Does God love Jacob and hate Esau on the basis of their actions? Once again, for the answer to this question we must let scripture interpret scripture.

We see a commentary by the apostle Paul in Romans 9:11-16,

Paul uses this passage in Malachi to teach the early church about the doctrine of election. The fact that God’s love is an electing love is devastating to human pride. The first objection one may raise is, “that’s not fair!”

We live in a society that holds equality and fairness as the highest virtue and these thoughts have permeated the church. We think that because God extends mercy to Jacob he must extend the same mercy to Esau.

Paul answers this objection in verse 14, “Is there unrighteousness in God? Certainly not or God forbid in some translations. You see when we demand mercy then you can be sure we are no longer thinking about mercy.

Mercy in essence is undeserved and unmerited. The creator is under no moral obligation to show mercy. Therefore, Jacob receives mercy and Esau, justice. But neither receive injustice.

I hope we will never say to a merciful God, “You are not merciful, enough!” that’s blasphemy and it implies there is sin in God.

The next observation is this idea found in verse 16 it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs. I want to make a brief examination of our free will. The world holds the view in what is called humanist view of free will, defined as making choices spontaneously and indifferent to pre disposition and inclination.

However, there are 2 problems with this view, a moral and rational problem. (Moral) If our choices are made without any prior disposition, then we are saying there is no reason for our choice it happens out of nothing.

If this is true how can such an action have any moral significance? One of the things God is concerned about is not only our choice but our intention behind the choice. An example of intention is the story of joseph and his brothers.

Joseph says, you meant if for evil, God meant it for good. If there is no intent, then how can the action be of any moral significance? The other problem(rational) is, how, can someone make a choice without any predisposition?

If there is no intent then it doesn’t matter what you choose. In essence, why would anyone make any choices if there is no reason? If her will were utterly neutral, then she would be paralyzed. It’s the old problem of a rabbit out of a hat with the hat and without the magician.

An effect without a cause.

The bible teaches that the fall has taken away not our choice but our choice for righteousness. We are dead in sins and trespasses before the moment of our conversion.

Just tell a non-believer to be righteous, they cannot measure up to righteousness because there is something in them an inclination for unrighteousness.

Johnathan Edwards said that free moral agents always act according to the strongest inclination they have at the moment of choice. If you were to ask a believer if they want to be free from sin they would say yes! So why do believers sin?

Believers sin because as temptation intensifies the desire for that temptation exceeds the desire to serve Christ until finally they give into their inclination and do it willingly.

A non-believer sins because they want to sin. There inclination is sin because they find pleasure in it. Therefore, we cannot lay a charge that God predestined Esau for damnation and Jacob for salvation.

God did not force Esau’s hand or create evil in his heart. The evil came from Esau and selling the birthright was his choice. Remember he was a fleshly man and would rather satisfy his flesh for a moment than to have an eternal inheritance from God.

God extended to Jacob his grace while leaving Esau to himself. What can we learn from this? In this illustration we see the veil removed as to how God deals with sinful man. It shows us the need for grace.

If mercy is not getting what we deserve then grace is getting what we do not deserve. For example if I release a prisoner out of jail that’s mercy, if I give to the same released prisoner a million dollars that’s grace.

God has demonstrated His grace toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. An easy way to remember grace is to remember God’s riches at Christ’s expense. He’s still in the business of extending grace to sinners through Christ.

This leaves a small hole in the presentation of election and free will. You may be asking, if it’s not on the basis of our works, or our will then how does God elect people for this grace?

The apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1:3-5,

Did you catch that? It is not because of something in us but something in God. I don’t know about you but I’m glad it rests on God to extend grace because if it were up to me and my performance or Israel and its performance then God would have been done with us long ago.

One person stated, “I do not believe in election because I don’t believe God takes a person to heaven kicking and screaming that doesn’t want to be there while passing over someone that does.” 

This is an entirely wrong view. Everyone that wants God will have him, the rest are said to be enemies of God through wicked works and it is said of fallen men, “they loved the darkness rather than the light.” God leaves them to their own fallen disposition.

What does this mean for us? Well although we have taken a bird’s eye view at election we do not fly above the clouds and conclude “those who will be saved, will be saved.”

We live down here where the rubber meets the road and we are commanded by Christ and compassion for the lost to tell them of the peril of sin and the reality of salvation.

It will be God’s business to sovereignly open their eyes. We rest on knowing that our Father is seated on His throne, there is no unrighteousness in God, and He is in control.

It was Charles Spurgeon that said, “if God put a yellow streak on the elects back I would only preach to the elect but God simply didn’t do that so I preach to everyone.”

No one can charge God on the other hand because the gospel of our salvation is not hidden. It is not as if God gave it to a secret society or hidden group. The crucifixion of Christ was public, he was displayed for all to see, he was like a billboard that separates history from BC to AD.

No one will stand before God and tell him they didn’t know or God is not fair! But if God were fair then we should have all gotten justice and not mercy yet He has provided a way in Christ Jesus.

Dessert
We are reaching the end of the meal now. I conclude by asking the question what does the future hold for Jacob and Esau?

Well we go back to Malachi 1 and we see that God is still with Israel and has kept his covenant to preserve them. This is in stark contrast to what is said about Esau’s future.

Malachi 1:3-5,

“And laid waste to his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness. 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. Your eyes shall see, And you shall say, ‘The LORD is magnified beyond the borders of Israel.”

We see even today through hindsight in history that God has been true to his promise. It is no secret that Israel is back in the land after more than 1900 years.

They are back on the world stage but what about the nation from Esau, Edom? Well it just doesn’t exist today. There are no longer any Edomites around, God has literally dealt with them as he promised and we cannot judge the judgements of God.

We simply do not have that perspective. What about this saying, indignation forever?

I’ll leave you with this:

Remember when I mentioned that Esau represents the flesh? Well God is currently at war with the flesh and will one day have full victory.

As Christians we are told to crucify the flesh and the lusts of the flesh. We eagerly await the day of redemption when we will be given a new glorified body so that we can choose righteousness perfectly. Free from the inclination to sin and having full liberty to love Christ and enjoy him forever. Truly as it is written, The LORD is magnified beyond the border of Israel.