Title Malaga Strong Summary 1
Contents
Malachi Chapter 1
[What does Malachi consistently proclaim? It is to restore the holy passion for God. The messenger of God will come with all authority and will pick out correct and false beliefs, so hold on to the Word once more and restore a holy life.
How did God love Israel? Look at verses 2-3. We see here that there is a significant difference of opinion between God and the people of Judah. God says to them, 'I have loved you', and this is the IMPERFECT tense. He loves you in the past, now and in the future. God loved them especially. He not only loved them, he loved them especially.
What does God think of love? Just like the love between husband and wife, getting to know each other more is what we used to do alone, now we do it together. God's love for Judah means that God and Judah are no longer living separately, but are living together and sharing their lives.
But the love that the people of Judah thought was material. If God loves them, he must give them money, houses, land, and power. They had no consciousness that God was with them. So, “God deceived us. God never loved us.”
This is how God describes the nature of his love for the people of Judah. ‘Isn’t Esau Jacob’s older brother? But I loved Jacob and I hated Esau.”
The essence of this verse is that God has decided to love Jacob unconditionally.
Look at verses 3-4. At first glance, there does not seem to be much difference between the descendants of Esau and the descendants of Jacob, and on the world level, the descendants of Esau seem to have an advantage in every way. Judah was destroyed first, but Edom was restored first. When the people of Judah returned, Edom had already been rebuilt. Edom was a people who loved the world, and Judah was a people who loved God. However, the problem is that it was Edom who succeeded in the world. Moreover, Edom has always been a thorn in the descendants of Jacob. They ignored and harassed Judas with the pride that they could live well and become strong even if they did not believe in God. Ladies and gentlemen, Edom is a country that, even if you have everything in the world, will disappear like smoke if God just says one word. In Malachi's time, they wanted to repent through the book of Obadiah, but did you know that they did not repent and ignored Israel, and then they were completely destroyed after the time of Malachi?
What does the Bible tell us today? Our true blessing is not in being materially rich, but in knowing God more deeply and walking with Him.
Today's text speaks about God's love and also mentions worship. Imagine how absurd God's heart must have been when he saw the distorted appearance of worship. In verse 14, God even says that they have cheated. I wonder if he used such an expression, trying to figure out God's feelings. Look. The words he spit when no one was there became a dagger and pierced the heart of God.
This is the cause of the failure of Old Testament Israel. Outwardly, they always worshiped. But it was formal worship, superficial worship, inertial worship, forced worship, and disrespectful worship. In a word, it was an abomination of worship that God could not accept, and they were completely failures in worship.
Beloved, let's gather our hearts before God! Let's believe that everything in the world depends on God, and believe that God loves us! I pray that you will become happy saints who bless the world with God's heart by seeking God who is thousands of times more precious than material blessings that the world considers precious, seeking God, and giving the life God has given to you.