The Faithful Love of God: Malachi 1:1-5 | Recognizing True Devotion in a World of Imitations

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Have you ever settled for something fake without realizing it? In Malachi 1:1-5, God confronts Israel about their hollow devotion, calling them to return to Him in genuine faith. The people doubted His love because they couldn’t see His promises fulfilled immediately, yet His faithfulness remained unshaken.

📖 Scripture Reference: Malachi 1:1-5

✝️Sermon Points:

✔️ God’s unwavering love and sovereign choice
✔️ The difference between true devotion and empty rituals
✔️ How God restores His people for His glory.

📢 “Want to reflect deeper on this message? Read the devotions for this sermon: 5 Devotions on God’s Sovereignty and Our Response

📖 Click to Show the Transcript of this Sermon

I believe it was three or four years back, I was looking for a particular Super Nintendo video game. Over time, I had checked the usual used record stores in Sioux Falls. I had gone to a few other places, but didn't have any luck. I knew that I could buy it online.

But as with anything that you collect... What do you always hope? That you'll show up at a Goodwill and somebody who doesn't know how valuable something is will have left it there and you get it for cheap, right? That's kind of what collecting and doing this kind of thing is.

Well, one day I decided to check eBay, kind of give up the hunt of going out into the wild and trying to find this thing. And I found it for a great price. It was an unbelievable deal. It was too good to pass up. Way below what I had ever seen that it was selling for.

The pictures look good. The description of the game was spot on. And so I willingly paid the $15 asking price and I waited for it to arrive.

Well, when it came, I picked it up and I knew right away that something was wrong. It was too light. And when I opened the package, the plastic of the cartridge was smooth, but the original sort of had a rough texture to them. Well, then I looked at the label. It was too pristine.

This thing is supposed to be 30 years old. It shouldn't look like this. Well, then the label was coming up in a spot. And I looked at the paste, and there wasn't a speck of dust on it. It was brand new. It was perfectly white. It was clear that this thing was not genuine.

So I pressed it into the console, not knowing what to expect. You know, what was I going to get? But it actually worked.

Someone had made a counterfeit. And the reason it was so light is because the game had been put on a modern light circuit board instead of the old, you know, 1990s heavy one. And I could play the game. It was functional.

But from the standpoint of a collector... It was worthless. It wasn't the real thing. It could never, ever be passed off as the genuine article. It had no real value.

So as we come to the book of Malachi this morning, the question that I want us to consider as we make our way through this book is this. How often do we settle for imitations? And specifically in our relationship with God?

How often do we just go through the motions and just do the things we think we're supposed to be doing? How often do we just play the game? Is our devotion to God authentic? Does it have real lasting value?

So we're going to be spending six weeks in the book of Malachi leading up to Palm Sunday and Easter. We're going to be considering the short prophetic book that comes at the end of the Old Testament.

And the words that the Holy Spirit inspired here in Malachi, they come to a people who are plagued with complacency. They assume that their place with God is secure. But in reality, their hearts were very far from him.

And our opening passage that we read this morning in this book places a call on those people and on us. We are called to return to the one who is real, to invest ourself in the genuine article, to do something more than just play the game.

So if we start out with verses 1 through 5 today, we're going to consider God's unwavering love and his sovereign choice, how he restores his people. And also, we're going to see that we're called the faithfulness to this one who is eternally faithful to us.

So as this book opens, we see a statement on the authority that this book carries. It says that it's an oracle of the word of the Lord. Now, we read that this oracle is from God, and this is a weighty statement by itself. Clearly, this is a word from God.

But I want us to learn a little something here about this word oracle. A word from God is weighty. It's heavy to begin with. But when we look at the original language in the Hebrew language, The word should be translated oracle. This is a great translation. It's what it should be.

But that word in Hebrew is actually connected to another word. And there's a sense in it that there is weight to this. There is something that has a burden from here. So when we read this, we want to read it that this oracle has a burden to the people. This is a hard word. This is a heavy word.

So we need to read this and we need to understand that the people receiving this would have understood that this is not just some flowery admonition that God thinks they are just great, that they are doing wonderful. Right away as they read it, this is meant to be understood as weighty, as a burden.

This word coming through Malachi is a message from God that they need to pay attention to. Like I said, it's going to be a burden for them because it's going to be hard for them to hear.

And regardless of the weight of the message being delivered by Malachi, we do see that it is a message of love. And we see this stated very clearly as we move on to verse 2. We see here that the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, is telling them that he has loved them.

The love that he has shown them is apparent. He revealed himself to them by name. He brought them out of slavery. He has made his covenant promise to them. The love that Yahweh has for his people is without doubt.

And the story of scripture is God redeeming the people for himself through a particular family line. And the people receiving this were that family line. They are the blessed of God. They are the ones who are bearing this message of the coming Messiah. God's covenant faithfulness drips from the pages of Scripture.

And of course, there are times where that love that God has for his people is a tough love. There are times where the people were unfaithful. They departed from God by chasing after idols, but God would continually bring them back because he had made a covenant promise to his covenant people and he cannot lie. That's the essence of the depth of this love that we see here.

And as the passage continues after God's expression of love, we see that the people question this statement. Malachi says, they ask, how have you loved us? And this is an interesting and bold reaction to God saying that he loves you, right?

It's a little less surprising when we understand, though, the context of this book. At the time when this was written, the people had returned from exile, but they were still a part of the Persian Empire. They didn't have their own nation state here.

And so what is being asked by this statement is, God, you say you love us, but where are all these promises you've made to us? The prophets have spoken of all these great things that will come to us because we are the people of God. And here we sit, a hundred years into a return to the land, and we're just nobodies in the Persian empire.

Essentially what they're saying, the promises of God are good, but we've heard enough about promises. We want to see promises. But God's response is not to apologize or promise them, you're right, I should be more rapid in my response to you. Your complaints are valid.

No, instead, what is said goes even deeper into the promise of God's electing work for his people. And so God speaks here of his relationship to the twins of Isaac and Rebekah from Genesis. And we know the story. Jacob was the younger twin.

And God, in his mercy, did not choose the oldest, Esau, to be the one who was going to carry on the covenant line. Instead, Jacob, the younger one, he had the covenant promise bestowed upon him. And this was not done because Jacob was better or because Jacob somehow earned it.

In fact, if you remember back to when we were in Genesis, I don't think we could count the number of times I said Jacob was a scoundrel. That's who he is, was. Jacob was chosen by God before either of the twins were born for the purpose of his glory.

And here God is basically saying to the people of Israel, I chose you. You can know that I love you because I have made you my covenant people. You could have been the Edomites. You could have been the offspring of Esau.

And the language here, it's harsh. I have loved Jacob and hated Esau. And his choosing of Jacob shows that they're the loved of God. He made a promise way back when their forefather Jacob was still growing in the womb of his mother. And he has kept that promise.

That's love. Faithfulness throughout the ages. Faithfulness despite the rebellion that the people had committed against him over and over. This is faithfulness that will endure beyond the moment.

They're worried about a hundred years of being subject to the Persians. That's nothing compared to the eternal faithfulness that God shows to his covenant people. Their heritage will be the Messiah and his saving work. But the heritage of Esau is jackals of the desert.

So the people of Israel doubted God's love because they were looking at their present circumstances. They wanted immediate proof of his promises instead of resting in the truth of God's enduring faithfulness.

But God reminds them that his love has been steadfast from the beginning. And yet, despite this love that they knew of so well, they knew this story, their hearts had grown cold. They were just going through the motions, living as if their genetic status before God was enough.

They lacked true devotion already. like that counterfeit game I bought on eBay. It functioned, but it lacked real value. They were just playing the game.

The people of Malachi's day were doing all the right stuff externally. They were offering sacrifices, participating in the rituals, but that worship was hollow. It was surface level. It was an imitation of what God truly desired.

God wanted their hearts. And we get this because we know that that same danger exists for us. It's easy to settle into routine, to assume that because we show up to church, because we say the right words and do the right things, we are where we need to be spiritually.

But God isn't after our performance. He wants our hearts. He wants us to turn to him in repentance and faith, trusting in his mercy.

And this is why God's next words through Malachi are so important. He not only calls his people to remember his love, but he also shows them that something bigger is happening. God is at work.

Even when they don't see it, he is going to restore his people in a way that is greater than they can fathom. And so Malachi stays with this train of thought, speaking about the descendants of Esau here.

And he brings this prophetic, weighty oracle to the people of Israel. He says that if Edom, the descendants of Esau, try to build themselves up from their ruins, God says that he's just going to tear them down again.

They will not have success because the Lord is angry with them forever. And these are really harsh words. This is difficult to understand because we think in terms of being nice. We think in terms of giving everyone a chance. And this just seems mean that God would remain angry at them forever.

But we need to understand the big point here. The big point underlying all of this is that both the descendants of Esau and the offspring of Jacob, they both deserve God to be angry with them forever. They both deserve it.

In their sin, they have rebelled against God. The people of Israel and the people of Edom have both been bogged down in idolatry and sin. The idea here is not that God is specifically angry at them for a particular incident or attitude.

This is a covenantal idea here. Israel is loved by God and they are in covenant relationship with him. God is angry and is said to hate Edom because theirs is an absence of blessings.

They are not in covenant with God. Edom is not the ones that God has set apart for his purposes of bringing salvation to his people. They are referred to as a wicked country because they are not a people who worship the Lord God.

They are not his people. They are not in covenant with him. So what we see in this is that God is going to restore Israel. He's doing something different with them.

They are waiting for this to come. But he is going to build them up. That promise is sure. But on the opposite side of it, the Edomites will not have a restoration.

So what comes through in this, more than anything else, what helps us to understand this is that the descendants of Jacob, hearing this word from God, should know that what God is doing for them is totally undeserved. It's an act of mercy toward them by the one who has put them in covenant with them.

And this reminds us that it's God who restores his people. Our labors apart from him will always falter. but he remains faithful to us.

In times where it seems as though God is not in control, he is. And as we close up this passage, we see that he is doing something far greater than even they could imagine.

They're given a promise that their eyes will see this. God is doing something. He's doing something greater than they can imagine.

These people didn't feel as though they were God's people, but God is reminding them that he is. Your eyes may be tired of seeing what is around you and you feel as though you have been forgotten, but now the Lord lets them know change is on the way, that he is at work.

And we see that this will be an amazing work because it causes them to proclaim the greatness of God. In the flow of the history of Israel leading up to this time, there have been so many ups and downs.

God would bring his people out of bondage and into the land of promise only for the people to turn to idolatry, and then they would be exiled again. And this story repeats itself numerous times throughout the Old Testament. in numerous ways as well.

But these exiles and their returns from those exiles are a proof of the great faithfulness of God. Malachi states that Edom is going to be torn down even when they try to be built up. They will never be established.

But despite the continual flow of unfaithfulness from Israel, God keeps bringing them back. He shows his love over and over. Edom will not be a people. They will be forgotten to history.

But the fact that these people are in a land, these people hearing the book of Malachi, and that they could be called the people of Israel is a clear sign of the faithfulness of God.

He is the God of history and he is working things together to do something beyond their borders. He is accomplishing his purpose beyond the territory that they currently know. And we see that he will be praised for this great and marvelous work.

And this puts the steadfast love and faithfulness of God on display more than anything else because we know the fullness of this story. The message of salvation and the praise of God will one day go beyond the borders of that particular tract of land in the Middle East.

That's what's being said. And through the promise of the Messiah, one day the grace of God is extended to the whole world where God brings to himself a people for his own possession, a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

And on our journey through Malachi, We're going to see continual calls to repentance, calls to being faithful to God. And this call to return to God is not only a call for the people that this book was written to, it's a call to us as well.

The call we will hear persistently in this book is a call to reject counterfeit devotion and embrace the genuine relationship that God desires from us. the Israelites had settled into their ritualistic routines and assumed their status before God.

And as we saw today, they didn't feel as though God loved them, even though his faithfulness had clearly been on display. They were a people whose hearts were far from God.

They doubted his love. They doubted his faithfulness and treated worship as a hollow transaction instead of having hearts filled with true devotion.

And if we're honest, we can say that every one of us has done this at some point. We've all done the same thing. We can show up at the right times, say the right words, even do the right things, but not have hearts that are truly set on Christ.

We can play the game, but it doesn't have any lasting value. But as the people of God in Christ Jesus, there is good news.

God doesn't leave us to wallow in complacency. He loves us, and so he continually calls us back to himself. He is not a distant God. He is near to us, and he continually pursues us.

And the promise in Malachi was that they would say, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel. And this promise has been seen by our eyes because we see it fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The faithfulness of God to his people became fully known when Jesus took on our flesh, when he suffered, died and rose again and ascended to heaven. And we know the fullness of that promise in this time and in this place.

and we look to it as we are called to repentance. Daily, return to the one who demonstrated his unwavering love for us in the gospel.

Abandon the emptiness of routine and ritual and place your trust in the work of Jesus for you. He is the genuine article.

So may we not settle for imitations. Let's not just play the game. Let's return to the one who has shown his love for us, that he might be glorified in our lives. Amen.

Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank you that you have gathered us together here today.

And we thank you for this reminder from Malachi that you love us and that you call us back to yourself continually. We pray that we would hear these calls and that you would use your Holy Spirit within us to lead us to live holy lives, that Christ might be glorified in all that we do.

It's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

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