SERMON TITLE: God’s Love
SCRIPTURE: Malachi 1:1-5 (ESV)
SPEAKER: Josh Hanson
DATE: 9-20-26
Sermon Discussion Guide
Take notes here
As always, it’s a joy to be with all of you this weekend at Gateway Church. And there’s one thing I want you to know — and this is true if you’re worshiping with us for the first time or if you’re joining us at our North Main Campus — I want you to know that God loves you and that I love you too.
We’re starting a new preaching series this weekend at Gateway. And as I’m sure you noticed, as we start this new series, we're taking this opportunity to try some changes to the worship service leading up to the sermon, including using a song to introduce the sermon. Here are the words we just sang again — and no, I’m not about to sing to you. As you hear the words, notice what sticks out to you and how it might apply as you hear the sermon today.
Speak, O Lord, as we come to you
To receive the food of your holy Word
Take your truth, plant it deep in us
Shape and fashion us in your likeness
That the light of Christ might be seen today
In our acts of love and our deeds of faith
Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us
All your purposes for your glory
Teach us, Lord, full obedience
Holy reverence, true humility
Test our thoughts and our attitudes
In the radiance of your purity
Cause our faith to rise, cause our eyes to see
Your majestic love and authority
Words of power that can never fail
Let their truth prevail over unbelief
Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds
Help us grasp the heights of your plans for us
Truths unchanged from the dawn of time
That will echo down through eternity
And by grace, we'll stand on your promises
And by faith, we'll walk as you walk with us
Speak, O Lord, 'til your church is built
And the earth is filled with your glory
Each summer, the pastors and elders of our denomination gather to learn, conduct business, fellowship, and worship. This past summer, before each of the six sermons preached over the three days we were together, we sang Speak O Lord. And it was powerful. And our hope — each week during this Malachi series — is that as we sing Speak O Lord, we’ll all be united together — eager to hear from God through his Word.
And knowing that Malachi might not be as familiar a book, I thought it’d be even more important for us to remember why sermons are preached, why we gather together, and why we come to worship. We do all these things because we want to hear from our speaking God — the God who speaks to us through his holy Word.
And, if you have your Bible, please open it to the book of Malachi. It’s the last book in the Old Testament. We’ll be in the book of Malachi — chapter one — beginning in verse one. There we read…
Malachi 1:1–5 ESV
1 The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. 2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob 3 but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.” 4 If Edom says, “We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins,” the Lord of hosts says, “They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called ‘the wicked country,’ and ‘the people with whom the Lord is angry forever.’” 5 Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!”
Here’s my hope for you today: No matter who you are, whether you’re a Christian or not, I hope you’ll leave here in awe of God’s love for you and for all people. That even as you sit and listen, I hope your heart will be moved in hearing that the God who created everyone and everything is a God who loves you. We’re going to get there, I promise, but first I need to help you understand this book, where we are in the history of God’s people, and a few other important details because, as I said earlier, Malachi’s often a pretty unfamiliar book for people.
So let’s get our bearings. The first thing you need to know is that Malachi is a prophet. And a prophet, as you may know, is someone who speaks on behalf of God. Now the name Malachi can be translated as “my messenger.” So we’re not one hundred percent sure whether Malachi is his name or whether it simply means that this individual was God’s messenger. But to keep things simple, we’ll treat Malachi as the prophet’s name.
Second, we don’t know much about Malachi. We know he’s the last prophet to speak on God’s behalf until John the Baptizer shows up roughly four centuries later.
So that’s our who. Now let’s cover a bit of history so you know when all that’s in our book takes place. Originally, there were twelve tribes of Israel — and each tribe descended from a son of Jacob, who was also named Israel. These tribes eventually asked for a king. The first king was Saul. Next came David. Then David’s son — Solomon — became king.
After Solomon, conflict over who should be king led the nation to divide. Ten tribes joined together and kept the name Israel — they’re in the north — and two tribes joined together and were named Judah — they’re in the south.
And — for a while — neither Israel nor Judah faced much external conflict, meaning things were overall pretty peaceful. But they still had serious internal problems, like evil kings and moral corruption — the people even abandoned God. Things are a mess, which you can read about in the books of First and Second Kings.
But here’s what may surprise you. The people of Israel and Judah both assumed that God approved of the way they were living. In other words, they thought “peaceful times” equaled “God’s blessing.” But — remember — they’d abandoned God, and yet they thought that he approved of their wicked behavior.
So God makes it clear what he thinks about their behavior by sending the Assyrians their way. The Assyrians come from the north and invade and conquer Israel. And Israel, as a nation, is done. They’re destroyed. They’re no more.
Down in Judah, things are better than up in Israel — but not by much. The Assyrians don’t conquer them — they just oppress them until Assyria's capital, Nineveh, fell in 612 BC. And eventually the Babylonians invade and conquer Judah a few decades later.
Nebuchadnezzar is king of Babylon at the time — this is the same Nebuchadnezzar found in the book of Daniel. And — after conquering Judah — the Babylonians dispersed many of the Jews, which began the seventy years of living in exile that God had warned his people about. God had warned them that they’d spend seventy years in exile as a consequence of their sin and rebellion against him if they refused to return to him. Eventually, Babylon fell to King Cyrus, leader of the Persian Empire. And — it’s during Cyrus’ reign — that groups of Jews began to return to their homeland.
Malachi’s alive about a hundred years after the Jewish people began returning home. And, at first, the Jews had great hope, thinking they were living in the time when God would fulfill his promises to them. These promises were found in prophecies given in previous years — such as a New Jerusalem being rebuilt and how it’d be a city that would last forever.
Yet their hope doesn’t last. For example, when the Temple’s rebuilt, it’s not nearly as glorious as the original Temple. It pales in comparison. So it’s a letdown. And all the other promises of the New Jerusalem — a city that’s the center of the Kingdom of God, a place where evil and corruption will be eradicated — well, none of that was coming true either. Instead — corruption, rebellion, and evil were still happening in full force.
And the people’s response to their expectations not being met — even though they’re the ones continuing to live in sin and rebellion against God — their response to their expectations not being met is to question God. In fact, the book of Malachi shows a pattern. God makes a statement, and the people immediately question God about what he just said. This happens multiple times in the book.
We’ll look more closely at each of these as we go through the book in the coming months, but I thought I’d give you a taste of what’s to come. Here’s how the people question God. After God says…
Malachi 1:6–7 ESV
6 “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ 7 By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the Lord’s table may be despised.
God asks them, “Where’s my honor?” And the people essentially reply with, “How have we dishonored you?” God then gives specific examples of how they’ve dishonored his name.
In the next chapter…
Malachi 2:17 ESV
17 You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”
God says, “You’ve wearied me.” The people reply with, “How?” God then gives them specific examples.
In the next chapter…
Malachi 3:7–8 ESV
7 From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ 8 Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions.
God says, “Return to me.” The people reply with, “How are we supposed to return to you?” Probably because they don’t think they’ve left him. Then God says, “Will you rob me?” And they reply with, “How have we robbed you?” God then gives them a specific example.
Later we read…
Malachi 3:13–14 ESV
13 “Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’ 14 You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?
“You’ve spoken against me?” “How have we spoken against you?” To which God gives specific examples.
And then there’s their question in our passage.
Malachi 1:2 ESV
2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?”
We’ll get to the example God gives to prove that he’s loved them in a moment. But this statement by God — and the people’s question in response — is the crux of our passage: The people doubt God’s love for them.
One scholar writes, “The people were discouraged by [the] hard economic realities [of] Persian dominance. Some of the people felt that the Lord did not really love them because of these factors. Many Israelites were showing their dissatisfaction with the Lord by bringing defective animals for sacrifices. Some even went so far as to assert that worshipping the Lord was drudgery and serving God was a waste of time.”
They were judging God’s love for them purely by their circumstances. If things were going well, then God obviously loved them. If things weren’t going well, well, obviously it’s not because of anything they’ve done; God’s obviously being wishy-washy with his love. Clearly the problem is with God, not with them.
Now, if you’re living through loss, illness, maybe a long season of suffering or disappointment, I understand why God’s love may be hard for you to see right now. And the question I want all of us to consider is this: Where will you turn with that pain? Another question is: Will we let our circumstances have the final word about God’s love?
Just like the Israelites, it’s common for people to think that times of peace and prosperity mean that God’s pleased with us. And times of hardship clearly mean that God doesn’t love us anymore, or that he’s unfair, so why even bother trying to worship him? Doesn’t the evidence speak for itself: God’s obviously still wishy-washy with his love. The problem’s definitely with him and not with us, right?
And what’s the result of all of this misled thinking? For the people in Malachi’s day, the result of this thinking was that God sent them a prophet with a message. A message still relevant to us today. Verse one states it this way.
Malachi 1:1 ESV
1 The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.
A pronouncement is about to be made on God’s behalf. And God’s going to give his response to the rumors going around among the Jewish people. “You think I don’t love you? You think that worshiping me’s a waste of time? You think that serving me has no purpose because everything hasn’t turned out the way you thought it was supposed to? OK. Here’s my message.”
And the messenger is Malachi. And here’s the first message Malachi was to give to the people.
Malachi 1:2 ESV
2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?”
And what comes next is God’s answer to their question. This is God’s defense of how he has loved them. And these are words that have disturbed many Christians over the centuries. Are you ready to be disturbed? Here’s what God says. I’ll let God just speak for himself.
Malachi 1:2–3 ESV
2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob 3 but Esau I have hated.
“Isn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” The answer’s yes, by the way. Jacob and Esau were brothers.
“Yet,” God says, “I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.” I warned you: God’s response is disturbing. Why? Because we’re uncomfortable with the idea of God loving one brother and not loving the other. Much less God loving one brother — Jacob — and hating the other brother — Esau. And there’s no relief for our disturbance when we see how Paul quotes this verse in his letter to Christians living in Rome.
In defending God’s sovereignty — meaning God’s Divine right to choose who will be saved — Paul writes…
Romans 9:9–13 NLT
9 For God had promised, “I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” 10 This son was our ancestor Isaac. When he married Rebekah, she gave birth to twins. 11 But before they were born, before they had done anything good or bad, she received a message from God. (This message shows that God chooses people according to his own purposes; 12 he calls people, but not according to their good or bad works.) She was told, “Your older son will serve your younger son.” 13 In the words of the Scriptures, “I loved Jacob, but I rejected Esau.”
I loved Jacob, but I rejected Esau. Not because of anything either of them did, but because I — God — choose people according to my own purpose.
And if we go back to Genesis — where this is all first recorded — this is what we read.
Genesis 25:21–26 NLT
21 Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was unable to have children. The Lord answered Isaac’s prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant with twins. 22 But the two children struggled with each other in her womb. So she went to ask the Lord about it. “Why is this happening to me?” she asked. 23 And the Lord told her, “The sons in your womb will become two nations. From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals. One nation will be stronger than the other; and your older son will serve your younger son.” 24 And when the time came to give birth, Rebekah discovered that she did indeed have twins! 25 The first one was very red at birth and covered with thick hair like a fur coat. So they named him Esau. 26 Then the other twin was born with his hand grasping Esau’s heel. So they named him Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when the twins were born.
Now, if you follow their story in Genesis, you’ll see that God chose Jacob as the son of the promise that he’d made to Isaac and to Isaac’s father, Abraham. Yet God chose Jacob not because Jacob was worthy. Jacob was a mess. He’s a deceiver, a trickster, and he did a great job of looking out for himself even at the cost of his family members.
And know this: If you were in charge — if you were the one doing the choosing — Jacob wouldn’t have been the guy you’d pick. Yeah, Esau’s pretty foolish, but he’s not deceptive like Jacob. And most of us would rather take an honest fool than a cunning deceiver — because we know we’ll eventually get played. So just based on what we see in the brothers, most of us would’ve passed on Jacob. But God chose him.
Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
And even when we soften the “hate” language — and I think this is how you’re supposed to interpret what’s being said in Malachi, Romans, and Genesis — where love means God chose Jacob, and hate means God rejected Esau — the disturbance is still there. And I can’t get rid of it for you. It’s just there.
You see, in the Bible, a big part of the history of God’s people — which is part of your history if you’re a Christian — is God choosing some and rejecting others. It’s a truth you have to come to grips with — or, at the very least — submit yourself to it even while you say, “I’m submitted, but it still disturbs me.” Because not just here, but throughout the pages of the Bible — from Genesis to Revelation — we see God choosing those who’ll be his people and rejecting those who aren’t.
And just like Jacob and Esau, this choosing happened before any of us had done anything good or bad. Meaning the choosing isn’t based on something we did or didn’t do, and it’s not based on something that we will or won’t do in the future. It’s just God’s choice. And to call it anything other than sovereign choice or Divine election is to try to take from God what’s his sole right: As God, he gets to choose who he will save.
That may raise a bunch of questions for you — I know it does for me. But the point is that God’s choice didn’t rest on something Jacob had done or something God knew Jacob would do. The choice was God’s to make. And this truth is meant to lead us to worship the God who chooses his people, even as we wrestle with questions we can’t fully understand.
For we read in Scripture…
Ephesians 1:3–5 NLT
3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. 4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
If we take these verses at face value, it seems pretty clear who does the choosing. God does. And this truth is meant to stir in our hearts praise of our saving God.
GOD’S LOVE DOES NOT ELIMINATE HIS JUDGMENT
Malachi continues with…
Malachi 1:4–5 ESV
4 If Edom says, “We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins,” the Lord of hosts says, “They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called ‘the wicked country,’ and ‘the people with whom the Lord is angry forever.’” 5 Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!”
Edom — and the people who lived there, the Edomites — were descendants of Esau. And, if you read the Old Testament, you’ll see that they were a constant adversary of God’s chosen people — the descendants of Jacob.
Here are a few examples.
One time, when Moses was leading the Israelites in the wilderness…
Numbers 20:14–21 NLT
14 While Moses was at Kadesh, he sent ambassadors to the king of Edom with this message: “This is what your relatives, the people of Israel, say: You know all the hardships we have been through. 15 Our ancestors went down to Egypt, and we lived there a long time, and we and our ancestors were brutally mistreated by the Egyptians. 16 But when we cried out to the Lord, he heard us and sent an angel who brought us out of Egypt. Now we are camped at Kadesh, a town on the border of your land. 17 Please let us travel through your land. We will be careful not to go through your fields and vineyards. We won’t even drink water from your wells. We will stay on the king’s road and never leave it until we have passed through your territory.” 18 But the king of Edom said, “Stay out of my land, or I will meet you with an army!” 19 The Israelites answered, “We will stay on the main road. If our livestock drink your water, we will pay for it. Just let us pass through your country. That’s all we ask.” 20 But the king of Edom replied, “Stay out! You may not pass through our land.” With that he mobilized his army and marched out against them with an imposing force. 21 Because Edom refused to allow Israel to pass through their country, Israel was forced to turn around.
Instead of letting their distant relatives travel through their land, they assembled an army to force them to turn around.
Here’s another example. This happens hundreds of years after Moses and about a hundred and fifty years before Malachi.
Ezekiel 25:12–14 NLT
12 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: The people of Edom have sinned greatly by avenging themselves against the people of Judah. 13 Therefore, says the Sovereign Lord, I will raise my fist of judgment against Edom. I will wipe out its people and animals with the sword. I will make a wasteland of everything from Teman to Dedan. 14 I will accomplish this by the hand of my people of Israel. They will carry out my vengeance with anger, and Edom will know that this vengeance is from me. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!
What had Edom done to deserve this kind of response from God? We find out from one of God’s other prophets — Obadiah.
Obadiah 10–14 NLT
10 “Because of the violence you (Edom) did to your close relatives in Israel, you will be filled with shame and destroyed forever. 11 When they were invaded, you stood aloof, refusing to help them. Foreign invaders carried off their wealth and cast lots to divide up Jerusalem, but you acted like one of Israel’s enemies. 12 “You should not have gloated when they exiled your relatives to distant lands. You should not have rejoiced when the people of Judah suffered such misfortune. You should not have spoken arrogantly in that terrible time of trouble. 13 You should not have plundered the land of Israel when they were suffering such calamity. You should not have gloated over their destruction when they were suffering such calamity. You should not have seized their wealth when they were suffering such calamity. 14 You should not have stood at the crossroads, killing those who tried to escape. You should not have captured the survivors and handed them over in their terrible time of trouble.
When the Babylonians conquered Judah, Edom refused to help. They gloated when Jerusalem fell. They rejoiced at God’s people’s misfortune. They saw the people suffering — they saw them being destroyed — and they chose to plunder them — even killing those trying to escape from the Babylonians.
So what would we expect God to do to those who take delight in his people — the people he loves — being harmed and destroyed? What would we expect God to do to those who killed his people who were fleeing for their lives?
Do you want a God who turns a blind eye to this kind of behavior? Or a God who forgives them even though they’re not repentant or sorry for what they’ve done? Would it be loving for God to ignore their violence? No! God’s judgment tells his people that the harm that’s been done to them hasn’t escaped his notice.
You see, because he loves his people, God will bring judgment on their enemies — and that’s what God promises to Edom at the end of our passage. Edom, which prided itself on building a city so high up in the mountains that they believed it was indestructible and that no nation would ever conquer it — Obadiah reveals this to us — to this people God says, “You will be destroyed. And, though you think you’ll rebuild again, that won’t happen. For you’re a wicked people. And my anger towards you will never end.”
And then, to the people he loves, God says, “You will see this with your very eyes. And, in response, you will say, ‘Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!”
Notice God’s final words: “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!” God’s greatness isn’t defined by Israel’s circumstances or its borders. And as we see in the rest of the Bible, God brings people from beyond Israel’s borders to himself through Jesus Christ.
With that in mind, I want us to all try something. Christian or not. First-time guest or you’ve been here for decades — it doesn’t matter. Right now, silently, I want you to ask God, “God, how have you loved me?” Let’s all do that right now. Right where you are — here at County Road 9, at our North Main Campus, watching online — wherever you are, right now, ask God, “God, how have you loved me?”
And listen for his response.
— pause —
I have no idea what you just heard — or if you heard anything at all. You may have felt something in that silence, or you may have felt nothing. Either way, we don’t have to guess if God has spoken. For we’ve already heard what he’s said to us in his Word.
But if your circumstances, like the Jews in Malachi’s day, if your circumstances have made it hard for you to hear or see or believe that God loves you, my prayer is that God’s words through Malachi will speak to you. My prayer for you is that, if you belong to Christ, you’d know your difficult circumstances can’t overturn God’s love for you. My prayer is that, for some among us who’ve been trying really hard to mess up their lives, my prayer is that you’d believe that God didn’t choose you because you earned it. He loves you because he loves you. And if you didn’t earn his love, you can’t unearn it either. And my prayer is that if you’re not sure whether you belong to Christ, my prayer is that you’d know that you don’t need to find the perfect answer about election and man’s free will and God’s choosing versus our choosing. My prayer is that you’d just come to him — and believe in Jesus. For everyone who believes in the Son has life.
And when you know that you’re loved by God, though you’re sure to still experience hard and challenging days, you will know that those days mean nothing in regard to whether God still loves you. For all who are his people — all who have believed in his Son, Jesus — who’ve responded to his call of salvation — all who are God’s people declare, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!” For his saving, eternal love has gone beyond the border of Israel — all the way to you — and has changed you forever. Let’s pray.
Father in Heaven, thank you for loving your people. You were under no obligation to love anyone — for we’ve all sinned and rebelled against you. None of us have earned your love. None of us deserve your love. Yet, you choose to love.
Spirit of God, for those whose circumstances have made them wonder if you love them, may you speak to them right now. Remind them of a truth they’ve heard today. Bring to mind a promise from your Word that they heard years ago. Give them assurance that your love is unearnable, meaning what we do is neither why you choose to love us nor why you choose to keep loving us. You love us because you choose to. And that’s so different from the world we live in, where our worth is based on what we do, that it makes your love sound too good to be true. Spirit, can you flip that for us, where your unconditional love for us is so true that it frees us from this world where love must be earned.
And, Jesus, our freedom from this enslavement, and our being loved — though not earned by us — was earned by you. For you gave your life as the sacrifice for our sin. You exchanged with us your perfect, loving obedience to your Father for our sinful, rebellious lives. And, in doing so, our hearts were made alive not only to love you in response, but to be loved by you. Help us to trust in your love for us more and more. And we pray all of this in your name. Amen.
Regardless of your circumstances, may you go knowing that you are loved by God. Amen.
God loves you. I love you. You are sent.
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