Do You Love Me?
I Love You, BUT • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a great privilege and joy to be back, stewarding the pulpit with the saints of Durbin Memorial Baptist Church.
One of the most gut wrenching things some one can say to you is, “I love you, but…”
In that moment, you don’t know what’s going to come after the but, however you know it is bound to be some form of criticism. Sometimes we’ll be driving down the road, I have a little touch of the Attention Deficit Disorder so I’ll be bouncing around topic to topic and Cassidy might look at me and say, “I love you, but please stop talking.” That one is pretty tame and actually well received on my end so I’ll calm down a bit on the conversation. Other times the critiques are a bit more serious. For many Kentucky Basketball fans we just went through a phase of, “I love you coach Cal, but its time to go another direction.” There is a bit more gravitas in that statement, but its still just sports. A more serious case would be when a couple is engaged in relationship counseling, and one person says to the other, “I love you, but you are acting like a child” or even worse, “I love you, but you’ve got to clean yourself up.”
Throwing in an “I love you!” followed by a “but” almost seems to be communicating everything except, “I love you.” Adding the “but” rips apart the context of the sentence and the “ I love you” gets thrown down the relationship rabbit hole. Saying I love you, BUT communicates that your love for the person is totally dependent on their ability to meet your perceived need in that moment.
As a side note for practical application, this isn’t pertinent to the overall direction of this series, but I’m all about building healthy relationship in the body of Christ, so the next time you are in a disagreement with your spouse, try changing the “but” to an “and”. Instead of saying, “I love you, but would you please stop talking.” Say, “I love you and I could use a break from the conversation for a little bit.” Even, “I love you, and you’ve got the clean yourself up.”
Changing the “but” to an “and” will lead to healthier communication that doesn’t undermine or weaponize the word “love” in a relationship.
For the next nine or ten weeks, we are going to be walking through the book of Malachi in a series I’ve entitled, “I love you, BUT…” While we will touch on the marital relationship when we get to the end of chapter 2, that is not the overall focus of this series.
As I was reading through the book of Malachi this week, it became clear to me that believers in God often either overtly or implicitly hit God with these I love you, but’s. That is, we say we love God we might even tell Him that we do so, we might go to church, we might post a Scripture on Social Media, we might say with our mouths that we love God, BUT we either have things that we think He needs to show us, or things that we are unwilling to do, even if His Word commands it.
I’m gonna give you all a term from Brad Pearce Theological Seminary. Too often in the Christian life we fall into “Meatloaf Orthopraxy”. That’s a term I made up, “Meatloaf Orthopraxy.” Orthopraxy means correct practice in line with the words of Scripture. It simply means right practice. And then we have Meatloaf meaning, “I would do anything for love, but I wont do THAT.” So we ignore the practices that are challenging or inconvenient. That was a joke for anyone above the age of 25.
But there is truth to that. We tell God we love Him, we attempt to follow His Word, that is until loving or following Him gets in the way of something else that we would rather do.
This morning we are going to begin our exposition, our journey through the book of Malachi. If you haven’t already, you can turn in your Bibles to Malachi chapter 1. If you don’t know where to look, its the last book in the Old Testament, right before Matthew kicks things off in the New Testament. This is a book that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the Bible Study world, but I believe it, like all of God’s Word, is breathed out by God and profitable for our teaching, reproof, correction, and training as we live out our lives for the glory of God. Let’s begin in verse one and then I will give you some of the context surrounding this overlooked book of the Bible.
1 The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.
This book, this oracle, this burden of the Word of the Lord as some translations call it, was written by the Prophet Malachi in the mid fifth century BC. If you are familiar with the Old Testament timeline, this prophecy is taking place about 100 years after Cyrus, the King of Persia allowed the Israelites have been returned to Judah from Exile. The Jewish people had been allowed to rebuild the temple. It’s likely that the walls around Jerusalem were at this point rebuilt or at the least in the process of being rebuilt by Nehemiah’s crew.
This is a difficult time in the life of the Jewish people. They were allowed to go back to their land, but they were still operating under the political dominion of the Persians. Living conditions were rough. Harvesting, growing food, was difficult. And with the hard circumstances of life, the Jewish people and the priests had become indifferent to the Word of God. In a myriad of ways that we will walk through in this series, they identified as God’s people, but did not live that out.
Malachi has been tasked by God to call out the people for their indifference towards God. And this certainly is a tall task. That is why this word “oracle” is also translated as a “burden”. This is a heavy word! I don’t know many people who like to have their toes stepped on and Malachi’s task is bring down the boot.
In the church, we love talking about sin. A few weeks ago, I was actually encouraged by my discussion in the youth Sunday School class. We were talking about the idea of sin and where they hear people talking about it. They said that they don’t really hear about it many places, except for when they are hear in this church. It is right a good to talk about sin in the church. Sin is missing the mark of God’s perfect holiness. Through understanding sin in our lives, we see our need for a Savior. I want to talk about and have people know about their sin.
However, most of the time we only really want to hear about other people’s sin, not our own. We like to hear the pastor rip on the sinners, but don’t want him to “come at us.” But we have to!
Warren Wiersbe once shared a church story. He said,
A church member scolded her pastor for preaching a series of sermons on “The Sins of the Saints.”
“After all,” she argued, “the sins of Christians are different from the sins of other people.”
“Yes,” agreed her pastor, “they’re worse.”
They are worse, for when believers sin, they not only break the Law of God, but they break the heart of God. When a believer deliberately sins, it isn’t just the disobedience of a servant to a master, or the rebellion of a subject against a king; it’s the offense of a child against the loving Father. The sins we cherish and think we get away with bring grief to the heart of God.
We talk about sin in the church, even the sins amongst the body of the church, ESPECIALLY the sins amongst the body of the church, because we are God’s people! We are to glorify God in everything we do. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he essentially said, “What business do I judging unbelievers for acting like unbelievers. God judges that. I’m writing to you to get your own house in order!” Then goes on to address the problems happening within the context of the church.
That is the principle of what is happening in the book of Malachi as well. The Man of God is giving the Word of God to the People of God so that they may follow the commands of God.
It is a pertinent, practical message. It is not easy to deliver, but it is necessary. For the next 9 or so weeks, we will be looking at 7 ways God’s people, the Israelites, were deficient, sinful even, in their thoughts and practice towards God while seeking application for the church today.
Let’s look at the first deficiency of God’s people described in the first half of verse 2.
Malachi 1:2 (ESV)
2a “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?”
This morning we will be focussing on the Sin of Doubting God’s Love. This sermon has been entitled, “I love you, but do you love me?”
If we’re honest with ourselves, I think that many of us have gone through at least a season of doubting God’s love. For the Jewish people, they were looking at the state of life around them and asking, God how can you really love us and allow us to live this way? Where is the harvest? Why are the Persians in charge around us? If you really loved us, why aren’t we the ruling force in the Promised Land? If you really loved us, where is that Messiah you’ve talked about time and time again through your prophets?
We ask similar questions in times of discomfort. God, if you love me why did you take my loved one from me? If you love me, why can’t I make ends meet. If you love me, why did they leave me? If you love me, why am I sick all the time, why can’t I get better? If you love me, just why???
We say we love the Lord, but we doubt that He loves us back when the comforts around us fade away.
In the case of the Jewish people, if they had studied God’s Word, they would’ve been able to see that their conditions were not a result of God’s lack of love, but rather a result from their own disobedience. The nation as whole needed to repent from the sin, the lack of belief, and fall in love wholeheartedly with the Lord.
In the case for us today, if we would just study God’s Word, we would see that we are not promised a healthy or even prosperous life, but through Christ we are strengthened to go through any trial. We can have contentment through the difficulties, as we saw last week in our look at Philippians 4.
But in both cases, when the storms of life rain down, instead of clinging to the God of our salvation, we say. “God I love you, but I’m not sure if you love me so I’m just going to go do my own thing.”
Through the Prophet Malachi, God will squelch any doubts that may be had in His love. And he has already begun the explanation of His love in the first half of this verse. Remember that as a prophet, Malachi is speaking for God. These are the Words of the Lord as it is put in verse one. And God begins His message to His People with this simple but beautiful phrase, “I. Have. Loved. You.” Four words as a simple, beautiful, and emphatic declaration.
Despite their circumstances, it is a fact. God has loved them. For the Jewish People, this God, THE God, called Israel into existence. He ruled her, and raised her. She has been the object of His love.
For the believer today, despite the circumstances of your life, God HAS loved you. That loved expressed no where greater than on the cross, where the Son of God laid down His life so that in Him you might become the righteousness of God. So that the stench of sin might be washed away and replaced by the pleasing aroma of Christ. There is no greater expression of love than The God man going to the cross to save you from your sins. He laid down His life and calls you His friend. We can know that God has loved us when we see how He has unwaveringly displayed that love.
In the next half of verse 2, into verse 3 we see God give more tangible proof of His love for His people.
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.”
Speaking candidly this morning, this is one of the most uncomfortable sections of Scripture for me to read and to preach. I know that it is God’s Word, I know it is for our benefit. I know that God is good and God IS love. So it strikes at my sensibilities to read God say, “Jacob I have Loved, but Esau I have hated.”
That is a jarring statement! And we have two ways we could deal with this: We could, one, ignore it and move on ignoring our discomfort, or we could, two, dive into the discomfort and discover what this means from the greater context of Scripture. I’m going to attempt to do the latter, as I hope all of us would when we come across a word or a verse we do not understand.
To do this first we need to understand what is meant by love and hate. This might seem a little simplistic, but we all understand that words can carry a variety of meanings. A basketball player may tell his teammates he loves them, but it is quite different from what he mean when he tell his wife he loves her. I love nachos and I love my son, but while both situations express some form of affection, their certainly more depth in one over the other. I’ll let you decide which one I love more. The same goes with hate. I hate baked beans and I hate human trafficking. Those both indicate a form of disproval, but they are not the same thing.
In the Hebrew language in which this book was originally written, the words love and hate don’t refer to steamy emotions, but rather to God’s choice. Love and hate are used in a similar way in the Greek in Matthew 6:24 There Jesus says: “24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” You cannot form your life around serving God AND amassing as money. You are making a choice between the two. In Luke 14 Jesus says “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Meaning, we must choose Christ over everything even at the cost of family or own life. We see from the whole of Scripture that having a wife is a good thing. Children are a blessing. Taking care of our families are important. So Christ isn’t telling us that at the point of conversion we should bullheadedly blow up our families or even take our own lives. No, He’s saying that following Him means CHOOSING Him above everything else.
So love and hate used in the context of our Scripture this morning refer to God’s choice to make a covenant with one party and not the other.
So let’s look now at the object of that choice, Jacob and Esau. Jacob He loved, Esau He hated. Jacob He chose to covenant with, Esau He did not choose to covenant with. Who are Jacob and Esau? They are the sons of Isaac, the son of Abraham, whom God chose to make the Father of many nations. From a point of Divine Sovereignty, God as the Sovereign, chose to express His love on Jacob, later to have his name changed to Israel, through blessing and covenant and did not do the same with Esau.
If you are familiar with the story of Jacob and Esau, you would see that this is certainly a God-driven decision for blessing. Esau was the older brother. Conventionally speaking, he had the right to inherit the blessing from his father. Yet even before the boys were conceived, God told their mother Rebecca, “two nations are in your womb, two people will be divided, and the one shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.”
One commentary notes, “Although their initial condition was the same, although the parties in question were equal [as brothers], the Lord set His love on Jacob, not Esau, for no reason intrinsic to themselves. Because this love was unmerited, it is unchanging. From before their ancestor’s birth, God has loved Israel. The imperfect form of the verb ending Malachi 1:2 implies God’s ongoing love for Jacob, while the perfect verb beginning verse 3 shows his settled unchanging opposition to Esau.”
Through this seemingly uncomfortable verse, God is expressing a profound statement on profound love He has for His people, the Israelites. It has been there since before the beginning. It was unmerited and given by His will and design. This idea shows that God’s love for them is bigger than current discomfort.
Our initial inclination is to assume the love of God and be taken back any expression regarding hate or rejection from God. “But do we know that none of us deserves God’s love?” Why did God choose to love Jacob and not Esau, we can’t explain that! Why does God love us so much that He sent His own son to die for our sins? We can’t explain that either! All we can do is respond to God’s amazing grace and love.
If you know Jesus as your love and Savior, then rejoice no matter what you are going through, because you have been adopted for sonship by God the Father. You have been made a part of a chosen race, a royal priesthood. You have been given the inheritance and the full blessings of God, not because of anything that you did, but because of EVERYTHING Christ did for you!
I can’t explain to you how election and free will reconcile. I don’t feel I have to. I know that Jesus Himself said, “Whosoever believes in me shall not perish but have ever lasting life.” “Come to me all you who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of His heart will flow rivers of living water.” And the very same Jesus said “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” “All [those] that the father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” “If the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days.” Praying to the Father Jesus said, “I have manifested your name to the people whom YOU gave ME out of the world.” I share these verses with you because sometimes theologians like to push all the uncomfortable theology off on Paul. But these are the Words of Christ.
I think sometimes we want to be God. We want to be able to fully contain the high truths of the universe in a broken vessel that isn’t able to contain it all. I believe in election, in God’s unmerited expression of love and grace, because that’s what God’s Word pronounces. That election divinely and sovereignly coincides with our free will in a mystical union that I cannot define.
God elected to bless Jacob, God chose to open the blind eyes of a wretch like me. The implications of this truth are not prideful boasting, but humbled adoration. May those of us who know Christ as Lord never take that gift as a point of superiority, praying like the Pharisee, “God I thank you for saving me so that I’m not like all those heathens, not like that tax collector.” But instead propel us to be ambassadors for Christ knowing that He is still calling His own unto Him. If you think you are better than others because you know Jesus, you need to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, because knowing Jesus shows us just how full of sin we are.
Truly seeing the love of God causes humility and hope. Humility in understanding we are undeserving. Hope in knowing He will hold to all the promises He has made for His people.
God has good promises for His people. But the same cannot be said for the rest. The latter half of verse 3 mentions that destruction that has come Esau’s family. This isn’t so much a comment on Esau, but rather a reminder for Israel that God keeps His promises. Both Israel, Jacob’s people, and Edom, Esau’s people, received judgement from God at the hands of the oppressing Babylonians in the sixth century. God promised and continued to provide restoration for Israel. They got their temple back. They were rebuilding the walls. The Messiah would still come through them. That was not the case for Edom. Their nation had turned into a wasteland. Even if Edom tried it’s hardest, they would never be able to reestablish their country. Look at the next verse
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.’ ”
Not even if the Edomites put together the best “can do attitude” and “pulled up their bootstraps as high as they could” would they be able to come back to prominence in the region. This plays out in history. In the fifth century, the Nabateans, an Arabian tribe, occupied Edom (located south and east of Judea) and forced the Edomites westward into a desert area later known as Idumea. In the fourth century, the Nabateans took over Idumea as well. Edom would never come back to prominence. They had no future.
Why does all of this matter? Look to the fifth verse
5 Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!”
God’s dealings with the Edomites is not the overall point of this passage. Remember this passage began with the idea that the Jewish people were oppressed, dejected, and down. They were doubting that God loved them. Through His dealings with the Esau and the Edomites, God is reminding the Israelites, I have loved you, I love you, and I will love you. That stuff happening over their with the Edomites, is not what is happening with you.
The idea for the Jewish people is to think bigger of God and beyond themselves. God’s love is not defined by their immediate circumstances, but by His Word and Faithfulness to His people. This world is God’s World. As we are dealing with political tensions and threats of war around the world, it’s a good reminder for us today. No matter how dark the world may seem, Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel.
The gospel is still being spread. People are being saved. His loving kindness knows no end.
The people of Israel needed to be reminded that God loved, loves, and will continue to love them. When they were only focused on their direct circumstances, they lost sight of that and began dishonoring the One they said the love.
The same can be true today. We say we love God, but we go through a difficult season and suddenly feel like God is not there. I can promise you He is ever-present and His love endures forever. If you are feeling like God has given you the cold shoulder, begin to think bigger than yourself! Go to Scripture and see the promises God has in store for His people. See how God uses trials and tribulations to grow His people. Think beyond your circumstances and see that God loves you!
Before we conclude I want to make one more point. This was a difficult to swallow kind of sermon. If we aren’t careful, we can be tempted to paint God as a villain. We see the Edomites are treated and begin to question the love of God. We begin to think of God as a bully.
If you were tempted to think like that this morning allow me to share with you more of the Words of Christ.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Judgment, condemnation, wrath even are not the bullying of an unjust God. Because of sin, way back in the garden of Eden, we stand as opponents to the all Holy, all righteous God. To receive judgment, temporal or eternal, is not God being mean. It is the condition in which we are born in a fallen world. God is not a bully, in fact God is so loving that He sent His only Son, so that who ever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. God would have every right to let all of us receive condemnation. But in His great grace, Christ died so that some may be saved!
Do you see, do you know the Love of God? If so, don’t forget it and live like you got it. If not, but it is something you thirst for, allow me as and ambassador for Christ say, “Come to Him and drink. You will find rest for your soul and out of your heart will flow rivers of living water.” If you want to know what that means, come forward in this hymn of response.
Let’s pray.