Transcript

Well, grab your Bibles and let’s go to Malachi chapter one. We’ll look at verses two through five this morning. One of those controversial texts of scripture. The controversy is on our part. God’s not confused or mixed up about anything. Sometimes I think scholars and pastors alike try to help God out. God needs no help, he just needs to be proclaimed.

Let’s look at it together, Malachi 1:2-5. Communicating through the prophet Malachi, God says, verse two, “I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, this is Jacob’s descendants, or Israel, but you say, well how have you loved us? Was not Esau, Jacob’s brother, declares the Lord? Yet I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau. And I’ve made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness. Though Edom says,” now Edom are just the descendants of Esau, so when you see Edom, you see Esau, it’s the same thing. “Though Edom says, we’ve been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins. Well thus says the Lord of hosts, they may build but I will tear it down and men will call them the wicked territory and the people toward whom the Lord is indignant forever. Your eyes will see this and you will say, the Lord be magnified beyond the border of Israel”.

Now this text, verses two through five of chapter one is the first of six disputations that Malachi records. In other words, God will say something about what he’s done or who he is and how he’s blessed them, and then they will dispute it back and say, no, God, you didn’t really do that, or God, you haven’t been faithful like that, or God, you didn’t fulfill your part of the deal. a dispute. Now, this is quite common in the Old Testament. Sometimes you see a dispute just through regular folks, kind of spelled out in the text, and sometimes it’s a dispute between prophets like Elijah, God’s prophet, disputing with the prophets of Baal about who was the true God and the mighty God. But here the dispute, and throughout Malachi, the disputations will be between God and the descendants of Jacob, or Israel.

Now this is a post-exilic prophet. In other words, the nation of Israel has already gone into exile, primarily Babylonian, then Persian exile, and now they’ve returned back to the promised land. The walls have been rebuilt, the temple’s been rebuilt, they’re back home, and now they’re being prophesied to in that context. There’s only two Old Testament prophets that prophesy after they return from the exile, and Malachi is one of those.

So, the dispute here is over the manner of God’s love toward Israel. But first of all, the elephant in the room is this strong and clear statement concerning God’s sovereignty in all things, including how he saves men. He says it very clearly, “Jacob, I have loved”, verse two, last phrase, verse three, “but I have hated Esau”. Now here in this text, this phrase is given as an undisputed fact proving Jehovah, our Yahweh’s faithful love to Israel. I chose your forefather Jacob, I’ve loved you so dearly. And so God has said, and contrast that with Jacob’s twin brother Esau, how I hated him. So you know I love you, how I picked and favored and loved your forefather Jacob. You’re all of the lineage of Jacob, obviously. So here in our text, it’s stated as an undisputed fact of Yahweh’s love for Israel.

Now it’s quoted again, of course, in Romans chapter nine by the apostle Paul, and it’s quoted there as a point of explanation of how salvation is secured or realized in a believer. Romans chapter nine, Paul just writes, “just as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated”. Well, look at this again in just a few moments, and I would just challenge you this morning to be on your best cognitive behavior. Engage your brain to drink in what God would have for us this morning.

Roman 1, as we unpack the text, notice Israel’s challenge to God’s pronouncement of love for her. Israel’s gonna challenge God when God says, I’ve loved you, and she’s gonna come back and say, verse two, well, “how have you loved us?” Or is it the end part of verse one? No, it’s the middle part of verse two, I’m sorry.

Now, when God says through Malachi to Israel, “I have loved you”, says the Lord, there’s two aspects to that word love. First of all, it’s an election word. I’ve loved you, I have chosen you, and I have chosen to love you. I’ve elected to do that. It’s an unmerited favor.

And even the most ardent Armenians among us would always go back to Father Abraham. You got Abraham, Isaac, and then Jacob. They always go back to Abraham and they will admit that was an election. God just chose Abraham among all the men on the earth to be the man he would begin his great nation through, a nation he would bless and cast his love on.

So it’s an election word. Deuteronomy 7:7-8 tells us “The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of the peoples”. In other words, there wasn’t anything especially appealing about you, Israel. God just elected to choose you. “But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which he swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt”. So it’s an election word, but also this word love here is a covenant word. God makes these covenants, and here he says, to you, Jacob, through your forefather Isaac, through his forefather Abraham, I made a covenant promise.

A covenant is the idea that God himself says, I will lash myself to faithfulness to fulfill this covenant to you. these promises to you. That’s powerful. God has no one greater than himself, so in one occasion he says, “I swear by myself I will be faithful to you”. power in this word love here, an electing love, and it’s a covenant word, and this is a word different from other Old Testament words that are translated love. One Hebrew word that Hosea used, for example, is a weaker form of the word love, but the word love here has more intensity than Hosea’s word. It has more totality to it. It has a familial aspect, the closest family bonds, that kind of love.

So in deep, deep love, God selected Jacob and the lineage of Jacob. By the way, Malachi’s writing about 1500 years after Jacob was selected. So he’s going way, way back. He’s saying all through this time, all of you descendants of Jacob have been the objects of my deep, deep selective love.

Now Israel hears this, this simple statement, Malachi writes in verse two, “I have loved you, says the Lord”, but now here’s Israel’s challenge, here’s her dispute against the Lord. “But you say”, verse two, middle part, “how have you loved us?” Now, the point here is not the actual fact of God’s love. That’s not really what they’re getting at here. It’s not the fact of God’s love that they have a problem with, it’s the manner of God’s love that they have a problem with. We don’t like the way you’re loving us. The point is, you’re not doing for us what we want you to do for us, so you don’t love us. We’re talking about four-year-old level stuff here. That’s what they’re doing.

You see, they come back from being exiled in captivity in Babylon and then to the Medo-Persians. They’ve been released under Cyrus. They come back to the promised land. They’ve rebuilt the town and the city and the walls and the temple. And they really believe when we get back to the promised land, the Messiah will be there and we will be ushered into an eternity of blessing and utopia and love and peace and prosperity, et cetera, et cetera. and that’s not what happened. They come back from exile, they get to the promised land, everything’s being rebuilt, everything is rebuilt, and a famine hits. And they’re physically, materially suffering. But when you see this, and people begin to judge God based on whether or not he performs according to their dictates, you get into a serious, serious sinfulness. Because when you sin against one far greater than yourself, and you sin against one that’s had such great love for you, your sin is greater and your guilt is greater.

You know, for us today as we think about this and realize this speaks to us just as clearly as it spoke to the Jews 2,000 years ago, An application for us would be this question. Do you know what you’ve done when you get to the point that you’re grumbling and you’re complaining and you’re accusing God of not being good to you or faithful to you or loving you because you have this problem and this trial and this difficulty? Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve left your first love. That’s exactly what you’ve done. That’s what they had did. and that’s what you and I often do. You’ve left your first love, Revelation 2, 4, the church at Ephesus, but I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Now, he didn’t say you’ve lost your first love. I think maybe the King James translates it that way, I didn’t look it up. But the Greek word there literally means to set something aside and leave it behind. That’s an encouragement because the true love you should be exhibiting for God is still there, you’ve just left it out. You’re not walking in it.

Do you remember how it was at the first, when you first came to Christ? When you first believed on Christ, your love for Christ was unconditional. You were convinced he knew the best. You had a childlike faith, just whatever God’s will is, hallelujah, that’s what I want. You trusted him completely. You were secure in his love no matter the conditions and no matter the consequences. Though he slay me, yet I will praise him was the theme of your life when you first fell in love with him.

But now that’s changed for too many of us. A hardness, a backslidden condition has come into our lives. And you’ve reduced God in your thinking to be a servant boy that is there to satisfy your wondering desires. And if he doesn’t, then he’s failed. That’s where they are. And far too often, that’s where we are. Like a foolish child, you pout over not getting your way, and you charge God with not loving you. Repent. Return to your first type of love. It says, whatever, Lord, just whatever, as long as I’ve got you. And by the way, you can’t ever lose him. He never leaves you or forsakes you.

Well, that’s the first main point here. Israel challenges God when he proclaims to them, I’ve loved you. Well, now God’s gonna go into this proof of how he’s loved Israel, and I call this Roman II: God’s response. God responds now to their accusation, their dispute with him that he hasn’t loved them, at least not loved them the right way, and God says, well, look what I’ve done. I’ll just read it, and then we’ll unpack it some.

“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” Your forefather Jacob, didn’t he have a twin brother Esau? Of course he did, “declares the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob”, I’ve loved your lineage, made your forefather Jacob the line of the promise of the covenant with all the blessings and the conditions of the covenant attached to it. And while I loved you, verse three, “but I have hated Esau. made his mountains like a desolation and appointed his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness”. Then he goes on in verse four, then says that Edom, that’s the descendants of Esau again, they’re gonna say, we’ve been crushed down, we’re gonna rise back up again and God says, no, I’ll crush you back down a second time. Your land will be like a wicked realm on the earth.

We’ll unpack that in just a moment. Let me do it this way. So God’s response here has three parts to it. Here he is responding to Israel as they challenge him that he’s not loving them, right? Here’s what God says. Sub-point A, God says, I sovereignly favored your forefather Jacob over his twin Esau. I sovereignly chose and favored your forefather Jacob over his twin Esau.

Proof of this special selective love is throughout the Old Testament and it’s clearly seen in the New Testament. Again, Paul amplifies this truth because this is a type of our own salvation. This unfavored choosing and blessing on one that didn’t really deserve it. And so Paul amplifies this truth to apply to salvation today, Romans 9:10-13. “But not only this, but there was Rebekah also. Rebekah was the wife of Isaac, and she was the mother of Jacob and Esau. But there was Rebekah also, and she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac. For though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to his choice”, his election, His sovereign election “would stand, not because of works”. Well, they’re not even born yet. They can’t do any works. “Not because of works, but because of him who calls”. It was said to her, the mom, the older would serve the younger. Just as it is written, Jacob I love, but Esau I hated”. Now Esau was born first. They were born one right after the other, but Esau came first, and the firstborn son is to be heir of all things. His lineage should be the lineage of the covenant and the lineage of the promise. But God in his perfect sovereignty said, I chose to do something different. I’ll let the second-born Jacob, Israel, your forefather, be the one I chose. and favored and cast special blessings upon.

So Esau, the firstborn, though he was to have the right of the inheritance, was not allowed to be included in the covenant promise made to his forefather, which was Isaac and Abraham. But Jacob, ironically the younger and quite the scoundrel himself, is chosen. Jacob, these people’s forefather was unconditionally loved and chosen and what God is saying and that is your lineage. How can you say I don’t love you? Because you gotta understand when you talk about Israel and you talk about Jacob or you talk about the nation, it always includes the whole lineage and all that God’s done throughout their history. And that’s what God is saying. Look at your history. This divine electing covenant love is so obvious and true and contrasts that with how I dealt with Jacob’s twin brother Esau. Comparatively speaking, I loved one and I hated the other. Now, there’s been a lot of scholars wrestle with the Hebrew word here, I should say, that he hated Esau, and they wanna make that a little better, a little easier to swallow, I guess, and they go all over the place and say, well, it means he prized Esau less dearly. Well, certainly that’s true, and it’s not quite hate, but it’s kinda hate. The eminent German Hebrew scholars, Keil and Delitzsch say very clearly it means hate. God said what he, excuse me, said what he means and he means what he says.

So contrast your choice to be the lineage of blessing, the lineage of the covenant, to Esau’s condition, to Esau’s condition I should say. Now by the way, as we’re thinking about God hating Esau and these terrible things that God brought upon Esau, be assured that Esau deserved everything he got. All the judgment that God brought upon Esau, Esau wholly, fully deserved it. Everything.

Just a few thoughts on Esau and his nature and his condition before God. You see, Esau never valued the lineage of the covenant. He never valued God’s promises through his forefathers. It just didn’t matter to him that much. Hebrews 12:13 refers to Esau as a godless man. It means he’s a profane man. He’s a base man. He only cared for the things of the earth, not the things of God. He cared not for high values that came from a high and holy God. He cared for what am I gonna eat next and what lust am I gonna satisfy next? That’s who Esau was. His heart was set on the earth. He lived for his base appetite. And with contempt and with disdain, he loathed the promises of God. It was just to him like, who cares what Father Abraham said? And who cares what he gave to Father Isaac by way of promise? And who cares about all of that? I just wanna know, where’s the next thrill I’m gonna have?

You know people like that? They don’t have time to hear about God. They don’t have time to listen about God. They’re not concerned about higher things of God. They have no desire to find pleasures in God. Just give me the pleasures of the earth. Base, animalistic, profane, low. That’s Esau. For example, in Genesis 25, the Bible says he despised his birthright. You say, he’s the oldest boy. He’s supposed to be of the lineage of the promises of God, all the way back through Isaac and Abraham. Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. But Esau, Jacob’s brother, says, I don’t care anything about that. He despised it.

Again, in verse 25, he actually sells to Jacob, his younger brother, his birthright as the head boy, the firstborn son, for a bowl of stew. It’s not just the bowl of stew. The text wants you to get, you see how profane he is. You see how earthly and vile, unspiritual in all of his thinking that he is.

First of all, he says, I’ve sovereignly favored your forefather Jacob, and compare that to how I’m gonna deal with Esau, and we had the subnote, and Esau deserves every judgment God gives him. But B, God says in responding to Israel, saying that how has God loved us? God hasn’t proven his love to us, et cetera. B, I have made Esau’s land a desolation. God again is saying through the prophet Malachi, look how I blessed your forefather Jacob, but look how I’ve judged and shown my hatred for Esau.

God used the Chaldeans or the Babylonians to raise Edom to the ground, destroy all of Edom, Esau’s descendants nation. It’s left in ruins until it’s uninhabitable for human beings. Look at it there in verse three, if you will. “But I’ve hated Esau, I’ve made his mountain a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness”. That’s an interesting phrase. I meditated on that one. I studied on it a while. “Jackals of the wilderness”. Jackals are the wild dogs of Africa. Have you seen them? We’ve all kind of seen, if you’re like me, I like animal stuff and outdoor stuff and you’ve seen those. They’re hideous creatures. The wild dogs of Africa run in packs of 15 to 20 and they can run up to 40 miles an hour and they are absolutely relentless. They just don’t get tired. So when they pick out a prey, a gazelle or an antelope or something out there in the safari, the whole pack gets after him and never lets up.

And finally, the antelope or the gazelle, whatever it is, begins to slow down and they don’t do like the big cats, grab the neck and kill it instantly. No, they start tearing at its belly and at its genitals because that flesh eat more easily tears and they get the bowels falling out and they will literally eat the animal while it’s standing. There’s a metaphor here when he says, look what I did to Esau. I made his place like the jackals of the wilderness. That’s what they are. They’re like jackals, base, vile, the most distasteful and corrupt of people.

Brothers and sisters and applicationists, they’re not a parallel for us here. You find the man that’s abandoned of God like Esau was. You find the man that lives just for the earth and not for God and heavenly values. What do you find? You find that he goes to the nth of his stamina in sinning. He gives it all he’s got. Where’s the next perverse thrill? Where’s the next corrupt thing I can enjoy?

And we see that in our country today, the most vile and perverse and idiotic things for the next pleasure. Vile, wicked, sexual things. Like the jackals of the wilderness, the wild dogs of Africa, they just pursue it, pursue it, pursue it with all they have.

And then in like type, They live in their sin, tearing at the bowels. That’s a picture of the lost man, the God-abandoned man in his course, hardened disregard for others. I’ve had to deal with people in my life, probably most of you have, that’s been around a few years, maybe they’re completely given over to alcohol and a drunkard and drug addiction and pretty soon they will kill, steal, destroy, lie, scheme, manipulate, it doesn’t matter what they do to others, they’ve got to satisfy themselves.

That’s what the jackals do. They have no concern for anything or anything, they become a beast. You remember Nebuchadnezzar, king of mighty Babylon? God abandons him, pulls his restraints off of him, and later on, Nebuchadnezzar is out on his hands and knees and eating grass like a beast. God says, that’s what you are when I take my hand off of you. That’s what God’s doing in our world. That’s what God is doing in our country. He’s saying, look what you do when I pull my restraints off a little bit.

And by the way, that’s what’s going to happen when the Antichrist takes the throne. God’s going to pull all the restraint off and men will be given over to total, beastly, vile, selfish, violent lust. How can these people How can these people, in the name of human rights, march and scream and threaten and cry to defend the extreme Islamic radicals and all the viciousness of their evil and call it they’re doing good? It’s just a vile, violent, coarse approach to life.

And then the satanic superman, the most abandoned of God and the most filled with the lust of the earth, rises up and he’s the antichrist and the Bible calls him the beast. There’s something in here for us to learn. God said, I’m doing all of that to Esau. I’m destroying everything that’s his, everything his descendants have built, every city he has in his kingdom. I’m bringing it down to nothing. A human being won’t even go there anymore. Only the jackals of the wilderness will feel comfortable in that land.

Romans 1:28 tells us about men who’ve been given over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper. That’s when God turns you over to just your beastly, fleshly, earthly appetites. Do you, child of God, child of God, have you considered lately what a magnanimous blessing it is that God’s lifted you out of that and given you a desire to know and find pleasure in him? That’s a miracle. Every one of you are a jackal in your heart unless God apprehends you and turns you around, including this preacher.

Well, God’s responding. He said, well, you think I don’t love you? What about the fact that I showed such unconditional favor and love to your forefather Jacob and not to Esau, his twin brother? What about the fact that I brought Esau down in my hatred and judgment for him into a desolation? His land would be just a haunt of jackals. Then thirdly, God says, Also, I’ll bring perpetual judgment on Esau’s land. Look at verse four. “Though Edom”, again, those are the descendants of Esau, same thing. Though Edom says, well, we’ve been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins. Well, thus says the Lord of hosts. They may build, but I’ll tear down. And men will call them the wicked territory and the people toward whom the Lord is indignant forever. a perpetual judgment. God says, I’ll bring on those people and their descendants and their land. Eden will rise up and resolutely proclaim. We’re going to rebuild what God’s torn down and God rises up and resolutely proclaims. Yeah, if you do, I’ll bring it back down again.

Through the years, the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, have maintained a vicious and vile spirit toward Israel. Some historians record that the Edomites, Esau’s descendants, even fought with the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar as he conquered Israel. Edom in the Bible becomes a symbol for the enemies of God and the enemies of Israel. For example, Edom is condemned in Obadiah, in Amos, in Ezekiel, in Lamentations, in Joel, in Malachi, in Isaiah, and in the book of Psalms.

The last phrase here, he says it’ll be a wicked territory in verse four. The point there is it’ll be known as the realm of wickedness, a place where God’s wrath justly abides forever. So Edom in the Bible becomes synonymous with the anti-God or wicked state. The idea here that is the kind of place where men in general, not just godly men, not Christian men, but men in general will be glad that God’s judgment abides on it.

We have some regimes around the world right now that we’re glad when judgment comes on, aren’t we? when we know just a little bit. If just a little of what they claimed or are accused to have done is true, they need the judgment of God on them. Well, that’s God’s response.

Now, things kind of culminate into the ultimate purpose of all things, if you will. Notice God’s resolve in verse 5. “I will be magnified among the nations”. Oh, I chose to love unworthy Jacob and you’re of his limit. Y’all know I love you. I chose to hate and judge wicked Esau and his descendants. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t have anything to do with Jacob. It doesn’t have anything to do with Esau. It has to do with me wanting my name magnified among all peoples. and like it or not, agree with it or not, dispute with God about his purposes and his ways any way you want to, that’s going to happen. He’s gonna be magnified.

So we have in verse five a prophetic type of what’s gonna come into the full a little later on. It’s increasingly come in the full as the church age came and Jesus has come and the gospels preached and churches are being built all over the world. He’s being more magnified, but it’s not close to what it’s going to be one day. Verse 5, let’s read it. “Your eyes will see this and you will say, the Lord be magnified in Israel. No, beyond the border of Israel”. In other words, he’s too big of a God just to be magnified and glorified here. He’s got to be magnified and glorified everywhere. He must be and he will be glorified.

Now you know in the ancient world, in this day that this is written, they were polytheists. Every nation, every people had their collection of gods and usually they had one supreme god, the god among all their gods. For example, the Egyptians had Ra, the sun god, the Babylonians had Marduk, the Philistines had Dagon, the Moabites had Chemosh, and the Canaanites had Baal and Asherah, and it seemed that Israel would always be envious of those who worship Baal and Asherah, and they’d start bringing Baal and some Asherah worship into Israel, and even into the temple. We still have that plague today in our churches. We keep the camouflage outside all looking good. We use the Bible, but we get to pull in Baal and pull in some Asherah. Israel was just prone to do that. Well, I’m getting off track here a little bit, just trying to point out that’s the way the culture worked in that day. You had your gods and then your supreme God, but Yahweh, the God of Israel, was not just a local deity. He’s to be magnified, the text says, beyond the borders of Israel.

Isaiah 45:18, “I am the Lord and there is none else”. My dealings with Jacob’s descendants and ultimately Esau’s descendants will show my superiority and my absolute sovereignty and I will cause all nations to honor and glorify me. You know, even the ungodly will worship him. Do you know that? They’ll not worship him unto salvation and eternal life. Look, when they are confronted with him face to face, they will be compelled by the majesty of his being to say, he is the true God. And then they’ll be banished. But all will worship. All will worship because his very being will compel it out of them.

Psalm 72:18, “may all the nations”, how many all the nations “call him blessed and blessed be the Lord God of Israel who alone works wonders”. Psalm 86:9, all the nations whom you have made will come and worship before you and they’ll glorify your name. Romans 15:11, again, “praise the Lord all you Gentiles and let all the peoples praise him”.

That’s where it’s, you say, where’s this whole thing going? That’s where it’s going. is going to be where everyone bows and worships him. Revelation 15:4, “Who will not fear the Lord and glorify your name”. Who will not fear the Lord, I should say, and glorify your name? “For you alone are holy, for all the nations will come and worship before you”.

Revelation 5:9,12-13, “They sang a new song, saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to break its seals, for you were slain and purchased people for God with your blood. from every tribe, every language, every people, and every nation. saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. And I heard every”, notice the every all the way through, “every created thing which is in the heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea and all things in them saying to him who sits on the throne unto the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever”.

So as the prophet gets to what we have as verse five, he said, let’s wrap all this thing up and remember, it’s all about God being magnified beyond Israel. In Israel, yes, but beyond Israel.

Now, the ultimate purpose God has, the ultimate purpose of all that God is, all that God has ever done, all that God is doing, and all that God is going to do, threefold. Number one, to display his glory. Number two, to have some who will embrace his glory. That’s us. That’s us who say, I treasure who he is. Preacher, shout some more about our God and all that he’s done through his son. We want to hear some more of it. We embrace it. He’s going to display his glory to everybody. By His sovereign workings, He will have a called-out elect church that will embrace His glory, and also, lastly, that will praise His glory. Number three, that’s what the world is all about. No, that’s what the universe, that’s what the unseen universe, everything is all about that. To proclaim or display His glory, to embrace His glory, and for Him to be praised for His glory.

Isaiah 43:7, “everyone who is called by my name and whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made”. God’s full loyalty is to his own namesake and his own glory. Did you hear that? His primary burden and loyalty is not to you, even his elect child, though that loyalty is beyond comprehension. His full loyalty is to his own name and his own glory. God’s glory is the highest value in the universe.

Now get this, when God is most consumed with his own glory, he most benefits his own people. Because you might sit there and say, well, what about me? Do I get anything? Is it all for God? Do I get anything? No. When God is most glorified, you are most blessed.

The only reason sinners like you and I get saved is that it shows a part of God’s glory that nothing else could show. It displays an aspect of God’s being and God’s attributes that nothing else could fully display. God needed worthless wretches that ought to be judged and go to hell and bring them into a full payment for their sin, guilt removed, sin removed, regeneration, spirit indwelt, glorified in heaven with his own righteousness, and then all the angels and all of us will say, glory, you did all of that. Because when he’s most glorified, we’re most benefited. That’s the way it works with God. It’s not this partnership, he gets 90% and we get 10%. Blasphemous. No, he gets 100% and we get in on it too. We’re blessed when he’s most glorified. There is no teaching in scripture that separates his glory from our good. and whatever is for our good must first be for his glory.

The whole goal of creation, the whole goal of redemption, sending his son, saving the children, bringing them to salvation, putting them in the church, the whole goal of creation, the whole goal of redemption, and ultimately the whole goal of judgment is to display his glory, that some will embrace his glory, and all will praise him for his glory. This was Jesus’ soul in full purpose. Before going to the cross, John 12:27-28, Jesus said, “my soul has become troubled. And what am I to say? Father, save me from this hour”. Father, do something different. No, “but for this purpose, I came to this hour, Father, glorify your name”. Jesus did not, as he went to the cross, primarily say, help the children. That’s there, it’s in the text, it is true, but that’s not the preeminent thing. The preeminent thing is, Father, in saving the children, let’s glorify your name. In getting this job done for these sinners, who I’ve come to say, make it to the renown of your reputation.

And then the last part, verse 12, 27, 28, and I love this, because it’s as if God said, oh, son, you know what I’m about. The son says, father, glorify your name. And the father said, oh, you know I’m going to be about that. Then a voice came out of heaven. That’s God the father. I have both glorified it, and I will glorify it again.

So we come all the way to that conclusion that I do love you. I chose your forefather Jacob. and I hated his twin brother Esau. I made Jacob the lineage of promise, and that’s the lineage you are of. Doesn’t that show you how much I love you? And look how much I hated Esau, and I crushed them, and I made their land a desolation. It’s only inhabitable while wild beasts like jackals, which are vile creatures, and when Edom, the followers of Esau, try to rise up, I’m gonna crush them down again, and I’m gonna make them a perpetual place of judgment.

Now, in conclusion, oh, it’s long time till lunchtime. We’re eating right now. If you hadn’t figured that out, I don’t know if I can help you. Jacob was not much of a guy himself. Jacob was a manipulative supplanter. Rebecca has Jacob, but she has twins. Esau’s the older, he comes out first. Esau, his head pops out, shoulders come out, stomach comes out, his hips come out, his thighs come out, one leg comes out, one leg’s hung. The midwife pulls a little bit, and lo and behold, as she’s pulling out Esau, Jacob’s got his hand on Esau’s heel, hanging on like, you ain’t going first without me going with you. Now wait a minute, it was rightfully Esau’s place, he was first born.

But Jacob said, I’ll not have it, I’m gonna supplant you. I’m gonna take what belongs to you, because I want it. Where Jacob literally means he’ll grab her. Or one who supplants another, one who overreaches his place, one who takes another’s place. Matter of fact, in Genesis chapter 27, in a play on words, Esau makes the statement, here’s what he says in the literal Hebrew, he said, he’s Jacobed me. Jacob has Jacobed me. He’s deceived and manipulated and taken advantage of me. Jacob was not a great guy.

You remember when it came toward the end of Isaac’s life and Isaac was gonna give the blessing and Jacob comes in and puts goat skin on his sleeves and goes to his father. Isaac gives him some stew and Isaac thinks it’s Esau. And Isaac loves Esau more than Jacob actually. And Isaac wants to give the blessing to Esau but Jacob’s deceived and Isaac can’t see well and here he is with his hairy arms like Esau and Isaac ends up giving the blessing to Jacob instead of his son Esau. Little deceptive rat. conniving, a pusher. I’ll get what I want.

Jacob takes advantage of Esau’s hunger. You remember he actually bought Esau’s birthright as the older son for a bowl of stew. Esau would rather have a bowl of stew because he wants to satisfy his lust than to be the child of promise. But Jacob manipulated that And then one night, a man visits Jacob while he’s sleeping. And Jacob wrestles with him. Jacob knew he wasn’t just any man. And Jacob says, I’m not going to let you go until you give me a blessing. And the man knocks his hip out of joint. He walked with a limp. And Jacob in those moments went from a self-consumed, self-pleasing sinner to a broken repenter. He was broken. Matter of fact, he says in the text, I’ve seen God face to face. That was Jesus. Jesus in pre-incarnation comes in a body and wrestles with Jacob and brings him to brokenness. Why? God chose him.

What a picture of our own salvation, amen, where God comes to us. When I turned on the radio that Sunday night, driving through Columbia, Tennessee, back to Middle Tennessee State University, I wasn’t looking for God, but he was coming for me. And I was converted in my car that night.

You see, friend, this scoundrel Jacob, God loved, And the scoundrel Esau, God hated. Malachi says, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated”. In Romans, Paul quotes it and says, “even before they were born, God said, Jacob I loved and Esau I hated”. Now a lot of people look at this and they’re just so upset.

This is improper. It’s a scandal. It’s a scandal. And the idea that it’s not proper. God can’t do that. Be careful telling God what he can and can’t do. They think it’s unfair, it’s unjust, it’s demeaning to the character of God. But listen to me, friend. The real scandal in the biblical text is not that God hated Esau. It’s that he loved Jacob. He should have hated both of them. That’s the scandal. That’s what’s improper. That Jacob would be loved because all have sinned, Jacob and Esau. All are by nature children of wrath, Jacob and Esau, and all of us, of course. No one does good, not even one. That’s Jacob and Esau.

Listen, God doesn’t have to love sinners. Divine justice is fully satisfied in hating and judging sinners. And to know anything of the biblical revelation of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man, the scandal is that God would not hate and judge Jacob just like he hated and judged Esau. It’s a scandal that God would love any sinner. It’s not proper to be that holy and embrace us. It’s not proper. It’s a scandal, but I’m telling you, it’s a glorious scandal. It’s a righteous scandal because the Holy Son of God fulfilled all justice and all righteousness for those God chose to love by hanging on a cross, becoming our guilt offering, bearing our sin before the divine bar of justice. And that’s a scandal, a glorious scandal.

Now in conclusion for those of you who says, well, I just don’t think it can mean that I’ve got a couple of things. I want to challenge you a couple of things. I want to question you about if you think it’s wrong for God to say before they were born. I hated one and I love the other and I love one. I hated the other. First, I want you to look back through the annals of time. I want you to go back 2,000 years. I want you to go to the cross. I want you to see Jesus hanging there, but claiming to any and all that will come to him that he will save them if they repent and believe. Follow the cross up through the decades, the centuries, the millennia, all the way to our day, and find me one person, find one person who would say, I love Jesus. I treasure Jesus. I put my faith in Jesus. I was bankrupt before him. I did all of that. I just came to him in faith and he would not save me. You’ll never find one. You will never find one. For 2,000 plus years who came to him broken and repentant and looking for a savior that he would not save. Now go back again. Go all the way back through time, all the way through the decades, the centuries, and the millennia, and go to the cross, and then start working your way out from the cross, crossing through the decades, crossing through the centuries, crossing through the millennia, up to today’s time, and find one person. who of their own inherent virtue, goodness, and righteousness was smart and wise enough on their own without God helping to believe on Jesus. You will not find one. You will not find one.

So Jesus stands, blood from his brow, his hands, his feet, his side. arms wide open and their still wide open and says, whosoever will may come, but left to ourselves, no one comes. And God, for his own glory, and because it pleased him to do it, chose to turn some to see their sin and look to the Savior. It’s a scandal, for sure, that all of us who deserve eternal wrath and judgment, but we become the undeserving objects of eternal grace and love and forgiveness. John 6:44, “no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him”.

God came down taking the initiative and he wrestled with Jacob. Jacob did not go to bed and say, oh God, would you please come down? Nothing in the text like that. Jacob, the usurper, Jacob, the deceiver, Jacob, the manipulator, Jacob, the schemer, Jacob, the selfish, forceful pusher, just goes to sleep. And Jesus says, Father, I’m gonna go get him. And he reached down there and, Jacob, wake up. And they started wrestling. His name was changed that night, by the way, to Israel, it means the one who wrestles with God. And they had a wrestling match. And Jacob lost, because God’s never lost a wrestling match. He just doesn’t, and that’s why Jesus could say, “of all that the Father gives me, I lose not one”. I hadn’t lost one yet. He’ll get you in a suplex, headlock, whatever, and you’ll say, not uncle, you’ll say savior.

So Jacob leaves with a broken hip and a broken heart and a humbled spirit. believing in the promise of a Savior. And dear friend, if you’ve been humbled, if you see your sin and need, and you’ve placed your faith in Christ and Christ alone to save you, then you are God’s Jacob. And anyone can do that. If you will do that, you’ll become God’s Jacob. And you will be the object of undeserved favor and love, and it lasts forever.