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00:37 Thank you for joining me today. Good to be back at the cafe today. I have a wonderful message here on God’s love for us and how it affects us or it doesn’t affect us.
00:48 And you say, well why is that wonderful? Because it’s wonderful when we learn how much God really loves us and how deep that love relationship goes. And this message, we’re not going to get through the whole thing today, so you have to tune in next time for the conclusion.
01:03 But hopefully it’s going to give you enough here to soften your heart to the ways of God and the things of God and turn you back towards Him.
01:10 Even if you’re on fire for Him now, you’ll be more on fire. And if maybe you’re far off from Him, you’ll draw closer to Him when you hear just how much He loves you. You know, think about this, the holidays, they’re right here.
01:24 People are inevitably thinking about holiday stuff. You know, they’re getting their Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas dressing or whatever it is. They’re getting ready for celebration.
01:35 They’re thinking of maybe going to church. You know, some will go to church during the holidays for the first time this entire year. They’ll do it out of some kind of respect or habit or being with a friend or so forth, a cultural thing.
01:49 They’ll go to church. Some might even do something charitable for the first time this year because it’s the holidays and they think, this is my time to give back. And look, it’s not wrong to go to church.
01:59 Even if you don’t go a lot, it’s great that you’re going and you’re starting to go. It’s not wrong to give. That’s great that you’re giving and that you’re starting to think of others.
02:08 But God is so much bigger than just one season, amen? And I think during this season, churches especially, we start thinking about things, about our culture, about who we are, what we’re about.
02:21 We start thinking about doing the will of God maybe in a broader sense because it is that time of year and we are experiencing as churches maybe more attendance or maybe more giving or maybe not.
02:33 But either way, it just seems around this time of year, before the new year, that we start thinking on these things.
02:41 And as we think on these things, I want you to think about the cause-and-effect relationship when it comes to our dealing with God. That cause-and-effect relationship, that God first loved us and then what comes next, amen.
02:55 Our text verse is out of Malachi, Malachi 1:2. I have loved you, saith the Lord, yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother, saith the Lord? Yet I loved Jacob.
03:10 So in Malachi 1, we see something here as evidenced in our text verse that God’s love is predestined.
03:18 It’s a predestined love. You know, if you look at the tense here in Malachi 1:2, I have loved you. Not, I love you now, but I didn’t before.
03:37 Not, I’m going to love you. It’s, I have loved you, saith the Lord. And then God gives this very interesting thing, statement here through the prophet Malachi, yet ye say, wherein has thou loved us?
03:49 So God is saying, you’re saying, how do we know that you loved us? And God’s response is, let’s look at Jacob and Esau.
03:53 So who’s Jacob and Esau? That would be the question I think someone reading this that wasn’t familiar with the Bible would ask. Well, Jacob and Esau were brothers born of Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac, of course, was Abraham and Sarah’s chosen son, the one to carry on the line to create that Jewish people that are God’s people.
04:08 And we see in Malachi 1, we see God kind of painting this picture of predestination of loving this group of people before they were even founded or created.
04:17 And you can look at Malachi in the scope of the Bible there. It is after many books in the Old Testament.
04:27 In fact, it’s the last book in the Old Testament. And so it’s referencing the Jewish people right before we get to the New Testament in terms of the order. Verse 1 of chapter 1, the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.
04:37 So who is this? This is the Lord. And it’s to who? It’s to God’s people. Verse 2, I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
05:01 Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.
05:12 And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.
05:18 So here in Malachi 1-5, we see that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, He loves his people from the beginning.
05:26 Because to me, the whole Bible is a picture of Jesus Christ. And Israel could be also, broadly speaking, God’s people. And he loved them from the beginning, from their forming, from their heritage, from the start of their lives or even before their lives.
05:42 The Bible says the Lord knew us before we were born. Amen. And the word here in verse 3, I hated Esau, as I understand that translation is a little different.
05:53 It’s more that I preferred Jacob and I didn’t prefer Esau than the current translation of hate as in like something you really dislike him. It was more of I preferred Jacob. I chose Jacob.
06:05 And Edom in verse 4, But we will return and build the desolate places. Edom, that is the root people of Esau. So Esau became the Edomites, that those are the people of Esau.
06:18 And so God is saying here, people, they’re ignorant. They think that God’s on their side when he’s not. They say, hey, we’ll return, we’ll build, we’re going to be okay.
06:29 And they’re fooling themselves. And in fact, Israel will be the one that will be magnified because the Lord has chosen so. And so we see this idea through Malachi 1:1-5 of predestination, of God writing to his people saying, I predestined you.
06:43 And he brings up this controversial idea that I chose you over this other. Now, when we look at that, that’s very warm. It should warm the heart of the Christian.
06:56 And it could make the unbeliever furious. Because the unbeliever, those that don’t believe in God, would say, oh, who are you to say that God makes a preference or a choice?
07:07 But in the book of Malachi, through the prophet Malachi, the Lord speaks clearly that he does make a choice. And that God’s people are chosen people.
07:18 That Israel’s a chosen people. And we understand here that, look, God wants all to be saved. There’s scripture on that, that he desires all to come to repentance, all to be saved.
07:28 You know, he sent his son that all in the world could be saved, but not all will be saved. And so we have to understand that some, they won’t be saved.
07:37 And the reason why they won’t be saved is because they have a hard heart, because they’re wicked.
07:44 And in the scripture, we learn that when you have a hard heart and when you’re wicked, God won’t reveal the true path to salvation to those people and soften their hearts to be saved, because he doesn’t want that sinner in his heaven, because his heaven is holy.
07:58 And so it’s not that God decides who’s going to be saved and who’s not. It’s that God knows, he foreknows, who will accept that free gift of salvation out of the right heart, out of the right mindset.
08:10 And look, it’s a doctrine that even a preacher can struggle with to understand predestination. And I believe, I preach to everybody, and I believe anyone can be saved, and everyone should be saved, and nobody is too good to not be saved, and no one’s too bad that they couldn’t be saved. I hope that all made sense.
08:32 I believe we are all eligible. The Lord will forgive. I believe the Lord gets great glory when he saves unconventional people.
08:36 You know, I’m an unconventional person. I grew up in a broken home, a broken upon broken home, and statistically I should be in prison or something. I had all kinds of developmental issues growing up.
08:47 I had all kinds of problems, anger and all of this, and I was rebelling and all these things. And I believe it brought God glory to save someone like me. And someone in my past says, oh, what’s old Clark up to?
08:58 And they look me up and they say, that man’s a pastor, that man’s on fire for God, that man’s on the radio.
09:05 They wouldn’t believe it, because it’s only of God. And he gets all the glory, because clearly that never would have been me otherwise. So God, I believe he relishes in saving those that many would think wouldn’t be saved, amen.
09:19 But at the same token, he’s very clear that he has a predestined love for those that are his, for his people.
09:27 Now you’re saying, well how do you know if you’re predestined? And let me tell you, if you’re saved, that’s proof. He loves you.
09:35 As I mentioned earlier, if you were not saved, or if you were not able to understand the gospel, if you were not presented the gospel and able to understand it or digest it, that means God had closed your eyes to it.
09:46 He had made you unable to process it, because only God can do the saving. So if you are saved, or if you’ve heard the gospel and understand what it means, and maybe you feel a Holy Spirit conviction among you, then clearly you are one of the predestined. And now of course some will be saved later, I understand that.
10:04 But for those that are saved, and I believe a lot of people listening to this are saved here today, that means that God has predestined you, that he loves you, that you are part of his chosen people.
10:17 You are part of that Israel that he’s mentioning here. And I’m taking that symbolically obviously, but you get the idea.
10:24 You are predestined in love by God. Well you say, well what does that mean? Well number one, do you recognize it? Do you understand that God loves you so much that he saved you?
10:30 Do you recognize this predestination, or do you think that hey, this is for everybody, it’s no big deal, God’s not worried about me, God doesn’t care about me. You know, God needs to be big enough to you for you to understand his sovereign power.
10:42 But in the same light, he needs to be clear enough to you to understand that he loves you to the point where he knows how many hairs are on your head. You know, the Bible says, I was reading this in Matthew today, that God knows all your needs before you even pray for them.
10:55 Do you know that? You know you have a lot of needs, I have a lot of needs, and you know before we even pray for them, this is the Lord Jesus Christ, I believe it was the Beatitudes, was saying, look, you don’t need to give some long repetitious prayer, because guess what? God knows all your needs anyways.
11:12 So just pray like this, and he gives the Lord’s prayer, amen? And so that’s a whole other message on how we should pray, but look, God knows our needs, he knows how many hairs are on our head, he loves us with an everlasting love, we were fearfully and wonderfully created, amen.
11:26 God is in the details, he is in the details, and because he loves us and he knows our needs, he is going to meet those needs, he’s going to give us food, he’s gonna give us clothing, that’s also there in Matthew, and he loves us, but how do we respond to it?
11:42 And I want to give you an example here, Lord willing, if we have time, of a wife and a very loving husband. Now imagine this husband, he took her for marriage, and the wife was helpless and poor, and he cared for her by giving and not taking. He protected her, and he taught her great things.
12:01 It’s a great husband, a mighty man, he was patient, and you know, he took her back when she had gone astray. He provided for her above and beyond what she could dream of having. He even gave his life to save her life.
12:13 In short, he did everything she couldn’t do for herself, out of a perfect, pure love. You know, he took her to marriage, he cared for her, he kept giving, he didn’t take, he protected her, he was patient, he took her back when she went astray, he provided and provided, provided, he gave her everything she could ever imagine, he even gave his life to save hers. It was a perfect love.
12:35 Now the question is, how does that wife respond? Indifference, not making a strong effort to know her husband. Confusion about who her husband is and if he really loved her. Lack of satisfaction, looking to others to satisfy her desires.
12:47 Rebellion, doing what wouldn’t please her husband, but would grieve him. Pride, thinking she was justified in her actions, that she did the saving of her own life. Lack of giving, spending her resources on herself, and not giving to the causes that would please him.
13:05 Lack of recognition, not even mentioning him to anyone. I want to tell you today, this is how the church is today. For the large majority, the church, and I mean that individually, those in the church are treating God, and corporately the churches themselves maybe, are treating God with indifference, with confusion, with lack of satisfaction, with rebellion, with pride, with lack of giving, with lack of recognition.
13:28 They’re treating this God, this husband, we are the wife, we are the bride of Christ, and he is the bridegroom, he is our husband, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. We’re treating Jesus unfairly.
13:37 We’re not giving the love that he is due, and we need to think on that, and we need to turn back to God in these last days, and we need to recognize his love is this everlasting love, and it’s important to look at this in the scope of eternity.
13:52 Look, for eternity we will worship and praise him, the saved will, so why not get started now by understanding how deep and powerful that love is, and when we gain that understanding,
14:02 we’ll be faithful to him again, and he’ll be faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and allow us to have close fellowship with him. Tune in next time to hear part two of this very important message.
14:15 Thank you for joining me.