⏱ 10 min read

• Thank you all very much for your birthday wishes and prayers yesterday 🤍🤗 Truly grateful.
• We’re on Day 43 of 50, and we are going strong with the book of Malachi. You’ll be super blessed by this! 📖🔥🤗
• Maybe you missed all the earlier readings, but hey, you can join in and let’s “tattoo” God’s Word in our hearts! 📖🤍 God bless you, and looking forward to your lessons, insights, and comments.

The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. “I have loved you,” says the Lord. Yet you say, ‘In what way have You loved us?’ Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” Says the Lord. “Yet Jacob I have loved; But Esau I have hated, and laid waste his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness.” ~ Malachi 1:1-3

• I really love how Prophet Malachi starts his book: “The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel…”
• A burden represents a heavy load that makes one uncomfortable. This is one of the many different ways the word of the Lord can come to us.
• Take special notice of when you have a word/message burning inside of you; God may be speaking to you.

I've had some times when I wake up and there's a burden of a word or message to someone or to the ministry I lead - I'll just be walking around and that's all I can think about. Until I speak to the person or ministry about it, the burden doesn't leave. God can speak to you through a burden.

The first message God gave through Malachi was this “I have loved you.” Other versions say, “I have always loved you.” What a message of hope and assurance for us all. God loves you dearly, and He wants me to repeat these words to you today: God loves you and He has always loved you!

“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you." ~ Jeremiah 31:3

• Unfortunately, just like many of us do, the Israelites doubted about God’s love because they used their political or economic progress as a measure of God’s care (they were just coming back from exile).
• Because the government was corrupt and the economy was poor, they assumed that God didn’t love them.
• So they responded to God’s statement by asking how God loved them. They were using the wrong measure of God’s love.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

• Often, we find ourselves asking God: “Do you really love me?” Especially when life isn’t turning out the way we had hoped.
• Dear friend, material blessings are not the primary indicator of God’s love. In fact, they are often not an indicator at all.

God loves all of us because He made us specially in His image. However, His eternal rewards go only to those who believe in Him and are faithful to Him regardless of life’s circumstances.

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. ~ Hebrews 11:6

• God did answer Israel’s question anyway. They asked: “In what way have You loved us?”
• God said, out of two siblings, Jacob (Israel) and Esau, I chose you Jacob (Israel). “Jacob I have loved; But Esau I have hated.”
• Oh what grace, may God choose us and love us!

God was explaining the way He had loved them (and the way He has loved you and I also). God has loved us by choosing us. Love is demonstrated in the choice made.

• In a romantic relationship, a man/woman makes a choice out of all the other potential people out there. That is his/her choice of who to love.
• Out of all the 8 billion plus people in the world, God says, “I want you to be my special person; my beloved.” Why me, Lord? What good did I do?
• “You did nothing! It’s not by your works; I have just made my choice, and my choice is you!” That is grace at work! Receive God’s amazing grace (Ephesians 2:8).

One may ask, but why didn’t God choose Esau (unbelievers) instead or in addition? After all, he was the firstborn; he had the rights of inheritance by tradition, and so he deserved to be the next in line.

Now I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll attempt to touch on it briefly before we move to what I want to share with you today. First, all through the Bible, God seems to have a preference for the undeserved or the neglected, over the deserved.

Cain and Abel; Ishmael and Isaac; Judah was the fourth born among his brothers; Perez was the result of the affair with Tamar); David was the youngest and despised among his brothers; King Solomon was the son of Uriah's wife; etc.

• Usually, the firstborn has a mindset of deserving things. “It is my right! I deserve to have this; I deserve to enter heaven.“
• Many unbelievers believe that they deserve to be allowed in heaven based on their works, efforts, good deeds, etc.
• But God says no, “Your righteousness is like a filthy rag”; You can only come through believing Jesus Christ, not by your merit.

Secondly, God is all-knowing and He sees the end from the beginning. This means God already knows how everything is going to turn out in the end. Lemme explain with an illustration below:

• Have you read a book and then afterwards, a movie is made based on that same book?
• When you’re watching the movie, you already know the choices the characters will make, and you already have in mind which character you like or dislike.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 

having PREDESTINED us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. ~ Ephesians 1:3-6

• In essence, it seems God has already seen those who will choose/reject Him when the opportunity is presented to them, and based on that knowledge, He has made His choice.
• God knew that Esau despised his birthright and would not choose him; but Jacob would choose him. I hope this helps.

From v6-14: God expects honour from certain relationships. Secondly, honour is seen in our physical demonstration, actions, sacrifices, and gifts. Thirdly, God doesn’t take dishonour lightly!

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am the Father, where is My honor? And if I am a Master, where is My reverence? Says the Lord of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, ‘In what way have we despised Your name?’

The law of Moses required that only perfect animals be offered to God as sacrifices, demonstrating the need for a person to give up something very valuable in exchange for being pardoned for the high cost of their sin (eg Leviticus 1:1-3).

‘If his offering is a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish; he shall offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the Lord. ~ Leviticus 1:3

• But these priests (shockingly) were allowing the people to sacrifice blind, crippled, and diseased animals.
• They were careless and acted as if any kind of sacrifice or service was good enough for God. Dear Christian, be careful of this.
• God accused them of dishonoring Him with these imperfect sacrifices, and He was greatly displeased. Romans 12:1 says that our lives should be living sacrifices to God.

If we give God only our leftover time, money, and energy, we repeat the same sin as the Israelites, who didn’t want to bring anything valuable to God.

Would you give clothes that are torn and dirty or things that are broken as gifts to those you love? What we give God reflects our true attitude toward him. The Israelites sacrificed to God wrongly through some of the following:

1. Convenience — taking the easy way out;
2. Neglect (v12-13) — being careless in how they offered sacrifices;
3. Misplaced Priorities (v8) — they honoured their governors more than they honoured God;
4. Outright disobedience — sacrificing their own way and not as God had commanded;
5. Stinginess — being as cheap as possible;
6. Deception (v14) — they had perfect animals but they brought the imperfect ones as if this was the best they had

Their methods of sacrifice and giving showed their real attitudes toward God. How about us and our attitudes? Has convenience, neglect, misplaced priorities, disobedience, stinginess, or deception influenced our giving and our sacrifices? What would you do differently from today?

Hey, you're blessed and highly favoured and dearly loved! Do share your lessons from Malachi 1. Remember to tag us and your friends on 📲:
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