Malachi 1:1-5

appreciate that well it's a great joy to get to be here with you all today and to see some familiar faces and Dave and Bree and Tori today who are down in Bloomington for their their college Years and ransford who got sick this morning uh and uh you know couldn't make it today but Ransom and Julia were also with us back in the day as well and so it's great to be here I want to just encourage you what a great gift you're giving Dwayne with this time of rest this season of rest I had a sabbatical last summer I was incredibly just a time

of great renewal and precious time with my family my kids are getting a lot older than Dwayne's kids are these days but uh but it was a just a great sweet time and and I want to to also know that it's not just a gift you're giving him it's a gift you're also giving yourself because healthy pastors can kind of also help the church be healthy as well and so I just want to encourage you that Duane's a good friend and just love him dearly and I I know they're doing doing well and working through some good things this summer and I'm sure he'll be

excited to be back with you here soon last summer when I was on sabbatical he preached for me for our church down in Bloomington and uh and people in my church are still talking about his sermon uh now like it was like the most impactful sermon of the summer uh there are a lot of folks that just really love that and I'm not going to promise you that today it's probably not going to happen for you you won't probably be talking about this sermon maybe even after this morning but uh but yeah what a gift well yeah like I said my name's Chris married to

my wife Crystal we have three kids Seth Leah and Levi assess 21 he's in Brazil right now for a month on his own uh because he met a woman down there on our spring break trip who's from Brazil and so that's exciting uh in our life my daughter Leah's almost 19 and my youngest son Levi is uh 15. so that means I'm old and so I'm here with you today last month Crystal and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary and we marked the occasion with kind of a delayed 20th anniversary trip our 20th anniversary if you're counting was in the year 2020. so we didn't

do anything that cool we stayed at this really uh you know not so great Hotel in Downtown Bloomington because even the nice hotels weren't open yet then so you know three years later finishing up the Jordan year we we had a great trip to St Lucia it was incredible we'd never done a trip like that when we got married we had nothing to go on any fancy honeymoon so it was it was a really great gift we're far from perfect folks and you know we uh we certainly don't have a perfect marriage but I feel incredibly blessed to tell you that after 23 years she's

still my best friend a person that I want to spend my days and time with more than anyone else uh the the person I want to you know have fun with laugh with cry with all those things and God has used her and her love in my life to show me a lot of the Father's Love the goodness of God's love and his grace in my life he's used her to confront me in love to encourage me and remind me again and again of how much God loves me right marriage is not easy and and sadly at this point in our lives we've seen more

than a few of our friends marriages really struggle some even come to an end and it can be easy to kind of fall into a relationship where you simply kind of take one another for granted and then apathy begins to set in and you start just kind of going through the motions but your your heart isn't in it and one of the keys I think for us has been this practice of just being really intentional in our time together being intentional to regularly remind one another of our love for each other the things that we love about each other the ways that we're experiencing Each

Other's Love day by day what we're thankful for in each other all those kind of things remembering our love has been a key to truly enjoying our marriage and our life together and and in the book of amalekai at the start of the Book of Malachi that's really at the heart of what we see God's people in this book in this time period have grown apathetic in their relationship with God all right they're going through the motions half-heartedly they have forgotten and they doubt God's love for them but what they need more than anything is to push past the apathy to True affection is to

remember God's love for them that's what you see in Malachi chapter 1 verses one through five invite you invite you to turn there in your Bibles and if you would stand with me for the reading of God's word Malachi chapter 1 1-5 hear the word of the Lord the Oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi I have loved you says the Lord but you say how have you left us is not Esau Jacob's brother declares the Lord yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated I have laid waste his whole country and left his Heritage to jackals of the

desert 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 your own eyes shall see this and you shall say great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel this is the word of the Lord let's pray Heavenly Father we're grateful for this time just to gather together to to sit under your word to encourage one another and remind one another of your love for us Lord I pray that you'd open all of

our hearts in this room in this space to see to hear to feel the depth of your love for each of us individually and collectively as your people Lord would you grip us with your love in a way that that moves us Beyond just going through the motions of life and faith but moves us to True affection for you to living passionately for you in every way possible I pray this all in Jesus name and all of God's people said amen you may have a seat as we walk through this passage we're going to talk about the problem of apathy the cure for apathy and

and we'll discuss it the strategy for fighting apathy first let's consider the problem of apathy it's helpful you know if you know I don't think you guys can studying Malachi this summer we're working through a series on Malachi right now but uh to get a little background context for What's Happening Here in the world of Malachi The Book of Malachi is a prophetic book that was written sometime after the return from Exile in Babylon the books of Ezra Nehemiah if you're familiar with them or more the historical counts of that period of return from Exile and it's clear from the context here in this book

that that it was written at least after the temple had been rebuilt after that period of return from Exile so it's safe to say that Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries of Malachi the prophet and that's just about the extent of what we know about the person Malachi right other than the fact that his name literally translates to mean My Messenger but the focus of this book is not on the messenger but on the message the people of God had been carried off into Exile in those years for their idolatry and their Rebellion against God breaking the Covenant with God but then after a time of

discipline the people returned from Exile God brought them back to rebuild the destroyed city of Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple rebuild the walls around the city but already after they've come back the people are already again growing cynical serving God feels like drudgery right and meanwhile it seems like to the people of God this time that all these rebellious people living around them are the ones who are enjoying the blessings that that they were promised like things are going well for them but not so great for us God seemed absent to them and so they started neglecting major aspects of proper worship that God had

commanded them in the old Covenant the general attitude of the people of God at this point in time seems to be if God doesn't care why should we why should we bother right that's apathy that's apathy and as a result all moral morality seems to kind of be spiraling out and down into darker and darker places adultery divorce deceit fraud sorcery are all running rampant and much of the corruption is coming from the priests of God the the pastors if you will of God themselves this is the situation that the Malachi finds himself in and speaks to and Malachi of course is the final book

in the Old Testament and it closes out the Old Testament Canon with with God addressing his people in their apathy and calling them out of it calling them from apathy to affection as they wait for the coming Messiah and through Malachi you read through the rest of the book you're going to see God calling his people out of fake and empty worship back to True passionate affectionate worship he's going to call them out of adultery and divorce and intermarriage with Pagan wives to honor the Covenant of marriage in equally yoked god-honoring marriages he will call the priests to turn from corruption back to serving the

people and pointing them to the God who loves them he'll call the people to pursue Justice with faithful service and gracious Integrity he'll call them to stop robbing God by failing to give as they should and to instead give generously and Faithfully in all of it he's calling them out of apathy to affection but apathy is a is an interesting problem as one author kind of describes it he says as a sin apathy is unique and yet not unique as a misdirection of our attention and affection it is the same as many other sins but as a passive aggressive hostility to God it is a

strange bird apathy is not the hostility of shaking a fist but of a gaping yawn and when you think about it what hurts more someone's anger or someone's indifference toward you the lack of care and concern is is something we can easily fall into if we are not intentional we see one of the Easy Pass Pathways into apathy as it concerns our attitude toward God right here in these verses the people's response to God's Declaration of his love for them is this how have you left us right you say you love us God yeah I don't see it shows are cards right away in that

response they give away that they are doubting God's love for them a clear pathway to apathy not the only Pathway to be sure but a common one forgetting and doubting the love of God and when you doubt that God cares it becomes easy to stop caring much yourself if you think God doesn't care or even more if you think that God doesn't love you then instead he's against you he's out to get you it's going to have a very serious impact on your life it's going to lead to at best this sort of detached apathetic kind of going through the motions or possibly despair or

some kind of all-out rebellion against him all of which are going to have serious negative impacts on your life apathy in a marriage right can can lead to Mindless coexisting at best right we're just kind of roommates ships passing in the night just interacting barely just existing together or just taking each other for granted but at worst apathy in a marriage deteriorates to chasing after love somewhere else destroying the marriage altogether in our relationship with God it's it's similar it's very similar apathy leads us to going through the motions right we go to church because that's that's what we're supposed to do so so here

we are we're going to church right we're doing the things we're supposed to do well we're supposed to serve so we're going to serve but we're going to do so mindlessly half-heartedly but it can also lead to resentment and chasing after what we can only find in God elsewhere if we doubt God's love for us that's going to have a real impact on our lives I'll quote Uche andazor once again he says a man tends to live up to his self-image forgiven or condemned righteous or filthy how we perceive ourselves makes all the difference in the world that's a little bit on the problem of

apathy but but let's also talk about the cure for apathy that the text points us to here put simply the cure for apathy is God's love it's God's love it's not just a random occurrence here that the very first thing that God speaks through the prophet Malachi is this I have loved you says the Lord I have loved you says the Lord now there are there are a number of issues we've we breezed over though there's a number of very serious things that are going on that God needs to address in his people but he begins with I love you I love you God begins

by declaring his unchanging and enduring love for his people the actual tense of that verb love in the original language carries with it the meaning of this I have always loved you and will continue to always love you says the Lord in other words while you may have forgotten or you may be doubting God's love for you God remembers and he continues to always love you God not only declares his love for his people he also seeks to answer their doubts with evidence of his love the chief evidence being his Divine election of Israel as his chosen people he says yet I have loved Jacob

but Esau I have hated now that sounds a little harsh especially if you're Esau right um it sounds a little harsh but but it's better to understand the words love and hate in that sentence in their covenantal sense which is chosen and not chosen right because God chose Jacob to fulfill the Covenant that he made with Abraham and back in Genesis 12 God loved Jacob and since God did not choose Esau God hated him we're getting into that that doctrine of election a little bit and as a guest preacher I'm not going to get too deep into that because I'll let your pastors handle that

with you but while that Doctrine stirs up a lot of controversy for some God is employing it here as a way to reassure his people of his unconditional love for them because the truth is God's choosing of Jacob over Esau had absolutely nothing to do with anything other than God's Sovereign will he didn't choose Jacob because Jacob was better or nicer go back and read Genesis he wasn't God chose Abraham out of all the people in the world to make a covenant with and God chose Jacob over his older brother Esau to continue to work out that Covenant God chose the Israelites over all of

the other nations of the world at that time to be his chosen people but he did not choose them based on any Merit of Their Own Deuteronomy 7 verses 7 and 8 it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you for you were the fewest of all peoples but it was because the lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of pharaoh king of

Egypt one commentator on the Book of Malachi wrote God does not grade on a curve if he did Esau might have passed Jacob on the other hand certainly would have failed as he conned his father into placing the blessing on him rather than on his older brother according to the cultural Traditions Esau deserved God's blessing yet God does not bestow Grace on those who seem to deserve it if one's righteousness were the condition for God's grace no one would enter the kingdom so when God says this through the prophet he's saying to the people you have done nothing to deserve it you you have done

nothing to earn it but I have chosen you I love you You Are My People and God further substantiates his love for his people by speaking of what he's caused to happen to the [ __ ] the descendants of Esau and this may sound mean and cruel to our ears but you need to understand the [ __ ] reject rejoiced at the destruction of Jerusalem they rejoiced at the people of God being taken away captive into Exile they exploited Israel's vulnerability for their own gain in some very extremely Wicked and perverse ways and God displays his love for his people here in the Justice that

he brings upon their enemies he causes their country the [ __ ] country to become desolate and God assures his people that even if things are looking up for the [ __ ] now you think they're they're getting better they're making plans to rebuild that's fine God says I will tear down whatever they built they will forever be the wicked country the people the Lord is angry with forever the people of God will see God carrying out this Justice on their enemies and they will declare great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel the point of all of this is to declare to us

that the cure for apathy is remembering the love of God when you or I are troubled to the point that we would ask how do I know that God even loves me like how do I know just as it was in Malachi's day the answer is found in a historical event God points the people here in Malachi's day to his choosing of Jacob over Esau he points his people back to the Exodus and delivering them out of slavery he points them back to the return from Exile see I've brought you out of that captivity once again because I love you but he points us friends

to the person and work of Jesus Christ the finished work of his cross Jesus is the ultimate display of God's Sovereign Love for us when we were caught up in sin nothing in us that deserve his love nothing in us that could possibly save ourselves we were alienated from God dead in our sins spiritually blind morally bankrupt but God loves us and he sent his son Jesus Christ to live and die and rise to rescue us Ephesians 1 3-6 blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the Heavenly places even as

he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as Sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious Grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved here is God's Sovereign Declaration of love for us love that is meant to Humble us to remove any any room for our boasting to take away any sense of entitlement kill our pride and expose the foolishness of self-reliance it's all his love we are nothing and we have nothing apart from

Jesus he is our everything and we have nothing to contribute nothing in us that he should want us right and yet he loved us so he loved us so this is the cure for apathy that the apathy that cripples us consider his love remember his love he's the father that runs out to meet you like the the father in the parable The Prodigal Son that Jesus tells in Luke 15. he he's this he's that father we come stumbling back to him hoping for some way to pay off our debt that he'll give us some lesser status just so we can get a little closer and

Jesus comes running before we even get there he comes running out to us he puts on the Royal robe on us he puts a ring on our finger he Embraces us he calls us his own and orders that a feast be held immediately to welcome us home this is the love of God for you for me for us remembering this love is the cure for our apathy it's the love that will not let us go as the great hymn says and declares remembering this love sinnering ourselves on This Love This is the cure for our apathy and this points us to the strategy for fighting

apathy as well understanding the problem and knowing the Cure can Empower us to lean into a strategy for fighting apathy in our relationship with God if the cure for apathy is remembering God's love then we must regularly take time intentional time to recount the ways that he has loved us and that starts first and obviously with Jesus the Sunday School answer right his life his death his resurrection to rescue us from sin and death that the sin and death that we deserve but there's certainly more ways that he is personally expressed his love in your life think about how how did he make known to

you the love of Christ how did God make known the love of Christ to you in your life did he place you in a Christian home with Godly Parents who raised you in the church pouring the gospel into your lives day by day through those years knowing that incredible Grace and Truth friends if that's true for you oh how he has left you maybe you're like me maybe you didn't grow up in a Christian home right and yet he sent friends and people into your life who Faithfully shared the hope of Jesus with you you think back on that oh how he has left you

how has he shown his love to you in your life with him how has he given you the opposite of what you deserve those times when your sin was exposed and yet it was met with Grace with kindness with the opposite of what you deserve oh how he has left you how has he showered you with his love and shown you favor in your life every good and perfect gift James tells us comes from from him you know a few months ago I couldn't stand up here and tell you this but at this point all three of my children profess faith in the Lord right

and some of that's not my story to say um but it's not because of anything I've done either and sometimes I've probably been a obstacle in the way of God's work because I wanted to be the holy spirit for my children in a lot of ways it's all of his grace what is he doing in your life how is he working in your life how how are you seeing his love at work in your life um is that the uh lead pastor and wives Retreat for our Network back in uh in May and uh Pastor that came and spoke to us as Zach s wine

Pastor in St Louis Pastor I admire dearly um who also has like a few Couples from Redeemer like we're just like a triple A affiliate for like every other church and we get these college students and get to have them for a few years and then send them off to other places it's a blessing though but Zach is talking Zach if you don't know him he has three older children whose ages kind of range from like the middle 20s down to like 18. the Lord has also blessed him with a four-year-old little boy now and his little boy named Noah and he was talking in

some of the messages about how they just have you know they're older in these years of just kind of being a little bit more wise when you've parented some other kids all the way through you learn some things uh and just like the intentionality of constantly telling little Noah you are a love boy you're a love boy he called Noah his spiritual director because Noah has started responding to that you're a love boy with this yes I am yes I am one of some other relatives said no you're a little boy and he said no I'm not I'm a love boy right it's adorable right

you're a love boy Chris and I came back from that Retreat just impacted by that but also you know got a sense of humor so I keep telling my wife you're a love boy yes I am no right but it's so beautiful that intentionality like what if we could respond that way when we're met with the reality God loves you yes he does yes he does that's who I am I'm a love boy I'm a love girl right we're loved by God he loves you to just receive that embrace it stand proudly in it not based on your pride but on the love of God

yes I am remembering and recounting the ways that he has loved you throughout your life that's the way we fight apathy and move towards increasing affection for the Lord and for others so how has he loved you what has he seen you through that you had no business making it through what what good things has he brought into your life that you have no business enjoying how has he given you the opposite of what you deserve even the most difficult of times there are still things that we can point to and say see he loves me he loves me the people Malachi was writing to

and speaking to were were waiting for the Messiah to come but we have the privilege of knowing that he has come we can look to Jesus and we can remember his cross and his empty tomb and know without a shadow of a doubt that he has loved us and he loves us still and he will always love us may his love move us from apathy to affection from going through the motions to passionately living for him in every way possible let's pray Our Father would you help us to see beyond of shadow of a doubt how you have loved us Jesus help us remember how

you have loved us and lived and died and were raised for us that we might be your people Holy Spirit fill our hearts with the love of God in Christ for us so that the apathy might be driven out of us and that we might be filled with a deeper and deeper affection for you Lord enable us to daily remember and recount your love that our lives might be gripped within with and empowered by your love that we might live our lives knowing that we are loved people forgiven of all of our sins declared righteous because of the finished work of Jesus Christ Alone help

us live in light of your love and your grace and excited to share it with others we pray in Jesus name amen