Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2782
“I have loved you, says the LORD. Yet you say, In what way have You loved us?” Malachi 1:2.
THE children of Israel had passed through great trouble, but all of it was brought upon them by their own sin. Yet, in their time of trouble, God had remembered them in the greatness of His Grace and mercy. They had been carried into captivity in Babylon and there they had wept when they remembered Zion. They had been scattered over the face of the earth, but God had heard their groans and had restored them to their own land and given them a period of peace and prosperity. But now that they were cured of idolatry, they fell into self-righteousness, indifference and worldly minded-ness. The ordinances of God’s house were neglected, or, if they were attended too outwardly, it was in such a careless, heartless manner that God was insulted by their worship rather than adored thereby. For these reasons, new sorrows were caused to fall upon them, for, under the old dispensation, it was God’s rule that His obedient people were a prosperous people—but whenever they wandered in heart away from Him, then they began to suffer. His message to them, by Moses, was, “If you will walk contrary unto Me, I will walk contrary unto you, also, in fury and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins”—and so they found it. They were, therefore, now in a very sad condition, but they had no consciousness of the real cause of it. They were fretting and fuming against God instead of striking out boldly at their sins—complaining of the severity of the Divine chastisement rather than confessing the iniquity by which they had brought the rod upon themselves!
So God sent His servant Malachi, the last of a long train of Prophets, to seek to bring them to repentance—to try to touch their hearts and consciences by reminding them of His manifold favor and of their base ingratitude towards Him who had treated them so graciously and with such undeserved mercy. This is to be the subject of my discourse. I want, if I can, to get at men’s hearts. I shall not have much to say by way of instruction—I want, rather, to speak so as to impress and awaken my hearers, seeking to set your consciences at work so that all of us—for I hope there will be something to touch us all—may be compelled to bow before God in true repentance and with genuine confession of sin.
The text seems to me to contain two things and to suggest a third. First, here is the lamentation of love—“I have loved you, says the Lord.” Secondly, here is the insensibility of ingratitude—“Yet you say, In what way have You loved us?” They would not see any signs and tokens of God’s love, for they did not believe in it. And the third thing on which I am going to speak is the discoveries of Grace, for, though it is not in the text, the text leads us to think of it and the 5th verse tells us of it—“Your eyes shall see, and you shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel.”
I. Our first theme, then, is to be THE LAMENTATION OF LOVE—“I have loved you, says the Lord.”
The lamentation is abrupt and appears to end without completing its own sense. It is the exclamation of unrequited affection—“I have loved you, says the Lord.” It is a sorrowful lament—as the eyes of God rest on His rebellious people, He seems to say to them, “You are acting thus wickedly against Me, yet I have loved you. You offer polluted bread upon My altar. You bring the blind, the lame and the sick as sacrifices unto Me and thus you treat Me with derision, yet I have never treated you so, for I have loved you, says the Lord,” as if He were about to say a great deal more, but suddenly stopped. His grief would not let Him say more, so the sentence stands in its rugged majesty of pathos, “I have loved you, says the Lord.”
Taking this expression, first, in its lowest sense, namely, the love of benevolence, it applies to all mankind. The Lord can still say to those who forget Him and care nothing for Him, “I have loved you.” Great masses of mankind live as if there were no God. If God were really dead it would, apparently, not make the slightest difference in their thoughts and feelings. They are, practically, dead to Him and they act as if He were dead to them. The Lord seems to me to be speaking to some of you who never appear to have any thought about Him—and He says to you, “I have treated you lovingly. I have permitted you to live and kept you in being. You are not suffering pain—the blood leaps in your veins, you are in robust and vigorous health, yet, alas—you are spending that strength in sin! Your children have been spared to you. Your house is replete with comfort and you have no little satisfaction in the things of this life. I gave you all these things—your corn, your wine and your oil—and I have clothed you and kept you alive. Shall I still keep on loving you in this fashion, loading you with benefits, causing you to prosper, giving you all that heart can wish—and will you, in return, continue to be hard, cold and indifferent to Me? Must I still be your Benefactor and you remain an ingrate? Must I, from morning to night, and from night to morning, visit you with kindness, and shall I never have anything from you but sullen silence and heartless indifference?”