Malachi (Sections 128-129)
Section 128 "I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say Wherein hast thou loved us?"—Malachi 1:2.
Israel under Malachi was in a captious, querulous condition; his brief prophecy is full of unbelieving questions, in which man seems bent upon having the last word with God. The text might be treated as bearing upon our own favored nation, for God has been very gracious to Britain, and Britain is sadly ungrateful.
We prefer to consider Israel as the type of the election of grace.
It occurs even to the chosen, when grace runs low, to fall into an ill humor, and to appear beaten down, depressed, and full of sullen unbelief. This is a very wretched state of affairs. With this state of heart we deal.
I. God's love declared.
"I have loved you, saith the Lord." To every believer the special love of God is declared in the Scriptures, and to that love the text refers. This is clear if we observe the words which follow:—"Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau." This is the precise language used by Paul when speaking of the election of grace. Romans 9:13. To every believer this love has been shown in—
1. Election in Christ Jesus from of old.
2. Covenant engagements made by Christ on his behalf.
3. Accomplished Redemption by the Lord Jesus.
4. Regeneration and the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus.
5. Pardon of sin, justification by faith, adoption, sanctification, etc.
6. Preservation to this hour, and promise for all future time. This is a scanty list of the ways by which the Lord has said to each regenerate soul, "I have loved you." Do we not remember times of love when this was personally sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit?
Even now the Lord speaks thus to his redeemed by his Word, and by his Spirit. Do they not hear it? Are they not touched with so gracious and condescending an avowal of love?
II. God's love questioned.
"Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?" This is a shocking and disgraceful thing; but, alas, it indicates a condition of heart which has been seen far too frequently.
Such a question has been asked—
1. Under great afflictions in which there seemed no relief. Petulantly the sorrowing one has questioned divine love.
2. In sight of the prosperous wicked in their day of pride many a poor despised believer has rashly doubted the special love of God.
3. In times of grievous doubt as to one's personal salvation, and under heavy temptations of Satan, the same doubt has arisen.
4. Alas, this has also happened when, immersed in worldliness, the man for the time has lost all sight and sense of spiritual things, and has treated distinguishing love as though it were a fiction! This is a grievous wounding of the Lord of love.
It pours despite upon amazing mercy.
It exposes the questioner to fearful peril.
III. God's love considered. When we solemnly turn, and meditate upon these things, we see—
1. Love lamenting. Is God to be thus treated? Shall he mournfully cry, "I have loved you. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?"
2. Love entreating. Does not each accent say, "Return to me?"
3. Love abounding. Our question shames us. God loves us in ten thousand ways; loves us so as to be patient even when we wickedly question his love.
4. Love conquering. We bow at Jehovah's feet with shame, and yield our heart's best love in return for his love.
Come, ye cast-down ones, leave your sullen questionings!
Run into his arms, and receive the quietus of all your fears.
Love-notes A child has wilfully disobeyed. For this offense he has been chastised, and confined to his own room. He is very sullen and obstinate, and his father reasons with him, and tells him with tears that he is greatly grieved with him, and feels wounded by the ingratitude which he receives after all his love. The boy angrily replies that he does not believe in his father's love: if he loved him, why did he whip him, and send him to bed? This would be a very rebellious speech; but it would be pitched in the same key as our text. It would also set forth the spirit which is often seen in Christians when they measure the Lord's love by their temporal circumstances, and ask in rebellion whether their poverty, their pains, and their persecutions are fit fruits of divine favor. The Lord knows how foolish we are apt to be when our soul is vexed with bitter anguish, and therefore he does not destroy us for our presumption, but he patiently reasons with us that he may bring us to a better mind.
If it would be marvelous to see one river leap up from the earth full-grown, what would it be to gaze upon a vast spring from which all the rivers of the earth should at once come bubbling up, a thousand of them born at a birth? What a vision would it be! Who can conceive it? And yet the love of God is that fountain from which all the rivers of mercy which have ever gladdened our race—all the rivers of grace in time, and of glory hereafter—take their rise. My soul, stand thou at that sacred fountain-head, and adore and magnify for ever and ever God, even our Father, who hath loved us.—C. H. S.
What is more tender than a mother's love To the sweet infant fondling in her arms?
What arguments need her compassion move To hear its cries, and help it in its harms?
Now, if the tenderest mother were possessed Of all the love within her single breast Of all the mothers since the world began, 'Tis nothing to the love of God to man.
—John Byrom A very tender parent had a son, who, from his earliest years, proved headstrong and dissolute. Conscious of the extent of his demerits, he dreaded and hated his parent. Meanwhile, every means was used to disarm him of these suspicions, so unworthy of the tenderness and love which yearned in his father's bosom, and of all the kindness and forbearance which were lavished upon him. Eventually the means appeared to be successful, and confidence, in a great degree, took the place of his ungenerous suspicions. Entertained in the family as one who had never trespassed, he now left his home to embark in mercantile affairs and was assured that if in any extremity he would apply to his parent, he should find his application kindly received. In the course of years it fell out that he was reduced to extremity, but, instead of communicating his case to his parent, his base suspicion and disbelief of his tenderness and care again conquered him, and he neglected to apply to him. Who can tell how deeply that father's heart was rent at such depravity of feeling? Yet this is the case of the believer, who, pardoned and accepted, yet refuses to trust his heavenly Parent, throws away his filial confidence, and with his old suspicions stands aloof in sullen distrust. Oh, how is God dishonored by this sinful unbelief!—Salter.
Dr. Chalmers used to say that "As soon as a man comes to understand that 'God is love,' he is infallibly converted."
Section 129
"But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise
with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall."—Malachi 4:2.
There is one grand distinction among men—"him that serveth God, and him that serveth him not." See last verse of previous chapter.
Fearing God is the mark which distinguishes man from man far more than wealth, rank, or nationality. The coming of Christ is a calamity or a blessing to men according to their character.
What a change of figures! To the wicked "an oven"! (See verse 1.) To God-fearing men a "Sun"! Our text was fulfilled at our Lord's first coming.
It awaits a far larger fulfilment at his second coming.
It is always true as a general principle, and it is felt to be true when the Lord Jesus spiritually draws near to his people.
I. Let us think of our Lord as the Sun.
1. He is the center of the whole system of grace.
2. He is to us the Grand Attraction, and Holdfast, keeping us in our places, as the sun keeps the planets in their orbits.
3. He is the source of all good. His beams are righteousness: all that emanates from him is good: all good emanates from him; even as all light and heat come, directly or indirectly, from the sun.
4. He is without variableness or shadow of turning. James 1:17. In himself he is for ever the same, shining on without ceasing.
5. To us he has his risings, and his settings. If for a while we are in the shade, let us look for his arising.
6. To those who fear him not he never rises, for they are blind, and know no day, and see no light.
What the world would be without the sun, that should we be without our Lord. Can we conceive the gloom, the death, etc.?
II. Let us enjoy the blessings which he scatters.
1. What light of knowledge, what warmth of love, what radiance of joy we receive from him! Let us walk in it.
2. What health he gives! Healing for the sick, health for the strong.
Every sunbeam is medicinal, every word of Christ is life. The earlier we come to Christ the better: his rising is attended with sparkling dews of joy. The more we commune with him the better: let us bask in the sunlight.
3. What liberty he brings! "Ye shall go forth." When the sun has reached a certain point in his annual course, the cattle which have been stalled are led forth to the mountain pastures; so the Lord Jesus sets his people free, and they go forth— To enjoy spiritual privileges. To perform spiritual duties. To reach spiritual attainments. To carry abroad spiritual influences.
4. What growth he fosters!—"and grow up as calves of the stall." When the Lord Jesus is with his people—
They are abundantly fed.
They are comfortably housed.
They are regularly tended.
They advance rapidly to maturity. A heart which communes with Jesus possesses a freshness of youth, an ease of life, and other advantages, which admirably fulfil the comparison of "calves of the stall." As all this comes of fearing the Lord, let us be diligent in worship, careful in obedience, and reverent in spirit. As all this comes through our Lord Jesus, let us abide under his sweet influences, and never move out of his sunshine into that far off country, where the Arctic winter is never cheered by the Sun of righteousness.
We have not to make a Sun, or move the Sun, or buy the Sun; but only to step into the free and blessed sunshine. Why do we hesitate?
Why do we not by faith pass from darkness into his marvelous light?
Sunbeams The late Mr. Robinson, of Cambridge, called upon a friend just as he had received a letter from his son, who was surgeon on board a vessel then lying off Smyrna. The son mentioned to his father that every morning, about sunrise, a fresh gale of air blew from the sea across the land, and, from its wholesomeness and utility in clearing the infected air, this wind is always called the Doctor. "Now," says Mr. Robinson, "it strikes me that the prophet Malachi, who lived in that quarter of the world, might allude to this circumstance when he says that 'the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings.' The Psalmist mentions 'the wings of the wind,' and it appears to me that this salubrious breeze, which attends the rising of the sun, may be properly enough considered as the wings of the sun, which contain such healing influences, rather than the beams of the sun, as the passage has been commonly understood."—Burder's "Oriental Customs."
There is a beautiful fable of the ancient mythology to the effect that Apollo, who represents the sun, killed a huge poisonous serpent by arrows surely aimed, and shot from afar. It intimates that sunbeams, darted straight from heaven, destroy many deadly things that crawl upon the ground, and so make the world a safer habitation. The parable is, in this respect, a stroke of truth, and it coincides with a feature of the eternal covenant. Light from the face of Jesus, when it is permitted to stream right into a human heart, destroys the noisome things that haunt it, as Apollo's arrows slew the snake. —W. Arnot. In all the departments of vegetable, animal, moral, and spiritual life, light stands out as the foremost blessing and benefit which God confers. In physical existence this is especially true. Thousands die for lack of light. No vigorous vegetable life, no healthy animal life, can long exist without light. The pestilence "walketh in darkness." . . . Sir James Wylie, late physician to the Emperor of Russia, attentively studied the effects of light as a curative agent in the hospital of St. Petersburg, and he discovered that the number of patients who were cured in rooms properly lighted was four times that of those confined in dark rooms. These different results are due to the agency of light, without a full supply of which plants and animals maintain but a sickly and feeble existence. Light is the cheapest and best of all medicines. Nervous ailments yield to the power of sunshine. Pallid faces grow fresh and ruddy beneath its glow. The sun's rays have wonderful purifying power.—H. L. Hastings.
"Heaven be praised! I have once more seen the sun," said Dr. Hayes, in his record of the experience of a certain Arctic day, when he, with others, had visited a point from which they could see the sun come up for the first time from his long winter isolation. "Off went our caps with simultaneous impulse, and we hailed this long-lost wanderer of the heavens with loud demonstrations of joy." A man scoffingly asked, "What advantage has a religious man over anyone like myself? Does not the sun shine on me as on him, this fine day?" "Yes," replied his companion, a pious laborer, "but the religious man has two suns shining on him at once,—one on his body, the other on his soul."—The Biblical Treasury.