Passage: Malachi 1:1-5; 3:13-18; Genesis 25:21-34

The Big Idea

Reading Malachi is like visiting a heart doctor who wants you to live and tells you the truth. What song is playing in your heart? The world’s most popular song was first sung by the enemy: “I will… I will… I will be like the Most High.” It’s the song of independence from God, and our flesh still hums it. God opens Malachi with a love song, “I have loved you,” but His people couldn’t hear it. He points them to Jacob and Esau. Esau, strong and self-sufficient, despised his birthright and the promise of the coming Seed. Jacob, weak and flawed, clung to it. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. If you want a new heart and a new song, ask Him.

The Heart Doctor

Reading the prophecy of Malachi is like going to a heart doctor: someone who wants you to live and is willing to tell you the truth so your problem can be fixed.

Heart doctors start with a stethoscope (usually one that’s been stored in the coldest freezer on earth). I like to imagine they hear music.

What song is playing in your heart?

A song of praise, a love song to Jesus for all He’s done?
Or the sound of struggle, pain and sorrow?
A ballad of victory through grace?
Or a gloomy anthem of a self-focused life?

The World’s Most Popular Song

Before we open Malachi, let’s look at the most popular song playing in hearts today. It was first sung long ago, when the enemy fell:

“I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God… I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14).

The enemy wanted to have something, do something and be something apart from God. Independent.
That’s his theme song. And he’s been blasting it ever since, starting with the first man and woman.
Its lyrics go something like this: “You are what you are independent of God. You don’t really need God. You’re self-sufficient. You can lose God and lose nothing at all.”
He’s planted this song deep in our hearts. It’s been passed down through Adam in what Scripture calls the flesh.
The flesh is the part of us that nods along to that self-serving song. It’s the opposite of love. Its beat is called pride.

God hates this song, because He loves you, and it drowns out His love song to you.

“I Have Loved You” (Malachi 1:1-5)

“I have loved you,” says the Lord. “Yet you say, ‘In what way have You loved us?'”

See? They can’t hear the love song! Another song is drowning it out.
So God hands them the stethoscope to show them what’s going on in their hearts.

“Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” says the Lord. “Yet Jacob I have loved; but Esau I have hated, and laid waste his mountains.”

God reaches back about fifteen hundred years. To understand, we need to look at the story.

Two Nations in the Womb (Genesis 25:21-26)

Isaac prayed for Rebekah, who was barren, and the Lord answered. But the children struggled together within her. She asked the Lord why, and He said, “Two nations are in your womb… One people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.” Esau was born first, red and hairy; Jacob came out holding his brother’s heel.

These two babies would become two nations: Israel, God’s people, and Edom, a lasting enemy of God’s people.

Why would God “hate” Esau? He’d done nothing yet!

Paul explains: before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, “that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls,” it was said, “The older shall serve the younger.” … Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Romans 9:10-16).

God chooses, and not on the basis of how good we are.
His choosing has everything to do with mercy.
So the real question isn’t “Why did God pick this one?” but “To whom can God show mercy?”
(In Hebrew idiom, “loved… hated” often means “chose… did not choose,” as when Jesus says we must “hate” our families compared with our love for Him, Luke 14:26.)

Two Brothers (Genesis 25:27-34)

The boys grew. Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field; Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

God knows everything ahead of time. What did He see?

Esau was a “man’s man”:

Self-sufficient and proud.
An outdoorsman, a mountain man.
No time for “soft” things, or for God.
Esau is a picture of the flesh. His theme song would be: “You are what you are independent of God.”

Jacob was:

Quiet, a homebody, close to his mother.
Not popular. Not impressive.
A schemer, a deceiver, an embarrassment to his father.
Not self-sufficient, not dependable, not able. And he knew it.

Then the story unfolds. Esau came in exhausted from the field and said, “Please feed me some of that red stew, for I’m weary.” (That’s why he was called Edom, “red.”) Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright first.” Esau said, “Look, I’m about to die; what good is a birthright to me?” He swore it away, ate, drank, got up and left. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

We’re learning their character.
Esau cared only about himself and what his flesh wanted right now. He had no concern for leading the family.
The birthright meant a double inheritance, but also spiritual leadership of the family.
Jacob wanted spiritual things. He wanted God to use him, though he went about it all wrong.

Why did Esau despise his birthright, and what did that mean?

The birthright carried God’s promise to Abraham: in his Seed all nations would be blessed.
Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made… “And to your Seed,” who is Christ (Galatians 3:16).
To value the birthright was to have a heart that believed that promise, the promise of Christ.
Esau despised his birthright, and in doing so he despised the promised Christ.
Esau said in his heart, “I don’t need this. I’m fine without God. I’ve got my bow, my sword and my strength. Grace is for weak people.” And he looked at Jacob and thought, “Sure, cling to your ‘promise.’ I’ll be over here living my life to the fullest.”

The New Testament warns: lest there be any immoral or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright (Hebrews 12:16).

This is about us. Esau pictures our flesh, the lie living inside us: “You don’t really need God.”
God hates that lie. Not because He’s mean, but because He hates for His beloved people to be deceived. He’ll fight against it.

Back to Malachi (Malachi 1:2-4)

“Jacob I have loved; but Esau I have hated… Even though Edom says, ‘We have been impoverished, but we will return and rebuild the ruins,’ thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘They may build, but I will throw down.'”

God opposes Esau’s way because God opposes pride: a heart that refuses to need God and despises the way He gives grace, through His Son.
It’s the heart attitude of self-importance and self-sufficiency that God opposes, now and always.

“But Jacob was a sinner too!”

Yes. But Jacob became broken and humble. He cried out, in effect, “I’m a mess. I’ve got nothing going for me. But You made a promise, and I’m going to cling to it, no matter how crazy it seems.”

God could work with Jacob. He could show him mercy.
And it had nothing to do with Jacob’s abilities, efforts or goodness. He was a deceiver and weak!
Yet God blessed him, changed him and loved him, because he believed the promise.
God’s strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Humility is knowing you need God. Does your heart know it? Really know it, enough to seek Him on your face, not just go to church?

God doesn’t love you for what you are, but He loves you as you are, and He has a plan to make you into something new.

Pride Brings Us Down (Obadiah 1-4)

Concerning Edom, the Lord says: “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high, who say in your heart, ‘Who will bring me down to the ground?’ Though you soar like the eagle and set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down.”

Esau rejected his birthright because receiving it required humility, accepting help from God.
He wanted to be himself, master his own life, set his own course.
He saw no need and no danger. But God promised to bring him down, and all who share the pride that refuses the Son of promise, Jesus.

This drama of Jacob and Esau has been playing out for four thousand years. God divides people not by the scales of their good and bad deeds, but by humility versus pride. Every human heart is one or the other. And God wants to pour out grace and mercy on every heart.

He gives more grace. Therefore He says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

God always wants to bless. He always has more grace. But we disqualify ourselves through pride.

The Heart of the Matter (Malachi 3:13-18)

“Your words have been harsh against Me,” says the Lord. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against You?’ You have said, ‘It is useless to serve God. What profit is it that we have kept His ordinance?… So now we call the proud blessed.'”

God is hurt, because they don’t know His character.
They’d been serving Him religiously, and that was the problem. They forgot His love and turned it all into religion.
Their hearts grew cold, until they were upside down, believing pride was the way to blessing.

Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them. A book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and meditate on His name. “They shall be Mine,” says the Lord of hosts, “on the day that I make them My jewels. I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.”

Now God gets to the heart of the matter. He discerns between the righteous and the wicked by the heart. He hears the song.
Does the heart fear the Lord? That’s a picture of humility.
A humble heart prays, because there’s no other way to live.
A humble heart belongs to the Lord, in union with Him.
The relationship is Father and son, not religion.
A humble heart is the only way we can truly serve God.

Your Homework

I’m not going to tell you the song that plays in a humble heart. That’s your homework. You can only learn it from the Holy Spirit.

Get alone, in a quiet place, with your Bible. Read, listen and pray until your heart is flooded with His mercy and grace. There are no shortcuts. “Ask, and it will be given; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7).

Humble hearts will wait on Him this way. Proud hearts will make excuses: “I don’t have time. I don’t need to. It’s hard to seek God’s face.” In other words: “I am what I am, independent of God.”

Grace Takeaway

If you want a new heart and a new song, simply ask Jesus in faith. Everyone who asks Him for a new heart will receive one. But you must ask. That’s the step of humility and faith God always blesses.

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What Song Is Playing in Your Heart?