The Forsaken

I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?

Malachi 1:1-3

Look at this thing with me now if you will. Any peace or order that comes out of chaos and pain could only be from the Lord. Perhaps you haven't heard the Lord talking to Israel, but it looks like he's speaking right now. When then you might ask has caused them to listen. How good it is, you might say, these are finally on speaking terms once more. Well, I don't know about you, but these two were never not on speaking terms. It's just that Israel had a bad little habit of not really listening. It's awfully hard to have a conversation is it not with someone who doesn't listen to a word that is said. God has to get their attention somehow so as we see here this is exactly how he does it.

It seems the first thing the Lord would have to say is his love for them. But with all that has happened these had forsaken him and had thereby been left quite alone. The issue then remains to the people of finding peace when the ever after wasn't really matching up to their expectation. How many of you know it should be found at the hands of our God and not from any other one little self. Is it not that our God specializes in bringing good from all the bad that has come. So too, he brings peace in the house from all the mess and distress that wouldn't have come had we only surrendered our own lives on back then to him. See then the issue.

Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,

Israel, it seems cannot begin to comprehend the love of God so too not knowing his words. Remember, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Yet these neither feel nor understand it at all. The other matter then is that after all the fires and deep waters through which these have been, as some loves that cannot be quenched of Song of Solomon 8:7, their God would still not leave them alone. Since these here only know of what they can taste, touch, handle, and feel, the knowledge of the Holy in Psalm 34:8 seems strange and uncertain at first. To answer the charge of marital infidelity he first says unto them this, cause as you know Jehovah is married to the backslider as we have seen once before.

That means the ones who ran away, denied him, and quite possibly refused him still gets accepted should they but return to him in the end. The Lord simply gives an example here to remind them of this all at first. First, came Esau Jacob's brother as the elder, the heir. Then after came Jacob, the basest of men driven purely by instinct. Once as his brother lay hungry, he made him some stew and so switched the blessing. Now I am sure the Lord loves a cheerful giver and quite possibly better still even a righteous liver. The issue here though goes far beyond that. It lies rather at the heart of the matter, that of our perception. This speaks to our ability to see things as they really are compared with what these now might appear.

And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

It seems Esau once dwelled in the desert, a place of no life, full of fear and uncertainty as one living in the very shadow of death then itself. There's a perspective change now, a shift if you will from one state to the next. Esau appears to be living quite happily and as one that's no longer alone. With him are some dragons of the desert along with all the treasures stored up that these bring. Knowing their nature and that of the Lord, I would not at all be surprised if these had laid up no provision for times just like these. Herein lies the shift. Only God could bring us from a place of what once was not to one which now is full of life with lots of strange things in sight. It's a situation that even now speaks to the "streams in the desert," places we would not have believed just to hear about still as those of Isaiah 35:6. But like Zacheus, the shortest little man found, we just had to go see the situation ourselves and with it the Lord also there on his throne. Even now he changes all things, that of your life and mine. So too he brings all things back safely out. How much more should we but trust him for 'Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus' and so do trust him solely.