Chosen with Love

The Messenger, The Message, and The Mess
Allen Snapp
Grace Community Church
Oct. 26, 2025

Chosen with Love

In December of 2012 a friend messaged several of her friends including myself to ask for prayer as she was about to have surgery. We all sent messages saying we’d pray for her. The last message was sent by a friend on Dec. 24, 2012, wishing my friend a merry Christmas.

Then, silence. No more messages. I had forgotten all about it until 4 ½ years later, May 11, 2017 at 7:53am, I got this message: Diane left the conversation. That simple message got me thinking, if no one says anything for 4 ½ years, is there even still a conversation to leave?

The book of Malachi is appropriately the last book in the Old Testament. It was written sometime in the 400’s BC and it will be the last message from God for over 400 years. It will feel like God has left the conversation…until the angel Gabriel appears to a virgin named Mary with good news of great joy.

Malachi brings a message of correction and rebuke to the people of Israel. This is a message to a messed up people. In fact, one of the most striking features of this book is the way every word of God is questioned and contradicted by God’s people.

It is you priests who show contempt for my name. But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’1:6-7

You have wearied the Lord with your words. ‘How have we wearied him?’ you ask. 2:17

‘Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. ‘But you ask, “How are we robbing you?”’ (3:7–8)

‘You have spoken arrogantly against me,’ says the Lord. ‘Yet you ask, “What have we said against you?”’ (3:13)

Questions can be a good way to get information but that’s not the heart of these questions. They are challenging and contradicting everything God says. They a contrary people. They are a half-hearted people. Jesus would call them lukewarm. They worship God but not from the heart. They give to God but they’re giving their leftovers not their best. They think they’re ok cause they’re not outright running away from God or worshiping idols but the fact is they’re spiraling downward towards destruction. Malachi is a messenger with a message: turn around before it’s too late. It’s a corrective message and one that is just as relevant for the church today. It’s a rebuke. We’re going to be rebuked over the next several weeks but that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. The Bible says God disciplines ALL He loves. His rebuke is an expression of love and in fact that’s exactly where God’s message to His people starts.

1 The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.² “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” Malachi 1:1-2

Let’s pray.

Malachi’s name means “my messenger” begins the message from God with a message of love. I have loved you. As messed up as God’s people are, this book doesn’t start with them or what they need to do, it starts with God and what He has done. He has loved them. I have loved you means I have always loved you. God loves His people with a love that’s not going anywhere, a covenantal love that lasts from generation to generation. It’s a love that’s not based on sentimentality or feelings but on the indestructible and unbreakable promises of God. I have always loved you.

But Malachi reads the room and knows that Israel is skeptical about God’s love for them. How have you loved us? Even though they have returned from exile back to their land, it hasn’t been the blessed return they hoped it would be. This is during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and it’s been a challenging time. The land is hard to cultivate. They don’t feel safe with enemies all around them. They look at all the problems and troubles they have and they don’t feel God’s love in the situation. How have you loved us? Prove it!

We can all relate to that at times. There are times when it’s hard to see God’s love in our situation. When we might question, does God really love me? I’m just not seeing it.

“Is not Esau Jacob's brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob ³ but Esau I have hated. Vs. 3

Chosen in love

God’s message of love might be a little confusing to us at first. I loved Jacob and hated Esau. He chose Jacob over Esau while they were both still in their mother’s womb not based on anything they had done but purely based on God’s free choice. Jacob and Esau represent two types of people – two nations, Jacob would later be renamed Israel and Esau’s descendants would be know as Edomites.

How has God loved His people? He chose them in love to be His own. God’s purpose has always been to have a people for Himself. All of human history is divided into two categories: God’s people and God’s enemies. Those who live by God’s promises and those who live by the flesh. Cain lived by the flesh and murdered his brother Abel, Seth was the promise of a new line. Ismael was born a testimony of what man could do, Isaac a testimony of what God could do. Even on the cross, we see the dividing line between all mankind: on one side was a thief who mocked and scorned Jesus, rejecting his claim to be the Savior of the world, and on the other side was a thief who dared to believe that Jesus could save him and asked him to remember him when he came into his kingdom.

Here's the beautiful thing: everyone has the opportunity to leave the enemy of God category and run to the loved by God category. Not all who descended from the line of Jacob were saved. And some from the line of Esau believed in God’s promises and were saved. In fact we see that some Idumeans who were descendants of Esau came to Jesus and believed. They were transferred from Esau’s line to Jacob’s line. From hated to loved. The cross is the gateway to being chosen and loved by God, not our race or nationality or level of goodness or religious upbringing. Which side of the cross are we on? The side that rejects Jesus or the side that believes in Jesus? All who believe in Jesus will be saved. Will be loved. Will be chosen.

Not chosen based on our merit

God chose (loved) Jacob and rejected Esau while they were in the womb. His choice isn’t based on our performance. He set His love on His people not because we deserve it or earned it but because He freely chose to love us. Paul writes in Eph. 1 that in love God predestined us and adopted us before the foundation of the world.

Can you remember what you were doing before the foundation of the world?

I have always loved you. We want to see God prove His love by giving us what we think we need: heal me of my illness. Give me a higher paying job. Heal my marriage. Vindicate me before my enemies. But even when God gives us these things it’s not long before we are questioning His love for us again.

I can look back on over 50 years of following Jesus (I’m getting old!) and so many times and so many ways God has answered prayer and protected me and blessed me and proved His love to me over and over. And yet, when a new challenge comes up or a hard situation enters my life, I can be tempted to think, “God doesn’t love me. He’s forgotten me. He doesn’t care.”It’s never ending need for reassurance.

Anyone in this room who struggles with insecurity knows the constant need to be reassured that someone likes you. You leave a conversation and feel really confident that they like you. But after a while you start to feel that insecurity creeping up your spine again: do they like me now? Do they think badly of me? Did I say something wrong?

God wants to free us from always looking at our circumstances in order to gauge if God loves us. I have always loved you. I chose you before the foundation of the world, I set My love upon you not because you deserved it but because I chose to love you, I will protect you from your enemies and I will save you from My wrath for sin.

If we assess God’s love by how he meets our needs, then our greedy hearts will always find him wanting. If we assess God’s love by his mercy in saving us from the death, judgment and hell that we by nature and by actions deserve, then we will constantly marvel at his amazing love and amazing grace. ~ Peter Adam, The Message of Malachi

Protected from evil by God

I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.” ⁴ 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.’” ⁵ Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!” Malachi 1:3b-5

God then expresses His love through His commitment to judge the enemies and persecutors of God’s people. Esau’s descendants went on to deal treacherously with Israel at different points in history and God reminds Israel that while He has preserved them, Edom has become a wasteland and has been shattered. They represent all the enemies of God and the evil of humanity detached from our Creator.

There is evil in the world. Our enemy isn’t flesh and blood but powers of darkness that use human vessels to do their work. Jesus prayed that our heavenly Father would protect us from the evil one. God loves us and God will protect us from the evil one. He wants to destroy your soul but God will shatter his work over and over until one day God casts Satan and all who follow him into hell.

We will say great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel! God’s greatest work of destroying the evil one is through the cross. Every lost sinner who comes to Jesus and finds mercy and grace is a wrecking ball to the enemy’s kingdom. There’s a section of wall in the kingdom of darkness that was destroyed when Russell came to faith in Christ! And a section when you came to faith, and me.

I want to close with a word to anyone who isn’t a true Christian. You may consider yourself to be a Christian culturally because that’s what you grew up with, but God’s word isn’t really the highest authority over your life and Jesus isn’t really the Lord and Savior of your life. The first step towards life is to be honest with yourself.

If you want to be chosen by God and loved by God, believe in Jesus. The Bible says that everyone who believes in Jesus will be saved. Not some, not most, but everyone who believes in Jesus will be saved. You can only believe because the Spirit of God is working on and in you but I believe in limited free will and I believe people can resist the working of God in their heart and you don’t want to do that. The Pharisees rejected the purpose of God for their lives it says. They couldn’t thwart God’s purposes but they could reject them for themselves. Don’t do that. Don’t hang on to the empty pig swill of humanism or worldliness or atheism. Or worst of all, following a man-made religion that says if you try hard to be good and do the right thing and your good outweighs your bad you will be good enough to make it into heaven. That is one of the devil’s biggest lies! God’s word says no matter how hard you try to build apart from God it will be torn down brick by brick. Come to Christ.

One day I believe as we enter the kingdom of heaven we will see written over the archway ”everyone who believes in Jesus shall be saved” and as we pass through the archway into the kingdom and look back, on the other side of that archway is written, “chosen before the foundation of the world.”

And we will hear God say, I have always loved you.