An old game that I believe originates from France in the 19th century, pulls flower petals from a flower while saying, he loves me, he loves me not. Surely you've heard of that before. And the person has, I guess if it's he loves me, it's properly a female. And she has in mind a particular object of her desire, and she's unsure of his affection for her. So this is a little game that's played and superstitiously believed that what you're saying when you pull the last pedal off is the answer to your question whether he loves you or he doesn't, whether the object of your desire reciprocates his affection or can be expected to. And it's harmless as long as there's no real faith in that process. But I was just thinking about a much more important matter, and that is to know for sure whether God loves you or not. Does God love you in particular? I don't simply mean does God love us, in some group fashion or all the people of the world. But does God love you? And some people, I think, never worry about whether God loves them in particular because they're The presumption is, well, God loves everybody. In fact, they would think that God loves everybody alike, and I'm just another person in the world, and so since God loves all the people of the world, the same He loves me because I'm a person in the world. Well, that's not true, of course. According to Scripture, there is a special love of God, a distinguishing love of God that's revealed in it. And some are objects of it and other people in the world are not objects of God's special love that purposes to save them. Scripture teaches that God sets his love, his special love, eternally on particular individuals and that love guarantees their final deliverance from all their miseries into everlasting bliss and glory in fellowship with him. but others are passed by. The sovereign God lets other people perish in their sins. He doesn't love them as he loves his elect. Now, already I've raised hackles in some of the hearers, perhaps not present now, but who may hear the recording because they think this is the most outrageous thing they've ever heard. But grant the premise for now that God's love is for some people in a special way. The question is, can we know for sure that God loves me? And how can I know for sure? Well, Malachi chapter 1, verses 1 to 5 really answers these questions. And that's the passage I'd like to expound today in the preaching. Malachi 1, 1-5. And having soaked in the passage this week, I would like to suggest to you that the simple doctrine we may derive from the passage could be stated this way. The Lord tells and shows His people that He loves us in particular. The Lord tells his people that he loves us in particular, and he shows his people that he loves us in particular, so that they may know. And it's important that we know as God's people that God does love us with this special love. In the context of Malachi, you'll see that this announcement at the beginning of the book that God loves his people is a foundation for bringing charges against us. that we have not loved him as we should in return, but I'm getting ahead of myself in the chapter. Let's look at the biblical text now. I intend to work through the first five verses of Malachi 1 with you in this sermon, and here's what those verses say. This is, of course, the Word of God. the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord? Yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste For the dragons of the wilderness, whereas Edom saith, we are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places. Thus saith the Lord of hosts. They shall build, but I will throw down. And they shall call them the border of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, the Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel. Amen? Amen. This is the word of the Lord, isn't it? You believe that? It's deeply challenging to typical modern conceptions of God and his dealings with men. It's deeply offensive to modern sensibilities in several ways, but it really always has been disagreeable to wicked people. In the passage, I want to show you that first of all, God tells his people, that is us, that he loves us. And he does it so plainly. He says, I have loved you, says the Lord, which is the same as saying, I love you. The Lord, Jehovah, says to his people, I love you. And this is in the Old Testament, by the way. And having announced that he loves us, he shows us that he loves us in verses 2 to 5 of the passage. And so that's the plan for the exposition. He tells us that he loves us, and he shows us that he loves us. Now, I asked the question in the introduction Can we know that God loves us? And if we can, how can we know? Well, mulling that question over, it just struck me that there's really only one way. There's only one way a person can know that God loves them in particular. They cannot know by intuition. You can't just go based on your feelings. I don't know, I feel like God loves me. That's totally unreliable. You can't go by your experience and circumstances because there's not a direct correlation between being obviously blessed in this world and the love of God or suffering horrible problems in this world and the love of God. There's not a direct correlation, I say, between those two things. You can't look around and consult wise men and philosophers for this information. We only know, we only know whether God loves us or not by his own spoken word. That is, we need a divine revelation that is more than the nonverbal revelation in creation. We need a word of good news. We need the gospel to know. that God loves us in a special saving way. In other words, people without scripture cannot know for sure that God loves them in a distinguishing, gracious way. But you see, that's what we have in the beginning of Malachi 1 is a special revelation, a verbal message from God that he loves his chosen people. The passage starts out with what might seem a little bit of a strange expression, the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. That's introductory, but don't fail to appreciate what it means. Don't just pass it over. This is language, uh, that announces that the whole book of Malachi is a, is in the nature of prophecy. That is, a human person is the channel through whom the true and living God speaks and is heard by an audience. That's the idea of prophecy. The word burden is translating a word in Hebrew that might also be rendered oracle. It means a weighty message, and it implies a grave responsibility for the prophet. That is to say, the idea is that God actually speaks to a man in redemptive history, like Malachi, words. God, the creator, speaks words to a man who hears and understands the words, and it's his grave responsibility to pass the message along uncorrupted to others. That's why it's called a burden. Now, I'm, as a preacher, I'm never, I've never, and I expect I never will receive some extra biblical message of words from God. for you. But even though the prophecy that I proclaim is that which is written in the scriptures themselves, I know something of this feeling of the burden of the word of the Lord in my heart because I will be giving an account one day whether I have faithfully relayed to you what God says or whether I have substituted my own thoughts and my own opinions and my own will for God's, which would be idolatry. But this is Malachi, the one mentioned, is a historical figure and a literal sinful man who in that day actually received a fresh verbal message from God, from the Lord Jehovah, the creator and the covenant God of the Old Testament nation of Israel. And the Lord gave a stewardship of this message to the prophet Malachi. He has the sober responsibility to convey the message to God's people. And here, those people are called Israel. By the way, remember that when it comes to biblical prophetic utterances and writings. The New Testament explains that, 2 Peter 121, by the way, prophecy did not come in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So when you read the Bible, you should understand that even though men wrote the words, the words didn't originate in the first place from their own minds. or feelings, or consciences, or judgment. The words originate with God. And God so works in the men who were the prophets and the apostles, that what they wrote is as much God's own speech as if God had spoken it with his own lips, if God had lips. In other words, it's absolutely trustworthy as the very word of God, scripture is. And the ones to whom this prophecy here is sent are identified by the name Israel. Israel. That is to say, God's chosen people. And surely you know, anybody who has passing familiarity with the Bible knows that Israel designates the holy people. The ones who are set apart by God's sovereign grace for himself. A helpful cross-reference here would be Amos 3, 1-2. Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth. Therefore will I punish you for your iniquities. This is serious language that makes it plain that God had selected people in the world, and they had a special relationship with him because of his sovereign choice. And in the Old Testament, in general, that people is called Israel. This language in Amos, one scholar says, highlights God's special choice of Jacob's descendants. And yet I want you to appreciate this truth, which is especially pertinent to us. Israel in the most wonderful and profound sense is not all of Jacob's physical descendants, nor is it only Jacob's physical descendants. And in other words, not all the so-called Jews are really the spiritual Israel. And the spiritual Israel, the ones God chose from eternity for salvation, are not limited to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 9, they are not all Israel, which are of Israel. And I encourage you to read that passage in its context to understand more of what Paul's saying. So only some of the Jews were chosen by God for eternal salvation, and others who were not, in that sense, of the Jews, are also chosen by God for eternal salvation. Galatians 3, 7 reads, know you therefore that those who are of faith, those people who are of faith, The same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee all nations shall be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. This is Paul arguing that it's one thing to be a physical descendant of father Abraham and you may or may not be saved if you're a physical descendant. It's another thing to be a spiritual child of Abraham and the ones who are the spiritual children of Abraham are the ones who had the same faith in Christ as father Abraham had. They are the Israel of God. So we understand Israel in a much more profound way and biblical way when we understand it designates all God's people chosen from eternity for salvation. So this prophecy from the Lord through Malachi is delivered to a people in the passage called Israel. And to Israel, the Lord says, look at verse two, I have loved you, saith the Lord. I have loved you, saith the Lord. Now this isn't a brand new truth that the people of God had never heard before. In, in the Pentateuch given through the prophet Moses many centuries earlier, the Lord had told his people that he loved them. I refer you to Deuteronomy seven, for example, in verse six, Addressing the Israelites, we hear this. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people to himself above all the other people that are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you nor choose you because you were more in number than any people, for you were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved you. And because he would keep the oath which he had sworn to your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. So, so Moses, as the Lord's prophet is telling the Israelites, look, the Lord loves you in a special way. And that's why he delivered you out of bondage in the land of Egypt. But it wasn't because of anything in you. It wasn't because you're such an impressive nation of many, many millions of people. No, because you weren't, you were a family that grew large in Egypt. The Lord doesn't love you because you were a great nation. The Lord loves you because he loves you. That is to say it pleased him to love you. There's no, you can't understand why. is nothing in you, it's all in God himself that he loves you. So they knew by this ancient scripture that the Lord loved them in a special way as a people, but here in Malachi 1, the announcement from the Lord himself that he loves his people is so warm and personal and direct It's the first, after announcing that this is a prophecy, this is the first thing out of the prophet's mouth to the Israelites. I have loved you, says the Lord. You could say this is what the Lord was eager to, the message he was eager to convey to his people. I have loved you. And remember, this is God as he revealed himself in the Old Testament era, 400 years before Christ came. Certain people have the idea, very wrongly, that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and justice, and the God of the New Testament is a God of love and mercy. Banish that from your minds. It's not true. The Old Testament God is here saying to Israel, I have loved you. And why is it in the past tense? Why instead doesn't it say, I love you? Instead it says, I have loved you. It's not because he didn't still love them. He makes it plain he does. It's because he's about to rehearse evidences in their past of his love active on their behalf. that the past tense in this particular passage is alluding to the proof of God's love in redemptive history in the past. Because this was really part of the controversy the Lord had with his people. He's telling them he loves them. And they are, as it were, arguing with him and saying, no, you don't. You don't love us. And so he's not only going to tell them in this passage, he's not only telling his people that he loves us, he's insisting upon it against our doubts, reservations, skepticism about the love of God. You see, those whom the immutable God ever loved He always loves. Amen. God's love is not fickle, wishy-washy, indecisive, undependable. God's love for his people is an eternal, unchanging love, as God himself is eternal and unchanging. You know, the Lord really really convicts his people of great sins in the book of Malachi. And then he explains that the reason that they haven't perished eternally as they deserved is not because of their performance, which was wretched, but because of his unchanging love. Look at Malachi 3.6. I am the Lord. I change not. Therefore, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Therefore, ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Because I don't change. Reminds me of a passage I didn't look up beforehand from the book of Lamentations. I hope I can find it on the fly. Yes, it's Lamentations 3.22, where the prophet Jeremiah says, it is from the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not. It's the unchanging love of God that preserves his people, in other words, to be his people. The whole book of Malachi exposes very grievous sins in Israel, but God's love, you see, is irrevocable. And Paul brings this out in Romans 11 when he says, The gifts and calling of God are without repentance. That is when God, as God eternally sets his love upon some people in the world with a purpose to save them, they're going to be saved. His, no matter how much they sin, no matter how they kick and scream under his grace, God's going to bring them all the way home. Amen. Your, if you're in Christ, You're going to be saved, like it or not. God is going to love you, no matter what, and bring you all the way home. I can't think of anything more comforting than that. It's a persistent love, a holy, gracious love, not a reward for good behavior. Okay, so God tells his chosen people, that is us as the church of Christ, that he loves us, first of all. He announces it, I have loved you, says the Lord. And then, in the rest of the passage, God proves or shows us that he loves us. When the people respond, yet ye say wherein hast thou loved us, verse 2, then the Lord speaks in answer to the skepticism that is expressed by that question. And he points out how they could know, besides his testimony, that he really has loved them as he says he does. You see, God's love is so much more than talk. He shows his love by rich gifts to his chosen and saving deeds on our behalf. In 1 John 3, John exhorting the Christian community says, my little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. Now, when he says don't love in word and tongue, he's not saying, don't say I love you. That's good to say to those you love that you love them. He's saying, let it be more than that. not just your announcement that you love them, but deeds of love and mercy to them. And so this is what God does. He doesn't just say he loves us. He acts in love for our ultimate good, even though we doubt him. And yes, I say we doubt him because the passage in verse two says this, yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? And I think that this is less innocent than it might appear at first. It seems that the spirit of the people being addressed here historically was an angry denial that God loved them because of their present suffering. You say you love us? we say oh yeah how have you loved us as it might be translated how have you loved us isn't this a deeply convicting word for us even though god says he loves us in his own word we're prone to doubting him and and and doubting that god loves you in particular lays a trap for your feet spiritually it is an unbelief that bears poisonous fruit of sin in our lives. If you look at this passage that starts Malachi in its context of the succeeding chapters, you see that having announced that God, having announced that he loves his people and insisting on the proof of that in the redemptive history, he then begins to convict them of their sins. And their sins were related to questioning God's love for them. They were guilty of the sins, for example, of irreverence. Verse 6, a son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? If I am a master, where is my fear? Says the Lord of hosts to you. They were guilty of offering to God unacceptable worship, which he complains about in 1.7, 1.8. and 113 of Malachi. He says in verse 13, you brought to me animal sacrifices that were torn and lame and sick. This is what you brought for your offering. Should I accept this from your hands, says the Lord? They're doubting that God loved them, induced a kind of refusal to hear him as they should. Chapter 2, verse 2, he says, if you will not hear and if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, I will even send a curse upon you and so forth. And we can make a list in a Bible study of the sins of Israel mentioned or alluded to in the book of Malachi and it all stems from this challenge that they offer in verse 2 that God loved them. You know what I infer from that brethren? That certainty that God really loves us is foundational to true religion. Certainty that God really loves us is the basis the foundation of our hearts responding gladly and thankfully in worshiping the Lord and keeping his commandments. Indeed it is. Now God says to their protest, you say, how have you loved us? God responds with a demonstration that He has loved them. That is, that He has loved us. And the first line of proof that He loves us is, He chose us and not others for His gracious favor. He chose us. Look at verse 2, midway through. It says, and I believe we should understand this as the Lord responding to the people's challenge, how have you loved us? The Lord says to his people, was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord, yet I loved Jacob and I hated Esau. I remember teaching this passage in this very room decades ago. And I read the passage, I love Jacob and I hated Esau. And then I stopped and I asked the congregation, did God hate Esau? And I had one or two that said out loud, no. And I said, let me read this to you again. I love Jacob and I hated Esau, the Lord says. Did the Lord hate Esau? Again, it was no. The only reason that people could read this and deny that God hated Esau is they just find that truth unacceptable to them because the text is not unclear at all. The Lord hated Esau and loved Jacob, his twin brother. And the unspoken truth behind this is that only God's gracious love accounts for his choosing Jacob and rejecting Esau for his saving blessing. You see, both of these men historically, Jacob and Esau, were really spiritually the same in themselves. Remember, they were twin brothers with the same mother and the same father. born at approximately the same time. Although Esau was born first and a moment later, Jacob was born and in the ancient custom of primogeniture or rights of the firstborn, Esau was the one who would be getting the bulk of his father's inheritance according to the custom, but instead God revealed to Isaac and Rebekah, even before the twin boys were born, that the Lord had chosen Jacob over Esau. And this shows that it had nothing to do with Jacob and Esau and their performance or their character in the choice. In Romans chapter nine, verses 10 to 13, Paul explains, he says, When Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac, for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, the elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau I have hated. So when the people, the Lord says to his chosen people, I have loved you. The people ungratefully responds in a challenge. Oh yeah, how have you loved us? And the Lord says, well, for starters, I chose Jacob and not Esau. And you're the descendants of Jacob. That's the idea. You're the descendants of Jacob who are under covenantal blessing. The descendants of Esau called Edom are under covenantal curses. Because I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau. So the love of God for his chosen people is demonstrated by the contrast with his hatred for the reprobate here. So though we doubt him and his special love for us, he announces that he chose us over others for his blessing. And then he announces that he saves us by condemning a substitute. And this is a little bit subtle, so follow me, because I think you'll be richly blessed if you can understand this. In the passage, starting with verse three, God elaborates on his hatred for Esau and his descendants called Edom. And he says in verse three, I hated Esau and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Now this is not referring to medieval mythological dragons. This actually is a term that might be translated as well, jackals. A jackal was a wild animal resembling a wolf and a fox together. So an alternate translation of the verse goes like this. I hated Esau and I have devastated Esau's hill country and abandoned the land to jackals. It's a graphic image of the Lord killing the Edomites and emptying their villages so that now there are no humans there and wild animals. just walk through. It's a wilderness, in other words. One commentator on the passage says, the point is not that God loved Jacob more than Esau, but that he loved Jacob rather than Esau. It was one instead of the other. And furthermore, we know from history that in fulfillment of prophecy, the nation of Edom had been conquered and its people driven out or killed. So the Israelites in Malachi's day would have known, yes, the land of the Edomites is now uninhabited, having been under the curse of God. It actually was fulfilled in history. So the Lord says, and yet Israel is preserved, you see. And the Lord, that's the evidence that the Lord loved Israel and hated the Edomites. The Lord preserved Israel as his people and the Edomites have been decimated. Not only has the Lord loved Israel in the past, verse three, but he's committed to love Israel in the future. Verse four, look at the text now there. Whereas Edom says we, we are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places. So this is surviving Edomites saying, well, yes, we did go through a real bad spell there where we were driven out of our homeland, but we're going back there and we're going to build again. And we're going to be a great people again. That's what they say. But here's what the Lord says, verse four, they shall build, but I will throw down. This is to say, all their best efforts to reconstitute themselves as a great people are going to fail. Because all their attempts, I'm going to be against and thwart them. And people will call them, oh, the border of wickedness. That is, this line between Israel and Edom, on the other side of that line are wicked people. under the wrath of God. Look at verse four. They'll also call them the people against whom the Lord has indignation forever. Indignation is an intense word for hatred. The Edomites under the judgment of God are the people that are damned by the sovereign decree of God. And there's no hope for them. Edom, you see, refused to acknowledge God's wrath against them. Maybe they just gave purely earthly explanations for why they had been driven out of their homeland. And their hopes for future blessing was based on self-confidence, you know? It's like the Edomites in exile would have had t-shirts that said, Edom Strong. Because they didn't trust in the Lord. They trusted in themselves. And so God announces He will frustrate their plans and pour out His wrath on them, no matter how hard they try. Otherwise, they're doomed and damned. Now, this is one of the aspects of biblical truth that I'm telling you is so offensive to modern sensibilities. It is the doctrine that reprobate sinners, those not chosen by God for salvation eternally, have no possible escape from hell. There are people living in this world right now that will not and cannot be saved because God has decreed before they were even born that they would not be saved. They are the people against whom the Lord has indignation forever. And this proves, you see, in a roundabout way, God's love for Israel because he saves them through the destruction of Edom, Israel's enemies. In other words, God, Israel was sinful also, but God judges others for the sake of Israel's salvation. In this case, God saves Israel through the destruction of Edom, their enemies. Now look, through the sermon, we've been able to come to this place, I think, together in our understanding that I can make a point here that is so momentous. And I urge you to give me your full attention. God in the old Testament uses even substitutionary language for how he saves Israel by punishing other nations in their place. Listen, Isaiah 43, three says this. I am the Lord, thy God, the Holy one of Israel, thy savior. I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee, since thou wast precious in my sight. Thou hast been honorable, and I have loved you. Therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life. God is saying to his people Israel, You alone, out of all the peoples of the world, I loved in a special way. And so in order to save you, I judged and threw down your enemies in your place. You deserved my judgment. But I withheld my judgment from you, Israel, and I poured it out on others. Does that sound familiar, brethren? that because of the love that Jehovah eternally has for His chosen people Israel, He spared us the punishment of our sins and punished others in our place. Or one other specifically. And you know who that is. See, there is a spiritual type in the correlation between national Israel and national Edom. That type is fulfilled in the corresponding relationship of spiritual Israel to Christ. Christ Jesus, who was punished for our salvation. From love to God's elect. He gave up His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, to die on the cross to bear our sins and suffer for them. Isaiah 53, 6. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to His own way and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. God punished Jesus on the cross as if He had been guilty. of all the sins of all God's elect from Adam and Eve to the end of the world. And Jesus willingly suffered in our place to pay that sin debt for our salvation. You know, the New Testament makes the spiritual gospel so crystal clear in verses like John 3 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 1 John 3.16 says this, Hereby we perceive the love of God, because he laid down his life for us. Substitutionary language. 1 John 4.10, herein is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Dear ones, do you know what the word propitiation means? It means an acceptable sacrifice to God by which His wrath is appeased. or turned away from those for whom the sacrifice is offered. It's an atoning sacrifice. God's beloved people chosen from eternity are the guilty ones in ourselves. But because God loves guilty sinners, he sends his son into the world to be the scapegoat for us. so that the wrath of God falls on the Christ in our place instead of upon us who deserve it. And this is proof of God's love. Romans 5.8 God commended or demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And by the way, this obliterates any idea of unlimited atonement. Christ dying for everybody without exception. That's not sound doctrine. The Bible teaches Christ's sacrifice on the cross is a substitutionary sacrifice, one instead of the other, and that God accepted that sacrifice for the people for whom Christ died. and that it's Christ's death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead that effects the salvation of those for whom he died. This is how we know that God loves us in particular because he gave his son up for us. Romans 8 31. What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, and he is, who can be against us? He who spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, that is all the elect. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Do you follow the logic Paul's using? He's arguing from the greater to the lesser. If Almighty God gave up His Son Jesus for you in particular on the cross, then He'll give you all the blessings that come after that as well. If He gave up His own Son for you, you will have every other blessing along with Christ. Now that's proof that God didn't give up his son on the cross for everybody without exception, because not everybody without exception receives all the other blessings that Paul argues we receive along with Christ. God saves us from his love for us by condemning a substitute. in our place. And so delivering us from the horrible consequences we deserved on account of our sins, that substitute is Jesus Christ. That substitute and sacrifice for our deliverance is implied by the type of Edom which is given up by God to ruin for the benefit of the Israelites, for their salvation. And this is proof of God's love for his holy people in particular. Now that's the line of reasoning. God says to Israel, I have loved you. They respond ungratefully, how have you loved us? God answers the challenge by saying, I chose Jacob, not Esau. And I punished Edom, the descendants of Esau, for your deliverance, Israel, and that's proof of my love. And verse five then is a prophecy of God's love for Israel eventually being acknowledged by Israel, because it says in verse five, Your eyes shall see and ye shall say, the Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel. In other words, in time, the prophet says, this is the Lord speaking through Malachi, in time, my love for Israel will become so crystal clear and undeniable that those that I have loved will be forced to admit it, that I have loved them. You will see my love on display with your own eyes, the Lord says, and from your own lips you're going to acknowledge it. And here's the acknowledgement. The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel. Or it might be translated, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel. You won't be able to be skeptical about my love anymore, is what it's amounting to saying. I'm going to love you so marvelously, so incontrovertibly that when you see it, you'll admit it. You'll say, indeed, the Lord does have a special love for his chosen people, Israel. Now elsewhere, You know, that acknowledgement is in the language, great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel. Elsewhere, the idea of the Lord's greatness in the Bible is applied to the universal reign of Messiah. And in some of the Psalms, it's connected with the eschatological salvation. One scholar says, here's the idea. For one thing, 400 years after Malachi, God's love would be publicly known in the gift of Jesus Christ, His Son and our Savior, in His incarnation, in His holy life of love and truth, in His atoning death, in His resurrection from the dead, and in His ascension to heaven. For another thing, the potency and reality of God's special love for His elect will be seen in the second coming of Christ, when all of the people of the world will be separated one from the other, the sheep on the Lord's right hand, the goats on his left, and the Lord will say to the sheep on his right hand, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." And to the goats on his left, he will say, depart, you cursed, into the everlasting fire. Then the special love of God for His chosen people will be on undeniable display. There won't be any doubters about God's special love then. Now brethren, in closing, let me say that we who believe in Christ have many biblical passages like this where God plainly asserts that He loves us with a special distinguishing love. A love that guarantees our deliverance from all our sins and our miseries. You should take this passage as the divine I love you if you're a Christian. You know, I thought to myself, if only I could know that God loves me in particular. Here it is! I have loved you, says the Lord! Secondly, we have the proof of that love in history. And the greatest demonstration of God's love for His elect is that He gave up His beloved Son on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for our salvation. and He gave His Son for us in particular. Thirdly, we also have the future experience of seeing God's love even more undeniably displayed when the Lord Jesus Christ returns from heaven for us on the last day. You don't need to doubt God's love for you if you are believing in Christ. Know for sure, as a Christian believer, that God loves you in particular and that Christ is yours through faith in Him. You could and would never have believed in Christ apart from the Father's electing love for you. the Son's effective atonement for you, and the Spirit's effective call of you to faith and new life in Christ. This is proof that God loves you in particular. In yourself, you're like anybody else. It's the gracious, sovereign love of God that makes the difference for you spiritually. You now love the Lord and are a new creature in Christ because before the foundation of the world, God set his love on you and now he is saving you by his sovereign love. The truth of these things is clearly set forth in our wonderful confession of faith known as the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. Let me just read a couple sentences from chapter 18 to conclude this. It says in paragraph 1 of chapter 18, Such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love Him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before Him, may in this life be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace. They may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed. This certainty is not a bare, conjectural, improbable persuasion grounded upon a fallible that an infallible assurance of faith grounded, or founded rather, on the blood and righteousness of Christ, revealed in the gospel, and also upon the inward evidence of those graces of the Spirit, upon which promises are made, and on the testimony of the spirit of adoption, witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, and as a fruit of it, keeping the heart both humble and holy. The main point of this is simply stated this way. If you are a sincere Christian, you can know with an infallible certainty that God loves you in particular and that you are saved and shall be saved on the last day. You don't have to hold the flower in your hand. with its many petals and pick them and say, God loves me, God doesn't love me. God loves me, God doesn't love me. And be in suspense until you get to the last petal to know whether He loves you. And so I just ask you in my closing appeal, do you truly and sincerely believe in the Lord Jesus? Do you love Him in sincerity? Or do you only say you love Him, but you're really hypocritical about it? You don't mean it. Are you trying to walk in all good conscience before God? If you are, you may know God's special love for you and rejoice in the hope of glory. Amen? Amen.