Holy Scriptures and Israel

Guest (Male): Shalom. Holy Scriptures and Israel is a ministry designed to share with the Jewish people the good news of the Lord Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah, and to instruct Christians on the Jewish roots of their faith. And now, teaching God's word from a Hebrew Messianic perspective, here is Gideon Levytam.

Gideon Levytam: Shabbat Shalom. I'm going to ask you to turn with me to the prophet Malachi, Malachi. In Hebrew, we call him Malachi. "My messenger" is the meaning of the name of Malachi. Malachi wrote and ministered to our people of all the people of Israel about 400 years before Yeshua the Messiah was pronounced as the Lamb of God, which would take away the sin of this world.

So, Malachi, a very interesting book. It is actually the last prophecy that our forefathers heard from God. For about 400 or 450 years passed by, and there was no messenger to present before Israel a message until John the Baptizer came and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of this world."

I would like to read today the first five verses of chapter one. We have already gone through an introduction in our previous ministry meeting. Today, I would like to just present before you the first five verses of the first chapter. Let me read those verses so we will have this before us. It says in verse one, Malachi 1:1, "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 for ever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel." Yigdal Adonai me'al gevul Yisrael. These are the last verses I want to read today.

Now, brothers and sisters, just once again, give me a moment or two before I'm going to enter into these verses. I want to just refresh your mind with that one fact: that by the time that we read the prophet Malachi, it is about 430 or so BC. Jewish people who returned from Bavel now have already built the temple in the city of Jerusalem. They finished building the temple at about 513 BC. The temple was finalized, and the sacrificial system had continued on. About 515 BC, the temple was finished, and the people of Israel are now back from the diaspora, the dispersion.

The Jewish people have already rebuilt the temple in Yerushalayim. The walls of Jerusalem were already built by Nechemiah, Nehemiah. You might say things began to come into a formal order. After those 70 years of dispersion and after the return back, now by that time, the very same temple that was once destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians is now rebuilt, of course in a smaller scale, but rebuilt again. The sacrificial system continued. The priests were there doing their service. There was an altar there. The animals were killed. You might say the routine of the worship of the Lord now was restored.

Now that it was restored, you would expect that the people, Israel, our nation, who have enjoyed now a restoration and now the service of the Lord and the worship of the Lord continue on, you may say, what a privilege it is. Let us now enjoy what God had brought us back into. Our forefathers were in Bavel. Our forefathers have already suffered, have been persecuted. Now we are coming back. Yes, we have enemies around us, but at least we can worship the Lord and praise the Lord and go through the ceremonies and all that, the rituals that God had given to our fathers according to the law.

But something had happened. Something had happened, perhaps we might say similar to our condition today in the days of the assembly, the church age. The restoration back to the truth that was given to us in the word of God is amazing. It is great. The problem is that there is a problem because the heart, though we are going through the routine, we are going through the system, and yet the heart still is hardened and discouraged and not really enjoying the things that God had intended us to enjoy.

I'm always, as I'm studying and teaching the word of God in relationship to Israel, I'm always making an application to our lives today. If you remember, as we read it many, many times in the Brit Hadashah, in the New Testament, the apostles more than once said when he wrote to the Romans and when he wrote to the Corinthians, he said in Romans chapter 15, "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope."

In other words, we learn from the events that happened in the days of Malachi to apply it to our lives today. You see, we live today in the last days of what we know and understand of the church age. 2,000 years passed by. The Messiah had already died, was buried, and rose again, had ascended to heaven. The Holy Spirit of God descended in Yerushalayim some 2,000 years ago. He formed the assembly, the ecclesia, when the Spirit of God descended and formed the body of Messiah.

2,000 years passed by, and now we are finding ourselves right now much later after all the experiences that the body of Messiah have experienced. In about the 1800s, about few hundred years ago, there was a revival, and the times of darkness of the Dark Ages have passed by. There was a revival, and the truth of the word of God was now presented, and many got saved and accepted the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, and become part of the assembly, part of the ecclesia.

There was a time, the Dark Ages, where the Bible could not have been even read. We didn't have believers in early days. In the Dark Ages, they never had the privilege that you and I have today to read the word of God, to study the scripture, to search the scripture, and to ask the Lord to guide us. We are in such a privileged era, the last days of the church age, just the same like our own Jewish brethren were in the days of Malachi.

But, beloved brothers and sisters, whatsoever things have happened to our people of old under the law, we can see it evidently happening today to the assembly, to the people of God, to the ecclesia under grace. While Israel, our forefathers, failed under the law, you see in these last days of the church age how the church have completely failed under the days of grace. Last ministry meeting when we studied together, we read Second Timothy, where the Apostle Paul said, "I know." He said, "I know that in the last days, perilous time shall come," and he listed the things that will happen in the last days, of which you and I experience today in our own life and in our own people's lives today.

Now, in this preaching of Malachi, it is really very interesting because it's like a dialogue. God states a statement. Israel responding to God with a response, with an answer. God began to explain to them that whatever condition they are in, they were wrong, and they have departed from the Lord. If you notice, there are seven statements that God says here in the whole book of Malachi that he give to the people of Israel, the restored remnant of Israel, who are now back in the land, back in Jerusalem, back in the temple, back through the worship system, and all things seem to be just right, but the heart was not right.

It didn't take too long, and they were so discouraged and they didn't continue to follow that which God had intended for them to follow. The first thing that we find out in chapter one, Malachi 1 verses 1 to 5, is the first statement of God concerning his people Israel, the response of Israel, and then the answer of God in response to what they said. In this case, chapter one, verses 1 to 5, God is presenting the fact that he have loved his own people Israel.

So you notice that it says here the first verse of Malachi chapter 1, verse 1, "The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi." Just one more point before I'm going to move along, the word "burden" come from the Hebrew word "massa." Massa means a load that one is carrying. When I was in the Israeli army, we had to carry many massa'ot, many heavy burdens, in order to strengthen you to be able to run and to walk for miles after miles after miles.

But here, the massa is not something physical that Malachi was carrying, but it was the spiritual condition that Malachi was exhorted, Malachi was exhorted to present it before Israel, that their condition was so wrong that it become like a heavy load that God had to tell Israel that he was very much concerned about their spiritual state. So it was the burden, the massa, of the word of the Lord. Notice, it was not Malachi's burden; it was the burden of the word of the Lord, but he presented it to Israel through the man by the name of Malachi.

In this book of Malachi, there are four times the word "Malachi" mentioned. The word "Malach" simply means messenger. In chapter 1, verse 1, the Malach, or the messenger, was the servant, the prophet Malachi himself. In chapter 2, the servant or the messenger was the priest himself in chapter 2, verse 7, "For he is the messenger of the Lord." In chapter 3, verse 1a, we have the third person who is a messenger. The third person is the announcer of the coming of the Messiah at his first coming, and we know that that it is applied to John, Yochanan HaMatbil, John the Baptist.

In chapter 3, and verse 1b, the fourth person that the word "messenger" apply to, and this is to the person of Yeshua the Messiah, the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in. So we have four times by the Holy Spirit of God mentioned the word Malach, or Malachi, my messenger. Once applied to Malachi the man, the second time applied to the priest who is a messenger, the third time it applied to John the Baptist, Yochanan HaMatbil, and the fourth time it's applied to Yeshua, Jesus our Lord and our Messiah, who is the messenger of the covenant who would come to provide for Israel that new covenant, the Brit Hadashah, when he would die and will be buried and will be resurrected from among the dead.

Here we begin from the next verses, from verse 2 all the way to verse 5. Those are the only verses I would like to speak about in this ministry meeting today. Verse 2 to verse 5, we have some of the things that the Lord is dialoguing with Israel. He's sharing with the people of Israel, and you notice how it began. In verse 2, it says that the Lord is announcing his love for the people of Israel. Notice what it says, "I have loved you, saith the Lord." In the Hebrew it's very nice. It says "Ahavti etchem, amar Adonai." I just simply love you. I have loved you in the past. I love you in the present, and I will love you in the future. I love you.

This is tremendous when God is saying to the Jewish people who returned now from Bavel and they are now already the next generation and the next generation, some few hundred years passed by, and he is giving them this wonderful statement and he said to them, "I loved you. I love you now. I loved you in the past, and I will love you for time and for eternity." This is tremendous to think of God's love. I mention in our previous meeting together that there are four verses in the word of God that you might say describe before all humanity of the love of God.

John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." Then we also mentioned Jeremiah chapter 31, where God said to Israel, "I have loved you with an everlasting love," ahavat ad, a love that is unconditional according to verse 3. "I have loved you with an everlasting love," God said to our people of all the people of Israel. In other words, it is unconditional and unlimited to a time and to a season. I have loved you with an everlasting love.

Then in Ephesians chapter 5, and verse 25, we read, "Husbands, love your wives, as the Messiah loved the assembly," Paul, Sha'ul said, "and gave himself for the assembly, the church, the ecclesia." Paul said in Ephesians chapter 5, and this is an exhortation for us who are believers, to love our wives as the Mashiach loved the assembly and gave himself for the church, for the assembly, for the ecclesia. Then we also mentioned in our previous meeting together that Paul, Sha'ul elsewhere said in Galatians 2:20, "The Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Paul was always fascinated with the fact that how can God love me, he was saying when he was sharing this with the Galatians believers.

So God's love for the world, John 3:16. God's love for Israel, Jeremiah 31:3. God's love for the assembly, Ephesians 5:25. And God's love for you, for me individually, Galatians 2 and verse 20. So God is pronouncing this statement when he said to Israel, "I have loved you, saith the Lord." Now you and I might wonder and say, what is it that God found in Israel that he loved the nation? What is it that God found in the church and the assembly that he loved the assembly? What is it that God love in the world that have rejected him? And what is it that in you and I, that God loves us? Unconditionally. Unconditionally the love of God towards whom he have set his love upon. It is unconditional.

I want you, for the context, if you will, go back with me to the book of Deuteronomy for a moment because we are studying Malachi, but I want you to see it in light of historical promises of God to the people of Israel, historical relationship that he had with our forefathers, the people of Israel. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 7, verses 6, 7, and 8. We read there in verse 6, God said to Israel through Moshe, Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses the lawgiver. God said to him to say to Israel, "For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth."

Then he continued, he said, "The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people." But then he continues, he says, "But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto 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." Look at this.

By the way, when God stated this statement in Deuteronomy chapter 7, our forefathers, the people of Israel, were standing on the shore of the promised land. Soon they will enter into the promised land. 38, 39 years have passed by where they rebelled and disobeyed God all along for 40 years, 38, 39 years. And yet God still say, "I have loved you." Now, makes you wonder. It makes you wonder why would God set his love knowing the manner of the behavior of the people whom he have chosen. Yet he says, "I have loved you."

After 40 years, nearly 40 years of rebellion and complaining against God and against his will, constantly saying we don't have any food, we don't have any water, we want to go back to Egypt to eat the food from Egypt, back to Egypt, and God says no, I want you to go to the promised land that I will give to you, I promised to your fathers, and yet Israel rebelled again and again. When they were standing before the shores of the promised land, God said to them, "The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor chose you, because you were more in number than any of the people, but because the Lord have loved you."

We will never understand the love of God. We will never fathom his unconditional love towards his people. Notice in chapter 10 in the same book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 10 and verses 14 and 15 we read, listen to this, beloved brothers and sisters. "Behold," he said, verse 14, "the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only," listen to this, verse 15, "Only the Lord had delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day." It's not because Israel or the Jewish people were better than any other nation, but it was simply the election and the love of God towards our forefathers that brought them into such a favor.

The love of God towards his people. I read Jeremiah 31:3, "I have loved you with everlasting love." I didn't read, but Hosea 11, God speak of Israel. "Israel is my firstborn, and I have loved him." Sometime, beloved brothers and sisters, when you're on your own and when you are questioning the Lord, sometime ask yourself the question: Why is it that God have loved me and have brought me into a relationship with him? What is it in me that God could set his love upon me? It is fascinating. It is fascinating.

So you see, when God state this statement to Israel, Israel, like you and I, have the audacity to question the love of God. You notice what we read here in verse 2 again, but this time 2b, the second part of verse 2. It says there, "Yet ye say," notice that, Malachi chapter 1 verse 2b, "Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?" In other words, in a different translation, "Yet ye say, How is it that you say that you loved us? In what way you really loved us?" And you know what? They kind of neglected to look back at the faithfulness of God throughout the whole history of their people of Israel.

And to say the fact that they have experienced persecution, even in those days, a few years earlier, in the days of Haggai and Zechariah, God had promised that he will eventually will bring about the Messianic Kingdom. So when they were sitting now in the temple or in the city of Jerusalem, they were looking back just a few years earlier, when in a time of Haggai and in a time of Zechariah, the Jewish people build the temple.