1 The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.

2 I have loved you, said the LORD. Yet you say, Wherein have you loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? said the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,

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

4 Whereas Edom said, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus said 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 has indignation for ever.

5 And your eyes shall see, and you shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.

6 A son honors his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is my honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear? said the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, that despise my name. And you say, Wherein have we despised your name?

7 You offer polluted bread on my altar; and you say, Wherein have we polluted you? In that you say, The table of the LORD is contemptible.

8 And if you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now to your governor; will he be pleased with you, or accept your person? said the LORD of hosts.

9 And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious to us: this has been by your means: will he regard your persons? said the LORD of hosts.

10 Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nothing? neither do you kindle fire on my altar for nothing. I have no pleasure in you, said the LORD of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.

11 For from the rising of the sun even to the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered to my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, said the LORD of hosts.

12 But you have profaned it, in that you say, The table of the LORD is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.

13 You said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and you have snuffed at it, said the LORD of hosts; and you brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus you brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? said the LORD.

14 But cursed be the deceiver, which has in his flock a male, and vows, and sacrifices to the LORD a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, said the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.

Mal 1:2-3

I. There is no impiety in this inquiry. Granted that God may prefer whom He will; that it is for Him, if it please Him and as it please Him, to put one man before another; yet, if in so doing He allows the reason to appear, there is nothing wrong; nay, rather it is our duty to mark that reason, for it helps to confirm us in our conviction that the Judge of the world will always do right. Now, in the case of Jacob, that reason is not far to seek. There was one quality in him which Esau had not, that must, we believe, have recommended him to God's favour, and that was religion. Jacob, with all his faults, was a religious man. Esau, with much in him that attracts us, was not a religious man.

II. To Esau the present was everything. So that he had abundance of this world's goods, plenty of corn and wine, he was content to forego the hope of the future. We see this stamped on all he did and on all that is written of him in the Bible. He was open-hearted and open-handed, and these are qualities we all admire and ought to admire. But the one thing most needed was wanting in him. He had no religion no love, no fear of God, no reverence for things holy; he gave no sign by anything that he did that he believed in a life to come. With Jacob it was quite otherwise. With him the future, and not the present, had the most weight. God was continually in his thoughts: he depended on God, and loved to ask counsel of God; and did not feel that he was sufficient of himself, but that his sufficiency was of God. And this piety will account for the preference accorded to him in Scripture over Esau.

R. D. B. Rawnsley, Sermons in Country Churches, p. 64.

The character of Jacob is not presented to us as a noble, still less as a perfect, character. It is represented as a character which in spite of many stains and apparently habitual weakness God in His wisdom saw fit to bless and to adapt for His own purposes.

I. What, then, was the difference between the brothers? It amounts in substance to this: Jacob, with all his faults was a religious man. He did believe in God. He did believe that his life was to be a life of obedience to God. He did believe that the God of his fathers had called him, even him, to be His servant and His witness. Even his ungenerous and dishonest efforts to obtain the birthright prove that he at least attached a meaning and a value to these privileges. He believed in something and some Person beyond and above himself.

II. Thus, then, we have two men brought before us for our instruction. The one has much that is attractive, much that commands our sympathies, if not our respect; and yet he has nothing in him on which the Spirit of God can fasten so as to make him a blessing to the world. On the other hand, we have a man subtle and self-seeking, capable of offences which seem most removed from the noble character, and yet he communes with God. He rests upon God. He asks God's guidance. He believes in God's calling and God's providence; probably he confesses to God with shame and sorrow the sins by which he seems to the outward eye to have thriven. Surely you do not deliberately doubt as to which of these brothers was in the main right, and which was in the main wrong. Learn from the text that you must come to fear and think of God. You cannot, you dare not, live a life of mere animal enjoyment, however innocent it may seem to you to be. You dare not subject yourself to that solemn sentence: "I hated Esau; I could not make of him a chosen vessel for speeding the coming of My kingdom."

H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons, 2nd series, p. 12.

References: Mal 1:3 . Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 526. Mal 1:6 . W. Braden, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 152. Mal 1:8 . Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii., p. 263. Mal 1:11 . H. D. Rawnsley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 358; J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. x., p. 89. Mal 1:13 . J. Norton, Golden Truths, p. 455. Mal 1:13 . R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii., p. 315. Mal 2:1 . J. Hiles Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 363.