Malachi 1:2

Such gratuitous love on My part called for love on yours. But the return ye make is sin and dishonor to Me. This which is to be supplied is left unexpressed, sorrow as it were breaking off the sentence [MENOCHIUS], (De 7:8;

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

Man, by nature, is a lump of ingratitude. He is often ungrateful even to his earthly friends and he is invariably ungrateful to his Best Friend, above, until the Grace of God has changed his heart. Leave him alone and though he may be loaded with mercy, yet he will never bless the hand that gives him the favor.

Man, by nature, is a lump of ingratitude. He is often ungrateful even to his earthly friends and he is invariably ungrateful to his Best Friend, above, until the Grace of God has changed his heart. Leave him alone and though he may be loaded with mercy, yet he will never bless the hand that gives him the favor. Should he even be allowed to survive so long as a hundred years, unless the Holy Spirit shall deal with him, he will not once remember his God in grateful thankfulness, but he will go on, from the beginning to the end of the century, always receiving, but never rendering back to the Lord anything like gratitude. We often say that ingratitude is one of the worst of sins—and we feel it so when it concerns ourselves. But we quite forget that it must be worse toward God than it is toward us, for, after all, whatever we may do for others, we are only like stepfathers to the blessings we bestow, for every good gift comes directly from the great Father of Lights, even from God, Himself! We may be the channels conveying comfort to others, but the blessing, itself, comes from Him. Shameful, then, is it that all good should come from God and yet that man should be ungrateful to Him who is the great Source of it all. The charge of ingratitude can be made against us all as we are by nature—it is not merely of some base, mean, groveling spirits that we are now speaking—but of mankind as a whole, looking at it on a broad scale. Observe, next, from our text, that the Lord does not like that we should forget His love. He says here, by His servant Malachi, "I have loved you, says the Lord. Yet you say, In what way have You loved us?" And in the prophecy of Isaiah He says, "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me." Our ingratitude evidently grieves God's heart—speaking after the manner of men.

THE children of Israel had passed through great trouble, but all of it was brought upon them by their own sin. Yet, in their time of trouble, God had remembered them in the greatness of His Grace and mercy. They had been carried into captivity in Babylon and there they had wept when they remembered Zion. They had been scattered over the face of the earth, but God had heard their groans and had restored them to their own land and given them a period of peace and prosperity. But now that they were cured of idolatry, they fell into self-righteousness, indifference and worldly minded-ness. The ordinances of God's house were neglected, or, if they were attended too outwardly, it was in such a careless, heartless manner that God was insulted by their worship rather than adored thereby. For these reasons, new sorrows were caused to fall upon them, for, under the old dispensation, it was God's rule that His obedient people were a prosperous people—but whenever they wandered in heart away from Him, then they began to suffer. His message to them, by Moses, was, "If you will walk contrary unto Me, I will walk contrary unto you, also, in fury and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins"—and so they found it. They were, therefore, now in a very sad condition, but they had no consciousness of the real cause of it. They were fretting and fuming against God instead of striking out boldly at their sins—complaining of the severity of the Divine chastisement rather than confessing the iniquity by which they had brought the rod upon themselves! So God sent His servant Malachi, the last of a long train of Prophets, to seek to bring them to repentance—to try to touch their hearts and consciences by reminding them of His manifold favor and of their base ingratitude towards Him who had treated them so graciously and with such undeserved mercy.

Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? - Have I not shown a greater partiality to the Israelites than I have to the Edomites? I loved Jacob - My love to Jacob has been proved by giving him greater privileges and a better inheritance than what I have given to Esau.

I have loved you, saith the Lord - What a volume of God’s relations to us in two simple words, “I-have-loved you” . So would not God speak, unless He still loved. “I have loved and do love you,” is the force of the words. When? And since when? In all eternity God loved; in all our past, God loved. Tokens of His love, past or present, in good or seeming ill, are but an effluence of that everlasting love. He, the Unchangeable, ever loved, as the apostle of love says 1Jn 4:19, “we love Him, because He first loved us.” The deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, the making them His Rom 9:4, “special people, the adoption, the covenant, the giving of the Law, the service of God and His promises,” all the several mercies involved in these, the feeding with manna, the deliverance from their enemies whenever they returned to Him, their recent restoration, the gift of the prophets, were so many single pulses of God’s everlasting love, uniform in itself, manifold in its manifestations. But it is more than a declaration of His everlasting love. “I have loved you;” God would say; with “a special love, a more than ordinary love, with greater tokens of love, than to others.” So God brings to the penitent soul the thought of its ingratitude: I have loved “you:” I, you. And ye have said, “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” It is a characteristic of Malachi to exhibit in all its nakedness man’s ingratitude. This is the one voice of all people’s complaints, ignoring all God’s past and present mercies, in view of the one thing which He withholds, though they dare not put it into words: “Wherein hast Thou loved us Psa 78:11? Within a while they forgot His works, and the wonders that He had showed them Psa 106:13: they made haste, they forgot His works.” “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother! […]