Malachi 1:2 - Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary

Every word in this address of the Lord is weighty, and deserves the closest attention. Reader, pray observe how the Lord opens his discourse, with referring to his love. Yes! this is the source, the fountain, and cause of all Israel's mercies; and the subject begins in eternity, in the gift of Christ, God's dear Son, and reaches through time to eternity, forever. And observe further, the insensibility of God's people here pointed out by the question, wherein hast thou loved us? Reader! do not in considering the Israel of old, as spoken of in this Chapter, overlook the Israel now. The Lord's Israel are all the same in every age in themselves; ignorant, ungrateful, and for the most part lost to a sense of distinguishing mercies. Romans 3:9. I beg the Reader, before he goeth further, to turn back to Jeremiah 31:1-4. And when he hath duly pondered the wonderful subject. I would have him particularly to attend to this doctrine of distinguishing grace, here preached to the Church by the Lord himself The Lord demands concerning the fact, Was not Esau Jacob's brother? Yes! he was, yea, his elder brother, and therefore as such, concerning the right of inheritance, was legally intitled, and by the Lord's own appointment, to the birth-right. But gospelly considered, he was set aside, and by the Lord himself from it, and Jacob preferred. And what tended to confirm this doctrine yet more, and to make it; unanswerably conclusive, was, that this choice of the younger, and rejection of the elder, was in the decree of the Lord, before that either was born. Paul, the Apostle, was commissioned by the Holy Ghost, in the after ages of the Church, to preach on this Sermon of the Lord, and to make this comment upon it; and certainly by that authority, the doctrine is laid down with a firmness of divine decision none can safely dispute. I beg the Reader to turn to the Apostle's subject. Romans 9:6 to the end, and then see the history of this memorable transaction. Genesis 25:20 to the end, and Genesis 27:1, throughout. And I beg further to call the Reader's attention to this doctrine, from the same scriptural authority, that all these tokens of distinguishing grace, personally to Jacob, was not limited to Jacob, but included all the seed of Jacob. In confirmation, see Genesis 28:1-14. Hence therefore, the burden of Malachi's prophecy you see is a blessed burden indeed; for it contains Christ in his fulness, suitableness, and all-sufficiency. The blessings given to Jacob, it is plain, were not temporal, for he no sooner had it, than he was compelled to flee for his life; and few and evil, as he told Pharaoh at the close of his pilgrimage, had been his days. Genesis 47:9. But the whole of this distinguishing grace and love the Lord had to Jacob and to his seed, as beheld in Christ, and accepted in Christ, was in respect to the blessings of redemption. Reader! what a vast thought is here, in proof of the love of God in Christ, being set forth altogether free, without all motives of good or evil, in the happy receivers of this unspeakable mercy; not only before they have done good or evil, but before they were born! Reader! do not turn hastily away from this subject. Pause over it. How many are there the distinguishing objects of this rich, free mercy in Christ, who through the weakness of their faith, and their inattention to divine things, even after partaking of the sweet effects of it, in regenerating, converting, renewing grace, are frequently without full and clear views of their happy and unspeakably blessed state in Christ, in the enjoyment of it?