TODAY'S BIBLE TWEET

BIBLE TEXT: “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…” (Malachi 1:2-3a KJV)

BIBLE TWEET: God declares His love, but His people deny it, so God demonstrates it, by explaining divine election, His election of Israel in His choice to love Jacob, who coveted the promise of the coming Christ, and to hate Esau, who couldn’t have cared less for Christ.

BIBLE TAKEAWAY: In Old Testament typology, Jacob symbolizes what God loves, the spiritual man who seeks the promises and blessings of God, but Esau symbolizes what God hates, the natural or carnal man who spurns the promises and blessings of God. 

Jacob, whose name means trickster or supplanter, was an ancient flimflam man. Yet, he knew he needed a Savior and would do anything to get his brother’s birthright and father’s blessing, so that he could assure himself of being in the lineage of the coming Christ. It was Jacob’s belief that he needed a Savior to save him from his sins that God loved. On the other hand, Esau, unlike his brother Jacob, was not smoothed-skinned and his mother’s favorite, but hairy and his father’s favorite, because he was an outdoors man, a macho man, and a real man’s man. Furthermore, Esau, who epitomizes the flesh, because he believed he had no need of a Savior, but could make it on his own, swapped his birthright, his place in the lineage of the coming Christ, to his brother for a bowl of beans. It was Esau’s callous disregard for his dire and desperate need of Christ to save him from his sins that God hated.