We are going to be back in Genesis this morning.
in the next part of the narrative of Jacob's
life, God's rogue, in
Genesis chapter number 27.
And we're going to look at the whole chapter.
There's a lot of verses, and I usually try to
read the whole chapter and then read where I get my points from, but
because it's so many, we're just going to do that in parts, because
I don't read quite as excitingly as Philip does.
But we're going to start reading in verse
number 30, and then read down to the verse number 46.
So Genesis 27 verses 30 46.
God's word says now it came about as soon as Isaac had
finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had hardly
gone out from the presence of Isaac.
His father, that Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting.
Then he also made savory food and brought it to his father.
And he said to his father, Let my father
arise, and eat of his sons' game, that you may bless me.
Isaac, his father, said to him, Who are you?
And he said, I am your son, your firstborn Esau.
Then Isaac trembled violently and said,
Who was he, then that hunted game and
brought it to me, so that I ate of all of it before you
came and blessed him?
Yes, and he shall be, blessed.
When Esau heard the words of his father,
He cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter
cry, and said to his father, Bless me, even me
also, O my father.
And he said, Your brother came deceitfully, and
has taken away your blessing.
Then he said, Is he not rightly named Jacob,
for he has supplanted me these two times.
He took away my birthright, and behold,
now he has taken away my blessing, and he said,
Have you not reserved a blessing for me?
But Isaac replied to Esau, Behold, I
have made him your master, and all his relatives I
have given him as servants, and with grain, and new wine, I have sustained him.
Now, as for you, then, what can I do, my son?
Esau said to his father, do you have only one blessing, my father?
Bless me, even me also?
O my Father?
So Esau lifted his voice and wept.
Then Isaac, his father, answered him, and said
to him, Behold, away from the
fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling, and away
from the dew of heaven from above, By your sword ye
shall live, and your brother ye shall serve, but it shall come
about, when you become restless, that you will break
his yoke from your neck.
So Esau bore a grudge against Jacob,
because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him.
And Esau said to himself, The days of mourning
for my father are near, then I will kill my brother Jacob.
Now, when the words of her elder son, Esau,
were reported to Rebekah, she sent and called her younger
son, Jacob, and said to him, Behold, your
brother, Esau, is consoling himself concerning you by planning to kill you.
Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice,
and arise, flee to Haran, to my brother Laban,
stay with him a few days, until your brother's
fury subsides, until your brother's anger against
you subsides, and he forgets what you did to him, then
I will sin and get you from here.
Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?
Rebecca said to Isaac, I am tired of living.
Because of the daughters of Heth.
If Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth,
like these, from the daughters of the land, what good will
my life be to me?
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we love you.
Lord, what a great morning it is to come and sing to you, and worship you, Lord.
And I pray that's just what we do in this message that you bless
the message, in spite of the messenger, in our hearts and minds, to
your truth, and for your glory in Christ's name.
Amen.
Jacob, as we saw, excuse me.
Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son
of Abraham, was born to Rebekah,
in the last passage that we looked at last
month, and he was born as a twin,
with his brother Esau, and right from
the beginning, we've already seen the trouble in
Rebecca's life, in Isaac's life, and now in Jacob and Esau's life.
Jacob and Esau were fighting prenatally.
They were struggling in the womb, the author says.
They gave their mother, Rebecca,
a lot of consternation during her pregnancy.
It was a very rough pregnancy, and she
felt awful and so awful.
She prayed to God, if you remember it, in chapter 25,
verse 22, says, But the children struggle together within her.
And she said, If it is so, why then am I this way?
So she went to inquire of the Lord.
And so Jacob and Esau were born, and
Jacob was such a mess from the beginning, that his
name he got from grabbing the heel of
his minutes older brother, as they
were being born.
This fact, this grabbing
of the heel, this kind of
trying to get his way, it was becoming very consistent
with his character.
His name was very fitting, that old heel grabber.
He was always scheming on how he could trip up the next guy,
and how he could get ahead himself.
And while Rebecca was going through that struggle
of pregnancy, and she prayed to inquire why
there was so much struggle in her womb at the
time, that the Lord answered her prayer with
a prophecy in the next verse in
chapter 25, verse 23, the Lord said to
her, Two nations are in your womb, and
two peoples will be separated from your body, and
one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older
shall serve the younger.
So this rogue of a man, as I'm
calling him, was set, as God's
choice, to be a nation that would be great and strong.
And kind of the point is that
it is because God chose Jacob, not because of
any good in Jacob, as we have seen, and
as we will continue to see, as we go through
Jacob's life, and that should make
us feel glad, right?
That should make us feel happy that God chooses to
use sinners, like Jacob, and like us
to fulfill his plans.
And so right out of the gate, as Jacob and
Esau grow older, the next account
of their lives, if you remember, was
how Jacob traded a pot of red stew for
Esau's birthright.
And this would begin, as
you could imagine, to put a strain on their
relationship as brothers.
Chapter 26, then, after chapter
25, tells a story of Isaac
and his struggles with some neighbors over some wells.
But then we come to our passage today, the next passage that
speaks of Jacob's life in chapter 27,
and we get a glimpse as to not
just Jacob, the sinner, but how the whole family
was dysfunctional, that
each one of them was quite a mess,
and the question is,
will all the Hebrew nation, will God's
chosen people come from this mess of a family?
All four of them are shown
here in horrible light.
None of them are painted in a favorable light.
There's no redeeming quality to any of the
four people in the story, and that's how
the Bible usually tells it.
It tells it how it is.
It's not a panegyric, like an old mythological
story about a great thing or a great family of old that
would just look perfect, or that the author would take
all the rough edges and smooth them out, so that they look
like super men.
But these are real accounts of real people, and
it's over and over and over again in scripture that
the scripture doesn't a roll over,
a pass over, any blemish for the sake
of making the characters of the accounts in
the Bible look better than they actually are.
And in the end, all of the
accounts of scripture, or how God can take those
real pictures of fallen
humanity, and fleshly sin, and dysfunction,
and mess, and shape it into his ultimate will.
And that's the theme, kind of today, is that
God's will be done, even
in our messes, in our dysfunction, and in our sin.
So the first part I want us to look at,
I'm calling the machinations, because it really is
some scheming going on here, of four sinners in our story.
And we're going to read verses 1 through 17.
Now, it came about, when Isaac was old,
and his eyes were too dim to see, that he
called his older son, Esau, and said to him, My
son, and he said to him, Here I am.
Isaac said, Behold, now, I am old,
and I do not know the day of my death.
Now, then, please take your gear, your quiver,
and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and
prepare a savory dish for me such as I love, and
bring it to me, that I may eat, so that my soul may bless you before I die.
Rebecca was listening, while Isaac spoke to his son, Esau.
So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game to bring home,
Rebecca said to her son, Jacob, behold, I
heard your father speak to your brother Esau, saying, Bring me
some game, and prepare a savory dish for me, that I
may eat and bless you in the presence of the Lord, before my death.
Now, therefore, my son, listen to me as I command you.
Go now to the flock, and bring me two choice young goats
from there, that I may prepare them as a savory dish for
your father, such as he loves.
Then you shall bring it to your father, that he may eat,
so that he may bless you before his death.
Jacob answered his mother Rebecca.
You would think he would say, hey, that doesn't sound ethical.
That's not what he says.
Listen, behold, Esau, my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.
Perhaps my father will feel me.
Then I will be as a deceiver at his sight, and I will bring upon
myself a curse, and not a blessing.
But his mother said to him, Your curse be on me, my son,
only obey my voice, and go get them from me.
So he went and got them, and brought them to his mother,
and his mother made savory food, such as his father loved.
Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau, her
elder son, which were with her in the house, and put
them on Jacob, her younger son, and she put the
skins of the young goats on his hands, and onto
the smooth part of his neck.
She also gave the savory food and the bread,
what she had made to her son, Jacob.
So there's four people in our story.
There's Isaac, the son of Abraham, his wife, Rebecca,
and there's Esau, and then there's Jacob.
And all four of them, have
their own motivations, and their own plans, their
reason for doing these things, and all of their plans,
and all of their motivations, it seemed from the story, are
all through the eyes of flesh.
None of them are looking at it through
an eye for God's will, or God's law,
or for righteousness, or how to go
through life in a way that pleases God.
Each one of them are trying to go through life and trying
to make their life successful in a way that
it is fleshly.
The first or the plans of Isaac.
Isaac knew that the end of his life was coming up.
His eyes were going to go dark soon, and
it was time for his blessing to be given to one of his sons.
And at this time, the blessing is kind of
the last will and testament.
But Isaac knew that the
prophecy that was given to Rebecca, his
wife, as she was praying to the Lord, was
that the older Esau, would serve the younger.
And he knew
that ahead of time, but he liked Esau better.
The reason that Isaac liked Esau better
was because Isaac liked to eat, particularly
the type of food that Esau cooked.
We saw it here in the passage we just read, but also in
chapter 25, verse 28.
It says, Now Isaac loved Esau, because he
had a taste for game.
But Rebecca loved Jacob.
Isaac was led around by his stomach.
He made a decision, not based on God's word,
that the older would serve the younger.
He made a decision on which son he liked, because
he liked the taste of Esau's game and his cooking.
So he comes up with this idea for a private
ceremony, which was not the way these things were normally
done, with just Esau, Isaac,
and a ceremony, which is Esau, Isaac,
and Isaac's stomach in attendance.
Ralph Davies calls Isaac,
the patron saint, of all who say, I don't really
care what the word of God says.
I will follow my own feelings, and
we'll see, as we get into the next passage, next part of the passage.
that it's not just his stomach, his
taste, it's his feelings, his hearing,
all of his senses.
He's a very fleshly person.
So Isaac plans to have this private ceremony,
to go against the will of God, in secret,
and give his blessing to Esau, or the last will and
testament of his life.
And then we look at the plans of Esau.
Esau was a man of the present.
As we saw last month, he is that the
quintessential secular man, he could care
less about the future, about the promises of God,
about the name of his family, or even his own reputation.
He just wanted what he wanted at
the moment that he wanted it.
And in the end of chapter 26,
he marries someone from the tribes that
they were promised to have the land from.
Verse 34, when Esau was 40 years old,
he married Judith, the daughter of Barry, the
Hittite, and Basimuth, the daughter of
Elon, the Hittite, and they brought grief
to Isaac and Rebekah.
What does he care?
What's the big deal?
He loved them, right?
They pleased him, right?
The big deal was, he was only thinking of himself,
not thinking of the promise and the covenant of
God, to bless his family and all families
on the earth from his family.
His family, Abraham and Isaac,
had the promise and covenant of God on them.
But he could care less about that.
He was worried about what he wanted at the time.
But this lack of care, this lack of foresight,
or thinking of the future, is going to get him
into big trouble, as we're seeing in this passage.
And then the third person, in our story that had
schemes and machinations, was Rebecca,
the wife of Isaac.
There might have been, in her mind, this idea,
well, my husband is gone, and
I need to help fulfill God's plans.
I need to take action myself to make God's plan,
and God's prophecy come true.
What's a little lie?
if it furthers the greater good, or the bigger plan.
She could have reminded Isaac, that
it was God's prophecy, that Esau would
serve Jacob, and trusted in God,
to keep his promise in a way that
he would choose, but she took things into her own hands.
And she worked out a plan from her own mind to
make things happen.
And then the last person is Jacob.
the rogue himself.
Verse 11 and 12, as we saw, show that
his concern was not for what is right, but
his only concern about what might happen to him.
How might this hurt and affect him?
Verse 11 says, Jacob answered his mother, Rebecca, Behold, Esau,
my brother, is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.
Perhaps my father will feel me, then I will be
as a deceiver in his sight, and I will bring upon myself a
curse, and not a blessing.
Complete pragmatist.
He's an only concerned about what might happen to him, not
about what's right or the right thing to do.
So all four of these sinners.
are all going about sinning in different ways.
They're all looking at the situation in one
way or the other, but in the end, they're all looking out for
number one, right, themselves, in their own
ways and their own personalities.
And maybe we can relate someone we know in
our life that fits into one of these four different patterns
of sinful behavior from our characters,
and maybe you can relate with someone in the mirror to one of these.
And that's the idea.
Maybe we don't want to admit it, but we probably
have a natural inclination to one of these four different types of character.
But all these different types of characters, and the rest of this passage,
the rest of Genesis, be honest with you, is here
to show us what Proverbs 1921 teaches.
Many plans are in a man's heart,
but the counsel of the Lord will stand.
And so the next part of our passage,
We see the four different characters and their schemes and machinations.
And now we see that the plan works, the deception
works, versus 18 through 29.
I know this a longer passage.
Just bear with me.
It's a good story.
Then he came to his father and said,
My father.
And he said, here I am.
Who are you, my son?
Jacob said to his father, I am Esau,
your firstborn, I have done as you told me.
Get up, please.
Set and eat of my game, that you may bless me.
Isaac said to his son, How is it that you have it so quickly?
My son?
And he said, Because, the Lord your God caused it to happen to me.
Then Isaac said to Jacob, please come close, that I may
feel you, my son, whether you are really my son, Esau or not.
So Jacob came close to his Isaac's
father, and he felt him and said, The voice is
the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.
He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy,
like his brother Esau's hands, and so he blessed him.
And he said, Are you really my son, Esau?
And he said, I am?
So he said, bring it to me, and
I will eat of my son's game, that I may bless you.
And he brought it to him, and he ate.
He also brought him wine, and he drank.
Then his father, Isaac, said to him, Please
come close and kiss me, my son.
So he came close and kissed him.
And when he smelled the smell of his garments,
He blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is
like the smell of a field, which the Lord has blessed.
Now may God give you of the dew of heaven, and of
the fatness of the earth, and an abundance of grain, a new wine,
may people serve you, and nations bow down to you,
be master of your brothers, and may your mother's sons,
bow down to you.
Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed, be those who bless you.
A lot of this, could have been avoided with
a simple conversation between all four
of them, an honest conversation, but that doesn't happen.
The plan is so convoluted here, and deceitful.
There's so many ways that the plan could go wrong.
Jacob and Esau were obviously opposite people, even
though they were twins, they were obviously fraternal and not
identical twins.
But they went through the plan anyway.
Rebecca prepares the meal.
She dresses Jacob in a way that would cause a blind
man to think he was Esau.
And by the way, can you just imagine how Harry,
Esau, must have been, for her to have to use young goat's
pelt on his hands to trick Isaac
to think it was Esau.
I just think that's nuts.
I just can't imagine.
I know some people like that.
Jacob goes into Isaac's room
with full knowledge.
100% knowledge that he is being 100% deceitful.
He even uses the name of Yahweh
to further his lie in verse 20.
Isaac said to his son, How is it that you have it so quickly, my son?
And he said, Because the Lord, your God, calls it to happen to me.
No, he just went in the backyard and got two goats.
But Isaac begins to suspect something.
He tells Jacob to come closer, and he feels the
young goat's pelt on his hands.
But then he hears Jacob's voice, and it sounds like Jacob.
It doesn't sound like a big outdoorsman.
It sounds like a mama's boy, right?
And he questions his voice.
And then Jacob, again, lies to his
father, verse 24.
And he said, Are you really my son Esau?
And he said, I am.
Isaac, tasted the food, and it tasted
good, like something Esau would make.
Isaac feels Jacob, and it
feels like Esau.
But something is still off.
He needs to use more of his senses to really tell
what's going on.
So he tells Jacob to come closer to him, so he could kiss him.
And Jacob does so.
And because he's wearing Esau's clothes, it
smells like Esau.
And so the deception will be completed here,
when all of the senses of Isaac are
tricked into thinking that Jacob is Esau.
His emotions and his feelings are what's
controlling him here, not reality.
When all those feelings and emotions
and senses are tricked and satisfied, he
goes ahead and gives his blessing to Jacob instead
of Esau.
The blessing has two different facets
here that we can see.
Verse 28, now may God give you the dew of heaven,
and of the fatness of the earth, and an abundance
of grain and new wine.
God Isaac is
giving the blessing of land to Jacob, and his
mind, Esau.
And with that is the source of wealth.
This is basically someone willing
their property to one of their children and
not to the other.
But not only that, he's praying
that God would bless it with due, with fruitfulness,
with abundance, so the wealth of Jacob, would increase.
The problem is, he thinks he's giving it to Esau.
The second facet of it is authority.
Verse 29, May peoples serve you,
and nations bow down to you.
Be master of your brothers, and may your mother's
sons bow down to you.
Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed
be those who bless you.
And here, though the prophecy that God
had made, when they were still in the womb, to
Rebekah, is fulfilled, that the
older son would serve the
younger son, as hard as Isaac tried, to
get around it, and give that blessing,
to his preferred son,
God still, through all these machinations,
worked it out, to fulfill his own prophecy.
Esau will serve Jacob.
The deceitfulness of Rebekah and Jacob,
and all they had done were successful.
So now, Jacob has the birthright,
and the blessing of Esau.
And immediately after they're finished.
Jacob leaves a room, and Esau comes in with a
big old pot of savory game.
for his father.
And he's excited.
He's about to get the blessing.
But then he finds out what happened.
And Isaac realizes that he
had been duped by his own wife and his own son.
This is the dysfunctional family in
full view.
But in spite of all that dysfunction, the last part I
want to look at, is God's will still prevails.
Verses 30 through 46, but we're only going
to read 38 and 40 through 40.
Esau said to his father, Do you have only one
blessing, my father.
Bless me, even me also, O my father.
So Esau lifted his voice and wept.
Then Isaac, his father, answered and said to him,
Behold, away from the fertility of the earth shall be your
dwelling, and away from the dew of heaven from above.
By your sword you shall live, and your brother you shall serve,
but it shall come about when you become restless, that
you will break his yoke from your neck.
Isaac was so disturbed, when he realized
what happened, that the Bible says that he trembled violently.
And then Esau was so distraught when
he lost the opportunity to get the blessing,
it says that he cried out bitterly.
He shouted a cry, Please,
Father, is there anything left that you can bless me with?
Verse 35?
Your brother came deceitfully, and has
taken away your blessing.
And I want you to pay attention to Esau's
response in verse 36.
Then he said, and you got to imagine, he's crying, he's
shouting, he's angry and sad, is he not rightly named Jacob?
For he has supplanted me these two times?
He took away my birthright.
And behold, now he has taken away my blessing.
And he said, Have you not reserved a blessing for me?
Jacob did deceive him one time.
But he tells a little lie here, if you remember,
he didn't deceive him from his birth room.
He willingly gave that up for a pot
of stew.
And then the Bible says that he despised his birthright after that.
So why is he acting like he cares now?
Because he is a whiny hypocrite.
He wanted the stuff.
He wanted the land and the power.
He didn't care about his name, or his family.
He just wondered what came with the blessing.
And the fact is that even though
Isaac intended to give it to Esau, technically,
as the owner of the birthright, Jacob should
have received the blessing anyway.
And that's why Isaac and Esau were scheming
to do it in this private ceremony,
instead of in the normal way, with a
whole group of people and witnesses to it.
Their plan was to sneak the blessing onto Esau.
But then, their plan didn't work.
So Isaac gives Esau the truth.
He doesn't really curse him, but he kind
of gives him the anti blessing.
It's virtually the opposite of the blessing that
he gave to Jacob.
verse 39, Isaac his father answered and said to him, Behold,
away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling.
And away from the dew of heaven from above, by
your sword you shall live, and your brother you
shall serve, but it shall come about when you become restless,
that you will break his yoke from your neck.
So what are we left with?
After all this is done, and I have all
this deceit and lies and dysfunction is out of the open.
These four people, whose side should
we be on?
There's four different people, four different centers,
four different ways that they mess
this whole situation up, and all that we are
left with is scorched earth.
Have you ever been in a family situation like that, where everything
seems to be messed up?
But this is the covenant family
of God.
If this was the material that you had to work with, is
there any way that you think you could fulfill
the promise you made to their grandfather and father,
Abraham, that all the families of the earth will
be blessed from this mess of a family?
There's no way that I could do it.
But God can, and God did.
In fact, he is still working that covenant
out through all of our messed up families in
our messed up lives, at the end of the day, in
spite of all their plotting, and all their sinning,
God's decree, from before the foundation
of the world, not based on anything that Jacob or
Esau did, but his choice, for his glory only,
his decree that the older will serve the younger will
absolutely come to pass, no matter the
scheming, no matter the sin,
that happened there, everything God decrees will
be the same, as this decree, and through
all of this mess.
And we should be grateful and
glad, and give praise to him that he is able
to do it even through sinful vessels,
that he will have victory, no
matter who or what, tries to stand in his way.
He will fulfill his word, no matter what the
resistance or rebellion of man, and
praise him, that it's not just through negative situations, that
he does use some positive situations as well.
We were talking this morning about Spurgeon and his sermons
being his wife, insisting that his sermons
be transcribed, so that people could read them in
their time, and even to this day, and at that time,
some of his sermons were printed in newspapers,
and not just in England, but also in America.
And it was during his time that there was an evangelist who
was requested to go to a public house, a
bar, in the small town of Nottingham,
England, because the pub's owner's wife was
dying, and he was asked to go and visit
her in her last moments and give her the gospel.
And he agreed to do that.
But when he went into her bedroom where
her deathbed was, he found her, that
she was praising Christ, and that she had become a saved woman.
And so he asked her, how did you
come to Christ as Lord?
And she said, by reading that, and she held
up this piece of torn newspaper.
And that torn newspaper held a segment
of Spurgeon's,
one of Spurgeon's sermons printed on it.
But that newspaper didn't come from London, it came from America.
And that little piece of sermon,
printed on an American newspaper, came to her via
wrapped package from Australia.
So it went from preached in the pulpit
of London to the newspaper of America, somehow got to Australia.
Someone was done with it, used it to wrap a package, and
when they tore a package open, they didn't throw it away.
She kept it, she read it and she became a Christian.
God, his decree, will
come to pass in negative and positive situations.
He will make his will happen.
And even if it has to circle the globe,
God's decree will come to pass.
This shows us that if God is nothing, he
is persistent, and we know that he's all things, because this is how he works.
He overcomes messes, even like
those in our text today, with great strength, with
great wisdom for his own glory, and he can turn the
most unlikely circumstance, the most unlikely
person into the instrument of his will at any
time he pleases.
If this rogue himself, Jacob,
isn't proof of that, then you can look at me, or
look at yourself and your own testimony, and how God uses you.
Ralph Davies, again, says that stubbornness
should be listed as an attribute of God, not
stubbornness like we have, but a holy stubbornness.
We should take great fact or comfort in
the fact that God will keep his word by
any means necessary, regardless of the human
rebellion or human stupidity.
Now, look at the sin of this one family that we just went over, one
situation, and there's, like, 10 more chapters of mess
in Jacob's life.
But we can look through that mess of Jacob's
life, Jacob's family, and look directly to
Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is a descendant of
Jacob here.
And God promised to bless all the families of
the world through this one family, and he
did it through Jesus Christ himself.
And it really is an amazing story.
So continue to read the book of Genesis
and see how God works out through sin,
his will.
But all of this started, when God made a promise, to
Abraham, and God is still, and will continue,
to keep that promise he made to Abraham until the end of
time itself, when we are in New Jerusalem,
bathed in the light of his glory.
Let's pray.
Hearly Father, we love you and thank you for your word.
And I thank you, Lord, that these men and women are just like me.
Or I'm just like them.
We're all sinners.
We're all messed up, but we have a great savior who
uses even our mess and our sin to fulfill his will.
And I pray that you continue to do that, you continue to help
us to see that, to rest in that in our lives.
In Christ's name.
Amen.