Sin, Sovereignty, and the Blessing

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0:12Oftentimes at this point somebody comes up and reads the scripture, but this morning's a little bit different. We're gonna be reading the scripture in the body of the message. So I'll encourage you to turn to page 21 in the blue Bibles if you'd like to do that. Or to Genesis 27 if you brought your own Bible. And I'm gonna begin this morning first by isn't it great when we thank God for such a big stage so we can have so many people up here?

0:47He's been very kind to us to hear all those voices. I wanna start with a little Bible trivia, a little, get the brain going, what's happened? We're at Genesis 27 and it's helpful for us to think back to kind of get a grasp of where we are in Genesis. We've been preaching through this book and I'm gonna ask you, can you think of a theme or repeated word that you've heard over and over and over again in Genesis? Get the brains going. What's something that the author Moses of Genesis keeps coming back to? There's probably a lot of good answers and maybe that's a good lunchtime conversation with roommates or over the dinner table or with people on the way home.

1:37But let me remind you of one or actually two. Have you heard the word offspring and blessing before in this book? Sometimes it comes up as an idea, but oftentimes it comes up at as that word offspring and blessing. Let me remind you or catch you up a little bit if this is your first time with us. Genesis 1 28. Right from the beginning, God blessed Adam and Eve and said to them, be fruitful and multiply. That means have offspring or one of the most famous promises and blessings in Genesis. Genesis 12, when God was calling Abraham, he says, I will make you a great nation, meaning I'll give you lots of offspring and I will bless you.

2:29And we saw at the end of a Abraham's life at this climactic event of obedience, when he was sacrificing his son, God links these two words and says, in your offspring, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed? And last week in chapter 26, we saw like father, like Son, those same words were spoken to Isaac. And in your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Genesis 26, 4. So why am I reminding us about this? Well, the way that Genesis works is the offspring and the blessing is often threatened. There's various things. There's brokenness in the world that threatens the offspring.

3:15So we see that both of these couples that we've been looking at, uh, Abraham and his wife and Isaac and his wife both faced the brokenness of of barrenness and not able to have children for a significant season of time. We've also seen the sinfulness of man go up against that. We've seen both Abraham and Isaac lie about their wives and threaten their wife's safety, threaten other people taking their wives and creating offspring that would not fit with this thing. Different things are threatening. And today again, this idea of offspring and blessing are in view and we're gonna hear the word blessing over and over and over again.

3:57Kids, if you're wanting something to help you keep focused, maybe just keep noticing. Every time we say the word bless or blessing, I'm gonna get there in just a second. But first we need to say, well why should I care about the offspring and blessing in a story that happened thousands of years ago? Well, the offspring and the blessing are God's purposes. In fact, Christians pray your kingdom come, may your people, your offspring grow and they grow because they have faith in the offspring, Jesus Christ. So we should care about that. But we also just like the people back then live in a broken and sinful world and there's all sorts of things that can discourage us.

4:46We can look around and we cannot have the hope that was just prayed for from this pulpit. We, we can need God to come and say, take my heart, unite it. Help me to hope that your purposes are happening even though I see all of this sin around me in my own life as well. Some of us are fighting God's purposes ourselves and in this text as well, we see God come to those who are standing against or not seeing or not walking in line with his purposes and are walking in sinful ways and grab them and redirect them or at least call them back to him. That's why we need this text. Let me pray for us and then we will dive in.

5:35Great God, thank you that you have a kingdom that you sent Jesus, your perfect offspring, and thank you that you are a God who came to seek and save the lost. And thank you that you are a shepherd, that pursues your sheep with steadfast love and mercy to correct them, to turn them back to you, to keep them faithful to your ways. God, we live in a sinful, broken world and we are very much a part of it. Would you be merciful to us? Would you help us to think with clarity and see with clarity and be drawn to you in the midst of our own dis discouragement or despair? And would you be after our hearts that we would walk in your ways so that we wouldn't stand opposed to your purposes in your kingdom?

6:31And would you help us to see your great faithfulness? Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We're gonna walk through this text from verse one all the way to verse 46. But lemme give you a little bit of a roadmap if we're gonna break this into three chunks. 'cause every good Baptist sermon has three points. Uh, here's what, here's what they would be. The first one is the plan. The plan, it's it's opens with verses one through four. And we see Isaac announcing a plan to bless Esau and those who have been paying attention along the way are asking themselves this question about the offspring. Will the wrong person receive the blessing?

7:24I'll explain that in just a minute, but that's kind of what's rumbling around in people who kind of know the story. They're wondering, is the wrong person gonna be blessed? Oh no. Next the conspiracy. Ooh uh, verses five to 29. The main section of this text is the conspiracy where Jacob and his mother scheme to steal the blessing and the careful reader in that section is gonna be asking themselves, wait a second, will the offspring of blessing actually receive a curse?

7:58Finally, the last section is verses 30 to 46 and the title over that is The Aftermath. The Aftermath. Our final section will detail the results of Jacob's deception and they will force us to ask, will the sins of the offspring cause him to lose his life and therefore have no more a offspring? So please turn with me if you're not already there. And look with me at verse one of chapter 27. Let me read the first four verses When Isaac was old and his eyes were dimmed so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, my son, and he answered, here I am. He said, behold, I am old.

8:52I do not know the day of my death. Now then take your weapons, your quiver and your bow and go out to the field and hunt game for me and prepare for me delicious food such as I love and bring it to me so that I may eat and my soul may bless you before I die. This first section is the plan and I want to point out a few things for us to notice in this opening section. First, it opens with the words When Isaac was old, do you know the last time we've heard something like that in Genesis? In chapter 24 we read when Abraham was old. Um, actually now Abraham was old is what it says in ESV. What happened back then?

9:43Well, back then Abraham also had a plan, but his plan was different than this. His plan was to call his servant and make him swear that he would not take a wife for his son from among the Canaanites, but to go back to his homeland and secure a wife for him there. So last week we kept looking at all these different things. I think there was seven different things like father, like son. So a question here is what I just read to you, does that sound like father like son? No. Why? We don't know. We don't know. It may become a little bit more clear, but at at this point we do not know. Notice he calls Esau and only Esau to come into his presence to bless him.

10:34And this should cause us to ask a few questions as well. Wait a second, Esau, if you look just up the page to the the two verses of the last chapter, you notice that Esau, what did he do? He married two women, not one but two women, two Canaanite women Hittites to be specific from among the people that he dwelt. Is the offspring gonna be threatened? Is the blessing gonna go to this guy who just did that as well? We saw earlier there was this struggle. We learned that there is this constant struggle that started in the womb and continued through life. There was this struggle between the brothers and the last time Esau despised his birthright.

11:19That was super significant. It had a lot of great things that went along with it. Abraham was his grandfather and he is like, you know what? I'd rather have a bowl of stew than the good things that go along with that. He devalued what was extremely valuable and lifted up the common and Jacob is nowhere around. The reader has heard earlier that this second son is going to uh, rule over or be served by the older one. And so we're just all these different questions, why is this happening? And I think it's about food. Look with me at verse four. Prepare for me or maybe verse three, prepare for me delicious food such as I love and bring it to me that I may eat and bless you.

12:11What's the motive behind this? Why is a food, why is food delicious food in a meal? Why is that the condition for blessing? We've already heard that there's favoritism in this family and that the reason that Isaac loves Esau is that he ate of his game. So I think the biggest question that's in the reader's mind is, is Isaac in this moment planning to do what Esau did with his birthright? Is he about to trade something extremely valuable for a single meal? Is he gonna oppose God's plan? Is he gonna not value what God wants him to value?

13:00And where's God in this? Is he gonna step in and intervene? Is he going to redirect by his mercy, his patriarch? Is he gonna preserve the blessing so that it moves in the right direction? Those are the questions that this text begins with. Thank God that we have a merciful God, a sovereign God. Before we move on to the next section, we should reflect and ask ourselves, are we valuing what is extremely valuable? What do we love Throughout this text? It seems like one of the things that the family knows for sure in the midst of all these lies and deception, one of the things is family knows for sure is that Isaac loves food.

13:48What does your family or what do those around you know that you love? Do you love what is extremely valuable or do you love common things? The apostle John in his letter, in his first letter says, do not love the world. Don't make it an ongoing habit to keep pursuing the things that are not of God because those things are passing away. Just think about this, this blessing that God promised and all these generations and it's gonna fulfill in Christ. How long did that last? How long did this food last on the lips of Isaac?

14:30Are you pursuing things that are not valuable and devaluing and not pursuing things that are eternal? This could be a wake up call for you. This text is a wake up call for Isaac. Let's move on. Now, Rebecca was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. Another thing that we learned in Genesis is that private conversations don't really happen in this book. The last time one of these private conversations were happening, Sarah was listening in the tent tears, Rebecca listening in. I mean those things are hard to have in these days. So when Esau went to find, um, sorry, went to the field to hunt game and bring it, Rebecca said to her son Jacob, we see a little bit of favoritism there.

15:13Her son Jacob, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau. Bring me the game and prepare for me delicious food that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord before I die. This is a summary of the key aspects of this report. And then she has a plan now, therefore my son obey my voice as I command you. Now the careful reader of Genesis, we'll we'll find out her plan in just a second. Should pause there and maybe take a gulp. This word obey can also be translated. Listen, and we've heard it a couple different times, God rebuked Adam for listening to the voice of his wife when he took the temptation.

16:00Abraham did the wrong thing by listening to the voice of his wife or obeying the voice of his wife by taking Hagar as a second wife to try to have offspring through her. Now it doesn't, it's not always negative, but this should at least be like a in the mind of the reader. It's also repeated in verse 13, in verse 43. So Moses swans us to catch this, go to the flock and bring me two good young goats so that I may prepare them and make delicious food for your father such as he loves and you shall bring it to your father to eat so that he may bless you before he dies.

16:45Do you see what Rebecca's plotting here? Many of us, if we've grown up in the church, have heard this story over and over again. So we kinda lose the impact of this. It's like of course that's what he's gonna do. He's just gonna go lie. It's gonna, he's trick his dad. No big deal. No, it is a big deal. It's a big deal. The people who are first listening to this were the people on the edge of the promised land. Moses writing this to them. He's already given them his God's law in several other books and if they use those books to evaluate what was about what was being suggested here, they would be like that is a bad plan.

17:24Leviticus 1914 says, you shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind. If you dig more into that, you realize what's happening here is you are taking advantage of somebody's disability and you're using it for your own selfish purposes. That's what's being suggested here. Your father's eyes are dim, he's not gonna know it's you. Why don't you go steal his blessing on top of that in God's top 10, number seven, Exodus 20 verse 12, honor your father and your mother. Is this honoring his father that your days may be long in the land that your the Lord your God has given you. Isn't that ironic? The first command with a blessing, with a promise is being broken to try to get the blessing to try to get the promise.

18:19This is not a good plan. But Jacob said to Rebecca, his mother, verse 11, behold my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth man. Perhaps my father will feel me and I shall seem to him to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing. So why did Jacob push back? Was he like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I fear God. This is not good. God is watching over this. I'm supposed to like honor my father. Is that what he says He is? He's a master manipulator, sneaky guy and praise God that he redeems all of us and people like that. But at this point he cares more about the plan and he is a master plan maker and he is like, mom, I'm checking out your plan.

19:14And there's a really big flaw here. If I get near my dad and he is like, what is this? It's like baby's face. This is not my hairy son. I'm gonna curse you. He sees the problem. Well his mother says this in verse 13. His mother said to him, let your curse beyond me. My son only obey my voice and go bring them to me. You need to know that Rebecca is overpromising here. She cannot pass him a get outta jail free card or in this context a pass your curse on to me card. It doesn't work that way. Blessings and curses go to certain people and they affect them. She can't say this. She's trying to get him to do what she wants them to do.

20:15And this should remind us of another group of people who followed in this same line of thinking who said similar words When Jesus, the perfect lamb of God was beaten and standing before Pilate and Pilates like this man is innocent. And the people kept saying, crucify him. Crucify him. And Pilate goes for the basin of water to wash his hands and says, I wash my hands of this. What do the people say? Don't worry. Let his blood be upon us and our children. Let the curse that you'll deserve for turning over the spotless slam of God unjustly to death. Let that curse be on us. But they couldn't fulfill that.

21:04I don't know if that was the the thing that tipped Pilate over, but he went through with it and he faced the consequences for his actions and they faced the consequences for their actions. There was a curse on them and there certainly could be a curse on Jacob. But here's the beautiful thing. The only person that can give you a card that says give your curse to me is Christ. Galatians says, he became a curse for us.

21:36What a savior. Look to him. Listen to his voice. Rebecca can't make good on her claims but Christ can do you realize that you are under judgment. If you are not trusting Christ, look to the one who can take the curse for you. The text moves on. So he went and took them that is two goats and brought them to his mother and his mother prepared delicious food such as his father loved. Then Rebecca took the best garments of Esau, her older son, which she had with her in the house. And I scratched my head, he's a 40-year-old man married to two women. How are his best garments in your house? But we won't go there and put them on Jacob, her younger son and the skins of the young goat.

22:33And she put them on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck and she put the delicious food and the bread which she had prepared into the hands of her son Jacob. Now you need to realize just as Eve took the fruit and ate of it and gave some to her husband, in a very real sense, Rebecca has done all this work and now in Jacob's hands are what he can use to sin and he goes to action before we see what he does. Let me just ask this. There's a lot of family dysfunction that we've seen already. There's favoritism, there's scheming, there's plans for lying, there's heartless treatment being planned for one individual deception is about to be unfurled.

23:30Do you see significant dysfunction around you In your family system, in an organization that you're a part of in a group of people that you work with in some other place? Or do you just read the news and pay very close attention or see what's going on around you in the community and you're disheartened? They were living in a very hard situation and everybody was after one another. Selfish ambition was just going rampant.

24:03Is your heart discouraged about those things today? Do you believe that God can reach into your dysfunctional system and still be at work and still help and still allow you to hope in him? That's the call of this text and that's what his word says. Isaiah 46 10 says, I will accomplish all my purposes despite rampant un unrighteousness. And I'm not saying that we don't care about that. We don't stop that and that we don't repent. What I'm saying is despite that our God will accomplish all of his purposes as well. Psalm one 30 verse 130 verse seven says, oh Israel hope in the Lord for with the Lord is steadfast love and with him is plentiful redemption.

24:55Is that where your heart is going? Is your heart leaning towards despair and unbelief? Turn from that repent of that and say, God, help me. I believe, help my unbelief. Moving on to the next text and my manuscript is out of order. So give me a moment as I turn back to the correct page. Verse 18. So he that is Jacob went to his father and said, my father. And he said to him, here I am. Who are you my son? As he walks in here, the reader has this curse that might happen in the back of his head and the first thing out of his father's mouth is, who are you my son? This is not looking very good. Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn.

25:55This is first of many bold faced lies. I have done what you told me. No he didn't now sit up and eat of my game, not his game. That your soul may bless me. That's what he wanted. But Isaac said to his son, how is it that you have found it so quickly my son? So Isaac is tracking and perhaps much more sharp than his mother and he had thought he answered because the Lord your God granted me success. He's even adding religious manipulation into this thing and notice the Lord your God. He doesn't say the Lord our God. What does this say about the next generation? Will God be faithful to his promises?

26:49Then Isaac said to Jacob, please come near that. I may feel you and I am sure his heart is like leaping out of his chest, his worst fear. He's perhaps looking at these goofy skins on his arm saying, this is what I thought was gonna happen or these gonna work That I may feel you, my son to know whether you are really Esau or not. Yikes, verse 22. So Jacob went near to Isaac, his father who felt him and said, the voice is Jacob's voice but the hands are the hands of Esau. Whoa. But he's not in the clear yet. His voice doesn't sound like his brother. Verse 23. And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother's Esau's hands.

27:41So he blessed him. Now this blessing here is probably a greeting. This is not the official blessing that's still coming and the tension is still hanging in the air because in verse 24 notice he says, are you really my son Esau? And notice what Jacob, the ultimate trickster and the person who can fly by the seat of his pants says and he said, I am in Hebrew. That's only one word. So we sort of like, who knows my voice. So I'm just gonna say, yep, Verse 25. Then he that is Isaac said, bring it near to me that I may eat of my son's game and bless you. So he brought it near to him and he ate and he brought him wine and he drank Verse 26.

28:34Then his father, Isaac said to him, come near and kiss me, my son. So he came near and kissed him. We need to pause here over those words as well because we're about to unfold this massive betrayal where what the father intended to do is completely undermined by this other person. And these words I think can help those of us that know deeply the pain of betrayal from somebody that we trust. You see these words. So he came near to him and kissed him. If we are to read these in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is what most of the New Testament Christians read and some of the authors of the New Testament quoted from, if we read these words, they're almost identical to the words that Luke uses in Luke 2247 about another person who drew near to kiss another person to betray them.

29:34Listen to what Luke says in Luke 2247, speaking about Judas in the garden of Gethsemane. Luke writes these words, he drew near to Jesus to kiss him. If you look at those two Greek sentences except for the two, Jesus, they're the identical same words. They're in the same order, you know different parsings 'cause they're talking in different ways, but it's the same thing. Luke has this event in mind when he sees Jesus betrayed by Judas. Now what's the difference here? Isaac is completely oblivious. He does not know this, but Jesus knew exactly what is happening. He'd said ahead of time who was gonna betray him.

30:21He said over and over that it was gonna happen and yet he did it willingly. He received not only the kiss of betrayal but all of the things that would follow after that. So what does that mean for those of us that know deep betrayal, it means that Jesus understands deep betrayal and you in your deep betrayal in a very painful way, have a little window into Jesus's betrayal and you can know and love your savior even more and you can cry out to that savior. You can pour out your heart before him, which would what I would call you to do. Psalm 62 verse eight says, trust in him at all times, even in betrayal O people pour out your hearts before him.

31:17God is a refuge for us in different circumstances. This week I was pouring out my heart to the Lord and received his help, his healing, just expressing these are the things that are hard and I don't know why they're hard. Would you please help me? You can do the same thing. And if you need a biblical example of that, Hannah is a wonderful example in one Samuel one who faced great animosity and poured out her heart before the Lord. So verse 27 continues as he draws near to kiss him, Isaac does something 'cause he's still not convinced. Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, see the smell of my son is the smell of the field that the Lord has blessed.

32:08So Isaac is finally convinced and he launches into this blessing. May God give you the do of heaven and the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. The first hearers of this who are listening to Moses tell them their history would've thought, hey, that's the promised land. Verse 29, let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Those words, peoples and nations were both a part of of words, spoken to Rebecca about Jacob and about Esau when they were still in her womb. May let peoples serve you and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers and may your mother's sons bow down to you again.

32:56That is what was prophesied over them. The over shall, the older shall serve. The younger and the final blessing connects to the blessing of Abraham. Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. Taken straight from Genesis 12. So what just happened here? Isaac thought he was blessing the older son Esau, yet God's purposes of election stand and the younger son is blessed just as it was said before either of them were born or had done anything good or bad. So what is going on here? Sinful people are involved and you know God uses sinful people for everything he does through people 'cause we're all sinful.

33:41But I think the thing for us to wrestle with a little bit more is he's using sinful people to do sinful things to accomplish his good purposes. How does that work? Well, we'll see more of that in Genesis 50 or where Moses gets really specific and helps us think and see how God can mean something for good and people can mean something for evil. He can mean some evil things for good. We're gonna, we're gonna figure that out. But what we need to remember is that's what God does sometimes he's so sovereign that in a way that he is not culpable, not guilty. He can use the in the evil and ordain the evil actions of people to accomplish his good purposes.

34:20That's what he did in Christ. That's what he did in Christ. You can read Acts 2 23 to think that through, to help you try to wrestle with that, but that's what God does. He is sovereign over all things and his purposes will stand. Look at me at verse 30. After this happens, the account quickly moves to the aftermath and this deception being discovered. Verse 30, as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of his father, he saw his brothers came in from hunting. I mean that is like you talk about a close call. The guy who's just coming in from hunting who still had his weapons, probably something dragging along or over his shoulder, something like that.

35:15Sees his brother come out, he didn't see him. So just as he was leaving he shows up Verse 31. He also prepared delicious food and brought it to his father and he said to his father, let my father arise and eat some of his father's game that you may bless me. Note he's completely unaware of what just happened. His father, Isaac said to him, who are you? Same question, but that causes something in our hearts to go, oh no, he answered, I'm your son, your firstborn Esau. Then Isaac trembled very violently. The Hebrew there stacks up all these words of emphasis like this was this crazy trembling. What just happened?

36:07I think this is the moment where Isaac is disciplined by God and he's changed back and pushed in the direction that God wants him to go down the road. He wasn't going there before, but God intervened to mercifully discipline and correct his son. He says these words, who was it then That hunted game and brought it to me and I ate it all before you came. And I have blessed him. Yes, and he shall be blessed.

36:44Jacob was worried about a curse and maybe people were wondering as we were reading like, oh, can he like I'm gonna grab this from you and give it to him. No. This highlights the absolute permanence of this blessing. It's already happened, the time is up, it can't be moved and the rest of the narrative deals with the consequences for Esau and the potential consequences for Jacob. Verse 34, as soon as Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry. Everyone, no one had to be listening in. I'm sure many people based on that language heard something is not right in this camp.

37:35Verse 34 continues and Esau said to his father, bless me, even me also, oh my father. But he said, your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing. Esau said, is he not rightly named Jacob, which means cheater grabs the heel for he has cheated me. These two times he took away my birthright and behold, now he has taken away my blessing. Now you need to realize for Esau, two things can be true. At the same time, yes, he was cheated out of his birthright, but we also know that he also despised his birthright and he's missing these realities. He's still missing the significance of some of these things.

38:19Then he said, have you not reserved a blessing for me? Isaac answered and said, Esau, behold, I have made him Lord over you and all his brothers. I have given to him for his servants and with grain and wine I have sustained him. What then can I do for you? My son? The favoritism of a father comes back to haunt him. He's starting to experience some of the things and he's admitting I did it. I gave it all to him. Esau said to his father, have you but one blessing my father, bless me, even me also, oh my father and Esau lifted up his voice and wept.

39:06We really need to double click on this word wept, which shows up in the book of Hebrews as the word tears. He sought it with tears. He so much wanted the blessing. Hebrews 1215, beginning in 15 and specifically verse 16 and 17 is a word from this Old Testament text to the church today. It was to the church back then it was to a church that was facing all sorts of oppression and social, um, pressure to turn away from Christ and to renounce him. And the author of Hebrews grabs this account and says, you need to pay very close attention to what happened to Esau and be warned by it. So we need to take this warning to ourselves.

39:47The text has a commanding verb and it is C to it. It's a plural verb. That means be watchful, watch out for these things. And he lists a few things, but the one that connects to Esau is the third of those three things. Watch out or C to it that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau. And I don't think this is just talking to the church and saying each of you like watch out for your own selves that you're not unholy. I think it's also talking to the wider church earlier in Hebrews, there's a command be continually watching over one another that there be no evil unbelief causing you to fall away from the living God.

40:33So what's happening here is take a look at what happened to Esau and don't let it happen to you or those within your spiritual community. Well, what is that? It goes on and says in verse 16 or verse 17 for you know that afterwards when he desired to inherit the blessing he was rejected for, he found no chance to repent that we sought it with tears. Here's what's going on. Esau was living a life neglecting, not caring about loving, unholy things, not loving God. And then this big event happened where he gave up his birthright for a bowl of stew and like solidified that at this major turning point, he does not turn.

41:16He continues moving forward and there's all this season for him to turn and he doesn't turn. And finally when the blessing is taken from him, there was no longer any chance to receive that blessing. He persisted his whole life. He didn't turn and there weren't other people that that we know of. Maybe his family was like, wake up, you're going the wrong direction. But regardless of that, Hebrews says that's what we need to do. So this is a word to the Esau among us. Are you persistently moving in a unholy direction, not caring about the Lord as well? Wider church community? Are there people among you, people among the people of faith that you're sort of like, well, it's not that big of a deal that they're drifting away from the Lord.

42:01It's not that big of a deal that they're moving in these sinful directions and that steam is picking up or it's a word for those of you that are exhorting those around you to say, I am walking in God's ways. God calls me to call out to those Esau and exhort them to turn back and I'm doing that and I'm praying for them and pleading God, turn them back. So invite yourself into this situation and say, is any of that true of me? Am I persistently moving away from the Lord or am I ignoring those around me that are persistently moving away from the Lord? Or am I seeking to be faithful and I need more grace from the Lord to pray and pursue those around me that are in my community, that are moving away from the Lord?

42:43Membership is so important among the church. We need to be in the church and invited in and be shepherded by our elders and others and to let other people know so that others can have eyes on our faith. Move in that direction if you're not already there. And if you are a member, lean into that and let people know what's going on in your lives and let's exhort one another so that we're not like Esau and drift away.

43:13Verse 39, then Isaac, his father answered him and he does give him a blessing, but it's a little bit more, it's definitely a blessing. It says it's a blessing in the book of Hebrews, it's telling his future, but notice that it's the very opposite of the blessing that he gave to Jacob. Behold, rather than the fatness of the land and these things, he says, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be away from the dew of heaven on high verse 40, by your sword, you shall live and you shall serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from your neck. All of these are further foretelling of things that would happen in Israel and it is saying that you're gonna serve him.

44:01Verse 41 to the end of the chapter will very much be picked up in what Steven will preach next week, but it's important for us to just look at it quickly and I'll read it to you. Now, Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father said blessed him. And Esau said to him, the days of mourning from my father are approaching, then I will kill my brother Jacob. Do you see what's happening here? Right outside on the porch, sin is crouching at Esau's door, desiring to have him and to do the same thing that he did with Cain when he killed his brother. This makes us very concerned for the now blessed offspring of Isaac, but the words of Esau were were told to her son.

44:51Uh, but the words of Esau, her older son were told to Rebecca. Rebecca knows everything. So she sent and called Jacob, her younger son and said to him, behold, your brief brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you now therefore, my son obey my voice. Do you see this is the same pattern Rebecca finds out. Rebecca goes to Jacob, Rebecca tells him to obey her voice and then she hatches her plan, arise, flee to lab in my brother in Harran and stay with him for a while until your brother's fear. He turns away until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him.

45:34Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of both of you in one day? Like I said, it follows the same pattern and sadly she is. She's rightly concerned for her children, but it's still missing something. The reason that Jacob's supposed to be sent to Harran is to find a wife. Are these spiritual things not in her eyes? Why? Why doesn't she want those things? We're not told. Maybe that was in the background, but we're not told that. We're told that she doesn't want her to lose her children, which is very much a a noble and good thing and she wants to protect her child. She takes that and then she is the one that goes into the presence of her husband to try to pass on the plan to him in verse 46, which is where our text ends.

46:21Then Rebecca said to Isaac, I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me? Here's the offspring again here, marriage is brought up about sending him away and we don't know how much of this is self-interest and how much of this is moving Jacob in the right direction, but regardless, the sovereign God, despite all the dysfunction and mess is moving his purposes forward. There was a lot in this text and a lot of applications along the way, but as we close, let me just refresh your memory on a couple things.

47:04I'll ask you three main questions. Here's the first, is God using this sin filled account to highlight rebellion in my life? Is there sinful partiality in your favoring of some over others? Are you controlled by your passions? Are you persisting in worldliness? Are you rejecting his discipline? Are you re rejecting repentance altogether? Are you seeking to control others by getting to get your agenda accomplished? Are you disrespecting your parents and heartless towards them or are you nurturing bitterness and plotting revenge? One of the beautiful blessings that fulfilled from Christ was that he would bless you turning every one of you from your sins.

47:52Do you need to turn from sins that you see in this text and you see in your life today? Or are you struggling with despair and unbelief as you look at the dysfunctional family or system or organization or community or country that you're living in? Do you need to repent to God and say, help me, help my unbelief. Forgive me. Or finally, have you forgotten believer in Jesus, that Jesus mercifully redeemed you from a life of rebellion? Either that was very true in your life or could have been true and you could have been just as rebellious as this? I love Titus three, three through five, which says, for we ourselves were once foolish.

48:37He's talking to Christians disobedient, let astray slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. As I look back at this account, I can see several places in my life where I was walking the same ways as these characters in the Lord graciously redeemed me. And if that's true for you, may your heart erupt in kindness for his mercy and also apologize that you don't have that and and value that as much as you should.

49:20I'm gonna pray for us and then we're gonna sing to the Lord. Great God, thank you for accounts like these that capture our attention and get lodged in our brains and seek to build our faith and refine us. This is your history. You wrote this on the pages of human history and you wrote this on the pages of scripture. Would you use this text and would you use this body and would you use your exhorting words of your people to build your kingdom? Would you help us even now as we sing to reflect on our lives, see our sinfulness, bring it to you and rejoice in Jesus' great kindness to us. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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