Transcript

Okay, we're in Genesis 27, and I've asked Kathy, she's going to come and read the chapter
for us.
It's a long chapter, but it is important to kind of read the whole thing to get a picture
of the story together.
So Kathy's going to read it for us, all right?
Here you go, Doug.
When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called for
Esau, his older son, and said to him, my son, here I am, he answered.
Isaac said, I am now an old man and don't know the day of my death.
Now then, get your equipment, your quiver and bow, and go out to the open country to
hunt some wild game for me.
Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat so that I may give you
my blessing before I die.
Now Rebecca was listening as Isaac spoke to his son Esau.
When Esau left for the open country to hunt game and bring it back, Rebecca said to her
son Jacob, look, I overheard your father say to your brother Esau, bring me some game and
prepare me some tasty food to eat so that I may give you my blessing in the presence
of the Lord before I die.
Now my son, listen carefully and do what I tell you.
Go out to the flock and bring me two choice young goats so I can prepare some tasty food
for your father just the way he likes it.
And take it to your father to eat so that he may give you his blessing before he dies.
Jacob said to Rebecca, his mother, but my brother Esau is a hairy man while I have smooth
skin.
What if my father touches me?
I would appear to be tricking him and would bring him down a curse on myself rather than
a blessing.
His mother said to him, my son, let the curse fall on me.
Just do what I say.
Go and get them for me.
So he went and got them and brought them to his mother and she prepared some tasty food
just the way his father liked it.
Then Rebecca took the best clothes of Esau, her older son, which she had in the house
and put them on her younger son Jacob.
She also covered his hands and the smooth part of his neck with the goatskins.
Then she handed to her son Jacob the tasty food and the bread she had made.
He went to his father and said, my father, yes, my son, he answered, who is it?
Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn.
I have done as you told me, please sit up and eat some of my games so that you may give
me your blessing.
Isaac asked his son, how did you find it so quickly, my son?
The Lord your God gave me success, he replied.
Then Isaac said to Jacob, come near so I can touch you, my son, to know whether you really
are my son Esau or not.
Jacob went close to his father Isaac, who touched him and said, the voice is the voice
of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.
He did not recognize him, for his hands were hairy like those of his brother Esau, so he
proceeded to bless him.
Are you really my son Esau, he asked?
I am, he replied.
Then he said, my son, bring me some of your game to eat so that I may give you my blessing.
Jacob brought it to him and he ate, and he brought some wine and he drank.
Then his father Isaac said to him, come here, my son, and kiss me.
So he went to him and kissed him.
When Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, he blessed him and said, ah, the smell of
my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.
May God give you heaven's dew and earth's richness, and an abundance of grain and new
wine.
May nations serve you and people bow down to you.
Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you.
May those who curse you be cursed, and those who bless you be blessed.
After Isaac finished blessing him and Jacob had scarcely left his father's presence, his
brother Esau came in from hunting.
He too prepared some tasty food and brought it to his father.
Then he said to him, my father, please sit up and eat some of my game so that you may
give me your blessing.
His father Isaac asked him, who are you?
I am your son, he answered, your firstborn Esau.
Isaac trembled violently and said, who was it then that hunted game and brought it to
me?
I ate it just before you came and I blessed him, and indeed he will be blessed.
When Esau heard his father's words, he burst out with a loud and bitter cry and said to
his father, bless me, me too, my father.
But he said, your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.
Esau said, isn't he rightly named Jacob?
This is the second time he has taken advantage of me.
He took my birthright and now he's taken my blessing.
Then he asked, haven't you reserved any blessing for me?
Isaac answered Esau, I have made him lord over you and have made all his relatives and
servants and I have sustained him with grain and new wine.
So what can I possibly do for you, my son?
Esau said to his father, do you have only one blessing, my father?
Bless me too, my father.
Then Esau wept aloud.
His father Isaac answered him, your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, away
from the dew of heaven above.
You will live by the sword and you will save your brother, but when you grow restless,
you will throw his yoke from off your neck.
Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him.
He said to himself, the days of mourning for my father are near, then I will kill my brother
Jacob.
When Rebekah was told what her oldest son Esau had said, she sent for her younger son
Jacob and said to him, your brother Esau is planning to avenge himself by killing you.
Now then, my son, do what I say.
Flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran.
Stay with him for a while until your brother's fury subsides.
When your brother is no longer angry with you and forgets what you did to him, I'll
send word for you to come back from there.
Why should I lose both of you in one day?
Then Rebekah said to Isaac, I'm disgusted with living because of these Hittite women.
If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these,
my life will not be worth the living.
That's one passage there, isn't it?
But it's really important to get our heads around the whole story of what we're doing.
Let's just pray a minute.
Father, we just want to thank you for your word that is living and active and sharp and
cuts to our heart and divides between joint and spirit, and we pray, Lord, come and speak
to us this morning, come and challenge us, come and encourage us, come and move us on
in you.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Amen.
So, what is this all about?
It's interesting, isn't it?
When we go through Genesis, as we have been doing, it's kind of like a bit of a rollercoaster
ride, isn't it?
Some weeks, it's that we're up here and it's a great story and it's full of faith and we're
stirred like the stuff we heard last week, and we think, yeah, we get this, we're for
it.
And next week, you're into a chapter which is, my word, what are these guys doing?
You know, family, huh?
What a family.
I don't know what your family is like, if it's anything like the one in this story here,
or maybe your family is great, I don't know.
But when you read a chapter like this, you think, what is going on?
How is this?
How can this happen?
And we're reminded how fickle human character is, and yet how God continually uses fickle
human characters like you and I to bring about his plans and his purposes.
And just the context of this passage, if you're reading it thinking, what really is going
on here, is in the culture and society of that day, it was the custom for the father
as they were nearing the end of life to pass on this blessing to their firstborn son.
A little bit like, I guess, you might pass on all of your will to the firstborn son.
It's that type of thing that's going on in the story here.
And yet behind that very practical, earthy thing is the sovereign purpose and promise
of God, that we'd seen him speak to Abraham through the earlier chapters, and now passing
on through Isaac to the next generation to Jacob.
And yet today's passage is a bad story for everybody involved.
Back in chapter 25, we read how Rebecca loved Jacob, but Isaac loved Esau.
Favoritism never ends well in families, never ends well in families.
And we see that in the story today.
We see Isaac trying to go against the plan of God that God had spoken to Rebecca when
she was pregnant with the twins.
We see Esau break his oath that he'd made to his brother Jacob in chapter 25 and end
up wanting to murder him.
We see Jacob and Rebecca lie and cheat and act deceitfully to get what they want.
We see Jacob running away so that his mother, and she's the one, he's the one she loves,
his mother never sees him again.
And although Jacob and Esau make up by the time we get to chapter 34, their descendants
are at each other's throats for generations to come.
This is better than EastEnders.
Who needs soaps when you've got the Bible, right?
And yet through all of this that's going on, yet through all of this, the plans and
the purposes of God are unfolding.
How on earth can that happen?
What is that all about?
You see, God's promise to Abraham about his descendants being as numerous as the sand
on the seashore, we saw he spoke that to Abraham, and Abraham had to wait 25 years for Isaac
to be born.
And then when Isaac's born, he remains a bachelor for 40 years.
That must be so frustrating for Abraham.
He's thinking of the tension of how is God's promise going to be fulfilled?
And then he's married to Rebecca, and then they have children, and then you think, right,
it's going to really take off now.
No, things still don't go so well.
And that unfolding promise of God to Abraham passes to the next generation through the
words of a poorly sighted, aged old man who can't detect the difference between human
skin and goat hair.
Don't ask me how that one works, right?
And by a scheming mother and a scheming younger brother and a very angry older brother.
And on the surface, it can seem like the purposes of God are being fulfilled via deceit, via
cheating and other dubious practices.
And yet, if anything, this chapter speaks volumes about no matter what mistakes you
and I make, no matter what naughtiness we get caught up in, no matter what dodgy dealings
we have done or schemings we get involved with, God can not only use you, but fulfill
his plans and purposes for your life through you, despite all of that.
Hallelujah.
That is good news.
Right?
And as we've seen already, we're only at chapter 27 of the first book of the Bible, and we've
seen that carry on so often.
We've seen Adam and Eve think they can hide from God as he walks in the garden with them.
We've seen Noah rescue, not Moses, but Noah rescue all the animals in the flood and save
mankind and then as a bit of an issue of alcohol.
We've seen Abraham lie and cheat and pretend his wife is his sister and try and manufacture
the promise of God.
And now we see Isaac and Rebekah caught up with the same sort of shenanigans as they
do.
Where do people get the idea that God only calls and uses people once they've got everything
sorted out?
Why do people look at the church and think, oh, they're goody-goodies, they think their
life is sorted out?
It's tosh.
It's wrong.
Right?
And actually, maybe we should be more transparent about how messed up we are, and then the world
would see and realize this is where God works.
He doesn't work in the people who have got it all lined up and nicely, neatly boxed off,
but he works in the mess and the chaos and the distractions of life that goes on around
us.
The promises of God, his plans and his purposes are not stopped by the mess and chaos of our
human lives, which is good news, isn't it?
In fact, they sometimes seem to be the very catalyst that brings about those things.
Four things briefly from this chapter, I promise quickly.
I just want to say in passing, it's really important when we read passages like this
that we get our head around the fact of the culture in which we live today and how we
bring that when we read a passage of scripture and this tension of, does our society and
our culture tell us how to interpret scripture, or does scripture tell us how to interpret
the society and culture round about us?
What I mean by that, you can read this passage and feel really sorry for Esau.
Oh, come on, be honest, as you read this passage, that's right.
I mean, he's just the older brother who's naturally gone to his dad and asked for the
blessing, right?
And then he's deceived and cheated by his own mum and his younger brother, and we could
easily read this and feel sorry for that.
And that kind of difficulty is heightened when we look in the New Testament.
You know we've got to use scripture to interpret scripture, right?
So when Paul talks about this passage in Romans 9, and he's quoting, actually he's quoting
Malachi, but he talks about this passage, he says, God says, Jacob I loved, but Esau
I hated.
How do we work that out?
That doesn't fit very well with our nice Christianity, does it?
How can God say something like that?
And then he goes on and describes how God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy,
and he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion.
And they remind us, those verses and this passage remind us that there are times in
our lives when we need to lean back into the sovereignty of God, that we do not understand
everything.
And leaning and recognising that God is sovereign might be a problem for some of you, might
be a problem for someone here this morning, but that is such an important part of how
we read a passage like this.
You know, we all have fallen short, all of us.
All of us deserve the judgment of God, and it's only because he is merciful to us.
He has chosen to be merciful to us.
We do not deserve his grace by definition.
We talked about that when we looked at Sodom and Gomorrah, and it's resurfacing again in
this passage here.
Here we have a passage where God says mercy and grace to Jacob and not to Esau.
Now we've got the rest of eternity to kind of discuss that with him, and ask him what
was going on, right?
But at this point in time, in our lives here, we need to lean back into the sovereignty
of God and trust his good and perfect plan.
And the point I'm just making, it's really important when we read scripture that we recognise
that and take that approach rather than taking what is a common approach in the world today
in the society and culture we would live, which is godless at the end of the day, and
humanistic and secular, and would come up with a different rationale of how to read
that.
How to come up with the truth of scripture, learn how to handle it, and interpret the
times in which we live through the lens of scripture and not the other way around.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing I want to talk about is God will fulfil his promises, his word will come
to pass.
Isaiah 55 tells us that the word of God leaves his mouth and does not return until it has
accomplished what it set out to do.
Full stop.
And we see here the word of the Lord came to Rebekah, you can read it in chapter 25
verse 23, that when she was pregnant, the word of God came to her to say that the older
will serve the younger, that the blessing of God will come primarily to the younger
child.
And although Isaac and Esau tried to change that in the story we've read today, they weren't
going to do that because God has spoken.
And on the surface it may look like human scheming going on but behind that is the orchestration
of God's sovereign plan and purpose, that when God speaks his word it will be fulfilled.
Abraham had had to learn that, Isaac had learned that in his life, and now Jacob is beginning
to learn that in his young life.
You see it's not like when you and I make a promise, you know, because circumstances
change for us, don't they, and we reason ourselves out of something we previously promised
and say why we've changed our mind about something.
Circumstances change, you know.
The frivolity of life today reduces the sense of what a promise is, and when we read passages
like this we think, oh yeah, God's making a promise, but no, his word will not change.
It's not like I observe, maybe this is just the younger generation thing, they go on Facebook
to events.
Have you seen events on Facebook and you can say whether you're going or whether you're
interested or whether you're not going.
And I remember chatting to our daughters about this, they say they're going, but they don't
go.
And they're actually not even intending to go really, but they still say they're going.
This is not the kind of promise God makes, all right.
He doesn't say, I'm going to say this, but then I'm not really bothered about it.
There's not that frivolity.
And the problem is the politicians say one thing and do another, as we know really, really
well.
The characters have a media appearance of what they present through the media, but in
real life they are very different so often, and there's challenges going on, and we see
that in the news almost week after week, right.
And we live in a culture and a society where people's words and people's promises rapidly
become meaningless.
Nice.
That's great.
That was obviously the key part of the message.
Even in our own lives we change our priorities, so we've just started having our granddaughter
three days a week, which is kind of a challenge, and I'm rapidly learning that the list of
stuff I thought that we had to do, suddenly the priorities of it all changed because there's
this dynamic two-year-old in our life for eight hours a day, and you can't do the things
that actually I thought we could do, and we've had to change it all.
Not so with God.
He's trustworthy.
He is committed to his word.
He is committed to you and I.
He is trustworthy.
In Joshua, at the end of Joshua, in chapter 21, after they had gone into the Promised
Land and they'd won all their battles and they'd taken it all over, we read this.
So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their forefathers, and they
took possession of it and settled there.
The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn through their forefathers.
Not one of their enemies withstood them.
The Lord handed all their enemies over to them.
Not one of all the Lord's good promises to the house of Israel failed.
Everyone was fulfilled.
God keeps his word.
When he speaks, it will happen.
That starts in Genesis 1 when he speaks and says, let there be light.
Guess what?
There was light.
And he hasn't stopped speaking since, and when he speaks, what he says will happen.
Paul says the same thing when he writes to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians chapter
1.
He says this, but as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not yes and no.
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy
was not yes and no, but in him it has always been yes.
Well no matter how many promises God has made, they are in Christ, absolutely.
And so through him there are many spoken to us, the glory of God.
The promises of God are yes in Christ.
He is not a God who has changed his mind elsewhere, Paul writes.
He's not a man that he would change his mind, but his word is true and faithful and it will
come to pass.
And we need to get a hold of that in our lives, and I'll just bring that in personally.
God has doubtless spoken over your life.
Words about his love for you, his passion for you, words about his plans and his purposes
for you.
Maybe like Rebecca in our story today, that was a long time ago that you heard God speaking.
Maybe like Abraham, you've heard God speak and you've tried to make it happen yourself
and somehow it hasn't.
Maybe you think that you've lost it through getting things messed up in your life like
in the story today.
So many things can snatch away the promise of God over our lives.
The busyness of life, right, can just snatch away what God has spoken into you years, decades
previously.
The busyness that can snatch, the mess of life.
You can start to doubt, did God really say that to me?
It just seems really daft and unusual.
We can drift away from, we lower the bar of faith in our own lives and we settle for a
place of faith and living out our Christianity that actually is where we are just comfortable
but it is not where God intended us to be.
And he spoke a word to us years ago that actually we've let drift and we no longer respond to
that.
I'm here to say this morning that what God has promised to you, he will do.
I am confident that he who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion
until the day of Christ.
Hallelujah.
That God is true, his word is true and it will be fulfilled.
Maybe for you this morning it's a little bit like you've got those embers of God in your
life like coals glowing red.
They're not raising fire anymore but they've dwindled.
Maybe one or two of those coals are black but one or two of them are red.
I want to tell you this morning, God is ready to get down with you and start going, I'm
blowing on those embers in your life for his word to spring up and start to grow again
and new shoots of the Holy Spirit to get a hold of you and transform your life and move
you into the plans and purposes that he's got for you.
Number three, passionately pursue the calling of God on your life.
Because his promises are true, because his word over you will be complete and he will
fulfill it, the encouragement to us from this passage is that we should be men and women
who passionately pursue what God has called us.
On the face of it, we would not condone the scheming and the deceit we see that Rebecca
and Jacob do in this story and just to be clear, we don't.
And there are plenty of passages in the New Testament where it makes that very clear.
However, if we take a step back, what's going on here?
Well perhaps Rebecca is remembering the word of God that came to her when she was pregnant
all those years previously, that God had spoken and said the blessing of God will come
to Jacob and the promise of God that started with Abraham will continue through Jacob.
I'm kind of intrigued, this is a bit of a side conversation, I'm kind of intrigued that
when we look at Abraham and he tries to manufacture the promise of God by Ishmael, that's clearly
wrong and not on and yet what we seem to have here, interestingly enough, it looks a little
bit like Rebecca is trying to manufacture the promise of God and make it happen and
switch through Jacob.
I'll leave you to take that one away and discuss in your groups.
But on hearing of what Isaac is about to do and bless Esau, she is stirred to take action
and an action that is going to cost her, big time, because she will not see Jacob again.
But just think for a minute, if she hadn't taken that action, you know, maybe the blessing
would have gone to Esau.
Maybe Jacob would have just lived out a life as a home bird, counting down the years, an
ordinary life, you know, where the highlight of his life would be Strictly Come Dancing
every September and that was it.
Maybe he would just be ordinary, he would have missed the blessing of God on his life
and my cry this morning is I do not believe Jesus wants you to miss the blessing of God
on your life.
Today, this week, next month, next year, at all, but he wants us to have it all and to
take it all and he is passionate about that and the change in Jacob, whether he ended
up just being this home bird guy and just flitting away his life or whether the promise
of God came to him and whoosh, he was off, it all hung on Rebecca's determination and
passion to do something about it and I want to say this morning, Jesus is that passionate
about you and about me that we get a hold of the word that he has for us and that we
get a hold of the life that he has for us to transform us.
Have you ever been faced with that awkward situation of where there's something you want
to do and you kind of don't want to do?
You know, you're kind of, it's exciting to do it and I really ought to give it a try
but I'm actually scared at the same time.
There's a few people in this room who know I once went white water rafting, yeah, once
and never again.
That's one of those things.
I do want to do it, I don't want to do it, I do want to do it, I don't want to do it,
you know, because it sounds really exciting and it's thrilling and I'm going to get wet
but, you know, and it's difficult and in the end you do it because you don't want to back
down in front of your mates but that's a different story, right, but that kind of tension is
what is going on here, that actually Jesus is calling you and I to something far greater
than just living out three score years and ten or a little bit more and just eking out
an existence and then we die and that's it.
He's calling us into the purposes of God, that one day Jesus will return for a church
that has made itself ready and you and I have been caught up with that and you and I have
been given a place and a part to play to help God fulfil his purposes, not just to lean
back and just eat through life.
You see, here's the deal, do you want to see God's plans and purposes for your life happen?
You want to see what he will do in you and through you if you dare to believe.
We have the same choice that faced Rebecca here and Jacob here.
We can choose just to mooch along in life existing surviving or we can choose to passionately
pursue Jesus and his call on our lives instead wherever that takes us across the world or
across the street.
Last week we weren't able to be here but we prayed for Roland as he went off to Zambia
and he's arrived, as we've heard, which is great news but Angie and I remember Roland,
we go back to about 1982 when we first knew him and we used to chat about stuff then and
he had no idea of any of this but he is a guy who has chosen to passionately follow
Jesus as best as he is able to understand it and work it out and pursue it.
If we talked to him in 1982 and said Roland, one day you're going to go to Zambia to help
launch a massive radical education system to reach some of the distant tribes in that
land he would have, I don't know what he would have done, he would have said we're very silly
at the very least, you know, had no idea, you do not know where the plans and purposes
of God are going to take you once you make yourself available to Jesus for him to use
you and get a hold of you and like I say that may be across the world, it may be across
the street but you're doing it with Jesus and seeing what he will do through you and
in you.
Hallelujah.
And for some of us it's a little bit like Jesus is a firework, alright, and he's a firework
that we've got in the box and we take it out of the box and we read the instructions and
then we put him back in the box and we think, ooh, they're a bit dangerous, aren't they?
It might go wrong, it might topple over, it might explode, you know, we have to stand
at least 200 metres away when we light it, you know, it's dangerous.
And Jesus is here this morning to say it's time to light the firework and to let his
Holy Spirit ignite you to bring the purpose of God for your life into focus and to get
a hold of what Jesus wants to do for you, to say to God, your will, not mine, wherever
that goes, whatever that means and I particularly want to say, you know, for a younger generation
and bear in mind I'm 62, so make of that what you will, but to a younger generation
here this morning, what are you wanting to do for Jesus?
What is Jesus speaking to your heart about to stir you up for him, to give you passion
for Jesus, for his church, for his mission?
Maybe even you're sat here and think, yeah, actually I do feel I've had something of that
but it sounds daft to talk about it or embarrassing to talk about it.
And I daren't talk about it because it just sounds so out there and it's so not me.
But actually Jesus is here this morning to stir your heart and to agitate and to give
you and to eyeball you, say this is what I'm calling you to do.
And you know, years ago, she reminded me that, and when I say years ago, we were talking
about 1980, something like that, we're in a meeting where there's a guy speaking called
Alan Vincent and he was talking about passing the baton on to the next generation, to a
younger generation.
And at that time, 40 years ago, that was us.
Well, now it's another generation.
This is a story about passing on the baton.
This is a story about Isaac passing it on to Jacob and despite the mess around Jacob's
life that actually it happens.
And so here we are again, you know, there's a baton passing needing to take place to younger
people in this room and in this church and even in 146, that actually Jesus is passing
on.
Will you take up the mantle?
Will you take up the baton for him, for his church and for his mission?
And that is stirring us up.
It's time to step up to the plate, to not be passive.
The question is, what is he calling you to do?
And finally, I just want to talk briefly about God's mercy for today, because what we see
in this passage and throughout the Old Testament is the mercy of God shown to specific undeserving
individuals like Jacob at set times.
And Jacob goes away from this chapter carrying the blessing of God on his life, not because
of anything he had done, not because of his character, but simply because of the mercy
of God.
And the good news now is that the mercy of God is here for all people, because Jesus,
the Son of God, came to this earth 2,000 years ago, lived, was tempted in every way as you
and I are, yet did not sin or slip up once.
He was crucified on false charges, but actually he was killed taking the punishment that you
and I justly deserve.
He took it for us all, for you and for me.
And three days later, God raised him from the dead, and he now sits at God's right hand
with all power and authority.
And now because of that, the mercy of God is available to all of us.
But we have to want it.
We have to take it.
In the words of Billy Graham, we have to get up out of our seats and walk down to the front
and receive it from Jesus.
But it does mean no one can sit here this morning and say, I'm so undeserving.
How could I possibly do this?
Because you're absolutely right.
We are all so undeserving.
There is nobody more undeserving than anybody else.
We're all in the same boat.
You can't say and sit here and say, but what I've done is so bad, how could Jesus accept
me?
Because he took the full consequences of what you have done that is so bad on the cross
and those nails pierced his hands and his feet, and he died for you and for me.
To take that away.
To win freedom and open the way for God's mercy to transform our lives.
We've talked about the promises of God this morning, and some of those promises as you
come to him are the things that mess up our lives, that trip us up.
We can be free of them.
Hallelujah.
And this morning, maybe Jesus is knocking on the door, but to be in the good of that,
you need to ask him in.
You need to turn over the running of your life from you to him.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.