The Defiling of Dinah

The Defilement of Dinah

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Well, it's good to see y'all this morning. My name is Chet. I am one of the pastors. Logan, do you mind cutting the light on? I'm one of the pastors here. Last week we got to celebrate Easter together, and so we gathered, as many Christians around the globe did.

We gathered, we sang, we praised, we worshipped, and we delighted in the fact that Jesus Christ died on a cross. He was dead, he was buried, and he rose again to forgive us of our sins and to save us to himself. And as we did that, as we got together, as we celebrated, as we ate, as we had an Easter egg hunt, as we did a lot of fun and had a lot of fun, and across the world in Sri Lanka, there was a tragic attack that killed 253, as of the last count, people who were in hotels and people who had gathered in churches to celebrate the same gospel that we gathered to celebrate. And that is the reality of the world that we live in, that there is beauty and joy and delight, and there's pain and tragedy and suffering, and we can swap from one to the other in the blink of an eye.

And the story that we're going to be in Genesis looking at today is one of those stories of great tragedy and horrific sin. And if you'll grab your Bibles and go to Genesis chapter 34, we've been following through this story. If you don't have a Bible, there's a blue Bible near you, it'll be on page 17. And if you don't own a Bible, feel free to take this one with you, that would be our gift to you. We'd love for you to have a Bible, we'd love for you to read it. We've been following through this story where God made the world good.

He made it beautiful. He made it delightful. And then humanity sinned, and we brought into the world wickedness and pain and death. And then the question throughout Genesis is how is God going to respond to this problem? And that's the question we've had to continually ask as we've watched real people in real stories in real life have horrific things happen is how does God respond? And that's what we're looking at today.

In a story about rape and revenge, fear, hatred, murder, we're asking the same question, which is how do they respond? And more importantly, how does God respond? Now as we go through this, there may be some of you who, this is very close to home. In your past, you have had situations of abuse, that you have been abused or harmed, that you have abused and harmed others, or those near you whom you love have been harmed greatly. And this will drag up a lot of painful memories and a lot of emotion. My encouragement to you this morning would be, even in the moments when you feel like you want to just get up and leave, you just need to get out of the room, my encouragement would be to stay as we study this together, that we might see Christ and His answer, which is a good response to this, and it is sufficient and complete.

So my encouragement would be to stay, to continue to press in, to ask the Lord for help. Now I know that for some of you, I just made it really hard to go to the bathroom. And so there's still room, normal Sunday, if you need to get up, if you need to go out of the auditorium, you're welcome to, and nobody's going to be looking at you thinking, obviously this means something particular about you, but I did want to give that word of encouragement to those who don't want to hear this. So we're going to pray for God's grace. So I would encourage you to just a moment, pray for yourself, that you might hear this well, regardless of where you sit in the room, whether this is close to home or foreign to you.

Just ask the Lord for grace, and then I'll pray, and we'll read this text together. Lord, we need your help. Lord, we have been sinned against, and we have sinned against others. We have been harmed, and we have inflicted harm. So we ask for your Holy Spirit to work as we study your word today, that we might, as we look at this family and their story, and your response, we might see Christ, know him, and that we might respond appropriately.

In light of your word, in Jesus' name, amen. Chapter 34. Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had born to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. Okay, so Dinah, her name actually, it's similar to her brother's name, Dan. It means judge or avenge or justice. And that's going to be really interesting, because that's kind of what we're going to be asking in this text, is where is justice?

What ought to happen? How does this respond? But it says that she went out to see the women of the land. Now if you'll remember, Jacob had fled from his brother Esau because he had stolen from him. He then gets married, has a bunch of children. He has 11 sons at this point.

He's going to have one more. He has one daughter, Dinah. She's probably in her teenage years. He's 16 or up, somewhere around in there, 16 to 20. And they come back. He was supposed to kind of go back to Bethel, where God had said originally, I'm going to bring you back here, and then you'll worship me.

And when he said, go back to your homeland, it's kind of implied. Go back to Bethel, but he doesn't. He goes to Shechem. He lives near a city. Now the Bible does not tell us that cities are evil, but the Canaanite cities are.

The Canaanite people in this land have a very bad culture, and the Bible is not like us. And we say, well, all cultures are equal, and there's, you know, everybody just what they believe. The Bible doesn't do that. The Bible steps in, and because it's written over all culture, can say, that's good, that's bad, this one's okay, that's not. This part of your culture needs to go. This part needs to flourish.

And so it does that with these Canaanite cities. They're not good cities. And they settled near one, and so Dinah goes to see the people of the city. Now, Jacob has a tribe. They're set up in tents. They're kind of a roaming band, but they bought a little bit of land.

They have some tents. They have herds. They're not a huge group of people. If you'll remember, Abraham had a ton of people. He had 300 fighting men. Jacob doesn't.

He's got 12 sons. He's got some servants, but it's not a huge crowd. They're big, but not huge. They're a little tribe. They're next to a city, and that's kind of the setting for this. And it says she goes out to see the women of the land.

So she heads into the city. She wants to get to know some people. We don't really know why, what she's doing. We just know that she does this. And it says, And when Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land. Okay, so they're near the city Shechem.

This guy's name is Shechem. He's the prince. His dad's the king, tribal leader. He's over the city. It says, When he saw her, he seized her, and lay with her, and humiliated her. When he saw her, he seized her, and lay with her, and humiliated her.

From his position of power, he sees something that he wants, and he forcefully takes it. Now, we don't know how forcefully, but he did use his authority, and he did use his power, and he does rape Dinah. Now, the truth is, you should be able to go anywhere, and be inside any circumstance, and never have someone sexually assault you. The reality is that that is how God designed his world, but the reality that we live in, is that that is not how it works, any longer due to sin. And that we can get into positions, where we are unsafe, and we can get into positions, where we really should be safe, and still be drastically, horribly, wickedly harmed.

And what happens to Dinah, is horrific. And it's the type of thing, that happens in life, where from this moment forward, life is not the same. Not to say that she can't heal, and not to say that she can't mend, and not to say that there can't be good in life for her, but this is the type of thing that happens in life, where from now on, it affects your future. And so, there are instances in life, where things happen, horrific accidents, terrible sin, wicked actions, and then as we move forward, the question is, how do we best move forward, but there's no way to really, just perfectly fix, and go back to, what we would have considered normal.

We're going to have to find a new normal. And for, this story is not far from us. In the United States, one in four females, will be sexually assaulted in their life. That's the, the statistic we have currently, one in six males. One in six females, in the United States, will be forcibly raped. Most of them, will be raped by someone, that they know, are acquainted with.

And that's, what we're looking at here. And if this, is true for you, I want to say, I'm so sorry, and that should not have happened. It is horrific. It is evil. And God does have a response. This is true, for far too many of us.

We live with this reality. And the question is, how do we move forward? And what do we do? And we're, we're going to get to see in this story, how they respond. It's not going to perfectly tell us, what to do. We're going to have to look to Jesus, for that.

But we'll get to see, how they respond. And it says, and his soul, this is verse three, was drawn to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman, and spoke tenderly to her. So Shechem spoke to his father, Hamor, saying, get me this girl, for my wife. And far too often, this is what happens. This is the confusing mess, that comes out of this, is that he forcibly takes, what he wants.

And he's in a culture, where maybe this was relatively normal. He's the prince of the land. He's able to just kind of claim, what he wants. And then he speaks nicely to her. And this happens. It says his soul is drawn to her.

He's genuinely conflicted. He, he inside of himself, thinks he loves her, but he doesn't even know what love is. And he doesn't know how to act. And he chooses to do something, so wicked and horrible. And then he's just really kind. And we have that situation, where females are going, I know he does this.

I know he Acts this way. I know he hurts me. But then he talks nicely to me, and he says he loves me. That's what's happening here. And he goes to Shek, goes to Father Hamel, and says, get this girl for my wife. Now they would have at this point, at least, if not earlier, I would assume earlier, because she would have looked different.

They would have known at this point, she is not of our people. She does not live in this city. She's a part of this tribe, that is outside our gates. And so there is some amount, of cultural tension, that is happening here. They're not all under the same law. They're not all under the same rule.

They are in separate zones. She says, go, get her for me as a wife. Now Jacob heard, that he had defiled, he being Shechem, had defiled his daughter, Dinah. Now that word defiled, is very interesting. It means, to make unclean, to make dirty, to stain. And the reality is, that our culture, at one moment, will tell you, that sex is just sex, and it's just physical, and it's just an appetite.

And therefore, it ought to be free, and it ought to be shared, and it ought to be, we shouldn't look down on it. But as soon as we move, into the realm, of sexual assault, we are all willing, and immediately understand, that that isn't true. That it's not just physical. That there is, a reality, to spiritual ramifications, that take place, and when someone, forcibly takes this, when they claim something, that is not theirs, when they take something, from you, that is private, and should never, be taken. There is great harm, and it says, that she has been defiled. She's dirty.

And for so many, victims of assault, this is a reality, that they face, that they feel this, in themselves. Yet they're dirty. It says, when he heard this, but his sons, were with his livestock, in the field, so Jacob, held his peace, until they came. Jacob doesn't respond. We're going to see, that this isn't just, self-control. He doesn't respond, this whole time.

We don't, know why. At the end, we're going to see, that there's some fear, and some self-preservation here. And for those of people, who have struggled with, assault, and maybe finally told someone, this is one of the most painful things, that can happen, is that they just, don't really respond. Or at best, they just kind of want to cover it up, or they just want to move on. That's what Jacob, leans towards. He doesn't lead.

He does not pursue, justice. And we'll see, the consequences of that, in a second. So it says, Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to Jacob, to speak with him. The sons of Jacob, had come in from the field, as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant, and very angry, because what he had done, is an outrageous thing in Israel, by lying with Jacob's daughter. Because he had done, an outrageous thing in Israel, by lying with Jacob's daughter. For such a thing, must not be done.

We don't care, what Shechem's culture is like, this ought not to happen. It doesn't matter, if he's used to it, it doesn't matter, if he's okay with it, it's not co-signed, by the scriptures. It ought not to happen. It is outrageous, and they are angry, and indignant, and they are correct. There are certain things, that you ought to be angry over. They can mourn, that would be a correct response.

They can be angry, that is a correct response. Those are responses, that God has to sin. Do not believe the lie, that all anger is sinful. Now, what we do with it, can be. And what they do with it, ultimately seems like it is. But to be angry, and to respond violently, in ourselves, is acceptable, and godly.

But what we do with it matters. So it says that Hamor went out. Now, Hamor's the king of this city. We're going to hear him speak, we're going to hear Shechem speak. It is fair to assume, they would have ridden out, with some form of guard. We also find out later, as we go, that Dinah is not with them.

She's still in their house. So either way, they ride out in a position of power. They ride out to a, probably smaller group, than them. Most likely, with some force. And, in some ways, at least to the people of Israel, it feels as if, Dinah is still held hostage. So here's what they say.

But Hamor spoke to them, The soul of my son Shechem, longs for your daughter. Please give her to him, to be his wife. Make marriages with us, give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourself. You shall dwell with us, and the land shall be open to you. Dwell, and trade in it, and get property. Shechem also said to her father, so he's there, and to her brothers, Let me find favor in your eyes, and whatever you say, to me, I will give.

Ask for as great a bride price, and gift as you will, and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman, to be my wife. Okay, so they ride out to Jacob. Jacob is older, he's got a hip injury, he's holding his peace, but ultimately find out he's fearful. There are 11 indignant brothers, older, not all of them, but several of them, a good bit older than Dinah, who care greatly about this outrageous thing that happened. Hamor rides out as a king, with his son, the prince, and probably, it does not say, it's fair to assume, some force, but at least no Dinah, and they just say, Hey, my son really likes your daughter.

Let's have some marriages. Let him marry her. We'll pay you as much as you want. We're rich. We can't ask for as much as you'd like. We'll pay you.

They don't say, here's what we've done. We're sorry. This is a bad situation. They just ride in. They act as if this should be fine. The sons of Jacob, this is verse 13, answered Shechem and his father.

So you'll notice, Jacob does not respond. His sons do. And in the absence of godly household leadership, you will get other leadership. Somebody will step up. Jacob ought to be leading this situation. He does not.

He commits a sin of omission. We think that sins are things that we do, but often we can sin by not doing the things we ought to do. So the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah. So because of what he did, they're going to retaliate. They lie to him. It said to them, we cannot do this thing to give you our sister, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us.

Only on this condition will we agree with you, that you will become as we are, by every male among you being circumcised. Then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become one people. But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter, and we will be gone. So basically what they say is, the Mark of our tribe, the Mark of our people is circumcision, and so we can't intermarry with y'all because you're uncircumcised. But, if you'll get circumcised, then we have a deal. We'll intermarry.

You can have Dinah, we'll just become one big group of people. This is not exactly, but it is similar to, when someone is dating someone who is a non-Christian, and they are a Christian, and they say, well I can't marry you. We've seen this in our church family. I can't marry you unless you become a Christian. And then the guy's like, oh, yeah, I love Jesus. And the girl's like, great, that sounds great.

That's what's going to happen. They say, you have to have this Mark, you have to have this sign, and this has to be true for us to be able to be married, otherwise it's a deal breaker. And, their words pleased Hamor, and Hamor's son Shechem. That's verse 18. And the young man did not delay to do the thing, because he delighted in Jacob's daughter. Now, he was the most honored of his father's house.

That matters in just a second. So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of their city, and spoke to the men of their city, saying, these men are at peace with us. Let them dwell in the land and trade in it. It seems as if when they rode out, there was a bit of attention on, are we about to have to go into conflict with these people? Is there going to be war? Because it's a party's riding out to another tribe that's outside of us, and something has happened here that they may not appreciate.

So they ride out, they come back and say, we're at peace. The land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives, and let us give them our daughters. Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us, and to become one people. When every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised. Will not their livestock, their property, and all their beasts be ours?

Only let us agree with them, and they will dwell with us. Okay. One of the things I learned from my dad, who's managed business stuff, and who's done sales, one of the things he talks about is, when you're going to give somebody difficult information, he talks about you do it in the sandwich method. So a sandwich has a nice soft piece of bread, and has the main part of the sandwich. You don't call it a bread sandwich, it's called a ham and cheese sandwich, the part in the middle, and it has a nice soft piece of bread. That's exactly what they do.

This is when you're having to correct somebody. You bring them in, and you say, I want to let you know you've done such a great job, really appreciate how hard you work. And it's true, you don't make stuff up, and then you say, but we're going to have to work on the fact that you keep showing up late to work, because I want you here the full time you're supposed to be doing your great job. So let's punch in on time. But I really appreciate you, and I know you're going to fix this, and it's going to be great.

That's a sandwich. Soft. Main part. Soft. These guys roll in and say, we're at peace. They can live in the land.

This will be great. We'll give our sons. We'll intermarry. It's going to be wonderful. Everybody's going to have to be circumcised, but won't we own everything? And it matters that this is the most honored son, and this is the king of the city, because it says this, and all who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised.

All who went out of the gate of his city. So every male that lives, going out of the gate means they would be able to work outside the city, but they would come in and close the gates at night. They were under the protection of Hamor. They lived in this city. On the third day, when they were sore, it's not an easy operation, specifically for people who don't have good anesthetic, painkiller, ways to keep things clean. They had sharp utensils, but it's not an easy operation.

Three days later, they are sore in a place that makes it hard to do much of anything. If sore. Two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males. They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem's house and went away. So they say, we can't do this unless y'all all get circumcised.

They know everybody got circumcised. They wait. Just so y'all know, every time a new servant entered into this household, it was policy that all of the new servants would have to be circumcised. They understood how this worked, how it felt, and when you were most vulnerable. They wait. They know.

Day three. They've been doing this. They understand. Simeon and Levi take swords, just two of them. They walk in the city and they kill every male that breathes. They kill Hamor.

They kill Shechem. There was a moment when Shechem most likely laid up in his bed, sees a shadow fall across his doorway, sees the silhouette of a sword, sees a man walk into his room and for just a second, maybe two men, they probably both went, just a second realizes what's about to happen, can't move, can't respond and is cut down. And his blood pours out because he defiled their sister and they kill everyone. Now I understand, I've been made to understand as I share stories from my family and my childhood that I grew up in a home that maybe was different from other people's homes. When I was in about middle school, my dad taught us about a thing called equalizers.

He said, if you're going to fight somebody and you're going to win, fight them behind the gym, fight them in a bathroom, fight them wherever. You don't want to get in trouble, just fight them. If you're going to lose, don't fight them where they say, don't fight them in the bathroom, don't fight them behind the gym because no one will break this up. They will beat the fool out of you. You're going to need an equalizer. And he gave us some options.

Hard lunch trays are an equalizer. Throwing sand in someone's face is an equalizer. Waiting until they're sitting down and you're standing up, starting the fight before they realize it has begun. It's a good equalizer. It is an effective way to win a fight is to punch someone while they're still talking or while they're taking a test. Ask my brother Logan about that.

This is one of the best equalizers in the history of humankind. They set the odds in their favor and they slay everyone. And there's part of us that loves this. There's part of me that loves this. This is Braveheart, Gladiator, Patriot, and like seven Denzel Washington movies. There's part of us that so greatly desires that when someone harms someone and when someone wrecks someone that somebody else picks up a sword.

But that's an incomplete answer. verse 26. They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem's house and went away. The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city because they had defiled their sister. They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys and whatever was in the city and in the field and all their wealth and all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses they captured and plundered. So the men of the city had said, if we get circumcised then we'll get to own everything they own and it was actually the exact reverse.

If we get circumcised they'll soon own everything we own. So they go in, they take everything, they plunder. Now, there are places in the Old Testament where God specifically says and directs his people to do similar things. This is not one of those places. This was done by the will of Simeon and Levi not the will of God. Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi you have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land the Canaanites and the Perizzites.

My Numbers are few and if they gather themselves against me and attack me I shall be destroyed both I and my household. But they said should he treat our sister like a prostitute which is an indictment against both Jacob and Shechem. Should he treat our sister like a prostitute? Should he just take what he wants and then as long as he pays us enough we're okay? And the question here as Jacob wants to have a very non-response a very muted response a very let's just make everything easy let's just make sure we're safe let's not cause trouble in the household. And as his sons in violent anger Jacob's working out of fear his sons working out of anger and wrath they go exact revenge.

But the question is where is justice? How ought this to have been handled? And how does God respond? Chapter 35 God said to Jacob Arise and go up to Bethel and dwell there and dwell there make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau. So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him that's all these new families all these new women and children put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments then let us arise and go up to Bethel so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.

And to all who were with him that's all these new families all these new women and children put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments then let us arise and go up to Bethel so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone. So they gave to Jacob all their foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears

And Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem and as they journeyed a terror from God fell upon the cities and they that were around them and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob and Jacob came to Luz that is in Bethel that is Bethel which is in the land of Canaan he and all the people who were with him there he built an altar and called the place El Bethel because there God had revealed himself to him when he had fled from his brother and Deborah

Rebecca's nurse died and was buried under the oak below Bethel so he called its name Alan Bakuth God appeared to Jacob again when he had come from Padamaram and blessed him and God said to him your name is Jacob no longer shall your name be called Jacob but Israel shall be your name so he called his name Israel and God said to him I am God Almighty be fruitful and multiply a nation and a company of nations shall come from you and kings

Shall come from your own body the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you and I will give the land to your offspring after you then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him and Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him in a pillar of stone he poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it so Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him Bethel God does not show up in the middle

Of this situation he shows up after it seems as if a lot of it has been resolved although he does protect them as they travel so that what Jacob said was true which is they are going to find out what we did and all the rest of these people who are semi-related to them are going to come crush us God protects them and takes them to Bethel but then God says he renews his covenant with Jacob he renews this promise that had been made to Abraham and to Isaac

And to Jacob multiple times he renews it with Jacob and he says I am going to do this and it feels as if God's answer is insufficient it is incomplete that in this story we want him to show up we want him to bring clarity we want him to tell us who was right who was wrong how it should have been handled but God's answer to this is going to be absolutely complete and 100% sufficient and it is made here when he re-promises I am going to send the king his answer to this

Is found in Jesus and nowhere else everything else will be a limited earthly response carried out by sinful humans and so God gives a full and complete answer and it is made by way of promise here and it is made by way of fulfillment for us and it is through Jesus and I want to tell you the full and complete answer so we are going to spend the rest of our time Jesus has two tools with which he responds to this type of sin and wickedness really all types of sin and wickedness

But we ask it so often in these heinous moments first Jesus picks up the cross second Jesus picks up the sword first Jesus picks up the cross then he picks up the sword that is the answer that the Bible gives us for just a moment let us talk about the cross Jesus comes and lives a perfect sinless life loving teaching us how to love treating people even people who don't like

Christianity like Jesus he is so kind he is so loving all they want to do is pull off the deity part they just don't want him to be God but otherwise we can keep him he is nice he comes graciously lovingly and then he is brutally murdered the first thing he does is he picks up the cross in Isaiah 58 there is a prophecy about this and I want you to see that the first thing Jesus does

When he reveals himself to us when God becomes a human he meets Dinah and all the Dinah's that would come after her Isaiah 58 says he was despised and rejected by men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not surely he has borne

Our griefs and carried our sorrows yet we esteemed him stricken smitten by God and afflicted but he was pierced for our transgressions he was crushed for our iniquities upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed Dinah had someone in a position of power take her strip her humiliate her

And harm her and the first thing we see Jesus doing is coming and having people in positions of power take him strip him humiliate him and harm him that if Dinah were in one of our community groups and this week she were to share maybe for the first time or maybe just the most recent time this thing that has happened and through tears she would talk through what had taken place

That if Jesus Christ were in her group he could through tear stained eyes look directly at her and say me too that where Dinah is voiceless here we are told in this same chapter Isaiah 58 that like a sheep led to the slaughter he opened not his mouth that Jesus Christ was stripped brutally beaten humiliated and died that he is a man of sorrows who joins us in our sorrow

That throughout the Old Testament we read that God is close to those who mourn he is close to the broken hearted and the question is how close and the answer is he becomes one that close he does not sit far off enthroned and separate that he joins us in our pain but he does not just join Dinah as comforting as that is he redeems Dinah

Isaiah a few chapters later in Isaiah 61 it says I will greatly rejoice in the Lord Isaiah 61 is the chapter that Jesus reads in Luke 4 when he says he proclaims the day of the Lord's coming the year of the Lord's coming he says this has been fulfilled in your hearing this is how it ends it says I will greatly rejoice in the Lord my soul shall exult in my God

For he has clothed me with the garments of salvation he has covered me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels if you're in here and a minute ago when we talked about Dinah being defiled you felt shame creep up your back crawl up your face and you felt dirty all over again

I want you to know that in Christ he does not just join you he clothes you that he was stripped so that you can be clothed in righteousness that you can be like a bride or a groom on their wedding day as dressed up and as beautiful as we can get as much as he can cover you and make you shine that's what he does to us in the cross that he not only dies for our guilt but he dies

For our shame and he takes it away that you have been cleansed that you have been washed that you have been made new that he meets Dinah but he doesn't just meet Dinah he also meets Jacob and Shechem if you look back at Isaiah 58 it says he was pierced for our transgressions he was crushed for our

Iniquities upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed that is good news to those who have suffered abuse and that is good news to abusers that Jesus Christ took the punishment that you deserve and when you feel like you're going to be found out and someone ought to punish you the truth is that that is real you ought to be punished but the hope

In Christ is that he was punished for you that by his stripes you are healed and so for all the Shechem's in the room and all the Jacob's in the room and all the parts of us that are Shechem and Jacob where we've harmed and hurt and sinned that we get to run to the cross and we get to trust in Jesus who bears our iniquity and sheds his blood that there was a moment

In human history when Shechem's blood spilled out onto the dirt and onto the clay and there was a moment in human history when Jesus did the same for all those who would trust in him he bears iniquity the first thing Jesus does is he picks up the cross he takes wrath in our place that's what 1 Thessalonians 1 says we are waiting for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead

Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come when we talk about being saved and people say what does he save us from he saves us from our sin he saves us from the wrath that our sin is owed see Jesus first picks up the cross we stand between these two moments in history but the next time we see him he'll be holding

A sword he picks up the cross he suffers once and then he picks up the sword this is actually what he says to the Sanhedrin as I was reading through this this past week as we led up to the crucifixion Jesus before the Sanhedrin they're asking him all these questions and he has an answer they're accusing him of all these things and he has an answer and finally the high priest

Says I adjure you by the living God are you the Christ the son of God he says by God swear by God and answer this question and Jesus says you said it which isn't super cryptic it means bingo you guessed it you called it and then Jesus says this you have said so but I tell you from now on you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the

Clouds of heaven he says this to a group of religious leaders and they did not think it was cryptic we read it and we're like oh they rip their clothes and freak out because he just quoted Daniel 7 he looked at them and said in this moment you are seated above me and in this moment you're going to crucify me and right now I'm picking up the cross

But the next time you see me I'll crack the sky open and I'll be holding a sword that's what he said because this is what Daniel 7 says behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man he's telling him right where he's quoting from he came to the ancient of days that's the father and was presented before him and to him was given

Dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples and nations and languages should serve him his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom is one that shall not be destroyed he said you guessed it I am the one who rules and reigns for all eternity and they rip

Their clothes and say what more do we need he's claimed to be God and the truth is if he were making that up sure he blasphemed the problem is he wasn't he picks up the cross once and then he returns with a sword and the next time the Sanhedrin saw him

It's when he's cracking open the sky the next time they saw him he was standing next to the ancient of days as a ruling reigning king through all eternity 2 Timothy 4 1 tells us that he will judge the world I watched in parts with my son yesterday I watched Aquaman and he goes and it's all this mess

And all this chaos and all this brokenness and there's this moment at the end of the movie and this isn't going to ruin anything for you because you knew it was going to happen there's this moment in the end of the movie he busts through the ground he's riding on the top of this giant sea creature

He's wearing his shiny gold Aquaman wetsuit thing he's holding his shiny gold trident and there's this moment where all of his enemies suddenly realize this person that looks so humble and pathetic is now the king and he's the right king and he's

The real king because he can talk to the animals and all of a sudden all their little sharks just turn on them and it is awesome as awesome as Aquaman can be and it pales in comparison to the moment that Jesus Christ

As Revelation 19 says stands before the sky the sky rolls back he's on a horse he's got a sword he's got a robe covered in blood you see Jesus in history is covered in blood

Twice once it's his the next time it's his enemies once it's his and the next time it's the unrepentant it says he treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath

Of God that he actually grabs people together like grape clusters and stomps them that his sword kills everyone there's this moment in the book of Revelation where

They're seeing into the future and it says that all those great and those small those rich and those poor those kings and those

Homeless it says they all who were unrepentant it says that they yell to the mountains and the rocks and the buildings and they

Say fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the

Lamb you see he was a lamb who was slain and then he returns with wrath his day of vengeance the great day of

Their wrath has come and who can stand second the Thessalonians one Paul's writing to the church and he says he's talking to them about

Their suffering and he says God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who

Are afflicted as well when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire inflicting vengeance on those who

Do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus they will suffer the punishment of eternal

Destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified

In his saints and to be marveled at among those who have believed there are some in our culture who would tell you that

Our God is like Jacob and he just wants to love and he just wants to make everything nice and he just wants to

Calm everything down and when we begin to believe that and tragedy strikes that God is too weak to handle it and where there

Is no leadership and where there is no justice there will be blood there will be violence there will be vengeance that if God

Does not take up sword and so what do we do how do we respond there is a short answer that is a short

Lived answer and it is found in Romans 12 and Romans 13 Romans 12 he says beloved do not avenge yourselves leave it to

The wrath of God the truth is in Jesus taking up the sword he meets Simeon and Levi and they are free to put

It down because it does in Romans 13 he says that God has entrusted the sword to the governing officials that there is a

System of justice that we are allowed to pursue people can go to jail ought to but when that fails and it often does

Vengeance repayment belongs to the Lord and as we sit between these two moments I want to read something for you it is a well

Known passage in John 3 16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should

Not perish but have eternal life that's the cross for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world that's

The cross but in order that the world might be saved through him that's the cross whoever believes in him is condemned that's the

Cross but whoever does not believe is condemned already that's the sword because he has not believed in the name of the only son

Of God that's the cross and the king whoever believes in the son has eternal life that's the cross whoever does not obey the

Son shall not see life but the wrath of God remains on him that's the sword Romans says Paul's writing and he's talking to them about their sin

And how they judge me I want the sword I want repayment when I sin I just want you to be calm about it I didn't

Really mean it and Paul says you who judge do you not practice these same things and then he says do you not know

That God's grace and kindness are meant to lead you to repentance that the cross is to show you how much he loves you

That you might for with your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourselves on the day of wrath here is the beautiful

Glorious good news of the gospel every single sin will be paid for there is not a sin that has been committed against you

There is not a crime that has been committed there is not a single person who has gotten away scot free there is not

Someone who was tried and not convicted and got to live out the rest of their days in peace that will not pay for

Their sin blood will be shed either on the cross or on the sword your sin will be paid for either on the cross

Or on the sword and we stand in the middle this is why John the Baptist comes and the Pharisees come to him he

Says who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come and that is the correct response to flee from the wrath

That is to come so for those parts of us that are Dinah and for those of us who are Dinah go to the

Cross where Jesus meets you and becomes you and clothes you and gives you his righteousness and washes you clean and makes you new

Go to the cross and for all the parts of us and all the times that we have been shechem and we harmed and

We hurt go to the cross where you can have your sin paid for the right blood shed for it because blood will be

Shed and for those of us who are Simeon and Levi and all the parts of us that has fury and rage towards the

Lack of justice and the God forgives you and he mends your heart and wait patiently for the day that he picks up the

Sword that belongs to him not to you there's hope in the cross but one day that hope will be gone the sky will

Rip open the king will return and every sin will be paid for the ones you think are hidden the ones you think no

One knows about there will be blood and it will either be his or it will be ours and those are the only two

Choices and if you have not placed your faith in Jesus run to him and ask him to forgive you and ask him to

Heal you and beg him to have his blood shed for your sin and this day that is a day of wrath becomes a

Day God on him on the cross that I'm forgiven and free not because I'm good not because I'm holy not because I'm worthy

But because I'm hiding behind Jesus and his blood covers me my sin will be paid for we can trust that all sin will

Be paid for Matt is going to come back up and we are going to sit for a moment he's going to sing a

Song far off as we sit in this moment waiting for those who have harmed us and hurt us to pay sitting in pain

And suffering that we feel like we can't shake trusting in the cross he's just going to sing and we're just going to sit

Feel free to sing with him pray trust rest focus on the words whatever we need to do my hope is that all around the

Room we would be running to the cross trusting in the sacrifice that was made on our behalf the hope that is given to

Us in our pain and God's supreme justice to either redeem sinners like us and to forgive them or to repay them and for

Many of us right now that's the choice you get to make and I would encourage you to flee the wrath that is to

Come and to run to the cross where your sin can be paid for where blood can be spilled and where you can be

Made new and be forgiven let's pray that we ask that in this moment your Holy Spirit would work that you would help us

To trust you and your supreme and glorious justice and for those of us who are so overwhelmed by anger that we would be able

To put the sword down and trust that you wield it properly and for those of us who feel dirty may we know that

We have been clothed in Christ if we just come to you that you will make us new you'll make us holy and blameless

And above reproach and Lord for those in this room and for those of us who have sin may you remind us to hide

Behind the cross again that your wrath has been poured out our guilt is gone there is no condemnation for those who are in

Christ Jesus praise be to his glorious grace and for those who have not trusted in you we ask Lord that they would only

Know you in the cross and would never face your sword in Jesus name Amen

Wrestling with God

Wrestling with God

Chet Phillips

Transcript

It's good to see y'all this morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. If you're new and I haven't had a chance to meet you yet, hopefully I'll get to soon. It's good to see y'all. Grab a Bible.

Go to Genesis chapter 32. It'll be on page 16 if you grab one of these blue Bibles. If you don't own a Bible, steal this one. It's our gift to you. Take it home. Read it often.

We want you to have a Bible. We have been walking through the book of Genesis and following along with this family, seeing how God has worked through human history and how he specifically has chosen this family that he is going to, he says, through them he's going to make a people. He's going to give them a place. He's going to bless them and he's going to bless the world. And we've been following along with Jacob. Now, Jacob was a twin.

His mama, Rebecca, was pregnant and she was pregnant with two children. It's the first children she had had. Pregnancy is tough. This one was tougher. It was hard. The children inside of her fought one another.

They didn't get along from before they were born. Esau is born first. Jacob comes out second. Jacob comes out holding on to Esau's foot. He was a very close second. And he comes out holding on to Esau's foot.

And this matters a lot. The names they give their children are basically hairy and foot grabber. They name them the way they look. Esau's big, kind of hairy. Jacob comes out second. He's holding on to his foot.

And the word they use, Jacob, means sneaky or tricky or deceiver. And it kind of follows him the rest of his life. That's what they name their children. And it matters that he came out second because in some ways in this patriarchal society, it's like they were children of a king. So here's what that means.

If you have a family in a monarchy and there's a king and a queen, their firstborn son will get to be king. You ever seen the line, King? It was the firstborn son saying, I can't wait to be king. Singing that song, that's who gets to be king. And the secondborn son gets to be the king's brother. That's it.

You get to see him. You get to see his crown. Maybe he'll take it off, let you look at it. Maybe he'll let you polish it up for him, wear it at night, give it back to him. I don't know. But you don't get to be king.

And that's kind of how this worked. Esau's firstborn, so he gets the birthright. He gets the blessing. He gets the patriarchy. And Jacob coming out, holding on to his foot, close, silver medal, gets to be Esau's brother. That's it.

And so Jacob spends his life fighting with, wrestling with Esau over this. He eventually tricks him. He takes advantage of him. Esau wasn't real tricked because he knew what he was doing. But he sells his birthright for some soup.

And then Jacob dresses up like Esau, actually puts on a little Esau outfit, and tricks his father, who was going blind, into receiving the blessing. Now, this is a big deal. He got the birthright through the soup transaction, which was taking advantage. But then he just lies and tricks his father and his brother, and he steals a blessing. Now, the blessing is priceless. It's not something that he can give back.

It's not something that he could exchange something else for. He steals something priceless. Now, think about this for a second. If you had twin brothers today, one of them doing okay for himself, well-liked in the family, and the other one, not so much. But this one, because they're twins, he just kind of steals his brother's identity.

He goes and closes out his 401k, closes out his bank account, goes and takes his car, because he looks like him, and he knows how to do the signature. He sells his car. And he suddenly puts his brother in a bind. All of a sudden, his checks are bouncing. His things are getting repoed. He's getting in trouble.

And he realizes that his brother has just tricked him. He's just pretended to be him and stolen everything he has. That still pales in comparison to what Jacob did, because Jacob took something priceless. I don't care if he, the illustration I gave, I don't care if he took $100,000. That can get, you can get that back. You can't get this blessing back.

And so when he does this, Esau, who is big and hairy and lives outside and hunts, he's like Chewbacca, has the crossbow and everything, decides, I'm just going to kill Jacob. And so Jacob, who has torn this family apart, basically he and his mom have to come up with a reason for him to leave, and they dress it up as best they can. They do bless him and send him out, but he leaves with a stick. Give him a walking stick. And they say, hit the bricks. Or, didn't have bricks hit the dirt.

I don't know. Head to the woods. And he leaves. He leaves, sent to go find a wife. He ends up finding four. And he lives in Haran, marries these wives, and then at some point God comes to him and says, it's time to go back home.

God, actually the blessing works. God says, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to give you the blessing that was in Abraham and Isaac. It's going to come to you. You're going to have a people. You're going to have a place.

You're going to be blessed. And now it's time to go back. He'd gone 500 miles away. Now it's time to come back. And that's where we pick up. Genesis 32.

I'm going to pray. Today's text is just great. And we're going to study it together. And it's going to be good. All right.

God, we pray that you would help us speak to us this morning. And you'd help us to listen. We love you. And we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Jacob went on his way.

He's been sent back home. And the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, this is God's camp. So he called the name of that place Mahanaim, which means two camps. His camp, God's camp. So he's traveling.

You take a whole group of people. You'll set up camp. He comes in. He sees angels. And he thinks, oh, we're in God's camp. And then it basically seems like they just kind of stopped there.

It says, Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother, in the land of Sire, the country of Edom, instructing them. Thus you shall say to my Lord Esau. Thus says your servant Jacob. I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. I have oxen, donkey, flocks, male servants and female servants. I have sent to tell my Lord in order that I may find favor in your sight.

You see, Jacob understands something. When God tells Jacob it's time to go back, Jacob understands that going back to the land of promise where God intends to bless him, he has to go through Esau. He doesn't just get to roll back in there, set up his camp and hope for the best. He knows that when God's sending him back, God's sending him back to and through Esau. Now, last he saw Esau, Esau was planning on killing him. And there's got to be a great amount of fear.

And in some ways, Esau personifies, he in human form represents to Jacob all the shystery, tricky, sneaky, sinful mess that Jacob's ever done. He's the person in his life that just shows Jacob's sinfulness, his brokenness, his wickedness. And Jacob knows that he's got to go through Esau to get to the promise. So he sends messengers to Esau. Now, if you'll just if you'll try to sympathize with Jacob for a second. If you knew that in order for your life to move forward and to be good and for you to follow what you were supposed to, you were going to have to face the people that you had wronged, the people that you had harmed.

If you knew that you were going to have to stand face to face with your sin and the consequences of your sin. Can you imagine the knot that would be tied in your stomach? The truth is, the reality is, is the Bible says that all of us will stand face to face with the weight of our sin. Jacob has to do it with Esau, but all of us will. Maybe you spread yours out. Jacob concentrated his.

He focused it primarily on Esau. Maybe you spread yours out. Maybe yours travels across high schools and Job sites and cities, but it's spread out. But one day you will stand face to face in judgment with your sin. And that's what he's facing. He's got to go through this.

He's got to recognize his sin. He's got to stand face to face with what he's done. And that's what he does. He sends messengers to Esau. And he says, I've sent to tell my Lord in order that I may find favor in your sight, knowing I can't just sneak past you. I can't just try to live here without you just haunting my dreams and suddenly being able to show up.

I know I've got to talk to you. I know I've got to address this. All right. Six. And the messengers returned to Jacob saying, we came to your brother Esau and he is coming to meet you. And there are 400 men with him.

Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him and the flocks and the herds and the camels into two camps, thinking if Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape. So he says, go tell him I'm coming back. Call him my Lord. Tell him I'm his servant. He sees his guys coming back.

They're moving a little bit too quickly for comfort. They show up. They say, all right, we told him what you said. Esau is on his way and he's bringing 400 men. Now, they can't be that far behind these people. And Jacob's not just I mean, he's greatly afraid and distressed because this sounds like a war party.

He thinks he was going to kill me by himself. Now he's going to kill everybody. He's bringing all his men with him. This is terrible. And his first plan is just let's just separate and then half of us can try to get away. Then it says this.

And Jacob said, oh, God of my father, Abraham and God of my father, Isaac, a Lord who said to me, return to your country and to your kindred that I may do you good. I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that he has shown to your servant. For with only my staff, I crossed this Jordan and now I have become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him that he may come and attack me and the mothers with their children. But you said, I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.

Jacob prays. We've seen him converse with God very little. He's been we've watched this guy's whole life and his relationship to God has been tumultuous and and sparse. But he prays in this moment. He prays. And so this is good for Jacob.

And you guys, it's a pretty good prayer. I was praying with my four year old about a week ago. He prayed and then I prayed and we got done. He said, Daddy, was my prayer good? I was like, yeah, buddy, it was a good prayer. And he said, it was better than your prayer.

Not wanting to bring competition into the prayer atmosphere. I said, well, maybe we tied, you know, and he went, OK, well, let's pray again. He does not want to tie. There are rankings in prayer, just so you know, there are good and bad prayers. Jesus says the Pharisees pray this pompous prayer that puffs themselves up. The truth is any prayer that's a genuine prayer is a good prayer if it's humble and genuine.

But this one's actually pretty good because what he says is, God, here's who you are. And then he says, I'm doing what you told me to. You're the God who told me to leave and to come here and that you're going to do me good. And then he says, I'm not worthy. Here's who I am. I'm not worthy of the least of the things you've given me.

That's beautiful to hear rolling off the tongue of Jacob because so far he has seemed kind of cocky, kind of sneaky, kind of. And he hears a little bit of humility. He says, I'm not worthy of all that you've done for me. And then he says, here's the situation. I'm afraid and I think Esau is going to kill everybody, not just me, but the mothers and their children. And then he says, but you promised to do me good.

That's a good prayer. God, here's who you are. Here's what you've promised. Here's who I am. Here's what you've promised. So he prays.

Then it says this. So he stayed there that night. So he comes. This is the Lord's camp. The angels he sees kind of shows that he's in the presence of God. So he's like, all right, we're going to stay here.

There's two camps here. I'm going to send them on. This is kind of encouraging that God's people, you know, God's angels are here. So I'm going to send them on to get this news. They come back and he just stays there in that camp that night. And from what he had with him, he took a present for his brother Esau.

200 Female goats and 20 male goats. 200 ewes and 20 rams. 30 milking camels and their calves. 40 cows and 10 bulls. 20 female donkeys. 10 male donkeys.

And then he handed over to his servant every drove by itself. And he said to his servants, pass on ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove. He instructed the first. When Esau, my brother, meets you and ask you to whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?

Then you shall say they belong to your servant, Jacob. They are a present sent to my Lord Esau. And moreover, he is behind us. He likewise instruct the second and the third and all who follow the droves. You shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him. And you shall say, moreover, your servant Jacob is behind us.

For he thought I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me. And afterward, I shall see him face to face. Perhaps he will accept me. So the present passed on ahead of him and he himself stayed that night in the camp. Okay. He splits his camps up.

Then he prays. Then he comes up with this present idea. And this present idea doesn't sound like that bad of an idea. He's going to give Esau gifts. This is going to slow Esau down. Maybe let's give him a little bit of time to think.

And while he's thinking, let's give him some presents. That's what he's doing. It doesn't tell us whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. It doesn't tell us that this was in humility. This isn't in restitution. This is, it says, maybe it'll appease him.

And then he says, after that, I'll see him face to face. And what we see held together so clearly here in Jacob is half of this is obedience. Half of this is faith. He's praying. We've never seen that. He's going to go see Esau face to face.

He's going to go face what God's given him. And half of this is old Jacob. Making a little schemey plan. Coming up with a cool idea. If I could just do this. Maybe it'll work out.

And the reason I love that when I notice that in the text. Isn't that us? That's our church family, y'all. You're walking in life. I'm trying to follow Jesus. I'm going to do this thing.

I'm doing what he told me to. Something happens. And then boom. Half and half. Talk to you one day. I've just been praying.

I've just been trusting the Lord. Prayer hands. Hallelujah. Emoji. Whatever. The next day.

All right. Well, I may have an ounce of weed on me. I'm really stressed out. Okay. I've been praying. I've been trusting.

I'm following the Lord. I'm doing what I'm supposed to. You know what? I called her up and I cussed her and her mama out. Okay. Half and half.

Half repentance. Half following. Half praying. Half running back to what we used to chase after. Half running to what we used to make us feel good. Half running.

Blowing off steam. Whatever. That's Jacob. So he's growing. He's coming along. He's back and forth.

Let's see what happens. The same night. He arose and took his two wives. All right. He can't sleep. Like he just is.

He's antsy. He gets up. He takes his two wives. His two female servants. His 11 children. And crossed the ford of the Yabak.

So he said he was at the Jordan. Now he's at like the Yabak part of this. And it's a ford. Which means it's a shallow part. You can walk across. And so he takes his wives and children across.

He's getting them to the other side. He's trying to get them to a safer position. Maybe. Maybe he's just thinking. All right.

We got to just keep pressing forward. We don't exactly know where he's kind of lining them up in relation to where Esau is. He's got children at varying ages. He's taking them across. Some kids are being held. Some are maybe you're holding their hands.

Some of the older kids are maybe holding kids. He's got 11 kids. He gets them across. And Jacob was left alone. So he comes back across.

Maybe he's checking. Making sure everything. Everybody got across. He's by himself. We don't know what he's going to do. If he's going to pray.

And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. Okay. What? That's written in the text intending to be a surprise. Like it's as surprising to us as it was to Jacob. He's getting his family across.

He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. He's stressed out. He comes back. And now in the dark at night, there's a man who wrestles with him until the breaking of day. We don't know at what point they started wrestling.

We just know they wrestle until the breaking of day. Now that word wrestle means dirtied. They rolled around in the dirt. This was a fight. Which, I mean, if you're in the woods in the dark at night and a man comes and lays his hands on you, that's a fight. I mean, let's be real.

Adrenaline is pumping up past your ears like you are. And they're fighting. Now, at this point, Jacob's in his 60s. Now, he would have been a healthy 60. He was tough. He was out in the world.

He was working. So you saw him. When he said he was 65, you'd have been like, 65? That's what he looked like. We don't know if he was sitting. And all of a sudden, he heard, and he turned just in time for somebody to tackle him.

We don't know if somebody walked up on him. And he was like, hey, who are you? Are you one of the what's going on? And then they just grabbed him. But we know at some point they're on the ground.

Like, not like a pretty fight. You ever seen like a good, like a movie in a good fight? And they're like kicking and punching. And it looks nice. This does not look nice. This is a wrestling, dirty, somebody's got somebody's head smushing them into the ground kind of fight.

Fingers in the face like this. The kind when you break middle schoolers apart, they're sweating and red. That's this kind of fight. If you watch UFC, it's the boring part of the fight. Where there's like tangled up. And people are like, what is this?

It's like man sport. They're wearing underwear and hugging each other. This is weird. Yeah, but in a minute, they're going to catch their breath and go back to punching. That's what they're doing. Until the breaking of day.

Who is Jacob fighting? We do not know. Jacob does not know. He's trying to win. It's going to slowly kind of reveal this to us. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob.

Okay. Nobody's winning. Both tired. Both sweating. Both dirty. Rolling around.

Fighting. He touched. He touched. His hip socket. And Jacob's hip. Was put out.

Of joint. As he wrestled with him. Okay. The word touched. Means. Touched.

Touched. That's what it means. It means touch. There are like one or two places in the Bible where it is translated strike. But they're trying to read into the context there.

But the word means touch. This is like he's fighting. And the person he's fighting does the Kung Fu Panda Wushu finger hold thing. Skadoosh. And his hip. Pops out of joint.

Now. This is just a poll question. Because it took me. I had to look some stuff up. Anybody here. Ever dislocated their shoulder.

Or know someone who dislocates their shoulder on a semi-regular basis. Anybody. This is legit. I want to see your hands. This is just for me. I want to see something.

Okay. Anybody ever dislocated their hip. Or know someone who dislocates their hip. Okay. A few people. It doesn't happen super often.

Oh just for the record. Next time someone asks you that shoulder dislocation thing. You can raise your hand. Matt Freeman does. He dislocates his shoulder periodically. But he doesn't dislocate his hip.

I've had to watch videos. I was trying to see what this looked like. If you dislocate your hip. Your foot kind of turns around like this. The only one I saw. Most of it was just like how to treat it.

And has a lot to do with being elderly. Mostly what it seemed like. But I saw a guy running. In baseball. And then he just fell over. And that was what his dislocated hip did.

And then he laid and held his leg. Like he was in excruciating pain. They're wrestling. It's a tie. So Jacob's doing okay.

And then all of a sudden. Pow! Hips out. Jacob has searing pain. And. Light bulb.

Okay. I was in God's camp. I saw angels. I'm now wrestling someone in the dark. I was doing okay. And then.

They just. Pinned. And my legs out. I think Jacob's got an idea. That this is not just a man. This is not.

Normal. Situation. And then he says this. Let me go. For the day. Has broken.

So the man knocks his hip. Out of socket. And then says. Let me go. The sun's coming up. That's.

That's weird. You guys. Sorry. I'm a woodland night wrestler. I don't wrestle during the day. It's not my thing.

What? What? Like if you. If you're telling stories to children. And you're like. The sun was coming up.

It's like. Okay. Are we telling a story about an ogre? Because I think they turned to stone. Is this Fiona? Is she going to turn into like a lady?

Like we don't know. What's happening here? Why? What is the sun coming up? Like I don't like. It gets hot.

You know. I like to wrestle in the cool. Jacob. Coming from a culture. Where this would have clicked in his brain. And just further added to what he.

Understood was going on. They understood. That God. Was holy. Meaning. Completely others.

Separate from us. And that if you saw him. You'll die. Like it. It will just. It will kill you.

You can't handle it. This is why. Peter. When he's on the boat with Jesus. And they catch all the fists. Peter falls down.

And says. I'm not worthy. This is why. Isaiah. When he's brought into the throne room of God. Says.

I'm not worthy. I come from an unclean people. This is why. When an angel. The Lord comes to Samson's parents. And talks to him.

And then he leaves. Samson. Samson's daddy. He looks at Samson's mama. And says. We're going to die.

And Samson's mama says. I think he would have killed us. If he was going to. I don't. I don't think we're going to. And then they don't.

But this is. This is what they understood. Like if I see God. This is why Moses. When he sees God. He actually.

Moses gets to see God. In his glory. And he glows. Glows. For the rest of his life. Glows.

Like. Daytime. Skin glow. So much so. That when he comes back. He doesn't know he's glowing.

He comes back. They see him. And everybody runs from him. And he has to be like. No. No.

It's okay. And they're like. No bro. It's not okay. He has to wear a veil. Because he glows.

So. Touches his hip. Hip shoots out a joint. I know I'm in God's camp. Now he says.

The sun's coming up. I need to go. You don't need to see me. It's basically what he's saying. And so. Any.

Smart. Person. Who's not Jacob. In this situation. Would have said. Let's see what Jacob does.

But Jacob said. I will not let you go. Unless you bless me. That's crazy. And it actually shows us. Not just something about Jacob.

But something about God. He says. I'm not letting you go. Unless you bless me. What Jacob's saying is. Kill me if you have to.

Let this destroy me. I need you to bless me. I can't go. One. Step. Further.

Without you. Blessing me. I can't face Esau. I can't stand up to my past. I can't be the man I was. Without you blessing me.

And he just holds on to him. As soon as he figures out who he is. He says. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. I will not let go of you.

Until you bless me. Now if God didn't like that. This would be the end of the story of Jacob. But God likes that. Because Jacob understands who God is. And who Jacob is.

God is the one who blesses. You see. Sometimes we get into the idea. That maybe I'll bless God. I'll serve him. I'll do something for him.

I owe him something. He wants some morality from me. He wants some good work from me. I can present it to him. And then he'll be pleased. He'll be happy.

He'll bless me. But that's not an exchange. It's that we have nothing. We roll in the dirt. Hold on to his foot. And say just bless me.

That's the right posture. And that's what Jacob does. He holds on to him. And he said to him. What is your name? Now he knows his name.

But watch this. And he said. Jacob. When he says my name is Jacob. He has to own up to who he has been his entire life. I'm a deceiver.

I'm scheming. I'm a tricker. There's a lot of weight and baggage that goes with that name. He feels it every day. Then he said.

Your name shall no longer be called Jacob. But Israel. For you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob said. Please tell me your name. But he said.

Why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. Now blessings are verbal. We don't know what he says. Doesn't tell us. Because he was blessed.

Puts his hand on him. Blesses him. So Jacob called the place Peniel. Saying. For I have seen God face to face. And yet my life has been delivered.

The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel. Limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh. That is on the hip socket. Because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip. And the sinew of the thigh.

Jacob is blessed. He gets up. He is limping. And the sun rises. And the sun rises. On a limping.

Broken. Blessed. Jacob. On a limping. Broken. Blessed.

Israel. He has been given a new name. Now I am willing to bet. When his family saw him. He looked terrible. But there was like a glow about him.

He was different. He looked like. He had been really stressed out. Stayed up all night. And gotten beat up. But like in a good way.

And if you have ever seen somebody coming out of mourning. And coming out of pain. You might know what I am talking about. That is what he is doing. The sun rises on him. Chapter 33.

And Jacob lifted up his eyes. And looked. And behold. Esau was coming. And 400 men with him. You ever seen those old western movies.

Where you like look. And it is one person. And then they start talking among themselves. And they are like. Who is that? And they look back.

And it is just all these people on a ridge. It is kind of. Esau. 400 men. Coming towards him. So he divided the children among Leah.

And Rachel. And the two female servants. And he put the servants with their children in front. Then Leah with her children. And Rachel and Joseph. Last of all.

He himself went on before them. Bowing himself to the ground seven times. Until he came near to his brother. Bowing himself seven times is absolute submission. I am your servant. He is actually reversing what the blessing was.

The blessing was that. Jacob's brothers would bow down to him. And he comes and bows down to his brother. In humility and in repentance comes to his brother. But Esau ran to meet him.

And embraced him. And fell on his neck. And kissed him. And they wept. So Jacob.

Bowing. Getting up. Bowing. Getting up. When he gets close enough to run. Esau takes off running.

And Jacob thinks. Okay. He is not going to shoot me with a bow. He is going to do this with his bare hands. And he gets closer. And the face isn't angry.

He is happy. Sad. They hug. They cry. They weep. They kiss.

And they reconcile. And that is beautiful. It is beautiful on Esau's part. That he forgives his brother. And it is beautiful on Jacob's part. That he repents.

And he goes to him. And he faces what God sent him to face. And when Esau lifted up his eyes. And saw the women and the children. He said. Who are these with you?

And Jacob said. The children whom God has graciously given to your servant. The rest of this. Is he and Esau talking. And discussing where they are going. And how to get there.

And Esau keeps trying to offer to do extra stuff. And Jacob is just like. No. Just let us move slowly. We are good. And then Jacob kind of settles in a different place.

And so. If you look at 18. And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem. Which is in the land of Canaan. And on his way from Paddan Aram. And he camped before the city.

And from the sons of Hamor. Shechem's father. He bought for a hundred pieces of money. The piece of land on which he had pitched his tent. There he erected an altar. And called it El Elohe Israel.

Which means God. The God of Israel. Jacob reconciles with his brother. Moves back into the promised land. Owns some land. Sets his tent up.

Builds an altar. And says God is the God of Israel. I'm new. I'm changed. I'm not Jacob. I'm Israel.

Jacob was the old man. Israel is the new man. And he limped his way there. With a smile on his face. And some peace that he had never understood. And he got to live in the land.

Because he knew Esau knew where he was. And he got to live there peacefully. Not worrying about it. Now. There's a bit of this story. That is a little bit embarrassing for us.

That if. As Christians. As we look at this story. There's a little bit that's like. Wait. God.

Came to the ground. And wrestled Jacob. Like. Part of it just feels like. Wow. What?

It feels degrading. Like. Like if it just said. Heaven opened up. And he was shining. And Jacob went blind.

Or his face melted off. Or it looked like the scene from. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or something like that. Like. Yeah.

That's what God does. But it's like. No. God sneaks up on him. In the dark. And fights him.

And there's a little bit. That like. That feels humiliating. That feels small. That feels. The truth is.

How beautiful is that? That God. Creator of the universe. Holds everything in his hand. Comes to Jacob. And does what Jacob needed.

He says. You've wrestled with God. And with man. And you've prevailed. You see. The truth is.

God did for Jacob. What Jacob needed. Jacob hadn't stopped fighting. His whole life. Had been wrestling. It said that they wrestled.

And when. When God saw. That he did not prevail. Over Jacob. Then he.

Breaks him. Now think about that. God's been wrestling. With Jacob. His whole life. Fighting with Jacob.

His whole life. And Jacob. Has not quit. So God. Breaks him. And in that moment.

God says. You have prevailed. That it was at the moment. When God defeats Jacob. That Jacob. Wins.

Because. God. Was wrestling Jacob. On Jacob's path. Now. Jacob doesn't get to live.

In the promised land. Without facing Esau. And he doesn't get. To get the blessing. Without being broken. And the truth is.

As small as this seems. And as humble as it seems. For God. To have done this. Jesus. Blows this out of the water.

That our God. So much more. Will God. Join us. And wrestle with us. So much more.

Will God. Humble himself. To fight with somebody. In the dirt. So much more.

He'll be born. As a human. Not just look like one. And he'll die. That's what Philippians says. I have it on the screen.

Behind me. It says. Being found. In human form. He humbled himself. By becoming obedient.

To the point of death. Even. Death. On a cross. Some of you may be saying. I wish God would do that for me.

He is doing that. He is wrestling with you. He is fighting with you. And he has done. So much more.

Than show up. And push your head. Into the dirt. He showed up. And he was the one. Who was beaten.

He was the one. Who was broken. And he was buried. That you might have life. And he rose. Again.

And I want you. To see something. So clearly here. You don't get. The promised land. Without having to face.

All the sin. And all the brokenness. And all the things. You've ever done wrong. Jacob didn't get to live there. Free.

And happy. Without Esau. Lurking in the back of his mind. Forever. Until he went and faced Esau. You don't get.

The blessing. That you so desperately need. Until God takes you. And breaks you. Over your sin. And your wickedness.

And your brokenness. Until he does to you. And shows you. What you've been doing to everybody. Your whole life. And you don't get the resurrection.

Until you get the cross. But so many of us. Even us in here. In our church family. In our community groups. Are trying to bypass.

Brokenness. And just get. Blessing. And joy. And what we're trying to do. Is Jacob.

Before God grabbed him. And stuck him in the dirt. We're trying to do a little bit of both. There are some of you. Who every time. It's time to confess.

Every time God tries to make you face. Your Esau. You just back out. Every time. He goes to break you. You let go.

You don't cling. You don't say. Okay. Break me. But bless me.

You just back up. Because you don't want it. You don't want the pain. You don't want the confession. You want to try to live. In the land of promise.

But Esau. Is lurking in the background. Some of you do not feel free. Because you have not confessed. Some of you have your sin. Hanging in the background.

And let me tell you something. It will not remain hidden. By God's grace. It will tackle you in the dark. And you will face it here. Because if God in his grace.

Does not do that. You will face it at the end of the line. And you will stand. And be held accountable. For your sin. Before a holy God.

And that is not the time to do it. That is to be a reunion. With the God who broke you. And blessed you. So that joyous tears.

Fall down your face. And you wrap your arms. Around the sin. That would have condemned you. That now has saved you. Because Jesus paid for it.

Second Corinthians 7. 10 says. For godly grief. Produces repentance. That leads to salvation. Without regret.

Whereas worldly grief. Produces death. I pray that God. Pierces your heart. Through the Holy Spirit. That you grieve.

Your sin. So that. You may have salvation. Without regret. You ever seen somebody. Confessing sin.

And talking about their past sin. With such freedom. That you couldn't understand it. I'm not talking about bragging about it. Because there's something about. Bragging about past sin.

That still stinks. That still reeks of this shame. And this guilt. And this pride. It's like. I'm trying to glory in my shame.

So that I can feel okay about it. I'm talking about someone. Who can just own the fact. That they used to do this. I used to be Jacob. But the reason I can tell you.

Yeah it used to be Jacob. But now I'm Israel. I've been set free from it. Have you seen that? How beautiful it is. That.

Is godly grief. That reproduced salvation. Without regret. But worldly grief. Just produces death. Psalm 51.

17. Says the sacrifices of God. Are a broken spirit. And a broken and contrite heart. Oh God. You will not despise.

One of the things. The scripture tells us. Is that God will turn mourning. Into joy. And will turn joy. Into mourning.

That if we try to just skip past. Into just. I'm going to live my best life now. Eventually that. Ends. In.

Brokenness. And mourning. And pain. But if we. Live here. In mourning.

And brokenness. And own our sin. And go to God. We limp. But we're blessed.

I pray that we would not have. A single person in here. Who struts around with swagger. But that we'd have. A whole bunch of people. Who limp.

But the sun shining on us. I served with a recovery program. At Midtown. One of the things we used to do. Is we would have. Everybody when they first started.

They would write down the names. That marked them. The things that if you. They described themselves. They would write down worthless. They would write down.

Unloved. They would write down. Sinful. And broken. And evil. They would write down.

Abused. They would write down. Abuser. And then we'd walk through. Recovery. We'd point them to Jesus.

We'd talk about what he's done for us. In the cross. And at the end. We'd say. What's your new name? They'd write down.

Loved. Worthy. And not because they're worthy. But because Jesus has made them worthy. That they'd write down. Cherished.

They'd write down. Forgiven. They'd write down. Free. Free. Don't leave here.

Carrying the name Jacob. And don't want God. Right when he goes to break you. Don't take off running. Don't let go. Cling to him.

And say. You can break me. But you've got to bless me. I'll face Esau. I'll stand up to what I've done. And who I've been.

But you've got to bless me. And you've got to work. And I'll go through the cross. I'll die to my sins. So that I can rise again.

And be made new. And that's what. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says. Therefore. If anyone is in Christ. He is a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold the new has come. We have no desire. Whatsoever. To help you be a slightly better person. Zero desire.

We want you to be a new person. We want you to be born again in Christ. Have zero desire to help you. Cuss less. And drink less. And be a little bit nicer.

And cheat on your taxes. Just a little bit less. And be half and half Jacob. Zero desire. That's the truth is. Sometimes we'll have people who say.

I've believed in Christ. I've placed my faith in Jesus. But if there hadn't been any brokenness. If there hasn't been any weeping. If you hadn't cried so much. That you thought you couldn't breathe.

If there hasn't been you face to face with your sin. If there hasn't been any moment where you realize. If I don't have Jesus. If he doesn't step in. I'm broken and busted. If all you've tried to do is sneak around Esau.

To live in the promised land. If all you've tried to do is run on over to Easter. Without Good Friday. To resurrection without cross. If you've never walked through this. Do not leave here without running to God.

And saying break me. Bianca's going to come back up. And here's what we're going to do. My prayer. Is that the Holy Spirit would work right now. That some of you know right now.

You've been running from this. And that every time he started to put a little pressure on you. To confess. Every time he started pressing on you. To repent. To actually change.

To not just try to mix it together. And be a little bit better. And kind of keep some of your old stuff. But every time he's actually pressed into you. And said. Now.

Every time you've been hanging out with your community group. And you're going around. And people are confessing. And it gets to you. And you have that moment. Where you think.

You feel almost like you're going to throw up. And some of you were like. No I was going to throw up. You were almost confessed. And then you just let go. He came to the point of almost breaking you.

And then you just ran. Don't. Be broken. Limp. Confess that you're a sinner. Own your sin.

And then let the sun rise. And be made new. That's the hope today. We're about to take communion. In a minute. They're going to sing.

We want you to wrestle with God. We want you to go before him and ask. Where do I need to confess? What have I hidden? What am I allowing to lurk around? Why am I not free?

And trust that he can break you. And his Holy Spirit can set you free. And you can have freedom and hope. Don't run from this. Some of you have been running for a long time. You've been wrestling for a long time.

You've been doing everything you possibly can. To keep God from taking something away from you. Or from fixing your soul. You're trying to be a little bit better. And you need to be made new. So bow your heads and let's pray.

God we pray that you would grant repentance. To those who ask it. And that you would grant brokenness. And mourning. That you would empower it through your Holy Spirit. That there might be those right now.

That would cling to you. And ask for your salvation. Ask for your forgiveness. Ask for the hope that only comes through you. Ask for the resurrection that only comes after the cross. That you might die for their sin.

That you might forgive them. That you might be broken for them. And they might see truly how much you love them. And the great lengths at which you are willing to go to redeem them. We pray that your Holy Spirit would move. And that people would respond.

And that anybody here today who is feeling that right now. Would not let go. They are feeling the pain of what it will take to confess. What it will mean to face what they have done. And who they have been. And to tell others.

And to be open about it. And they are feeling the pain and the fear over that. And we pray Lord that you would not let them go. And you would let them cling to you. That they might actually repent. And they might find freedom.

That they do not understand. Hope that is unparalleled. They would not be half and half. They would be wholly new. In a moment we are going to take communion. If you are a Christian.

I encourage you to confess. To repent. And then to take communion. Reminding yourself that Jesus was broken for you. His blood was shed for you. If you are not a Christian for the first time.

You need to place your faith in Him. You need to go to Him and say. I will not save myself. I am not letting go. Unless you bless me. Unless you save me.

Unless you redeem me. Unless you let me walk away from my past. We would encourage you to do that. And then take communion for the first time. And if you are not a Christian. Aren't ready yet to place your faith in Jesus.

We would just encourage you to sit. And respectfully decline communion. Is for those who have trusted in Christ. And His sacrifice. We pray that all around the room Lord. That your spirit is working.

That we might confess. That we might repent. And that we might be made new. And enjoy the beauty. And the life in you. That was purchased for us.

Because Christ is willing to humble Himself. Even unto death. And He rose again. That we might be free. Amen.

Leaving Laban

Leaving Laban

Chet Phillips

Transcript

I'm one of the pastors here, and if you're perceptive and this isn't your first time hanging out with us, you may have noticed that there was a drum kit on the stage today. I want to take a second to just kind of use that as an opportunity to tell you a little bit about some philosophy of ministry stuff for us. One is, I appreciated that. I also really like the box, and I think that even when we have cajons, we should make them sit in there, because that would be fun. Especially Isaac, who is quite loud on a cajon. This being the first time we've had a drum kit on Sundays, the reason was not that we hated drums, and the reason we have it now is not that we necessarily love drums.

It's that we never had anybody who could play drums, and our philosophy of ministry is when we gather as a church, we do what our church can do. That it's us. That we don't want to pay somebody to come in and play music, although I've heard that other churches do that. We don't pay anybody to do any of this stuff up here musically wise, because we just want, it's our church gathering together to worship and to make much of Jesus. And so if you play the oboe and can throw down on it, come talk to Matt. If you're killer on the spoons, we'll do whatever we can do to worship the Lord together and make a joyful noise, and so if everybody in our band left for some reason, hopefully to go be missionaries in Menya, then we'll just have somebody read some Psalms and somebody else hum behind them, and it'll be great, and we'll go back to that until we get some more musicians.

And so that's just kind of how we do stuff. So not sold on one thing or the other as much as we're sold on the idea that we gather and worship together and we do what our church family can do. Grab your Bibles, go to Genesis chapter 30. Um, we've been walking along through the book of Genesis and we're in chapter 30 and what we've been seeing is we've gone through this. We're seeing the beginning of the world as God created the world, and then we've watched as God has worked his will, where he has brought about his desires for the world in the midst of brokenness and sin and pain. So he created the world good and humanity rebelled, and then God immediately steps in and promises that he's going to fix this.

And so we've been following with Abraham and Isaac and now Jacob as God has stepped in and said, I'm going to accomplish my will. I'm going to bless the world through you. I'm going to give you a people and a place. I'm going to make you, uh, my people. And so we've been following that story. And what we're going to see today as we read this, this aspect of the story is part of the story is we're going to get to see a clear picture of the distinction between, um, the gods of Laban, which is Jacob's father-in-law and the God of Jacob, the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And we're going to get to see kind of the contrast between Laban's gods and Jacob's God. And we're going to get to see that Laban's gods, um, are weak and frail, uh, enable, incapable, uh, of defending themselves, bringing about change. And that the God of Jacob is very big and very powerful and rules over everything. And so the hope today is that we would grow, that we would expand our thinking about God, our view of God. Um, there's a story in the gospels and, uh, there's, it's found in Mark four, as well as other places in the synoptics where Jesus is with his disciples and they're on a boat and Jesus is asleep and a big storm comes along.

Now, some of the disciples weren't used to being on boats necessarily, but a handful of them were, were fishermen and we're used to being out on boats and the storm comes in it. I mean, it, the boat's rocking and a rolling it's, it's up and down and there's this major issues and they're trying to do everything they possibly can to defend it. Uh, themselves to try to fix the situation, to handle the situation. And they can't, they finally go to Jesus. Who's asleep in the bottom of the boat. And they say, master, don't you care that we're going to drown?

So Jesus wakes up, he comes up out of the bottom of the boat and he stands up on the deck and he says, peace, be still. And the waves that had been rocking in the wind that had been blowing suddenly just stops. And the text tells us that the disciples were terrified. They were actually, the word it uses is they were more afraid. When Jesus told the ocean to stop than they were of drowning. They were like, nah, let's go back to drowning.

I can't handle this. Like, I don't, I don't know how to handle somebody who can just tell the ocean to stop. And it does it. They're terrified. And he says, oh, you of little faith. You see, when they went and woke Jesus up, they didn't wake him up because they thought he could come calm the storm.

They woke him up because they needed somebody else to bail water. They wanted somebody else to hold a rope. And Jesus walks up and handles the whole situation. And so the reason I tell you that is it matters how we approach God and how we view God. And so they had underestimated him. He was a little smaller than they had reckoned.

He was, he was a little weaker than they, than they thought. They thought he was a little weaker than he was. And that's why he says, oh, you of little faith. If they had known who they were approaching, they would have approached it differently. So we just sang.

And when you sing, you're singing to the best picture you have of God, the best image of who he is and his character and what he's like. When we pray, we're doing the same thing. The best, our best understanding, but the best human understanding falls short of God's glory, falls short of his massiveness, of his power. The best we can wrap our minds around is still short of who he truly is. But it does matter to us in our anxiety levels.

And it does matter to us in our prayers that we pray and in our approach to him. And in the way we live our life, that we know him truly and rightly and worship him fully. Does that make sense? So our hope today is to make God a little bit bigger. To, as we see these gods contrasted against one another, try to find places where we line up more with Laban, where our thinking about God and our approach to God is just a little bit smaller than it needs to be. And try to move ourselves to lining up more with worshiping the true God of Jacob in his massiveness and in his sovereignty.

So that's our hope, that God would be a little less domesticated after we leave here today. It'd be a little bit bigger, a little bit scarier, and there'd be a lot of joy found in that. Let's pray. God, we ask for your help as we read this passage, that we might see you clearly, truly, fully. And that wherever we have made you smaller, wherever we have in our minds treat you as tame, we pray that you'd break through that in a glorious, helpful, fearful way. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right. So we are in Genesis 30. We're going to start in verse 25. So Jacob and his wives just had 12 children. Eleven boys mentioned one girl, and later they're going to have another son. It'll be the 12 tribes of Jacob.

And so it says, verse 25, as soon as Rachel had born Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, send me away that I may go to my own home and country. Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you that I may go for, you know, the service that I have given you. Jacob is in a very inferior position to Laban. He's married Laban's daughters. He has served Laban. He has served.

Basically, we find out this is about the end of the 14 years. He served seven years for Rachel and then he married Leah because Laban tricked him. So he served another seven years for Rachel. And so he's been there at least the 14 years. Uh, and he comes and says, let me go and let me take my wife and children with me, which in our culture, that, that would be a formality in their culture. It's not Laban had a lot of power and would have the potential ability to just say, no, you may leave, but the wife, your wives and children stay with me.

Um, and so he just says, let me go. But Laban said to him, if I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you name your wages and I will give it. So Laban says, I've learned about divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. Now divination is a practice that's been practiced since ancient times on up till now, which is used to try to find, uh, truth about reality by seeking, uh, to divine, to find a sign, to hear from spirits, to hear from gods what's going on. And so the way they would practice this, you could practice it with tea leaves, with sticks, with water, with dirt, uh, with the guts of animals.

Um, tarot cards is a form of this. It's, it's that. And so he says, I've learned by divination that it's your God. It's the Lord has blessed me because of you. Now, uh, there's three options in the Bible and just in the world when it comes to practicing things like divination, fortune telling, these kinds of occult pagan type practices. Option one is that it's just some people doing some stuff and it's just earthly, no spiritual aspects whatsoever.

Um, so if you went and saw a fortune teller, they're just, you know, doing the things fortune tellers to do where they'll, you know, like you go see a psychic and they stand up on stage and they say, I'm hearing a, I'm getting a letter. Um, a, no, it's B. Is it C? I'm seeing a color. It's purple or it's red. And someone says, I, I, oh, red.

And you go, oh yeah. And they just, they're kind of shotgunning and they're just good at this and they kind of work out something and there's no spiritual aspect going on. It's just kind of a trick. That's one option. The second option is that it's demonic, uh, that there's actual evil spirits at work there that, um, to God rules over the world. He created a spiritual beings.

The, the ones that worship him and stayed with him are angels. And they all point us to the Lord. They don't accept worship. They don't point away from him. There are places in the Bible where they'll show up. Somebody will try to worship them.

They'll be like, nope, stand up. We worship God together. You don't worship me. Then there are, uh, evil spirits that rebelled against God and they accept worship and they point to themselves or away from God. And so the second option is that it is demonic. It's evil.

Um, so that these evil spirits, these other gods pointed and said, yes, we are able by our godly powers to tell you that that God is doing really good things. That's what they said. Not we've blessed you, not anything else, just his God's blessed you. And we're able to tell the third option. And this happens very rarely in the Bible is that God just busts through a cult things to tell people what he wants to tell them, um, that he will interrupt people's plans and just kind of do what he wants. Um, this is forbidden later in the law.

This is not something they should practice. And it is a practice, uh, that Laban is practicing, not that Jacob is Deuteronomy 18, nine says this. When you come into the land that the Lord, your God has given you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. If you get a letter from Hogwarts, throw it away.

And because of these abominations, the Lord, your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord, your God for these nations, which you are about to dispossess. Listen to fortune tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord, your God has not allowed you to do this. The Lord, your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him.

You shall listen. Ultimately that's fulfilled in Jesus, but that's also fulfilled in the prophetic offices that happened throughout the old Testament where someone spoke on behalf of God. And so we look to God's word and we look to Christ and we look to nowhere else. But that's what he says. So he's practicing divination and he says, they've told me that I'm blessed because of you.

And so he wants him to stay. That's what's going on in the story. So Jacob said to him, you yourself know how I have served you and how your livestock have fared with me for you had little before I came and it has increased abundantly. And the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?

So Jacob has just served and he's made Laban rich. Jacob's doing well while he is in Laban's household. But if he were to leave, he has nothing. He just went and asked, can I keep my wife and my wives and children? But he has nothing to take with him.

He's not gained any wealth of his own. He's made Laban very rich. So he says, he says, I want to earn for my own household. So he said, what shall I give you? Laban says, okay, I'll give you something. I'll give you a portion.

I'll do something. And Jacob says, you shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it. Let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb and the spotted and speckled among the goats. And they shall be my wages. So my honesty will answer for me later when you come to look into my wages with you.

Everyone that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs that is found with me shall be counted stolen. So here's Jacob's pitch. Here's his plan. He says a normal shepherd's wages, if they were going to get paid wages, would be about 20% of all the new goats and sheep born. They get about 20%. So every time there was 10 born, they'd get two.

He says, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to do normal kind of shepherd wages. What we're going to do is we'll go. Let me go today and I will take all the spotted speckled out of the goats and all the black out of the sheep. And I'll just have regular goats and regular sheep because most goats are just a solid color and most sheep are white. Most goats are solid brown, solid black.

He says, so I'll just have a flock, solid white, solid brown. And then from then on, my wages will be everything that is born that is black among the sheep, spotted speckled, mottled among the goats. That's his pitch. Laban says, good. Let it be as you have said. The reason Laban says good, exclamation Mark, is that this was a great deal for Laban.

Why? Because 20% is way higher than what happens with the birds of black sheep and spotted speckled goats. That percentage of the population is very low. That's why you can refer to somebody as the black sheep of the family. It means that they stand out and they're the only one. But if you had a whole bunch of sheep, you'd have one black sheep that would stand out and there's not a lot of them.

If it was 50-50, that phrase wouldn't work. Tracking? Okay, so he makes a bad business deal. And if any of you have done sales, you know that if you get to the end and you make an offer or you offer a price and the person across from you says yes and goes to shake your hand, you feel bad inside. Because you immediately think, oh, I'm paying too much. Or, oh, I could have gotten more.

They would have said yes to it. The way they said yes, I could have gotten another $1,000 out of this person. Like you just feel that. Like when you go to offer on a car, if you're talking to a car salesman, you say, I'll give you 12. And they go, deal. You go, ah, 10.

I'll give you 10. I've got to go home. I'm sick. I can't do a deal with you today. But that's what he says.

Good deal. Let's go. That's what happens. And so he says, but that day, this is verse 35, Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it and every lamb that was black, and put them in charge of his sons, in the charge of his sons. And he set a distance of three days journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban's flock. Laban says, deal, but then he makes sure it's not a trick.

So Jacob said, let me go through and do this. And Laban says, deal. And then he goes through and does it. And he moves them all three days away. So he's thinking, Jacob's got something up his sleeve, so I'm going to make sure this doesn't work out for him.

I'm taking this deal, and I'm getting those far away from you. Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plain trees, and he peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front of the sticks, and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled and spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks towards the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban.

He put his own droves apart, that's going to come back later, and did not put them with Laban's flock. Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks and the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the sticks. But for the feebler of the flock, he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban's and the stronger Jacob's. Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants, male servants, camels and donkeys. Okay.

So Jacob takes sticks and he makes them striped, speckled, mottled. And then he shows the sticks strategically to the animals while they breed. And boom, genetics. Science, you guys. This is Jacob's plan. Jacob did have something up his sleeve.

He had a way that he thought he could manipulate this. And it says it worked. And so if we just stopped here, you'd be like, this is super weird and I don't think the Bible knows things about science. It goes further and God's going to step in and say, no, no, no, no, no. I did this. And we're going to see that God blessed Jacob's hard work and his weird plan.

That's what happened. Jacob had a plan. He went for it. God blesses it. That's ultimately what I do want you to see, that God steps in in the middle of this story and Jacob works really, really hard. He's going to talk more about it later.

He works really hard. And God in the midst of that blesses it. He blesses his hard work and he multiplies it and he makes it work out in his favor. And so I want you to know that as you work in life, a lot of times we're waiting for God to bless us and we're wanting God to bless us. And we're like, I just wish God would work and he would do something. And I really wish I would just meet somebody.

And I really wish I could just get a job that would work well. And I wish I could get it. And sometimes you know what he does? He miraculously blesses your years of hard work. And it is miraculous. But it wasn't you sitting around doing nothing.

We've done this in our church. Matt and I have seen this early on where we had prayed and worked really hard. We came up with a sticks plan. We're going to do this. It's going to be amazing. And then it turns out that was stupid.

But God did some really good stuff. And we've seen that. And that's what he did here. That God works in the everyday. And so do you know that? Do you know that God works in the midst of everyday stuff?

That he's at work? That he sees you? And that he's blessing and working even when you can't tell what's going on? Chapter 31. Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, Jacob has taken away, taken all that was our father's.

And from what was our father's, he has gained all his wealth. And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before. Then the Lord said to Jacob, Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you. Okay, so earlier, Jacob was making Laban rich. They work out this deal that is way in Laban's favor, and Jacob becomes rich. And he actually outgrows Laban.

So that Laban's sons and Laban are mad at Jacob. They're frustrated. It's not a good relationship anymore. So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah into the field where his flock was. And he said to them, I see that your father does not regard me with favor as he did before. But the God of my father has been with me.

You know that I have served your father with all my strength. Yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me. If he said the spotted shall be your wages, then all the flock bore spotted. And if he said the stripes shall be your wages, then all the flock bore striped. Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me.

Okay, so we find out a little more in this story that Jacob's plan was working so much that Laban came and said, Okay, okay, we're changing this. This is, I don't know what's going on here. But I'll take the striped ones. You can have the spotted ones. And as soon as he would say that, all of them would start giving birth to spotted ones. And then he would change it again.

Did I say, I said it wrong. I meant, I meant, I'll get the spotted. You take the stripe and immediately we'd go back. And Jacob's saying that God has blessed me. And this is after Jacob's already seen a vision that he's about to tell him about a dream he had. Where he knows that it was God that was at work in this the whole time.

He says, thus, God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me. In the breeding season of the flock, which runs from about August to April. And we don't know exactly when he had this dream. I lifted up my eyes, which seems like it would be the most recent one. And saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted, and modeled. Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, Jacob.

And I said, here I am. And he said, lift up your eyes and see all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and modeled. For I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. And I am the God at Bethel where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now arise, go out from this land, and return to the land of your kindred.

Okay, remember earlier when I said that him splitting up the flocks would show up later? This is where it shows up. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on in this dream. Because he's like, I saw a dream. And it seems like it's special. It means something that all the goats that are breeding are spot, speckled, and modeled.

He's like, I saw them. And then he says, do you see them? And I was like, yeah, I see them. And then he was like, okay. And it took me a minute to figure out what was going on here. But here's the thing.

Jacob had Laban's flocks. All brown goats. All white sheep. Every time they had a spotted, speckled, modeled baby, he just took it away and put it in his flock. So that whenever these were breeding, it was only white sheep breeding with white sheep and brown goats breeding with brown goats.

And then God shows him in a vision and everything that's breeding is modeled, speckled, speckled, spotted. It's so hard to say those three in a row over and over again. And what God is saying is, I tweaked the genetics. I made all the males over here work as if they were over here. I made them all function as if they were. That's what he's saying.

He's showing him that I'm the one who's been at work here to make this happen. And that's why when he goes and tells them, he doesn't say, I came up with this great plan. He says, you saw what God did. God was the one who blessed me the whole time. God took control of it. God did it.

So after he sees this, he realizes that it was God that was blessing him. And maybe he did this whole thing, stepping out in faith, hoping that God would work. Maybe he just sees now that God did work. So he says, then God told him to leave. Go back. Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father's house?

Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us and he indeed devoured our money. All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. Now then, do whatever God has said to you to do. Okay, the reason he brings him out and talks to him is that he's trying to find out, are y'all going to try to stay with your dad or are you going to go with me? Which head of household?

Which patriarch? Where are you headed? He's trying to find out. And they say, oh, we're going with you. Their answer is not, we love you. Their answer is, you own all the stuff.

He's like, okay. Fine. Saddle up. So Jacob arose and set his sons and his wives on camels. He drove away all his livestock, all his property that he had gained and livestock in his possession that he had acquired in Paddan Aram to go to the land of Canaan to his father Isaac. Laban had gone to shear his sheep.

It's one of the busiest times for sheep herders. And Rachel stole her father's household gods. And Jacob tricked Laban, the Aramean, by not telling him that he intended to flee. And he fled with all that he had and arose and crossed the Euphrates and set his face toward the hill country of Gilead. Okay. Jacob flees Laban because he is afraid of him.

Jacob does not feel like he's in a position of power. He does not feel like he is able to just do what he wants. He gets his wives in secret and says, are y'all going to go if I go? And they say, yeah. And he says, all right, let's go. And he does it all as a trick when they're about three days away because he knows that Laban will not handle this well.

He's in more of a position of power than he was. Last time he went and asked for permission. This time he just says, we're leaving, we're taking our stuff. But he knows that Laban isn't to be dealt with. It wouldn't go well if he tried to do it straight up and he's trying to get away from him. This is an escape.

Also, let's pause for just a second. I want to point something out. But as we think through in our approach to God, are we viewing him correctly? Jacob leaves because God blesses him. And then God says, pick up your stuff and move. That's why he's leaving.

God says, time to go back. So the God of Jacob sits, rules and reigns over Jacob. That when he tells Jacob to act, when he tells Jacob to do something, Jacob has to do it. It says, Rachel went and stole her father's household gods. Now, these things could be as big as a person, if not bigger. We find out later they're pretty small.

She bags them up, throws them on her camel and hits the road. And here's what's very interesting. Jacob leaves because his God tells him to. Laban's gods leave because Rachel tells them to. Jacob goes where his God says. Laban's gods go wherever anybody that's around them says.

They have no power. They have no authority. So here's my question. As we relate to God, as you walk with the Lord, as you read the scriptures, does he tell you what to do or do you tell him what to do? Does he correct you or do you correct him? Does he set the pace in the course of life or do you set the pace in the course of how he'll interact in your life?

I want to be really clear with you and be as helpful as I possibly can. If you say that you worship Jesus, but you can tell him, stay put. Don't cross this line. You're welcome over here in this zone. This is none of your business. And he stays put.

That's not Jesus. If when you read the Bible, when you worship, if he fully, perfectly cosigns all of your political opinions. If when you're wanting to do something, Jesus just stands back there going, you got this girl. And he never corrects. And he never, he never leads you to repentance. If you have said, I've walked with Jesus, but you can't point and say, this is where he's changed me.

This is where he's grown me. This is where he wrestled my wallet out of my hand. This is where he wrestled this thing, this thing that I love away from me with weeping and gnashing of teeth for my own good. This is where he stepped in and told me this relationship wasn't okay. This is where he ruled and reigned over me sovereignly. If you don't have that, go ahead and carve you a little idol and stick it in your pocket.

You name it, whatever you want. Do you sit in authority over God? Or do you worship the God of Jacob that sits in authority over you? That's an important question to ask. Does he set the pace for your life? Does he tell you where to go?

Does he tell you what to do? When you hit passages in the Bible that you don't like, do you bend to be in line with what he says? Or do you try to bend the Bible to be in line with what you like? And let me tell you something. If you are going to be faithful in reading your Bible, you're going to hit passages you don't like. If I was talking to somebody who was unmarried, if you were talking to somebody who was unmarried, and they were telling you, this is what I want in a wife.

This is what I want in a husband. They were just saying stuff. I worked with a lady at Sears. She had a list of 50 things she wanted in a husband. And it was, I mean, it was extensive, 50 things. And they were minute things.

Like, I think Harry Chess was on there. Like, she had some things. She really, she was looking for this. But if you were sitting there trying, if they were talking to you about what they wanted, and they said, well, I want a wife like this. And I want her to want to watch scary movies with me. And I want her to, you just kind of, you go along with that.

Yeah, dream big, bro. Go for it. Yeah, they love sports. I'm sure they do. Yeah, they play paintball with you. Yeah, you want that.

Now, if I said that, you know what I want in a wife? You know my dream wife? And I started talking to you. It'd be about 30 seconds in. You'd be like, bro, aren't you married? What is your real wife like?

Is she like that? No, she's not like that at all. This is unhealthy, what you're doing. Like, we would step right in. And so there are some people who go, well, my God. And it's like, oh, okay.

My God would never. What says he does here? Which one are you worshiping? If it's not this one, we can close it. We can quit talking. Like, God can do whatever you want it to.

Carve it up. Give it a funny hat. It'll be cute. If you are worshiping a real God, he will not come in and cosign all of American culture. And he will not come in and join your political party. And if you are worshiping a God that never upsets you, frustrates you, wrestles something out of your hand or changes your opinion, you are not worshiping the God of Jacob revealed to us in Christ.

But I wish you would. Because all that stuff you love that he'll wrestle away from you is detrimental to your soul. And he's really, really good. Let's keep going. So this is going to get more humorous and scary.

So it should be good. So they head out. Verse 22. When it was told Laban on the third day that Jacob had fled, he took his kinsmen with him and pursued him for seven days and followed close after him into the hill country of Gilead. It is fair to assume they are armed. This is a doesn't know what's going on.

Grabs all the men in this camp and heads out. Specifically his kinsmen. The reason that matters is there are times when you would take all the males when you were going to do something that you thought you would need all the males for. And there are other times when you would take just your kinsmen because you were going to do stuff that required more loyalty. He takes just his kinsmen. We don't know his plans, but they're not probably not great.

But God came to Laban, the Aramean, in a dream by night and said to him, be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad. So God cuts him off and he says, you can go catch up with him. Do not harm him. Do not try to sway him from what he is doing. You be very careful. So this does mean that his intentions weren't all good.

God actually has to come to him and say, you better slow your roll. And Laban overtook Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the hill country and Laban with his kinsmen pitched tents in the hill country of Gilead. And Laban said to Jacob, what have you done that you have tricked me and driven away my daughters like captives of the sword? Why did you flee secretly and trick me and did not tell me so that I might have sent you away with mirth and songs with tambourine and lyre? Maybe he was going to do that.

That'd be nice. The text doesn't read like that's necessarily what he was going to do. It's just he says it. If you'd have told me, we'd have had a party. Okay, well, I didn't think that's how you acted over the past 20 years. I've known you, but all right.

And why did you not permit me to kiss my sons and my daughters farewell? Now you have done foolishly. It is in my power to do you harm. There we go. That sounds more like it. But the God of your father spoke to me last night saying, be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.

He clarifies it's your God, not mine. But he told me not to harm you. Jacob answered and said to Laban, because I was afraid, for I thought that you would take your daughters from me by force. So he's in front of everybody, the kinsmen are there, and he just says, I think I thought you wouldn't let me go. That you wouldn't send me off by myself. And then he says this.

Oh, he says, sorry, I skipped something. And verse 30, and it matters to the story that we don't skip this. And now you have gone away because you longed greatly for your father's house. But why did you steal my God? So he says, you're going back to your God, to your father's house.

Why did you steal my God? Jacob answered and said to Laban, because I was afraid, for I thought you would take your daughters from me by force. Anyone with whom you find your God shall not live in the presence of our kinsmen. Point out what I have taken that is yours and take it. Now, Jacob did not know Rachel had stolen them. Rachel is Jacob's favorite wife.

You're not supposed to have more than one wife. If you do have more than one wife, you're not supposed to have a favorite. That's how the Old Testament treats that. But Rachel was his favorite. Jacob probably would not have said that. The text includes that because Jacob probably would not have said that if he had known she said them.

But he says, we find it, we'll kill that person. Now, you know Rachel at this point, her heart's about to beat out of her chest. I didn't think they were going to get caught. I didn't think that was going to happen. So Laban went into Jacob's tent and into Leah's tent and into the tent of the two female servants.

Those are the other wives of Jacob. But he did not find them. So he goes to only those in the head of the household looking for who has stolen these that they might be punished. And he went out of Leah's tent and entered Rachel's. Now, Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel's saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about the tent, but he did not find them.

He's digging through everything. This was not just like peeping around. He's pulling out bags. He's digging. He thinks they're hidden somewhere. He digs through all of these tents while they all just stand around.

This is taking quite a while. Felt all about the tent, but did not find them. And she said to her father, let not my Lord be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me. So he searched, but did not find the household gods. In this culture, you would be unclean. You would be removed kind of from society and doing some different things during menstruation.

And that's what she says. She says, I'm sorry. Don't be mad at me. I would get up. But the way of women is upon me.

Now, from what I understand, I've never menstruated. What I understand is that it's not the most pleasant thing ever. But one perk here. He doesn't kill her. So there's one little bonus there.

She, we don't know if she's lying or not. But this is told in such a way, the way the story unfolds is it's meant to build tension. And then at this last moment, we're to see how inept Laban's gods are. That they had to be protected by her lying about menstruating. That she's sitting on top of them and hiding them from Laban to protect herself. And so that's what happens.

That's the way it's told. To highlight their weakness and inability. And then it says this. So he searched but did not find the household gods. Then Jacob became angry and berated Laban.

Jacob said to Laban, what is my offense? What is my sin that you have hotly pursued me? For you have felt through all my goods. What have you found of all your household goods? Set it here before my kinsmen and your kinsmen that they may decide between us two. These 20 years I've been with you.

Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried. And I have not eaten the rams of your flock. What was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it myself. From my hand you required it. Whether stolen by day or stolen by night.

There I was. By day the heat consumed me. And the cold by night my sleep fled from my eyes. These 20 years I've been in your house. I've served you 14 years for your two daughters. And six years for your flock.

And you have changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac had not been on my side. Surely now you would have sent me away empty handed. God saw my affliction in the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night. All right.

The second thing I want us to consider as we think about the viewing God rightly. One of the primary reasons that it matters. That you understand how big and cosmic and glorious and powerful God is. Is that if you walk around with a tame. You worship an easy going tame God. That's nice.

Until you realize how vulnerable you are. But that's fine as long as everything is working well in life. But the truth is we are vulnerable. We do things to try to protect this. We wear seat belts and helmets. We lock our doors.

We have people monitor our credit cards. We try to defend and protect ourselves as much as we possibly can. But within a moment. Somebody not paying attention while they ride down the road. Getting a diagnosis. In a moment from a phone call.

Our weakness and our out of control. Our inability to control our world. Is so present. And in our faces. And the truth is in that moment. When you're standing.

Facing death. Facing destruction. Facing pain. If God. The God of Jacob. Revealed to us in Christ.

Rules and reigns over you. Then you are in his sovereign hands. And you can stand behind him. But if you have a small. Weak. Frail God.

You have to be the one on the hook. You have to be strong. You have to be smart. You have to defend them. So we see in the story.

That Rachel has to be clever. That Rachel has to come up with a good idea. She has to hide him in the right spot. And so what happens is. You'll be walking through life. And all of a sudden.

The bottom will fall out. The wheels will fall off. And we will be standing there. And the question is. Is your God big enough to handle it? Is he capable of you resting in him?

Can you hide under the shelter of his wings? Can you stand in his shadow? Can you know that in the midst of chaos. And pain. That he is not out of control. That he has not.

His hand has not left the steering wheel. Or. Is that the moment. That you have to be big enough. Strong enough. Powerful enough.

To withstand it. Smart enough. Some of us are wracked with anxiety. And fear. Because we are doing everything we possibly can. To rule.

And to reign. In a seat that is too big for us. It's like when my son puts my boots on. And tries to run. He can't. He looks cute for a second.

We wouldn't let him leave the house like that. And so many of us are trying to sit in God's chair. And be bigger. And stronger. And smarter. And tell him where to go.

And what he is allowed to mess with. Because we don't want to give up control. And that's fine. Until it's very very obvious. That you are out of control. And then it would be really nice.

That you had a God way bigger than you. 42. 43. 43. Then Laban answered and said to Jacob.

The daughters are my daughters. The children are my children. The flocks are my flocks. And all that you see is mine. But what can I do this day for these daughters.

Or for their children whom they have born. Come now. Let us make a covenant. You and I. And let it be a witness between you and me. So Jacob took a stone.

And set it up as a pillar. And Jacob said to his kinsmen. Gather stones. And they took stones. And made a heap. And they ate there by the heap.

And they ate there by the heap. Laban called it. Jigar Sahadutha. But Jacob called it Galid. Jacob said. This heap is a witness.

Between you and me. Therefore he named it Galid. Which means heap. And Mizpah. Which means witness. For he said.

The Lord watch between you and me. When we are out of one another's sights. If you oppress my daughters. Or if you take wives besides my daughters. Although no one is there. No with us.

See. God is a witness between you and me. Then Laban said to Jacob. See this heap and pillar. Which I have set up between you and me. This heap is a witness.

And the pillar is a witness. That I will not pass over this heap to you. And you will not pass over this heap. This heap and this pillar to me. To do harm. The God of Abraham.

And the God of Nahor. The God of their father. Judge between us. So Jacob swore by the fear of his father Isaac. And Jacob offered a sacrifice in the hill country. And called his kinsmen to eat bread.

They ate bread. And spent the night in the hill country. Early in the morning Laban arose. And kissed his grandchildren. And his daughters. And blessed them.

Then Laban departed and returned home. So they make this covenant. That he makes a covenant with Laban. That Laban would not have otherwise been willing to make. Except for the fact that God had broken through boundaries. And told him what to do.

So they make this covenant. And then they say that God will stand between us. And the truth for us. Is that in Christ. That is our reality. That if you have placed your faith in Jesus.

That he stands between us. And the world. That he stands between us. And everything that would cause us harm. And Matthew 16. He says this.

We have it on the screen. He says. I have said these things to you. That in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation. But take heart.

I have overcome the world. So. He. He's looking at his disciples. Prior to going to the cross. And he is saying.

You're going to have trouble. You're going to have pain. You're going to have tribulation. But I have overcome the world. That I rule and reign over it. That I have conquered.

That I will conquer death. That I will conquer sin. That I will conquer hell. And that everything that could chase us down. That could catch us. That could do us harm.

He stands in between us. And it. Are you vulnerable? Yes. Can your legs get. Swept out from under you in an instant?

Yes. But our God is big enough. That in that moment. You don't have to be powerful. You don't have to be strong. You don't have to be the smartest.

The most capable. That you get to rest. Knowing that he rules. And reigns. Over it. You get to swell your eyes shut.

With weeping. Knowing that there's a God. Who has not lost control. And who has a deep and abiding love. For you in Christ. And if you are not a Christian.

If you have not placed your faith in Jesus. The real Jesus. That rules and reigns. That sets the pace. That dictates. What's real and good.

You will have to surrender. You will have to get out of the chair. That is too big for you. You will have to submit. To his leadership. His direction.

But it's so freeing. And so good. To have a God. Who stands between us. And our sin. Stands between us.

And the rest of the world. As it would seek to destroy us. That we have hope. Not that everything will. Ultimately work out well here. But that it will never be lost.

From his control. And that we can trust him fully. With all of it. They're going to. Play this next song. And during it.

We're going to take communion. And I would encourage you. To take a moment. If it's been a while. Since the God. Of Jacob.

Has led you to repentance. If it's been a while. Since he's pointed out. Where you need to grow. And change. If it's been a while.

Since you've sat with him. And you've. You've been broken. Over your own sin. I would encourage you. To ask him.

Where have I stopped. Listening to you. Where have I actively. Tried to draw a line. And say you can't cross this. What are the places.

In my heart. That I'm trying to keep from you. And I would. I would encourage you. To take a moment. And just ask him.

Where do I need to repent? Who is it. That I need to reconcile with. That I need to go talk to. Right now. That I've just been.

Holding bitterness against. Because I'm unwilling. To let you mess. With that part of my life. What is it. You've been telling me.

I'm supposed to do. But I've been holding. So tightly to something else. That I won't give it up. And I would invite you. To surrender.

To a real God. Who watches you. Who knows you. And who leads us. Into grace. And repentance.

And life. Through his sovereign will. After you've done that. If you've spent some time. Praying through that. I would encourage you.

If you are a believer. That you would take communion. Where we remember. That it is not in our power. And not in our might. That we are saved.

But it's through Jesus' body. That was broken. And his blood. That was shed. You might take communion. Reminding yourself.

Of the goodness of the gospel. And the fact that you hide. In his shadow. Let's pray. God we pray. That your spirit would move.

And that you would lead us. To repentance. And that anywhere. That we have fought against you. And anywhere. That we are defending.

Our own sovereignty. That we might repent. That we might worship you fully. And truly. Resting in you. And trusting in you.

To stand between us. And all that would do us harm. In Jesus name. Amen.

Suffering Well

Suffering Well

Chet Phillips

Transcript

It's good to see y'all this morning. We are going to be in Genesis chapter 29 and Genesis chapter 30 today. We've been walking through the book of Genesis and we've been following the story of Jacob. We're going to pick right up where we left off and here's what we're going to see today. Jacob is, in some ways, he's on the run. They dressed it up as nicely as they could, but he stole his brother Esau's birthright.

He tricked his, he stole his blessing. He stole his birthright and his blessing, although Esau signed off on the birthright thing very foolishly. And then he tricked his father and he tricked his brother Esau and he dressed up like his brother Esau and he stole the blessing from Isaac whose eyesight had failed him. And so he was able to, by smelling like his brother and by putting on goat's skin hair, be as hairy as his brother, which again, extremely hairy. And so he was able to do that. And he, they found out that Esau said, I'm going to kill him.

As soon as my dad passes away, then I'm going to kill Jacob. And so Rebecca finds out that is their mother. And she says, Hey, you've got to go. You've got to get out of here. And they come up with this idea and it kind of fits with what's going on. But they say, Jacob needs a wife and he doesn't need to marry a Hittite.

So they bless him and he hits the road. Now they dress it up a little bit with the blessing and the send off, but he doesn't really take anything with him. He's on his own. And in some ways he's leaving behind him, busted up family. And he's headed off to go find a wife. As we read this story today, we're going to see the wheels fall off of Jacob's life.

And in so many ways, what, what's going to look like it's going to turn out really well is just going to hit a wall and fall apart. And so as we read through this, we're going to see how they respond. And I want us to ask a question. I want us to look at this and try to see how are we meant to respond in the midst of suffering? How are we supposed to walk out life in pain and suffering and difficulty? And I will tell you that America, that we as Americans are poorly equipped to handle suffering.

We're poorly equipped to handle pain and difficulty. We, our founding fathers started us off with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And by and large, we've bought into that. Well, the goal in life is happiness, that the point in life is happiness. And whether or not you think about that all the time, it's an undercurrent in how we walk through life that I'm supposed to be happy. This is why we say things like, well, we know God wants me to be happy.

Therefore, and then we'll immediately follow that up with, I can kind of do whatever I want because his, his primary goal is my happiness. And we've bought into this idea and that kind of runs underneath everything. And the truth is this, if your goal in life is happiness, we are poorly equipped to handle suffering because every time suffering and happiness step into the ring, it's a no contest. Suffering destroys happiness. Pain destroys happiness. When suffering and happiness face off, suffering is undefeated.

And so what happens in the midst of our suffering, our happiness flees, and we suddenly have the question of how, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to move forward? Tim Keller, who's a pastor and an author, in his book, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, he says this, he says, in a secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life, but only as an interruption. If you think about that, most of us, we've bought into that idea that suffering is an interruption in the midst of our good life. Suffering, difficulty, pain are causing us to have what we're going for be not achievable.

It's taking happiness away. It's an interruption. It's messing us up. It's removing from us what the point of life is. He says, with that understanding, there are only two things to do when pain and suffering occur. The first one is to manage and lessen the pain.

Then he says, this is why professionals now primarily talk about stress management. This is why we have high medication rates. This is why we have the primary goal is to just manage and lessen the suffering. He says, the second way, the first one is to manage it. The second way, the second way to handle suffering in this framework is to look for the cause of the pain and eliminate it, to fix it, find the problem and fix it. And I'm an American and that sounds smart.

You're in the middle of suffering. Make it manageable. And if it's fixable, fix it. The problem with that is there are some seasons of suffering, there are some types of pain that are not manageable and that are not fixable. And that biblically, we're invited into some things that there are times where we have to choose between obedience and suffering, disobedience and pursuit of happiness. There are going to be seasons in life where you get to choose obedience and difficulty, obedience and pain or disobedience and pursuit of happiness.

And we are ill-equipped to think that this is good, to think that obedience paired with suffering and obedience paired with pain is a good and loving thing for God to give us. As Americans, we're ill-equipped for that. We honestly need something, a purpose in life beyond the pursuit of happiness, something that's a little bit more resilient because happiness is too weak. The truth is you will face inevitable suffering and inevitable pain. There will be seasons in life where you are meant to walk in obedience in the midst of pain and in the midst of suffering and not to try to abort what is going on and not to try to just escape and not to just look to something to fix the problem and not just try to find a way to manage it and lessen it and get past it, but you're supposed to find a way to walk in it.

So we're going to read this story today and we're going to watch Jacob and his family respond the way we want to. Manage it, lessen it, fix it, find something to satisfy, find something to get past, and it's not going to work. And then we're going to finish our time looking to see if there's something better, if the Bible holds out something to us better, bigger, more meaningful, if it gives us a better answer to suffering. So let's pray and then we'll start reading. God, we have a heavy task at hand, and in so many ways we're trying to look at your word and swim against the current of our culture, and in so many ways we are going to translate this poorly as we filter it through the way we want to think about the world.

And we ask that your Holy Spirit would enliven us to see your word, to respond well to it. We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Starts off happy. So that'll be good.

Then Jacob went on his journey, chapter 29, verse 1, and came to the land of the people of the east. So his journey is to go find a wife. They specifically told him, go find your uncle Laban, marry one of his daughters. Culturally, that's not uncommon or weird. Culturally for us, that's terrible advice. So don't go find your uncle and marry one of his daughters.

But for them, this is fine. Let's keep moving. He's looking for his cousin. As he looked, he saw a well in a field and behold, three flocks of sheep lying beside it. For out of that well, the flocks were watered. The stone on the well's mouth was large.

And when all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep and put the stone back in the place over the mouth of the well. So Jacob said to them, he shows up, he's some shepherds. He says, my brothers, where do you come from? And they said, we are from Haran. That's where he's supposed to go find his uncle. He said to them, do you know Laban, the son of Nahor?

That's his uncle. They said, we know him. He said to them, is it well with him? How's he doing? They said, it is well. See, Rachel, his daughter, is coming with the sheep.

Okay. Prime, marriable, lady. He's, he's made it to the right place, about 500 miles from where he was. It took a month or more. It seems as if he just walked. That's what I said.

They, they dressed it up like they were blessing him and sending him out. But last time they went to get a wife, there was 10 camels and a bunch of people and a bunch of clothes. And there was like a big caravan. And they were like, go find a wife. Boy, bye. Like that was it.

They just sent him out. He, he walks off, you know, he took his nice rock pillow and went and took a nap. And that's, that's where he is. So he shows up, but it's worked out. He's in the right place. She's coming towards him.

And so he says, he said, behold, it is still high day. It's not time for the livestock to be gathered together, water the sheep and go pasture them. But they said, we cannot until all the flocks are gathered together and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well. Then we water the sheep. So, he gets the information he needs from them. They say, that's your cousin.

He says, well, y'all need to go on somewhere. It's basically, he's trying to get a little bit of alone time. He wants to talk to her. He wants to have this, not have an audience. And they say, no, no, no, we got to wait for all the shepherds to get here and move that big rock. So, while he was still speaking with them, this is verse nine, Rachel came with her father's sheep for she was a shepherdess.

Now, as soon as Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Laban, we find out later that she's pretty, his mother's brother and the sheep of Laban, his mother's brother, Jacob came near and rolled the stone from the well's mouth and watered the flock of Laban, his mother's brother. He got pretty girl strength. And a lot of the guys in the room understand what that is. I once carried a two, it was a two man Job, but I carried it upstairs by myself because I thought my now wife was pretty. And she doesn't realize this, but she married me and I won. Halfway up the stairs, I almost fell.

And I was like, you better not. That's what happens. He sees her and he walks over and he's like, let me pick this stone up. Oh, flex a little bit. I got this. Oh, what?

A bunch of men have to do it. Watch this. And then he waters her sheep. He's trying to make a good impression. And then it says this, it gets weird. And I love that.

I think he kind of did this out of order and it was probably fun. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud. First of all, it's not a romantic kiss. This is a normal greeting. It wasn't like, he was like, do you like that? Watch this.

It wasn't like that. Normal warm greeting. Uh, they still do this. They still practice this, uh, uh, overseas. Ben Johnson, who went to Lebanon for about 10 years. Uh, they practice it there.

It said it took him a while to get used to it. But then one of the first times he came home, he had just gotten off of a long flight. He had to run by his home church to do something real quick. He saw the facilities guy. And without thinking, he grabbed him and kissed him on the cheek. He said, the guy about threw him across the hall.

So what are you doing boy? And so, uh, normal here, normal Middle East, not normal in our culture, but that's a normal thing for him to do. So he kisses her. It's a warm greeting after serving. And then it says he wept aloud. Now they're a little bit more emotionally involved.

They respond more emotionally than Westerners do, but it's still kind of weird for him to just start crying. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's kinsman, that he was Rebecca's son. And she ran and told her father. So he goes to, he goes to kiss her. And it's like, he's overwhelmed with how well this has worked and how he's come to the right place and met the right person. He just starts weeping out loud, which had to be weird for her.

And she's like staring at him. And he's like, no, I'm your cousin. It's cool. I was came from so far away, but bro's going to kill me. Like she runs and tells her, her dad. And it says, Laban heard the news about Jacob, his sister's son.

He ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him. And brought him to his house. Jacob told Laban all these things. And Laban said to him, surely you are my bone and my flesh. And he stayed with him a month. We don't know what all these things are, but he told him all the things.

So how, how much he included. I have the birthright. I was the younger son and all that stuff. We don't really know, but he at least tells him enough to know. I am Rebecca's son. So he stayed with him a month.

So it's been a month. Then Laban said to Jacob, because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? So Jacob's just been living there and working. Tell me what shall your wages be? So he's saying you should earn something.

You should be able to begin to grow your own personal wealth. It shouldn't just be, you are treated like my servant. You're one of my kinsmen. Now, Laban had two daughters. So, this is the marriable group. This is what he was sent to do.

The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. There is some question as to what it means by Leah's eyes were weak. This isn't a super common phrase. Some argue that it's a compliment.

It's saying that her eyes were tender. They were distinct from others. They were like a beautiful look. And so there, if that was the way you took it, it would be saying, Leah had pretty eyes, but Rachel was pretty from head to toe. That's what it would be saying. Most commentators and most people believe that it is saying something negative about Leah, because what it says about Rachel after but is something really nice.

So it thinks it's saying she needed glasses. She squinted a lot. Her eyes didn't line up correctly. She had some kind of eye malformation or difficulty or sickness that made him really watery or puffy or something. So it's saying Leah was older, but Rachel.

That's kind of the tone of the text. Leah, but Rachel. And for those of you who grew up with siblings, maybe you feel a distinct pain when that's phrased that way. Because there's something about having siblings that make you consistently just compared to one another. And it's hard for parents to not have some amount of this one, but this one in different categories. And I know, I'm sure that was really tough for my brothers growing up.

They're not here. I can say what I want. But that's what's happening. And so it says, Leah, but Rachel. And so it says, Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel.

And Laban said, it is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man. Stay with me. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him, but a few days because of the love he had for her. Now that is one of the nicest things that has been written in the book of Genesis. This has been a rough book. That was sweet, y'all.

He said, it seems like just a few days because of the love he had for her. He said, I'll serve you seven years. Now it was normal for someone who was going to marry to pay a bride price for the bride, to offer something to the parents of the bride, because you're removing them, removing the bride from their household. And so he offers seven years of labor. He says, seven years. My energy, my effort.

You're not paying me anything. I get some room and board, and I want to marry Rachel. And Laban says, yes. If this were an American story, if this were a Disney movie, we're getting real close to the end. They're about to ride off. It's going to say, happily ever after.

The sort of bird or teapot is going to sing something at us. This is real life. It's not a Disney story. And this is not going to work out well. Verse 21. Then Jacob.

Oh, because it's been seven years. It seemed like just a few days. It's been seven years. Then Jacob said to Laban, give me my wife that I may go into her, for my time is completed. Bruh. Maybe word that differently next time.

Not a super gracious way. Say the thing about how it didn't feel long, because you love her so much. Like, you know, lead with that. But he says, give me my wife. So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast.

But in the evening, he took his daughter Leah, and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. Laban gave his female servant Zilpah to his daughter Leah, to be her servant. That's going to come up later. And in the morning, behold, it was Leah. Okay, so there's a big feast. It's fair to assume there's alcohol.

It does not lean hard into that. It's not saying that Jacob was blind, drunk, or anything, but it's fair to assume there's some alcohol. When it gets dark, depending on the time of year, depending on the moon, it's dark. She would have been veiled. And also, given the way Jacob worded his, let me have my wife, I don't think he was super talkative. when she was brought into the tent. So what happens, is at some point, Laban worked out this plan, I think, assuming, seven years gave him plenty of time to marry Leah off, and then not so much.

Nobody seems very interested in marrying Leah. I think if he had some actual other offers, he might have done something different. He comes up with the idea to get a bride price for Leah, and to marry her off. You could argue that he was trying to be kind to Leah. I think, as we see Laban's character play out, not so much. He's trying to be kind to himself.

And he's setting his daughters up for some difficulty. And in some ways, Jacob's met his match. So he swaps Leah out. He had to tell Rachel, nope, Leah, veil up, you're on deck, let's go. And in the morning, behold, it was Leah. And Jacob said to Laban, what is this you have done to me?

Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me? Now, if we'll just think about being Leah for a second. Seems like nobody wants to marry you. Jacob shows up. He does not choose you.

He chooses Rachel. And by the way the text is written, that seems common. Leah, but Rachel. Then, you have one night with him where he would have been, in some ways, passionate, in some ways, loving. And you know, she has to be nervous and anxious about what's going to happen in the morning. And what happens, I'm assuming the look on her face was never forgotten.

The look on his face was never forgotten by her. When he saw that it was her, and the first thing he did was run out of the tent to go talk to Laban. And I assume that the pain there, and the pain for Rachel, who, as best we can guess, probably appreciated. Jacob probably loved him, and we're never told, but we know that he loved her, and a lot of times, when someone loves you, that's a very attractive quality. Would have been looking forward to getting married, and wasn't able to, and this is a mess. Laban said, this is verse 26, it is not so done in our country to give the younger before the firstborn.

Ooh. If you know Jacob's story, that's a sick burn. He says, oh, maybe where you're from, the younger gets to be treated like the firstborn. But we're 500 miles from your mama's house, and that's not what we do here. So he swapped Leah out.

He says, complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also, in return for serving me another seven years. That's part of the reason why he views them as property, this one, the other one. And he's not super loving towards his daughters, gracious or setting them up for anything good. So there would have been a week where they would have kind of been a honeymoon week. He says, finish your week, and then you can have Rachel. Jacob did so, and he completed her week.

Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. Laban gave his female servant, Bilhah, to his daughter Rachel to be her servant. So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years. What could have been beautiful is now set up to be a train wreck. What could have been joy filled, and the truth is, that's so often how life works. We think we're on the right track, we think everything's going well, we think we've done what we needed to do to be headed in the right direction, and then in a night, over the course of a few weeks, this fell apart, and now he's married to sisters.

He loves one, he doesn't love the other, and there's no way at this point it's set up to be difficult and painful and hurtful for everybody, and that's the way we feel. So many of us can look back and go, it was all going well until, that's when it fell apart, and that's when the pain happened, and that's where everything came in that got messed up, and from that moment, so many of us have been trying to manage and to fix. If I could just get past it, if I could just get to this, if I could just have this happen, if this would just go away, if this could just be like this, and we're going to see that's what they do for the rest of the story. Verse 31, when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

Much of the rest of this story is going to deal with child birth, and we're going to see some joy and some pain and hurtfulness mixed in here, and what we see in this very first sentence is that God is in charge of conception, and that's going to be pulled through the rest of this story, that God rules and reigns sovereignly over conception. This is why we ought to take life from conception very seriously, and this is why it can be so painful for those who struggle with infertility, and those who have struggled with poor choices here, and abortion, and those who have conceived a child, but not been able to carry the child full term, and have lost babies. This is painful. So I would just ask that as we continue to read through this, that you would stay, that you would listen, that you would see the pain here, and that hopefully we can reach some redemption on the other side.

But this is painful. And Leah conceived and bore a son and called his name Reuben. For she said, Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me. She conceived again and bore a son and said, Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also, and she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son and said, Now this time my husband will be attached to me because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi.

And as she conceived again and bore a son, she said, This time I will praise the Lord. Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing. There's a few short verses, but it drags out over the course of at least about five years. Maybe longer. What we see is that she kept saying, she has the first one and she says, Now my husband will love me.

But then she has another one, several years later, and says basically the same thing. Because the first one didn't fix it, so she says, Now. Now God's seen I'm hated this one. And she has a third son years later and says, Now. Finally she reaches the fourth one and she says, This time I'm just going to praise the Lord. And it seems as if she's reached a little bit of a place of peace, a little bit of understanding that this idea that if I can just have this, this will fix it, this will solve the problem.

She's looking ahead every time she has a child and says, This will be it. She's looking to some sort of circumstantial fix to the pain that she is in. And a lot of times when we talk as church family, we'll say, You're going through a season of difficulty. And sometimes what we don't mean by season is summer, spring, fall. We mean this. She's walking through six years, five years, ten years.

And every time she gets pregnant, this hope swells in her heart. This time. This time he'll care about me. He's certainly sleeping with her. This time he'll love me. This time he'll be attached to me.

This time he'll care about me. And it doesn't work. Never happens. Chapter 30, verse 1. When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, Give me children or I shall die.

And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel and he said, Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? She looks, She has Jacob's love, but she doesn't have any children and that meant a lot culturally. It still does. There's a lot of hope and life wrapped up in that. But she, there it meant that you were honored, that you were blessed, and she has no children.

She says, Give me children or I'm going to die. You see, she has his love, but she wants children. Leah has children, but she wants his love and everybody's looking for a circumstantial fix. They're looking to something and saying, If I could just have this, then I'd be okay. Then I'd be at peace.

Then my heart would settle. She's looking and saying, If I don't have this, I'm going to die. I have to have this to live. I have to have this to be okay. It's not worth living if I don't. And how often do we do that?

My whole life is hanging on this. I've just got to have this. And if I can't, I don't know what the point is. And if I can't, I don't know how to move forward. Verse 3. Then she said, Here is my servant Bilhah.

Go into her so that she may give birth on my behalf that even I may have children through her. So she's looking for a circumstantial fix. This is not coming from a place of faith. This is not coming from a place of hope. It's just that I need children. I've got to have them.

She goes through this process which was common culturally. There's a lot to the Bible just tells us happens without telling us how to think about it and how to approach it. And a lot of times, especially in Genesis, we're just going to hear some stories. The Bible's going to keep moving. There are places later in Scripture where we see this is not a good idea. This is not the way to go about this.

Not to have multiple wives. Not to approach it this way. But she does this. It's common. So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife.

And Jacob went into her and Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then Rachel said, God has judged me and has also heard my voice and given me a son. Do y'all see that? She said, he's also heard my voice. That's pointing back to Reuben where she said, God heard me. And she says, yeah, God also heard me.

Which means that Jacob knows that these names meant something. It was common that all the names of these children were saying, Jacob will love me now. And it still didn't work for Leah. Each child she named was a cry for help and he doesn't even care. And then Rachel says, ha ha ha, he heard me too. You're not the only person who can pray.

Rachel's servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, with mighty wrestlings, I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed. So she called his name Naphtali. This is a terrible home to live in. She named her child Wrestle because she's fighting with her sister. The amount of unrest, venom, pain here is overwhelming.

And some of you can picture this so clearly because you know what it's like to live in a house like this. When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Then Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son and Leah said, good fortune, has come. She called his name Gav. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son and Leah said, happy am I for women have called me happy. So she called his name Asher.

So at this point, Leah seems that she's no longer just pointing back and saying, these children will give me love. These children will draw Jacob to me. She's just saying, I just want children. They make me happy. They're where life is and she's putting her hope in them. In the days of the wheat harvest, Reuben, that's the oldest, went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother, Leah.

I'm not sure how many botanists and horticulturalists we have in the room. I think many of you were like, wait, I've only heard about mandrakes in Harry Potter. Are they real? They are. They look similar to the little things they pull out. They're all twisted up and rudy and they're all little people and they've been treated to have special powers since forever.

I think too much of them. They're kind of a hallucinogen and they can kill you. The Bible is not advocating the way they think about this but they understood mandrakes. They call them love apples. So they understood when they found this and it was a rare find that this was some sort of fertility drug, some sort of aphrodisiac and so it was much appreciated especially in the middle of the fight that these two sisters are having.

Then Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes. But she said to her, is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? I can't imagine living in this house. Her response is, you took my husband, which I'm assuming that Rachel would feel like, no, you took my husband. She says, you want my mandrakes also?

You want my super special fertility? I'm going to help you have babies? But she said to her, is it a small matter that you've taken away my husband? Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? Rachel said, then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes. So he spent most of his time with Rachel.

She says, you can have him for the night. Give me the mandrakes. She believes that's going to help her in her infertility. When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, you must come into me for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes. So he lay with her that night.

This is healthy. Jacob is not leading his family, is not setting them up for any amount of joy. He got pushed into this by Laban who deceived him, who tricked him. And then Jacob at this point is just, it seems, one of the ladies in our teaching team said that it seems like his goal is happy wife, happy life. Like he's just this kind of, whatever they say, he's not trusting in, hoping in the Lord. He's not trying to lead here.

He's just doing whatever they say. He's mostly silent. I think he's just trying to manage the circumstances that he's in. Later, we see later in Genesis when he meets the Pharaoh, he says that his days were few and evil. He's not joyous. He's not trusting.

He's not walking with the Lord. He just is here. He's kind of dead inside. That's what it seems like. So he lay with her that night, verse 17, and God listened to Leah and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.

And Leah said, God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband. So she called his name Issachar. Now that statement she says there, God has given me my wages because I gave him my servant to my husband. The Bible is not saying that's a good theology. It's just saying that's what she said. Also, the theology defined here is that mandrakes don't help you with conception.

God does. And again, for those who struggle with infertility, that truth that God is sovereign over that can bring more pain than to just think it was random. It can be more hurtful than to just think there's, you know, it is what it is. But that's the truth that's found here. And Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son. And Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment.

Now my husband will honor me because I have born him six sons. She hasn't fully moved off of the idea that children are going to make her husband love her, appreciate her, honor her. She's still clinging to this, longing for this, and it has been years. And in some ways, who can blame her? But nobody's joyous, nobody's hope-filled, and everybody's looking for something else to fix the situation.

Verse 21, After she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah, then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. It's helpful to note that when Rebecca could not conceive, we were told that Isaac prayed for her. It doesn't seem like Jacob's praying. It seems like it's just intentionally kind of saying, listen to Rachel, listen to Leah. Jacob is just there playing no real part in any of this, except for the conception part when they pass him back and forth from 10 to 10. Bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach.

And she called his name Joseph, saying, may the Lord add to me another son. That's one of the saddest lines in this to me. Rachel has been hurting and pleading and wanting to have a child. She has a son. He's born. She says, God's taken away my reproach.

And you're like, yes, praise him. Yes, trust him. Yes, see that he's good. And what she says is, may I have another. Her heart, even in the moment of naming this child, has not settled. She is not satisfied.

There is no joy. There is no hope. And that's the way it works. When we hang everything on our circumstances, we will not find satisfaction. It will always be short-lived. And the truth is, as you read this story out, and we'll see it in chapter 35, she has another son, and she dies in childbirth.

The thing that she thought would give her life and purpose and meaning ultimately is what kills her. We're going to stop there. Nobody here does anything for us other than model for us over, in short verses, but over a long period of time, how we so often walk through life. If I can just have this, then I'll be satisfied. If I can just make it here, then I'll be okay. Nobody's happy.

Everybody's chasing it. We have to have something more resilient than happiness because we are going to walk through pain and suffering and hurt, sickness. Should the Bible give us any help here? First thing I want to show you is that what just happened here, and then when she does have her next son, Benjamin, is that the twelve tribes of Israel were born. God's promise that He made early on that I'm going to make you into a great nation, that in the midst of this pain and in the midst of this difficulty, He is accomplishing that. In the midst of two wives and two extra wives, He is accomplishing His promise.

In the midst of what is brokenness and sin, God is working towards His glory, towards His accomplishment of His promise, towards ultimately everyone's good in the midst of. He's working actually through it. It has not derailed His plans. That this is ultimately the tribes that will be the nation of Israel. And this is where God shows us how He works in and through suffering. And ultimately as Christians, we know and hold that to be true.

That Jesus Christ suffers. That He's the suffering servant. That He's a man of sorrows. That He's acquainted with grief. That God does not sit far away from our pain. He does not sit far away from our suffering.

It is not just an interruption, but He uses it and works through it for redemption and for good and for His glory and for His purposes. That if we are Christians, if we are people of the cross, we cannot just believe that suffering and pain and difficulty are an interruption to our otherwise meant to be happy lives because that is a false understanding of who God is and what He does and how He works in suffering and what His ultimate purpose is in the world. It is not our temporal happiness. It is His eternal glory. And the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of the scriptures and the beauty of this story is that when we are caught up in His eternal glory, we will have unending satisfaction and unending joy.

And when we aim at temporal happiness, we will never get it. We will have glimpses of it. We will have moments of it. We will have tastes of it. We will get to what we think we see other people having and enjoying it. But what ultimately happens is what happened with Leah and Rachel.

Well, Rachel is looking at Leah and saying, see, she has got the happiness. And Leah is looking at Rachel and saying, see, she has got the happiness. And the truth is we will spend our time looking into the dirt at temporal things that will not satisfy, that will not fill us up, that will not fix the problem. And ultimately, we will die and we will have missed the point, which is that God works for His glory and in that, we get joy and we get good. It's what Romans 8 says. We're going to pull it up on the screen.

I want to read that to you quickly. It says, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children, then heirs. Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him, that we might be swept up in His glory, that we might be brought in to His glory and it says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The sufferings of this time are not worth comparing to the glory. Do you know what defeats suffering? God's glory.

Happiness can't do it. Your temporal, circumstantial satisfaction will not satisfy, will not fix the problem, but if we get swept up in God's glory, in His story, in His purpose, if we get brought into what He is accomplishing in the world, if we lean into His eternal purpose and His glory, then we are equipped and we are prepared for all of the temporal suffering that we will face because it's not worth comparing to the glory that is to come. That what we face here on a daily basis and that what we walk through for seasons of life, for decades, when we get the diagnosis back and we are staring down the barrel of pain and torment and torture and death, if our goal is happiness, we are not prepared. When we get the news that our spouse has cheated on us that they are leaving, we are not prepared.

If we get the news, if we find out that our parents have passed, if we pull through an intersection and are hit by a truck and we stand and weep over the graves of our children, we are not prepared unless we know that there is a God who joined us in our suffering and in the midst of suffering brings about purpose and sweeps us up into His glory and gives us an eternity filled with hope and gives us something bigger to lean into and something stronger to hold on to. 2 Corinthians 4, Paul's talking about the suffering that they're facing as they try to proclaim the gospel and he says, knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us into Your presence. That life lived for God's glory gives us hope beyond our suffering and purpose in our suffering. And this is the hope beyond our suffering.

That this will not last. This is not eternal. This will not win. And if you are in Christ, you will rise. That the God who raised Christ from the dead will raise us from the dead and this death that works in our bodies will be conquered and we will stand in glory forever. He keeps going.

He says, for it is all for your sake so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. He's actually saying that they, the apostles, are suffering so that more people might know Christ and ultimately be brought into His glory. so we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. He says, we are not crushed even though our outer self is wasting away.

Some of us are in situations where we feel like we are wasting away. We are decaying. We are being crushed. We are being destroyed. And He says, even though that's happening, God's Spirit works in us and He enlivens us daily and He gives us hope and He gives us meaning beyond this. He gives us a way to work through it and ultimately He gives us purpose in it because He is preparing in our sufferings.

He is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory. That there will not be a tear shed. That there will not be a drop of blood that hits the ground. That there will not be a moment of anguish for a Christian that does not roll into God's divine purpose that you might be able to handle how wonderful it is to be in His presence. That it is through our suffering we are prepared to enter into the glory that He has. That we are brought into and swept up into His better purposes that we might be able to handle it through His suffering.

Because Jesus walked through suffering to bring us into glory and we follow Him in suffering so that we might enter in as well. As we, verse 18, look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient. Meaning they'll pass. But the things that are unseen are eternal.

He's saying that the way that we are able to stand in this is that we fix our eyes beyond our circumstances. And this is so difficult to do. Paul at the beginning of this chapter says that they're afflicted, they're perplexed, they're persecuted, they carry around death in their bodies, that they're struck down. But we have to remind ourselves of the glory and the good that is to come. We have to look towards what is eternal and where our hope is found that we might rest in Him. I'm going to pray and we're going to sing more songs at the end than we normally do that we might walk our minds towards the Lord, that we might fix our eyes on Him, that we might see Him in His glory and be brought along with Him.

And then during this next song we will take communion that those of us in the room who have placed our faith in Jesus might sit for a moment, talk with the Lord about where we have trusted other things, talk to the Lord where we have been looking towards our circumstances to solve our problems and help set our minds on what is eternal, on where our hope is and where God's glory is that we might be brought along into a bigger purpose that creates in us a resiliency in the midst of suffering and pain. That you would come and take communion where we celebrate that Jesus' body was broken and His blood was shed, that it was His suffering where God twisted and bent the course of history towards His glory and His fame and His name that He had been working towards that as the pinnacle of history and that we as Christians are prepared to walk through what we're walking through. I don't know what you're going through right now and I don't know what you're going to face in the days to come and I don't know what you're trying to live down in your past but I know that God does and I know that it is not wasted because God works in suffering that we might know Him and that we might be prepared to be in His presence. We don't know why we suffer the way we do and we don't know why you suffer in one way and someone else in another way but we know that God is good and that He loves us and that He has a purpose in suffering and therefore we can trust Him and we can walk through the darkest of days with a hope that will not die.

We will weep. We will doubt. We will hurt. We will have moments when we feel we cannot move forward. Paul says that they were crushed beyond what they could bear and then we will lean into an eternal God who has an eternal glory and trust that it's for His name and for His good and that in that we will be brought into what matters. We fix our eyes on what's eternal.

So sit, pray, lean into the Lord, try to fix your eyes on Him. If you've been looking towards something to say, if I could just have this then I'll be okay. If I could just have this then I'll be satisfied. Repent and trust in the Lord and then we'll take communion. Let's pray.

God, we thank You for Your grace. We thank You for Your goodness. We thank You that our suffering has meaning and purpose and hope. That it is not an interruption, that it does not mean that the good plan for our life has fallen apart but that You work in suffering, that You work through suffering for Your glory and for our good and that we can look beyond our suffering because our hope is fixed in a resurrected Christ and that we can have purpose in our suffering because You are preparing for us a glory that is not worth comparing. Look what we're going through now. We pray that we would point to You well in our suffering as we weep as we're broken and as we trust.

In Jesus' name. as they do nothing. Let's keep it.

The Presence of God

The Presence of God

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We have been walking through the story of Genesis. We've been following the patriarchs the past few weeks and months. We've been Abraham, and then we followed Isaac.

We are now shifting more into Jacob being the patriarch. I want to recap a little bit of what we talked about last week in the story, because that bleeds into the story today. Last week we were in Genesis 27, and it is the moment that Isaac has come to give his blessing, the promise that he had been given from God, that he would bless one of his sons, and he chose his favorite, Esau. That was his plan. His plan was to give the blessing to Esau. While Esau goes on a hunting trip to prepare food for his dad, his wife catches wind of it.

Rebecca hears of this plan. Her favorite is Jacob. She wants him to be the son of promise. So they devise a plan where she cooks some food, where she dresses him up to smell like Isaac. Isaac at this point is old. He is blind.

He is nearing death. He is a little bit easier to deceive. So Jacob shows up in his brother's clothes to smell like him. He has goat skin wrapped around his hands and his neck to feel like Esau, because Esau is furry. And then he comes and he deceives his father. He dishonors his father.

He lies to him. He even blasphemes the name of the Lord, and he actually steals the promise. That through it all, God works through this mess of a situation, this mess of a family, to bring the promise because God chose Jacob to carry this promise. And when Esau finds out about this, he is very upset. He is distraught. And in his grief, it quickly turns to anger.

In verse 41 of chapter 27, it says, Now Esau hated 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 approaching. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. Jacob. So he is angry.

And this is going to cause Jacob to go on the run and to leave this family. So we're going to be in Genesis 27, and we're going to finish up through Genesis 28, which is on page 13 of your blue Bibles. I encourage you to grab a Bible today. There's not going to be a lot of text on the screen. We're going to walk through this story as this family is divided, as Jacob goes out on his own. So go ahead and flip there.

There are moments in epic stories where a hero enters the scene and changes everything. Where someone arrives and it changes the momentum, it changes the swagger, it changes the confidence of the whole story. You can think back to the two towers and the Lord of the Rings. At the Battle of Helm's Deep, this big battle is happening. They are losing the battle. And then Gandalf enters the scene.

On the top of the hill, shining like white lightning, he is ready to bring his army in. It changes the whole momentum of the battle. It changes the swagger of the army. They end up winning the battle. You can look at the Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In the last part, in the last battle, Aslan enters the scene, and it changes everything.

You can do this with Star Wars. You can look at the multiple times that Luke Skywalker shows up, and it changes the scene. You can do this when Bobby Boucher enters in at halftime of the Bourbon Bowl, and he inspires a comeback. The Mud Dogs win the Bourbon Bowl and the Waterboy. You can do this with a lot of stories. When someone comes in and they change everything, they change the momentum, and they change the confidence, and it brings, and it changes the story completely.

And we see that today in this story. We're going to see Jacob out on his own, and God is going to teach him something about the importance of his presence. That God's presence matters. This is going to teach Jacob a profound lesson, but it's also going to teach the church as we read this. So let me pray, and then we're going to dive in to the story.

God, I thank you that you didn't stand in the heavens, that you came, and that changed everything. God, I pray that today, as we walk through this story, that you would help us see your good news in it. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so we're going to be in the end of 27 in verse 41.

Now Esau hated 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 approaching. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. But the words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebekah. Now there's two aspects of this that I found remarkable.

First, Esau. He's just foolish, and this is the last story we get of his foolishness. It just shows up again. I kind of feel like, you know, remember the guy in high school or middle school that always picks fights? And the whole day they'd be talking up the fight, like I'm going to jump this kid, I'm going to stop this kid. And they're talking loudly to themselves.

They're telling anybody who will listen. And then at the end of the day, the principal calls them into the office and says, Hey, I heard you're going to fight a kid. And he's shocked. Like how? How did that happen? It's like, bro, because you told everybody.

Everyone in the school knows. As I imagine a little bit of what Esau's doing. He's cleaning his deer. He's in the camp and he's just loud. He's like, When daddy's gone, I'm going to kill him. That's part of what I find remarkable.

Also, Rebekah. How stealthy is she? She picks up on everything. Nothing is lost on her. She caught wind that Isaac was going to give the blessing to Esau and she intervened. And somehow she's got ears everywhere and she picks up on this.

And she realizes this is not good for Jacob. And so she sent and called Jacob, her younger son, and said to him, Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise. Flee to Laban, my brother, in Haran and stay with him for a while until your brother's fury turns away, until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there.

Why should I be bereft of both of you in one day? Then Rebekah said to Isaac, I loathe my life because of these 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? So she tells Jacob, Son, you got to go. I love you, but you got to go. Your brother, Esau's like Katniss with the bow, but he's built like Sasquatch.

And Jacob, she's like, Jacob, you're real skilled with the knife. I've seen you cut potatoes in the tent, but that's not going to help you. Your brother will destroy you. You have got to go. And also, you got to leave here. You got to go to my family in the land of Haran.

You got to go to Laban and find a wife because you can't marry the women of this land. And she goes to Isaac and she's like, If he marries a Canaanite, if he marries a Hittite like his brother, I'm going to lose my mind. He has got to find a good woman, and it's not here. He needs to go. So Isaac hears this, and it says, Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him.

You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. Arise. Go to Badam-Aran, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. So he says, Don't, don't marry a Canaanite woman. Please, like, do not follow in the same footsteps of your brother. Marry someone.

Go to the land of Padam-Aran, which I know sounds like a planet in Star Wars. It's a real place, and it's 500 miles from where they are. So this is a big journey for Jacob, and Isaac knows this, and he gives him a blessing. And as we talked about last week, blessings hold weight in the Bible. He says, God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham.

Thus Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padam-Aran, to Laban, the son of Bethuel, the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau's mother. So Isaac reiterates this promise that he had gotten, that his father Abraham had gotten. And I want to just refresh us on the importance of this promise. That he promises him a place. You will get this land. This place is yours.

And he promises him a people. That you have the blessing of a great nation being made through you. The blessing of place in people is significant. And we're going to see how that shows up a little bit later. But I also want to take note of something.

That his son dishonored him. His son lied to him. His son took advantage of him. He blasphemed the name of the Lord. He used God's name for dishonorable practices. But he ultimately trusts in the sovereignty of God in the situation.

He trusts that God chose Jacob. And he has faith. It's a little bit of a redemptive moment for Isaac. He trusts God. And he gives him a blessing. So he sends him out.

Jacob is on the road. And then Esau catches wind of all of this. In verse 6 it says, Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padam Aram to take a wife from there. And that as he blessed him, he directed him, You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. And that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Padam Aram. So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac, his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had, Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaoth.

Now, we get kind of one last picture of Esau and his foolishness. He catches wind that it didn't please his parents to marry a Canaanite woman. So he thinks, have you ever been in a situation where you mess up in your family, like really mess up and your solution is, you know what I should do? I should marry my cousin on the estranged side of my family, like the one where his dad and my dad are not friends, like that's a good idea. That's kind of his plan here. He goes to, this is the Ishmael, alright, this is the Ishmael that his grandmother threw out of the family to die and to be on their own.

He thinks, that's a good idea. I'll marry his daughter and I will get in my parents' good graces again. And you kind of feel a little bit bad for Esau. He's just trying to please his dad, but he's foolish. He's not wise. And it's evident that God has chosen Jacob to carry this promise that Esau is a fool and that he is not going to inherit this promise and that his attempt to get back in his parents' good graces will not work.

So then the story really shifts completely to Jacob. And Jacob is on the run and it says, Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran, which is another place for this land of Padamuram. He went toward Haran and he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and laid down in that place to sleep. So I want to take a moment to kind of feel where Jacob is at.

This is the first time that Jacob is on his own. And in this culture, you stay with your family. It was identity. It was future. It was value. It was the way you were provided for.

It was security. So Jacob is on his own and there's a lot of uncertainty here. Also, I feel like Jacob, he says he's a man of the tent, that he's not really used to being out on his own. I kind of feel like it's the picture of, you know, they used to take animals that were born in captivity and release them in the wild because they thought that was a good idea to lease them back to the wild and they put trackers on them and they go out in the wild and after like a week, they see the animal hadn't moved and they go out and they see that it didn't make it because it's just not wise to release someone who's something born in captivity into the wild.

I feel like Jacob is like this. He's a man of the tent. He's not used to being out on his own. There's all kinds of uncertainty all over this situation as he is journeying out. In the midst of his uncertainty, in the midst of all of it, he's very tired. We know he's tired because he takes a stone as a pillow to sleep and stones aren't comfortable.

So he is uncertain. There's all kinds of, probably some fear in the midst of all of this and he is tired and God comes to him in a dream. Verse 12, And he dreamed and behold, there was a ladder set up on earth and the top of it reached to heaven. Now, pause. This is common in the Bible. God speaks through dreams.

We are not going to talk about it a lot today. We're going to save that for when we get to Joseph because I know that some of you probably got really excited about talking about dreams and that you want to go to community group this week and you want to hijack the discussion and talk about how dreams are and how God speaks to us in dreams. I want you to save that for when we get to Joseph. God does speak through dreams. He communicates truth and he communicates promises. Also, sometimes a dream is just a dream.

If you dream about winning the lottery, it doesn't mean you go out and buy lottery tickets. Alright? We'll get more of that when we get to Joseph but right here, it's important to know he is communicating truth and promises to Jacob and he comes to him in a dream and Jacob sees a ladder. He sees a ladder. Now, it's debated in the Hebrew whether it's ladder or a staircase. You may see in some of your Bibles it'll say ladder and it'll have a footnote that says also it could be a staircase and there's a lot of debate that happens over this.

Honestly, I don't really care about the debate. I don't think that is as important as what the method is. The picture of what's happening here is that heaven and earth are connected. That a ladder connects heaven and we're going to stick with the language of ladder here because this is what our Bibles say. That heaven and earth are connected. This is a very big and grand picture.

It says, And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it on this ladder. And behold, the Lord stood above it all and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father and the God of Isaac. I want us to picture this and what this would look like. There's this grand ladder. I mean, sometimes we use ladders to change these lights up here. I don't.

I watch people that do it because it's very tall up there and if you fall, it's not good. And it's high. And this pales in comparison to what it actually would be like. This is a ladder that reaches the heavens. It is massive. It is grand.

It is big. This connection is happening and there are angels ascending and descending on it. Which I know, some of us have a hallmark version of what angels look like, that they're very cute. They are not cute. They are terrifying. If you read about them in the Bible, they bring some of the glory of God with them.

They are terrifying creatures. This picture is grand. It is big. And it's starting to get even more fearful because the Lord, the God Almighty, stands above the ladder. So this ladder is in the sky.

There's angels descending and ascending upon it. And the God of the universe, the God that created everything out of nothing, that holds the universe in the palm of his hand, he stands at the top of it. And this picture just got even more fearful because the last time that Jacob spoke of the Lord, it was not good. He blasphemed the name of the Lord. He also has not had this type of relationship with God, not like his father Isaac. So this is his first encounter with the God of the universe.

And any time that anyone encounters the glory of the Lord in the Bible, it is a fearful picture. And the last we see of him talking about him is a very blasphemous episode. It feels like a little bit, there are times going up when I would get in trouble and my stepdad, who's a bigger guy, would stand before me and I was tiny. And he looked huge. And when he spoke, he spoke deep and it sounded so much louder when I was in trouble. I know many of you have had this experience with parents.

Multiply that by a thousand. And this is the picture that we get here. It is fearful. And then the Lord speaks. What is he going to say? Based on what his last episode was with what happened with Jacob, what is he going to say to him?

And this is what the Lord declares. The land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your offspring. He's going to give a place. This land. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth. And then we see the promise of people.

You get a place and you get a people. And you shall spread across, spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And then you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. So the Lord starts out by reassuring him that you get this blessing. The blessing of Abraham, the blessing of Isaac, this is yours. And we see a glimpse of a common theme that we get throughout Genesis that this is God's grace.

Jacob deserves wrath. He blasphemes the name of the Lord. He deceives, dishonors his father. He deserves wrath. But God gives him a blessing.

He gives him grace. And this picture of grace is much bigger than just Jacob. It's going to bless all the families of the earth. So he gives this blessing and then he says, Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you. And it's at this point that we see what the imagery of the ladder is.

How this comes into full view. The picture of the ladder is a picture of God's presence with Jacob. The ladder connects heaven and earth and God doesn't just stand above it all managing from a distance. God is imminent. He is with Jacob. He's telling, I'm going to be with you.

My presence will be with you wherever you go. I am intimately involved. I have got your back. And that is a powerful picture for Jacob that wherever he goes, the presence of the Lord will be with him. He will not be alone. And he gets this dream, this powerful picture and then Jacob wakes up and he responds in verse 16.

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, How awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven. So we see two things in this story. We see that Jacob gets this powerful dream and then we see his response. That he just encountered God.

God steps into his story. Everything is about to change. And it's the first thing we see about his responses is that he's fearful. Because it is a fearful picture anytime that someone is in, that we are in sin and anytime you see in the Bible that someone is sinful and they're in the presence of God, it's a fearful picture because God's glory is so great it causes us to shudder. It's a fearful picture for him. It's also a reminder that he's going to be with him so it's a little bit of a warning.

I'm with you wherever you go. I'm going to see everything. I see all of your sin. I see all of your hidden faults. We see this develop later in the Bible that God sees every aspect of our life even the inner hidden thoughts. That's part of what's being said here but here's the bigger picture of what's happening.

His presence to Jacob is a comfort. It is a comfort to know that the Lord is with you that his presence is with you. The idea of presence in the Hebrew is the idea literally before the face of God. That you would be in the presence of God that he would be with you that you would literally be before his face and that would be a comfort to know that God is with you. There are moments when my son he's been walking for about six months and sometimes he'll wander off a little bit and he'll get mixed up with some people that he doesn't quite recognize and when he can't find me and he can't find my wife he starts to get a little bit scared and he starts to breathe heavy his tears start to come down his face and in those moments I'll call out to him and he hears my voice and it's a comfort but what really comforts him is when he can see my face.

Stolen Blessing

Stolen Blessing

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. That sounds like a daylight savings time. Welcome right there. Oh, there we go. Encore. My name is Spencer.

I'm one of the pastors here with Mill City. We've been walking through Genesis, through the story of the patriarchs. We're in Genesis 27 today, which is on page 12 in your blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, please take that home. That's our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible that you can read.

There won't be a ton of text on the screen this morning, so I'd encourage you to follow along as we walk through this story. We've been walking through Abraham into Isaac, and the next patriarch is Jacob. We're kind of shifting from Isaac into the story of Jacob with this story today. One of the best television series, I would argue, of all time is Breaking Bad. It is, I mean, you can probably put some other ones up there good, but I think Breaking Bad, by and large, is one of the best. It's one of the best written shows.

It's one of the best directed shows. The acting in it is phenomenal. The story line, it's a phenomenal story about a character named Walter White. And Walter White is a high school chemistry teacher. And he gets cancer, and he doesn't have the money to pay his bills. So if you're in New Mexico and you're looking to make some money, him being a chemistry teacher, he decides to start making meth.

And you feel a little bit sorry for him, a little bit sympathetic at first, because he's dying and he needs help. But he quickly kind of morphs into an antihero. It becomes less about him making money to survive and more about power. And he becomes more and more corrupt as the story goes. By the end of it, he's killed people, he's done terrible things, and by the end of it, you're not pulling for anymore. You want what is coming to him.

You want justice to be done. He's a frustrating character and a pretty great story. And I feel like Jacob is similar, minus the meth and some of the drama that comes with that. He's just a frustrating character. He comes in, born as a twin of Esau. He comes in grabbing the heel of Esau.

And his name is Jacob. It's a play on words that he, on the phrase deceiver, that he's going to be deceptive. It's prophetic. Looking forward to his story. A couple weeks ago, we got to see what that looked like when he cheated, when he stole his brother's birthright of Rabola Stew. We start to see that he's schemey, that he's a deceiver.

And the more we get to know him, the more frustrating he is. I would say he's probably one of the most unlikable people in the Bible. And that he really is a deceiver, like his name. And there are moments in the coming weeks, as we walk through his story, we're going to see moments of faith where he's trusting the promise. But there's a lot of mess in the middle of it.

Especially here at the beginning of his story. So as we look at this story today, it's going to be frustrating. As we look at this family today, it's going to be frustrating. But if we take a step back from this story, we'll see that actually our frustrations can be turned into worship. This story is actually good news for us. We're going to see why that is and how God uses people like Jacob.

And ultimately, we'll see how we are blessed because of this. So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to jump in. God, thank you so much for the good news of the gospel that we get to celebrate every time we open your word. I pray this morning that you would meet us here, that you would teach us more of your character and your goodness and your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so we're going to look at the last part of 26 that sets up Genesis 27.

Genesis 26, 34 says, Alright, so that's an important transition into Genesis 27. Esau, as we've established a couple weeks ago, he's foolish. He Acts foolishly. He doesn't follow in the same footsteps as his father and go and marry someone from his clan, someone from his family, and wait for that wife. No, he marries someone of the land. The Hittites did not value God like his family did.

And it makes life bitter for this family. And that's what Esau does. He's foolish. He jumps into things. And he didn't just jump into one. He jumps into two.

He marries wives seemingly back to back here. Bringing bitterness into this family. Because he wasn't patient. Because he was foolish. And then it sets up into verse 1. We're going to see that in spite of all of this, in spite of the bitterness that he brings into this family, Isaac is prepared to bless him.

So verse 1. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim 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. I 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, that my soul may bless you before I die.

So Isaac is old. He's nearing death. He's blind. So he knows it's time to give this blessing. And he summons, he gets Esau, and he gets him to do one of the things that he loves about him. Y'all, one of the reasons that he favors him over his other son.

He says, Grab your bow, grab your quiver, go and bring to me the delicious game that you make for me. It's one of the reasons that he loves one son over the other. And we also see some similarities there, that Isaac has a weakness for food, and so did Esau, that he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. That both of them have this weakness for food, and this situation starts to get even more broken. But he says, Bring this to me, that I may bless you.

Now we are a little bit far removed from the weight of what a blessing is, and what it's supposed to be. In our culture, at its most base form, the blessing or the word bless, you might have heard this when you were younger, or maybe last week. Your grandma, or maybe an aunt, said, You know, bless your heart. Bless you. And you reply, Oh, thanks grandma. That's nice of you.

And what you did not realize is, that was a backhanded insult. That wasn't actually meant. She was saying, You're an idiot. That's the base form of blessing that we have. The most common form of blessing that we have, is probably a blessing that you have before a meal. Alright?

That you would sit down, you would figure out if it's going to be before the salad, or after the salad, or before the entree gets there, or whatever. You would decide to have a blessing on the food, and then you'd eat. And that's good. That elevates kind of what blessing is. But it's even more so than that.

In the church for centuries, and even today as we practice this a little bit, Christians bless one another with words. We do this every Sunday. At the end of our gathering, someone stands up here, and they give what we call a benediction. Some of you may have heard me say that before, and you've laughed. I may have even said a blessing for the road, because that's what it is. We give a blessing, and we're practicing what the New Testament does.

At the end of the New Testament letters, there are benedictions that are blessings for those churches. That you would give a good word, that's a deeply spiritual way of asking God's blessing on another. And that's even a closer form to what we see here, but that doesn't even capture all of what's happening in this blessing. Because this blessing is not just deeply spiritual, it's prophetic. He's pronouncing something that what he is saying is, he is blessing a blessing that's going to change the future for these two sons. That one of them is going to carry this promise.

That one of them is going to carry this blessing, and everything that comes with it, the other is not. One of them is going to find favor with the Lord, and the other is not. So this is a deeply spiritual and prophetic blessing. And we as Christians, we just need to grow in our understanding of what a blessing is, and what it means. Even what the weight of words are supposed to be, for those of us who are filled with the Holy Spirit. James 3 talks about this.

It talks about the importance of words. It talks about the tongue, and the words that we say. It says the tongue is a small member. It can be like a tiny rudder of a ship. It's a tiny rudder that guides a whole ship through waters. It's a constructive picture of how words can build up.

And he says it's also going to be like a spark that sets a forest on fire. That it can burn everything around you. It can cause destruction. That words matter. And when he gets to blessings and curses, in James 3 and verse 9, he says, With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

So Christians, we need to grow in this. We need to grow in understanding that words matter. They have weight. That they can build up, and they also can tear down. That our words, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can be deeply spiritual. But also, as we see in this passage, it is prophetic.

And he gets ready to pronounce this blessing. And Rebekah catches wind of it. Picks up in verse 5. It says, Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau.

Bring me game, and prepare for me delicious food, that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord, before I die. She says, Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. Go to the flock, and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare for them 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. So Rebekah, she catches wind of what's happening here, and she jumps into action.

So I want to take a step back and look at this, because this situation is even more broken. Rebekah, while she was pregnant with Jacob and Esau, she was given a prophecy by God. In Genesis 25, this is what he says. God says, Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger.

So she was given this prophecy, so she knows that God has spoken, that Jacob is the one that's going to carry the promise. So all she has to do is trust God's word. She simply can just trust God, because he's going to make this happen. Jacob is the one that's going to carry the promise. She doesn't have to force this promise, like her mother-in-law Sarah, who did it with Ishmael. No, she simply can trust God that he's going to do this, but she doesn't.

She starts to jump into a scheme. And when you look at this from another angle, you see this is even more of a broken situation. It is very reasonable, and commentators agree on this, it's very reasonable to assume that when Rebekah received this prophecy, that she went and told Isaac. Isaac's the patriarch. He's the leader of their clan. They love each other.

This is something she would have brought to him. And if he knew this, that means that for decades, he has favored Esau. He hasn't believed this promise. In fact, there are times he's actively opposing it. So you have one who's trying to force the promise.

You have the other one who's opposing it. This is a broken situation, and we see the division that devised this family because of this favoritism. This is a broken family. And y'all, this is the broken family that God chose to bring about his plan of redemption. So Rebekah hears this.

She goes and gets Jacob, and she starts giving orders. Go and get two young goats, which is oddly specific in the text that Isaac loves two young goats. But I did learn that younger meat actually does taste better. Over a year ago, I accidentally shot what I thought was a doe and ended up being a young buck. And I felt bad because in hunting, you don't do that. You don't shoot young bucks.

That's wrong. But the meat was tasty. I did learn a thing. I'm not into young, like veal. I'm not into some of the other things. But apparently, younger meat does taste better.

And Isaac knows this. He wants two young goats. He likes that. She's like, all right, go and get the two young goats. And she makes the meal, which means she's taking matters into her own hands. She's giving orders.

And she knows that food is the way to get to her husband. So it picks up in verse 11. It says, But Jacob said to Rebekah, his mother, 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 be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing. His mother said to him, Let your curse be on me, my son. Only obey my voice and go and bring them to me.

So Jacob states the obvious. Dad may be blind, but he's not stupid. If he feels me, he'll know it's not, that I'm not Esau. Esau is hairy like Chewbacca. So he's going to feel like Chewbacca.

And if he catches wind of this, he knows the importance of words and curses. That if a curse comes down on him, this has effects for generations. It has eternal ramifications. And she says something profound. She says, Let the curse be on me. I'll take it.

Go and do what I'm telling you to do. So it picks up. Verse 14 says, So he went and took them, talking about the young goats, and brought them to his mother. And his mother prepared delicious food, such as his father loved. Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau, her son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob, her younger son.

And the skins of the young goats she put 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 hand of her son Jacob. So she makes this food. She goes and gets Esau's clothes, because those are going to carry his scent. He's a man of the field, so he smells differently than Jacob. Then she takes the skin of the young goats.

The goats that she just slaughtered. Alright, so this is nasty. And she puts it on his hands, and on the smooth part of his neck, which again, how hairy is Esau, that his neck and his hands are like goat skin. I don't know if you've ever peted a goat, it's like a dog. He doesn't have hair, he has a layer of fur. And they put this deception suit on, with his clothes, and with his goats in.

He gets the deception suit on, he takes the food. And then we get to see how, even further broken this story gets. Verse 18, So he went in 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. Now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me. So he lies to his father. And that is a very big deal in this culture. This is a shame and honor culture. There's two very important aspects of this culture.

And one of the most important things that you would do in this culture, is that you would honor your parents. It was a great shame to show dishonor to your parents, and to think that you would take advantage of your father's blindness, by lying to him. That's outrageous. That's gross in this culture. You would never do that. That's dishonoring.

And this lie gets even more wicked. Verse 20, But Isaac said to his son, How is it that you found it so quickly, my son? So again, he's not stupid. And this hunt would have taken some time. All of a sudden he shows up. Jacob says, He answered, Because the Lord your God granted me success.

And this is no longer just a lie. This is just morphed into blasphemy. He has blasphemed the name of the Lord. We kind of have a little bit of a low view of blasphemy. Our kind of categories for it is you would use God or Jesus' name in a curse word. But blasphemy is so much bigger than that.

It's dishonoring the name of the Lord. It's taking it in vain. It's dishonoring and robbing God's name of its glory. And he uses that to deceive his father. To lie to his father. He uses the integrity of God's name for dishonor and evil.

Similar to, I don't know if you've ever seen businesses that have a Jesus fish on their sign. And some of those businesses are known for dishonorable practices and ripping people off. That's blasphemy. Using the name of God for evil purposes. And that is what he does here. He didn't just lie to his father.

He blasphemes the name of the Lord. God has stricken down people in the Bible for much less. And he is justified in doing so. So he blasphemes the name of the Lord. And he lies to him. And this story continues to come off the tracks.

21 Says, He's starting to get outmaneuvered here. Because he did not anticipate that his son might stoop to this level. To put on this deception suit of goat skin. And he feels them. And he starts to become convinced. But in verse 24 he says, Just one more time.

He said, Are you really my son Esau? He answered, I am. Just one more time. Are you really Esau? Is it you son? Yeah, that's me then.

Then he 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. So he brings the food. A weakness for him. He brings in some wine. That's going to further loosen him up. Lower his inhibitions.

And then the blessing comes. Verse 26. Then his father Isaac said to him, Come near and kiss me, my son. So he came near and kissed him. And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments. And blessed him and said, See the smell of my son as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.

May God give you of the dew of heaven. And of the fatness of the earth. And plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you. And nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers.

May your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you. And blessed be everyone who blesses you. So he kisses him. He's further convincing. But he smells Esau's clothes.

And he is convinced. And he gives this blessing. And remember, this blessing is prophetic. This is God speaking through Isaac. What he means for Esau, God ultimately uses the brokenness of this situation to mean for Jacob. His prophecy is coming true.

And he says, May God give you the dew. Which to us, it's like, oh, that's how you start this grand blessing. Cool. Dew is actually a sign of prosperity. It's a little bit far removed from us. And in an arid culture, they didn't have a lot of rain.

So dew is how the fields were watered. He's saying, May you be prosperous. And he continues that by saying, May you abound in grain and wine. That's more language of prosperity. Then he says, May nations bow down to you.

And that is a continuation of the promise. That he's the one who's going to have the great nation. He says, May you Lord over your brothers. Meaning he's going to be the leader. And Esau is going to submit under his leadership. He says, Blessings for those who bless you.

And curses for those who curse you. And the deception is complete. Jacob gets the promise. And when you look at how much deceit. How much sin is all over this. How broken is the situation.

How messed up is this family. How frustrating is it that Jacob, the deceiver. He's the one that gets the promise. Through all of this sin. And the moment that this happens. Jacob sets out.

And then Esau steps in. It says, As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob. When Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac, his father. Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting. He also prepared delicious food and brought it to his father. And he said to his father, Let my father arise and eat of his son's game.

That you may bless me. His father Isaac said to him, Who are you? He answered, I'm your son. Your firstborn, Esau. Then Isaac trembled very violently.

And said, 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.

We've established that Esau is a fool. But man, part of me just really, I feel sorry for him. He listens to his dad. He goes out. He hunts. He brings in the food.

And then they realize that someone is coming in and robbed this blessing. We're going to see in a moment. It doesn't take long to connect the dots. They know exactly who did this. His father starts to connect the dots. And it says he shakes violently.

He trembles as he figures out what just happened. Now, some have looked at this and thought, Why couldn't he just revoke the blessing? Why couldn't he just say, All right, bring Jacob back in here. You're cursed. You're blessed. Game over.

There's two possible reasons for that. First, on the one hand, it doesn't really seem like blessings like this could be revoked. That once this was said, it was finished. And that makes sense because he says, he pronounces and says, Anyone who curses you, let them be cursed. So you can't exactly go back at this point and correct this and pronounce a curse on Jacob.

The second reason is that it is very reasonable that Isaac knew about this prophecy. That Rebecca told him years ago that he knew about this. And for decades, he has been fighting this. For decades, he's been showing favor to the son who he loves. The son that he favors. The son who brings some game.

The boy that he most favors. And in this moment, finally, he concedes. He reasons it out and he says, Yes, he shall be blessed. Jacob gets the blessing. And through years of deception and years of division and years of favoritism and years of brokenness in this family, it's complete. God's promise comes true.

And Esau is broken. Verse 34, it says, As soon as 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, oh, my father. In the depths of his grief, he's begging. Can I just get a blessing? Can I get something? It says in verse 35, But he said, Your brother came deceitfully and he has taken away your blessing.

Esau said, Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. He took away my birthright and behold, now he's taken away my blessing. Then he said, Have you not reserved a blessing for me? I mean, he just wants something. This cheat of your son has taken everything from me.

Can you just give me something? Just a tiny blessing. Anything. And Isaac answered him and said to Esau, Behold, I've made him Lord over you and all the brothers I've given to him for servants and with grain and wine sustained him. What then can I do for you, my son? 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. When Isaac makes the point, I've given him the blessing. I've given him all that. What possibly could I do for you? And Esau is broken and he weeps at what he has just lost.

And he just begs, Can I get something? And in his grief, Isaac answers. He says, Then Isaac, his father, answered him and said to him, Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be. And away from the dew of the heaven on high. By the sword you shall live and you shall serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from your neck.

So he does get a tiny blessing. He doesn't get the promise of the blessing of prosperity, of carrying the line and having this great nation. He doesn't get any of that. But there is a proclamation that one day this yoke will be broken. And yoke is a, if you've ever seen a classic picture of an oxen with a wooden yoke on its neck, its tail in the field. Yoke is a sign of serving under someone.

And this is a prophecy that one day the descendants of Esau, this is the Edomites in the Old Testament. One day they will break free. They will be their own nation away from the Israelites. So Esau gets this tiny blessing. And next week we're going to see what comes out of this, the reaction to all of this. But when you look at this story, what a mess.

It is covered with sin and brokenness. This family is broken. This story is broken. And y'all, this is the family that God has chosen to bring about the Savior of the world, Jesus. They're not likable. There's no heroes here.

It's a bunch of Walter Whites gunning for power. It's absolutely broken. And at the end of this, you may be thinking, man, didn't you say this was going to be hope-filled? Didn't you say that this was going to be worshipful, that we could find joy in this? Because the reason why this is a hope-filled story for us as Christians is because this shows that God uses the worst of us to bring about His plan of redemption. That God uses our brokenness and uses it for His redemption.

Because there's part of me that reads this story and goes, man, what a messed up family. I can't believe that Jacob gets this. I can't believe he's the one that carries the promise. He's the one that the line of Jesus is going to come through. And I look in the mirror, and it's like, man, of course God does this. I'm Jacob.

At my worst fully exposed, I'm Jacob. And so are some of you. And some of you are Esau. And some of you are Rebecca. And some of you are Isaac. We are just like this family.

The difference for those of us who have trusted in the finished work of Jesus for us is that we have Christ. That Jacob chose to clothe himself in this deception suit. That in Christ we don't have to do that. We don't have to fake it. We come to Jesus just as we are. And we don't clothe ourselves in deception.

We clothe ourselves in the righteousness of Christ. That when we trust in him, all our sin is nailed to the cross. And Jesus' goodness, his perfection, his holiness, all of that, we're clothed in it. We don't have to fake it. We don't have to deceive God as if we possibly could. That Jacob, he chose to enter his father's tent in the presence of his father through deception and blasphemy.

And we get to enter the tent, the presence of God, boldly because of the finished work. In spite of our sin, in spite of our brokenness, because we trusted in Jesus, we have access to the Father. In part in this life through prayer and worship and seeking him. And fully in the next life. That Jacob, he receives this irrevocable blessing through deception. And y'all, as Christians, we come to Jesus in spite of our sin.

When we trust in him, not putting on a facade, but fully give ourselves to him. We have an irrevocable blessing that we have trusted in. Romans 11.29 says, For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. And all over the rest of the New Testament, it says over and over again, No one can snatch you out of the hand of God. That he will carry us home. That we share in an irrevocable blessing because of what Jesus has done for us.

This story is good news for us because God will use us in spite of our sin and shortcomings. Some of us have paths of brokenness. Some of us are wrestling with some pretty difficult battles with sin. And in the midst of all of this, you can begin to wonder, How could God possibly use me? How could he possibly use me? We talked about this multiply series.

We spent five weeks in the very beginning of the year talking about how we're going to make disciples. We're going to multiply disciples. We're going to change this city. We're going to do this. And we got excited. And some of you may have been thinking, Yeah, that's great.

I would just like right now to stop looking at porn. I would just like right now to stop hurting myself. To stop hating myself. I'd like to just stop struggling with this sin. How could I possibly be used by God to change this city? Christians, that's because this is exactly what God does.

We see it all over this story. We see it all over the rest of the Bible that God uses the broken to accomplish his purposes. And I feel this as a pastor. There are moments in the midst of temptation where I'm feeling it, where I'm fighting it. And the enemy comes in. Satan comes in and whispers, Oh, you're going to get exposed.

You're going to fail. It's all going to fall apart. Your story is going to come off the tracks. You're going to take this. Your family is going to be embarrassed. This church is going to be embarrassed.

You're going to defame the name of God. And this lie comes in and whispers over and over again. And I get to fire back with the gospel. We get to fire back with the gospel. No. No, no, no.

I know how this story ends. I know that your story ends in the flames. And my story ends secure in Jesus. That one day I will stand before him. That my identity is so wrapped up in Christ. That I get to beat my chest.

The Galatians 2.20 which says, I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God that loves me and gave himself up for me. That is my identity. I rest in that.

Satan doesn't get to win. That my identity is so firmly in the gospel. When anything comes in and says, You don't have redemptive qualities. You can't be used. I get to fire back and say, That's the point of the gospel. That God uses those who are broken to bring about his purposes.

That God uses the broken to change lives. That he takes the brokenness and redeems us by his blood. That he makes beauty out of the ashes of our sin. That's the hope of the gospel. That's what we see in this story. Yes, this family is the worst.

But so is that. So are we.

Generation Faith, Generational Sin

Generational Faith, Generational Sin

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in Genesis 26. We are continuing our journey through Genesis following this storyline of this family. We are following Isaac still.

And we're in Genesis 26, which will be on page 12 in a blue Bible near you. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. We want you to have a Bible that you can read at home. I would encourage you. There's not going to be a lot of Scripture on the screen. We are going to be walking through this story.

So please do grab a Bible. We'll walk through this together. Growing up, my stepdad had some quirks. They were quite humorous. My brother and I used to watch movies in our living room. And we wanted to be kind of like a theater.

So we would turn off the lights, watch the movie. And my stepdad would get home and he would see that we're watching a movie in the dark. And the first thing that would come out of his mouth was losers sit in the dark. That's just what, every time he'd come through the door, losers sit in the dark. And he'd come on and he'd turn on one light. That was one of his quirks.

Because in our family, you just didn't watch movies in the dark. It was just a thing. Like you had to have at least one light on. And it drove me crazy that this is one of his quirks. Fast forward. Anna and I, we got married.

We got an apartment. She gets a movie. We're watching it. Getting ready to watch it. She starts turning out the lights. I started getting fidgety.

I'm like, baby, let's put one light on. And she's like, no, this is a completely normal thing. Like, turn off the lights. We're going to watch the movie. I said, no, just, I mean, I get it. Like all the lights, we can turn off at one.

We'll just keep one light on. And she was like, why? And it came out. Because losers sit in the dark. She looked at me. What did you just say?

And I had to explain the history. That in my family, we all have one light on when we watch movies. It's just a thing. And to this day, we do not watch movies in the dark. We always have one light on. It's just this quirk that I picked up from my stepdad.

This happens. Like we pick up things from our parents. We pick up behaviors. We inherit things from our parents. We inherit both things that like are the kind of inheritance of traits. Like there are things about our parents that we inherit that are in us.

And then we also inherit behaviors. Just being around, absorbing some of the behaviors, some of the patterns from our parents. And they just kind of become ours. And we're going to see that a little bit in this story today. That Isaac follows in the same footsteps of his father Abraham. Doing almost the exact same thing.

Because he, like us, inherits patterns that have been passed down to him. And we see this show up in three distinct ways. We see that Isaac inherits obedience. And we're going to see as we walk through this that he inherits sin. And then ultimately we're going to see that he inherits grace. And as we walk through the story and we see these three things that he inherits, I want us to do this a little bit reflectively.

Thinking about the things that we inherit from our parents. Some of the behaviors that show up in us. But also for those of us that have kids, what we pass down. Because it matters. So I'm going to pray.

And then we're going to jump in. And Father, thank you so much for your word. That it is accurate. That it is good. That it instructs us in righteousness. And shows us your gospel.

God, I pray this morning that you would open our hearts. That we would hear it and receive it. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, so it starts off in verse 1. Now there was a famine in the land.

Besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. Alright, so that phrase, now there was a famine in the land. And it's supposed to take you back to Genesis 12. This is supposed to help you clue in to the story of Abraham. Because Moses uses the exact same phrase in Genesis 12. So it's cluing you in.

This story is a little bit like Abraham. And then as we continue to read this, we're going to see even more so how this shows up. How this is a repeating of history from Isaac and Abraham. It says, And Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech, king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt. Dwell in the land of which I shall tell you.

Sojourn in this land. So now this is starting to sound even more like Abraham. It's starting to sound like Genesis 20. If you think back in the fall when we went through this story, Abraham took his family to the land of Gerar. God doesn't want them in Egypt. That's coming down the line at the end of Genesis.

But for now he wants them to settle in Gerar amongst the Philistines. And guess who the king is? Abimelech. Now, this could be the exact same Abimelech. There's a long gap between when Abraham was living amongst Abimelech in Genesis 20 and this time period. It's a huge gap.

So it's possible that Abimelech was very young at the time being a king. And now he's very, very old. It's also possible that this is the son of Abimelech who bears the same name. But regardless, they would have been very familiar with this family. This family has history in this land. And they would have remembered it when they came to settle amongst them.

So he says, verse 3, Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands. And I will establish the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. And then God continues. He says, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of the heaven. And will give to your offspring all these lands.

And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. So Isaac settled in Gerar. So he tells Isaac, trust me. Obey me like your father Abraham did. Like he trusted me in settling where I told him to.

Trust me. Obey my commands. Obey my statutes like your father Abraham. And you'll get this promise. This promised land. This blessing of a great nation.

That is for you. Just trust me. And what's important here is it says, So Isaac settled in Gerar. That Isaac, he trusts God. He listens to his word. He trusts him.

And he settles in the land. And that is huge. Isaac inherits obedience from his father Abraham. And this happens with us. We pick up patterns of behavior. We pick up patterns of good patterns.

Obedience from our parents that shows up in our lives. I think to my parents, one of the values they instilled in me was generosity. It's just something that they taught me at a young age. I have vivid memories of my mom. And we would be at church on Sunday. And she would be writing a check.

And she's explaining to me, this is what we do. We give to the church. And I remember the moments, not just giving with the church, but also there were situations growing up where there's someone that either worked for my stepdad or was a family member or someone we knew that they would cut checks, they would cover bills, they would help pay for things. That generosity was a rhythm. It was a natural thing for our household. And it's something that's shown up in my own life that I've been able to practice in our own family.

And sometimes that stuff is taught. Like I remember specifically my mom teaching me some of this stuff. But oftentimes a lot of this is caught. You absorb it over time. It becomes some of your behavior. And we see this as an intense example with Abraham and Isaac.

Because if you go back to Genesis 22, you look at the story of Abraham taking Isaac to the Mount of Moriah to sacrifice his son. Isaac was front and center for that. He got to see how Abraham was obedient to what God had called him to, so much so that he was in the center of it. But that Abraham ultimately trusted that the blessing was going to come through Isaac, that God was going to make this blessing happen. He just had to trust God. And he got to see this, that he trusted God, and there was blessing that came out of it.

And he got to inherit this obedience, and it was passed down from Abraham. And ultimately this is passed down to the nation of Israel. This love for God, that the heart of the Old Testament law is love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, that you would be wholly devoted in love to God, and in your devotion and love to God, that might show up in your kids. That you might teach that to your children, that they also might love God wholeheartedly, with their whole self. Proverbs 22, 6 says, Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

And that's the hope, is that you would train up a child, which sometimes is intentional teaching. Sometimes it's opening up the Bible, it's showing how to pray, it's intentional moments of training, but a lot of times, it's just stuff that is caught. It's them seeing your love for God, so much so, that it shows up in their own lives, that they might never depart from it. And this is something, that we have been trying to focus on as a church. That we've realized, we have a lot of families here, and as a gospel-centered family, we want to help families do this, and we've made some shifts. Like Kid City, I don't know if you have seen this, have gotten to see this, they've been crushing it lately.

We've made some shifts over the past year, and it's been awesome. My daughter came home a month ago, and she was learning about Romans 6, 23, and she was learning about, for the wages of sin is death, and she's explaining to me, the connections of sin and death, and I was blown away. I was so thankful. And we want to continue to press into that, but we also want to see this happen, outside of Kid City, because you, parents, have the most opportunity for impact, with your kids. You do. You have the most opportunity for influence.

My mentor, for over a decade now, he's a pastor in Houston. He used to be a youth pastor, and I interned under him. When he first showed up at the church, that I was interning at, this kid got busted, this high school kid got busted at a party. And his parents came to the church, and said, where were you? Well, my kid got busted at a party. You guys are failing.

And he said, okay. He realized, this is kind of the culture of this church. It's really the culture of down south. You take your kids to school, that's where they get their education. You take your kids to sports team, that's where they get their athletics. You take your kids to the church, that's where they get their spiritual growth.

That was kind of the mindset. So he got all the parents together, in one room. And he had one small jar, and one giant jar. And he had a bucket of ping pong balls. And he said, he took out a ball, and he said, this ball represents one hour of influence, that I get with your kids every week. Sometimes it's one, he put it in the small jar.

Sometimes it's two, he put another one. Sometimes it's three. For some of your kids, I might even get four hours, with your kids a week. And he took the bucket to the big jar, and he dumped it in. He said, this is the amount of time, that you get with your kids. 30, 40, 50, 60 plus hours a week.

And he said, tell me, who has the most opportunity for impact? Who has the most opportunity, for influence with your kids? It's you. And that is how God has designed this. That we might influence our kids, we might train them to love the Lord, with their whole self, that they might never depart from it. And some of that is intentional, it's going to be, in the future, we're going to be making shifts, to make sure that we're encouraging, time in the word at home, and time in prayer.

And we want to encourage, some of those intentional moments, but a lot of times, it's just going to be caught. It's going to be caught, and it's going to show up in your lives. We were talking about this, in our teaching team this week. And Bianca, who serves in music, and she also serves on our teaching team, and helping write sermons. And she said that she remembers, that her mom, not necessarily her teaching her, how to read the Bible, how to study the Bible. But what she does remember, is she would come home, or she would come downstairs, every morning, and she'd see her mom, with her Bible, reading.

And that has had a lasting impact, on her, to where she values, the word of God, like her mother does. I think of a friend, one of my friends from seminary, he had a daughter, and we didn't have kids yet, so I was just learning, and observing. And they had this culture, of forgiveness, and repentance, in their household. That when him and his wife, would mess up, and they would sin against their daughter, they would go to her, and say, will you forgive me? I'm so sorry. And they had this, this rhythm of repentance, and forgiveness, and love, that I hadn't seen before.

I was like, man, that is awesome, that one day, that's all she's going to know, is a culture, of repentance, and forgiveness, and love, and not one of pride. that she might never depart from that. This shows up, in the everyday moments, of crisis, and chaos. Your kids will remember, our children will remember, how we respond. Will we go to the things, of this world? Or will we go, to the Lord in prayer, seeking his wisdom, and his care, and his provision? Now some of you, may be thinking, that's great, for those of people, that grew up, in a Christian household.

That was not mine. We picked up, all kinds of different patterns, but not that. So how in the world, am I supposed to, if God gives me children, or if I have children, how in the world, am I supposed to, to teach them this kind of stuff? That sounds great. How? Well, you have a, gospel centered family, that you're surrounded with.

We are figuring this out together. Ask. Learn. Ask how some, we have older parents here. Ask how, they have done it. Because we are figuring this out together.

And you might be thinking, some of you are like, wow, this is really good. You've spent quite a bit of time, in the first six verses, talking about, how to raise kids. I don't have kids, and I don't think I'm ever going to have kids. How does this apply to me? You are a part, of a gospel centered family. We get to do this together.

We need you. You get to join in with us. You get to help raise our kids, that they might love the Lord, and never depart from it. That's a beautiful thing, that you get to be invited into, in community groups, not just in Kid City. That you get to help raise our kids. So ask, how you can help.

And parents, receive it. Ask how they can, how you can pitch in. How you can help. Maybe it's babysitting, where parents can go on a date night, at least once a month. Maybe it's, intentional, moments of conversation, that you get to share the gospel, with kids in your group. Be a third wheel parent.

We are asking you to join in, that we might partner together, that we might be a village, that raises gospel centered families, that kids might depart from, might not never depart, from the love of God. This is what we are moving towards, this is what we want to embody, as we obey the scriptures, and as we love our families. And we all have opportunities, to pass on this obedience, this love of Jesus. But at times, this gets difficult. And one of the reasons, this gets difficult, is because we, inherit sin. We inherit a sinful nature, and this shows up front and center, starting off in verse 6.

He says, So Isaac settled in Gerar. Alright, so they're settled. Verse 7. When the men of this place, asked him about his wife, he said, She is my sister. For he feared to say, my wife, thinking, lest the men of this place, should kill me because of Rebekah, because she was attractive in appearance. When he had been there a long time, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of a window, and saw Isaac laughing, with Rebekah, his wife.

So Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, she is your wife. How then could you say, she is my sister? Isaac said to him, Because I thought lest I die, because of her. Abimelech said, What is this you have done to us? One of the people, might have easily lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us. So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, Whoever touches this man, or his wife, shall surely be put to death.

Now, doesn't that sound familiar? This is Abraham Abimelech, the remix. I mean, this is happening in almost the exact same fashion. And Isaac doesn't have the weird kind of half-truth, this is my half-sister kind of thing. This is a straight-up lie. He fears man.

After God just gave him this promise again, he said, This is the promise. You are going to have this blessing. You are going to have these lands. You are going to have all these things. And he goes, Well, my wife is a stunner. She is good-looking.

They might kill me. He fears man. And out of that fear, he lies. And it wasn't a small lie. This thing carried on for a while. It says in verse 8, that a long time had passed before Abimelech started to figure this out.

So Abimelech, he sees them, and they are laughing. Now, this isn't just laughter. This is flirtatious laughter. That's what the Hebrew is getting at in this text. They're flirting. So he sees them, and they're all starry-eyed, and laughing, and cutting up, and they maybe got a little bit physical.

And Abimelech's like, Wait a second. Y'all, this is not brother-sister love. You guys are married, and I like to think that everything just clicked. That he just, that this is OG Abimelech from back in the day, or this is his son. Regardless, it just clicks. This is what this family does.

They show up. They pass their wives off as their sister. What have you done? Which, by the way, is such a weird thing to be known for. It's like, What? You could have gotten us all killed again.

He operates out of fear. He doesn't trust God. He fears man, and eventually this scheme gets exposed. And it's because we inherit sinful patterns. Not just by absorbing them through observing bad behavior. We inherit this.

There's a philosopher named John Locke. He's one of the most influential philosophers on America. He's a British philosopher from the 17th century, but he influenced much of the founding fathers in our Constitution. Stuff like property rights, taxation without representation. That's all him. And one of the things he also, one of his philosophies was something called blank slate theory.

Blank slate theory was the idea that every child is born morally neutral. So they come into this world with a blank slate. And it's up to us, as families or as society, to shape virtue in children. They come in morally neutral, and if you could raise them in a moral vacuum, they would never have any type of evil. We could educate them to be good citizens, to be good, virtuous people. And that's one of the reasons why academics put such a high value on education to fix morality.

You may have picked up on this, that the way you solve racism is education. The way that you solve systematic injustice is education, which has not worked in any society ever, because education is not the problem. Children do not come in with a blank slate. There is one fatal flaw in this theory. It's children. Have you ever seen a two-year-old?

Have you ever? My daughter is so sweet. She's also a little schemer. She's schemey. And she, like, at a very young age, would scheme and would lie. And I didn't teach her that.

I don't spend most of the time with her during the day. That's my wife. But my wife isn't schemey. It took everything she could to throw me a surprise birthday party last year. She's just, she's not. And I didn't teach her.

No one else has taught her. It's natural. It's something that she inherited from me, because when I was a kid, I was very schemey. She inherits this naturally from me. Isaac, he certainly probably picked up some fear of man patterns from Abraham. But he wasn't even alive when Abraham and Abimelech were doing this dance in Genesis 20.

He never got to see this front and center. We inherit generational sin. Romans 5 teaches, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned. That's the formation for the basis of original sin. That from Adam, sin spreads to all of humanity. That we inherit this sinful nature, it is passed down all the way back to Adam.

In 1 Peter 1.18 it says, Knowing that you are ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers. That we naturally inherit sinful patterns from our forefathers. Sinful, futile ways. The Old Testament law teaches that we inherit sin from the second, third, and fourth generation. It's passed down. Now psychologists look at this, formation of behavior, and they kind of fall in between two camps.

On the one side you've got nature, and the far end of nature versus nurture, you have, basically when conception happens, genetics are formed, and therefore it's all decided from there. That's the far end of the nature side of the bait. Once your genetics form, that's who you are. On the other end of the extreme, is nurture. The idea that education, that how you are raised, is what forms you and shapes behavior. This is where clean slate theory has some of its merits in this argument.

That it would be education that would form you. That you would, through experiences, through upbringing, this is kind of what forms you. Most people fall between the two of these and see that both of them have value. That what you, there's something about you, inherit to you, that helps form your behavior. Also, there are things that shape you, and mold you. And as Christians, we look at this and go, yep, that makes sense.

You inherit a sinful nature, that matters. You also inherit, patterns of obedience and disobedience, that form and shape you. Let me give you a few examples. Take alcoholism or addiction. People look and they say, how is it that a father, or a son, and his father, and his grandfather, and his great grandfather, that all of them, are alcoholics? That all of them struggle, with addiction.

How is that? On the nature side, there are people who will say, well, it's genetics. That has to be what shapes you. And they've done a ton of studies. They haven't isolated the one gene, that causes this. They may have found some factors, into this.

But we as Christians, can look at this and go, yeah, that makes sense, that you would inherit, the sinful nature, that sin causes physical changes. The reason we know that, is because sin causes death. That yes, on this level, down to your very traits, you would be corrupt. It also makes sense, that the only way, you ever saw your father, deal with stress, or with burdens, is with a bottle. If the only time, you watched your parents celebrate, was them, stumbling through the door, killed over a toilet. If you saw, if this is who, you come from, and this is what you see, it makes sense, that's generational sin.

This happens in, in anger. People look at families, and go, there tends to be, a pattern between, all the people in this family, that are angry, especially some of the men, cousins, dads, brothers, they're all angry, and violent. It's like they have, an extra Y chromosome. There's something going on here, that they're just, angry, and violent. Every time, they face, opposition, they use their fists. Yes, you inherit a sinful nature.

Also, if the only time, you ever see your family, deal with opposition, is with their fists, are getting violent, or getting verbally abusive, those are the only patterns, you would ever know. This happens with any, I'll give you one more, this happens with anxiety. People look at families, and go, how is it, that anxiety, plagues this family so bad, that mothers, and sisters, that even brothers, uncles, there's just, it's so stressful, in this house. And it was the same, for their parents. There's all these, burdens and stress, and it was just so tense. Well, there's something going on there.

There's a fallenness, that is inherited, that shows up. Also, if you never actually, get to see, families that go to the Lord, in prayer, that fight, that trust, fight to trust the promises of God, to make through. Both of those matter. When you have inherited sin, and you have observable, bad patterns, of response, of behavior, and you put them together, that is generational sin. This is what we inherit. We inherit, we inherit generational sin.

And when you think about that, when you think about all of the fallenness, all of the brokenness, that you have inherited, is all the way down, to the core of who you are, that feels a little bit depressing. But when you also think, that you, this is what you are passing on, to your kids, that feels even more depressing. But the good news of the gospel, is that's not the only thing, that we get to inherit. That we also get to inherit, grace. And that shows up, in the rest of the story. Verse 12.

And Isaac sowed in the land, and reaped in the same year, a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more, until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks, and herds, and many servants. So the Philistines envied him. So just off the heels, of him running this lie, running this scheme, God blesses Isaac.

He gives him a harvest, that's a hundredfold, which in an arid culture, is an absurd amount of crops. He gives him animals, he builds this family, they get blessing, upon blessing, upon blessing, and the Philistines, start to get envious. And it continues. Now the Philistines had stopped, and filled with earth, all the wells, that his father's servants, had dug in the days of Abraham, his father. And Abimelech said to Isaac, go away from us, for you are much mightier than we. So the hospitality starts to end.

They're like, you guys have gotten way too big, y'all need to get out of Gerard, go to the valley, and then from this point forward, the rest of the story, which we don't have time to watch, walk through, they just start filling up wells with dirt. Which you might think, oh that's petty. That's like you kicking down your neighbor's mailbox. I guess, it's more than petty. That's almost an act of war. Because in an arid culture, where water is life, it's how you feed your animals, it's how you feed your family, water sustains you, you start filling up wells, you start ending opportunities to live, to prosper, to grow.

And they go, the rest of the story, from place, to place, to place, to place, digging wells, taking care of the wells that Abraham dug. And they get filled up, and filled up, and filled up. And Isaac is starting to feel this, as they have to go from place to place, not ever having peace. And there had to be some part of them that wondered, oh, is this blessing going to end? What's happening here? And then God comes to him in verse 23, and makes it clear.

From there he went to Beersheba, and the Lord appeared to him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham, your father, fear not. For I am with you, and will bless you, and multiply your offspring, for my servant Abraham's sake. So he built an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there, and there Isaac's servants dug a well. That in the midst of this uncertainty, God makes it abundantly clear. This blessing is yours. This blessing is yours.

You are going to be taken care of. You are still inheriting the promise. You still are going to have a nation that is as numerous as the stars in the sky. I am going to take care of you. It doesn't matter how he acted before Bimelech. It doesn't matter the schemes and the lives that he lived in.

He gets grace. Continued grace. And the story ends with, we don't have time to look at this, but in your community group this week, you can look at it. The story ends with Bimelech and his posse showing up, and it's like, is this going to be a war? Are they going to fight? And they end up striking a deal.

In the most politically schemey fashion, you can look at Bimelech and laugh at how he just lashed through his teeth. They strike a deal. And peace is made. And Isaac's family is sustained. They are sustained. They are preserved with this promise.

And because Isaac was preserved, the bloodline eventually gets to Jesus. And therefore, we get grace. Grace is unmerited favor, unearned favor, which I like. That lacks a little spice and flavor. It seems a little bit overly technical. They say it like that.

Someone came up with an acronym, I don't know who, for grace. It's God's riches at Christ's expense, which I love. That in Christ, not by any good works of our own, we get the riches of God. That in Christ, we get brought into the same blessing that Isaac had. We get brought into the same fellowship that he had with God. That, y'all, we get access to the God who created everything.

We can come to him in prayer. We get fellowship in part in this life, more fully realized in the next. We get fellowship with God. We get the perfect love of Christ. That's one of the most amazing God's riches of God, that we get the eternal love of Jesus. That no matter what, for those of us who are in Christ, God's love captures us, it seals us, it never lets us go.

We get to experience his goodness, and his joy, and his hope, and his love. That one day, one of the riches we get, is we get to dwell with God, in the city of God, which Psalm 50 calls, the perfection of beauty. The perfection of beauty. We get to dwell in a land like that with God. We get excited about shiplap, and some farm tables. We don't even know beauty.

That we get to dwell with God, in the new Jerusalem. That he will be in the center. That we get to gaze upon his goodness, and his glory fully. We get riches upon riches. We get the perfect record of Christ, that stands for us. We don't have our own sin, it's replaced by the righteousness of Jesus.

You could go on, and on, and on, and fill your days, with writing out, the blessings of God. We wouldn't even come close, to scratching the surface, because those are just the ones, that we have written down in the scriptures. And they're not the ones, that through faith in Jesus, that we will get to fully realize, one day, we get God's riches, at Christ's expense. That the God of the universe, stepped into our timeline, humbling himself. He went to the cross, having his blood poured out, suffering for our sin, and having the full cup of wrath, poured out on him, so that he can make a way, for us to have life, and experience those riches.

That is the kind of grace, that we inherit, through faith in Jesus. We are just like Isaac, in one minute, scheming and lying, and the next minute, experiencing the goodness, and the glory of God, not by our own merit, but by God's. So for those of us, who are in Christ, for those of you, that grew up, in a Christian family, that got to hear this, I want you to think, through this for a moment. That you got to observe, the gospel. You got to be in a house, that filled the house, with the word of God, with prayer. You got to see this, over and over again.

And you know what, that didn't turn into? That didn't turn into legalism. That didn't turn into, false belief. By grace, you believed. You inherited grace. For those of you, that didn't grow up, in a Christian household, you inherited grace.

Because somebody, shared the gospel with you, and you believed. And someone shared the gospel, with that person, and before that person, before that person, you inherited grace. We all, through Christ, believing in Him, get to inherit this blessing, get to inherit grace. So parents, as we parent, may your homes, may our homes, be so infused, with the grace of our God, that in our obedience, that we hope to pass down, we can ultimately point that back, to the goodness of our God, working through us. That it's not, anything of ourselves, it is the goodness of the God, goodness of our God, and the gospel, working through us, that they might see, the Lord of grace.

That in your sin, and in our sin, and our fallenness, our kids may see repentance, they may see forgiveness, they may see us point back, to the gospel. May we be so, saturated with grace, that we would display this, the next generation of this church, might never depart from it.

The Deceitfulness of the Flesh

The Deceitfulness of the Flesh

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Well, all right, how we doing this morning? Whew! I forgot. I quit asking that. Good morning! My name's Chet.

I'm one of the pastors here. We are in the book of Genesis. We will be in Genesis chapter 25 this morning. We've been following along with this whole book, and we've been following along this story of God's beginning into redemption. So He makes the world.

It's beautiful. It's good. He makes humans. We're awesome for like half a page. And then we rebel. We fall into sin.

And the big question and the tension in the story of Genesis is, what is God going to do with sinful humanity? And is sin going to wreck His good plans? And is sin going to destroy His good design? And so we see that He picks up with His family. He picks Abraham. And we've been following this story through Abraham.

And now we move to Isaac last week. We kind of saw the story shift from Abraham and Sarah to Isaac and Rebecca. And today we'll see some new people enter this story. When we read stories, we've been trained to look for main characters. We've been trained to look for the hero. That's one of the things that happens.

When you start watching a movie, you start looking and saying, okay, who am I going to relate to? Who am I going to follow? Who am I going to root for? If you've ever watched a movie that doesn't do a good job of kind of giving you a hero and a villain and some tension, it's not a very good movie. It may be artsy, but it's not a very good movie. And there are some movies that it holds out.

I remember watching Frozen for the first time. And it takes a while. At one point I was going, who's the villain in this movie? I don't think it's the sister that just went crazy and built an ice castle and a monster. It may be her. She may storm back down the mountain and attack everybody.

But I don't think it's her. I think she's one of the main characters that's on the good side. But you're watching kind of waiting to see, like, who's the bad guy? When I watched the second Guardians of the Galaxy, I was like halfway in that movie. And I was like, what am I watching? Like, who's the bad guy?

What's going to happen? And that's kind of what happens. We read these stories and we start going, okay, who's the hero? Who's the bad guy? Who am I rooting for? Who am I?

And this story is about people, real people who actually existed. And so we're going to get introduced to two brothers today. Jacob and Esau. So we're in Genesis chapter 25. And I hate to hurt your feelings. Neither one of them is the good guy.

There is a hero in this story, but it's not one of them. And so let's look at this. Let's read this together. And let's see how this story plays out in God's redemptive history as he walks with his family towards redeeming humanity and setting us free from the consequences of sin. And so let's pray and then we'll read this together. God, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for this time that we get to gather to worship the God who saved us from sin because you loved us. And so we pray that that is what would happen, that we would worship. That we wouldn't just learn or we wouldn't just study or we wouldn't just get to see people that we care about, but that we would worship you. And we pray that you would help us do that as we read your word together. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

All right, so we're picking it up in verse 19. Now it says, These are the generations of Isaac. And in the book of Genesis, that means we've shifted the story. So it says, Abraham's son. This is generations of Abraham's son. It says that Abraham fathered Isaac.

And Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, the Aramean of Padam Aram, and the sister of Laban, the Aramean, to be his wife. And it says, And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren. All right, now if you'll remember, God has promised this family that it is through Isaac that the promises are going to come true. He promised Abraham it's going to be through Isaac. Not Ishmael, who was Abraham's oldest son, and not Abraham's other sons that he eventually has that you can read about at the beginning of this chapter with his third wife. But it's going to be through Isaac that the promises are going to become true, that he's going to get the land, that he's going to be the great nation, that ultimately the promise made to Eve in the garden is going to come true, that through him he's going to bless the world.

And so he says it's through Isaac. Well, Isaac gets married to Rebekah, and Rebekah does not have children. She's barren. We actually find out later that she's barren for 20 years, that Isaac prays for 20 years. The text makes it seem like he prayed once, and God was like, I hear you. But he prays for 20 years that God would bless her with children, and God does.

Now one of the interesting things as we see this story is that Sarah is barren for a very long time, prior to having Isaac. And then Isaac and Rebekah. Rebekah is barren, unable to have children for a very long time. There's a lot of pain and tension there, and it shows that ultimately this blessing came through God, and not through the power of man, or what we would look to and say, the fruitfulness of man and the ability of humanity. And God one-ups himself in the New Testament when Mary, who is a virgin, gives birth to Jesus. And he continues the same pattern of miraculously answering prayers and allowing things to happen.

So it says, Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord granted his prayer. And Rebekah, his wife, conceived. The children struggled together within her, and she said, If it is thus, why is this happening to me? That's not a great sentence. It's even worse in the original Hebrew. They tried to make it more of a sentence for English.

In Hebrew, it's, If thus, why me? Or, if thus, why? She says, The children struggled within her. So she's prayed and prayed and prayed. She finally finds out she's pregnant. She's excited.

They're excited. God's blessed. God's answered. And then it is a tumultuous, terrible pregnancy. Now, my wife has had, we've had two children, and I will tell you that even good pregnancies are terrible. It's not, it's not a picnic.

The curse that goes to Eve is real and active. And we have like medicine and doctors and the ability to check what's going on. She has nothing. She has two children inside of her. It says they struggled within her. Another way to translate that is they smashed each other.

There's, there's two children inside of her, and they don't like each other, and that makes it very uncomfortable, and very difficult. Like, at times in pregnancies, there's, you know, the mom will be like, oh, look, look, you can see a little hand, or you can see a foot, and you're like, yeah, and it's kind of cool and kind of creepy looking to see like a whole foot pushed up against. Well, with this pregnancy, there was like one of them smushing the other one's face repeatedly against the, it's, it's, it's bad. She doesn't know what's going on, but she goes to God and says, if thus, why? Like, what, if you were, if this is what pregnancy was going to be, why?

Why would you do this? Why me? Like, just send this promise to somebody else, if this is what this is going to be like. So it says that she goes to the Lord. So she went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord said to her, and this is, this is beautiful.

We don't know exactly how she went to inquire of the Lord, but we know that it is not important other than she was the one asking, and God's responding to her. It seems as if maybe she did this on her own. There's other places and other ways to inquire of the Lord, but she asked, he answers. He says, two nations are in your womb, and the two peoples from within you shall be divided, and one shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger. Now, it is possible they had a clue that she was carrying multiple children. It's possible that even from this, she's still wondering like, okay, I'm actually having twins, or like, in the future, I'm going to have two children, but that's, she's kind of getting this as an answer.

Okay, there's two nations in my womb. Two people shall be divided. One will be stronger than the other. And then he says, and the older shall serve the younger. Now, that's unheard of. That's not a normal thing for this culture, that the older would serve the younger.

You see, the older one, it gets the birthright. The older one is the leader, is the head, will take on the family name, will become the patriarch, will lead everything, and the other ones will receive some inheritance, but the older one, the oldest son, always gets double the inheritance, and he carries on and leads the family. And this is still the truth there today in the Middle East, that the oldest son has a significant amount of weight. And so it says, the younger will serve, the older will serve the younger. Now, this is also very important for this family, specifically because God has promised that he's going to bless Abraham.

And then he says, I'm going to bless through Isaac, and I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going to make you a great people. And so what she just got told was, there's two nations, meaning one child, one child is the child of promise. One child is the seed. One child is the nation. And the other child is not.

That's what's just told to her. And so then it continues. When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. So it was like, oh, okay, look, it was twins. The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak. So they called his name Esau, which is a play on words.

It's very close to the word hair. So he comes out red and hairy. You know how every once in a while people show you the baby, and you're like, yeah, that's a baby. Look at you with a baby. That's what happened here. It actually probably most likely signifies that this one came out looking very, very healthy.

It's possible that it was red hair, which would have been odd for this. And usually red haired people, and some people who are red haired may feel like this continued, are looked down upon in society. But it's also possible that it actually means he was red, like he was ruddy, which is the way they describe David later. It's a picture that goes along with he looked heroic, because that was kind of in that time frame. So it seems like, and as you read the text more, that he came out healthy, heroic, and hairy.

He comes out a little wild. And some of that we're getting from the way it describes his brother. It says, afterward, his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel. So his name was called Jacob. Jacob means he grabs the heel. It feels a little bit, they named him like you would name puppies.

Like the way my brothers and I would be like, hey, this one's got like a circle on its eye, we'll call him patch. That one that keeps spinning in circles, we'll call it spaz. Almost like it was Isaac's Job to name them, and he completely forgot that he was supposed to have done this, like come up with names. And they're like, so what did you decide? And he's like, oh, yeah, Harry, foot grabber. Rebecca's like, you forgot you were supposed to name him, didn't you?

He's like, no, Harry's my great, great uncle's name. You don't know him. You've never met him. He's on my mom's side. Anyway, names mean things in this culture, and they intentionally are highlighting the significance of the birth here. But it says, he grabs the heel.

Now, that's a play on words. He grabs the heel. It can mean one of two things. It can mean, may God have your back. May he be the rear guard. So that no matter what happens, God protects and defends.

It also means trickster or deceiver. The interesting thing with Jacob's life is that both of those end up being true. That he is a deceiving trickster, and God has his back. God guards him and carries things out on his behalf. And it says, afterward, his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so that his name was called Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them.

So they'd been 20 years. So one comes out definitively red, definitively hairy. The other one comes out, would have been smooth, possibly smaller, it seems as if they're kind of highlighting the differences between them, even at birth. And then we get when the boys grew up. So it immediately jumps.

It says, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field. And he came out seeming wild. So he's a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. So it's highlighting the differences here. It says Esau, as we'll see, it kind of shows him as wild. He's probably healthier.

He's out. He lives in the wild. He would go hunt. He would come back every once in a while. And then it says, Jacob's quiet. He's simple.

He's small. He's thoughtful. So Esau, you get this picture of he's kind of big, he's kind of burly. A little bit, if you picture, if you're familiar with the Marvel movies that have been going on for the past 10 years, if you picture Thor and Loki, it looks a little bit like that in my head. One's big, muscular, kind of outspoken, loud. The other one's a little bit thin, weasley, tinty.

He's indoorsy. He likes HGTV, a nice cup of tea, and a good book. And his brother's like, look at what I killed. He's like, neat. And it says, Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebecca loved Jacob. Now that sentence gives us a very messed up family picture.

Isaac loved Esau. Specifically, he loved that one. That's the one I like. And he loves him because he ate his game. He loves him because of what he benefits from him. It doesn't even say like he loved his personality, they hung out.

Like as best we can tell, Isaac was also kind of calmer, tent dwelling, pastoral, like he tended sheep. But he loves that Esau brings him something that doesn't taste like sheep, like he's eating lamb all the time. He brings him a deer and it's great. And he's like, hey, keep this up and I'll love you. And as we read the story further, we're not going to get into it all today, but it feels as if Isaac and, Esau and Jacob are trying to overcome the fact that the other parent does not love them. That they both feel put off balance by this.

So if you are a parent, this is not the best way to go. I actually realized recently, I've got two sons, one's four, one's one. The one-year-old, I'm not a very smiley person, but my one-year-old is. He is happy. Even when he's head to toe covered in eczema, he's just happy. And when I would come in to see him, he just will smile like, my dad's here.

And so I got in the habit, I walk in the room and I'll be like, hey buddy. Like I just smile, I'm excited to see him. His older brother is not smiley. He looks like me all the time. He's just kind of paying attention to stuff. Like even when he was little and you would do fun things in front of him, he would just stare at you.

And I'm like, I don't know. And then you would get done and he'd go, do it again. So it's like, oh, you enjoyed it. Make your face make that. Well, I realized I'll walk in the room and I'll see my boy Ellis and I'll be like, hey buddy, it's good to see you. And then I look at his brother and go, what are you doing?

And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like I've got to set the tone. And I can't let them set the tone. So I, when I became real intentional with this, I'll walk in the room. I'll say, hey to Ellis. And it tries to remind me to do the same to Archer.

And I look at Archer and I'll go, hey, how are you doing? And the first time I did it, he was like, hey. And so it is important that you don't do what Isaac and Rebecca did to their children. Now, we don't know why Rebecca loves Jacob. He was around the tent more. Easier to find.

And it's possible, very possible, that she's just leaning into the older shall serve, the younger. She's picking a winner. Either way, it's not a healthy situation and it doesn't play out well for their boys. Now we're getting another story. It says, once when Jacob was cooking. So now we're, we've moved on.

And again, it's highlighting this picture. Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted. So this picture, Esau, covered in sweat, been gone for, for days, hunting, shows back up, walks in the tent. He's like, uh, uh. And, uh, Jacob's over a pot. It's really coming together.

He's cooking. He's in his tent. He's like, close, close, close the, close the flap. You're letting in the air. And Esau said to Jacob, let me eat some of that red stew for I am exhausted. All right.

So, uh, in, in reading up on this and some commentaries, one of the things that was pointed out, I don't read Hebrew, but other people do and I read what they wrote in English and it's helpful. Um, one of the things that's pointed out is in this conversation, everything that Jacob says is very short. It's very to the point. It goes along with him being quiet and kind of thoughtful. And as we'll find out, his quiet thoughtfulness is also scheminess. He's real blunt.

Uh, Esau's sentences are all over the place. And again, the text is highlighting for us what kind of man Jacob was. You can almost see him just being, you know, every one of his sentences is like a little arrow shot, just a little, little dagger right in the right place. And Esau's sentences are like a club that just like slap everything in the room. Like they're all over the place. His sentence is actually, let me get some of that red, red.

Like he, that red, red stuff is what some of the other translations will give. He's just like, Hey, I'm about to die. Let me get some of that red. Let me get a swallow of that red bread. Other translations say, let me gulp down. He's like, just give me the whole pot.

I'll just pour it on myself. It's going to be delicious. So he comes in, we're told he's exhausted. He's, he's like, I'm wore out to the floor out, brother. He says, let me get some of that red, red. And then it says, therefore, his name was called Edom.

Edom is red. So he said, let me get some of that Edom, Edom. And it says, therefore, his name was called Edom. Now, we're being told this story. Something significant is about to happen. And what happens marks Esau forever.

His two names, Harry and red. And here's what happens. He says, let me get some of that red stuff. And Jacob said, sell me your birthright now. What on earth? It's actually like, sell me birthright now.

Like it's just this, just this real, sell, sell birthright now. Now. So he comes in, he says, I'm about to starve. Can I have some of this soup that you're making? Some of this stew? And Jacob does not say, yes, brother.

I made plenty. He says, sell me your birthright. Now, it would seem as if Jacob, now who knows if they brought this up, if this happened often. It seems as if Jacob, at least has been thinking about this. It wasn't just out of nowhere. And he finds his opportunity.

His brother blunders into his tent. Seems exhausted. Seems at the end of his ability to kind of think well. He's hungry. He's tired. And instead of being gracious and generous, which is one of the things that we've seen throughout the book of Genesis, how people are gracious and generous and go out of their way for each other, he says, sell me your birthright.

Make it to where I'm the oldest brother now. Now, here's what's really interesting. And the birthright matters so much. And here's what's probably very painful for these two brothers. They're twins. Now, in our mind, twins are the same age.

In an Eastern mindset, in this time period, no, they're not. One is older, one is younger, and that matters a lot. There's a great Jewish thinker. His name's Jerry Seinfeld. And he, in one of his stand-up routines, is talking about the Olympics. And he says, it's really interesting in the Olympics, especially in the, like, the 100 yard, 100 meter, sorry, it's worldwide, meters, 100 meter dash.

He said, the winner, the first place and the second place, he says, it's a fraction of a, it's, like, he said, you sometimes have to rewind it and watch. And he said, and then what happens is, they stand on a podium, and you look at, the fastest man in the world. And half a step down, never heard of him, doesn't matter. And he was, fraction of a, Jacob comes out, holding on to the heel. He lost the last little bit of their struggle. He was smashed into the back part of the womb.

Esau said, I'm out of here. He was putting his foot in his face. Jacob grabbed it. He comes out, and it is Esau, the firstborn, the eldest, who will be the patriarch, who will get the birthright, who the promise will follow, as best as they understand in this mindset. And, Jacob, Esau's brother. Who at some point will get a gift, and get some stuff, but he won't have the name, and he'll move on.

And this, has plagued Jacob. He's still, grabbing at Esau's heel. Trying to, trying to, trying to, trip him up. Sell me your birthright, now. Esau said, I am about, to die, of what use, is a birthright, to me? Now, given his long, sentence structure, Esau is not about, to die.

I was playing football one time, I got really dehydrated, I went to tell the coach, I needed water. And I went to say water, and my tongue stuck, to the roof of my mouth. And I ran to my coach, and said, he said what? And I was like, pointing where the water was. Because it was, Esau's like, I'm gonna die, brother. He's like, he's pontificating, he's laying this out, he's not about to die.

Now, he's very exhausted, he is hungry. And he says, what use is a birthright? Basically, look, I'll die, it'll be yours anyway, so I might as well, get some soup, out of the deal, and not die. Jacob said, swear to me now. No, no, we're putting this in an oath, this is becoming legal, this is becoming real. There are other places, in history, where somebody sold their birthright.

This isn't unheard of, although it's crazy. It should be unheard of. Esau is acting very foolish. Jacob said, swear to me now, so he swore to him, and sold his birthright, to Jacob. Now, in their mindset, Jacob is now the oldest brother. The birthright is transferable.

Again, something we would be unfamiliar with. It's not, it's not a deal I could work out, with my brother Logan. Where it's like, hey, we're gonna, I want, I want to give you some soup. And now I'm three years older than you. It wouldn't work like that. But it does there.

So Jacob finally trips, says, brother. Then Jacob gave Esau bread, and lentil stew. And he ate, and drank, and rose, and went his way. He ate, drank, rose, went. It's over, very, very quickly. And then, the story tells us how to think.

This doesn't always happen in the book of Genesis. This doesn't always happen in the Bible. We want it to. We want, we want the Bible to tell us the story, and then tell us what we were supposed to get out of it. Don't we? Isn't it nice when it does that?

A lot of times it just tells you this big, long story about a lot of terrible things, and it's like, and then guess what happened? You're like, no, no, no, pause, pause, pause, pause. I need you to tell me who was the hero, and who was the bad guy, and what happened, and what was, what I'm supposed to take from that. And the main takeaway from this, although the text is clear, Jacob is not gracious to his brother, he is scheming. The main takeaway from this is this, thus, which means in this way, Esau despised his birthright. Now, I've got to explain a little bit about how the text uses despise, and how they understood it in that culture.

When we despise something, mostly we despise something, or we think about despising something as head on. Meaning that, we look at it, we hate it. We intentionally hate it. We're malicious towards it. That's how we think of despise. So if it's like, I despise that teacher, we mean, I very much dislike them.

They're the worst teacher ever. Now the text, the Bible, we'll use despise that way. It will talk about, it says that, when David's dancing one time, it says his wife looked at him, and despised him in her heart. Meaning that she looked head on at him, disliked what he was doing, had hatred towards him. The Bible uses it that way, but it also uses it as, back to. That we ignore.

That we turn our back on something. That we dishonor it. So that if, if it was used in that way for a teacher, and it said, he despised that teacher's wisdom. Which the Proverbs say it that way. It means, did not listen to, did not think about, did not care about, turned your back on. Now we don't usually use despise that way.

We think of despise as an active thing that you do. But the Bible tells us, no, you can do it actively, or you can do it passively. It's the same thing. That if you turn your back on God's wisdom, if you turn your back on God's blessing, it is as much as turning right to it, and hating it. And so what we understand here, is that Esau did not think, I hate my birthright, it's terrible, I don't want it. But Esau turned his back on it, and when he did, showed that he cared nothing for it.

Now, that's the point of that story. That it moves forward the promise made to Rebecca. But it also highlights for us Esau's foolishness. That's one of the things that the author of Hebrews says. He says, don't be godless like Esau. Don't be profane or unholy like Esau.

Esau, who traded his birthright for a single meal. So what the Hebrew author is saying is that, in this way that Esau was being godless, he wasn't understanding and appreciating what God had done, the position he was in. Not only to be the firstborn, but to be the firstborn to Isaac, the son of the promise. He's a grown man and doesn't understand these things, doesn't appreciate these things, doesn't care about these things. So much so that he would sell his birthright for soup.

Stew. Stew. Sorry. The text says stew, and we're very serious about the text here, and I can't say soup because stew is thicker. We had this discussion in teaching team because I kept actively saying soup. It is stew.

He just, he trades everything for something that he can see and smell and taste that's right in front of him. And you want to wring his neck. You want to jump in the text and smack him. You want to right at that moment when he says, I'm about to die. You want him to be like, really? No, you're not.

And how close are the other tents? Like, get some water. Get your head on your shoulders right. Walk to your dad's tent. Walk to your mom's tent. Now, who knows?

Rebecca, he might want to walk in there and she loves Jacob. She might have been like, sell Jacob your birthright now. We don't know. But at least give it a shot. God, you can't be that tired. But you can be that foolish.

And here's the thing. We do this. Like, as much as I want to be really mad at Esau, I see myself in Esau. You see, the way the Bible talks about despising the Lord and despising his commands means that there are moments in life where we just turn our back to them. We're not thinking, I hate that command or I hate the Lord because he wouldn't have said that. If you said, if Jacob said, don't you hate your birthright?

He'd be like, were you a fool? No, I don't. But he just, he comes on the other side of it and just gets him to turn away from it. He gets him to turn his back on it for something that he can have right now. And the truth is, that's all of sin for us. That in the moment that we sin, something smells sweeter. tastes better.

Feels like it will give us life more than the future promises of God. Now, are the future promises of God bigger and more glorious to be waited on? Yes. But in that moment, I just want some of that red stuff. See, God actually picks this up in Malachi. He talks to the people who are the priests that are in the temple and he says, you have despised me.

And they say, how? How have we despised you? And he immediately goes into, he says, it's by the way you're doing your sacrifices. It's by the way you're going about this that I've been lowered down. And see, honestly, I think if God were to look at us and say, you despise me, we'd be like, no, I don't. I'm here, I'm singing, I hang out with my group, I read my Bible a couple times a week.

I do like half the stuff in there. Mostly, try to. And then he would point to some specific thing and he'd say, here, you've turned your back and you hate me and you hate my word and you hate my promises. You're not doing it with your face towards it. You're not clenching your fists. Some of us are sometimes.

Most of the time, we're just enamored with something that smells and looks more beautiful and more tasty at the moment. I'll give you a few examples. All sin is an example of this. But I'll give you a few. I think money is one for us. Just culturally.

It's one that Jesus talks about a lot. That most of us would think, I handle my money, okay. I'm not trying to be crazy. But when we look at what the Bible tells us about money, about how we're supposed to think about eternity in light of how we spend our money now and how we're supposed to be generous now and how we're supposed to know that the kingdom is a treasure hidden in a field that we'd be willing to sell everything and give up everything for. The truth is, when we turn around with money and we think, well, it's mine and I can kind of do what I want and if I'm, you know, I don't really feel like I should have to give that much and I don't really feel like I should have to be that generous and I really like, I gotta enjoy these things that in some ways there could be, for us, for God, could look at our budget and say, you despise me.

And we'd say, how? I think another one is romance. We have so elevated romance and relationships and love in our culture that we have whole denominations that have just peeled out parts of the text because how could God say that you can't love this person or be with this person or have this relationship? And we do that all the time where it's like, well, and we say the same things he said. He says, I'm gonna die. What good is a birthright?

And we say, what's the point of following Jesus if I'm gonna be this lonely? What's the point of following Jesus if I have to go home and be sad? What's the point? And what we're saying is that's too far away. It's not glorious enough. It's not big enough.

It doesn't taste sweet enough and I just want some of this. I think another one is power, security, safety. See, we're told as Christians that we should align with the weak. We should go out of our way for those who are hurting and needy. But we don't want to.

We want to feel protected and we want to be the people in power and we want to be those and so maybe this happens in high school at a lunch table. You choose where you sit because as best you can, you want to be at the table where there's power and where you're protected and where you feel secure and where you feel good. Maybe it happens when somebody starts making fun of someone else and all you'd really have to do is say, hey man, I don't think that's a helpful way to talk about that person or I don't think that's good or not join in or point out something good but you just can't. You don't want to.

And in those moments, you just despise who Jesus is and what he was about. He wouldn't say that but he would. Maybe it happens in the break room because we don't really grow out of that stuff. Maybe it happens in how we vote, how we think about voting, how we talk to other people who hold different viewpoints than us because the real goal is power and the real goal is position and the real goal is to have as much as we can have and have other people who disagree with us not have anything. Okay. I don't know how you're doing this but I know that we are doing this.

That there's somewhere, somewhere that we look as foolish as Esau. that we've just turned our back on some glorious, beautiful promise that Jesus gives and we act like we hate him and we act like we hate his law and we act like it's not good and we act like it will harm us and we act like we'll be destroyed and we act like this thing that we've turned to will give us life, will revive us, will give us hope, will give us joy, will taste so sweet. And the problem is it says he ate, drank, got up, left and yeah, he didn't die but it doesn't seem like that soup was worth it. And here's the biggest problem with Esau. The text tells us Esau despised his birthright but later we're going to read that Esau thinks Jacob cheated him.

Now Jacob was not a good brother and did but Esau doesn't see himself in it at all. He just thinks he's a victim. He says he's cheated me. He can't see in this moment he can't see past the soup and later he still can't see what he's done and how he was the one who ultimately made the decision how it was in his hands to turn one way or the other and he made a terrible, terrible blunder. Now where's the hero?

Who are we supposed to be like? I mean I think we could try really hard and we could say well you could just read it and say don't be like Esau and that's a good thing that's Hebrew says that. I think we could try really hard and say well be like Jacob and just think about the future. And it's like okay. Jacob doesn't look like Christ at all. He doesn't look gracious he doesn't look loving he doesn't look and honestly it looks as if Jacob is thinking about the future but he's doing everything he can to have absolute control over it by any means necessary and in some way twist God's arm to put him in the right position.

The promise was already made that he would be. We don't know if he knows that. We don't know if Rebecca told anybody and in this family situation I'm not making any guesses because it's a mess. But it looks as if he's trying to manipulate things. So in some ways Esau is just rebellious and foolish and in some ways Jacob's real moral and religious and he's just trying to twist God and make God owe him.

Well we do get a hero in this story. It comes in Romans 9 and at first it doesn't really seem when you read it in Romans 9 very heroic. We'll have it on the screen. It's Paul's writing and he's talking about the nation of Israel. And he says that God chose Abraham out of nowhere and that God chose Isaac over Ishmael and then he says this and not only so not only did he choose Isaac it says but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man our forefather Isaac though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad in order that God's purpose of election might continue not because of works but because of him who calls she was told the older will serve the younger.

So Paul says prior to them coming out and being the people they turned into God says I'm choosing Jacob. And then Paul as he continues this argument he kind of gets to the point and he says this so then it being salvation it being God's grace it being how this works depends not on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy. You see part of us wants there to be a hero if you'll just leave that up part of us wants there to be a hero because we want to be the hero. Like I I want to honestly I like Esau he comes out hairy and lives in the woods and it's like yeah sounds great then he shows up and he's like really hungry and can't see past his face he just wants to eat and I'm like I understand Esau I've felt that.

I've felt that. And then he just seems so foolish and some of you are like no Jacob Jacob he's thinking he's reading reading books and having deep thoughts he's into obscure other writer people and you'll see how much I connect with Jacob but some of you that's what you want that's what you want to see you want to have one of them be the hero you want to have somebody that you go that's who I'm supposed

To emulate that's who I'm supposed to be like I'm going to go I'm going to do this the problem is that we're all like Jacob Jacob and Esau twisted broken like Jacob and Esau we all fall into sin whether we're trying to be good and we're trying to manipulate God or whether we're just can't see past our nose and this is why this is so gracious

Because Jesus is the hero he's the one who shows up and saves sinners Jacob does not get better he doesn't it's not in the next couple chapters are we really going to fall in love with this guy but God has mercy you see what we want is for us to have human will or exertion what we want is to say I'm going to finally do this and for those of you

Who've really tried you understand that that eventually gives out for those of you who've said I'm going to be good now I'm really going to do this I'm going to have willpower for those of you who said alright willpower is over but right now I'm just going to exert myself I'm just going to do enough good things to have God owe me to be in his good grace and what it says is no you don't need that you need mercy

And Ephesians tells us that God is rich in mercy because of the great love that he has for us so that none of us are worth it none of us are worthy none of us are the hero and the real hero of the story has mercy that he dies in our place that he rises again conquering sin and death and hell and Satan all the things that would have destroyed us

And that he by his grace chooses to have mercy on some of us now Romans 10 if you flip the page is going to say that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved and there will be none who trust in him who will be put to shame Bianca is going to come back up here and here's what I want us to end on here's what I want us to understand you are not the hero and if you think you are

That sounds like bad news at first but for every person who does not feel like a hero to know that there is one that's glorious news you see that's why Jesus didn't get along with the Pharisees he was always arguing with them he was always saying hurtful things at one point he says he's at a meal he says really hurtful things to the Pharisees and one of the scribes says you hurt my feelings too

And it's almost as if he later should have thought I shouldn't have said anything because he just turns and is like I was trying to but let me say some specific scribe things because he's going after the people who think they're the hero the people who think they have it together the people who think they're good enough but every person who rolls up knowing I need a hero you see part of us always wants to be the person in the montage where it's like I need a hero and you're getting

Your crap together sorry your act together I'm going to be good enough I'm going to do it this time I'm going to read enough I'm going to be I'm not going to I'm not going to sleep with them anymore I'm not going to have this happen anymore I'm finally God I'm going to tell you I'm turning over a new leaf and I'm going to this time and I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people who are hanging out with our church and that's what they're saying to me

They're like this time I'm going to get it together and as much as I can graciously possibly say to them no you are not and if you were in here today thinking that this time you're getting it together let me graciously say to you no you are not and you will not and you are not the hero but there is a hero who has mercy and who leads us in triumph and all we have to do is go to him and ask for it there's a song my dad used to sing

To me when we were growing up at night and I sing it to my boys and it's softly and tenderly Jesus is calling and he says he's waiting at the portals of heaven and he says he's calling oh sinner come home and one of the lines in there is why would you linger and heed not his mercy mercy for you and for me you see there's a God who has mercy on sinners and all who call

On him will be saved and all who trust in his name will not be put to shame and there will be a day when they walk forward and are clothed in covered in smothered in mercy that we don't get what we deserve but we get forgiven for our sin and if you're here today and you have not trusted in Jesus for mercy that you are trying will and exertion you are trying to be the hero I want to ask you will you trust

In his mercy will you go to him and ask please God have mercy on me and so if you will I'd like to ask for everybody to start praying right now this is something we don't usually do but if you'll bow your heads and start praying and I just want to ask that if you are in here today and you have not trusted Jesus for his mercy that you would ask him that if you believe that he saves sinners and that you are a sinner that you would confess

Your sin and that you would ask not that he would make you the hero but that he would be the hero for you and that you might trust in his mercy and if you are in here today and you are in Christ I would ask that you once again remember that you were saved by mercy not your good works not your ability to keep it together that you are not the one that brings you to the finish line but Christ is and that you might confess sin and that you might remember

That you are clothed in smothered in mercy and forgiveness not human will or exertion and not good works that you will bring nothing to the table that displays to God that you deserve salvation but that you will bring your sin and receive mercy and if you have never brought Jesus your sin I ask that you would that you would run to the God who is abundant in mercy and grace and forgiveness

And know that every person who stands with the redeemed is redeemed out of sin into forgiveness into mercy into grace and stands there based off of Jesus' work not theirs and that you will be welcomed home in him Lord we ask that you would help us see our sin and that you would help us quickly come to the end of ourselves and know that we have despised you that we have hated

Your word that we wouldn't look at the few parts that we like and say we're doing well but that we would see all the parts that we have run from that we have disregarded and that we would know that we have been your enemies but that you save your enemies that at the right time you died for them and that in ourselves we cannot love you but that through you we can and we ask that your Holy Spirit would draw people to yourself this morning

That they might receive mercy and that they would leave here covered in it never to again try to atone for or fix their own sin in a moment band's gonna come back up here and continue to play and sing and we're gonna take communion which is us remembering that Jesus died that we might not receive what we deserved that he died that we might receive mercy and grace and abundant love and if you are in Christ or if today is the first time

That you've ever run to him and asked for mercy and he will save those who call on him and you will not be put to shame we'd ask for you to take communion for the first time and if you are not in Christ and have not yet received mercy and still think that you are the hero of the story we would ask that you do not take communion because you believe you do not need it but that all those who know they do and know they need a savior and know they need blood to cover them and know that they don't deserve it we pray that we ask that in a moment you would take communion

Joyously celebratorily knowing that you are covered in mercy because Jesus died in your place and he rose again that you might have be justified before God that you might be made right before God that you might be welcome before God we pray Lord that in this next moment that you would redeem that you would call and that all those who are redeemed would celebrate joyously in the mercy that you've offered the grace that you've given

And that we might make much of your name because you are the hero and we are the beneficiaries of your good promise that we like Jacob are tricksters we like Jacob are foolish we like Esau can't see past our nose but that you guard our back and that you bring us to the end in Jesus name Amen during this next song as they sing you're free to take communion when you feel ready

God Fulfills His Promises

God Fulfills His Promises

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning. Grab your Bibles. Go to Genesis chapter 23. We'll be in Genesis chapter 23 and 24. My name is Chet. I am one of the pastors here.

Matt's going to stay up here and play music to make everything seem more dramatic and special. So we are walking through the book of Genesis. And we are today going to kind of close the book on Abraham and Sarah. We're going to end their lives. And, well, we're not. We're just going to read about it.

And we're going to see how the blessing and the promise shifts from them to Isaac and Rebecca. So, if you'll look, we're going to pick up in the beginning of chapter 23. I want to read this and then we'll kind of set the stage for what we're going to be doing today. But I think this helps us understand what we're looking at. Chapter 23, verse 1. Sarah lived 127 years.

These were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died at Kiriath Arba, that is, Hebron, in the land of Canaan. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Okay. So Abraham is about 10 years older than her.

So he is, at this point, about 137. She is 127. And we don't have a good mental grasp as to how old that is and what that looks like. Because if we picture someone who's 127 or 137, the best I could come up with is the guy who used to do the Tales from the Crypt stories. And it's not a good representation. Because what happens with the ages in the book of Genesis is God creates the world new, fresh, perfect.

And then humanity sins. And when we sin, death enters the world. But it seems as if it kind of takes a while for it to fully begin to decay humanity and infiltrate humanity. And so the ages in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis, start off extremely high. 400, 500, 900 years. And then they work their way down to by the end of the book of Genesis, we're kind of where we are.

In 80 is a good, right age. It's almost like the humanity kind of drops off the healthiness, the vivaciousness. And then eventually it kind of settles out and we hit kind of a homeostasis. We kind of hit an even path. And so at 127, we would say, goodness. Like that, that is extremely old.

But he ends up living to 175. So he lives for 40 years after this. And so she was old. The Bible treats her that way, speaks of her that way. But she wasn't what 127 would be for us.

So, but here's what happens. She passes. And this is the only female in the Bible that we are given her age at passing. This is showing her great honor. That Sarah, the mother of Isaac, the mother of Israel, is honored here. And here's what we're going to look at.

We're going to read chapter 23 and 24. And I want you to jump to the end of chapter 24 so that we can understand what's going on here. Because they seem, in some ways, like two separate stories. But at the end of chapter 24, in verse 66, verse 67, it says, Then Isaac brought her, that's Rebekah. We'll read about her in a minute. Into the tent of Sarah, his mother.

And took Rebekah. And she became his wife. And he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. So the beginning of chapter 23 starts off with the death of Sarah.

And the end of chapter 24 kind of bookends with the death of Sarah. And how Isaac moved on. That Sarah's tent was still there. But Sarah didn't live there any longer. But it stood as this vacant.

Maybe Isaac lived in it. But it was still considered Sarah's tent. It stands as this vacancy. And this cloud of grief is over these two chapters. And the chapter 23 and the end of chapter 24 are about three years apart. So that this season of Isaac missing his mother.

And this season of the noticeable lack of Sarah is a long time. And so what we want to, as we study this chapter, the question we're going to ask and what we're going to try to learn from this is, How do we move forward in grief? When we have buried a loved one. When we have stood, prayed, wept by a graveside. When we go back and it feels like this is still Sarah's house. But Sarah's not here.

How do we move forward? How do we walk in that? And if you'll see, as this is in life, There are things that business kind of things that have to be taken care of. There are seasons of weeping. There are seasons of longing. There are seasons of good things as we look through these two chapters.

But that's the question we're asking, Is how do we learn from them and how to move forward in grief? So let's pray and then we'll read this together. God, we thank you for how good you are. And we pray that we would honor you as we study your word. And that we might worship Jesus this morning. As we see him revealed to us in your word.

And revealed to us through how you interacted with the first people that you called. To begin to fulfill this promise. In Jesus' name, amen. So in the book of Genesis, it starts off good. Humanity rebels and God comes in and he promises right at the beginning that Satan's not going to win. Sin's not going to win.

Death's not going to win. That there's going to be an offspring that comes from Eve. That's going to right this wrong. And then everything gets worse. And then there's a flood. And God resets it with Noah.

And then everything gets worse again. And then he goes to Abraham and he basically says, Come, I'm going to make you into a people. I'm going to give you a land. And eventually this promised offspring is going to come through you. And that promise would not be carried out through anyone other than Sarah. So Sarah is this promised mother to this promised offspring, to this promised blessing.

And so Sarah passes. It says, Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. So it's not just mourning, but he's also weeping. Meaning that mourning is a practice that you would do to honor the dead. But he actually weeps as well.

Meaning that he loved her. This hurt him. I don't think he was shaken by this as far as his faith. I don't think that he was crushed by this as far as how could God let this happen. She was older. That God had already provided the promise through her for Isaac.

But he was hurt. He was sad. It says, he went in to mourn for her and to weep for her. And Abraham rose up from before his dead and said to the Hittites, I am a sojourner and foreigner among you. Give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight. The Hittites answered, Abraham, hear us, my Lord.

You are a prince of God among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of tombs. None of us will withhold from you his tomb to hinder you from burying your dead. Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land. The next part of this chapter, really most of this chapter, is given over to this transaction that takes place. So it says he rises up from his dead and he goes to the Hittites.

And it calls them repeatedly the people of the land. And his intro to them is, I am a sojourner and a foreigner among you. I have no land that is my own. He's nomadic. They travel around, but none of it really belongs to him. And he says, I need a place to bury my dead.

What he's asking for is a permanent place. Not a temporary place, but a permanent place to bury his dead. Now, it's interesting because you would usually bury your dead among their ancestors. This is actually a prime time for Abraham to just say, let's go home. Let's wrap it up.

Let's head back. Let's go bury her among our people. But he doesn't do that. He actually says she'll be the first buried among future people. Not the most recent buried among past people. He is leaning into the promise that God has given that they are the beginning of a nation.

And so he says that she needs a place that's a permanent place for her to be buried. And so she goes to the Hittites. And he says, I'm a foreigner among you, meaning they don't really have to sell him anything. He's coming humbly. He's also telling us how he understands himself. He's lived here for 60 years.

He still does not feel at home here. This is not his place. He is a nomad. And it calls the Hittites, the people of the land, the people of the land, the people of the land. Now, we're a pretty mobile society. One of the things we ask people when you first meet them is, oh, where are you from?

Because we just assume, not Colombia. And if they say, then we're like, oh, wow. Neat. What's that like? Like we just kind of assume a lot of times, and that's fine. It's not wrong to be from here, but it's just assumed that people travel around.

Now, for me, I don't know if y'all can tell this, I am white. And when I travel around in the U.S., most everything kind of feels at home to me. But there are certain people that come from minority groups or minority groups in the U.S. And maybe you understand a little more, can feel a little more what he's talking about here, what he feels. Because it's actually when you are the minority in a situation, you notice your minority status way more than the people of a majority status notice their majority status. Does that make sense?

So when I would hang out with only the African-American guys on my football team, I never noticed how white I was until those moments. And then it was like my whiteness felt like it was like I felt like I stood out. Because I wasn't catching all the references. I wasn't getting all the jokes. There were things they were saying and I was like, yeah, what? And so that's what he's saying is that he feels his I'm not of this people.

He feels it. And so he goes to the people of the land and he says, well, y'all sell me some land. And they say very graciously, no one will withhold from you a place to bury your death. But he doesn't want a borrowed tomb. He wants a purchased tomb. So what it says he does is he stands up and he bows down and he stands back up and he says.

Oh, and now I guess he sits back down because this is how business was done. And he says, please ask Ephraim, the son of Zohar, to sell me his cave that's at the back end of a field in Machpelah. Ephraim is there. So Ephraim says, I give you the cave. You can just have it. Abraham stands up.

He bows down. There's actually some interesting things in the Hebrew here where they consistently say, hear me, hear me, hear me. That's how they start things. Abraham doesn't start things that way until halfway through. He starts realizing this is how you're supposed to say it. So he'll start with his way and then he'll go and also hear me because he's trying to learn how you're supposed to do this.

It seems he's trying to incorporate what they're doing. But he stands back up, bows back down and says, thank you. I'll pay you for it. Now, we don't exactly know. So here's why it matters.

If he doesn't pay for it, it's borrowed. Eventually, after decomposition happens, after some number of some amount of time, some number of years, they can just take the cave back. They can move Sarah. They can use the cave for their own purposes. It won't be his. They would honor him by letting him use it, but it wouldn't be his forever.

And he wants something that's his forever. It's also possible Ephraim was just doing what they normally do, which is pretend to give it, but really have the intent of selling it. We don't really know, but that is still common today. I was asking Ben Johnson, who lived in Lebanon. I asked him, is that a thing they do? And he said, yes.

He said he actually, a couple of things he told me was, one, and he had to learn this, they will invite you to dinner, but they have to invite you three times for it to be real. So if you go visit someone, they'll say, oh, please stay for dinner. And you're supposed to say, no, no, no, I'm not hungry. I don't want to, or something, some nice response. Your house doesn't seem like I'd want to eat the food here, something like that. And then they say, please stay for dinner.

And then you say, no, no, no, no. And then they say, please stay for dinner. And on the third one, that means I'd really actually like for you to stay for dinner. Now, Ben is from Georgia, the Georgia in the U.S., not the Georgia over there. And so he did not know this. And so he would show up to someone's house and they would say, would you please stay for dinner?

And he'd go, all right, I will. And they were like, super, super rude guy. It just took me over there. I had no plans on him staying. He had to learn. He also said that they would still do the, oh, oh, don't worry.

I'll just give it to you for free. What happens is Abraham says, thank you for giving me this for free. And he says, but I'll pay you for it. And Ephraim responds, listen, what is a little field worth 400 shekels between me and you? And it says that Abraham listened to him and he weighs out the weight and he pays for it. So that Ephraim slides in there, oh, money between us, what's 400 shekels?

Like he just slides it in there like this isn't how this would work at a car dealership here. I'd like to buy this truck. I'll give you the truck. No, no, no. Let me pay for it. What's a truck worth $19,999 between us?

It was 0% financing for five years. Like we wouldn't do this, but he's been said they still do this in Lebanon that he actually left a restaurant one time, forgot to pay, came back and said, I forgot to pay. And they said, oh, I give it to you. It's free. And he said, no, no, no. I want to pay.

And he said, what's $15 between friends like us? So he was like, oh, okay, $15. Here you go. Which I, you know, when I, if I ever get to go visit, I'm just gonna be like, thanks. That's so nice. And just walk off.

I'm not gonna be there for that long, you know? So he buys the land. And then in verse 17, it says this. So the field of Ephron in Machpelah, which was in, which was to the east of Mamre, the field with the cave that was in it and all the trees that were in the field throughout its whole area was made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites before all who went in at the gate of his city. After this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife, in the cave of the field of Machpelah, east of Mamre, that is, Hebron, in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites.

Now that overdoes and overemphasizes where the field is, who it was sold from, where it was sold, who were the witnesses, who bought it, who's definitely bought. It's his. Which field? The field that used to belong to Ephron, son of Zohar in Machpelah. The field and all the trees and the cave is east of Mamre. Like it overdoes this.

And every time it brings it up, it does it again. And what is happening here is it is showing us that for the first time, Abraham and his descendants own a piece of the promised land. It's not a big piece of the promised land, but they own a piece of the promise. That Abraham, when Sarah died, did not say, let's go back. He said, let's go forward. Let's lean into the promise that God has made.

And let's see some of this begin to be fulfilled. And that's what happens. And so they bury Sarah. Now. Sorry, that was my now, but the first word is now. Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years.

And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he had. So this isn't Isaac, although Isaac's 37 ish, 40 years old, right around now, he's not in charge of everything. The servant is. He brings him in and he says, put your hand under my thigh. That I may make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but you will go to my country and to my kindred and take a wife for my son, Isaac.

Like the servant said to him, perhaps the woman will may not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I then take your son back to the land from which he came from which you came? So Abraham's getting older and he's setting his affairs in order and we're seeing how he's leaning into the promises that God has given. So the first thing that he does is he acquires land to honor his wife, to bury his wife and to have a place for her forever in this land that God promised them. And now he's trying to work out getting a wife for Isaac. It's a little bit interesting that Isaac is not a part of this, but at the end of chapter 24, we find out that he needed to still be comforted at the loss of his mother.

And it's possible that Isaac was sad and wasn't handling things very well right now. It's possible. I'm reading that bit into the text. We know that he was still three years later. It was only after he marries Rebecca that it says that he's comforted. And he's the only guy that we have in the Bible that is not kind of immediately connected to the finding of his own wife.

So there are females whose dads kind of hand them over, but everywhere else we have a male, he's involved in some form or fashion. And Isaac is just hanging out and then gets a wife. Some of you think that's what will happen for you and best of luck to you. Sorry, that was mean. I shouldn't have said that. So we see, though, the servant has a very particular question.

It's a helpful question. He says, hold on. If she won't come, is Isaac to leave? That's an interesting question. It's a helpful question because he's saying, you know, I kind of understand the promises. I kind of understand the blessing.

Are we retreating on that to get Isaac a wife? If she won't come because it's far away, he says, does Isaac leave? We should all hold our breath for a second. And he says in verse 6, Abraham said to him, See to it that you do not take my son back there, the Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kiddred and who spoke to me and swore to me to your offspring, I will give this land. He will send his angel before you and you shall take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine.

Only you must not take my son back there. So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham, his master, and swore to him concerning this matter. There's been some research done on why he had to put his hand under his thigh. The general consensus is just it was very intimate and it meant a solemn oath. That Abraham makes him promise in that way that he wouldn't forget and that it was a very solemn oath. But he says if she won't come, you're not in trouble.

You can come back. You're just not allowed to take Isaac there. But we see what Abraham is doing is he's leaning into the promises that God already gave him. He says the God of heaven told me that I'm going to give you this land to your descendants forever. And so Abraham says, I'm getting old. I've got a piece of the land.

We're in the land. We're not leaving the land. But we're going to have to have descendants here. And Isaac isn't married, so we need to find Isaac a wife. And the Canaanites are not a part of that. As best Abraham can tell, the Canaanites are going to be pushed out later because God tells him that in chapter 13 that they're going to be in chapter 15 that his descendants are going to be slaves in Egypt, but they're going to come back and they're going to push out all the people that live in this region.

And Abraham says, no, you've got to go find a wife from our people. That's how the bloodline continues. That's how the promise continues. And that's how we have a people to possess this land. So Abraham's just leaning into what God already told him.

The servant took 10 of his master's camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master. And he arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor. Now that was about 500 miles away. It's one of the reasons why he takes camels because they travel a little better. It would have taken 21 days to a month or so to get there. He takes 10 camels, which is to show us something.

Well, it shows us something. He actually took them. It wasn't just written in there to show us something, but it shows us something, which is that Abraham was wealthy because camels weren't that common. And to have 10 of them and a bunch of people to send with a bunch of choice gifts, he looked like Aladdin rolling up in the Disney movie to Agrabah. He had a lot going on with him when he went. So, and he made the camels, this is verse 11, he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water.

And he said, Oh Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young woman to whom I shall say, please let down your jar that I may drink. And who shall say, drink and I will water your camels. Let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant, Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.

So here's what he does. He shows up, he gets to the city, but it's a city. Now it says it's the city of Nahor, which means this is where the guy lives. We're not necessarily sure it was named after him. It's just like he made it to where he lives. And so he shows up where he used to live and where Abraham's descendants were.

Nahor was his Abraham's brother. And he just sits out by the well where all of the women of the city, the unmarried women of the city would come out in the evening to draw water. And he just prays, Lord, please be good to my master. And I'm going to go over and I'm going to ask one of the ladies to give me some water. And if she gives me some water and then she offers on her own to water my camels, let that be the one that's supposed to marry Isaac. Now I do periodically have people ask me, does the Bible give helpful dating advice?

It doesn't give a lot, but if you want some from this passage, get your dad to send one of his friends to a well at one of your family reunions and pick up one of your cousins for you. Now what he was doing, I'll give you a second to write that down. What he was doing was he was going to the place where the type of woman who would be marriable for Isaac was. And he was seeking the Lord's wisdom in it. So if you want to steal a little bit, take that part.

Seek to actually find someone who is genuinely godly and marriable and pray for the Lord's wisdom and help and do it in an honorable way. Before he had finished speaking, Behold, Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor. So Abraham and Nahor are brothers. This is Abraham's grandniece. Great niece. Yeah, grandniece.

Abraham's brother came out with her water jar on her shoulder. The young woman was very attractive in appearance. A maiden, that means she's young, whom no man had known. That means she was never married, has never slept with anybody. She went down to the spring. The author's telling us that.

He wouldn't have been able to pick up all of that from just seeing her. What he saw, I guess, was that she was very attractive. Then the servant went to meet her, ran to meet her and said, Please give me a little water to drink from your jar. And she said, Drink, my Lord. And she quickly let down her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink. When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels also until they have finished drinking.

So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water. And she drew for all his camels. The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord had prospered his journey or not. Okay. If we lived in this time frame, we would be so blown away right now. Camels can drink about 40 gallons of water if they're running on empty.

There were 10 camels, which means that it's up to possible that she drew 400 gallons of water. Which, if this is a 5-gallon bucket, that's 80 trips, y'all. That'd be like if I said, I'm moving into a new neighborhood, and I'm praying that the Lord would send someone, my neighbors, to come over and ask me when they see the moving truck if they can help me move. And this will be my new best friend in the neighborhood. And then I told you, they showed up. And you know what they said to me?

Back up. I'll get that piano by myself. And then they carried it up the stairs by themselves. We'd all go, all right, I know some things about this person now. Or you have a small piano. Or this person is humongous.

Like, that's what I learned. And what we just learned from her by her being, not her volunteering. It would be kind and nice for her to give him a drink. But for her volunteering, I'm going to water all your camels until they're done drinking. And she does it. He watched her for a long time.

And she diligently, over and above in generosity, served him and his men. We should be just like, oh, wow. Like, we just learned some things about Rebecca if you knew things about camels. So, he watches. Then it says, When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring, weighing a half shekel and two bracelets for her arms, weighing ten gold shekels, and said, Please tell me whose daughter you are.

Is there room in your father's house for us to spend the night? She said to him, I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor. She added, We have plenty of both straw and fodder and room to spend the night. And the man bowed his head and worshipped the Lord and said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsmen. Then the young woman ran and told her mother's household about these things.

In their mindset, most gods don't travel well. You have gods of locations. Abraham consistently says, the God, the God of heaven and the God of earth. Not the God of this land. Not the God of that land. Not the God of the river.

Not the God of this particular thing, grain and wine. No, he says the God of heaven and the God of earth. And he travels 500 miles and he prays, God, continue to be steadfast to my master. Not quite sure. I don't know how devout this guy was. We know that he's praying in his heart.

But I'm sure there's a little bit of like, are you here? It turns out he is. Abraham's description was good. Heaven and earth. All of it. And so Rebecca goes and it says, verse 29.

Rebecca had a brother whose name was Laban. Laban ran out toward the man to the spring. As soon as he saw the ring and the bracelets on his sister's arms and heard the words of Rebecca, her sister. Thus the man spoke to me. So she has a brother named Laban.

Laban runs out there when he sees the gold. Now, this would have been, I think, a bit if they were paying attention to how long she was gone, I think it took a little while to water the camels. So they're like, man, she's taking a long time. She rolls back up, blinged out with things that I don't know if they can afford or not, but she wasn't wearing them when she left. It's an odd trip to them. And then she says, I just watered a guy who has 10 camels.

And they said, 10 what now? And Laban looked at the rings and stuff and said, I'm going to meet this guy. And he just trots on outside. So he goes over and he says, come on in, come on in. Like, you know, they're welcoming him. They're being hospitable and generous.

But it's also like, who is this guy? What is happening here? So they bring him inside and they say, come, sit, eat. And he says, he actually kind of breaks protocol. He says, no, I'm not eating anything until I say all the stuff I have to say. And they say, say it.

And so he retells the entire story we just read. The chapter is basically written out in duplicate. He highlights some different things. He points out some different things. But he retells the whole story.

He says, my master Abraham called me into him and he told me to promise. Oh, first he starts off with who Abraham is. I'm his servant. I'm following him. And he is very wealthy. He says, he has camels and donkeys, gold and silver, maidservants, menservants.

God has blessed him richly. And he has a son whom Sarah bore to him in her old age. I think he's gassing Isaac up a little bit. He says, God's, he said, Abraham's going to leave everything to him. So he says, I'm here representing Abraham who's super blessed, very rich, who has one son.

And he highlights that Sarah bore him in his old age. And that's very helpful because Nahor is Bethuel's father. Which would mean that if Isaac was born about the same time as Bethuel, he would be saying to Sarah, to Rebecca, I know a guy who's as old as your dad. And given the age gaps here, that could be a big gap. So he's like, he was born when Sarah was really, really old.

So he's saying closer in age to you. He's just highlighting that out and he's saying, and God and Abraham's going to bless him with everything that he has. And Abraham made me swear to come here and find him a wife. So at this point, I'm sure the story was like, oh. And then it gets deeper because he says, and so I showed up and I prayed that the lady I asked to give me a drink of water would not only give me a drink, but would offer to water my camels. At that point, they were all like, oh, she's going to, oh, no, that just happened.

That's what I did. And then he says, he ends with this. He tells the whole story. And then he says. He tells him, before I'd finished speaking, she showed up. We did this.

She did this exactly. And then he goes to verse 49. Now then, if you are going to show steadfast love and faithfulness to my master, tell me. And if not, tell me that I may turn to the right hand or to the left. He tells his whole story. He says, it seems as if God's at work here.

It seems as if this was planned. He tells him specifically. Abraham told me if she didn't come with me, I'm not in trouble. So he's like, this is on y'all. You don't have to feel bad for me. He lays this all out.

And he says, now tell me, are you going to show steadfast love to my master or not? Because I've got to go one way or the other. And I don't think he's necessarily meaning I've got to go home. I think he's also meaning I'm here to find someone who belongs here who's willing to go with me back. So if you don't want to marry him, although it seems like maybe you should, I'm just throwing that in there.

If you don't want to, I'm going to go somewhere else. Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, the thing has come from the Lord. We cannot speak to you bad or good. What they're saying there is it's not up to us. We're not going to do a pros and cons list if God's leading in this. Behold, Rebecca is before you.

Take her and go. Let her be the wife of your master's son as the Lord has spoken. When Abraham's servant heard these words, he bowed himself to the earth before the Lord. You see how much this guy loves the Lord. He's constantly praying to him. And every moment when he gets a chance, he's just thanking him.

And finally, it just works. It worked out. And he just lays down on the earth just before the Lord. And it says, the servant brought out jewelry of silver and gold and garments and gave them to Rebecca. He also gave to her brother and to her mother costly ornaments. And he and the men who were with him ate and drank and spent the night there.

When they rose in the morning, he said to them, send me away to my master. Her brother and her mother said, let the young woman remain with us for a while, at least 10 days. After that, she may go. They basically just said, at least 10 days, maybe longer. She needs to stay for a little while. We can't like he just showed up that night.

She just fed your camels last night. We're not. She's not leaving right now. But he said to them, do not delay me since the Lord has prospered my way. Send me away that I may go to my master. And they said, let us call the young woman and ask her.

They called Rebecca and said to her, will you go with this man? And she said, I will go. This also shows us some things about Rebecca here. First of all, they said, let's ask her. That doesn't always happen in this culture. You saw that her dad and brother got to pick whether or not she would marry him.

But now they're saying, hey, come here. Are you willing to do this? And she, like Sarah before her and like Mary after her, is willing to step out in faith where she feels like the Lord is moving. And so she says, I will go. So they sent away Rebecca, their sister and her nurse and Abraham's servant and his men.

And they blessed Rebecca and said to her, our sister, may you become thousands of ten thousands. And may your offspring possess the gate of those who hate him. They bless her before she leaves. And we know that that blessing comes true because God's already promised to bless this family and to bless the seed of Isaac. And so they leave. And what we see in these two chapters are two beautiful pictures of this promise stepping forward.

That God says, I'm going to bless you with people to possess this land. And both of those step forward in that Abraham, in his waning moments, leans into what God has promised. Believes and trusts what God has promised. And it's taken us a while to get here for Abraham. I believe fully as he was going to sacrifice Isaac, he was trusting the Lord fully. And we see after that, he doesn't waver.

He knows this is what's happening. He says, you don't take Isaac back. He stays here. We're going to own this land. We're going to lean into this. And he trusts the promise.

Now, Isaac had returned from Be'er, Laha, Roy, and was dwelling in the Negev. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening. He didn't have a wife and kids at this point. He had a lot of free time on his hands. So he's just getting to sit out there by himself and think.

And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, there were camels coming. And Rebecca lifted up her eyes. And when she saw Isaac, she dismounted from the camel. It's a sign of respect. And she said to the servant, who is that man walking in the field to meet us? And the servant said, it is my master.

So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah, his mother, and took Rebecca. And she became his wife. And he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.

And so what we learn, Isaac was 40 when he married her. So this is about two to three years after his mother passed. He takes her into Sarah's tent. It was still Sarah's tent. And what we see is the transition of matriarchy from Sarah to Rebecca. And the story shifts from Abraham and Sarah to Isaac and Rebecca.

Because God's promise is going to continue. And we see this beautiful transition and handoff. In this time of grieving, in this time of sorrow, and in this time of pain, Abraham, and through his leadership, Isaac, lean into the promises that God had already laid out. They trust him that they can move forward. Rather than retreating, Hebrews 11 says that if they had been looking for an opportunity to return, they would have found one. They had been looking to go back home.

They could have found an opportunity. There was plenty before them. But they trusted and walked out in faith, even though they only saw the promises from afar. And so that's what we see. I want to tell you something beautiful that happens here as we carry this story out. First, Isaac and Rebecca have children, and the promise continues.

They give birth to Jacob, who's renamed Israel, who gives parentage to all the tribes of Israel, and out of them directly comes this entire people. We actually begin to see in Genesis some of the promises fulfilled, where they're going to be a blessing to the nations, and ultimately a blessing to all the nations through Christ. And Sarah's tomb becomes the first flag planted in the ground in the promised land that they all look to. Moses is the one who's writing this, and he's writing it to a people out of the Exodus, wandering in the wilderness, headed to the promised land. And do you know why he overemphasizes this field, why he overemphasizes this cave?

He's pointing out to the people of Israel as they read this, at the very first readers of this text, that we still own land that was never sold back. That there's a cave that houses the bones of our ancestors that was claimed by the death of Sarah. Chapter 25, verse 7 says that Abraham died, and he was buried there. We're told later that Isaac and Rebecca die, and they're buried there. That Leah dies, she's buried there. That Jacob dies, he dies in Egypt.

And he says, don't you bury me here. He says, cart me on back. I'm getting buried at the field. And he says, Ephron, son of Zohar, who Abraham bought from the Hittite. He lays it all out again. He says, you bury me there.

And the people of Israel had this tomb that they looked to for their hope and for the beginning of the fulfillment of the promises, that this people of this bloodline could look at that tomb forever. Remember, that by her death, Sarah moves the covenant forward and that through the suffering, we see that there was purpose. And church, we have a better tomb to look to. Not filled with the bones of ancestors, scandalously, outrageously empty. That there is a tomb that in the midst of our grief and in the midst of our cloudy, tear-filled eyes that we can gaze upon when we can't see an inch in front of our faces, we can look backwards to a tomb where the God of the universe walked out in a hope-filled resurrection to assure for us that the promises are forever ours, claimed by him through his suffering and his death, and that we know as Christians that there is purpose and hope in the midst of suffering.

That death does not win. That grief does not conquer. That as the people of Israel looked to this tomb as a stake in the ground, as the place where the flag was planted, that they knew that they could hold on to, that God would fulfill these promises, that their bloodline would continue, we of a new bloodline given to us through the blood of Christ have a better tomb to look to in the midst of heartache and pain. So that our faith can move forward when we can't see anything else. We can trust that he's good, that he loves us, that what has rocked us and changed the nature of our lives won't ultimately win, and won't ultimately conquer us.

Matt's going to come back up here. As we close out our time, I want to show you where 1 Peter talks about this. Peter talking about this says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again. Meaning that we have a new bloodline through the blood of Christ, that we are in this lineage. Not just sons of Abraham through faith, but sons of God through the blood of Christ, through the adoption given to us through the atonement.

Born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. So that when we don't know what tomorrow will look like, and we don't know whether we'll be able to get out of bed, and we don't know if we'll be able to make it to work, and we don't know if we'll be able to utter a word without our face distorting and tears running down our face, we know what the ultimate tomorrow will look like. We know that we have an inheritance that is more beautiful than this promised land, that is more eternally secured, a tomb that is empty, that marks forever our hope, because Jesus rose from the grave will rise. And so we look to Him in hope and in longing, and we know that in the midst of everything, we can move forward.

That we can put one foot in front of the other, holding on to the fact that eventually grief doesn't win. We won't be swallowed up in death, but we'll be swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection of Christ. For those of us who have repented and placed our faith in Jesus, this is imperishably, undeniably, irrevocably true. And if you're in here this morning, and you are in the midst of a season of grief, I would encourage you to look at Jesus walking out of the tomb. to stare as best you can into that truth, so that you might be reminded that this won't win, that He's good and He loves you.

And if you're in here today and you don't know Christ, you do not know what I'm talking about. And you do not have this as a reality, but you can. If you'll run to Him and place your faith in Him and say, I want that and I need that, and I need you to change my heart, I need you to save my soul, He will because He saves us based off of His good work, not ours. And I would encourage you to do that today. In a minute, Matt's going to begin to sing. We can sing with him.

We're also going to take communion together as a church, which is where we take bread and the cup, and we remind ourselves of Jesus' broken body and His blood shed on our behalf, that we might have life and freedom and hope, that He conquered death for us so that we don't have to die in hopelessness, but that we get to be buried in hope of a resurrection and a life with Him. If you're a Christian, I would encourage you to spend some time praying, repenting where you need to repent, reminding yourself of His goodness, and then taking communion. And if you're not a believer, this is for believers, it's not for you, so we'd encourage you to pray and to sing and place your faith in Jesus if you never have. Let's pray.

God, we thank You for Your grace. Thank You for the hope that we have through the cross and the resurrection, that we are brothers and sisters in a new bloodline, that we are brothers and sisters of an empty tomb, and that our hope is forever secure because it's a living hope through the power of the resurrection of Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen.

The Sacrifice of Isaac

The Sacrifice of Isaac

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. All right, so we just got done walking through a series on multiplier. We spent five weeks walking through the calling to make and to multiply disciples. And then we, before that, were our gift series. And we spent December walking through our gift series. But before that, we were doing Genesis.

We made it halfway through. And we are jumping back in. We're going to finish Genesis, this half of Genesis, over the rest of winter into spring. So we're going to be in Genesis 22 today. You can go ahead and open there. It's on page 10 of your blue Bibles.

It'll also be on the screen as we follow along. But before we jump in, I want to catch us up to where we have been in Genesis and follow a storyline that we've been following. So in Genesis 1 and 2, God creates the earth. It is cosmic. It is big. It reflects his glory as he intentionally crafts different parts of creation.

And then in Genesis 2, we focused in on the creation of Adam and Eve. The guy creates Adam and Eve. He creates humanity different than any other aspect of creation, that we bear his image and his likeness. And that we have the unique ability to have a relationship with God. So Adam and Eve have a perfect relationship with God.

It is beautiful and it is good. And then in Genesis 3, they are in the Garden of Eden. And Satan, in the form of a serpent, comes into the garden. Causes them to question God and his goodness and his word. And they listen to Satan. They don't listen to God.

And they eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And in that moment, they sin. They rebel against God. And they bring sin and rebellion into this world. And it brings in death. And it affects every aspect of creation.

And when this happens, God comes down into the garden. And he makes a couple declarations. But one of the things that he says is that one day, Eve, you will have an offspring. And this offspring will come and she will come, or he will come and crush the head of the serpent. He will crush the head of Satan. And that is the declaration that Jesus one day is going to come.

That's the first declaring of the gospel that we have in the Bible. So we've been following this line that through Adam and Eve, the offspring is coming. And we see they populate the earth. Eventually, the earth gets so corrupted with sin, with violence, with hate, that God wants to start new. We followed the story of Noah, that God calls Noah. Noah builds an ark.

And his family is saved. And the line is preserved. And then we followed from Noah all the way to the character we've been following going into our gift series, which is Abraham. Abraham has a unique relationship with God. God comes to Abraham in his old age. Him and his wife Sarah do not have kids.

And he comes to Abraham and he says, I'm going to give you a son. I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make a great nation through you. And from that point forward, Abraham and Sarah are waiting for God to give him this blessing, to give him this son. And there are times where it's going really well, where he's trusting God. When there's this beautiful covenant ceremony that he does, he puts Abraham in a dream.

And in the dream, the animals, they split an animal in two. And God walks through the center of it. And what is being declared in that ceremony is that this promise is going to happen. And if it doesn't happen, may God be like this animal who's been broken apart. Meaning this is going to happen. This promise is going to come true.

And then there are times where Abraham and Sarah, they try to force the promise. They don't trust God. They end up finding a surrogate, Hagar, to have a son who is Ishmael. We followed that story that Ishmael is a son. He loves Ishmael. But God says, this is not the promised son.

No, I'm coming to you, Abraham and Sarah. Y'all are going to have a son. His name is going to be Isaac. And then 25 years between God's promise to them and the birth of Isaac, Isaac finally shows up. Abraham's 100. Sarah's in her 90s.

And that is where we are today. Isaac's a little bit older. He's a young boy. And in this story today, which is one of the more, one of the biggest stories that we have in the Old Testament, we're going to walk through this story and we're going to see how God tests Abraham. We're going to see how God tests Abraham. Then we're going to see how Abraham responds.

He responds in faith and obedience, trusting God. Then we're going to see how God ultimately provides. And then as we back up, we're going to see what this story points forward to. So let me pray and then we'll walk through this story together. God, thank you so much that you love us, that we have a story that reminds us of your good news. God, I pray today that you would help us be present, that you would speak to us powerfully.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right, speaking of verse 1 and 2. So this story just took a very serious turn. It starts out by telling us that he tells Abraham, he reminds us that Abraham is going to be tested here. And what is the test going to be? You are going to sacrifice your son.

This story starts out like a tragedy. It starts out like a tragedy and understand really what's going on here as we walk through it. There's two things that we need to understand. Firstly, we need to have a basis for what sacrifices are, as it shows up here in Genesis. Sacrifices were made with animals early on in Genesis to show the heinous nature of sin. That sin is rebellion against God and it's costly.

It costs blood. You don't sin against the God of the universe and commit cosmic treason and there's no punishment. So early on in Genesis, we see this practice of sacrificing animals to show this. And then later on throughout the rest of the Old Testament law and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, we see this system, this formalized system of sacrificing animals to show this. To show the grievous nature of what sin is and what it does to the people and how serious it is. And in this system later on, you see burnt offerings.

Burnt offerings are to show the total destructive nature of sin. That animal would be slaughtered and they would be burned up completely. That is what a burnt offering is. And God just called Abraham to do this to his son. And we look at this and there's a part of you that should say, What? Like this doesn't make sense.

I mean, this is explicitly forbidden in the rest of the Old Testament law because this is what the pagans would do. They're the ones that would sacrifice their kids. This doesn't make sense and it should catch us off guard. Because I feel like there's something inside of us that says, No, that's not right. There's a part of us, when we watch movies and films and we hear stories and there's certain thrillers and horror films where you know characters are going to start dying off. And then there's a sweet little seven-year-old girl.

There's a part of us, when we watch these films, we have this kind of social compact with Hollywood that says, You can take some of the characters out, but the girl lives. The innocent one lives. There's something inside of us that says, No, this isn't right. And this story begins with a setup that he is calling Abraham to sacrifice his only son, the promised son. So we get frustrated.

We start to think this isn't fair. But we're going to walk through this more and see what's happening here. The second thing that we need to understand is that God has always tested his people. From Old Testament to New Testament, God has always tested his people. Now, sometimes that word tested gets conflated with the word tempt. And they are two different things.

This is not tempting. James 1.13 says, Let no one say when he is being tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. God does not tempt. This is different. Tempting is luring you into sin and rebelling against God.

Testing is actually something that brings you closer to God. The Hebrew word for testing here means testing what someone is really like. Seeing what they are really made of through hardship and difficulty. And we see this all over the Bible. We see it in this story here. We see it in the book of Job.

The book of Job is another really challenging book where there's a man named Job, and he's prosperous, and he has a big family, he has lots of money, he has lots of land, he has great health. And then Satan comes along and says to God, you know, the only reason that job loves you and worships you is because of the things that you give. If you took it away, he would curse you. So God allows Satan to take away his health, his prosperity, and even some of his family. And ultimately, Job shows at the end of the book that he worships the Lord, he does not curse him. We see testing in the book of Job.

We see testing in how the nation of Israel comes out of Egypt. After the nation of Israel is brought out of Egypt by Moses, they sin against God in the wilderness, and they wander in the wilderness for 40 years. And this is what Deuteronomy says about this in chapter 8, verse 2. It says, And you shall remember the whole way the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, hear this, testing you to know what is in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. God tests our hearts to see what is in, to see if we will follow him. We see this in the New Testament when the early church is being persecuted, and Peter is writing to a church that is being persecuted, that's going through trials, and he says this, he says, In this you rejoice, though now for a little while.

If necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the Revelation of Jesus Christ. And the picture that is being played out here is that testing is like the purification of gold. When you purify gold, when you heat it up, impurities will rise to the surface. It shows what the gold is really made of. And it's an opportunity for you to clean the gold even further. And that's the picture of what testing gets to be, that when we are tested by God, it allows us to be closer to him, because it shows us our hidden faults.

It shows us where we don't believe the gospel, and it shows us where we need to repent and follow Jesus. Oftentimes what happens here is the thing that really gets us frustrated about testing, is we want to know specifically why. Why does this happen? Why does suffering happen? Why did this kind of period of testing happen for me? And a lot of times we don't get that answer.

We don't get the full picture. We get the theology here that we have to trust in the process, which is testing. But we don't always get the reasons, the specific reasons of why we're ultimately called to trust God, trust in the process, and trust that God is good, that he has good for us in the midst of testing. But every once in a while, I've seen this in my own life, every once in a while you might get a picture of why this happened, why periods of testing, periods of suffering happen. And in this story, we actually get the purposes of why this is going to become clear, why this is happening later.

So once you know, have a basis for what sacrifices are, once you have a basis for what testing is, we can walk through this story. He says, After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here I am. He said, Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall tell you. He says, he calls out to Abraham. Abraham says, Here I am. And then he says, Take your son, your only son, and offer him as a burnt offering.

That word son is going to show up repeatedly here. Son, your only son. Now, both Abraham and God know this is not his only biological son. They both know this. This just comes off the heels of the story of Ishmael. What is being implied here is this is the promised son.

This is him. This is the one. And it's repeated 14 times in this passage. Son, son, son, only son. Your only son whom you love. It's meant to show us this is the promised son.

It's meant to remind us of everything that it took to get here. Think about this. It took them 25 years after years of being childless. 25 years for this promise to come to fruition. They have this promised son whom they love, and God has just called him to reduce the promise to ashes. This is a weighty calling that he is calling Abraham to, and this is how Abraham responds in verse 3.

He says, It says, Oftentimes when we read the Bible, we have an American way of reading passages, of reading the text. I don't think it's necessarily bad. It allows us, I think, to be empathetic. We read it. We're a feelings-based culture. You talk to any other cultures that look at us, they say, Well, Americans, we care a lot about our feelings.

And that can go crazy. That can go awry. I went through 90s self-help seminars and schooling. That can go a little bit crazy with emotions. But I think it allows us, since we're an empathetic culture, to put ourselves in other people's shoes, to be able to understand some of these stories and how they play out.

I think that's helpful. But what can happen is, is that we can start to make definitive statements about what they were thinking and what they were feeling when the text doesn't give us some of those pictures. Ultimately, we have to look at the text and what it is telling us. But sometimes, in the Bible, we get the behind-the-scenes picture. Sometimes we get to understand a little bit of what they were thinking. And we get that in this story, but it's not in this chapter.

You've got to flip to the New Testament. If you go to Hebrews 11, it says, By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his son, of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your offspring be named. Hear this. He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. So in the mind of Abraham, as he's received this calling, in his mind he knows God is able to even raise Isaac back from the dead.

So he has plans to go through with this. He's going to trust the Lord. But in the back of his mind, he knows God is even able to raise this son from the dead because this son is the promised son. This is the one that he is going to bring this great nation through. It is him. So he is trusting the promises of God as he's being tested.

And we see this in how he responds. He says, Abraham gets up, that he packs his donkey, that he grabs some supplies, that he gets some help from two young men, then he gets his son, and they hit the road. And if you read that, right off the heels of what he was just called to, man, it just seems robotic. He just got told to sacrifice his son, and he packs up everything, and they hit the road. It's a little confusing. Two things.

Again, we don't get a window into his emotions. It is reasonable to think this is very difficult for him. He loves his sons. You can see in his relationship with Ishmael in the previous chapters, he loves his sons. This is a difficult and weighty calling. But ultimately, we look at what he is trusting in.

He believes the promise that Isaac is the promised son. He has faith that God will come through him this promise, even if it takes resurrection. So he's trusting God. Verse 4. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. And Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey.

I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. So after a three-day journey of coming to Moriah, they finally see the place from afar. He sees it. They're getting closer. He tells the two young men, he says, you guys stay behind. It's just going to be Isaac and I.

Now, y'all, it's been three days. Three days. Every day. Every night. One step closer to this happening. One step closer to where he's being called to bring the knife down on his son.

Now, while Abraham is clinging to the promise and he's trusting that God can even raise him for the dead, the weightiness of this obedience is growing closer. But he's still trusting the promise of God and he ends this conversation. It's telling how he says it. He says, I and the boy will go over there and worship and come back again to you. He's saying, we're coming back. Isaac and I were going to the mount, but we're coming back again.

Verse 6. It says, And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went, both of them together, and Isaac said to his father Abraham, My father. And he said, Here am I, my son. He said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went, both of them, together. So Abraham, he gets the wood, he hands it to Isaac to carry, and Isaac starts to carry the wood, which tells us a little bit that Isaac, he's a young boy, but he's old enough and he's big enough to at least carry this wood. So he puts the wood on his back. They start to go towards the hill. And that shows us a little bit of what Isaac is doing here.

Isaac's being obedient. He's being obedient to his father as his father is trusting the Lord. And then Isaac, in the midst of this, he asks the obvious question. Dad, I see, I see the fire. I see the wood. You've brought a knife.

Where's the lamb? They didn't bring one with them. They didn't stop and buy one along the way. They haven't taken one. See, Isaac realizes that something's up. This isn't normal.

That something is out here. But he's going to trust his father as his father trusts God. Abraham looks at him. He says, God will provide. Abraham knows that God is going to provide. That he's even capable of raising the dead.

He just has to be prepared to go through with this. He has to be prepared to bring the knife down on his beloved boy. And the intensity is building even further. Abraham and Isaac, both being obedient to what they are called to. Abraham now has the knife and he now has the flame. And these are both visual representations of what is about to be called of him.

But he believes Isaac is ultimately going to be okay. But that still doesn't take away from the horror of this situation of what he's being called to. That in the midst of testing, Abraham is still trusting the promises of God. And then the scene finally arrives. Verse 9. When they came to the place of which God had told them, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

So they finally get to this place, this place of sacrifice. And I want you to picture this scene with me. Abraham at this point, he's well over 100. He starts to build the altar. And this is going to take some time. He's older.

He's building the altar. And piece by piece, as he's building this altar, there's a question that's still lingering in the back. Where is the lamb? And then he gets the wood. He takes the wood from Isaac. Isaac is watching this.

He grabs the wood. He starts to stack the wood. And the question still remains, where is the lamb? And he takes his son. Y'all, his son that he loves. And he starts to bind him.

He starts to tie him up. And Isaac doesn't struggle. Doesn't say that he ran off. He could have. He starts to tie him up. And he takes his son, this son he waited so long for, and he places him on the altar.

Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. So he reaches out the knife. He has the knife. He's getting ready to bring the knife down on his son. And it's at this point in this story that something screams within us, where is the lamb? Like, what is happening here?

How? Is this gone far enough? You see that he trusts you. What is happening? This does not seem fair. He has the knife, and he's ready to bring it down on his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, Here am I. He said, Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and he looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide. As it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. So in the midst of him holding the knife, an angel intervenes and intercedes and says, Abraham, stop. Don't touch him. You've proven yourself. It's clear that you fear the Lord.

Step away. It's over. And Abraham can take his son. He can unbind him. He can do what every father would want to do in that moment. He can hold him.

He can hug him. He can tell him everything is going to be okay, that he was always the promised son. He can tell them what this was. It was never in doubt. You were always going to be the promised son. And then he picks up his head, and he sees the ram.

He sees the ram in the thicket. God provides the lamb, and then he takes it, and this is the sacrifice that was going to be there all along. He takes this ram, and he slaughters it as a substitute in Isaac's place. And Abraham can say, I knew it. I knew that God was going to come through with his promises. And they call this place, The Lord Will Provide.

That this place, Moriah, will forever be remembered as the place that God intervened, that God made a substitute, that God kept his promise, and the line of Abraham was preserved. And the rest of this chapter is that working of this blessing, declaring this blessing that is going to be, and you get to the end of it, and it's over. The story's done. And there's this lingering question, I think, that we still have when we read this. What was the point? What was the point of this story?

I mean, I get it. I'll concede. God tests his people. But calling a father to sacrifice his son, that seems a little too far. Calling him to take his innocent son. I mean, Abraham's old.

Couldn't God see his heart? Couldn't he see the faith that was in it? Why put an old man through that kind of grief? Why put Isaac through that kind of terror? Why? What is the point?

Because ultimately, this story is pointing to something else. The location of this place, Moriah, is significant. Later on in 2 Chronicles 3, we learn that Moriah is the place where Solomon built the temple. This is Jerusalem. This is not an accident. God could have chosen any place.

He could have chosen any mountain, but he chooses this hill. Why? Because this story was going to play out centuries later. That years down the line, there was going to be a son. There is going to be a son whom the Father loved deeply. The kind of love that is eternal.

The kind of love that stretches back into eternity past that is unbroken and perfect and pure and good. And out of this love, he's going to send his son. And out of this love, the son is going to obey the will of the Father. And he's going to travel on the same path that Isaac and Abraham took. The son is going to obey and he's going to put wood on his back. He's going to carry the wood up the hill.

The same path that Abraham and Isaac took. And this wood is going to be a wooden cross. And he's going to carry the wooden cross to a place that they called Moriah, a place that we as Christians now look at and call Calvary. And after being beaten and mocked and spit upon and abandoned and tortured, he's going to take that cross as far as he can go. He's going to need help just to get it up the hill. And when he gets to the top, there's going to be no need to ask the question, where is the lamb?

Because Jesus knew all along, he was the lamb. He was the ram and the thicket. He is the substitute. And he gets to the top and they bind him to the cross on the altar. They raise him up. And as, what's different from Abraham and Isaac now is as the knife is coming down and the angel stops, that doesn't happen here.

The spear pierces his side. The blood and the water pour out like an offering. And unlike Abraham and Isaac where Isaac is unbound, he can tell him everything's going to be okay. God the Father who's perfectly been in relationship and in love with his son is going to turn his back on him. This story in Genesis 22 is ultimately looking forward to the cross. That God spared Isaac.

He does not spare Christ. Jesus is the better Isaac. The one who carried the wood up the hill. And Abraham was right. The lamb would be provided. Jesus is our ram whose blood was spilled to take away our sins.

And the feeling that you have when you read this that says this isn't right that an innocent one should die, that is correct. We deserve wrath. Jesus dies in our place. Why? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That's the hope of the gospel.

Why? Because you and me we need a sacrifice. We need someone to stand in our place because we have sinned and rebelled against the creator of God. We have trampled on his commands. We pursued flesh. We pursued the world.

We need a sacrifice. We are like hopeless sheep without a shepherd and Jesus comes from heaven and he seeks us and he claims us because the father loves you so much that he did not leave you here in sin but he sent Jesus to die for you so that he might carry you home. You are correct. It is not fair. We deserve wrath but Jesus obeyed the will of the father that he might become the ram that thicketh for us. He is the fulfillment of Genesis 22 and as Christians y'all we get to look at this story look at this picture of the gospel and respond in worship.

We get to respond in repentance.