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.