Grace Through Dysfunction

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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Well, the Old Testament reading this morning is in the book of Genesis, chapters 26, verse 34, through 27, verse 29.

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If you'd like to read along, that's page 21 in your pew bibles. I'd ask you to please stand in honor of God's word. When Esau was forty years old, he took

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Judith, the daughter of Bere, the Hittite, to be his wife, and Basemath, the daughter of Elon, the

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Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called

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Esau, his older son, and said to him, My son, and he said, Here I am. He said,

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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.

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Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when

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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

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Esau. Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food that I may eat it and bless you before the

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Lord before I die. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you.

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Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats so that I may prepare from 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.

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But Jacob said to Rebekah, his mother, Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.

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Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself, and not a blessing.

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His mother said to him, Let your curse be on me, my son. Only obey my voice and go, bring them to me.

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So he went and took them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared delicious food such as his father loved.

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Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau, her older 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

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Jacob. So he went in to his father and said, My father, and he said,

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Here I am. Who are you, my son? Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn.

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I have done as you told me. Now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me. But Isaac said to his son,

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How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son? He answered, Because the Lord your God granted me success.

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Then Isaac said to Jacob, Please come near that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son

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Esau or not. So Jacob went near to Isaac his father who felt him and said,

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The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother

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Esau's hands. So he blessed him. He said, Are you really my son Esau? He answered,

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I am. Then he said, Bring it near to me that I may eat of my son's game and bless you.

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So he brought it near to him and he ate, and he brought him wine and he drank. Then his father

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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,

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See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.

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May God give you the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine.

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Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers and may your mother's sons bow down to you.

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Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. Please remain standing.

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The New Testament reading is Acts 4, verse 23 to 28.

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You'll find it on page 912 of the church Bible. When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priest and elders had said to them.

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And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father,

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David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, Why did the

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Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the

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Lord, against his anointed. For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant,

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Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the

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Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

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A marvelous song about God's providence and a good description of what we're going to see today in our text.

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I'm going to pick up the reading where we left off in chapter 27, verse 30, as we continue hearing this familiar story, one that we all know very well.

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Beginning in verse 30 of chapter 27. As soon as Isaac had finished blessing

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Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac, his father Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting.

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He also prepared delicious food and brought it to his father and said to his father,

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Let my father arise and eat of his son's game, that you may bless me. His father

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Isaac said to him, Who are you? He answered, I'm your son, your firstborn

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Esau. And 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?

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Yes, and he shall be blessed. 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,

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Bless me, even me also, O my father. But he said, Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.

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Esau said, Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times.

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He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing. Then he said,

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Have you not reserved a blessing for me? Isaac answered and said to Esau, Behold, I have made him lord over you, and all his brothers

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I have given to him for servants, and with grain and wine I have sustained him. What then can

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I do for you, my son? Esau said to his father, Have you but one blessing, my father?

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Bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.

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Then Isaac his father answered and said to him, Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be, and away from the dew of heaven on high.

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By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from your neck.

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Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him.

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And Esau said to himself, The days of mourning for my father are approaching. Then I will kill my brother

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Jacob. But the words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebekah.

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So she sent and called Jacob, her younger son, and said to him, Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you.

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Now therefore, my son, obey my voice, arise, flee to Laban, my brother, and Haran, and stay with him for a while until your brother's fury turns away, until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him.

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Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of both in one day?

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Then Rebekah said to Isaac, I loathe my life because of the Hittite women.

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If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?

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Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him, You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women.

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Arise, go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.

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God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of people.

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May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham.

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Thus Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan Aram to Laban, the son of Bethuel, the

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Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's mother. Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed

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Jacob and sent him away to Paddan Aram to take a wife from there, and that as he blessed him and he directed him, you must not take a wife from the

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Canaanite women, and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan Aram. So when

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Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac, his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had,

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Mahalat, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth.

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Let's pray. Lord God of heaven, this is a very familiar story to us.

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Make it come alive. Make us see your providential dealings in all of this so that we might have hope even now.

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Lord, you've not given this story just so we can recite it and wonder at it.

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But you've given it to us, living in this century, in order for us to understand you and your dealings with us.

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Help us to see ourselves in this text. And Lord, give us hope.

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In Jesus' name. Amen. We just moved to Leroux in the spring of 1985, and the second day we lived here, we decided to just drive around and see, get the lay of the land.

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We went south of town, and we went across on Leroux Green Camp Road, which is a road hardly anybody travels on, but we went down it, came around a curve, and there we saw a sign for Shoddy Road.

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And so, we went up, it went into these trees, into this forest, so we went up Shoddy Road.

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Right? And we got to a bridge across the Sciota. And it didn't look like it was a really, didn't look like much of a bridge, and I can remember we kind of debated about whether we should drive across it, but no, we didn't.

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We didn't. Essentially, for all practical purpose, we'd reached a dead end. Our exploring trip was over for the day.

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Well, when we get to this, oh, so familiar story, it seems we've reached a dead end.

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It appears there's no way to proceed from this mess of a family. God had made a promise to Abraham and confirmed it with Isaac, and that is that God would give a seed to Abraham, a descendant of Abraham's, that would be a blessing to all the nations.

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That was part of that covenant that God made with Abraham, along with the other promises of innumerable descendants, the land of Canaan to those descendants, a reputation of greatness, and the presence of the

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Lord. All that was involved in that covenant, in those covenant promises, and God determined to shower his grace upon the nations through that seed that would come from Abraham.

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But that all seems to hit a dead end with this family and its crazy dysfunction and its cast of unholy characters.

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How can he possibly fulfill the promise of a seed that will be a blessing to all nations with Isaac, a man of little faith, now driven by his appetites, and a failed spiritual leader willing to rebel against the clearly revealed will of God?

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You have Esau, unthinking. He does not reflect on the consequences of living for the immediate gratification of his appetites, a violent and duplicitous man.

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You have Rebekah, a domineering woman who stoops to scheming and manipulating in order to achieve the goal of her existence, which is the success of her youngest son, her favorite son.

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And then there's Jacob, an unprincipled, deceptive, blasphemous man who determines to get what he wants without any kind of moral scruples.

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And you have to ask, if you're following this story, you have to ask, how in the world is

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God going to keep his promise of a seed that's going to bless all the nations with this going on?

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Right? I'll tell you what. No BBC production could ever come up with this plot.

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Okay? This family is unbelievable. The rivalry in this family runs so deep that you wonder if you can even call it a family anymore.

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Dad attempts to bless his favorite son in secret, not in the normal public ceremony.

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Look at the personal pronouns that are used in chapter 27.

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Notice this in verse 5. Look. Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son

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Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son

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Jacob, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau. You notice that?

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That's favoritism to the max. You can see that clearly. Right?

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Isaac and his son Rebekah and her son. They both belong to both of them, but you get the picture, don't you?

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You have a wife who undercut the head of the family through a well -thought -out scheme. She doesn't speak forthrightly to her husband about his dishonest plan, nor has he ever spoken to her about that plan.

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Real communication between them no longer exists. You see the continued lack of communication even after the ruse has been exposed.

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There's no honest confession or honest discussion about the true nature of things. So look at verse 46.

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Then Rebekah of chapter 27. Then Rebekah said to Isaac, I loathe my life because of these

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Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?

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She's not talking to him about the fact that he blew it. She's continuing to manipulate even after the whole thing has been exposed.

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She's saying to Isaac, we don't want Jacob marrying another one of these

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Canaanite women. So I tell you what, why don't you send him away? You have a son willing to get the best of his older brother again, taking advantage of an old man's weaknesses.

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And the other son, don't miss this, the other son is willing to kill his own brother.

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Do you see rivalry in this family? With such rivalry and hatred and deception,

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I guess we could say this is a dysfunctional family.

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And that's way too easy. It appears we've reached a dead end for the promises.

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They will be squandered in a family wracked by unrighteousness.

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Now, key to this story, an absolute key to this story is the framing of it.

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Is the framing of this story, and this is really important. First of all, turn back to chapter 26, verses 34 and 35.

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When Esau was 40 years old, he took Judith, the daughter of Beri the

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Hittite, to his wife, and Basemath, the daughter of Elan the Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.

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You have Esau taking two wives from the Canaanites. Now look at what you see at the very end, in chapter 28, verse 6.

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Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Badamaran to take a wife from there.

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And that as he blessed him, he directed him, you must not take a wife from the Canaanite women, and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Badamaran.

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So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac, his father,

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Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had,

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Mahalot, the daughter of Ishmael, of Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth. So framing this, this is real important, framing this whole story, is this marriage of Canaanite women and women from Ishmael's line.

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Esau contracts his own marriages with Canaanite women, which is in direct opposition to God's covenant promises.

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Why? If you would look back at Genesis chapter 15, where God enacts the covenant with Abraham, you will see that God had said to him, your descendants are going to spend four generations in another land.

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And then I'm going to punish those people and bring them out. And then they will judge the

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Canaanites because their iniquity has not reached its full yet. Clearly in that covenant,

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God said, these Canaanites are going to be judged for their wickedness. And by the way, if you knew anything about the

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Canaanites, you know, when you look at the Canaanites, you would not believe the depth of depravity that those people sunk to.

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We don't have enough time to go into it, but it includes burning children in the heated up hands of an idol, burning babies.

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That's how deep they'd gone. And they were cursed by God. So what do you have?

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You have Isaac, who should have known that God condemned these people for their wickedness. And he certainly knew, and Esau certainly knew about his grandfather's efforts to prevent his dad from marrying those women.

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What did Abraham do with Isaac? He sent his servant out to find a wife for Isaac, not amongst the

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Canaanites. So it's clear to get a Canaanite wife is not acceptable.

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And it signals his lack, Esau's lack of commitment to God's promise to his people.

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And that attitude is confirmed when finally figuring out the heartache he causes his parents.

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He goes to uncle Ishmael, Isaac's brother, to find a wife. And Ishmael is part of the rejected seed of Abraham.

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Okay? How would God keep the promise of that seed with this going on?

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Will Jacob also wreck the whole plan by marrying a local woman?

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That's what's got to be in your mind. I think that's what Moses is trying to get across here.

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And you discover again that nothing will derail God's gracious purpose. He will fulfill the promise he made to Abraham and Isaac.

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He will do it. Not even the wicked actions and schemes of people will keep him from fulfilling that promise.

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In fact, he will actually use the evil that we read in this story to accomplish the fulfillment of that promise.

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So as we look at the story, what's the first thing we need to see? Know that sin cannot derail

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God's promises. Isaac intends to bless Esau with the birthright, and Esau, of course, agrees to the plan.

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This is a wicked and righteous deed. Isaac certainly crafts a wicked design here. First of all, he will do this in secret, instead of through the normal public ceremony of blessing.

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But he doesn't care. He certainly must know that Esau gave the birthright already to Jacob.

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He ought to know that already. They're a close family. He ought to know all that's going on. And that Esau actually agreed to it.

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Whether he was deceived or not, he made that promise. But Isaac doesn't care. He has failed as a spiritual leader.

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That's evident. He does nothing to heal the rivalries in this family. He is what you would typically call a passive father, in which disaster comes in his family.

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He doesn't care. In fact, he has encouraged that rivalry by favoring

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Esau. But worst of all, he already knew the birth oracle that accompanied the birth of the boys a few chapters earlier.

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What happens? God had given an oracle and had said to Rebekah and Isaac, the older will serve the younger.

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He doesn't care about that. He doesn't care. He proved willing to defy the clearly revealed will of God in order to accomplish his purposes.

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The only thing he cared about at this point is his own appetite. By the way, it shouldn't surprise us that Esau is the appetite -driven guy that he is.

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Look at his father. At this stage in his life, that's exactly what he is. He could overlook the bitterness of his heart over Esau's marrying those

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Canaanite women. Remember, they made Esau and Rebekah's life miserable. He's willing to overlook that even bitterness.

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Right? Because his favorite son would give him what he wanted.

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Now Esau shares the guilt of his father. He'll renege on his promise to Jacob. Easily renege on that promise.

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You see, along with the responsibility, along with the promises comes the responsibility of leading the family in relationship to God.

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And he would inherit the covenant with all its blessings and promises. But he only cares about the advantages he gets and the wealth that comes with the birthright.

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And so he's willing to break his promise in order to gain wealth and prominence. Now, can

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God keep his promise in the face of the unrighteous, wicked schemes and acts of men? Can he keep his promises, gracious promises, especially when those schemes and actions purposely work against those promises?

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Well, we heard a good example this morning when Sam read the New Testament reading.

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You hear what it says? The church is gathered. The apostles have been released from prison.

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They come back. They report to the congregation what had happened. What do they say? They quote Psalm 2 and say,

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The nations have conspired against God's anointed one, Jesus. The Gentiles, in Herod and Pilate, have conspired against him.

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The people, the Jews, have gone along with it and they crucified this Jesus, right? But what do they do?

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They actually accomplish the purposes of God in the death of Jesus. And they know that.

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God doesn't just work around the evil. God doesn't like work around the evil and try to navigate how to get through.

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He actually uses those evil purposes to accomplish his gracious purposes.

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Don't forget that. Now, what's the second thing we need to learn from this story? Know that good intentions cannot derail

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God's gracious purpose. Even good intentions can't do it.

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The plot thickens here with a woman who knows the promise, believes the promise, and wants to see the promise fulfilled.

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Rebecca knows the promise. She believes the promise. Rebecca wants the promise to be fulfilled.

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But she also has this gotta help God along attitude that Abraham and Sarah had.

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You remember? They had to help God along to fulfill the promise by giving Hagar to Abraham to raise up a son and all that sort of thing.

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She's got the same attitude. And she's going to act on her faith by unfaithful means.

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You get the picture. She believes the promise. She wants to see it fulfilled.

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But then she resorts to unfaithful means in order to accomplish that very thing. Now, with the information she has, she concocts this plan of fooling

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Isaac with counterfeit food and a counterfeit son. Now, Jacob, you notice in this story,

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Jacob raises an objection. He says he doesn't want to go along with the plan. But he doesn't object on moral grounds.

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He doesn't say, Mom, I'm not sure I can be part of this plan.

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It's an evil plan, Mom. We really shouldn't do it. That's not what Jacob does.

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What does he do? Mom, I'm not sure I can be part of this plan because it might not work, and I'll be in big trouble.

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Right? He's not saying, Mom, don't do this. God would not like that. He doesn't care about that.

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The only thing he cares about is, I'm going to get in trouble. Right? Now, you know the story.

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Figuring that Isaac may be suspicious, they determine to fool him.

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Through the senses of taste, food like Esau's, feel, hair like Esau's, and smell, clothes like Esau's.

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Right? Mom's thought of everything. Mom has thought of everything.

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Let's give you a little hairy skin, and I'll even give you his clothes that smell like the outdoors. You know what?

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I've had some discussions with my wife and with some of my kids, and we've often commented on mothers and their sons.

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What a mother won't do for her son is amazing sometimes.

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And I'm telling you, Rebecca fits the bill. Her son is going to be successful.

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She's going to make sure that he really gets what he deserves, man. Right? Now, you can sense

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Jacob's a bit nervous about the plan because when he gets in with Esau, he says, Hey, Dad, it's

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Esau. Here's your supper. So sit up and eat it and bless me, and I'll be on my way. Right? But Esau, but worse than the scheming and taking advantage of his weak father,

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Jacob actually blasphemes God. Do you see that? Look at verse 20.

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Esau says, or Isaac says, Wait a minute. Man, I thought you just left to go hunting.

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And he says, Oh, Dad, the Lord has blessed me in my efforts.

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Do you get the picture here? He's downright lying, and yet he invokes

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God. That's blasphemy. Isaac falls for the deception, but he still has enough faith in his

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Lord to give this blessing. He knows that as patriarch and representative of God, God will mediate his blessings through his word.

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He does believe that God will fulfill his promise. So he blesses his son with fertility and dominion.

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He's going to reap rich harvests in keeping with the covenant God made with Abraham. He will have dominion.

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Again, according to the oracle, the older will serve the younger.

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When it talks about your mother's sons, it's not as if Rebekah and Isaac had more children than the twins here, but this refers to her children through Esau, grandchildren.

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So Jacob will have dominion over Esau's descendants, and Isaac reaffirms the oracle from God, and he reaffirms the promise of God's covenant with Abraham.

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Look at verse 29. He says,

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Be Lord over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you.

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Straight out of the Abrahamic covenant. No sooner does

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Jacob walk out the door and turn the corner of the tent when

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Esau walks in. He comes with the game he prepared, looking for the blessing.

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And you can imagine, you can see it, you can hear it in the text, the anguish and the anger on both their parts, knowing they've been deceived.

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Esau says, He's rightly called Jacob, which means deceiver. But Esau grieves over the loss of his wealth, not about the promises of God.

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He's a man of his appetites. He cares about the wealth, not about the promises.

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But Isaac can't give him the blessing. He cannot say something to Isaac that God will not do since he already made the promise to Jacob.

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So he gives him this kind of anti -blessing, if you will. And at most, he promises that someday he will break the yoke of his brother

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Jacob. And you see the fulfillment, if you want to know how that all ends up, when you get to 2

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Kings 8, the kingdom of Edom, made up of Esau's descendants, throws off the yoke of Judah, Jacob's descendants, throws off the yoke.

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Seething with anger, Esau vows he will kill his brother. You know what?

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We're so familiar with this story that we don't sometimes get it. You've got a brother who's saying,

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I am going to kill my brother. You get it?

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That's really, that's pretty serious. Wouldn't you agree?

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You know what? If Levi ever said, You know what? Yance has made me so mad,

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I am going to kill him the next chance I get. I would be kind of concerned about that. Right?

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But this is what he's saying. This is the violent man that he is. He's going to kill his brother. He's going to kill his brother.

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Rebecca gets wind of this. I don't know, maybe a servant overheard Esau and reported it to Rebecca.

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And she warns Jacob of the danger, encouraging him to head for the homeland. Go back, this is the homeland where she had come from.

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Okay? Back in Mesopotamia. I'm going to send you over there. And you're going to wait for a word from me to tell you it's all safe.

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Again, good intentions, but followed by an unrighteous way of carrying them out.

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She uses her problem with her daughters -in -law. Notice, she uses her problems with her daughters -in -law as a manipulative technique to get her husband to send

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Jacob to safety. Again, she's manipulating. And so with Rebecca lying again,

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Isaac sends Jacob off, off to her family in order to find a wife in Mesopotamia.

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But listen, even our good intentions will not frustrate God's gracious purposes.

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Now what's the point of all this? This is so important. What's the point of all this?

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Jacob is delivered from the danger of marrying a

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Canaanite woman. That would destroy the promise.

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That would destroy the promise. And even though it appears this mess of a family would itself annihilate that promise,

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God actually uses the mess, the manipulation, and the anger to fulfill his purposes.

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That's the point of the story. God, by the way, has not changed.

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Do you worry about the horrendous events that are constantly displayed before you in the news or your neighborhood?

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Do you ever start losing hope because of how bad things are going?

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Even in particular in election year, we Americans are always in the tizzy, and that includes us

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Christians. Oh no. If she wins, it's the end of civilization.

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And by the way, it might be as we know it. If he wins, oh, who knows what's going to happen, right?

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And we get all worked up, and we tend to forget God's gracious promises, that his plan will never be frustrated.

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Maybe you've experienced the horrendous nature of life in this broken world. Maybe you have.

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Family members have betrayed you, deceived you, hurt you, maybe even abused you.

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Maybe even abused you. Will that keep God from accomplishing his gracious purposes in your life?

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Maybe you've been betrayed by a spouse. Maybe horrible things have happened to you.

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Is that going to keep God from accomplishing his gracious purposes? Was Jesus telling the truth when he says,

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I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.

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Do you think he's going to keep that promise for you? Do you think he can still make you like Jesus?

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Do you think he can change you and make you like Christ? Can he change you so that you can love and forgive those people who've hurt you?

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Will he rescue you from despair and give you hope in a messy, wild, broken world?

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You see, this story I have to say loud and clear to you, this one thing, you should never lose hope.

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God's gracious purpose for you will never be thwarted.

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No matter how messy, no matter how unbelievably evil it's going,

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God will accomplish his purposes. And I read this story,

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I remain confident in God's power to accomplish his gracious plan, even when that power appears nowhere in sight.

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Even when the power of God appears nowhere in sight, he will still accomplish his purposes.

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How do I know that? Because, because of Jesus. Because of Jesus.

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He is that seed promised to Abraham in the covenant. He appeared with irrefutable evidence that he came to bless, but then suddenly,

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God's power seemed to evaporate. Is that not true?

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Instead of people running to him, what happens? They turn against him.

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Like Esau, they were overwhelmed with this incredible desire for vengeance, and that vengeful anger wanted nothing short of the death of Jesus.

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Like Isaac, serving their appetites, they turned against him when he wouldn't fulfill their desires.

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Right? Like Rebecca and Jacob, they schemed and manipulated for his death.

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Read the story. The scheming and the manipulation to accomplish his death is incredible because they thought that blessing did not come through him, but that blessing would come when they eliminated him.

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Right? But what looked like a dead end for Jesus turned out to be the road to God.

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That's how I know. That's how I know that I don't ever need to lose hope, that you don't ever need to lose hope, that God will accomplish his gracious purposes because he did it through the most evil manipulations and actions of men that could ever be accomplished, and that was the death of Jesus.

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You see, God actually uses the evil and wickedness of depraved men to bring about salvation from their wickedness.

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You know what? Nothing's impossible. Nothing is impossible with God.

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Father, thank you. Lord, we look at these stories and sometimes forget to see this revelation of you in them and how the different characters and everything work together to show that this

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God, our God, you, will always accomplish your gracious purposes. So Lord, right now, we want to thank you.

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Even as we come to this table this morning, we're reminded, scheming, wicked, manipulation, vengeance all turned out for our good.

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Because of Jesus, all your promises are yes and amen. And so Lord, as we walk away from this oh so familiar story, would you please impress upon us that your gracious purposes for our salvation and all that's involved in that will never be thwarted.

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Help us, Father, then, to be people of hope. We ask this in Jesus' name.