Genesis 25:1-34 Center Stage at a Three Ring Circus

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the

Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.

Here's Pastor Don. Glad that you're here with us this morning.

Be sure to fill out your connection cards and turn those in in the black box back there, and if it's your first time with us filling out one of those connection cards, then please also take a free coffee mug back there.

Just our way of saying thanks and our way of getting you some caffeine this morning. And then if you choose to give this morning, there is an envelope provided for you, and those go in the same black box back there on the corner of the desk.

Anything that's marked for expansion fund will go towards the building in the future.

Just to highlight and emphasize a praise to God, I tie all this together. If you do get the eCast, if you've given us a connection card with your email address on it, then you get an eCast email every week.

And on the email, there's all different kinds of highlights and different things, but there is always on the left -hand tab of that email, there's always a financial update or report that's going on there.

And if you've never taken advantage of that and clicked on that to just kind of see what's going on, it's a full disclosure of all the finances here, what comes in, what goes out, where it goes, all that kind of stuff.

And so you can see that there. But I just got a report for this is our first month in this fiscal year, so we just got the report back from July.

And Zach was highlighting, Zach, our elder who handles all of our finances, was just emphasizing some different features and different things that he's noticed.

And one of the things that he did is he just took the month of July, which is our first month of the fiscal year, and he showed us what came in in 2010, what came in in 11, what came in 12, what came in in 13.

And it is exponential in the growth of the giving in this church. And so I just give the glory and praise to God for the way that he has continued to give.

And I'm not talking about growth year over year, I'm talking about exponential growth year over year, more growth each year, accelerated growth, if you will.

So I just rejoice in what God is doing. And you know that our goal in the end, we bought property, our goal is to build a building.

At this current pace, it's going to take us a while, and we're kind of settled into just having that fund open.

We're not selling chairs, we're not selling bricks, we're not trying to wheel and deal to get the money in hand to build the building.

But we obviously would love to be able to pay, how many of you would love to just be able to pay cash for a building? But the fact of the matter is that cash is going to have to come from somewhere, and so we're just kind of looking at that and just figuring out what that's going to be.

So continue to please be in prayer for that process as we move forward. We currently have a stable lease here through November, and then month to month after that.

And God knows, God is in control, but just continue to pray for his wisdom and leading in that. Now introducing the sermon this week, we're going to be looking at Genesis 25, kind of a wrap -up of the life of Abraham, and then moving on to his son and his grandson.

And one of our core values at Recast is authenticity. Now our core values are an acronym for our name, or our name is an acronym for our core values.

Reproducing, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. And I just put reproducing out there nebulously, it's not on the wall, because we really don't want the first thing that you saw when you walked in to be reproducing.

That could be misunderstood pretty quick. But then community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth, and those are our core values.

And authenticity is a word that could easily be misunderstood quickly. Like any of you into sports, any of you like sports, and you got your favorite athletes or whatever?

So you could potentially get like a bat that was swung by Miguel Cabrera, right? You could get a hold of one of those, and it would come with a seal or a stamp of authenticity that verifies that indeed there was a witness who can validate that this was actually swung by Miguel Cabrera.

So you can think of a certificate of authenticity that says, this is the real deal, something like that.

Or if you're into Civil War history stuff, you can get a seal of authenticity, this was an actual musket that was fired in the

Civil War, or something like that, and a certificate of authenticity. But that would be kind of like if you think that if that's what we mean by that, then what we would be declaring to our culture and to our community is that we're the real church.

That's not what we're trying to communicate, right? So would that be a misunderstanding of the word authenticity as applied to our church?

Yes, it would. It's not that we think we're the only thing that God is doing in this community, that we're the only thing out there, we're the real deal, we're the authentic.

We've got the stamp of God's approval on us. Well, I do think that we are a real church, and we are really being used by God, and I'm grateful for that.

But the way we use the word authenticity is more relational and deals more with honesty in our hearts and towards others in the church.

So it's more about transparency, more about relationship, more about really being who we are.

So what we want to avoid as much as possible is that fighting and bickering in the car on the way here, and then yelling at the kids, you put a smile on your face, we're a church.

Any of you ever? Nobody even relates to what I'm saying. Yes, okay. So we've all got our mask on, we're all being inauthentic, none of us can relate to that.

I think you know exactly what I'm talking about, and so we have a tendency to pretend that we have it all together.

That's inauthenticity. And we have a tendency, probably if we're honest, there have been times where we have actually been inauthentic within a church setting, maybe even here.

And what I mean by that is we've closed off our lives to others, not showing them who we really are, walling ourselves off to others in the church and protecting ourselves so that they don't know who we really are, acting like we don't need them and assuming that they don't need us.

But at Recast we encourage people to be honest about their sins, honest about their lives, honest about their struggles, honest about their victories, and we struggle together in life to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service together.

Now I want to point out that there's a context for that kind of sharing, you know, for you to stand up right now, here, and air out all of your dirty laundry.

That would be probably pretty uncomfortable for you, and maybe uncomfortable for everybody. That's just reality. And so we try to provide a venue for you to actually do life together, and that's through our small group ministry.

And that's the goal of our small groups, is that authentic relationships form where when you're having a rough week, you can say to a group of people, this has been a horrible week.

When you've lost your temper with your kids this week, you have somebody to say, I lost my temper with my kids and I need you to pray for me because I'm just right up here, you know, or whatever.

So that you're actually really authentically having those opportunities to share. And in a relational sense,

I love the way that scripture speaks to us in a very authentic way about the lives of people that are called out by God.

We've been studying the life of Abraham through the book of Genesis, and we find that he is messy just like us.

In our text this morning, we're going to wrap up the account of Abraham and move on right on into his family line, and we'll find out that the life of his grandchildren were not all that great either.

The text didn't paint a rosy picture of Abraham, but things are going to get even more dicey with his son

Isaac and then his grandkids, Jacob and Esau. So let's open our Bibles to Genesis chapter 25.

You can find that on page 17, if you pull out that paperback Bible, just turn to 17 and right there it is.

And if you don't own a copy of the Bible or an English standard version of the Bible, which is what I preach from, you can take that one with you and we've got a box full of those to fill in whatever's taken this week.

But follow along as every Genesis chapter 25 in its entirety. Abraham took another wife whose name was

Keturah. She bore him Zimran, Jokshin, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.

Jokshin fathered Sheba and Dedan. The sons of Dedan were Asherim, Latushim, and Laumim. The sons of Midian were

Ephah, Ephur, Hanuk, Abida, Eldah. All these were the children of Keturah.

Abraham gave all he had to Isaac. But to the sons of his concubines, Abraham gave gifts and while he was still living, he sent them away from his son

Isaac eastward to the east country. These are the days of the years of Abraham's life, 175 years.

Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years and was gathered to his people.

Isaac and Ishmael, his sons, buried him in the cave of Machpelah in the field of Ephraim, the son of Zohar, the

Hittite east of Mamre. The field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried with Sarah, his wife.

After the death of Abraham, God blessed Isaac, his son, and Isaac settled at Bir Lahai Roi. These are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom

Hagar, the Egyptian, Sarah's servant, bore to Abraham. These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, named in the order of their birth,

Nebaoth, the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbil, Mibsim, Mishma, Duma, Masa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedema.

These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names by their villages and by their encampments, twelve princes according to their tribes.

These are the years of the life of Ishmael, 137 years. He breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people.

They settled from Havilah to Shur, which is opposite Egypt, in the direction of Assyria. He settled over against all his kinsmen.

These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac was 40 years old when he took

Rebekah, the daughter of Bethul, the Aramean of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban, the

Aramean, to be his wife. And 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?

So she went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord said to her, 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. When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb.

The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau. Afterwards, his brother came out with his hand holding

Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them.

When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man dwelling in tents.

Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Once when

Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. And Esau said to Jacob, Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted.

Therefore, his name was called Edom. Jacob said, Sell me your birthright now. Esau said,

I'm about to die. What use is a birthright to me? Jacob said, Swear to me now. So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob.

Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way.

Thus, Esau despised his birthright. Let's pray.

Father, I rejoice in your promises, and I see in this story just the walking through of a family and a history in which you are working.

And I see the way that people behave badly, the way that we behave badly, and yet you are a

God who keeps your promises even to those who have failed, and even those of us who are broken and messed up, we really all are.

And our only hope is that you would be gracious. The only hope that we have is that you would be merciful to us. And Father, you are a

God who keeps your promises, and I pray that as we have an opportunity to sing songs before you, that we would recognize the glory of you as the great promise keeper, the one who has indeed made the promises that we hold to and cling to for our salvation, that ultimately you were at work to bring your

Son to the cross to pay for the wages of our sin, that we might have the way to have a restored relationship with you for eternity.

And Father, I pray that you would be with our worship and allow us to encounter you as you are, and through the preaching of your word this morning, that you would open our eyes to who you are and what you have done for us in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. Well, big thanks to Josh and Heidi for leading us in worship this morning.

Be sure that you feel welcome to get up and get any coffee, donuts, juice. I know we just took a break, but take advantage of that.

Restrooms are back here if you need those. You might just need an extra dose of caffeine to stay awake, so feel free for that as well.

And make sure you have your Bibles open in front of you. I think it's very beneficial for us to be able to just kind of walk through the text together.

That's kind of, I don't know if you noticed this. Those of you who have been here a while, you know this. I mean, the text is my outline, and so we're going to walk through it and get the points from the pages of Scripture.

And so it's good to have that open in front of you. But right away in chapter 1 of verse 25, we see something that might be a bit of a shocking statement.

Abraham took another wife whose name was Keturah. You remember her from your Sunday school class? You remember her really being highlighted and emphasized when you were a kid going to church?

Of course, you remember all the stories about Keturah, right? No, not really. So how many of you, it's kind of like, oh,

Abraham got married again? Is that kind of like, what? That really happened? It's natural in context for us to assume that this is a chronological account.

So many of you immediately when you read, starting in chapter 25, you're like, 24 already happened. Sarah passed away.

She died. And now Abraham remarries, right? Is that the image, the perspective that you get here?

But it's actually not likely the case. What is likely the case is that he was married simultaneously with Keturah and Sarah.

And the reason being that she's actually referred to as a concubine, which that word would only be reserved for somebody who was married to somebody who already had a wife.

And so the only time that we know Abraham to have a wife that is the headmistress of the family, the headwife, is

Sarah. And so for Keturah to be called a concubine in any context, in any way, shape, or form without the full and complete authority and role of wife in his life at the given time is if she was married to him simultaneously with Sarah.

That might rock some of our worlds. It might force you to do a little bit of research. That would be great if that's what it does to you.

But I really am of the firm conviction that what we have here are simultaneously overlapping accounts, which was quite common in ancient writings.

So then you kind of go, well, what's the significance of Isaac then? Like if he already had all of these other kids and stuff, like what's going on?

Well, everything has been written so far in the text of Scripture from the author's perspective to highlight, to basically put

Isaac in the center ring of the three -ring circus. I think it's appropriate to call it a circus. But he's in the center ring, and that's been kind of the goal in all of the writing has been to highlight how

Isaac is the point of the life of Abraham, that as we kind of start to string together,

Abraham is the first link in a massive chain of the promises of God that are rock solid, that are connected and woven together.

You can call it linked together, might be the better term for as I'm using the chain. But who's the second link in the chain then?

Isaac is the second link in the chain, and everything's been purposefully focused on that.

And now that he has been firmly established in that central role through the pages of Scripture, then only after he is firmly there, then we find a roll call of all of Abraham's other children.

This genealogy establishes that Abraham has already become the father of nations. So far, we've been told of two of his sons, and now in the end, we find out that he actually had at least eight, eight recorded sons.

But even in this discussion at the end of his life, so we're wrapping up loose ends from the life of Abraham, and even at the end of this, it serves to highlight the special privileges of his son

Isaac. Still focused on Isaac, still focused on him as the child of the promise. All of it, look at verse five, all of his inheritance,

Abraham gave all he had to who? Isaac, Isaac gets the full inheritance.

Now the use of the word concubine and wife interchangeably for both Keturah and Hagar tells us that any children that they bore were not legal heirs.

And in the case of Ishmael, he sent him away, and not just Ishmael, but he sent all of his children born to Keturah.

He sent them away to the east, but he sent them away with gifts. Now he need not give them gifts according to his culture.

He had no obligation financially to provide for these children. That's his culture. But he shows in himself some level of responsibility, even though he wants to preserve

Isaac's future. So why send these kids away? Can you imagine in your mind, in that historical context in ancient society, why he might want to put some distance between his other sons and Isaac?

Competition, yeah, exactly. And warring and battles, and we're going to see that when the children stay close together, like in the case of Ishmael and Isaac, there is a problem that moves forward in the future of jealousy and some different things.

So in wrapping up these loose ends, we find the death of Abraham recorded for us in verses 7 through 11.

Abraham died at how old? 175 years. Is that a good long life?

Long life. But the text actually tells us it was good, too. It was good. He died in peace, and everything about his death is demonstrating that he has had a long full life of good things happening to him, blessings happening to him.

He had experienced the unmerited favor of God. Now it's not like God looked down on the earth and said,

I need myself an Abraham. I found me an Abraham, and Abraham is awesome, and he's super good, and he's got my heart, and he does everything right, and so I've got to get me one of those.

Is that the way that God looked down on the earth? He just chose. He chose

Abraham by his own sovereign will. And so Abraham has not deserved or earned the favor of God.

God has given as a gift his favor to Abraham. That's key. That's a fundamental understanding about what salvation is.

We don't earn the favor of God. God bestows the favor that he possesses on people as he chooses and as he wills.

Now Abraham then, as the chosen of God, who had received the favor of God, received the blessings of God.

Was Abraham materially blessed? Yeah, he was. In that context, that was a part of that.

But he was also blessed with guidance. He was blessed with peace. He was blessed with military victory.

Were there a lot of components to the blessings in the life of Abraham that he experienced? Yes. It was not just material blessing.

There were a lot of blessings. 175 years seems incredible. Anybody think that? That's a long life. That's a long time to live.

But at the same time, I just want to point out, it's a much smaller age than the ages that we saw earlier in the book of Genesis that we had to deal with.

And if you're curious about that, you can come and talk with me about some of those older ages, Adam, Noah, some of their children, and the extreme lengths that are there.

Or you can go back and listen to the podcast from when I was preaching back then. If you do the math, there is enough information given to us to scale and figure out the life of Abraham, to actually understand and figure out something that might shock us, something in the math that surprises us.

He's 175 years when he dies, but he is, by the math, 160 years when

Jacob and Esau are born. I think that that's kind of interesting. Jacob and Esau, he's actually going to live to see the birth of his grandsons.

So it seems to me like I'd like to know how he interacted with them, what his thoughts were about them.

The text doesn't give us any of that. But he survived 15 years, longer than the birth of his grandsons.

He breathed his last, and death is pictured in the ancient Jewish mind as being gathered with the people of the past.

He was gathered to his people. One of the highlights in that is just a very general understanding that they at least understood that when this body dies, there is something immaterial that goes on beyond it.

So we're just basically getting a very basic level understanding of what death is, and that death is a parting of the soul from the body, and being gathered together with the people of the past.

But I want you to notice that it doesn't say anything about the interaction with the people of the past. It doesn't say it's going to be a family reunion.

It doesn't say where the location is. There's a lot of missing components right now in this text to the theology and understanding of afterlife and all of those kinds of things.

So what is being stated here is a beautiful picture that, I mean, death in one sense is a gathering of our soul to those who have gone on before.

It's like saying we've gone the way of our forefathers or something like that. Verse 9 is surprising from what we know of Abraham's history.

Who is it that's going to participate in the funeral of Abraham? What does it say?

Who are the two that bury him? Isaac and Ishmael. Now, those two guys are just best friends, right?

Those two, they're buds, man. They hang together. They're like everywhere you go, there's Ishmael, there's Isaac, you know, inseparable.

No, they didn't get along. And so what we see here is two sons coming together to bury their father and probably in one sense at least being civil for a period of time to do this.

We know that we're going to see here in just a moment, Ishmael is not particularly kind to his brother.

He's not particularly getting along with his kin and his family. And yet they come together and there's something to be said for at least the civility of coming together for this funeral.

What we have here, once again, indications of passing on blessings from Abraham to Isaac. Again, that he is indeed the second link in the chain of the promises of God.

And it's directly stated in verse 11 that God blessed Isaac as he settles in Bir Lahairoi.

In verses 12 through 18, we find out that God was faithful to Ishmael. Now, how many of you could do without any comment about Ishmael again?

Like it's just kind of like, okay, he's there and it's kind of like, he had kind of a second rate part in the story and now it's like, we're going to wrap him up and finish him and have his funeral and all that stuff.

And it's just kind of like, what's the point in that, right? Anybody kind of know what I'm talking about? Like why finish the story of Ishmael?

We know that it's going to be Isaac is the chosen one. It's because God made a promise and God always fulfills his promises.

And so here we have, even to Ishmael, who is not the chosen one, who is not going to be the one through whom the promises carried, even him, his mom was promised that he would become a great nation and his father was promised that Ishmael would become a great nation.

So guess what? The text wants to demonstrate and make clear to us that Ishmael became a great nation.

God had made the promise. The text of scripture wants us to be certain that things work out exactly the way that God says they will.

I would, I would go a step further and say the entirety of scripture exists to arrest our trust, to pull our trust away from ourselves and to pull our trust away from any other thing and orient our trust towards the

God who is completing his promises. At every turn,

God is being lifted up as faithful and trustworthy. I want to keep challenging us as a church and keep challenging you as people to answer the question, do you trust him?

Do you trust him? Are you, are you operating with him according to faith? And where do we go to grow in our trust in God?

We go to the pages of scripture, right? We dig in here and we see these stories of where God has indeed worked in human history in the past to model and demonstrate to us in real life stories with real jacked up people, his faithfulness, his mercy, his grace, his patience with us.

Raise your hand right now if you've ever experienced the patience of God. Right now,

I am experiencing the patience of God. He didn't snuff me out just now. His patience, his mercy, his glory, his trustworthiness and story after story, page after page, just dripping full saturated with the trustworthiness of our great

God. When he says it's going to happen, it is going to happen.

Ishmael was not a man who demonstrated love for God. We don't see anything in the scriptures that indicate that he ever had a turn of heart or change and as far as we know, to the end of his 137 years, he settled into a state of being against his kinsmen.

God had prophesied that he would be a wild donkey of a man. Any of you would like that title? Probably not.

There's another word for that in English, I'm not going to say. But a wild donkey of a man.

A man of the bow, he was declared to be a man of the bow, a man of warfare, a man over and against the rest of his family in opposition to them and in verses 17 through 18, his descendants are demonstrated to be like a

Bedouin wandering type people who like to pitch their tents in their neighbor's yard and eat out of their garden.

They like to pitch their tents in opposition to other people. In other words, they'll pitch their tent in your backyard, eat out of your garden and shoot arrows if you come out the back door.

That's the kind of people that Ishmael's descendants became. And yet God, who keeps his promises, blesses this wild man and his offspring, why?

Because he said he would. Because he said he would. But now we get to the main attraction, we've wrapped up Abraham, we've wrapped up Ishmael, pun intended, and now we direct your attention to the center ring.

Everybody, direct your attention to the center ring where Isaac is going to basically do nothing.

Have you ever noticed the absence of Isaac, of any definitive behavior, of anything that he does significantly in the pages of Scripture?

We just kind of, he just kind of gets skipped. He's the next link in the chain, right?

So what do we know of this guy who's supposed to be taking center ring now? And he's, all the spotlights are on him and he's standing there just picking his nose or something,

I don't know. There's just not that much. He's going to barely show up. Of course it could be a good thing that he barely shows up in the pages of Scripture because how many of you noticed that if you were alive in the times of Genesis, you might not want to be used as a case study?

Are you getting what I'm saying? I mean, these people are messed up and a lot of times they're chosen because they're messed up so that they can demonstrate what it looks like to be messed up.

I'd be like, God, could you skip my story? Just let that one slide. I don't want you to write my story in the pages of Scripture, please.

Or if you do, could you leave a couple parts out, you know? Speaks to authenticity, right?

What does the text tell us about the main attraction, Isaac? He was born to Abraham. How much did he have to do with that?

Passive, not much. He was offered by Abraham in his youth on Mount Moriah.

We talked about that a couple of weeks ago, passive. He married Rebekah at the age of 40, pretty passive in that account.

Abraham sends a servant, goes and gets a wife for him. She's provided for him. He's like, okay, I guess I'll marry her.

Pretty passive. He prayed for Rebekah to conceive, and that's the only active thing that we actually see him doing in our text.

He prayed for his wife to conceive, and she did. But not a super detailed life of Isaac.

He's not super active in the text, but what he does do actively is pray to have children, and they are given.

We find out that infertility seems to be a common family problem. Now, recognizing that these are women that they're marrying into,

I don't know if this family just had a thing for women who were struggling with fertility.

I don't know, but that's the way that it seems to go. We know that Sarah struggled with fertility.

Rebekah struggled with fertility. Rachel is going to struggle with fertility. When you consider what a lifelong struggle this was for his parents,

Abraham and Sarah, it's interesting that only one verse is dedicated to this problem for Isaac and Rebekah.

We had chapters devoted to Abraham and Sarah in that entire process. But in verse 21, we find it's declared of Rebekah, she was barren.

Isaac prayed to the Lord, and Rebekah conceived. Now we could be lulled into the brevity of that account to assume that this wasn't a big ordeal for their family, but he's going to be 60 years old when his boys are born, his first children are born.

So, they got married when they were 40, and they have children when they're 60.

How many years did he pray to the Lord that they might conceive? Probably a good 20 years of his life he's been praying.

Do you think that might be a long period of difficulty for them as a family? I'd say so. Immediately though, we find out she's having twins before she even knows.

Verse 22, a little bit of an indicator when the word children is used there, the plural, and the children are within her and they are struggling.

The word for struggling in the text, in the Hebrew text, is a very strong word. It's abusing or crushing or destroying.

It's like there's a bar fight going on in her womb. This is intense, whatever it is.

Now what does that literally mean? I don't really know. Is she seeing the fist come out or something? We don't really know, but whatever it is, we know that she's uncomfortable, and she's literally moved to ask the question, why is this happening?

Why is this happening? She's confused, she's worried, she's likely very uncomfortable.

You women who have gone through pregnancy, can you relate to this? A couple people in the room have had twins, maybe that's even different,

I don't know. She's worried, she's uncomfortable. So she schedules an appointment, has an ultrasound, and they verify that she's having twins, and she's like, oh, okay,

I get it, I get it. No, we know that that's not the way that it worked in ancient culture, unfortunately. So she inquires of the

Lord, and what that inquiry looked like, I don't know if that was just her praying at night, kind of saying, God, would you show me what's going on, because I'm scared,

I'm nervous, I'm worried, whatever. But God obliges her and gives her an answer, and it's more than a yes or no answer.

The Lord told her more than enough to comfort any of her fears. Now how many of you, if the Lord would come to you and say, and I mean, some of us are at various stages, but if the

Lord came to you when your children were young and he said to you, your children are going to become a great nation, and that would be comforting to you?

Well, primarily, just because I'm thinking, okay, good, they're going to survive to the point where they have children, right? Just that alone would be like a good reveal, right?

He'd be like, okay, good, they're going to make it out of my house. Wait, did

I say that out loud? No, you know what I'm saying, that they are going to survive, and that things are going to go okay for them, and so the statement is they are going to have children themselves, they are going to become a great nation, or two great nations, but she is also told that the older one is going to serve the younger.

How many of you think that that might have caused some pondering in her mind? What does that mean? What's going to happen there?

By the way, there's no indication she ever shares this with Isaac, and I wonder if Isaac didn't operate out of his entire life under the assumption that the older was the heir, the older one was going to be the child of the promise, the older one was the chosen one of God.

There's no indication that she ever shares that. There's also some indications that Isaac and Rebekah did not have a great marriage.

We're going to see that here in a moment, but a theme begins to develop, and it's actually started before here, and it's going to move forward from the book of Genesis and carry out into the entire scripture and all the way into the

New Testament, that God doesn't favor who humans tend to favor.

He doesn't favor the first above the second. He doesn't follow human convention and bless only the oldest.

And ultimately we find that God chooses to use the weak things of the world to confound the strong.

He uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.

God kind of likes an underdog, and we get that image, that picture that is ultimately going to be fulfilled in the end through His suffering servant, the one hanging on the cross who looks the weakest at that point.

Of all the people that would have been there in that crucifixion scene, who would have been the weakest? Who would have looked like they had nothing going for them?

That guy on the cross, right? The weakest one is the one that God is using, and in our weakness,

His strength is made glorious in our weakness. The younger will prove to be a great model for how the

Lord uses weak things. Jacob is very weak. As we get to know this guy, can

I call him a tool? He is. He is constantly abusing and using everybody around him.

He's not the guy that you would want to have for a best friend. Rebekah went into labor, and verse 24 sounds surprise, oh behold, there were twins.

We shouldn't be surprised by that. Should we be surprised that she's having twins? What did

God say to her? She's having twins. We should not be surprised.

She has twins because God said she was going to have twins. The first came out all covered in red hair, so they named him

Harry. Esau means Harry. They didn't call him

Harold. They didn't call him Hank. Just plain Harry. This kid is so manly that he needed a shaving kit on the baby registration.

He comes out needing a shave instantly. He's got a full beard, and I don't know. The image you get is that this guy is a hairy beast.

They're going through Babies R Us for the registry scanning stuff, and they're like, where's the shaving stuff?

He's named, the firstborn is named after a physical feature, which was quite common in Hebrew culture. They look a certain way.

They have some kind of feature, and so they're named according to that, so he's named Harry. The second is going to be named by a behavior, which again was common in that culture.

So the way he's acting. He is born holding on, grasping his brother's foot.

They're twins. He's born just apparently maybe a minute after or seconds after, and so he's holding on to his brother's foot.

What an awesome ... God has such a sense of humor that this one is going to be holding on to his brother, almost kind of like, get back in here,

I'm going first. And that's kind of the picture that we have right from the beginning of Jacob.

The name Jacob sounds like the word for heel. So it's a play on words, but there's all kinds of play on words in the name

Jacob. The name Jacob is a very rich and amazing word in the

Hebrew language, because it also evokes the image Jacob to grasp the heel. Has in it the picture of a word picture that is common for the phrase ...

How many of you ever used the phrase, are you pulling my leg? Are you pulling my leg? It's got that nuance to it.

So Jacob means heel or one who grasps the heel, and to grasp the heel in Hebrew means to lie or to cheat or to deceive somebody to pull their leg.

Now I wondered, I looked it up to see if we get that phrase in English from this story and nobody's willing to go there, and there was some kind of obscure statements about it, but nobody could define where the phrase came from, so I'm going to believe that it came from this.

I kind of tend to lean in that direction, that as much as Christianity has had an impact on the English language, that maybe we've come to say, are you pulling my leg, kind of like Jacob pulled his brother's leg.

But it is an idiom for lying and cheating, so they name their child heel. Is it nice to call somebody a heel?

No, not so much. Or they name him cheater, depends on the nuance of the word that you're looking at. So have you ever wondered, how many of you knew that his name was cheater before I just said that, or liar, or whatever?

A handful of you knew that that was what the name Jacob mean, meant, did any of you?

So that's new to most of you. How many of you think though, now that I've told you that, your mind automatically turned to who names their child cheater?

Like did your mind go there? Like why in the world would a parent name their child cheater? Well it all has to do with sounds, and we know what it means for two words to sound the same but mean very different things, and we know what it means to completely disassociate those things.

So how many of you have ever shook hands with somebody and they introduced themselves and their name is

Bill? We know a couple of Bills here, right? So you shake their hand and you're like, man, how could your parents name you after something that I hate when it comes in the mail every week, or every month, and I have to pay it every month, and I hate

Bills. Have you ever thought that when you met a Bill? Never even crossed your mind, did it? Until now.

So do you see how a parent could name their child after something you don't like, and you never even make that association because in English we know the difference between names and the other words that could be associated with them.

And so then the question is, okay, if this is double play on words, then what is the literal straightforward translation of the name

Jacob, and this is significant. The straightforward definition in Hebrew of Jacob means protected, protected.

Jacob means protected, and it is well documented. It's likely that this is a shortened form of a well documented name.

We've got all kinds of Hebrew writing that have another name that's longer than this that many people think they just shortened and made it

Jacob. But it's Jacobel, or Yacobel, which means protected by, anybody guess it, who?

Jacobel, protected by God. Now there's something that's beautiful in this naming, okay?

There's something that's so nuanced and so strange and crazy. We're talking about the cheater, okay?

The one who is going to deceive and swindle his brother out of his birthright, and swindle his brother out of his blessing.

He is a conniver, and his name means that, liar, cheater, and his name also means protected by God.

Why? Because God is a God who keeps his promises, even to sinners.

Who else can he keep promises to? Does he have a choice? I guess I'm waiting for somebody to come along to keep my promises who's going to be faithful and true 100%.

He's got nobody to keep his promises to. He keeps his promises even to swindler, even to cheater,

Jacob. And so he is a God who protects his chosen people. The older one will serve the younger, and the younger comes out grasping the heel of the older.

They fought in the womb. We have all kinds of foreshadowing in the text of the way this relationship is going to go down, and it is not going to be a happy relationship.

We have a really picturesque, I think it's cool how the text of scripture sometimes can paint such an in -depth picture for us in just a short period of time.

Look at verse 27. Go ahead and look down at the page. When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man dwelling among the tents.

Pretty picturesque. Do you picture the two of them? One of them is a hairy beast.

He is a manly man. He drove a pickup truck with a gun rack, and it's loaded.

This is that guy. Probably had the Confederate flag on his bumper sticker.

He was a John Eldredge, wild at heart kind of man. Probably the kind of guy that many in our culture would think of as a natural leader, strong in body, imposing in stature, a man who knows his way around the woods, is rough and tumble, and always smells a little bit like nature.

Strong capable man, skilled. Notice the word skilled applied to him. Even if it's just hunting, he's a skilled man, and he is always out in the woods killing himself some meat.

You know the guy. You've met him. Jacob drove a hybrid. He was quiet, quiet and demure.

I don't think we should go too far in the contrast, because the text does not say he's a sissy.

It does not say he's effeminate. He's going to actually make a two to three month journey up to Paddan -Aram solo, which was like taking your life in your own hands.

He's going to wrestle all night with an angel of the Lord and win. He's no weakling. So it doesn't say he was effeminate and weak, but he's not as strong in body as Esau is.

He spends more time around the kitchen than in the wilderness. He certainly has skills with shepherding that are going to show up later in his life, but he is more comfortable near mommy, and that's declared in the text in a moment.

Here in verse 28. Verse 28 is potentially one of the most painful family accounts or statements of a family.

Verse 28, Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Isaac loved

Esau because he was a hunter. He liked venison. He liked wild game.

He liked it. He liked his son for what he could obtain from him. There's something messed up about that already.

Something a little bit, and then the text says, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Implied in these statements is at least the word more because of what is stated and what is directly there, there can be some inferences that I don't think are a stretch at all.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that what the text is trying to communicate to us is that Isaac loved

Esau more than he loved Jacob. Rebekah loved

Jacob more than she loved Esau. Anybody see a mess coming?

Favoritism within the family? Warfare in the human family has been around since the fall.

Many of us have experienced it personally, and even have experienced it deeply. We do not love others as we should.

We don't love our neighbors as we should. We don't love our coworkers. We don't love our bosses, those who work for us.

We don't love people in our family and those who are closest to us as we should. And the reality is wounds and scars can develop in the human heart from a very early age, and some of us have experienced those from early on.

I don't want to attempt to psychoanalyze Jacob and Esau and get into their mommy complex and their daddy complex and all of this stuff, but do you think it's reasonable for me to say that the results of verse 28 are going to go negatively in this family?

Daddy loves Esau, mommy loves Jacob. What does that mean for us as parents and favoritism and things like that?

Oh, we're broken. We are broken. But a major part of authentic relationships in our lives is admitting our brokenness and being willing to say,

I'm sorry. We will hurt other people in our lives and especially within our families.

The ones that are closest are the ones that we're going to hurt the most because we spend the most time with them. You spend time with me,

I'm going to sin against you. You spend time with me, you're going to sin against me. We're broken and we're messed up people, and that's reality.

And so therefore, confession and forgiveness must be a part of any healthy human relationship.

If it is a healthy relationship, there is going to be confession and there is going to be forgiveness.

Without those, it is going to be an unhealthy relationship. You understand what

I'm saying? It's a fundamental thing about relationship in this fallen world is that forgiveness and grace and confession and admitting fault is going to have to become a part of our routine lives this side of heaven.

I don't mean to paint a bad picture, but it just gives me all the more taste for heaven, all the more glory and joy and looking forward to that eternal kingdom where there will be no more need for confession, no more need for apologies because we will be made right and we will love as we have been loved.

Until that day, confession, forgiveness, every day, every day, if you want healthy relationships.

Another aspect of that though is the expectation that we place on others, and we do this routinely, we do it on accident.

We do it even sometimes thinking we're doing other people a favor in our relationships and in our families, and that is that we want them to be perfect for us.

Sometimes we put too much trust and faith in those relationships, and if you expect somebody to be your everything, then you are placing more hope in that relationship than any human can stand up under.

You will crush them with your love. You get what I'm saying? Nobody can stand up and be everything for you.

Your husband can't be, your wife can't be, your parents can't be, your boyfriend, your girlfriend can't be.

When you turn to your spouse and say, you are everything to me, you are heaping expectations on them they cannot meet.

When you look to your kids and say, you are everything to me, as well meaning as that might be, you are putting expectations on them that they cannot stand up under.

Do you get what I'm saying? Where should we turn for our ultimate expectation for hope?

God, and ultimately Jesus Christ. And so Jacob is perfecting his red lentil stew recipe.

Just a little bit of this, a little bit of that, oh, this is going to be so good, yum. Where is he doing this?

I don't really know. Somewhere, you know, we know that he has a tendency to stay near the tents,

Esau is going to climb up out of the wilderness and ask him for some stew here in a minute, and supposedly he's got no other source of stew.

Like if he's near mommy's tent at this point, then why doesn't he go to mommy and ask her for some stew, right, if Esau is going to drive a hard bargain.

The implication is that he's somewhere pretty isolated. Some people have even assumed that in learning the shepherding skill that he's out cooking for the shepherds when

Esau crawls up out of the wilderness near him. Now Jacob is wearing his apron, Esau is all grimy, smelling like nature, and Esau is plum tuckered out just from being manly.

And Esau, Esau's quote in the Hebrew language, it's really interesting, but first year Hebrew students like to read

Esau's words. Very simple words, small, small words, words that you would learn early on in Hebrew, easy to read, and it is interesting that when

Esau speaks, the language gets easier for people who don't speak that language to understand. He is a little bit raw, and what he says, if we were to translate it directly into English, it would be something like,

Jacob, hook me up with some of that red stuff for my mouth to swallow. Like that's a direct translation, okay, and even with the accent, the accent is in there.

A little bit slack jawed and kind of, just hook me up, man, I need some of that red stuff.

And actually the phrase mouth to swallow is in Hebrew, like I want my mouth to swallow something. He's famished, okay.

How many of you see in the text that he's hungry? Did you see that? He's hungry in the text, and he crawls up out of the wilderness to his brother, and he's like give me some of that.

But it's quite unlikely that he's on the verge of death. If he's literally on the verge of death, do you think a bowl of stew is going to solve his problems?

No. He is not really going to die. How many of you have been so hungry you were going to die?

Have you ever used that phrase before? Have you ever abused that phrase before? I hate it when my kids say

I'm starving. I'm like, no, no, we're going to look at the pictures of Africa again, okay. Do you know what, that's starving, this is not starving.

We're going to get some food later, okay. It's going to be okay. You're going to make it another hour, I'm serious, it's going to be okay.

You just had a cookie five minutes ago. So I really think that that's the nature of what

Esau is doing. How many of you have just been hungry out of boredom and you're just kind of like, I got to get, I just am munching on something.

I don't think that that's necessarily the case. I don't think it's quite to that extreme that he's being that lazy. I do think that he's exaggerating, that he really is hungry but not on the verge of death.

So the swindler, Jacob, gets the first recorded chance to do more than just grab his heel and he shoots for the moon.

This is his moment to shine and he says, sell me your birthright now. He goes for the juggler, he goes in for the kill.

Now Esau stays with his assumption that he's about to expire, I'm going to die if I don't get this and what good's a birthright if I'm going to die, like duh.

So just give me some stew, sure, and Jacob makes him swear and he swears away his birthright.

Now a birthright wasn't everything. You kind of look at this story and you go, are people too hard on Esau, what's he giving away?

He's giving away some financial gain. The estate of a man who has died was divided by the number of his sons, he has two sons, plus one, so the estate right now of Isaac is going to be divided into three.

How many sons does he have right now? Two. It's going to be divided into three. This one, this part is going to go over to his firstborn.

That's the birthright. So he's going to get two -thirds of his father's wealth, where the other one is only going to get a third.

But not for Esau, because Esau has just traded that intense, extensive wealth.

Remember how wealthy Abraham was? All of it went where? Isaac. What did he just get out of the deal?

Some stew. Do you think maybe Esau was a little short -sighted in this?

Do you think that I could state that and be okay? I mean, am I on good, firm ground saying that he was a little short -sighted in the whole stew for two -thirds of his dad's wealth kind of business?

I think that he was short -sighted. Now like I said, a birthright wasn't everything. But now

Esau gives that away. Jacob gives him some of the stew, and according to the text, he generously throws in some bread too.

Man, what a good guy. This Jacob, he's rock -solid. He's like, you know what? You can have some of the red stew and a piece of bread.

And there's indications that he even gave him something to drink. What a great guy.

The kind of guy you'd want for your best friend. All I bargained for was the stew, but dude, you gave me some bread too.

Awesome. So Esau wolfs it down, drank, pushed back from the table, and went his way.

All of a sudden, the stew just made the difference, right? Now he's all just strong and ready to just go his way.

Are you seeing how he wasn't starving to death? The text is abundantly clear. He was not going to die. And now

I ask you the question. Who did wrong here? Who did wrong?

Jacob? Esau? And maybe a more difficult question to answer, because things get so messy in a fallen world.

Who did more wrong? Because my answer to that question is not what

Scripture says. My gut level, when I first read this, who did more wrong?

Who thinks that if I disagree with Scripture, who's with me on that one, that Jacob did more wrong?

Don't raise your hand, because I'm wrong. Who's with the Bible that Esau did more wrong?

Because that's what the Bible is going to say. Please everybody raise your hand right now and say that you are with the Bible, you're not with Don.

Don't go with my gut. Go with the Scripture. Scripture is going to say Esau. It's going to indict Esau in this.

It's not even going to say anything about what Jacob did. What? I mean,

I actually was thinking through, like, standing before Jesus and telling Him these two stories and saying, Jesus, which one of these did more wrong?

And Jacob, Jacob swindled his brother. He took advantage of him in his moment of need.

He seemed to me like the one that Jesus would make be the quickest to indict, but instead the text concludes with a commentary on Esau, thus

Esau despised his birthright. As shocking as Jacob's behavior is, and by the way,

Jacob's behavior in this text is never once condoned. It's never once declared that what he did was acceptable or okay.

Scripture never says, good job Jacob, you swindled your brother out of his birthright. And in a chapter you're going to take his blessing too, great job.

But Esau's selling of his birthright was the real shocker according to the kingdom of God. He is going to be called unholy for this behavior in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 12, 16 -17.

He's called unholy because of what he did, because he sold his birthright for a single meal according to the text of Hebrews.

He was so carried away by instant gratification that he could not see the long -term impact of his decision.

He had such a hunger for the immediate that he could not see the long -term.

And by the way, the word unholy, how many of you think the word unholy, like if somebody were to call you unholy, that would be an insult, right? That'd be a bad word.

But it's not quite as direct in biblical terms. The word holy means set apart or unique for the purposes of God.

It doesn't mean that everything that you do is perfect. So in that sense, Jacob is holy in this situation.

He is set apart for the Lord's work, set apart for God. Does he do everything right?

No. But Esau proves himself to be unholy or common by despising the privilege into which he was born.

Are you getting what I'm saying? That's what's going on in the text. So he is declared to be unholy.

Can you imagine a culture? I know that you're going to have to stretch your imaginations on this one, but can you a culture that's caught up in instant gratification?

Can you imagine that? I mean, I know pushing the limits. Some of you are really quick, though. You got it. You laughed.

So can you imagine a culture in which you can't afford something, but hey, no, you can.

Just pay for it on your credit card. Buy it today, right now.

Is your relationship with your spouse too difficult and complicated? Porn is just a couple clicks away, right?

Hungry? Taco Bell is open right now, always. Sorry. Now I lost everyone.

Everybody's thinking Gordita or something. What is it that we're selling in exchange for instant gratification, for this lifestyle of immediacy?

When we trade the joy and delight we have in Christ for sinful passions and pride, we demonstrate a lack of understanding of the privilege it is to be in God's chosen family.

When we trade in the immediate for the long term, we are neglecting what a great joy it is to be

His child. What a great joy it is to participate in His kingdom.

And we're ignoring all of that for the purpose of the right now.

You hear what I'm saying? Sin is to say,

I want the stew now. Who cares about the privilege of being in God's family? What is that to me?

I want what I want and I want it now. In our text, we find a lot of movement from the life of Abraham down through the life of Isaac, just briefly, all the way on to his grandsons,

Jacob and Esau. God called them out as His chosen people and many of us, if we're honest, would have un -chose them.

Right? They're messy. Raise your hand if you think they're a messy family.

I'll get more hands in a couple weeks. But yeah, they're messy. And yet I love this family because they highlight for me in distinct clarity the glory of God's gracious choice,

His grace and His mercy. He did an unpromised blessing to Jacob after he saw his behavior.

How many of you are glad that God hasn't un -chosen you because you've sinned since you accepted Jesus as your

Savior? He hasn't un -chosen me. I rejoice in that. Would He be just in un -choosing me?

He'd be just in it. But He has promised that those in Christ will be redeemed.

If you're truly in Christ, then you will be saved. And what we see in the text from the beginning, we find

Harry and Swindler behaving badly and it's only going to get worse. But in the midst of this three -ring circus, the center ring is vacated to make the way for the glory of God.

His faithfulness to sinful humanity will always be the central show that He remains faithful.

And at the center of that ring is the very Son of God lifted high, dying for sinful and broken people like Abraham and Sarah.

Sinful people like Isaac and Rebekah. Sinful people like Jacob and Esau. Sinful people like you and me.

Esau despised his place in the unique family of God. He took it for granted. He spurned it as barely valuable, even selling it for just some lentil stew.

Seems like an extreme example until we think about the things that we would sell it for. As we come to communion,

I want us to consider the value of our place in the family of God. Consider your, what value do you place in it?

How precious is your position in His kingdom? What would you sell it for? The winning lottery ticket?

Images and pixels on the screen? Fame? Money? Possessions? What would you sell it for?

Or would you cling to the birthright that is ours through the second birth in Jesus at all costs with your very life?

How precious is it to be called a child of God? To have an inheritance in Him secured for eternity?

And I'm not talking about losing your salvation here. I'm just talking about how we treat the glory of what has been given us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A position in an eternal kingdom that will go on forever and ever. And how do we treat it? Because that's the way the

Christian life is to be lived is in light of He died for me, I will live for Him.

Do we leave that second part of the equation out and just go, well, He died for me, great. I'll do what I want.

That's not understanding what He has done for you. Get what I'm saying?

So valuing, what value do you put on your salvation? If you're here and you've asked

Jesus to save you and believe in Him and put your trust in Him and you're in the family of God based on the forgiveness given to you at the cross, then by all means, please join together with God's people in communion.

And as we take communion, I want you to take communion knowing, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things.

You were not purchased with things that pass away like silver or gold, but you were purchased with the precious blood of Christ, the

Son of God, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. How valuable is our salvation?

It was bought by the precious blood of the very Son of God. Would you despise that gift?

Would you despise that inheritance or would you embrace it with your very life? Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much for your gift. I am so unworthy of it. I don't deserve the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as we take communion.

I both reflect on my unworthiness, my sin, and yet the great cost that it required of you, the shedding of your own

Son's blood, and yet the great and immense love poured out on me by that act.

I don't deserve it, but you did it to show your love. And so I am both simultaneously weak and broken and messed up.

I am deceiver and liar and cheater, and yet simultaneously the one protected by God.

Such a dichotomy is true at the cross. And Father, if there's anybody here who has not realized that they can't do it themselves, that if they operate only out of the half of the equation where they are sinner trying to reach salvation, they cannot accomplish that, but that you've provided a way to meet the other half of the equation of being deeply loved and forgiven by you.

And all of that meets at the cross. Father, if there's anybody here who is questioning and concerned and trying to think through these things of where they're going to spend eternity,

Father, if they would come to speak with me or Kyle or one of the other elders or even somebody that they know that attends this church,

Father, that you would help us to move out from this place recognizing the great glory that you've given to us and to not despise this inheritance, but to walk in it in joy and gladness this week.