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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Genesis 27:41-28:9
Well, we continue not only to complete chapter 27, but begin chapter 28 this morning. And so we're going to pick up in verse 41, of course, taking up from last week, we're sort of heading back into the tent where we left Isaac, trembling on his bed, reluctantly giving Esau not so much a blessing, more of an anti-blessing.
And Isaac essentially retorts, what can I do for you, my son? I've given Jacob the blessing of God. Isaac, as we saw, has now understood the will of God. He couldn't twist his way out of the will of God, and neither will Jacob be able to twist his way out of the will of God.
In fact, as we move forward into chapter 28 and chapter 29 and beyond, we'll see just how God untwists the twister, how He lays hold of the heel holder, and of course it's illustrative of how God works sanctification into the lives of His people.
But before we leave Genesis 27, before we even get to the great episode, the encounter at Bethel, we want to consider, I think, the importance of influence. Of course, Esau was trying to influence Isaac.
He himself is convulsing in tears, roaring like a lion, as we saw, not only filled with bitter regret and sorrow, but also rage. And we have to keep in mind, as we said last week, the testimony of Hebrews chapter 12, that this is not a man we should pity.
This is a man who's breathing murder in his heart, like Saul when he was persecuting the.
Church.
And we said, what would repentance have actually looked like? If this is worldly sorrow and not godly sorrow, if this is rage and self-pity, but not actual repentance, the question is, what would repentance have looked like for Esau?
And it would have looked like a humbling, a recognition of his wrong, his sin, a recognition that God had chosen Jacob, and Jacob had been the one seeking God's blessing all along, so he would have humbled himself before his brother, and he would have sought God to bless him as he humbled himself and as he bore the fruit of repentance, worthy of repentance.
But alas, we have the spirit of Cain alive and well in Esau, a bitter, vindictive, godless.
Man.
Verse 41, Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him. And he said in his heart, the days of mourning for my father are at hand, then I will kill my brother. So that's his heart song.
When my father does finally die and the days of mourning are complete, I'm going to kill my brother. He would have been plotting throughout this time and he would have been comforting himself, satiating himself, daydreaming about all of the different ways he could go about killing Jacob.
And so this is the picture, the portrait of the man that we see. But as we move forward in verses 42 and following, I want to focus on the family dynamics of influence. That's what really sticks out to me between the end of chapter 27 and the beginning of chapter 28.
We can clearly see influence at play between Rebekah, Isaac, Jacob, and Esau, beginning first with Rebekah, the influence of Rebekah, beginning in verse 42. The words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebekah.
It's significant that it says her older son and not her firstborn. We're already transferring the idea of what it means to be the firstborn to Jacob. And so here it's simply older son. So she sent and called Jacob, her younger son, and said to him, surely your brother Esau comforts himself concerning you by intending to kill you.
Sort of psychotic, isn't it? That he finds peace and comfort in daydreaming about how to murder his brother. Now therefore my son, obey my voice, arise, go, flee to my brother Laban in Haran. And stay with him a few days until your brother's fury turns away, until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him.
Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereaved also of you both in one day? And so you can see the plan here. She's aware of Esau's murderous intent. She somehow thinks this intent to murder is something that can blow over after a few days.
But she also takes radical steps to make sure that her son Jacob is safe. And so she commands him to rise, leave Canaan, and travel into Haran to be with family, Abrahamic family. This is the inverse of what had taken place between Genesis 11 and 12 where God called Abram to leave Haran and go into Canaan.
So there's a reversal now taking place. God's grace found Abram and called him out of Ur and specifically out of Haran into the land that he would give him, into Canaan. Whereas God is going to encounter Jacob when he's out of Canaan and say, I'm going to be with you and give you the land that I will show you.
So there's a repetition of the Abrahamic experience, not even the promise, but the experience is being replicated in the chapter ahead with Jacob. Now, of course, this is also setting us up for a rather difficult detour in Haran because Laban himself is a bit of a twister.
It seems to run in the family between Laban, Rebekah, and Jacob. And of course, she recognizes the stakes. Why should I be bereaved also of you both in one day? My husband apparently, as far as anyone is concerned, is dying.
My younger son, my beloved son, is going to be murdered and then my older son is going to be a vagabond and he's going to have to flee. And so she could essentially lose her whole family all in this day.
That's her heartfelt experience. When we begin to look at verses 42 and following, I think we can see that the influence of a mother is a powerful thing. The influence of a mother is a powerful thing.
All along, Rebekah has been directing the events of chapter 27. She's been the one commanding what is to be done. She's been the one calling Jacob, preparing Jacob, ordering him to go into the tent to deceive his father, and now she's ordering Jacob to go into the land of Haran to stay with his uncle.
The influence of a mother is a powerful thing. She has legitimate authority over her son. We've already seen with Sarah the same kind of influence, the same kind of authority. Genesis 21, Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, scoffing, and she said to Abraham, cast out this bondwoman and her son.
The son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son. And this was displeasing to Abraham because of his son. And so God said to Abraham, don't let it be displeasing in your sight because of the lad or because of your bondwoman.
Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice, for in Isaac your seed shall be.
Called.
So that's the kind of influence that even Sarah had. Whatever she says to you, listen to her voice. It's as if God has been influenced by Sarah. Whatever she's saying, she's right. You know, she's the right influence.
She's the right voice to be listening to at this time. And so there's this mirror now between Genesis 21 and 27. How often have we heard Rebekah say, listen to my voice, and then give a command. Isaac, Rebekah's husband, had a mother, Sarah.
And Isaac's mother understood the calling of God upon her son. Sarah said of Isaac, Ishmael shall not be heir. He will have no part of God's promise for my son. And so Sarah had a recognition that God had given promises and that the heir would be.
Of her.
It would be her offspring and not Hagar's offspring. And therefore there could be no sharing of that promise between them. And this was displeasing to Abraham. Abraham was a little too dull in his spiritual perception of what God had promised.
But Sarah was very sharp. And now even though she was cruel in the way that she treated Hagar, and if anything a little rough around the edges in the way that she sort of rebuked Abraham in chapter 21, we can see that she was spiritually perceptive and she used her influence.
Jacob also has a mother in Rebekah, very much like Isaac had in Sarah, who understands the calling of God upon her son. That the blessing of Abraham will rest not upon Esau, but upon Jacob. And even if she does a deceitful, ultimately sinful act to try to secure that blessing, we find in her a more spiritually perceptive woman than in her husband Isaac.
We don't find that same spiritual sensitivity as to God's promise in this covenantal lineage. A mother, a wife, has a powerful influence. Look at verse 46. Rebekah said to Isaac, I'm weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth.
If Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, like these who are the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me? Now what in the world is verse 46 doing here at the end of chapter 27? Arguably it's a pretty bad place for a chapter break.
Of course, originally the manuscripts didn't have chapter divisions. But here it's sort of an awkward chapter division. And so it's hard not to include it in the natural flow of what follows in chapter 28 as we're doing this morning.
And it seems to be significant that all of a sudden her mind hasn't gone from the murder of her son or all that has transpired about God's blessing on Jacob to, you know, what about his marriage? I can't stand those daughters of Heth.
It's kind of an odd transition in light of the events of the day and the stakes that.
Are raised.
Now, of course, she's aware that he has to leave and he's an eligible bachelor and he needs to be married. He's going to need a wife. But remember the context here. As far as she's concerned, he's coming back in a little while.
And as far as the plan goes, he's been commanded to go to the family household. So why do we have verse 46? Why does she go to Isaac, her husband, and say, I'm going to die if our son Jacob intermarries with the Canaanites.
I just, I can't take it. Why is she saying that now and here? I think the answer, again, is this spiritual sensitivity. She's perceived that God's promise has rested upon Jacob and not on Esau. And in light of Esau also, she recognizes that intermarriage would jeopardize God's purposed blessing upon him.
And so she goes to Isaac, her husband, and she basically says, I can't bear it. I can't stand it. If he marries, if he intermarries with women of this land, I'm just going to die. Which is saying to Isaac, without actually saying, you need to go speak to your son.
You need to go charge him not to intermarry, but to only marry one from the family. To only marry one who will not turn his heart away from the Lord God. In other words, we see Rebecca making what has been called in our circle a wise appeal to her husband, Isaac.
The influence of a wife, of a mother, is a powerful thing. On the one hand, she's moved to command Jacob as to where he must go, but in a very subtle and strategic way, she's approached Isaac and prompted him, stirred him to address his son, to charge his son.
And this is all part of the influence of Rebecca. Notice that there seems to be a shift in the way she's gone about. She was very deceitful and crafty toward her husband in the way she sent Jacob into that tent, but now there seems to be some humility, some self-awareness.
Now she shows honor to Isaac. She doesn't use her authority or her influence to henpeck. She doesn't go in and kind of harangue Isaac or kind of put all this pressure apart from her husband on her son.
She recognizes there's an influence I have, but something like this, it needs to come from dad. This needs to be a father-son moment. And Isaac is still as passive as ever. How can I prompt him? How can I get him to see the significance of addressing our son in this way?
So that's what I think verse 46 is explaining. I'm going to die if you don't address our son and charge him not to intermarry. And we see really our first influence, that the influence of a wife, of a mother, is a powerful thing.
And then that turns over to chapter 28, and here we see the influence of Isaac. So following the prompt of Rebecca, following verse 46 and Rebecca's influence on her husband, Isaac now bears an influence upon Jacob.
Notice, then, you could almost say because of this, Isaac called Jacob and, blessed him, and charged him and said to him, you shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Look what you're doing to your mother.
You're not going to take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.
Arise.
Go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. And here's the blessing. May God Almighty, that's El Shaddai, bless you, make you fruitful, multiply you, that you may be an assembly of peoples and give you the blessing of Abraham to you and your descendants with you, that you may inherit the land in which you are a stranger, which God gave to Abraham.
And we read, Isaac sent Jacob away. So now Isaac is following in the influence of Rebekah. It's very profound. That chapter 27 leads into chapter 28. And Jacob obeys this charge from his father. He goes to Paddan Aram, to Laban, the son of Bethuel, the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.
It's a full description. Now the family has been in ruins. They've been divided at almost every turn. There's bitterness and animosity, miscommunication. There's been aggression. The family's completely split up.
And yet, at least here, mom and dad are on the same page. At least they can agree pagan wives are a grief to their minds. And so while Rebekah uses her influence upon Jacob, she also wisely uses her influence upon Isaac.
And Isaac, in being shaped by that wise, godly influence from his wife, he addresses his son and his son's future. And he charges him. He gives a direct influence to his son. But notice, in the same way that Rebekah doesn't go into Isaac and manipulate and henpeck until she gets her way, she very wisely, tactfully goes in and makes it really about, I'm just going to die if this happens, and it's very deliberative and honorable.
And notice also Isaac, he doesn't just in his passivity or in his frustration go, by the way, this isn't going to happen. He's also very thoughtful. He says, well, I'm going to bless my son when I address him.
And so before he charges him, he blesses him, right? Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him. And then, of course, we read the charge, but with it comes the blessing. And I think that says a lot about the dynamic of influence in a family.
And this is really our second point. The influence of a father is a powerful thing. Rebekah knows that. She knows that it's going to be far more powerful coming from Isaac than it would be from her. I know, Mom.
You got to stop worrying about me, Mom. I'm a grown man. Don't worry about me.
I'll be fine.
I'll call you whenever I need laundry or money. Rebekah understands these dynamics of influence, and she knows the kind of steering she can have in Jacob's life, but she knows where Isaac needs to step up to the plate.
She also knows it's not her place to go and undermine or to make Isaac dwell in the corner of a rooftop in bitterness. It's very instructive about how we should wield our influence in the home. She's very wise in the way that she almost encourages Isaac into this role of giving a charge to Jacob, because she recognizes from him it will actually have this effect.
And then Isaac is, I think, very wise to say, I'm not just giving my son this immediate command, I'm going to bless him. Now, he's already blessed him. We've already read the blessing of chapter 27, so this is just an overflow of blessing.
And I think it's, again, to say, look what you're being called to. See the significance of this moment. You cannot intermarry. You cannot go the path of your brother. Just because the right Canaanite woman falls along into your path, don't lose the significance of what I'm saying to you, my son.
As a man to a man, as your father, as one in the lineage of this covenant, the influence of a father is a powerful thing. And Isaac, when he speaks to his son, he echoes the Abrahamic promises. It's so striking to me in the words he says.
First of all, he says, may God Almighty bless you. That's a recognition that Isaac's just had. God is almighty. God is all sovereign. He was trying to bless Esau earlier that day, and God overruled. God is almighty.
And so Isaac is saying, that's the God that's going to bless you. It doesn't matter where you go or what happens to you or how bad you foul things up, even like I have, if God Almighty has determined to bless you, indeed you shall be blessed.
And so even if you're in flight now and you must leave the land that God has promised, God will bless you, my son. El Shaddai will be your God. He'll make you fruitful, even though you're going into the great unknown, as it were.
He's going to multiply you, even while Laban begins to tit-for-tat you and strip away your.
Wealth.
And then he says in verse 4, may this God give you the blessing of Abraham to you and your descendants with you, that you may inherit the land. He's saying this as a blessing to him as Jacob's fleeing the land.
And so Isaac has this incredible trust in God Almighty, and he's, as it were, grabbing his son by the shoulders and saying, this is the God that you're walking with. This is the God who's going to bless you, and this is why you must not intermarry.
This is why you must choose a wife from the daughters of Laban. So he gives Jacob a blessing to influence him, and I think there's some wisdom there speaking as a father to fathers here this morning, that when we wield our authority, when there's moments of great significance, we ought to consider how important it is to bless, even as we charge.
The influence of a father is a powerful thing. And then the last family dynamic we see in these verses is really the influence of Jacob. It's Jacob and Isaac, but I think the root of verses 6 and following is really the influence of Jacob.
We read, Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob. He saw that Isaac had blessed, but the real issue here is this sibling rivalry. Jacob is the one who's been blessed, and sent him away to Paddan Aram to take himself a wife from there, and that as he blessed him, he gave him a charge saying, you shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan, and that Jacob had obeyed his father.
So Esau's watching this unfold. He's watching another blessing, as it were. Remember, he's just got the anti-blessing, and now Jacob gets a sort of double-down Abrahamic blessing and he's watching it.
But he's also watching his son, Isaac's son, his brother, obey. Jacob had obeyed his father, and he saw the charge, you shall not intermarry. And so Esau's watching the influence of Isaac toward his son, and Esau's on the outside of that.
And we read in verse 8, Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan did not please his father.
Isaac.
And so Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son. And it's almost a bittersweet moment in this passage, isn't it? That you almost get the sense Esau wants to please Isaac.
We look at verse 8 and we go, did he not know this? Did he not know that intermarriage with Canaanite women would displease his parents? Perhaps he didn't. Perhaps his father was so completely passive.
Perhaps his father never put into words, never charged or blessed in the way he should have, that Esau genuinely did not know. And perhaps when it became too late, Isaac just comforted himself saying, he's a grown man, what can I do?
He's got to make his own decisions. And so we not only see Isaac's influence on Jacob in a positive light, but we see Isaac's lack of influence upon Esau in a very negative light. Does Esau want to please his father?
And that's why he goes to the house of Ishmael or is it just another episode of sibling rivalry? Well if Jacob's going to do that, then I'm going to do this. And it could be a mix of both. And I think again, third point here, the influence of a sibling is a powerful thing.
Jacob had obeyed his father and really his mother in their command to leave Canaan and go to Paddan Aram. In their command, he's going to obey it. He has every intention to obey it, to marry within the house of Laban.
And so we're beginning to detect this tender sprout of God's grace working in the life of Jacob. Because when you begin to obey authority in your life, you're taking a step closer to obeying the ultimate authority of your life, which is God.
Obedience to the ways of God is always a step closer to God himself. Whereas rebellion to the authorities and the ways of God is always a step further away from God himself. And so Esau's journey is sort of this tragic parody of Jacob's journey.
Jacob is leaving Canaan to marry within the household so that he can preserve the Abrahamic covenant. Whereas Esau is traveling and he intermarries within Ishmael's household. Whether he realizes it or not, he's cementing his legacy as one who is not an heir, who will have no share in the inheritance of the promised seed.
And so we have not only a sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau, but a sibling rivalry between, as it were, the promised seed and the serpent, the lines between them. And Esau learned that Canaanite women displeased Isaac and he was no longer seeking to please or interact or rival Jacob.
He was seeking to have some effect upon his parents and we just see an influence, I think,.
Lost.
We also see the influence of a sibling, an influence of a brother. All along, Esau's life has been provoked by the life of his brother. And siblings, you have a powerful influence in your home. I see it every day, if not multiple times a day, the kind of influence that the oldest sibling has upon the younger siblings.
It's amazing. What we teach doesn't seem to stick as quickly as what the older sibling does. If you've raised children, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Words, habits, things to do, that almost always comes from the siblings and not from the parents.
Where did you pick that up? Why are you doing that? Who did this to you? It's all from the siblings. The influence of a sibling is a powerful thing. And of course, a child's desire to gain their parents' approval is a powerful thing.
And even in light of that reality, a father's temptation is adamic. It's to be passive. And so a child will often spend a good part of their life making decisions and living a certain way to gain the acknowledgment or the approval or the appeasement of their parents.
And sometimes their parents are not even in the picture, it's just the shadow of their parents. They're still living for the pleasure of their parents without even recognizing that they're.
Doing so.
And the question is, do we recognize the power of that influence and are we using it in a wise and godly way? The question is for fathers, are we using the influence we have within the home or are we being passive and refusing to make the impact that we in a unique way can make?
That Rebecca recognizes, I won't make this kind of impact. It will be too easily and readily dismissed. But the influence I do have, I'm going to use. I'm going to make an appeal to my husband. I'm going to stir him and prompt him and move him so that he'll use the power and the authority, the influence that he has in our family.
So that takes us really to our application this morning. We've considered the influence of Rebecca, which in a fascinating way sets up the whole event between chapter 27 and chapter 28. She's in a lot of ways running the show.
We saw the influence of Isaac, both positively toward his son Jacob when he charges him and because he charged him in this monumental way and he did it wisely with blessing and encouragement, his son followed in that charge.
He obeyed that direction. We also saw it negatively, the absence of his influence upon Esau. For all of Esau's life, his father's approval was gained by his sportsmanship and what he could bring home on the dinner plate.
He loved the food. He says, the food that my soul loves more than his son. So his influence was ultimately lost upon Esau. What about our influence? So to pull another Marty Anderson moment, we have to give a working definition of influence.
The definition that I think will help us is influence to affect, that's with an A, to affect or alter, that's change, the conduct, thought, or character of another. To affect or alter the thought, conduct, or character of another.
That's what it means to influence, that you make an impact or even a change. There's a change as a result of your presence, your words, your actions upon someone else's thoughts, actions, or words. Paul says in Romans 14, 7, none of us live to ourselves.
So take this as a maxim, it's impossible if you're a human being to live only unto yourself. No one lives to himself. In a day of social media influences, if that's not the most obnoxious thing that there is today, people who try to make a living out of being an influencer, so they try to get free vacations, hotel stays, trips, products, and then they post videos of them going, I love this, and this was great, and look at it here, and their career is I'm an influencer, and they go around saying I'm an influencer.
It's like the most obnoxious thing in the world. But the reality is, we're all influencers, yeah, so am I. Every human being is an influencer, because everything we do in one way or another, whether positively or negatively, whether actively or passively, is altering or affecting the thought, conduct, or behavior of those around us.
So everyone here this morning is an influencer. That's the reality. None of us live to ourselves. I have, we have iron-rich water in our little neck of the woods in Hubbardston. Maybe some of you that live close to us in Williamsville have the same issue.
And you never see, of course, any tint in the water. The water looks clear as ever. You don't know that there's an influence in that water until you take out a crisp white shirt out of the laundry, and now it's a crisp beige shirt.
There's a tinge of orange to it, and month by month it becomes more and more orange, and eventually you're just going to have a pure orange shirt. And so whenever I'm like, oh yeah, you know, we should wash that tablecloth, nope, we can't wash the tablecloth.
It's going to start turning orange. There's an influence. It's an undetectable influence, but it's there. And I think that idea of a tint is perhaps better for us. We like to think that we're only influencing people when we're conscious of it.
Oh, no, they saw me, oh, they caught me, oh, no, that was a bad influence, or I'm really trying hard to help this person and guide them, and I just want to encourage them. We think these are the only times we're influencing, but we're actually influencing all the time in between those times, whether we're conscious of it or not.
And so we need to acknowledge that we all, for better or for worse, for Jacob or for Esau, we're all involved in affecting or altering the conduct, thought, and character of those around us. And the question, I think, to start is, do we even realize that?
Do we realize that?
That we're all influencers. Day by day, we're influencing whoever we encounter. This is especially true within the household, within the family relationship. And we've seen the effects of influence with Isaac as a father.
The expectation is that a father is going to impact, alter, guide, shape, mold, direct the life and conduct of his son. That's just the expectation. Rebecca even knows that. There's a unique relationship between the father's influence and the dynamics within.
The household.
And Paul, the apostle, he seems to pick this up. He seems to understand that a father is meant to influence his children, primarily giving them a way to live. Not just a livelihood, not just the means of living, but a way of life, what in Latin would call a modus vivendi, a way of living.
In other words, a pattern to follow, steps and actions to take, an example to imitate. Paul assumes this is what a father does. And so look at how he speaks of himself as a father to some of the churches.
And again, this is all part of his desire to have an influence upon the lives of his brothers and sisters. 1 Thessalonians 2, beginning in verse 10, you are witnesses, God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behave, that's conduct, among you who believe, as you know, how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father does to his own children, that you would walk worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and.
Glory.
So in 1 Thessalonians 2, what is Paul saying? When we were living among you in a certain way, and when we were comforting, exhorting, in fact, when we took you by the shoulders and charged you, we were like fathers to you.
Because that's what a father does. And the father, if we're going to advance on Wiley a bit, sorry for the ladies, I realize this is the men's book, but you've heard this analogy several times already, the difference between a dot and a line.
And so we think dot as an abstract individual, someone who can somehow live for themselves only, and that's impossible. And so if we're saying, well, dot versus line, thinking generationally, that's wonderful.
For our purposes this morning, let's look at it this way. It's not even that you're a dot, we recognize no one can truly be a dot. They can think that way, but no one truly is that way. You're always part of the next generation, whether you choose to be or not.
But it's not even that you're part of the next generation as a line, as a passing of a torch. You're not so much a line as a rhizome, if you have that image, a rhizome being sort of a line that leads to many, many other lines in all different shapes and directions.
So think of the roots of a tree, the roots of a plant, those are rhizomes, lines that go into other lines and other lines and other lines, and it's stemming in all different.
Directions.
That's what we're talking about when we say we have an influence. We're not lines passing the torch, we're rhizomes. There's tentacles that come out of our daily lives and they tint those around us. Paul says our conduct, our words, how we behaved, our devotion, our exhortation, our blessings, all of this we did as fathers to their own children.
1 Corinthians 4, another example, you might have 10 ,000 instructors in Christ, Paul says to that church, you don't have many fathers. In Christ Jesus, I've begotten you through the gospel. He's saying, you know, I've given birth to you, as it were.
I've fathered you as a church. What does fatherhood mean to him? What does he say in the very next sentence? Therefore, I'm urging you, imitate me. This is what a father's meant to do, lay out a way of life for his children to imitate.
1 Corinthians 4, 17, for this reason, I've sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ. So he's saying, here's my son, as it were, Timothy, he's followed my patterns, he's imitating me, he's going to come to you and teach you how to imitate him.
This is rhizomatic influence. Brethren, he says to the church at Philippi, join in following my example. Note those who walk in this way, you have us for a pattern. So Paul is intentionally laying down his life as a model, and when he's doing so, he's conscious of this is what it means to be a father.
So as soon as he says, imitate me or walk after my example, he automatically connects it to fatherhood, just like a father. This is what a father does. The father does not have a choice in this. His children are being influenced by him, even when he's not actively seeking to influence.
Them.
Which means in a home where there's no family worship and a Sunday-only Christianity, you're teaching your children to walk in a way of no family worship and Sunday-only Christianity. That's the influence you're choosing to have.
Whether you're doing it actively or passively makes no difference. What goes into the water is tinted by it. Now that's a negative thing in some respects, but it's also a very positive thing, and there ought to be some hope, some encouragement in that.
If you can think through your own walk in the Lord, you can think through countless examples, I trust, of Christians who have influenced you toward the things of the Lord. That positively, not perfectly, but positively, they've shaped you and encouraged you in your.
Walk.
They've given you light for that next step along your path, or they've prayed with you, or they've put some good resource or means of grace in your hands. They've, in one way or another, influenced you by pointing you to Christ, whether directly by exhortation or just by example.
And as you come to church, so much of what you're doing is coming into a place where you can have better influencers in your life. That's a big part of God's design for the church. And so we're always being influenced, we're always imitating and patterning our lives after something.
Iron sharpens iron, it's Proverbs 27, 17. This is how a man sharpens another man. The truth is, whether we realize it or not, we all have these tentacles of influence on all of the relations of our lives and uniquely within the home.
Somewhere, somehow, at one time or another, you're being looked upon no matter how young or old you are. I see every Sunday how one-year-olds are influenced by two-year-olds and two-year-olds are influenced by three-year-olds, right?
It doesn't matter how young you are, you are an influencer. You might be someone else's reason to forge ahead, to press on in a really difficult time.
In your life.
You might be someone else's reason to not, to throw in the towel. When we're aware of the influence we have, it ought to direct and shape our lives. When I'm aware that I cannot live unto myself, it ought to motivate me that even when I'm in a season where I'm struggling to find the Lord or be satisfied in the ways of God, I recognize that I'm influencing others around me.
That ought to motivate me and steer me because influence runs both ways. It's the tragic chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah, isn't it? We read in 1 Kings 22 that Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, sort of if there were ever a grand villain among the kings, it would have been Ahab, began to reign over Israel in Samaria in the 17th year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah.
He reigned two years over Israel. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
Why?
De novo, of himself? How did he learn to do evil in the sight of the Lord? What prompted him and steered him along this trajectory? Whose pattern was he following? He walked in the way of his father and in the way of his mother.
That's what led Ahaziah on this path. He served Baal and worshiped him and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger in every single way his father had done. He followed that example to a T. And the question we confront ourselves within, especially within the home, is what is the pattern that my children are going to follow?
How am I guiding them as one who is bearing an influence in the home? For men, that has to mean, in what ways am I being passive? And when I'm not being passive, do I just flip the switch to being completely overbearing, a brute, and just sort of scoffing and running hard like a navy captain?
These are the kind of dynamics that the scriptures address, that a father is to instruct with gentleness. Because scripture is aware of that flip between utter passivity, and then when we finally do take charge, we take it in the wrong way, in a way that actually is repulsive rather than exhortative.
Proverbs 12 says that this has an overflow, not only within the home, but outside of the home as well. One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray. We are continually making an impact on the relationships within our homes.
And so I say this as an encouragement. First, that we are convicted of the fact that we are always influencing, and that we ought to be very mindful in heart-searching and asking God to help us examine the ways that our influence is falling short of the glory of God.
Certainly, I can see in my own life, already, many ways that I'm influencing my home in a negative way, rather than in a Christ-like way. But here's the encouragement. Perhaps you're worried that you've influenced certain relationships, or you've had a tenor within your home in such a way for so long that it's irreversible, and that the damage that has been done is insurmountable, and that your own struggles and baggage that you carried into the home, that perhaps now you've finally seen the Lord's grace smooth and iron out.
Well, unfortunately, your whole family was dragged through them along the way, and you're wondering, how are they going to overcome now issues that result from that? That's the kind of legacy I have. That's the effect and the damage that I've caused.
And my encouragement would be this, and please pay attention to Jacob's life in the weeks ahead, that the same grace that helped you overcome these issues and has not let you go in this long journey of sanctification will be the same grace that is available to help your children and your spouse within your home.
And certainly we'll see that with Jacob. We can be thankful that God is merciful, and He doesn't just redeem His people, but He begins to redeem the consequences of their failures, and we see that in the life of Jacob.
In their relationships, though, there's always scars, perhaps even invisible. God is a God of redemption. He's a God who loves to restore and redeem that which has been marred and defaced by sin, and so there's great hope that as we're repentant and seek Him, His grace will be the main influence, the influence that overcomes all of the bad influence we've ever had.
The same grace that corrects our poor example is the grace that helps others overcome our poor example. That means right now, speaking here primarily to parents, you strive in a visible way to overcome your sins while you raise them.
The worst thing you could possibly do is paint over or whitewash the very glaring issues within your life or within your home. The best thing you can do is own it, own it in a visible, sincere way. That's the best thing you can do for your children.
The worst thing you could do is pretend it never happened, pretend that that outburst wasn't a big deal, pretend that it was really these situations or the stressful environment or the more you gloss things over and make this a way of their life, that's where the damage happens, and you might be thinking, well, this is better.
It's worse. It's worse.
It's worse.
To address it, to show your repentance, but also in light of that, to show your victory so that as God has worked this out and you've sort of embarrassed yourself or humiliated yourself within your own household, you've owned this sin and you've asked for forgiveness, and now there'll be a time where you can say, God, I thank you that you have sanctified me in this way.
Right, family?
Don't you agree? Isn't my temper more tempered than it used to be? And so not only do you share your struggles and your repentance with them, but you also begin to share God's grace, his victory with them.
And this is part of how God will work in them the realization that they cannot depend upon themselves, upon their own ability to cover themselves with fig leaves within their own relationships yet to come, but they must depend upon the grace of God.
We won't be perfect, but we can be sincere. And I think God's grace will often come to those who are sincere. And our children may not see perfection in us, and there may be things that sting us to share, but they will recognize that God is true, and that God is faithful, and that God is holy.
And that's a far better influence than if you were living a perfectly sanctified life. So, four things as we sort of come to a close, four things that we must do to have an influence. The first is to learn.
We must learn. We're all learning, we're all being taught things, not just when we undertake to receive instruction, but by whatever we give our attention or devotion toward, we're being taught by.
It, we're learning.
We are learners, for good or for ill. We're all learning something from someone or something all of the time. When God brought His people to the promised land, this is what He warned them in Deuteronomy 18, when you enter the land which the Lord your God gives to you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations.
Don't learn.
Hear the nations surrounding you and look at their abominable practices, don't learn from them. And He connects learning to imitation. When you start replicating or desiring after, you're learning it in a way that you're setting up your life to follow that example.
And what happened? We read this in Psalm 106, 35. They mingled with the Gentiles, they learned their works. What did learning their works mean? They served their idols and it became a snare to them. So, that's a negative example.
In that way, don't learn, right? Don't learn from bad influence. Proverbs 22, make no friendship with a man, this is 24 and 25, make no friendship with a man given to anger. Don't go anywhere with a wrathful man, why?
Lest you learn his ways, you become like him. The scriptures speak most of learning in a positive way. So, we have these negative examples of how we're not to learn, but more often than not, we put off that bad learning with good learning.
Ephesians 4, 17 and following, this I say therefore, I testify in the Lord, you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, their understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God because of that ignorance within them, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
You have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard him, have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus. And so, there's a learning that comes from Christ. That's the amazing thing of this passage, isn't it?
It's not even that we learn from godly teachers and godly resources and means of grace in front of us, but in a profound way, we are learning from Christ himself. We're taught by Christ. It's what Paul says.
You have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him, taught by Christ, not about him, but by him. So, we're taught in a unique and direct way by Christ, which means we don't walk as the Gentiles walk.
Gentiles think they know a lot about Christ. Even in our godless age, there's still some modicum of respect for Jesus. Well, I think, you know, Jesus was a good man and, you know, he's sort of a Marxist revolution, okay.
They think he's a good man and they think they learn about him and they think ultimately that just means being sort of a 2 ,000-year-late hippie. That's the idea. But we're not just taught about Christ and we're not just picking ourselves up by our bootstraps so that we can try to mimic some of his behavior.
We're taught by Christ. No one can come to me, Jesus says, unless the father who sent me draws him and I'll raise him up at the last day. It's written in the prophets, they shall all be taught by God.
Therefore, everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me. So, God himself is teaching us. We are learning from God how to have the right influence and, of course, this is what it means to be a disciple.
When Jesus called the disciples, he was calling them to be learners, discipuli, mathetes in Greek, students. Come be my students. Come follow me.
Learn from me.
Learn my ways. In that ancient society, whether it was Jewish or Roman, you weren't learning textbooks and doing exams. You were following the whole life. So, if you went to go live with an instructor, and often you would go live with your instructor, it was very rare that you could actually go to a habitual place.
You would actually often go and travel with your instructor as he traveled from city to city. You'd gain quite a retinue. But you'd not just be modeling the wisdom of what was being said, you'd be modeling.
Your life.
So, if they lived a frugal life, you were living a frugal life as well. What they ate and how they composed themselves, that's what you would begin to mimic. This is what it means to be a disciple. And we're taught by Christ how to do this.
And so, our thought, our conduct, our behavior, we're being influenced by Christ, by Christ.
Himself.
So, the first thing we must do is learn. Secondly, as we're learning and with what we've learned, we must guard. You must guard. Paul says it as a moral maxim in 1 Corinthians 15, bad company ruins good morals.
If you're around bad influence, that's tinting you. It doesn't matter how much good influence you have in front of you. You've got to guard. You've got to be on guard. You've got to be careful that when you're in those places that you can't choose the influences, that you have a missional mindset.
I'm not here as one of the guys. I'm here as an ambassador for Christ. I'm not here to pal around and these are my worldly friends as opposed to my church friends. No, I'm here sort of in a missionary mode.
This is my tent making and I'm always engaged in the work of my Father. Galatians 5, Paul brings this out. You were running well. What hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion, this influence is not from him who calls you.
A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Guard, Paul's saying. What happened? You weren't guarding. This isn't the kind of influence that comes from him who calls you. And that little bit of leaven, it ran through the whole batch of dough.
So guard.
Proverbs 13 20, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. You'd think the counterpart to that would be, but whoever walks with fools will become foolish. But that's not the counterpart. The counterpart is the companion of fools suffers harm.
Third, consider.
So you've been learning, you've been taught by Christ. You have this from his spirit, his influence in your life. And having that, you guard it. You look in your own life in ways that that's undermining.
You look at the influence of the world and those relationships around you. You are aware of the wiles of the enemy who prowls about seeking whom he may devour. So you guard. You've been taught.
You're learning.
You guard.
Now you consider. You consider. When I say consider, I mean, you realize now, as you're being taught by Christ, that all of this influence from him is meant to be an influence toward others. So you consider.
How can I be purposeful? Just like Rebecca considers. How can I reach Jacob? And she considers it in such a way that I really need Isaac to reach Jacob. So then she considers, how can I reach Isaac? Do you see?
She's thoughtful, deliberate. She considers. And we consider. Having this influence that we're guarding, how do we use it?
How can we wield it?
Who is God directing us to build this relationship with, that we might have a godly influence and point them unto Christ? So we consider our influence. Hebrews 10, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.
I don't think the writer of Hebrews is saying, let us consider. It would be good if I stirred my brothers and sisters up to love and good works. Well, I considered it. That's not what he's saying. Consider.
Bust out the post-it notes. How am I going to do this? How am I going to stir them up to love and good works? What can I do? What can I say? You consider because you recognize you have this influence.
And then fourth and last, continue. Don't lose heart.
Persevere in it.
Continue in what you've learned and what Christ is teaching you. As you're guarding it and as you're wielding it and using it, considering how further to use it because you're a rhizome, continue and don't lose heart.
I know what it's like to get that surge of, I really want this. I want to do this. It's January. Our home's going to be different this year. Look at the stack of books I got and we're doing this blog and we found this.
And I listened to my podcast on the way home. So when I get home, I'm in like a totally right frame of mind. And it starts to fizzle out. And what's the first thing you want to do? We'll wait till next year.
Maybe next year.
Continue.
When you start to wield that influence, don't be discouraged that it's not initially received. Father's turning that battleship around, you know, in one day. Don't be discouraged that no one's with that.
Persevere in that.
Persevere.
Your influence will be blessed by God. It will be made fruitful in due time. And so it may be that you're doing a lot of repenting and you're examining things and you're trying to make these changes and Christ is teaching you these things.
And so you're trying to hold on to them and you're considering how to do it. And it seems like every time you consider something to do, I'm going to take my family and we're going to have this whole weekend away.
And we're going to, it's going to be this great like spiritual retreat for us. And it's just a complete barn fire.
Continue. Continue.
The day will come where you can look back on that and go, do you remember that? Oh, I'm such a daydreamer. You know, God has rooted this optimism out of me. But look at the work he's done. We're now where I hoped we would be after that weekend.
Just took a lot longer.
2 Timothy 3, this is a father speaking to his son Timothy, right? Evil men, imposters, they'll grow worse and worse, deceiving, being deceived. But you must continue. You must continue in the things which you've learned.
You must continue in them, knowing from whom you've learned them. Now, as he's saying, Timothy, continue in all that I've taught you. I'm your father in the faith, Timothy. Remember who you learned it from.
Is that what he says?
No.
From childhood, he says, you've known the scriptures from childhood, Timothy. Timothy didn't even have the influence of a father in his life, as far as we know. There's no reference made to this spiritual leader in the home, a priest within the family.
We don't even know if Timothy's father was present in his life at all. If he was completely absconding, if he was there, if he died unexpectedly, if he was just a pagan that doesn't need to be named. We don't know.
All we know is that Lois and Eunice recognized that they had influence, and they used it. And that influence was there from his childhood. And now here he is, and he's ministering to these churches. And Paul says, don't ever forget that influence.
Continue in it. Continue in it. You've had this as part of your life from your grandmother and your mother, and continue in it. So we must continue. Be doers of the word, James says. Not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
When you look into that perfect law of liberty and continue in it, not being a forgetful hearer, but a doer, you will be blessed in all that you do. So learn. Guard what Christ is teaching you. Consider how you might use it.
What ways, what means, what relationships have you not sought to influence, so that you're prayerfully, consistently seeking to be an influence. And then continue in it. Even if it's discouraging, continue.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for this calling. Thank you for the examples that we have. Not only in this passage, Lord, in your word, but the examples that do surround us, Lord.
It's easy to highlight and, in a resentful way, cling on, cling into all the negative influences that have shaped us. But Lord, as your people, as Christians, we glorify you for all the positive ones.
We thank you for those good moments, those good examples, those good qualities, in both believers and in unbelievers, recognizing your common grace. We thank you, Lord, that you're faithfully, patiently, molding us into Christlikeness.
And we pray that we would be more aware, more convicted, of not using or misusing the influence that you've given us, Lord. All these things we ask in your son's name.