Lessons in the Life of Jacob — Don Courville

Let's pray. Our Father, we're back again. And I ask that the Spirit of God would take the Word of God and teach us some more truths. There's so much on this subject, Father, it's a huge subject and we're just on the footers really and then building foundation on that and you have given so much light to draw out in these principles in the New Testament that we really haven't even gone over and gone through.

You've given us Ephesians 6 about the armor, powerful truths, and now we ask again that you would be glorified, that you would rebuke and bind any spirits hanging around here. If there are any, I'll just invite all of you to go to the presence of Jesus Christ and go where he tells you to go.

And Lord, just send them to the pit, we don't need them. I'll replace your spirits. We thank you that in Christ, we're seated with Christ in the heavenlies and that you've given us verses like, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world and we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

And so in the name of Jesus, we lift up our families, our loved ones. Some of us have deep trials, rebellious young people that the enemy has been given ground and he's certainly taken advantage. But Lord, we stand now for our families, our children, grandchildren, and just ask you to have mercy and rebuke the enemy away from them right now.

You said we're two and three are gathered together and we're quite a few more than that. And so Father, we believe that right now in the name of Jesus, the power of the Spirit of God is working to rebuke the enemy away and to turn the hearts of the rebels back to you.

You know, we cry some of us, Lord, we're bleeding some of us and we thank you now for the victory. Thanks be to God, which gives us a victory in Jesus name, amen. Another thing from Ganahl, January 3rd, head and heart, he who has only a nodding acquaintance with the king may easily be persuaded to change his allegiance or will at least try to remain neutral in the face of treason.

Some professing Christians have only a passing acquaintance with the gospel. They can hardly give an account of what they hope for or whom they hope in. And if they have some principles they take kindly to, they're so unsettled that every wind blows them away like loose tiles from a housetop.

When Satan buffets and temptation washes over you like a tidal wave, you must cling to God's truths. They are your shelter in every raging storm, but you must have them on hand ready to use. Do not wait until it is sinking to patch the boat.

A feeble commitment has little hope of safety when caught in a tempest. While that flounders and drowns, holy determination grounded in the Lord will lift up its head like a rock in the midst of the highest waves.

Supreme Scripture promises that people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. Daniel 11, 32. An angel told Daniel which men would stand and be counted for God when tempted and persecuted by Antiochus.

Some would be taken in by the bribery of corrupt men. Others would fall victim to intimidation and threats. But a few who were firmly grounded in the attendance of their faith would do great things for God.

That is to say, to flatteries they would be incorruptible and to power and force unconquerable. Head knowledge of the things of Christ is not enough. This following Christ is primarily a matter of the heart.

If your heart is not fixed in its purpose, your principles, as good as they may be, will hang loose and be of no more use in the heat of battle than an ill-strung bow. Half-hearted resolve will not venture much nor far for Christ.

Well, we'll continue on. I hope you're not getting bored with all this. It's a little frustrating for me. I have this one little notebook, but I've got about a half a dozen, and the others have a lot more material in it than this, and I've been a little anxious to get over to some more stuff.

But I felt like in praying, God wanted me to go through the foundational work. Now we don't have to talk so much about Obu, who he represents, so much we understand some of those things. Now we're going to see a lot of this is working behind the scenes.

You can draw out a lot of these principles in the New Testament that the Apostle Paul really understood in the spiritual warfare. Job didn't go focusing on the enemy, he was too busy with his friends, really.

But he was focused on God and himself, and getting into more and more self. The more he had to defend himself, which is a real trap of the enemy. The Lord says, vengeance is mine, I will repay. And if he'd just been quiet, which they did pretty good for the first seven days.

Then they began to assume some things about Job that were not right. And God's assuming things about, or Job's assuming things about God that's not right. Well, I'm going to take off now on Jacob. And again, I'm glad you know a lot about this.

Jacob's Calling and the Divine Order of His Life

I got a little confused on the wells, I think I repeated one on some of my notes. The title of this one is, Lessons in the Life of Jacob. It's going to make a hard decision, I'm going to be back over around in Genesis 25.

We have promises given, 19 through 23. Which I will mention again, we've already talked about this. There's a battle going on in the womb of Rebecca. And the Bible says in 21, Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife because she was barren.

And the Lord was entreated of him and Rebecca, his wife conceived. And the children struggled together within her, and she said, if it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said unto her, two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels.

And the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger. Now, I'm assuming that Isaac knew about that. Maybe he didn't. But I think it was very clear to Isaac that the elder was to serve the younger.

And so whenever we try to reverse God's order for things in our life, we have problems. And so here we go into the soup deal with Jacob. We know the story. Esau's a hunter, and Jacob is more of a domestic man.

And Isaac is hungry, so he calls in Esau to make him some of the venison soup that he loves. Rebekah hears about it and says, uh-oh, Isaac's going to give Esau the blessing. Now God has already established that the elder shall serve the younger.

This is not supposed to be. Now Esau had by right the birthright, and I'll talk about some of these things. And so we're going to get some principles on this. Jacob, I believe, was born to be a leader.

He was born to be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, one of the three that we call. You go over to Hebron, there's a grave there, and in there is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I've stood there and looked at those graves, the old green tapestries.

You might have a hard time getting in there now. I think they've done some more buildings over it. But that was a long time ago, back in 1968. And so he was buried there. He was buried with Abraham and Isaac.

And God meant him to be a leader, and he's going to go through a process to get there. And we're going to learn some principles. God wanted him to be a winner, to be an overcomer. And in Christ, that's what God wants us to be, 1 John chapter 5.

And so here's some things. I'll just list some things here. Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup, and the double portion of all was to go with the birthright. Esau was a low-profane fella. He had no altars in his life that we know of.

Hebrew 12, 16 says he was profane. He was a profane person. He had no zeal for the Lord that we know of, no desire or affinity to God that we can see. But in this birthright, there was the double portion, and there was the dignity that went to it, and the authority, the power, and the spiritual heritage of the family.

He was to become basically the priest over the family. And so God, in his foresight, could see that wasn't going to work out with Esau, so he said Jacob needed to have it. And so we get into some interesting things in this.

One of the reasons Jacob's life is important is because 40 of the book of Genesis covers his life. 40 of it covers his life. So the foundation of the future and the rest of the Bible, 40 of Genesis, which is a very important book, there's some things here that we might need to learn.

Somewhere along the line, I picked up this statement from Hudson Taylor. I don't know where he got it, but God always gives his best to those who leave the choice to him. So Jacob's going to give us some lessons in choices and making decisions, and he's going to get into some tight places here.

Now the birthright, this position of authority, what's so special about it? It was nothing to Esau. He was just a rough, mountain-type guy. And so the birthright was his, and Jacob's going to take it to him, but the blessing is something else that Isaac's going to give to him.

So Jacob, I've understood that he really didn't have a right to take that birthright from him. So he tricked him. He didn't really trick him. He just made a financial deal with him, a fraudulent deal.

But he's going to pay a high price for all the things he tries to get for himself and not let God give him. God always gives his best to those who leave the choice to him. So he said, hey, this is a good deal.

I can get his birthright from him. He doesn't care about it anymore anyway. And then he's going to take the blessing away, which Isaac was going to give to Esau, and he'd been told that he's not supposed to do that.

So we've got problems, and we'll list these things as we go along. And he had basically a 20-year vacation away from his brother. Now, a principle here. Carnal methods never achieve spiritual goals. Even though there are some things that needed to be done and be done right, it didn't necessarily give Jacob the right to do it.

It's best let God do it, and many times it looks impossible. And like Abraham and Sarah, it doesn't look like we're going to have a child. I've got Plan B over here. Plan Bs don't really do too good. And here's another principle.

Even though he messes up so much, and this is good, grace is going to cover him. God's grace is going to cover him until he makes it right with Esau 20 years later. And he gets down there with Laban. We're going to look at those things later on, and he has a lot of fun there with Laban.

Spiritual Authority, Submission, and Divine Correction

So, moving into spiritual authority. Here's a principle. Moving into spiritual authority without proper spiritual authority's blessing usually doesn't work. I've seen a lot of men, I've worked with a lot of pastors, traveling around the country, a lot of different places, I see a lot of times those that have established themselves up as an authority, it doesn't work.

For one thing, they are to be qualified. And the Bible teaches that a man that's going to be in the position of eldership or whatever is to be proved. There's a reason for that. And so there's to be a submission to authority, so authority can establish and recognize you in that area.

And I'm not necessarily behind all the ways of man and doing that kind of stuff. But grace will cover him. And I've got another question, maybe you can help me on some of this. Did Rebecca talk to Isaac before she decided to make her decision?

Did she check with her husband? I would probably assume, maybe you too, nope. She's going to do it herself. Another woman fixing a deal here. How many deals can we get into? Two wrongs don't make a right.

And so what we're going to actually see is wrong to wrong to wrong to wrong. Two wrongs just don't make a right. Just like years ago, I heard a pastor share a story. He was in the church, he was a pastor in a large church, and he had a Chinese couple in there, and they had a baby.

And he's up there looking through the window at this baby, and the father's there, he's all lit up, he's got this new little baby, and the pastor turns to Mr. Wong, he says, Mr. Wong, is your baby okay?

Well, yes, pastor, what's wrong? Well, look, he's sort of all yellow. And Mr. Wong, he looked at the pastor, he said, Mr. Pastor, you ever heard of two wrongs making a right? So our two wrongs are not going to make a right.

Or why? And so what we have many times is we have a wrong, then we do another wrong to try to fix the other wrong, and then we'll maybe have another wrong about it. So we're going to learn some things and maybe pick up a key principle as we go along.

Here's an interesting thing. Why didn't God reprove Jacob for his deception? Why didn't God reprove Isaac for his affliction to do what he was going to do? There's a principle here that maybe we ought to go over to Jeremiah, in chapter 2, in verse 19, and see that this works.

Many times I believe God doesn't have to do anything because what we did is going to be punishment enough to what we've done. You ever get yourself in a jam, you know? Oh, Lord, how did I get into this?

Would you help me out? Would you help me out? I went into a church one time to help them out. I was only there eight months, but I went in there to help them out, and I got in there, and a guy there said, this is my dad's church.

And I said, oh, okay, I took that. And then somebody in the community, I met another man, that's so-and-so's church. Oh, I thought it was supposed to be the Lord's church. But we'll find out. And sure enough, it was his church.

And I ended up getting thrown out. But this is the thing. What we do, and the church had actually shut down, and I was asked to come in and help them out and stuff. And so I said, Lord, I'm in trouble.

How can you be the Lord of the church? And this guy wants to control and do everything his way. It's got to be done his way. It's his way or the highway type of thing. And I'm trying to obey you, and he wants me to obey him, which doesn't work out too good.

Would you show me the way out? And so I'd go to the deer stand out in the woods, and I would just pray and get prayed up and come in and preach. And he would sit there and just sort of jerk and stuff.

And God was working. We saw souls getting saved, people coming in. And, right, I mean, we had a lot of people one time. He just came up and said, would you just leave? I said, well, sure. It's your church anyway.

I don't know what happened after I left. They're still going. But God dealt with him because I left it to God. I didn't try to fight with him or whatever. And here's the principle. Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backsliding shall reprove thee.

Know, therefore, and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts. Now, what happened there, it happened a long time ago.

And since then, I've learned, I've had to try to learn this lesson again. But my own self-will, my wickedness, shall correct me, and my backsliding shall reprove me. Know, therefore, God is saying, see that it's an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God.

Now, this is a serious thing with Israel, but we just talk about, Lord, would you guide me? Would you give me direction or whatever? I hope it's what I want to do. Because really, if it's not what I want to do, I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway.

You ever do that? Okay, if we're in the same boat, then we'll sink together here. So the correction and the chastening and the instructing, the backsliding and going into apostasy and all this stuff comes from us trying to have it our way.

Isaac's Mistake and God's Sovereign Purpose

Now, what I see in this is Isaac almost failed. He was going to give the blessing to the wrong guy. He almost failed. And the Scripture said, the elder shall serve the other. And I want you to look at 2733.

Get back over to Genesis. And I want to show you something about Isaac. 2733, if I've got it right here, in 32, let's do this,. And Isaac his father said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, I am thy son, thy firstborn Esau.

And all of a sudden he realized he gave the blessing to Jacob. And what did he do? The Scripture says,. And Isaac trembled very exceedingly and said, Who? Where is he that hath taken the venison and brought it to me?

I'm taking that of trembling. Maybe you never even thought about this, but I'm taking it this. It's a shuddering, it's a quaking from the Hebrew. It's used in 4228. Their heart failed him. In Exodus 1916, the same word is used.

The people that were in the camp trembled. I mean, it just starts shaking. And I am just wondering if he all of a sudden realized that he almost made a big, bad mistake. Now, maybe just assuming that on him.

But all of a sudden, maybe the light is coming on that he almost made a real big mistake against God. And basically after this time, I think for, I don't know, 50 years, Isaac just sort of goes off the scene.

You don't hear much more about him until the death after they get Jacob sent off. So, I just wonder if he realized that God was overruling in this situation. Here's the principle. Somebody said this, neither Isaac's will, nor Esau's pleading, nor Rebekah's scheming, nor Jacob's deceiving could defeat the purpose of Jehovah.

Man proposes, but God disposes. God is going to get it His way because it's the best way. So, no matter how bad we mess up on something, we're going to suffer the consequences, but God's going to keep on moving ahead.

And so, he's going to work in this situation. This is actually what you could call a real family mess. You ever seen one of those? He said, yeah, I got one. This is a real family mess, and we're going to see the grace of God working.

Esau, Profanity, and the Consequences of Choices

So, we're going to look at some lessons on this. It's maybe not really highly organized, but Esau, again, in Hebrews 12, 16, 17, and 15, he failed, he fell short. Maybe I ought to go back over that. Because of the testimony about him, we have a man that God has chosen to be a patriarch, and we have Esau, his brother, who could care less about anything spiritual.

And so, Hebrews 12, 15, again, we come back to Esau, and hey, he did sort of want that blessing, didn't he? Because then he goes to pleading with his dad, and so his dad does give him a blessing, but not the blessing.

He was so low, he sold his birthright, and then he thought he was still going to get the blessing to be over everything. And so, here it describes him in Hebrews 12, 15, and he's pleading and begging, and the Word of God says, Look indeligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God.

Esau failed of the grace of God. Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. Lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.

And then 17, For you know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, but he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. I didn't understand that for years, until finally this was brought to light, that Isaac would not repent, and change his mind and give him the blessing.

He wasn't interested in repenting. He was not a repenter. He was just a profane person, but he wanted his dad to turn that around. And I believe Isaac knew what he did was overruled by God, and he gave the blessing to the right man.

And so he was profane. That's a word for wicked. That's a word for wicked. So choices. The choices. Now Rebecca, she initiated Jacob's deception, and she said what? If things don't work out, my wrong, your wrong that you do is going to be upon me.

And it was, upon her. But the deception that was there, this is one of the things I want to know, when I get to heaven, I said, Lord, what would you have done? Because Isaac was fixing to give the blessing to the wrong guy, and if Rebecca would have stayed out of it, what would you have done?

He said, I had it all figured out. Don't worry. It wasn't a problem. I had a plan. And so, so Jacob's going to get sent away, just looking out there, and she's never going to see him again as far as I know.

Leaving Self-Will for the Way of the Cross

So hard choices. All right. Choices. God always gives his best to those who leave the choice to him. Sometimes God has to let us go through some hard things for us to understand that he is in control.

I've read the life of Hudson Taylor two times. There's a thick book with fine print. I have to do it with a magnifying glass now. God's Man in China. And I read that a long time ago, and then I read it again.

But there's a story about Hudson Taylor's life. One day he went out into, you know, his heart was to go out into the inner China. He wanted to move away from the coast and all that, but he wanted to get out there.

So one time he went off on a trip. He took some of his servants with him, and he got way out there. And while he's way out there, his servants take all of the food and all the supplies, and he's just left with a little money, and they abandoned him.

I forget how far away it was. It was a long ways farther than he could make it back with what money he had. And so he started, and he'd come back at night. He said he would go sleep on the idol temple steps and try to curl up and protect his money so he wouldn't be robbed.

And he went like that for days and days. I can't remember how long it was until finally he was tired. He ran out of money. And then he's getting tired, he's getting worried. He wasn't a strong man anyway.

And then he ran out of money, and then he's getting tired, and he gets to a river, and he sees a boat going down the river, and he's very, very weak. And so he runs and tries to catch that boat, and he doesn't catch it, and he just collapses and passes out.

And he wakes up some hours later on another boat. Another boat had come by, and the captain had seen him and pulled over and got him up in the boat and then took off. And the captain of that ship found out where he was wanting to go.

I think it was back to Shanghai. And he took him down the river, and he had a junction there, and he got off, and he paid another captain of another boat to take him to Shanghai and to take him all the way to his doorstep.

So when that ship got there, that captain took him all the way to his door and left him there. And Hudson Taylor learned this great lesson, and that was this, that God is the circumstance in life. He is the one circumstance in life.

And that God could take care of him no matter what happened. Now Jacob's fixing to go off on this journey. Maybe some of you are in a journey, you've gone on a journey, or you're fixing to go on a journey.

But whatever you're in, and however you're walking with God, God's fixing to fix you. And if you've got a problem, or you've got something in your life that you don't like, and you're trying to fix it, let me tell you, God's fixing to fix you with the fix that you're in.

But if you try to fix the fix that you're in with, he'll find another fix to fix you with. So let him have his way with you. Let him do what he wants to do. So God's going to fix this man, Jacob. And so here we go.

Isaac went against God. Rebecca went against Isaac. He didn't like that. And Jacob went against Esau. And Esau didn't want God's rule, the spiritual authority. All he wanted was soup, and to get the blessing and just have his way.

And so here's a principle, a lesson. Without proper submission to authority, you're not ready for service. Without proper submission to God and to where you're at, you're not ready for God to use you.

And so Jacob is going to be, what do you say, ground to powder? Because he's going to get off with another deceiver. Laman. It's like the kid that wants to leave home. And so he runs off and to get away from his mother who is just controlling him and trying to direct him right, and he's got a rebellious heart.

And so what's he do? He goes off and joins the military and has a drill sergeant just like his mother. You know? So God's going to fix you. He'll fix you at home or he'll fix you out there. And so you're not ready to serve the Lord until you've learned to be in submission to authority.

And so what we see here a lot is behind the scene, underneath these grounds, underneath these things, the enemy is always working to try to get us away from the will of God and the blessing of God and the purpose of God.

And God's always counteracting. Now, Esau, he was a grief of mind to them. He just lived, he was just a rebel. He lived in rebellion. All right. Choices. Choices for the Christian begin at the cross. You'll always make wrong choices in your life until you come to Jesus Christ and you decide to surrender to him and let him be your Savior and let him be your Lord.

And so the cross is the pivot point in life. Take up your cross. Think about that. Jesus is talking, take up your cross and follow me and I'll make you fishers and men and stuff. What did the cross mean?

I mean, what do you mean? Take up the cross. We see them butchering people on crosses. What are you talking about? Be crucified. He's talking to them about being crucified with him and following him. It's never going to be easy, but it's the road to blessing.

Now, all four of these seem to choose things for themselves. They wanted to go their way. Isaac wanted what he wanted. Rebecca wanted what she wanted. She wanted him to get the blessing, which happened to be God's idea, but she's not doing it necessarily God's way.

And Jacob, you know, he knew this was wrong to save his father. And so Jacob is going to be, he's going to be brought to the cross in the process. And Jacob took advantage of Esau, and so what's going to happen when he gets with Laban?

Laban's going to take advantage of him. So what we sow, we reap. So if you want blessing, then give blessing and be in a position to be blessed. So it will cost you more. Now, here's a key principle. I'm going to hit a key one every now and then.

It's going to cost you more to refuse the cross than it will for you to choose the cross as a Christian. The easy way is usually not to cross, but the cross is the path of blessing. It's the path of power.

It's the path of walking with Christ. And so this is the principle that we need to understand. Another thing here, we must maintain unity in the home. There is division in the home. We must maintain unity in the church.

We must maintain unity with God. This is a key spiritual principle because the enemy is always working to try to get his way. He doesn't want this Messiah to make it to the throne. And so the battle all the way goes back to Genesis, again, where we were told that a Messiah would come, and he would deal with the enemy.

So this is sort of setting it up to where we're going. Have you ever made a real bad mistake? Have you? I mean, something you wished you could do over again. Now, Jacob, you know, this is a bad one, and he got through it.

It just cost him a lot, and there are a lot of things, but coming to the cross is not easy because it deals with our self-will. I'm going to share with you one of my worst ones that I regretted a thousand times.

And I was just young. I'd just only been a Christian about two years, and I was just growing. I'm just coming back from being overseas. I was just 20 years old when I went over there. I'm coming back at 22 years old.

I've already been in 15 countries, and I stopped off in Rome. I wanted to see Rome for a few days, and when we left the airport, and I'd done quite a bit of flying. I was in the Air Force. I could go hop on a plane and go anywhere I wanted if I had to leave, and they had room, and they did something with this plane that you're not supposed to do, and they packed that thing full of people, and they had all their bread and their sausage and all their relatives and everything.

This thing was like a family reunion in there, and we're going down the runway, and we're going down the runway, and we're going down the runway, and we're going down the runway, and I've already flown a lot, and I'm thinking, Lord, I think we should have been in the air by now.

We're going down the runway, and we're going down the runway, and I'm thinking, this is not really looking too good. But finally, they get the thing off the ground. It was way overloaded. And so as a consequence, we get out over the Atlantic Ocean, and the pilots are up there getting something figured out that they're not going to make it.

Now, that's going to be a problem. And so what they did is they decided the first time they could come inside of land, they better stop and get some fuel. So they stopped way up there in Newfoundland.

I think it was St. John's or someplace up there, and picked up some more fuel so they could make it on to JFK. So I would have never guessed God was in on this deal. I would have said, then, that was not a good thing to do.

But we got to JFK, and we're late. Now, I was supposed to meet an uncle there in the airport. And this uncle, I was his favorite nephew, and he was my favorite uncle. And he was the type of uncle that was just a cool uncle.

Everybody liked him. They called him, he had the nickname of Uncle Bunny. Bunny was his, because he was so fast as a kid, so they called him Bunny, and he grew up with that. So we all called him Uncle Bunny.

And he was an executive with Exxon Oil Company. He was up there. He'd been a painter, and he'd worked his way up to where he could inspect ships and things like that. And so we had a deal we would meet at the airport.

And so when I got there and got to the airport, I'm late, and it took a long time to get on the shuttle. And finally, when I got there, we only had five minutes. Five minutes. And they're already on the second call.

And we talked a few minutes, and then they get the third, the final call. And then he said, Donnie, why don't you just stay overnight with me and catch a plane tomorrow? I'm thinking, OK, I've been gone for almost a year and a half.

Mom and dad are driving up to Shreveport to get me. And I made a decision. I said, no, I think I'll just go ahead and go. And I went and got on the plane. I didn't know that God was in that deal of packing that plane full of Italians.

I didn't know that God did all the delaying to get me to stay there with him because he needed to be saved. And if anybody could reach him for Christ, I could. I blew it. I went on my way. I was not probably mature enough to read and understand and to be having a submissive spirit and a surrendering spirit.

And so that was in 1968, whenever it was, July, when I came back, or whatever. Several years later, he was driving home from work. He'd been drinking. He hit a bridge abutment. He hit the rail or whatever and split both these jugular veins in his head.

They put him in the surgery. They flew a surgeon in from California to do the surgery. Nobody in history had ever lived through this type of surgery. They operated 13 hours on one side and 12 hours on the other side to sew him back up.

They had medical students all over the thing watching this thing. And he lived. He lived. And after that, he got saved. And I knew that I had blown it, that God had orchestrated that in my life for me to be used to reach him.