God's Chosen One Genesis 27:1-29

The Main Idea of Genesis and the Chosen Line

Remember high school and might be in high school right now or going to be in high school in the future, when you had to write a paper with a thesis statement in the first paragraph, the thesis statement was a purpose statement.

This one sentence was what you were going to argue in the rest of the paper. Every book of the Bible has a main idea. The whole book supports and connects to this main idea in some way. The author has a major theme that we need to see as we read from the beginning, middle, and end of the book.

And as we have gone through Genesis over the last 14 months, we've seen many topics covered. But every topic we have seen fits into the larger focus of the main idea. As one pastor has put it, the whole book is like a melody, like a work of Mozart or Beethoven.

Every book in the Bible is like that as you read it and think about that as you read. Every smaller narrative fits in with the larger narrative. So what is the author Moses primary intention in Genesis?

Genesis is a book of beginnings. That's what the word Genesis means. We have seen the beginning of the world as God created all things. We have seen the beginning of sin when Adam and Eve sinned. We've seen the beginning of humanity's new startup after the flood.

We've seen the beginning of Israel as God chose Abraham and planned that this nation would go through him. As we see that Genesis is a book of beginnings, what major theme should we zero in on? When Adam and Eve sinned, God promised that he would send one to crush the head of the serpent.

Genesis 3 .15. So there would be a future offspring who would crush the serpent, Satan. Eve did not know who this offspring would be. As far as she knew, they might have been the first offspring that she had, Cain.

But we know how that turned out. It was not Cain. Cain was an evil person who murdered his brother Abel. So who would this offspring be who would put an end to evil for all time? The answer to this is that God chooses a line to be a blessing to the whole world.

This line started with Adam and Eve's third son, Seth. Seth was the chosen line and Cain was the non-chosen line. From the line of Seth would come notable people such as Enoch, Noah, and Abraham. This line would eventually lead to a distant offspring who would crush the head of the serpent and deliver humanity from their sin and Satan's tyranny.

This distant offspring is, of course, Jesus Christ. Throughout Genesis we have seen the Lord faithfully preserve, protect, and bless this line. What we have seen in recent weeks in Genesis is that Isaac continues this line after Abraham.

Then Isaac's wife, Rebecca, has two twin boys. So who of these twin boys is going to continue the blessed line? And that's what we're going to look at today. The twin boys, Jacob and Esau. These are two lives with two very different outcomes.

One would be chosen of God and the other not. One life would be a life of triumph. The other would be a life of tragedy. In our text this morning we're going to see this in Genesis 27. So I encourage you as always to turn in a Bible with me there.

If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 25. This sermon is titled God's Chosen One. This is a big chapter of 46 verses. So what we're going to do is we're going to take point one today and point two next Sunday.

So point one is going to focus on Jacob. Point two is going to focus on Esau. So we'll start with the good and end with the bad. Our big idea, our proposition is God is sovereign over the destinies of believers and unbelievers.

We're going to see two flip sides in this text. The first is that he uses providential means to forever bless one. In verses 1 -29 we will see this, but before we jump in, we'll do a recap of last week's sermon.

We looked at the second half of Genesis 26. We looked at two conflicts that Isaac faced and how he rightly handled them. He handled them in a godly way that we should emulate. And as we face inevitable conflict, we learned two resolutions to handling conflict.

The first resolution is to make every effort to pursue peace. Isaac pursued peace in situations where he could have sparked friction between him and the other parties. We too must aim at peace by doing our part and being willing to forgive if the other side also desires to pursue peace.

And even if they're not willing to pursue peace, we need to be people who do everything we can to pursue peace and not hold bitterness as we wait. For hopefully reconciliation to take place. And the second resolution we saw is to make the Lord your focus.

And this really is the key to people who are peacemakers. The Lord is their focus and they don't get involved in all these little piddly disputes, these little conflicts that happen all over the place.

So this brings us to our text today in Genesis 27. The story of Jacob and Esau are now back in the picture. We just saw them a few weeks back. And in order to understand this narrative, we need to understand the previous episode between these two sons.

In chapter 25, after a long wait, the Lord finally answered Isaac's prayer that his wife, Rebecca, become pregnant. They had to wait 20 years to have a baby. And it turned out that she was pregnant with these two twin boys.

And during the pregnancy, the Lord gave Rebecca great difficulty that previewed the future tension between these two twin boys. And what we saw is a prophecy in Genesis 25 -23. And that prophecy said, the older shall serve the younger.

And at the birth of these two twin boys, the end of chapter 25 gave us the picture of the younger son, Jacob, holding the heel of Esau. And this is not literal, but the picture was intended to mean that Jacob would deceive Esau.

And that's why his name actually literally means cheater or deceiver. And you can remember that Esau was the outdoorsman while Jacob was the homebody. So as you picture today, right? So there's men in this town who aren't hunting, right?

And there's men in this town who are hunting. Esau was the hunter. Jacob was the guy who liked to stay home. And Jacob had something that Esau wanted, and that was his birthright. And as the firstborn, Esau would receive the inheritance and the family blessing would go through him.

And this was a big deal in every family. Who would get the birthright? And typically it went to the firstborn. But this was a bigger deal in this family than any other family because the living God, the only God, was going to choose this family to bless the whole world.

And so if you were going to get the blessing, you were going to continue this wonderful line into the future. And the Lord made the prophecy that the older shall serve the younger, which was contrary to custom.

And the Lord does things in mysterious ways. And to give up the birthright would be to give up the blessing of this line. The birthright and the blessing were not the same thing. They were different. But they went hand in hand.

If you got the birthright, you got the blessing later on. And Jacob, while being deceitful, was noble in that he desired for the blessing to go through him, while Esau was unholy in that he did not care that the holy line went through him.

It meant nothing to him. His mind was on earthly things. And Jacob told Esau that he could have the meal he was cooking if he could have Esau's birthright. And without giving it much thought, Esau sold the birthright to Jacob.

And what we are going to see today is that since Esau was so willing to flippantly give up his birthright, the Lord would not let Esau get the blessing of having this chosen line go through him. To the Lord, the birthright and the blessing, as I mentioned, go hand in hand.

In other words, to not to desire the inheritance that one had as their birthright was not to desire the spiritual line that would go through them. In Hebrews 12, 15 and 16 tells us this. The text tells us that we are not to be unholy like Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal.

And there is rich application in this. And I just want to warn you right now, most of the application is next Sunday. But you can kind of see what it is already. People all over the world are selling their souls for a single meal when they can have everything if they wanted it.

So I'm giving you a little preview of next Sunday. But the Lord rejected Esau because he did not want the blessing. He did not want the birthright. So as we see this narrative today, this is the background story of why Esau is rejected and Jacob accepted as the inheritor of the most blessed line in the history of the world.

The line that started with Seth continued through Enoch and Noah, then eventually went to Abraham and Isaac, and now this spiritual line would go through one of these two twin boys. And what I want you to notice in this narrative is God's providence in this.

The Lord would fulfill the prophecy of 25 -23, the older shall serve the younger. The Lord fulfills this, as we shall see, through strange means. You might think, I wouldn't have done it that way. But the Lord does it this way.

And He's sovereign over this, and we need to see this. God uses the sins of people in this narrative to bring about His purposes. Ephesians 1 .11 says that all things happen according to the counsel of God's will.

And so we'll see that here. And even though God uses sinners to accomplish this, He Himself never sins. And that's a very important point we have to emphasize. He never sins. And yet He governs circumstances to bring about His purposes.

God cannot sin. He is holy, which means He is set apart from anything that is evil. But He is indeed providential over the actions of humans. So I am going to begin by reading the first four verses and then say a few things.

So let's look at verses 1 -4. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau, his older son, and said to him, My son, and he answered, Here I am. He said, Behold, I am old.

I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver, and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me, and prepare for me delicious food such as I love. And bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die.

Right from the get-go, the author Moses tells us that Isaac is old and has a hard time seeing. Isaac's poor eyesight is very important to this narrative. Isaac knows that he is going to die, and before he dies, he needs to bless his older son, Esau.

I already mentioned above that the one who would receive the birthright is the one who would get the blessing. The birthright is the inheritance, while the blessing is the one who would carry this chosen family line forward.

And when Esau forfeited the birthright, he forfeited the blessing. What is interesting about this is that Isaac is not aware of this. The father who gives the blessing is not aware of this. Even though Jacob has the birthright, Esau sold it to him, Isaac is ready to give the blessing to Esau and continue the chosen line through him.

So he didn't get the memo, apparently. But what we will see is that God is not going to let this happen. The Lord knows what happened in chapter 25, and not only that, but the Lord's plan all along was to give the blessing to Jacob.

The older shall serve the younger. Now, as we see in the text, the way that Isaac is going to give this blessing is after eating a delicious meal hunted for and prepared by Esau. By the way, speaking of providence, I find it interesting that it's hunting, right?

The opening hunting weekend, and we're talking about hunting. So, we see God's providence there, too. And what we see is that Isaac desires for Esau to get this blessing. If you can remember from Genesis 25 -28, Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

So the parents had a favorite. And as Isaac is giving these instructions to Esau, Rebekah is listening in. And she comes up with a plan to make sure Jacob gets the blessing and not Esau. So let's look at verses 5 -13 as Rebekah listens and then comes up with a plan.

Rebekah's Deception and Jacob's Disguise

Now, Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau.

Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord before I die. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. Go to the flock and bring me two young goats so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves.

And you shall bring it to your father to eat so that he may bless you before he dies. But Jacob said to Rebekah, his mother, behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth man. Perhaps my father will feel me and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing.

His mother said to him, let your curse be on me, my son, only obey my voice and go bring them to me. Now, in verses 6 -10, Rebekah gives the plan to Jacob as to how they are going to fool Isaac and make sure Jacob gets the blessing.

In verse 9, Rebekah tells Jacob to grab two goats from the flock and bring them to her. And I know, of course, that we are in hunting season right now and we know that gathering goats from the flock is not hunting.

Imagine Maya telling Shayla that whatever game I get today we are going to eat for dinner tonight. And instead of getting a nice buck, he pulls a sheep from their pen and slaughters it and that's dinner.

This is pretty much what they're doing right here. This is Rebekah's plan. I hope that doesn't actually happen later today. So this is not hunting game from the wild. This is deceiving by gathering goats from their own flock.

We see the deceitful plan explained more in verses 11 -13. Jacob is concerned that Isaac will discover that it is him and not his brother. We've already learned from 25 -27 that Esau was an outdoorsman while Jacob was an indoorsman.

One of my friends back home, he called himself the great indoorsman. We learn in verse 11 that Esau is a hairy man and Jacob a hairless man. And of course I can empathize with Jacob much more than Esau.

It's funny, I've always been unable to grow facial hair. One Sunday, I wasn't going to preach the following Sunday and Brianne and I were like, let's try to grow a beard here, let's just see what happens.

And three days in, I stopped because it didn't look good. We cut our losses and we ended that. But Jacob, he doesn't have much hair, he can't grow hair it sounds like. And Jacob is concerned that Isaac will feel him and notice that his skin is smooth and know that he is being deceived and curse him instead of bless him.

That he's going to find out. But Rebecca brings Isaac comfort by saying that if he does discover that you are Jacob and not Esau, the curse is on me and not you. But Rebecca brings Isaac to this point and Jacob, we'll notice here, is willingly going along with this.

And the goal here is to get the blessing to Jacob and not Esau. And what we read in verses 14 -17 is that the mama's boy, Jacob, obeys his mother. Verses 14 -17,. So he went and took them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared delicious food, such as his father loved.

Then Rebecca took the best garments of Esau, her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob, her younger son. And the skins of the young goat she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck.

And she put the delicious food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son, Jacob. So Jacob gathers the two young goats and brings them to his mother. It appears that Rebecca is more of an outdoorsman than Jacob.

All Jacob did was get the goats, and Rebecca is the one who seems to have slaughtered them and prepared them for Isaac. Rebecca knew what her husband liked, and she knew not only because of the instructions that she overheard from Isaac to Esau, but also as the wife of Isaac, she prepares it for his liking.

The married men in this room probably love their wife's cooking. At least you tell your wife that, right? And Rebecca prepares the meal in such a way that it satisfies Isaac. She knows what he likes for food.

And in verse 15, we see the plan they come up with to deceive Isaac to make him think it is Jacob and not Esau. They have to do something about his skin. They need to disguise his body with hairy material to make this work.

So the first thing that Rebecca did is she took the garments of Esau and put them on Jacob. Then she put the skins of the young goats who were just slaughtered on Jacob's hands and neck. Two places where Isaac would feel.

And the food that she prepares, she puts into Jacob's hands. And at this point, let me remind you that the Lord is using strange circumstances to bring about his purposes. These thoughts are going to be going through your head as you read this.

Why is it happening this way? The Lord does not condone the actions, but he uses their actions to make sure Jacob gets the blessing. Remember, as 25 .23 says, the Lord chose the younger and not the older.

He chose Jacob and not Esau. You might wonder, well why? I was actually thinking about this week. Why does the Lord use these circumstances to bring about these purposes? And one thing that came to my mind is, remember, Isaac thinks that Esau is going to get the blessing.

He's 100 thinking that way. So something has to happen here to mix this up. Because, remember, Isaac loves Esau. He's not just going to give up. So the Lord has to use something strange here to make it so that the blessing somehow gets to Jacob and not to Esau.

And let me point out here that Esau is getting what he deserves. He's not an innocent victim in this. He's a willing participant in this. But the Lord planned from the beginning that Esau would forfeit the blessing.

Isaac Blesses Jacob by Mistake

And with all this preparation, the time comes for Rebekah and Jacob to deceive Isaac. So let's read how Isaac is fooled in verses 18 -25. So he went in to his father and said, My father, and he said, Here I am.

Who are you, my son? Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Now sit up and eat of my game that your soul may bless me. But Isaac said to his son, How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?

He answered, Because the Lord your God granted me success. Then Isaac said to Jacob, Please come near that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not. So Jacob went near to Isaac, his father, who felt him and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.

And he did not recognize them because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. He said, Are you really my son Esau? He answered, I am. Then he said, Bring it near to me that I may eat of my son's game and bless you.

So he brought it near to him and he ate and he brought him wine and he drank. Now in verses 18 and 19, Jacob walks into the room to feed his father with the game. And he tells, I put game in quotations here.

He tells Isaac, Eat this so that you can bless me. In verse 19, we see that he emphasizes that he is the firstborn. And this tells us that the firstborn was typically the one who received the blessing.

And since Jacob bought the birthright from Esau for the meal he made him back in chapter 25, he thought he should be treated as the firstborn. And the Lord thinks so too. Jacob valued the blessing more than Esau.

And the Lord providentially makes it so that Jacob would receive the blessing. But as Jacob tries to pull this off, it does not come so easily. Isaac is not so easily fooled. Because what we see here is that Isaac becomes immediately suspicious.

And in verse 20, he wonders how he could have hunted and cooked the game so quickly. Without batting an eyelash, Jacob responds that the Lord blessed him with the game. And all the hunters in this room right now are saying, Wouldn't hunting be great if I can catch something that quickly?

If I can kill a couple of deer in a matter of a couple of hours? I was actually talking to John Shenard last week and he went all the way to Montana to hunt. And I said, Did you get anything? And he said, No.

But he said he had a good time. I prepared this for John and he's not here today. So you can tell John that I mentioned him in my sermon. Now hunters in this room know that it doesn't work like this. It does not work like this typically.

And so Isaac knows this too. And he's immediately suspicious. And Isaac's suspicion leads him to want to feel his son to see if he is indeed Esau. It's interesting. My family and I, we play a game, a fun game that my sister-in-law, their family came up with it.

And it's called the Blanket Game. And it's kind of like hide and seek. Yes, adults do this. One person goes and counts and everybody else hides. And they hide under blankets, sleeping bags, and pillows.

And it's a game of deception because when the person comes out, they have to find which person is under which material. Blankets, pillows, sleeping bags. And we actually switch clothing. You might put a foot out and a sock and they say, Well, that's Seth's sock.

So is it Seth or is it someone else? And so on and so forth. We make people look bigger than they are or smaller than they are. And sometimes we actually put everybody under one thing and put decoys in other places.

It's a game of deception. But Jacob in this narrative desires for his dad to think that he is Esau. And they have used a disguise to fool him. In verse 22, Isaac decides that he feels like Esau, but his voice is like Jacob.

One amazing aspect of God's creation is that every person has a distinct voice. People may sound somewhat alike, but every person has a voice that is unique to him or her. So Isaac is once again suspicious.

He was first suspicious because of how quickly he hunted the game, and now he's suspicious because he does not sound like Esau. Isaac knows what his voice sounds like. But the fact that Jacob feels like Esau causes Isaac to lean toward believing that this is indeed Esau, my firstborn son.

So that leads Isaac to initially bless Jacob at the end of verse 23 and then ask just to make sure, are you really my son Esau? So he's like 80 -90 sure and he asks just to get that 10 or 15 more percent.

Once again, we do not follow Jacob's example in this. Sometimes we emulate the people of scripture. As it says in the New Testament, Paul says, follow me as I follow the example of Christ. If someone is living in a godly way, we should emulate that.

But if they're doing what they're doing here, we should run from that. And what we see in verse 25 is that Jacob succeeds in fooling his father, and Isaac plans to bless him. Isaac, one last time, wants to make sure that this is indeed Esau.

And so he tells his son to come near him so that he can kiss him in verse 26, the beginning of verse 26. Then his father Isaac said to him, come near and kiss me, my son. And the beginning of verse 27 says, so he came near and kissed him.

And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him. So as Jacob kisses his father, Isaac smells the garments that he was wearing. And remember in verse 15, we read that Rebecca gave Jacob the best garments of Esau.

And as Isaac smells the garments, he believes that this is Esau. As we all have a distinct voice, we also have a distinct smell. You can ask any canine this, who have an excellent sense of smell. They can tell who people are just by smelling them.

And while Isaac's eyesight is poor, his smell is still good enough to recognize that the clothing is Esau's. He's persuaded enough to give the blessing to this son, whom he thinks to be Esau, but is in fact Jacob.

We learn what this blessing is in the following verses and how incredible it is. In the second half of verse 27 through 29, let's read this together here. And he blessed him and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.

May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers and may your mother's sons bow down to you.

Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. Okay, so this belongs to Jacob, the second son, and not Esau. And this blessing has two components to it. The first focuses on the blessing of the land.

Oh, how important the land promise is in Genesis. We see this with the mention of the field being blessed, the dew of heaven that would water the field, the fatness of the earth symbolizing plenty, and the grain and wine in abundance.

The second component of the promise focuses on the blessing of the offspring. The Abrahamic covenant here, the Abrahamic promises. It is specifically that a blessed nation would come from this blessed child.

Isaac blesses Jacob by saying that peoples will serve him. This shows the preeminent place that Israel would have in the future. This nation that would come from these people. And again, this echoes the prophecy of 2523.

The older shall serve the younger. And when it says peoples serving Jacob and nations bowing down to him, this is primarily referring to Edom. Edom was the nation that came from Esau. But since nations and peoples are plural in this verse, other nations are included here as well.

Hundreds of years after this, the Canaanites would be driven out by the Israelites, and this prophecy would come true. However, Edom... What's interesting is that there's actually a plot twist later on in Genesis where actually Edom has more power than these Israelites.

But over time, it is Israel that has the power, and Edom becomes this weak little nation to the east of Israel. And Isaac mentions in this blessing that his son would be lord over his brothers, and the brothers here probably refers to his relatives.

We know all these sons that came from Abraham, and certain nations come from them. And the blessed line that comes from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, they would be the ones who would have the dominance.

And the last statement here has... or the second to last statement here has irony to it. Isaac tells his son that his mother's sons would bow down to him. Remember here, as we've seen in this narrative, Rebekah was the one who instigated this, and she is the one who brings blessing to one son, and a non-blessing to the other.

However, as Isaac says this, he does not know Rebekah is involved in influencing which son gets the blessing. So there's irony as we see here. And the last portion of Isaac's blessing closes with a sentence that sounds familiar to us.

He tells his son, Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you. This is the promise the Lord made to Abraham when he first called him. In Genesis 12 -3, Anyone who blesses you will be blessed.

Anyone who curses you will be cursed. So the blessing that Isaac gives his son is a reiteration of the Abrahamic promise. In other words, the son who receives the blessing is the one who will carry the Lord's promises of blessing with him.

This son is chosen of the Lord and blessed by him. So what we just saw here is the most significant line in history goes through Jacob and not Esau. And the Lord uses bizarre, and that's an understatement, bizarre circumstances to bring this about.

God's Sovereignty, Human Responsibility, and the Call to Trust His Providence

So what do we do with all this? This is where we have to understand that the Lord's ways of doing things and accomplishing his purposes is so much different from what we might think he accomplishes things.

The Lord said in Isaiah 55 -9, For as high as the heavens are than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. The Lord throughout history has used strange circumstances to bring about his good purposes.

And I read one earlier in the call to worship that said, For truly in this city, in Acts 4 -27 -28, For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

The Bible says that. And we need to believe everything the Bible says. The Lord used sinful acts to accomplish our salvation, and yet he did not sin himself. And that's a point we must emphasize. But he orchestrates these details to bring about his good purposes.

And we see that here, as he keeps this chosen line going through the son he wanted it to go through, and not the other. As Genesis 50 -20 says, What they meant for evil, God meant for good. And this is the truth that we must accept.

It's a beautiful truth. As the Lord weaves the circumstances of history for good, so he weaves the circumstances of your life as a follower of Christ, for your good and for his glory. And at times it can be hard to see that.

You face bizarre circumstances in your life, too. And you might wonder, Lord, how is this working for my good and for your glory? But we can take comfort in reading the Bible and seeing the big picture and seeing, yes, the Lord's wisdom is incredible.

And he does do this. All truths of Scripture that come from the Lord are beautiful. And what we just saw in the first 29 verses is that God chose to forever bless a man, not because he was good, but because the Lord, in his wisdom, decided to continue this line through Jacob.

He was working everything for his good, even through sinful circumstances. And that's what Romans 8, 28, God works all things for the good of those who love him. The Lord strangely weaves circumstances together to fulfill the prophecy of 25, 23.

The older shall serve the younger. And what's interesting here is that we have to see, that's the divine side, we have to see the human side in this as well. Who wanted the blessing? Was it Jacob or was it Esau?

You can say it out loud. Jacob wanted the blessing. Who didn't want the blessing? Esau. So we see God's sovereignty, yes, but we see the human actions, the human freedom here. Esau didn't want it. He sold his birthright for a single meal, therefore he forfeited the blessing.