Book of Genesis - Ch. 25, Vs. 19 (01/24/2016)

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son of the covenant, Isaac. This is God's promise that he made to Abraham back in chapter 17.

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And God said, Sarah, thy wife will bear thee a son indeed, and thou shalt call his name

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Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.

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So we dealt with that last week, and we considered who it was, what the covenant was, how long was the covenant, and who was this seed guy, his seed after him?

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Who are we talking about? We're talking about Isaac, the direct person, the covenant with Isaac, with him,

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Isaac, an eternal and everlasting covenant, and with his seed, with Isaac's seed after him.

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So who was that? That was Jesus. That was the Messiah. And then we looked at two aspects of the idea of seed.

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And we talked about, who is the seed, the identity of the seed? The seed of the woman?

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Jesus. The seed of the serpent? Who is that? Say Satan.

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OK, the serpent was Satan. So the seed of the serpent would be someone who came from Satan, and was mimicking

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Christ, the Antichrist.

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And then we dealt with the enmity between the two seeds, that is to say, the hatred or the enmity between the

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Antichrist and Jesus. So now we are to the most delicate part of the concept of the seeds.

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This is the problem. This is the area where we have the most problems in dealing with our fellow

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Christians. So we'll just go ahead and deal with it. Matthew 13, go ahead and go there.

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I'll tell you why you're looking there. That Matthew 13, I said, didn't tell you the verse. Start at verse 36.

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Early in Matthew 13, Jesus delivers a parable.

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And it's the parable of the wheat and the tares. And he's given them the parable.

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And he's told them that there's two kinds of seed in the field, the wheat and the tare.

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And the disciples say, are we to go out and pluck up the tares? And he said, no, leave it alone. In the end, we will deal with it.

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So we have the disciples to thank for getting a good explanation of what this parable is all about.

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So here we pick up in 36. Then Jesus sent the multitudes away and went into the house.

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And the disciples came unto him saying, declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.

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So anybody that doesn't understand what the parable is, Jesus is going to explain it to you. He answered them and said, he that soweth the good seed is the son of man.

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So he said, I sow the good seed. The field is the world. The good seed are the children of the kingdom.

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But the tares, that is to say the bad seed, are the children of the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them is the devil.

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And the harvest is the end of the world. The reapers are the angels.

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As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be at the end of the world.

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The son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and then which do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire.

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And there shall be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of the father, who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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So my question to you is, in all of this business of seed, where are we?

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We believe we're the seed that Jesus sowed. We sure hope we're the seed that Jesus sowed, don't we?

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Yes, indeed. Well, what I was really referring to is, we are not involved in the aspect of the enmity between the seed of Satan and the seed of the serpent.

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Well, I did it twice, didn't I? The seed of Satan and the seed of the woman, where the seed of the serpent was in conflict with the seed of the woman, and did everything he could to thwart the coming of the

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Lord. If you go through the Old Testament, you see section after section after section where someone is doing something to try to destroy the line to the

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Messiah. We talked about that last week. It didn't take very long. Within the first two children born to Eve, one killed the other one.

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And Satan thought he had broken the line. But the seed wasn't through the eldest son, it normally was.

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It was through the third son, Seth. Well, there's all of this workings of Satan and his attempt to interfere with the line to the

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Messiah. Well, we're not involved in that. That happened 2 ,000 years ago. That was accomplished 2 ,000 years ago when

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Christ gave his life on Calvary.

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So we're not involved in Satan's attempt to thwart the coming of the

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Messiah either, either against it or for it. We're just out of that all together. That's happened 2 ,000 years ago. Nor have we arrived at the harvest at the end of the world.

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We're not there yet, are we? There are people, and one of them, that think there are indications that that time is near.

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But maybe it's not, because people have been thinking that for years. But there are so many things that it must be near.

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No, we're in the field. We're wheat mixed among the tare.

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And our challenge is how to live as wheat among the tare. Jesus is very clear.

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There are good seed and there are bad seed. But despite that, today there are many people who believe that all seeds are the same.

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They believe that if we're clever enough and we present a good enough argument, we can convince a wheat,

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I'm sorry, we don't do that, we can convince a tare to become a wheat. Or if you want to change metaphors, we can convince a goat to change into a sheep.

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But the first thing we need to consider is that there's no argument convincing enough that another with a better argument might not convince them to convert back.

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If you talk someone into converting and you do it by clever argument, somebody with a better argument might come along and convince them otherwise.

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So your security, your salvation would not be secure. So it has nothing to do with our ability to being able to talk someone into salvation.

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I thought you must have been off on the Air Force mission. No, no Air Force mission. Now, if I were

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Brother Otis, I would scold you right now. I did that in order to introduce you to my sister and my brother -in -law.

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This is my sister and this is my brother -in -law and this is the young man

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I told you what that used to teach not too long ago at the Air Force Academy. And he brought his, he came and he brought his wife and three wonderful, is it three?

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Three wonderful children. And it's his daughter that I helped with chemistry once in a while. Okay, that's a, but I just wanted everybody to know everybody.

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I think now, if you don't know my sister and my brother -in -law, there are these two right here behind the carpet.

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And we'll have time to discuss in between, chat in between. But I'm just delighted to have them here.

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Oh, they're here hog hunting. Well, Tom's here hog hunting.

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Jane is here in support. Okay, so the first thing we've dealt with is are there good seeds and are there bad seeds?

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And is there anything one can do to convince a bad seed to become a good seed? We are compelled to present the gospel message.

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We're not compelled to convert them. If they're to be converted, it's going to be up to God to convert them, not us.

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So one thing we can take comfort in, if we attempt to convince someone to become a

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Christian and we lay the message out and we really butcher it and we do a terrible job, we know this, that if they belong to God, however we delivered that message, it will reach them.

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And if they don't belong to God, no matter how we deliver it, it won't reach them. So it gives us some comfort. It doesn't give us any rest though because we're still compelled to deliver the message.

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But we're not responsible for the outcome of it. So beyond the fact that one argument, if one argument can sway them one way, a better argument can sway them back.

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Beyond that, we're given instructions as to how to handle the word of God. We're not to handle the word of God deceitfully.

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And I think a lot of times we do that. I don't mean necessarily we, but people that are

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Christians a lot of times handle the word of God deceitfully. They have something they want to convince the community of and they fiddle with the gospel in order to make it prove what they want it to prove, which takes things out of context.

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They take Jesus out. They take Jesus out. Put somebody else in. There's a lot of things they do.

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In 2 Corinthians chapter four, Paul tells us about this. So go ahead and go there. 2

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Corinthians chapter four. Thank you. Well, we'll start at verse one with this one.

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You mean two Corinthians? I'm sorry. As a matter of fact, let me tell you, in defense of my man, who they were criticizing for calling it two

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Corinthians, that is the proper nomenclature. It is not really second

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Corinthians. In fact, if you talk about the letters, it's got to be at least the third letter. Because in the second letter, he refers to a letter in between the first letter and the third letter.

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So I'm all good with that. Two Corinthians. Two Corinthians four. Well, at least he didn't call it a little heaven

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Corinthians. Yeah. Yeah. Now I've totally lost my train of thought.

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I'm sorry. The good thing is,

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I've got the passage here and it's highlighted. I've got it color coded so I know where to go.

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Two Corinthians four one. Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not, but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty.

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Not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscious in the sight of God.

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So we're enjoying not to walk in craftiness, not to try to get the

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Bible to say what you want it to say. Now listen to what Paul has to say. And this is to me a key verse.

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But if the gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.

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In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine upon them.

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Now that's scary. Is the gospel hid from anyone?

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The gospel can be presented. The gospel can be presented. People can read it.

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And we have people, we have biblical scholars who study it. And yet the gospel is hid from them.

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The gospel is hid from those who are lost. And it's hid from them in order that the light of the word not shine on them.

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For we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ, the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

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For God, who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness, hath shined into our hearts to give light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

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So what does that say? God has commanded the light to come out. God has commanded you to show your light.

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He's not commanded that everybody see that light and recognize that light for what it is.

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Most everybody will recognize that you're different. But some will just think you're odd.

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And some will recognize why you're different. And consider this, but we have this treasure, this light that's shining forth out of us.

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We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.

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So we're not, Billy Graham is not the great man that he is because he is able to convince multitudes of people.

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To the extent that he's a great man, he's a great man because the light shines forth out of him, not by the number of people that walk down the aisle.

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We're troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We're perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the

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Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be manifest in our mortal flesh.

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So the bad things that we have, the bad things that come into our life, come into our life in order that it is the light of the

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Lord that people see, not the light of me. And we all have in us a temptation, a tendency to want to be,

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I want to be the center, I want to win someone to Christ, I want to be the greatest debater,

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I want to be I, I, I, but it's not I at all. And that's the difference.

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Now, I want to backtrack something, and there's two reasons for this.

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One, I think Brother David was not here the Sunday we dealt with this, and I want to redo it, and I don't think

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I got to it last time either, so some of you are gonna hear some things that you've already heard. There's a struggle today between two worldviews.

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The followers of two gods, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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You know who that is. Mark 12 says, as touching the dead that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses how in the bush

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God spake unto him saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the

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God of Jacob. There's a struggle between that God and the followers of two gods.

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The followers of a counterfeit God, a God inspired by Satan, a

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God followed by the other sons of Abraham, Ishmael and the sons of Keturah.

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If you remember, the one wife, I'm sorry, the one son of Abraham, Isaac was promised by God.

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The other two sons of Abraham, Ishmael, and the sons of Keturah were brought into the world,

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I guess is what we could say, into the world not as a surprise to God, but as an alternative brought in by the actions of Abraham and Sarah, and then later just Abraham himself, not by the inspiration of God.

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There's only one son through which the covenant passed. I wanted to say

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Israel, but Isaac is the word I want, Isaac. So we've got these two groups, the followers of the

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God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the followers of the other sons of Abraham, and so let's go on.

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Make no mistake about it. These are not the same two gods.

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The gods of Abraham's other sons are different than the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob.

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Earlier this month, a firestorm erupted when a

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Christian college suspended a professor over this very issue.

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The question, do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? I looked in the internet and found a posting from a source as far removed from me as I could possibly find, and I found it in the

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Washington Post. The Washington Post is a reputable paper, but it's not one that I would run out and say,

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I base all of my beliefs on that. In fact, most everything they say, I disagree with, and I picked this posting for that reason, and so here's what it said.

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Wheaton College, an evangelical college in Illinois, had placed an associate professor of political science,

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Larissa Hawkins, on administrative leave after she made a controversial theological statement on Facebook that Muslims and Christians worship the same

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God, and then it went on, and it was a longer article, and I read it all two weeks ago, but skipping on down to the bottom of that article, it said, speaking at a press conference in the sanctuary of Chicago's first United Methodist Church on Wednesday, Hawkins reiterated that she has not wavered from the college's statement of faith.

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She said, Wheaton College cannot scare me into walking away from the truth, that all humans, and then she lists them,

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Muslims, the vulnerable, and the oppressed of any ilk are all my sisters and brothers, and I'm called by Jesus to walk with them, she said.

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That was her, and she had some other things. She had a statement attributing this same idea to the

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Pope, and there was some discussions as to exactly how and where that reference came from, but that's not where I wanted to go.

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Where I wanted to go was this. While it's true that Jesus calls us to love our enemies, he certainly does that, doesn't he?

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In Matthew 5, you can go there if you wish, or I could just read it to you. In Matthew 5, 43, it says,

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You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.

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But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

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That's what Jesus said. I think that was on the Sermon on the Mount. I may be wrong about that, but it's 5, 43.

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I know it, that's for sure. So while it's true that Jesus calls on us to love our enemy, it's not true that he calls on us to walk with them.

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I said, or worship. Or worship with them. And yes, and that's kind of what this is talking about, walking in a sense of worshiping with them.

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In fact, in Amos, Amos said this, Can two walk together except they be agreed?

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I mean, you can love your enemy, but you can't walk with him unless you agree with him. But more than that, if we're to love our enemies, don't you think we should point out that they're on the path to destruction?

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Matthew 7, and go ahead and go there. We'll be there for a few minutes. Matthew 7, starting at verse 13.

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Enter ye in at the straight gate. I used to think,

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I don't know what straight meant. I used to think straight meant straight. But straight doesn't mean straight.

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Straight means narrow, like the Strait of Gibraltar is a narrowing between the

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Mediterranean and the Atlantic. So that's not straight,

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S -T -R -A -I -G -H -T. It's straight, S -T -R -A -I -T, narrow. Well, that's just my background.

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Enter ye at the straight gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in their act.

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Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth to life, and few there be that find it.

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Then he says, beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

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What are these false prophets trying to do? Steal the sheep.

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I'm sorry? Steal the sheep. Kill the sheep, okay. How are they trying to kill the sheep?

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Steal, steal. Steal the sheep. Okay, that's even better. How are they stealing them?

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They're coming in and just slightly altering the gospel. That's good. And what are they trying to convince these sheep to do?

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Get off the straight, narrow way, and get on to this broad highway where everybody else is. This broad highway that leads to destruction.

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And so I like what you said. When I thought you said kill the sheep, I said, okay, that's okay. When you said steal the sheep, that's really good, because what are they doing?

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They're taking the sheep off this nice, narrow path, which is taking them to salvation, and they're putting them on this broad highway that leads to destruction.

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They're stealing the sheep. Well, who are these false prophets? Maybe somebody like Hawkins, who is trying to convince the sheep to walk on the broad path.

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Should we really walk with those that are on the broad path, which leads to destruction, or should we warn those that are on the wrong road?

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So what are we to do? Walk with them or warn them? That's probably a good idea.

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And Brother David has said that many times. There are places where one can go, and one can present the argument, and one will get his head chopped off.

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And you may be called by God to go and give that message and have your head chopped off and be a martyr.

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That may be what God has in mind for you, and if that's the case, you should do it. But before you toss your pearls in front of the swine, you might need to know that God wants you to do that.

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He may want you to wait and toss your pearls in front of somebody that's more likely to accept it. So, I'm going to read this, and you've all heard it, so you don't need to go there.

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John 14 one, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me.

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In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you,

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I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

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And whither I go, you know, and the way you know. And then Thomas said unto him,

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Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way? And Jesus said unto him,

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I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the

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Father but by me. So what did Jesus say to Thomas?

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I am the way, there is no other way. The passage goes on to say, if you had known me, you should have known my

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Father also. And from henceforth, you know him and have seen him. If you've known me and seen me, you've known him and seen him.

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And Philip said unto him, Philip is kind of slow like me. Philip said,

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Lord, show us the Father. He just told him, I'm the Father. And it sufficeth thus, and Jesus said unto him, have you been so long, have

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I been so long with you, and yet thou knowest, and thou not knowest me, Philip?

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He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. How sayest thou then, show us the

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Father? Believest thou not that I am the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you,

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I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me doeth the work. Believe me that I'm the

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Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the work's sake. So what's Jesus telling him?

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Jesus is telling his disciples that without him, there is no way to God. I am the way, the only way to God.

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Jesus is the Emmanuel, the God with us that Brother David spoke about in his

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Christmas message. Emmanuel, God with us, the only God is

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Jesus. And he started out with eternal security because he said I'm going to replace him, you'll be there with me.

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Absolutely. And I said no other God. Maybe if you want to take the third aspect of God, the

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Holy Spirit, and Jesus, that now that Jesus is no longer walking with us in the flesh, the

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Holy Spirit is with us, but that's the only way to God. But without Jesus, there is no way to know

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God. No one that doesn't have Jesus in their theology has a theology that can take them to God because the only way to God is through Jesus.

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That's very exclusive, and that's not very popular now. And we say, well, what about the guy in Asia that has never had the opportunity to hear the message of God?

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Is it fair that he go to hell? What about the one in deepest Africa? Is it fair?

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They're here to stop the shells. I said they're here to stop the shells for us. Okay, yeah, that's what

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Brother Roach used to say, yeah. They're here for a reason, they're here to stop the shells for the believers.

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I like that, I believe that. You know, it also could be that, you know, the invisible things of God are clearly seen.

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So it's very possible that the deepest, darkest Africa never heard the message.

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Well, let me modify that just a little bit, but I really like that because wherever you are, there is the world around you that speaks of the creator.

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I mean, you can't see the sunset without understanding that there's a creator.

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You can't see a flower, you can't see a caterpillar turn into a butterfly without recognizing there's a

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God. And if that recognition takes you to search for God and you have a desire to find

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God, Jesus said, those that come to me, I will in no wise cast out.

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If there's someone in deepest, darkest Africa that has a desire to connect with God, God will provide someone to provide the message.

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That I believe. I don't believe there's anyone anywhere that has no opportunity to receive

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Christ if they belong to him. He says, I will lose none.

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Everyone that's given me of them, I will lose none. So the one of them that was given to him lives in Afghanistan.

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God will provide the messenger to get the message to him. Which goes back to the whole thing about the people that think we do it ourselves.

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Because something was provided to us to open that door. Well, without Jesus, we can know no

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God. Well, we can know a God, but we can't know a capital letter God. We can't know the

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God. The God the Muslims claim to worship is by their own admission, an unknowable

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God. If you ask a Muslim to describe Allah, they will say he's unknowable. He is capricious.

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There's only one thing you're certain of, if you're Muslim and you want to go to the

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Muslim version of heaven. What is a guarantee that you'll get there?

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Anybody know? If you kill a Christian in a jihad, or it doesn't have to be a

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Christian, a non -believer, a non -believer in Islam. If you kill a non -believer in Islam in a jihad, you're guaranteed to go to heaven.

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Everybody else has got to crawl across that little ravine on the little wobbly bridge and they might fall off.

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How do they know that? How do they know what? They just believe it. They've been told that and they believe it.

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They don't know it because it's not true. I guess they heard it from Mohammed.

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But even Mohammed was not guaranteed to be in paradise.

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But even Mohammed was not guaranteed to be in paradise. Right.

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He doesn't sacrifice for you. Well. He didn't ever take control of people in Arabia.

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He started converting by the sword and that's when it got written in that, well, hey, make it a holy war to go kill these people.

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It's justified now. So that was his way. That was Mohammed's way of guaranteeing that he would get to paradise.

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Right. I didn't know that. Well, I guess I did because you did mention it last week and I remember, but I didn't, it didn't click on me.

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I was not thinking, I was talking. And you know, I tell my students, because you can't think and talk at the same time. I guess you could say that the

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Qur 'an is an evolved book. That's scary too. An evolved book.

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Well it just shows that there are illogical people really. It's illogical to think that you can know there's an unknowable

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God. Unknowable, capricious, and a

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God that cannot reveal anything about himself. Because it's a

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God that doesn't really exist. But have you noticed that Satan's religions that he pushes, like Islam, Mormon, that kind of thing, are all based on sex in some way in heaven.

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And it comes down to, it's a basic love line, but Satan cannot separate himself from the physical.

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What makes sense, he's going to dress himself to a line that's most acceptable by the world.

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So it's not, Mormonism and Muslimism, it's not really a friendly religion to women.

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I was going to say, what do they promise the women? They promise them they can be one of the 70 brides.

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Tell me 70, I don't understand. They are certainly a sexist religion.

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And both groups are. Mormonism is just as bad. In terms of multiple wives, and the wives are subservient to the husbands, and the more wives you have, the more children you have, the higher your status is, but there's nothing for the woman.

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So in Muslim, if they go to heaven, then they get 100 virgins, correct?

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I thought it was 70, but we're equivalent of over 30. So when they get finished with those 70 or whatever, what after that?

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What else does have to apply for them? They haven't written that chapter yet. It's evolving.

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70 days or whatever. In short, he's not the

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God that we worship. He's a God that Satan has designed.

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And the purpose of it, the purpose of Satan designing that God, is so that men will not be able to find the narrow way that leads to life, but will proceed down the broad way that leads to destruction.

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The narrow way is Jesus. And the only way.

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And for those of you who thought we weren't going to get through even one verse in Genesis, we just finished verse 19.

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And we're going to go to verse 20, and we'll pick up several of them. But I thought I had a question or so still out here. Or a comment.

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Okay. Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel, the

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Syrian of Pandaram, the sister of Laban the Syrian. We'll get back to Laban later.

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But after 20 years of his wife's barrenness.

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How do we know it's 20 years? Because if you go a little bit forward three or four verses, in 25 it says,

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And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb, and Isaac was threescore years old when she bared them.

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So she had the children when she was 60. It was 40 when she was 60.

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So she was barren for 20 years. Isaac rose to the test and turned to God in prayer, obviously acknowledging

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God's involvement and timing in his promise of the seed. And the children struggled within her.

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And she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the

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Lord. Now, there's a Jewish legend and I didn't know whether to tell you this or not, but I'm going to go ahead and tell you, but I want to warn you again.

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You need to think in terms of, actually, this is not even good for that.

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Acts 17 and 11. And these were more noble in that they listened with all. I can't remember.

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But search the scriptures daily to see if those things were so. So this is a legend.

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It may not be so. Jewish legends say that Jacob and Esau tried to kill each other in the womb.

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And that every time Rebekah went near an idol's altar, Esau would get excited.

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And whenever she would go near a place where the Lord was worshiped, Jacob would get excited. Now, I don't know whether that's true or not.

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But anyhow, that's what they say. And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels.

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And one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger.

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And that's kind of out of the order. But from the beginning, there have been two manner of people. What are the two manner of people?

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God's children and Satan's children. And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.

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And the first came out red, all over, like an hairy garment, and they called his name

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Esau. You know what Esau means. Well, it's Edom that means red. Esau means hairy.

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So he's hairy and he's red. And after that came his brother.

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And his hand took hold of Esau's heel, and his name was called Jacob. And Isaac was three score years old when she birthed him.

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Jacob refers to the way the second son was born, holding on to the heel of his brother.

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In fact, the word Jacob means heel grabber, or heel catcher.

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But heel catcher meant something more in those days. It had the idea of a trickster, or a con man, or a scoundrel, or a rascal.

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As the boys grew, and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field, and Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents.

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And Isaac loved Esau because he didn't eat off his venison. But Rebekah loved

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Jacob. Now, another difficult thing. I think, ooh.

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I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to wait on that for next time. But I'm going to go down below and pick up a statement from Charles Spurgeon.

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This would be a good place to leave it today. There's a passage in Romans 9.

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Romans 9. Let's see. Starting at 12.

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It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it was written,

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Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated. And some woman asked.

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Well, yeah. And some woman who had that in mind, Mrs. Mitchell, asked Charles Spurgeon.

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Or said to Charles Spurgeon, I cannot understand why God should say