The Blessing And The Betrayal

The Meaning of the Blessing in Covenant Context 0:30

All right, in today's text, there is going to be a struggle over the most unlikely word, and it's the word blessing. Now, let me ask you, let me stop for a moment. This past week, has anyone blessed you? Has anyone blessed you?

I'll bet someone has. And you know when they blessed you? You know what the occasion was when you got blessed? You sneezed.

Here's the great irony in 21st century North American evangelical Christianity — that the most often time an individual is blessed in our culture is when they sneeze. Because of that, we look at this through 21st century North American evangelical Christian eyes. We look at this and we say, what's the deal with the blessing?

What's the value? Why was this wrestled over? Why is it this contentious, this issue of blessing?

The Abrahamic Covenant: The Promise Passed Down 1:14

Well, in order to answer that, in order to understand the text, we have to remember what a blessing was in that context: a blessing in this context is the most desirable thing you could possibly have or want. Why? Well, if you remember, going back to Genesis 12, Genesis 15, and thereafter, the God of all creation looked down upon that which He has made, and among all the peoples on the entirety of the globe, He chose one.

What was his name? It starts with an A. Abraham. And He says, you, you, though you've given Me no great reason that you should be the one, although you haven't earned this, you don't merit it, you don't deserve it, you, Abraham, above all the peoples on the entirety of the globe, I am going to make a promise, and this promise is going to be manifest in multiple things.

Among them is this. Number one, even though you're an old guy and your wife is old, you're going to have a son. You're going to have a son, and this son will have further sons and children and grandchildren, so much so that in due time, you who are barren, you whose wife is barren, in due time, you will have more ancestors than all the stars in the sky above you, all the sand that's at your feet.

You'll have more ancestors. So that was one of the promises. A second promise that God made to Abraham was that Abraham one day would possess, through his family line, would possess a great and wonderful land, a land flowing of milk and honey, a place where his progeny, his ancestors, would reside, a place that we now call Israel.

At that time, it was known as the land of Canaan, but God says, this will be yours. Now, the third promise God made is that not only will your progeny and your ancestors be blessed in due time, but after, thereafter, all of the nations will be blessed. In other words, he says, Abraham, I'm going to make a nation out of you.

You, even though you're old and you have no children, a great nation is going to come from your line. And that line, that nation, those people will be blessed. I will make a covenant with them. I will dwell with them.

I will teach them My laws. But in due time, the entirety of the globe is going to be blessed through you. More specifically, through your faith, O Abraham. And as we saw in the chapter that followed, Abraham demonstrated great faithfulness.

Great faithfulness. At the same time, he demonstrated repeated sins. Why? Well, because Abraham was no different than you and I. He was a man of flesh and blood, and he was inclined to do that which is wrong.

He had to fight his sinful nature. So even though he had great faith, he was also a sinner. Now, as we've seen in the weeks that followed our original study on Abraham, those same criteria, those same characteristics ended up applying to his son. His son Isaac, who we see in this text, is an old man.

His son Isaac was also a man of faith, and he trusted God. And he trusted God that the blessings that God gave his father that had been bestowed upon him would indeed be bestowed on his son and on and on down the line.

Isaac Seeks to Subvert God's Established Order 4:04

But what's going to happen in today's text is that Isaac is going to take God's established order, take God's plan for how those blessings would be distributed down the line, and he's going to seek to subvert it. You see, Isaac would have two sons. What would their names be? Jacob and Esau.

Which one did God love? I'm glad no one said Esau. God loved Jacob. God chose Jacob.

Unconditional Election: The Younger Shall Rule 4:31

“Two nations are in your womb, two peoples shall be separated from your body; one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.”

— Genesis 25:23 (NKJV)

And when Rebecca, Rebecca, Isaac's wife, was going to have a child, God told Rebecca, Hey, Rebecca, you're going to have a child, which was surprising because she had also been barren for a long season of time. You're going to have a child, not just a child. You're going to have two children. You're going to have twins.

And there will be a war literally being fought in your womb. You'll have two twins. But when they come out, the younger, the younger will rule over the older. Rebecca understood that when the children were born, that God's promise, the promises He originally made to Abraham that carried down through Isaac, would now be bestowed through her son, Jacob.

But in today's text, we're going to see that Isaac has a different plan. Why? I don't know. Maybe he didn't like Jacob.

Whatever the case is, Isaac is going to seek to bestow his blessing, his promises, the conduit of covenant that had been passed down to him — he's going to seek to place it upon Esau, even though Esau is definitively the worst of the two choices. And in this text, we're going to see all the family drama that occurs throughout this engagement.

The Plot to Steal the Blessing (Genesis 27:1-10) 5:33

All right, I'm going to read verses 1 through 10 once again. We're not going to go through all of this passage today, but I'm going to look at some select portions to give us the overall narrative before we close. So verses 1 through 10. Now it came to pass when Isaac was old, when Isaac was old and his eyes were so dim that he could not see, that he called Esau, his older son, and said to him, my son.

Right here we see that Isaac's plan is deviating from God's. Rebecca would certainly have told Isaac that God said Jacob's the one, God said Jacob's the one, but he didn't like Jacob, or at least he didn't like Jacob as much as he liked Esau. So here he plans, it comes to pass, he gets old.

His eyes — he can't see real well. And he says, oh, death is coming for me. I can feel its cold pursuit. What to do?

Well, I need to put my house in order. Come, my son. Come, my son. Esau, come on, come on, come on.

So that's what we see in verse 1. When Isaac was old, his eyes were dim. He couldn't see. He calls Esau.

He says, my son. And Esau answered and said, here I am. Then the father, Isaac, says, behold, I am old, and I do not know the day of my death. Therefore, please take your weapons, your quiver, and your bow.

Go out in the field and hunt game for me, and make me savory food such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, and that my soul may bless you before I die. Now, Rebekah was listening. I mean, this is a tent. It's not that hard to hear things.

Verse 5, Rebekah's listening when Isaac spoke to Esau's son, and Esau went to the field then to hunt game and to bring it. So Rebekah, verse 6, spoke to Jacob her son and said, I heard your father speak to Esau your brother, saying, bring me the game, make the savory food, that I may eat it and bless you in the presence of the Lord before my death.

Therefore now — she's talking to Jacob, you know, hushed tones. Come on, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob. Therefore now, my son, obey my voice. Listen to what I'm saying.

According to what I command you, go now into the flock, bring me two goats, two of the choice kids from the goats, and I will make the savory food for your father such as he loves. You know, Rebecca had been married to this guy for a long time. She knew what he liked to eat.

So she says, I'll do it. Esau will be real busy. I'll just get it done real quick. Verse 10, then you shall take it to your father.

You, Jacob, shall take it to your father that he may eat of it and that he may bless you before his death. All right, let's stop there. So verses 1 through 10, Isaac is near death as his father Abraham had been near death in times past. Now Abraham had had two sons, Isaac, and what was the other one?

Ishmael. And the covenant was definitively not going to be passed down through Ishmael, but out through Isaac. And so that's what happened. Well here, Isaac senses his own time is coming.

He says, I don't know the day of my death, but it's getting close. I can't even see anymore. And so he says, it's time to set the house in order. But again, he had been thinking about this undoubtedly for some period of time.

He'd been thinking, well, what am I going to do when the time comes? Well, here the time has come. And although he has to know what God's determination has been, he here says, I'm just not going to do that. Esau, come here, my boy.

I'm hungry. You make that great stew. You know, last week, it's fascinating how often good, tasty food factored into the sinfulness of what was going on. Remember last week, the birthright was stolen over a good pot of stew.

Well, here, Isaac is hungry, so he says, come on, Esau, go make the stew, make it the way I like it, and then when you come back, I'm going to bless you.

Why Isaac Preferred Esau: Evidence Against the Choice 8:48

Now, why did he prefer Esau? Why did Isaac prefer Esau? Well, again, we don't know. We don't know.

He made good stew. That might have been part of it for a hungry father, but we really don't know. If anything, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that he should have thought Esau was no good. There's a lot of evidence that should have suggested that he shouldn't have done this with Esau.

Among other things, last week when we saw that Esau's birthright was stolen by his brother, Esau was fine with that. He didn't care about the birthright, so to speak. The promises of God didn't resonate. He didn't care too much about it, which is why he was willing to trade his birthright for soup.

He didn't care so much, and the father should have been aware of that and think, maybe, just maybe, this isn't the right guy to carry the torch. Maybe the guy who despises birthright, who traded it for soup, is not the guy to send forward into the ages to come as the great standard bearer for God's promises.

So he should have known that, but in case that wasn't enough, in case that wasn't enough, if you were to go one chapter back, the very end of chapter 26. It ends with this line, this line here. It says that when Esau was 40 years old, when Esau was 40, he took his wives, Judith, the daughter of Beeri, the Hittite, and Basemath, the daughter of Elon, the Hittite, and they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.

You see, not only had this guy, not only had Esau traded his birthright for stew, but then he had gone out when he was 40, he married two wives, he married two wives from the Hittites. The Hittites never once come up in Scripture as a desirable people, as a good and moral people, as an ethical people.

They were pagans. So Esau goes out, marries two pagan women, and we see that Isaac and Rebekah, at the end of the chapter, that Isaac and Rebekah were grieved tremendously. They were a grief of mind. His marriages, his wives, were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.

That should have been hint number two to Isaac. He rejected the birthright, and then he married those women. Dear heavens, they are a grief of mind to me and Rebecca. He should have known this is not the choice to make.

So I guess in order to get to the next verses, let me again just ask, so why? Why would he then say Esau is a better option? Again, we don't know. It was customary and typical that the oldest son would be the one who would receive the father's blessing.

It was culturally acceptable in that setting. It wasn't really the norm in terms of what God did. God regularly took the runt of the litter. Look at King David.

God regularly took the one you wouldn't expect. But in their culture, the idea was that you chose the oldest, that he was the one who deserved the birthright by virtue of being born older, even if they were twins. Apparently, being a second or two out of the gate faster was enough that you deserved this birthright.

So he determined that Esau should get it. And on top of that, Esau was a manly man. You know, the Marlboro guy from the ads of years ago. Take the Marlboro man times 10, and you had Esau.

Jacob, on the other hand, spent his time in tents. We read about that last week. He had smooth skin. He wasn't hairy and manly and all that.

Whatever the case, the father was deceived into thinking that manly Marlboro man is the one that should carry the torch, despite all the other evidence to the contrary. Now, there's one other possibility, one other possible reason why he might not have chosen Jacob. And here it is. Jacob was a scoundrel.

Jacob was a swindler. Jacob, in the early chapters here, virtually everything that Jacob does is wrong. He had no problem, as we'll see in just a moment, lying to his father's face, putting on hairy garments in order to fool the old man. Now, is it possible, is it possible that Isaac the father had encountered this sort of nonsense from Jacob before?

Well, probably yes. Jacob, the very name, Yaakov, it comes from a Hebrew word, which means heel, heel grabber. That was what he was named because when he came out of the womb, Jacob grabbed the heel of his older brother, a heel grabber. That was the name that was given to him.

It was not a complimentary term. And across the years, he continued to grab the heel, so to speak. He swindled his brother. He lied to his father.

He did all this. So is it possible that old man Isaac, when he's thinking about which son gets his blessing, that he was willing to overcome Esau's indiscretions because my other son's just a rat. My other son's a scoundrel. I think it's very possible that that's the case.

Very possible. We don't really know, but what we know is that he tried to subvert God's plan. That was wrong.

The Deception: Jacob Lies to His Father (Genesis 27:18-24) 13:17

So let's see what goes down here. All right, chapter 27, verses 18 through 24. So Jacob goes to his father and says, my father. So at this point, we're skipping ahead.

Jacob is now in the midst of the ruse. He says, my father. And the father says, who are you, my son? That's a sign that maybe he didn't quite hear the voice quite right.

And Jacob said to his father, well, I'm Esau, your firstborn. It's weird you'd qualify it that way. And I've done just as you told me. So please arise, sit and eat my game that your soul may bless me.

Verse 20. But Isaac said to his son, how is it you found it so quickly, my son? There's something about the speed of this hunt that surprised Isaac. He's like, wait a second.

I just sent you out. You're back so quickly. And then Isaac lies in verse 20. And he says, I'm quick because the Lord your God brought it to me.

Oh, good golly. Now he's bringing God in on the lie here, right? He's bringing God into this. He says, well, the Lord your God, you know, he hooked me up with the sacrifice, and that's how I got it done so fast.

So verse 21, Isaac isn't believing this just yet. You understand that he's asking some qualifying questions about what's going on. He knows he can't see real well. So maybe he's sniffing out something here.

Verse 21, Isaac says to Jacob, please come near that I may feel you, my son, whether you're really my son, Esau, or not. And so Jacob went to Isaac, his father, and he felt him. He says, well, the voice is Jacob's voice, but those hands, the hands are the hands of Esau. And so he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands.

And so he blessed him. And then he said, are you really my son Esau? He asked this multiple times. Are you really, really my son Esau?

And Isaac, lying to his father's face, sinning through his teeth, says, I am. All right, let's stop there. You know, when I was younger, I had some great-grandparents still alive at that time. And my grandma, often as not, during the daytime, was watching something on TV.

Any idea what she was watching? Soap operas. You know when we watch soap operas, you know, Days of Our Lives and these sort of things? You know, that always threw me, soap operas.

I saw no soap and no opera. I didn't know what to make of this. But I knew they were terrible. There's these dimly lit rooms.

You got these dimly lit rooms where all these wealthy aristocrats are sitting there in the shadows, and there's all this drama, and the music would spike as they would say all these things. Well, this, this is the plot of a soap opera, it would seem. This is probably one of the most sinful five minutes in anybody's life in the Old Testament.

There are probably other exceptions, but this is up there. What he does, what a patriarch does to another patriarch here. It's amazing.

Total Depravity in the Patriarchal Family 15:55

You have three things going on, three aspects of family drama in verses 18-24. Number one, Isaac has turned his back on God's choice. That's the first thing that's gone wrong, and it's the linchpin for everything else that would follow. The father starts this train of transgression going the moment he says, I'm going to choose the son that God didn't choose.

I know God has His reasons, He's got His ways, He's got His will, but I'm a little closer to the reality. I know these two boys. I've spent a lot of time around them, and I think father knows best, and so I'm going to choose the one. Well, the father, the patriarch Isaac, starts the train of transgression going forward here with what he does at the outset of these verses.

Then the wife, Rebecca, overhears this and her determination is, well, I've got to do something about this. And so she comes up with a scheme to fool her husband. Even if God uses the outcome, this is undoubtedly sinful. Let's fool the old man.

He can't see so much. I'll make this soup. He won't know any different. He won't know what he's eating.

And you dress up with the hairy skins and you go on in. This is sinful, but Rebecca's engaged in it. See, you have Jacob lying to his father's face. You know, one of the precepts you see in God's word over and over again is honor your mother and father.

Honor your mother and father. That may go well with you. Of all the violations of that, there are few more egregious than Jacob lying to his dying father's face in order to steal the blessing from his brother. So you have all manner of sin here.

And the reason I highlight that is because it is fascinating which family is engaged in the sin. This is the patriarchal family. How many of you have someone that you know named either Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob? You don't have to raise your hand, but a lot.

I already know the answer. We all know an Abraham, Isaac, and a Jacob, right? And the reason we all know Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is because these names have regularly, across centuries and centuries and centuries, been bestowed to children with the hopes that children will grow up to model biblical fidelity and be faithful, faithful individuals.

Rebecca — the same is true with the names of the women. Faithful individuals — what we desire when we put biblical names upon them, generally speaking. And that's good, nothing wrong with that. The truth is, God loved Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Rebekah.

These were all dear to God. But yet, they sin tremendously in this passage.

God Works Through Broken People 18:15

If you've ever seen brokenness in a community, in a church, in your own family, and you look at that and say, oh my goodness, how can God use that person, that family, those people, given who they are, given what they've done, maybe given what they've done to me personally? God can't use people of such brokenness.

God can't use that family. God can't use those individuals, that church, what have you. Newsflash. If God didn't use broken people, family, churches, individuals, if God didn't use those, then who would He use?

No one, because there'd be no one left. The brokenness that existed in the lives of the men and women of Scripture, the brokenness that existed even among the patriarchs, who we revere to the hilt, the brokenness was supreme. Here's why it's helpful for us to know that: because sometimes, when we look at our own lives or our own sin, our own issues or spouses' issues, or other issues going on, our family issues going on, our church issues going on, our community issues going on, our nation — we're inclined to want to throw the baby out of the bathwater.

But God — God works through broken people, consistently, regularly, to achieve good ends, and He will even enfold their sins into His plans. You get that? God has enfolded the sins of people going back to Adam into His divine plan to bring Himself glory and to redeem a people unto Himself. And He doesn't necessarily do it through people and families and communities that are optimized for success.

And that's what's going on here. It doesn't get much more broken in the context of a family than what we see here. And if God was willing to work in and through that, then He's willing to work in and through whatever brokenness you and I are going through as well. All right, let's see, let's see if this ruse — as we look at our final verses for this morning, let's look at verses 25 through 29.

The Blessing Bestowed and God's Unstoppable Sovereignty 20:06

“Therefore may God give you of the dew of heaven, of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine.”

— Genesis 27:28 (NKJV)

Let's see if this ruse works. I think we already know the outcome, but let's see how it goes down. Verses 25 to 29. So Isaac said, bring it near to me, and I will eat my son's game, my son Esau — because Esau is clearly the son this must be — so my son may bless you.

And so he brought it near to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, come near to me, son, and kiss me. And so he came near and he kissed him. And as he did so, he smelled the smell of his clothing.

This is yet another test. He smelled the smell of his clothing and said, surely the smell of my son is like the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed. Because he was wearing the clothes and the stuff that smelled like Esau. Verse 28, therefore may God give you — so this is the blessing, this is the great blessing that's given down.

Therefore, may God give you the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, the plenty of the grain and the wine. In other words, let everything in this created realm be granted to you, my son. Verse 29, let the people serve you. Let nations bow down before you.

Be master over your brethren and let your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be those who bless you. You know, if you were driving down I-10, you're going down I-10, let's say a sinkhole opens up. You're driving along, all of a sudden, boom, it's in front of you.

Well, what are your options at that point? Well, I know this much: whatever your plan had been previously has now been, if not permanently halted, it's at least significantly changed. If a sinkhole were to open up in front of the trajectory of where you're going, assuming you have time to stop, at this point you could no longer continue to do that which you were dead set on doing, even just moments, moments earlier.

Now, how is God different? Well, God's different in this key way. There is nothing. There's no sinkhole in nature, and there's no sinkhole in the heart of man.

There's no sin that can occur, no deed that's either righteous or wicked. Nothing can happen on the face of this globe that can in any way, shape, or form halt or hinder for one nanosecond the sovereign plan of God. Everything, the things you like in life and the things you don't like in life, are part of a sovereign decree that has been God's plan since the beginning of time itself.

There are no surprises, no sinkholes that open up in the providence of God that cause God to have to swerve around it. With that said, when you look at this passage, when you look at what's happened, when you look at the ruse, when you look at the deception, when you see what has happened here and all this sin, at the same time, God says, I will yet use this.

Which son gets the blessing here? This is not a trick question. Which son got the blessing in this passage? Jacob.

Which son did God say would get the blessing? Jacob. The son that God had said would be blessed is indeed the son who was blessed. Now, would it have been better if it had just gone the way God had decreed?

Would it not have been better and easier for the people, easier for this family unit, if Isaac had just said, you know, I'm going to do it the way that God would have me do it, and come on in, Jacob, and I'm sorry, Esau, I'll bless you something in a different way, but God has told me that it's going to be Jacob, and so let's go ahead and we'll bless Jacob?

Would that not have been better? Would that not have been easier? Would that have not been more righteous? Absolutely.

Now, that's not what Isaac determined to do, and yet God's will was not thwarted. He enfolded the sinfulness of all the people involved to bring about a good end. But here's the thing, and I'll look to wrap up with this thought this morning and apply this to you and I. Here's the thing.

The Story of Jacob: Wrestling Against the Will of God 23:40

Do you have any idea, when we study the life of Jacob, who we're going to see — next week we're going to talk about Jacob's ladder. Remember the dream he has of the ladder that goes up to heaven? The story of Jacob is the story of a young man who regularly, consciously wrestled with God, wrestled with what God would have him do, wrestled with right and wrong, wrestled with the sinfulness in his heart, wrestled with his inclination to grab heels.

The story of Jacob is the story of a rebel, a rebel in his own house, a rebel outside his house. The story of Jacob is the story of one who consistently pursued that which God didn't necessarily desire for him. And because of that, because of that, not for a moment, not for a moment did God's determination and promises ever get messed up because he was sinning.

But you know how bloody and beaten up he was over the years because of his willingness to run against the will of God? The story of Jacob is the story of a rebel, but one who God says, I love you, and in spite of your rebellion, I will sanctify you, but man alive, you're making it hard.

Nothing's hard for God, but you understand the point here. How often has God told you what to do? How often have you opened the Bible and said, yep, here's the right way to live, the right choices to make in this context, but you know, I want to do something different? How often have you been the Isaac in this story or the Jacob in this story?

How often has God told you what He desires of you in your faith and your practice and your relationship with your husband, your wives, your children, your job, your vocation, your community, the lost? How often has He told you these things, and how often have you rejected that and swam upstream against the will of God?

Well, here's the thing. The will of God will not be thwarted just because you fight against it, but at the end of the day, you're going to be a lot more bloody for having done so. You and I, how much scar tissue do we have on our backs right now because we have been fighting against God on and on and on and on and on?

Perseverance of the Saints: You Will Never Lose His Love 25:25

Well, the good news is this. If He has chosen, if you're a child, if He says you are Mine the way He said you are Mine to Jacob and Isaac and Abraham before him, if He has said that to you, then the good news is you will never lose that. You can never jump out of the hands of a father who's holding you tight, but you can thrash against the will of that God in such a way as to beat your own self to a pulp.

Is that you? Are you engaged — have you been engaged — in a season of your life where you have fought against God's will for you, fought against that which is right? Do you have a loved one who's doing that even right now? Well, again, here's the good news.

The Gospel: God Saves Rebels Through Jesus Christ 26:02

The good news of the gospel is that God is in the business of saving rebels. God is in the business of saving Jacobs. God is in the business of saving Isaacs. God is in the business of saving Abraham.

God is in the business of saving men and women like you and I in spite of whoever we've been and in spite of whatever we've done. No matter who we are, no matter what we've done, we have a Heavenly Father who desires the best for us, and the best for us starts and begins with our fidelity to His Son, Jesus Christ.

This morning, if you have faith in Jesus, that's the singular means by which you're righteous in God's eyes. You'll never earn His love, and you'll never lose His love if you're a child. Your relationship with the Father is yoked to your relationship with Jesus. So this morning, the question for you is, what is your relationship with Jesus?

As we say when we go over the Gospel, the Gospel has two components. First component is this. You and I are sinners. We've broken the laws of a holy God, and the wages for that sin is death.

We've broken God's laws. We deserve to die. That's the consequences of even one sin, and if you think that's not the case, then go back to Genesis 3. One sin was enough to throw the entire created realm into chaos.

You have sinned a lot more times than once. You're a sinner. God is holy. You have guilt standing for a perfect God.

What are you going to do about that? Our culture says, what I will do about that is I'll try to be better than Bob or Steve, or Stu, or Frank, or Fran, or whoever. As long as I'm better than the people down the street, God will let me in. Wrong.

You cannot earn your way into heaven. Next week, we'll see you can't climb a ladder into heaven. Rather, what has to happen? God has to come down as a ladder to you and I that we might ascend through Him, and He did so in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

If the problem of the gospel is that you and I are sinners, then the solution in the gospel is this: that God has looked down upon sinners and determined to save them by sending His only begotten Son. God saved Jacob. He saved Isaac. He saved Abraham.

He saved this broken family. He saved this family unit going on down generations, in spite of who they are. And His hand of salvation is thrust out to you this morning. This morning, no matter how broken your own life is, I — I commend you to taking His hand, believing in His son.

Let's pray.