Podcast Transcript

Mike Booth: Welcome to another podcast of Rizen Fellowship. We’re delighted that you joined us and we hope you’re enjoying the study as we go through Genesis. So far, we’ve looked at the first division of Genesis. In Genesis chapter one through 11, we saw four great events. Now, we’ve moved into the second division. We’re looking at from chapter 12 all the way through chapter 50, and focusing on four great men.
In Genesis 22, we look at the story where we’re on the mountaintop with Abraham when he was obeying God and taking his only son Isaac to be willing to offer him as a sacrifice to God. We went there to Genesis 24 to look at Isaac in his specific life as the second great person. He was the beloved son, and we really focused in on him receiving his wife because that’s almost a foretelling of how Jesus Christ is going to come back to receive his bride, the church, one day in the future.
So now, we move to the third great person in Genesis, the second half of Genesis, and that is Jacob. Jacob is probably one of the most interesting characters in all of the scripture, a great lesson. I’m going to try to just kind of go through the overview of his life, highlight some points that I think would help us live our life today better but not really just focusing on one point of his life. Now, Jacob was a twin and he had an older brother who is born just before him and that was Esau, and they were the sons of Isaac and Rebecca. We see that in chapter 25.
Now, these boys grew up in a very devoted home and we can read the story about Isaac after he came down off that mountain and there’s not a lot in the scripture about him, and we might see where he made some mistakes of his life. No matter what he did as an adult, or even as a father, or a husband, we have to remember that as a young man, he willingly laid his life down on the altar to be pleasing to his father and obey him. So these boys grew up in a devoted home, but they also grew up in a very disappointed home because for many years, Isaac and Rebecca had no children and they wanted them desperately. They had to wait for years just like Abraham and Sarah did.
Isaac literally became a spiritual leader of the home praying, interceding on behalf for his wife, and God eventually granted that request. The whole of Genesis, you look and you read about these great people that are there, the whole book of Genesis emphasizes the sovereignty of God and the wisdom of his “delays.” Abraham and Sarah waited 25 years before their son Isaac was born. Jacob would have to labor for 14 years to get the wife that he really wanted in his life Rachel. Joseph as we’ll look at on our next podcast, he had to wait 20 years and go through prison and all these different things before he was reunited and reconciled with his brothers.
When we think about this, we also remember the verse in Psalm 31 verse 15 that says, “Our times are in his hands.” We have to really trust and have faith that God’s timing is always right because he’s never late even though we feel like it is a delay that’s causing us grief. So, they had a devoted and a disappointed home, but they also grew up in a very distressed home. When you read the story of Esau and Jacob’s life, they were struggling in the womb, and they struggle not only in the womb, but they struggled even after they were born. Their lives show us that conception, birth, and death that these things are not merely human accidents of how the world goes, but these are God’s divine appointments for our life and the things he has planned for us.
They also, unfortunately grew up in a very divided home. These boys looked different. They had completely different personalities. Esau was the rugged man. He was the outdoorsman. If he were in our culture today, Esau was one of those guys that when you went to Bass Pro Shop, you would find him in there looking for the latest, greatest things. Now, Jacob was a little bit more of a homebody. He’s the kind of guy that would only stay in, out of the sun, not get sunburn and might be called like a homeboy, but each one of these boys being completely different, each parent had their own favorite of the sons. Esau was Isaac’s favorite, while Jacob was Rachel’s favorite.
It’s unfortunate that when we see, not only in the biblical times but even in today when homes are divided because the parents have favorites, the one that are putting those favorites above God’s personal desire of their lives and for God’s will for their life. As you see in this in the family, you see all the scheming and the manipulating trying to get the upper hand. God’s purpose still prevailed in all four of their lives. At the end of chapter 25, that struggle is going to continue and get deeper as we see Jacob and Esau, where Esau sells his birthright to Jacob after he comes in from a long day being out in the field for just a little bowl of stew and for some bread, and later Esau’s even going to accuse Jacob of cheating him and taking advantage of him when he was weak.
As we move in to Genesis chapter 27, that division just continues to go wider and wider as we read about Rebecca and Jacob working out plans to try to deceive the father Isaac in getting him to bless Jacob rather than Esau the firstborn. You see, Rebecca overhears Isaac requesting his favorite son Esau to go out and to catch the game, and make that favorite meal for him that he liked. He said, “Son, if you’ll do that and bring that back to me, and after I eat it, then I will give you the blessing of the firstborn.”
Well, Rebecca quickly devised a plan to be able to prepare a meal herself for Isaac, and then have Jacob disguised as Esau and go in and take it to Isaac, and then to be able to get him to receive the blessing. Jacob was just a little bit hesitant of this plan because he said even though his father’s eyesight was bad at an old age, Isaac would be able to tell that this was not Esau in front of him but it was being Jacob, but Rebecca had ways to be able to make that happen.
She said, “If I take some of Esau’s clothes and put them on you, then you will smell like Esau, and Isaac’s dependent upon his eyesight and he’ll smell and think that you’re Esau.” Jacob had another objection. He said, “My skin is soft and my brother’s skin is rugged and hairy, and if my father takes and reaches out his hand and touches my hands to the back of neck, he’ll recognize real quickly that I’m not Esau and instead of blessing me, he will curse me.”
So, the mother took the skins of some of a young lamb and put that on the back of Jacob’s hands and on the back of his neck. So, the mother cooked the meal and then Jacob took the meal and began the charade, the masquerade of being his older brother. Jacob had an answer to every one of his father’s questions, and after eating the meal, Isaac then blessed his son thinking it was Esau but giving the firstborn blessing to Jacob. Just as soon as he received the blessing, Jacob slipped out of the room and almost at the same time as he left, Esau came in. When Esau and Jacob realized how Jacob had been deceived, they both were very angry. I mean, the Bible tells us that Isaac trembled violently and Esau begin to weep bitterly and he begged his father. He said, “Father, don’t you have even another blessing for me?”
In Hebrews chapter 12, there’s an interesting commentary about Esau’s attempt to repent over this situation. Hebrews chapter 12 verse 16 to 17 says, “Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.” For you know that afterward when he wanted to inherit the blessing, just as soon as he realized that his brother had deceived his father and received the blessing that he thought was due him, when he wanted that blessing, he was rejected. This is what the writer of Hebrew says, “For he found no place of repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.”
Now, what Esau sought was not repentance and turning around and repenting of his bad ways, and his profane ways, and becoming a submitted person to God himself. What he was seeking diligently was not repentance but the blessing. I think that’s so evident of the way we live in our world today. There’s so many people who call themselves and claimed to be Christians, and they want all the blessings that come from God by knowing God and calling themselves a part of his family, but they don’t want to submit or obey to be a part of the requirements of being a part of the family of God.
You see, repentance was not only necessary for Esau, but it’s necessary for each and every one of us. As a matter of fact, it’s essential for every one of us to be submissive to the father, to be able to receive the blessing and inheritance of eternal life. Well, after all these came down, Esau the older brother, vowed that after their father died because Isaac thought he was on his deathbed at this time, Esau swore and vow that after their father died, that he would kill his brother and Rebecca got wind of this plan, and she devised another plan that would protect her favorite son until Esau’s fury would be squelched and be able to turn away.
So, she asked Isaac to send Jacob away back to the relatives of where she came from over a 500-mile journey because she told her husband this would break my heart if now Jacob, my favorite son were to marry a Canaanite woman like Esau had done. Now, what Rebecca expected to be a journey of maybe a few weeks or a few months, turned out to be years. As a matter of fact, between all of the things that she planned, and schemed, and connived, she wound up never seeing her favorite son alive because that little short trip that she thought turned in to be 20 years.
Now, when Esau heard the concern of her mother about the Canaanite wife that she had, instead of repenting there and turning back to God,