Remsen Bible Fellowship Sermons

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Transcript generated by AI. The sermon was not. Please comment if you notice any errors.If you want to take your Bibles in turn, we’re going to be in Genesis chapter 29 this morning is where we will start. Genesis 29. Andy told me last week that I was a little academic. So hopefully it won’t be quite so academic this week. It’ll be a little bit more in the story that we are reading. Genesis 29, beginning in verse 1 will read down through verse 14 to start with. Says then Jacob went on his journey and came to the land of the people of the east. As he looked, he saw a well in the field, and behold three flocks of sheep lying beside it, for out of that well the flocks were watered. The stone on the well’s mouth was large, and when all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep, and put the stone back in its place over the mouth of the well. Jacob said to them, “My brothers, where do you come from?” They said, “We are from Haran.” He said to them, “Do you know Laban, the son of Nahor?” They said, “We know him.” He said to them, “Is it well with him?” They said, “It is well, and see, Rachel, his daughter, is coming with a sheep.” He said, “Behold, it is still high day. It is not time for the livestock to be gathered. Water the sheep and go pasture them.” But they said, “We cannot until all the flocks are gathered together and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well. Then we water the sheep.” While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherdess. Now, as soon as Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban, his mother’s brother, Jacob came near and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth and watered the flock of Laban, his mother’s brother. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud. Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s kinsman, and that he was Rebecca’s son, and she ran and told her father. And as soon as Laban heard the news about Jacob, his sister’s son, he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house, and Jacob told Laban all these things. And Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh,” and he stayed with him a month.So chapter 29 begins with the word “then.” Then what? After what happened? Well, last week we looked at chapter 28 and beginning in verse 10 of chapter 28. God had met with Jacob at Bethel. Jacob’s running for his life. He’s afraid that his brother Esau is going to kill him. Esau wants to kill him. And so he’s taking off. His mother and his father have sent him to Padan Aram to Laban, the brother, rather, of Rebecca. And so as he’s going, God meets him there in a dream and promises him that he is going to receive the blessing that God had promised to Abraham and to Isaac before him, and then adds to that a personal promise that God would bring Jacob back to the land that he was leaving. He was going to come back to the land of promise. Verses 2 and 3, as Jacob goes on this journey, he rises from that place at Bethel and heads, continues on, towards his mother’s family. We meet some shepherds. He gets to a place where he sees a well, and wells are significant meeting places in the Bible, and here is no different. He comes and he meets these shepherds at a well, and then we get a little bit of background as to how these shepherds operate. When all of their flocks get together, then they move the stone, and then they start drawing water to water their sheep. But they’re just laying around here in the middle of the day. There’s apparently a flock that’s waiting to come. And Jacob initiates conversation with these men. He says, “Where are you guys from?” And they say “Haran,” which is exactly the place that he is wanting to get to. This is where Abraham’s family is from. It’s where Rebecca’s family is from. He’s trying to get to this place, and he has made it here. God has providentially led him to the right place and also at just the right time, because when he finds out that they’re from here and he says, “Hey, do you know Laban?” And they said, “Yeah, we know Laban. And hey, look, there is his daughter Rachel coming right now.” God has led Jacob to just the right place, at just the right time. And here comes Rachel. And Jacob here is seen initiating. That’s important. He initiates the conversation with these men. When Rachel comes with the flock, he immediately moves the stone that these men have been saying, “Yeah, we wait until everybody gets here.” Well, as soon as Rachel’s there, he moves the stone. He tells Rachel who he is. He kisses her. This is just a kiss of greeting. Laban’s going to kiss Jacob the same way in a few verses. So this is not like love at first sight, romantic kissing. This is just like, “Hey, hello, we are relatives. It’s good to see you.” And then, Rachel runs and tells her father, and Laban welcomes Jacob in as a member of the family. There doesn’t seem to be anything duplicitous, anything hidden in Laban’s actions here. He just welcomes his sister’s son, as if he is a member of the family, which he is. So we get to verse 15. So Jacob has come, he started to stay with Laban. Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?” So Laban welcomes Jacob in, gives him a job, and then he says, “Okay, after a month, I’ve seen this guy work. I should probably quit treating—I shouldn’t treat him like a slave, but I can’t treat him like a son. I already have sons. They already get the inheritance, so I need to pay him something. Tell me, what shall your wages be?”Now, Laban had two daughters. The name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. Jacob loved Rachel, and he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel.” And Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man. Stay with me.” So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love that he had for her. So again, Laban looks at Jacob and says, “This is probably a good worker, a guy who understands what he’s doing with the sheep,” and we’re going to see later on in Jacob’s story that God actually pours out a great deal of blessing upon Laban because of Jacob’s diligent efforts. And so after a month, he says, “Hey, tell me, how can I pay you? How can I make it worth your while to stay here?” And Jacob, in this time has fallen in love with Rachel. The comparison here between the two sisters says that Leah has weak eyes, and this could just be a metaphor saying that she’s less attractive than Rachel, or it could be like a literal description. One of the ways that beauty shines through in people, and I would say, well, I’m on thin ice here, I probably should have thought this one through first. But like, women in particular is like the vivacity of their eyes. Like, you can see beauty coming through someone’s eyes when you’re looking at their face. And so that description of Rachel seems to be that she, in contrast to her sister Leah, who has weak eyes, Rachel is beautiful in form and appearance. Jacob is taken with her, and he says, “I will work for you for seven years in order to have your younger daughter, Rachel.” And that idea of treating a woman as if like, oh, we have to pay for her, that might strike our modern ears as strange, but it was a normal custom, that there would be some kind of bride price that a young man, if he wanted to marry a woman, he would have to bring forward this bride price. That was a normal part of, honestly, most human cultures until the day before yesterday. And you would have, in this society, an exchange, basically, like the man brought forward a bride price, and then the father would give a dowry with his daughter, so it was a transaction of sorts that took place. And Jacob offers something that is over the top. Seven years of labor is a long time. That’s a massive bride price, and he himself has initiated it. It seems that his intention here is, “I’m going to tell him something he won’t say no to.” You know, seven years of labor. Okay, I’ll take that, Laban says. That sounds fine to me. I mean, you know, I’d hate for her to marry somebody around here. Like, you’re much better. Yeah, I’ll take seven years of labor, young man. But then you have, honestly, probably one of the most romantic verses in all the Bible. Verse 20 says that those seven years were just like a few days to Jacob because of the love that he had for Rachel. So his story, even though it starts off pretty bad, like, he’s running for his life from his brother Esau, he gets here, and he meets her at the well, and now these seven years of labor for her father is just like a few days for him. It starts off like some kind of fairy tale. Until we read verses 21 to 30, where Jacob gets out-Jacobed.Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife, that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast, but in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. Laban gave his female servant Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her servant. And in the morning, behold, it was Leah. And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve you for Rachel? Why then, have you deceived me?” Laban said, “It is not so done in our country to give the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also, in return for serving me another seven years.” Jacob did so and completed her week. Then Laban gave him his daughter, Rachel to be his wife. Laban gave his female servant Bilhah to his daughter, Rachel, to be her servant. So Jacob went into Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah and served Laban for another seven years. Verse 21, we have our first indicator that something might be wrong in the relationship between Laban and Jacob. Jacob is having to remind Laban, “Hey, seven years have passed. Like it’s time for you to give me my wife.” Like, Laban didn’t lose track of time here. Laban knows it’s been seven years, but Jacob’s having to remind him, “You owe me. Okay, let’s get this marriage thing settled.” Laban says, “Okay.” And he gathers all the people together, and we don’t know, we don’t have hardly any information about weddings in ancient cultures like this. In the Old Testament, I think really the only clear pictures of weddings we have are this one here, and in Judges 14, where Samson gets married. But from what we know of later Jewish weddings and from the data that we have here, it seems like this is a week long celebration, which is also the case even in the time of Jesus. And you have this great, big, long celebration, and at the first night, the husband and the wife are supposed to be able to be together, but it seems that there’s been quite a bit of celebration happening already. And Jacob, whether it’s because it’s dark or his wife’s wearing a veil or he’s consumed too much alcohol or maybe all three, doesn’t notice when Laban sends Leah instead of Rachel, until the next morning. And he goes, “You are not who I thought you were.” And he goes to Laban, and he’s furious, and for good reason, he’s just worked seven years, and you know, Laban, maybe he didn’t have this plan in mind at first, but over the course of seven years, he’s thinking, “I could get another seven years out of this guy. If I slip in Leah, and you know, she’s not that pretty, I haven’t had somebody come and offer to marry her, but I could give her instead of Rachel, and then I could get rid of both of them, like get them both married off, and seven more years of labor out of Jacob.” This is he’s scheming away here, and the irony that we can see as the reader, that maybe not immediately apparent to Jacob, or maybe it is, and it makes him even more mad, is that Jacob, who by deceit, had stolen the right of the firstborn from his brother Esau, who by deceit had stolen his father’s blessing. He now, by deceit, has wound up with a different wife than he thought he was working for. He has been out-Jacobed by Laban. He’s been out-tricked. He’s furious, but he still ends up, Laban says, “Well, here’s the deal. Finish out this first week with Leah. Then I’ll give you Rachel.” So in eight days, he has two wives now, the one he wanted and the one that Laban snuck in on him. And Leah here certainly is not unaware of what it says in verse 30. It’s one of the most devastating verses in the Book of Genesis. Jacob went into Rachel also and he loved Rachel more than Leah and served Laban for another seven years. Gordon Wenham, Old Testament commentator, he points out that these second seven years, those first seven years, they pass like a few days. And Wenham says, the second seven years didn’t go quite so fast for Jacob. And we see that through what follows.The Lord saw, verse 31, that Leah was hated. That term “hated” in the Old Testament is generally, like it’s a Hebrew euphemism for “loved substantially less.” See the same thing in the book of Malachi when it refers to Jacob and Esau, that the Lord loved Jacob, but he hated Esau. It’s a term of comparison. And here, it’s not that Jacob has no affection for Leah at all, but it’s nothing compared to what he has for Rachel. The Lord saw, though. The Lord saw that Leah was hated. He opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, “The Lord has looked upon my affliction. Surely now my husband will love me.” And she conceived again and bore a son and said, “Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also,” and she called his name Simeon. Again, she conceived and bore a son and said, “Now this time, my husband will be attached to me because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore, she called his name, Levi. So, Leah is seen by the Lord, and the Lord hears her cries that she is not loved, that she is not cared for by her husband, and the Lord chooses to open her womb rather than Rachel’s. So unlike Rebecca, unlike Sarah, who had waited 20 years and 25 years in order to have a child, Leah is able to conceive and give birth right away. It seems like these children are just coming one right after the other, but then listen to these names. These names are devastating. The name Reuben means, I mean, these are what commentators call folk etymologies. Like it’s they’re word plays in Hebrew. It’s not that this is like literally where this word comes from, but this is what it sounds like. And what the word “Reuben” sounds like, the name Reuben sounds like “see, a son.” Like, “Look, now my husband’s gonna love me because I’ve produced a son for him. Maybe he didn’t care about me before, maybe I’m not as pretty as my sister, but I have produced an heir for him.” And then she has a second son, Simeon, whose name means “heard.” Like, “The Lord has heard my cries. And now my husband is going to love me. He’s heard of my affliction,” and then the third son’s name is Levi, which means “attached.” And she’s, you can just hear in the names that she’s giving these children, she is desperate, though the Lord has opened her womb and given her children, she is desperate for the love of her husband. “Would he be attached to me now that I have borne him three sons?” And by the time her fourth son comes, it seems she has given up hope of her husband ever actually loving her. Verse 35, and she conceived again and bore a son and said, “This time, I will praise the Lord.” Instead of desperately hoping for her husband to love her, she’s simply going to praise the Lord, for giving her Judah, and then she ceased bearing.And then we come to chapter 30. And Rachel has the opposite problem. She has Jacob’s love. Jacob cares for her, he is affectionate toward her, but Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, and she envied her sister. And she said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die.” And Jacob responds, and probably pretty reasonably. Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel and said, “Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” Jacob obviously spends a lot more time with Rachel than he does with Leah, and yet God has withheld children from her, and he says, “Who do I look like? Do I look like God?” And we can all answer with Jacob, “No, you don’t look like God, you don’t act like God.” But Rachel here, though she has the love of her husband, is desperate, because in that society, and I like not just in that society, like this is something that crosses times and cultures, a woman’s identity can be wrapped up in children, and she feels like her sister is beating her, is winning a competition with her, is in some sense, more valuable and valuable than her because she is able to have children when Rachel is not. It’s interesting here that in this whole passage, all of chapter 29, here in this first half of chapter 30, the only place Jacob mentions God at all is here in a flippant way of saying, “Do I look like God to you?” It’s the only way he refers to God in this entire text. Verse three, Rachel has a plan, and it’s a plan that we’ve heard before. It’s a plan very similar to Sarah’s back in chapter 16. Rachel says, “Here is my servant Bilhah. Go in to her that she may give birth on my behalf, that even I may have children through her.” And Jacob should say, “Hey, I’ve heard this story before, and it doesn’t go very well. Like, let’s not do that.” But instead, he simply listens to the voice of his wife. She gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob went in to her. And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. And then Rachel said, “God has judged me and has also heard my voice and given me a son.” Therefore, she called his name Dan, and Dan just means, like, it sounds like the word for “judged,” “vindicated.” Like the idea is, Rachel is saying, “Well, now that I have done this, I have given my servant to my husband to have a child with, God has vindicated me by giving me this child,” and so his name is Dan. And verse 7, Rachel’s servant Bilhah conceived again, and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, “With mighty wrestlings, I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed,” so she called his name Naphtali. So like her idea with this name is like she’s in this competition with Leah, and now she’s got the upper hand. Not only does she have her husband’s love, but she has two children as well, even if they were through the means of her servant. Well, Leah says, “Two can play at that game. Two can play at that game.” Verse 9, Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, so she took her servant Zilpah, and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Then Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son, and Leah said, “Good fortune has come.” So she called his name Gad. “Good fortune, I have been blessed above my sister again.” And Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son, and Leah said, “Happy am I, for women have called me happy,” so she called his name, Asher. And she’s just rubbing it in to Leah, or to Rachel, rather, that God has continued to bless me over and above what he has you, little sister.And then we get this micro story here in verses 14 to 18 that is again filled with irony. In the days of wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother, Leah. So Reuben is the oldest son at this point. He’s maybe four or five years old. He goes out into the field, he finds these mandrakes and the mandrakes were a fruit that was thought to contain properties that would improve the relationship between a husband and his wife and would also be thought to improve fertility. And so Rachel sees this, verse middle of verse 14. Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” And Leah says to her, verse 15, “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also?” And Rachel said, “He may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.” Rachel says, “OK, I have him most of the time, I’ll let you have him tonight in exchange for these mandrakes that are going to maybe bring me the child that I desire.” When Jacob came in from the field that evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must come in to me, for I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” Let’s think about what a disaster this family is if these are the conversations that they’re having. So he lay with her that night. So Rachel has him most of the time and now has the mandrakes. Leah has purchased him for one night, sold him for one night. And God listened to Leah verse 17, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. The mandrakes don’t work for Rachel, but the one night with Jacob works for Leah. Verse 18, Leah said, “God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband.” So she called his name Issachar. The situation is totally a disaster. It’s also very evident that their understanding of God and his blessing is a disaster. She thinks that she has gotten pregnant here because she had previously given her servant to her husband. She’s saying, “God has given me my wages here by giving me another son.” And Leah conceived again, and bore Jacob a sixth son. Then Leah said, “God has endowed me with a good endowment, and now my husband will honor me because I have borne him six sons.” And so she called his name Zebulun. Zebulun’s name just means “honor.” Like it sounds like Leah thinks, “I’ve given him six sons now. Surely he is going to give me the honor that I deserve. I’ve brought him so much.” And afterwards, she bore a daughter, verse 21, and called her name Dinah. And Jacob probably has other daughters that’s kind of indicated by chapter 46, that he doesn’t just have sons and this one daughter. But Dinah is named specifically because chapter 34 is going to be, she’s going to be at the center of that story. So her name is mentioned here, whereas the other daughters are not. And then, finally, in verse 22, God remembers Rachel. And God listened to her, and God opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” And she called his name Joseph, saying, “May the Lord add to me another son.” She calls him Joseph, which sounds like the words for “may he add,” but then also sounds similar to “he has taken away.” And so she believes that God has taken away the reproach of not having any children, as God gives her this son.This story is terrible. It’s just absolutely, it’s like so many of the stories of Genesis. The story is terrible. And so here’s some of the lessons we can learn from it. First of all, Jacob’s sins come home to roost. We saw last week that God had initiated a relationship with Jacob in chapter 28, even though Jacob didn’t deserve it. But God coming to Jacob and initiating that relationship did not remove the earthly consequences of Jacob’s decisions and his actions. And his deception comes back to haunt him as ironically, he is out-deceived by his future father in law, Laban. And I think this is an important thing for us to realize, is we can look at our lives and see all the ways that God is bringing things about what we’ll talk about this in a minute, and see the good that he brings about, we should not think that that is going to necessarily remove the negative consequences of our decisions and our actions. And Jacob is going to feel that again and again throughout his life, that he makes a foolish decision, and bad things happen from it. That happens here. Second, this is more indicated in a negative way here, but normally, when Jacob initiates in his life, things go well. But when he does not, when he’s just following the advice of others to sin, when he just follows along into it, things go poorly. That happened before when he listened to the voice of his mother, who said, “Deceive your father.” And he followed through with it, even though he had qualms, even though he was like, “I don’t know if this is a great idea.” He still follows the voice of his mother, and it has disastrous consequences for him where he ends up driven out. Here, the same thing happens. He is just listening to the voices of his wives. Rather than thinking, “What is the right thing to do in this situation? What should I be doing? Should I listen to the voice of Rachel and take Bilhah as a concubine here?” The answer is clearly no. We’re not to the law of Moses yet. They would clearly prohibit this, but he already has the pattern of how God made things in the beginning. He has the example of his grandfather with Abraham and Hagar. He knows this is the wrong thing to do, and he does it anyway, and the consequences are disastrous. Likewise, later on, instead of saying, “Wait a second, is time with your husband something that we purchase and trade as if it’s a barter transaction down in 14 through 18?” Instead of leading in his home and initiating, Jacob is just kind of taking whatever comes his way. And it goes very poorly, not just for him, but for everyone around him. But the third thing we see is that even in spite of all of this train wreck of a family, even in spite of the fairy tale turning into a soap opera, God is still at work. God is still building Jacob’s family. He’s actually fulfilling his promise to Jacob in chapter 28 to be multiplying his offspring. And so God is going to, with these children from four different women, still use these as the foundations of the people of Israel. These are 11 of the 12 sons who will become the twelve tribes of Israel. Benjamin won’t be born until they’re back in Canaan. Here are 11 of his sons. And even though the origin story of their lives is not necessarily good, God is still going to use them. God is still going to be at work through them. God is still going to bring blessing to the nations through them. I think of this specifically there of Judah, at the end of chapter 29. The first three sons, Leah bears, she thinks they’re going to cause Jacob to become attached to her. And in the fourth son, she says, “I will praise the Lord.” And it’s that fourth son who’s going to become the progenitor of the tribe of Judah from which the Messiah will come, the line of David, and ultimately the Christ comes through the line of Judah. God is still at work. And I take a great deal of comfort from that because I’m looking at a lot of these families in this room, and like me, you have a train wreck, at least in parts of your family. And you know what? God can still be at work through all that. God is not restricted to working through perfect, wonderful Christian families. God works providentially through every family. And for those who love him, I know I quote it all the time, but Exodus chapter 20 says that God is a jealous God visiting the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. Our bad decisions, our rebellion against God has real consequences that ripple out. But his steadfast love goes to the 1000th generation of those that love him. Our sin has consequences, and loving God has ripples that way past that. And I think you see that in Jacob’s life. His sin has consequences that ripple out, but the fact that he ultimately ends up trusting the Lord and walking with him has impacts that still hit us today. The Lord has blessed the nations through the family of Jacob. And so we can take confidence that no matter what our sins, no matter what our disaster around us, God is at work, and if we are trusting him, he’s going to be at work for good, in us and through us, to those around us. Would you pray with me? Father God, we thank you that you are not restricted to working through perfect people because there aren’t any outside of your son. And so, Lord, we thank you for him. We thank you for sending your son into this world to take on a true human nature, bear the weight of our sin and our rebellion. And we thank you that you are a sovereign God who is able to use both our obedience and our disobedience to bring glory to yourself, and to bring about your plan in this world. Help us to trust in you and to have confidence in you, regardless of what is going on around us, regardless of how chaotic our families may be, help us to trust you in every circumstance. We pray in Jesus’ name.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit remsenbible.substack.com

Transcript generated by AI. The Sermon Was Not. Please comment if you notice any errors.Do the ends justify the means? Now, if I phrase the question that way, you're all pre-prime to say, no, of course not, unless you're a pragmatist, in which case you say, yeah, maybe. So I'll rephrase the question a little bit. If the end of something is God's blessing, does that endorse everything that happened beforehand? If God pours out his blessing, does everything that came before that blessing represent things that are endorsed by God?We're about to look at a familiar story here in the 27th chapter of Genesis. And that question is a big question that is raised by this passage. Does God endorse the means by which Jacob acquires blessing from his father?Now, before we get going, I'm going to do something I don't normally do. Normally, I would read the passage, and then if I had comments on how it was structured, I would spell them out there. But because this is a familiar story for many of us, I'm going to talk about the structure ahead of time, just so you can kind of see what's happening here, and it's not just a familiar story washing past your ears and being ignored.This chapter, actually starting at the end of chapter 26, we're going to look at chapter 26, beginning in verse 34, and read all the way through the end of chapter 27. And this story is bracketed by two references to Hittite women. And that technique of bracketing the story is a common one in all storytelling, but especially ancient storytelling where they were mostly oral cultures not like he's writing down a final product here but this story has been passed along by means of speech for years and years and years and years and inside of those brackets i think what we actually have is also a chiasm which is if you're looking at a piece of paper a story that kind of does this it comes down to a point and then it comes back out and if you're reading things outside of biblical studies, they'll call this a ring composition because it circles down to the story and then circles back out. It works in rings.And I just want to point out a couple of these things to you. If I'm wrong about this, blame me. I didn't find this in any of the commentaries. I just noticed it as I was reading. I think the... Like I said, the brackets we have there. So if you were writing out a chiasm, I'm gonna nerd out here for a minute, okay? If you're writing out a chiasm, you would write out, here's section A, here's section B, and then in this case, you go C, and D is the center. And part of what the storyteller is doing when he comes down to the center is he's emphasizing that thing that's in the middle of the story it's not that everything else doesn't matter but this thing is the focal point and so this argument goes a or the story goes a b c d and then it comes out c prime matches up with c b prime matches up with b a prime matches up with a and so a and a prime are The reference to Esau's wives at the end of chapter 26, who are Hittites. And then at the end of chapter 27, Rebecca tells Jacob she doesn't want, or she tells Isaac that she doesn't want Jacob to marry Hittite women. So that's bracketing this story.Then in between, we have what happens where Isaac is an old man. And he is concerned about the fact that he needs to pass on his blessing to his son. But instead of blessing the son who is chosen by God, he instead wants to bless his preferred son, his favorite son, Esau. And we see references to his age in verse 1, his death approaching in verse 2, the fact that he wants Esau to use weapons in verse 3, and that he's going to bless him in verse 4. And down in verses 41 to 45 We see Isaac's death approaching. Esau planning probably to use weapons to kill his brother Jacob. Esau lamenting over the fact that his blessing has been stolen. And in both of those sections, verses 1 to 13 and verses 41 to 45, Rebecca overhears what's happening and then goes and talks to Jacob.And then verses C in our outline here, verses 14 to 25, we read of Jacob going out. Verse 30, Jacob went out. Verse 14, Rebecca prepares delicious food. Verse 31, Esau prepares delicious food and so on. So what I'm wanting to say is that as the story moves, it kind of moves down to a point and comes back out. And the author, Moses, wants us to see The emphasis that lays in the middle of the story, which is where Isaac blesses Jacob. That is, there's all kinds of other things going on in this story, but the center of what is being told to us is that God continues to bless the family of Abraham. And in this case, it's in spite of themselves.So having said all that, we're going to read the text. I know we just read Matthew 23, which is pretty long. Genesis 27 is pretty long too, and we're going to add two verses here. Genesis 26, beginning in verse 34, says this. ‏Genesis 26:34-27:46 (ESV)34 When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite to be his wife, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite, 35 and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.27:1 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.” 2 He said, “Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. 3 Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, 4 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.”5 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, 6 Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, 7 ‘Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food, that I may eat it and bless you before the LORD before I die.’ 8 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. 9 Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. 10 And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.” 11 But Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. 12 Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing.” 13 His mother said to him, “Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my voice, and go, bring them to me.”14 So he went and took them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared delicious food, such as his father loved. 15 Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob her younger son. 16 And the skins of the young goats she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. 17 And she put the delicious food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.18 So he went in to his father and said, “My father.” And he said, “Here I am. Who are you, my son?” 19 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.” 20 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.” 21 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.” 22 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.” 23 And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands. So he blessed him. 24 He said, “Are you really my son Esau?” He answered, “I am.” 25 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.26 Then his father Isaac said to him, “Come near and kiss me, my son.” 27 So he came near and kissed him. And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said,“See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed!28 May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine.29 Let peoples 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!”30 As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting. 31 He also prepared delicious food and brought it to his father. And he said to his father, “Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that you may bless me.” 32 His father Isaac said to him, “Who are you?” He answered, “I am your son, your firstborn, Esau.” 33 Then Isaac trembled very violently and said, “Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me, and I ate it all before you came, and I have blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed.” 34 As soon as Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!” 35 But he said, “Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.” 36 Esau said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.” Then he said, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?” 37 Isaac answered and said to Esau, “Behold, I have made him lord over you, and all his brothers I have given to him for servants, and with grain and wine I have sustained him. What then can I do for you, my son?” 38 Esau said to his father, “Have you but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.” And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.39 Then Isaac his father answered and said to him:“Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be, and away from the dew of heaven on high.40 By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother;but when you grow restless you shall break his yoke from your neck.”41 Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” 42 But the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him, “Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. 43 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran 44 and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away— 45 until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?”46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?”First point, as we look at this passage, is this. No one deserves the blessing of God. This story centers on a blessing, but no one in the story deserves it. And this is a point that is made clear for us explicitly, numerous places in scripture, that no human being, this side of the fall, deserves God's blessing, his kindness, or his mercy. Romans chapter 3, beginning in verse 9, says, There is no one righteous, no, not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God. Together they have turned aside. Altogether they have become worthless. That's Paul's authoritative, Holy Spirit-inspired description of humanity. We naturally hate God. That's what Romans chapter 5 says, is that we are born at enmity. We are born enemies of God. And you see that in this story, all four characters. We're just going to walk through them by just like in a movie in order of appearance. We'll list them out here and look at the fact that they don't deserve God's blessing.And the first is Esau. He's introduced to us there at the end of chapter 26. And we're told that age 40, he marries two Hittite wives. Not a good start for Esau. Okay. First of all, he's practicing polygamy, which... We don't have the law yet given through Moses, but we do have the pattern. Genesis chapter 1, and it's very clear from the very beginning of Scripture that any time a man starts taking multiple wives, he's running away from the Lord. This happens when Abraham obeys the voice of his wife Sarah and takes her concubine, or takes for himself her servant as a concubine, like he's moving away from God's will for his life. And every time one of the patriarchs or those in their family take multiple wives, they're moving away from God's design. And so we see Esau doing that. Furthermore, he's taking wives of the land. He's taking Hittite wives who would come, coming with them would come the Hittite gods and Hittite religion. And it is making life miserable for his parents. So in that sense, he is not an admirable character.Now he does some other things in the story that are perfectly fine. He's a man of the field. He goes to hunt game for his father. He's a good cook. Like, that's great. There's things about Esau that there's nothing wrong with that are even admirable. He prepares game for his father. He desires the blessing of his father. That's a normal, natural desire. That's a good thing about Esau. But when that blessing is stolen from him, in verses 34 and following, we see that his response is not a response of godliness. It's not a response that has any indication of faith. When Esau heard the words of his father, he is angry with his brother. He desires to kill Jacob. We see that later on in the passage. We can have empathy for him. I mean, you just hear his words and you hear like the pain, like Do you only have one blessing, Father? Can you not also bless me, Father? And yet when Jacob does give him or Isaac gives him some sort of blessing, kind of a mixed blessing in verses 38 and 39, what Esau does afterwards is start to plot the death of his brother. He starts to plot the death of Jacob. He's understandably angry, but he's far from guiltless in this story.The second character that we meet is Isaac. And what we are told about Isaac in verse 1 is that he is old. And if you Google, I don't really suggest Googling answers to Bible questions because you get some weird stuff, especially now with AI. Like, AI will make up answers to things in the Bible. But if you Google, how old was Isaac when this happened, you're going to get all kinds of answers. But the... Most common answer from commentators is he was probably about 137 years old when this happened. And so Isaac is old. It says his eyes have grown dim. He can't see clearly. Now, he's not about to die. He's not going to die until he's 180 years old. So he's actually got 43 years of life left. However, he is probably thinking about his mortality because his brother Ishmael, who was 13 years older than him, had died at age 137. And so if Isaac is also 137 here, he probably is considering that my days may very well be numbered. And so he calls in. his son to bless him before he dies. This is the right thing to do. It's the right fatherly procedure. The blessing needs to pass from Isaac down to the next generation.But the problem is, instead of listening to the prophecy that God had given in chapter 25, that the older son was going to serve the younger, so here he should be blessing Jacob, he's instead planning to bless his favorite son, And we see back in chapter 25 that Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. So instead of listening to the plan of God, Isaac's going to listen to his personal preferences and he seeks to bless his older son. As blindness here is mentioned because it's a physical reality that's important for the story, it's also a spiritual reality. When the Bible mentions physical details, almost always there's something more going on than just the physical reality that's being talked about.An example of this elsewhere in Scripture would be like in 2 Samuel 4, when Eli, the priest, is old and fat. He's heavy. He falls over when he hears the news of the Ark of the Covenant being captured and breaks his neck. While his fatness had come from his sons stealing the fat off of the Lord's sacrifices. And then that word heavy is similar to the Hebrew word for glory, kavod. And... What happens when his daughter-in-law gives birth is that she names her child. The glory has departed because Eli had died and the Ark of the Covenant had been taken away. So the reference there to his weight helps explain why he died when he fell over and landed on his head. But it also indicates a spiritual reality that he had grown fat and dim and dull because of his... turning a blind eye to his son's sin. Similar thing here with Isaac. His blindness is a physical reality that plays an important part of the story. He's also spiritually dim to the things that are happening in his home and in his life. Though he, as we saw last week, is a true worshiper of God, he is not a sinless man. He is faltering here big time by choosing the wrong son.The third character that we meet is Isaac's wife, Rebecca. And she maybe is a little bit more of a sympathetic character than Isaac, because if you remember what we looked at last week in chapter 26, Isaac had taken her to a foreign land, to the land of the Philistines, and said, hey, can you pretend to not be my wife? Like, maybe she doesn't really trust this guy. And furthermore, he's, again, acting contrary, she knows, to the word of the Lord, to prophecy. And so she doesn't have confidence in his judgment. She doesn't have confidence in his abilities to do the right thing. And so instead of going to him directly and saying, hey, why are you planning to bless Esau and not Jacob? Instead of confronting him directly, which is what Leviticus 19 would say to do, Don't harbor bitterness in your heart against your neighbor, but go and reason frankly with him. Instead of going and reasoning frankly with her neighbor or her husband here, she instead decides to deceive him. And she ropes Jacob in on this plot to deceive his father.And when Jacob, whose name means like a schemer or a swindler, He doesn't even like this scheme. He's like, I feel like this could falter and not turn out so well for me. She says she treats blessing and curse as if it's a flippant thing. She says, let your curse be upon me. So she's not concerned about being cursed, presumably by God. Then at the end of the chapter, After her plan kind of works but also kind of backfires because now Esau wants to kill Jacob, instead of telling Isaac, here's the situation, your older son wants to kill your younger son, we should send him away, she instead turns to manipulation and gives just enough of the facts in hopes that Isaac will do what she wants. She's lying all throughout the story. I mean, this is characteristic of people who give themselves over to lies, isn't it? Like if you hear one lie from someone, do you ever trust anything else they say? Maybe if they're a small child, then you feel like the issue was corrected. But if you hear it from an adult, you're probably not going to trust that person again. And for good reason, because lies become a characteristic pattern of the human heart. And that's what's happened here with Rebecca. She's characterized by falsehood, not by truth.Finally, we come to Jacob, who in some sense is going to become the focal point of the story for the next number of chapters in Genesis. Now, the schemer here, even he doesn't like this scheme. He says, hey, this could backfire. Like if I go to dad and pretend to be Esau, he's going to notice that Esau's a big, strong, hairy guy, and I'm kind of a little not. Like smooth, I don't have the testosterone that he does. Like I can't produce the facial hair or the arm hair or whatever. And what if he curses me? Now, it's interesting here, Jacob's thought process. He never mentions God. He doesn't think about the potential of the blessing All he's worried about is the curse that could fall upon him.And it was interesting reading this week about blessing language in the Old Testament. And ancient Near Eastern societies were run primarily, no, I shouldn't say primarily. One of the key features of ancient Near Eastern religion was this emphasis upon curses. So like huge parts of ancient Near Eastern religion are focused upon breaking curses. And so you would have these treaties or these covenants that were administered by a Lord and the with them would come blessings and curses we see this even in the book of Deuteronomy where god gives the law a second time and then he gives blessings if the people obey the word of the lord and he gives curses if they disobey but the dominant note of the old testament of Hebrew and Israelite religion is that of blessing the focus like the curses are present but blessing is the focal pointAnd the concern is not so much, oh, we don't want to be cursed. The concern is I don't want to walk out of the blessing of God. But the religions all around them were the opposite. There's very little mention of blessing and there's lots of mention of cursing. And so Jacob's priorities here seem to be ordered along the lines of the nations all around them. He's more worried about curses than about anything else. He doesn't want to fall under a curse. Nonetheless, he still listens to the voice of his mother here at probably about 77 years old. He can't decide for himself what's right and wrong. He just listens to his mom.And there's an interesting thing here, like to jump back to Rebecca for a minute. Like the instruction of a mother is supposed to be a blessing. Proverbs chapter one, verses eight and nine says, it's a father speaking to his son and he tells him to listen to his instruction and do not forsake the teaching of your mother. And if you hold onto it, it's going to be like a garland for your head, a pendant for your neck. Like a mother's instruction should be a blessing to her children. It should lead him or her towards godliness and maturity and wisdom. But here, Rebekah is going in the opposite direction. She's leading her son into deception and into sin.Isaac is oblivious to this. Jacob follows his mother's instruction. And when he comes to his father, he tells at least four explicit lies. Verse 19, he says, I am Esau. Verse 19, again, he says, I've done as you told me. I went and I killed this game and I made this food. And when Isaac says, how so fast did you kill something and make food already? Well, Jacob invokes the name of God in this lie. He says, the Lord your God has granted me success. So he's not only lying to his father, he's also blaspheming the name of God. He's taking the Lord's name in vain, using it in a flippant way to... stamp an endorsement on his lie and in verse 24 when Isaac again asks are you really my son Esau—Jacob says oh yes I am so there's not a character in this story who is guiltless there's not a character in this story who has earned the blessing and the favor of god all are in some degree some measure pursuing disobedience rather than obedience.The second thing that we see here though is that the blessing of god is invincible The blessing of God is invincible. God had promised in chapter 25 before the boys were born to lift Jacob over Esau. Does Isaac's rebellion against that promise or Jacob's practice of deception invalidate the promise of God? No. Romans chapter 11 and verse 29, the apostle Paul says, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Like they can't be called back. Once God has spoken a blessing, he's not reeling it back into his mouth. When God has poured out his blessing, it's there. And so their sin does not change, does not overthrow the plan of God.And we see when Isaac blesses Jacob, It doesn't seem like a very spiritual blessing, and that's characteristic of Isaac. He's not a man with a very spiritual mind, it seems, throughout his life. But he blesses him richly with physical prosperity. Verse 28, may God give you of the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. So he's pouring out verbally this blessing from God. He's also promising earthly prestige. Let the people serve you. Nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers and may your mother's sons bow down to you. So everyone who descends from your mother is going to honor you as their lord, as their king, as their covenant head.And then a reiteration at the end of verse 29 of the promise given to Abraham in chapter 12 and verse 3. Cursed be everyone who curses you. and blessed be everyone who blesses you. Isaac passes on the blessing to the correct son, not because he planned to, but because God determined that's what was going to happen. And so he uses the deception of Rebecca and Jacob in order to pass on the blessing to Jacob, even though Isaac wasn't intending to do that. He's speaking here, Isaac is speaking, an authoritative prophetic word over Jacob's life.And we see that when Esau comes and says, hey, why can't you just give the blessing to me? Like, don't you have an extra one? And if the understanding of blessing in the Old Testament were the same as we have today, like just some nice words that you say to someone... Isaac would be able to reel it back here and go like, Oh, I made a mistake. And you could call Jacob on the phone and say, you dirty, rotten trickster. Why in the world would you lie to me like this? I'm writing you out of the will now. And until he saw, yeah, you do get everything, but that's not what happens instead. Isaac recognizes that this blessing was spoken with the authority of God, even though he was unconscious of having done it to the right person.This happens in other places in Scripture, the story of Balaam and the book of Numbers. It also happens in the New Testament. Caiaphas, the high priest, after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, The Sanhedrin gets together and they're trying to decide, what are we going to do about this Jesus? Everybody's following him and now he's popular enough that we can't really do anything about him. And Caiaphas, the high priest that year, it says he was speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit. What he's about to say, he means one way and God means something else by it. And what Caiaphas says is, do you not understand that it would be better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish? And he's thinking, if we don't kill this guy and get rid of him, the Romans are going to come in and cause the nation to perish. But he's speaking prophetically, being high priest that year, because of his office, God speaks through him.and god is saying through Caiaphas that when Jesus dies the people of god's sins will be paid for so that they do not have to perish and it's not just the people of Israel who trust in him but he's dying to gather into one the people of god who are scattered abroad john 11 and verse 52 says so this is a thing that happens in scripture god speaks through people better than they know and that's what's happening here with Isaac he tries to bless the wrong son But God works and he so blesses the correct son. And that blessing is irrevocable. He can't take it back. He can't change his mind.God didn't leave Esau completely out in the cold like Ishmael before him. God says, I'm not going to bless. Ishmael, he's not the child of promise. Isaac is. But God still gave earthly prosperity to Ishmael. He became a father of 12 princes. He became a great and mighty man. Same thing's going to happen for Esau. He's going to become the father of the nation of Edom, which is going to become a prominent player in the Old Testament history. Even into the New Testament, King Herod, who calls himself king of the Jews, is actually an Edomite king. who tries to kill baby Jesus. Like the Edomites still play a massive role in the scriptures narrative.And here in verse 40, he says, your brother, you shall serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from your neck. And eventually during the reigns of David and Solomon, the Israelites rule over Edom. But eventually after that time, the Edomites break away and help actually conquer Israel and Judah. through the Assyrians and the Babylonians. So God gets his work done in this world, often in spite of his servants. Even though all the people in this story, all the human characters are failures, God is not a failure. God's plan will not be stopped even by our sin.But the third and final point here is God's blessing does not excuse our folly. To come back to our original point, A wrong inference from this story would be to say that God blesses their deception. Deception is culpable and condemnable before God. But God wasn't waiting for Jacob to be worthy of his promise, worthy of his blessing. So, don't worry... Don't worry. This is something that Christians worry about a lot. What if I mess up God's plan? What if I screw up his plan for my life by this sin? Or what if somebody else does something to me that messes up God's plan for my life? Human beings can't mess up God's plans. We don't have that power, so don't worry about it. What you do need to worry about is being faithful and obedient where he has put you.Here, Jacob and Rebecca are grasping for the thing that God had already promised to give. That's folly. God's promise to give was not going to go away. They did not need to grasp for it. They did not need to walk into sin here. Which brings us to our second point. Don't use God's providence, the fact that he can work all things together for good. Don't use that to whitewash sin. We can look at the result and say, well, Jacob got the blessing. That's good. But that doesn't excuse him. It doesn't excuse Rebecca. Don't use it in your life to excuse your own sin or the sins of others against you. It's so easy to say, well, I can see the good and the growth that came from this. So it wasn't that bad what they did to me. That's never the way the Bible treats sin. Call sin what it is. Even if God brought good about it, that's because God is good, not because the event, the thing was good.Third, The fact that God is complete in his providence, Providence is comprehensive over every single thing that happens, does not excuse us from making unwise or cavalier choices. Our actions still matter. And you see that in this story because Rebecca's favorite son is Jacob, right? And she plans this scheme to make sure he gets the blessing. But then Esau hates him so much he wants to kill him and she has to send him away to Paddan-Aram. And what we don't see yet, but we're going to see as the story continues, is that Rebecca disappears from the story. And probably what that means is that she dies before he comes back 20 years later. Her sin leads to her not seeing her favorite son again in her lifetime. So God brings good about, but there are still real painful earthly consequences to their sinful actions here. So don't be cavalier and unwise about your actions.Fourth, Finally, do have confidence that the word of the Lord will come to pass. Nothing that you do, that others do, that any human being can do, will stand in the way of God bringing about his purposes in your life and in the world. That's what we read in Psalm 2 as we opened up the service. The kings of the earth gather together to plot against the Lord and against his anointed, and he who sits in the heavens laughs at them. God is not intimidated by human actions. So neither should we be. Brothers and sisters, we need to trust God to be God. Do not trust in your own schemes. Do not trust in your own wisdom, your feelings, your experiences, or your ability to manipulate the situation to bring about what you think is the desired result. Trust in the Father who, according to his promise, will abundantly supply all your needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus. Would you pray with me?Father God, we thank you. for your goodness. We thank you that you are in control of everything. And so we pray now that you would give us hearts that have a firm confidence in your capacity to do good because you are good. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. This is a public episode. 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Genesis 25:12-34 (ESV)12 These are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s servant, bore to Abraham. 13 These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, named in the order of their birth: Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael; and Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, 14 Mishma, Dumah, Massa, 15 Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. 16 These are the sons of Ishmael and these are their names, by their villages and by their encampments, twelve princes according to their tribes. 17 (These are the years of the life of Ishmael: 137 years. He breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people.) 18 They settled from Havilah to Shur, which is opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria. He settled over against all his kinsmen.19 These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham fathered Isaac, 20 and Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife. 21 And Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren. And the LORD granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. 22 The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the LORD. 23 And the LORD said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.”24 When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. 25 The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau. 26 Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau’s heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. 28 Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.29 Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted!” (Therefore his name was called Edom.) 31 Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright now.” 32 Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” 33 Jacob said, “Swear to me now.” So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.Following sermon transcript was generated by AI. The sermon was not. Please comment if you notice any errors. So we've got basically three chunks of text here. The first is verses 12 to 18, the generations of Ishmael. And why would we care if Ishmael is not the son of promise?So Abraham has these sons. He actually has a number of other sons later by his second wife, Keturah. But earlier on in Genesis, we saw where God had promised to Abraham that he was going to become a great nation. But at that point, he was 75 and he didn't have any children. So after about a dozen years, his wife, who is only 10 years younger than him, is now at this point, she's also well into her 70s, says, hey, you know what? How about I give you my servant and you have a child with her and that child will be counted mine. And Abraham says, okay, sounds fine. And they decide to do that. That's a common practice in the ancient Near East. The children of the maidservant would have been considered the wife's children. And they do that. And Ishmael is born. Abraham has a child with Hagar. And God says, no, this was not my plan. It is not through Ishmael that your children will be named. I'm going to give a child to Sarah. And it's still then another 13 years before that promise comes to fruition. And God does give a child to Sarah. And this child's name is Isaac.And as Isaac is growing and he starts to get a little older, Ishmael starts to make fun of him and is poking fun at him. And Sarah, remember this was all her idea. Sarah says, get that woman and her child out of here. Send them away. And Abraham doesn't want to. Abraham doesn't want to send away his son, his firstborn son. He loves him. He cares about him. He cares about Hagar too. And he does not want to send them away. But God comes and he says, no, listen to Sarah. Send them away, and then in chapter 17 and verse 20, God promises that he is going to make Ishmael into a great people as well. Twelve princes are going to come from him. And here in chapter 25, we see that God is fulfilling his promise to Abraham. God is making Ishmael into a great nation, and these twelve princes, twelve tribes that become the people that today we would consider Arabs, they are descendants of Ishmael. So this is significant because we see God's faithfulness to the promise that he gave to Abraham to bless Ishmael, but at the same time we also see that this isn't the line of promise, these are not God's chosen people, and so we see a theme recurring that starts in Genesis all the way back in chapter four.And that's the theme of tension between brothers, between those who are the chosen people of God and those who are not. There is a tension, a division between them. And that happens with Cain and Abel. And we know how that results. And then it happens again here with this tension between Ishmael and Isaac. And Ishmael is blessed, but he's not the chosen one. And it's going to recur with Isaac's own children.So the second section we see are the children of Isaac. And if you remember it, here the text reminds us that Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, the Aramean of Paddan Aram, sister of Laban, the Aramean to be his wife. The longest chapter in Genesis was one of the last ones we looked at, and that's chapter 24. And chapter 24 of Genesis is this great, big, long narrative of Abraham realizing my son needs a wife. And he should not be taking a wife from among the people of the nations, the Canaanites, who would lead him away from God. Lot did that. Lot moved into the same area. He followed Abram into the promised land. But then he took a wife from among the people of the land and raised his family the way that everybody else in that area did. And it was a disaster for Lot. It undid his life and he eventually loses his wife and things don't go well with his daughters.Abraham doesn't want that for his son. And so he sends a servant back to his home country and says, find a wife for my son. And so in chapter 24, you get the story of the servant coming and meeting Rebekah. And then the whole story is repeated as the servant repeats it back to Laban and his father. And it's kind of a head scratcher. Why does the author spend so much time informing us of how Isaac got a wife? But the point of the story is that God is providing miraculously for the people of God. He's miraculously providing for the line of promise to continue. Even though Abraham was so old when his child came, and now his son is getting old to be getting married for the first time, 40 years old. God is providing for him.So Isaac has this wife, Rebekah, but then she too, verse 21 tells us, is barren. She's barren just like her mother-in-law was. And so it's another 20 years of waiting for the promise of God. Waiting for what is going to happen here. And Jacob, Isaac rather, Isaac prays for his wife. And he prays for her to conceive. And she does conceive, which again, this is like a really important theme in the biblical narrative. If someone who is barren or someone who we don't expect to get pregnant gets pregnant, something important is about to happen in salvation history. It's true with Sarah, it's true with Rebecca, it'll be true later on with Rachel and then Ruth and then Hannah and then most importantly with Mary. All these people you don't expect to be pregnant either because they're old or they're barren or with the case of Mary, a virgin, like something significant is happening when the unexpected happens concerning a birth.And here, Rebecca conceives, but then she's miserable, and it seems more miserable than the typical pregnant woman. She's to the point where she goes to inquire of the Lord. And we don't know what that means specifically. I think it's entirely possible that she actually goes to her husband, Isaac, who we'll see later on in Genesis, seems to function as a prophet. Like, it seems that she probably goes to him and inquires, says, okay, ask the Lord for me. Why? Why is this struggle taking place within me? And she receives this prophecy. The Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb. And two peoples from within you shall be divided. One shall be stronger than the other and the older shall serve the younger. So she receives a prophecy concerning her children that they both will turn into nations and they will be at enmity with one another. One's going to be stronger and the younger is going to be the one who is the head. He's going to be the one who receives the blessing. He's going to be the chosen of God and the older will serve him.So then the boys are born. And the first one, we're told, comes out all red. And so he's all hairy and his name is then given to him. His name is Esau. And the second one, his name is really significant because as he comes out, he grabs hold of the heel of his brother. And the name Jacob means like a heel grabber, but it can also be taken to mean a deceiver or a trickster. And that, as we walk through the Jacob story, is going to be very indicative of the kind of man that Jacob is. Jacob is a deceiver. He is a trickster. He's a schemer. Even this word here in verse 27, where it says, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field. Jacob was a quiet man. Could be taken to mean that he's a contemplative man, that he's sitting here, he's thinking. He's thinking about things and he's scheming how to get ahead.So you see these two brothers, they're different kinds of men. Esau is a man of action. Every time I say man of action, I think of the line from the Princess Bride where the man in black says to the six-fingered man, we are men of action, lies do not become us. Esau doesn't really seem to have a lying bone. He doesn't have a thinking bone in his body. He's just a man of action. Whereas Jacob is the schemer. These two brothers have very different trajectories, but those trajectories bring them into conflict.Again, we see in this section of verses 19 to 26 that God has been faithful to his promise. God is bringing about children to keep the line of promise going on, that God had promised that he was going to bless the world through Abraham's family, and against all odds, his family continues. Even though these old men and old women are having children, well, through the fact that they are having children, God is continuing to bring his promise to fruition.But then we start to get into the narrative proper of Jacob's life with his first story, which is, it's really a sad story. Verses 27 to 34. When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man dwelling in tents. You see the start of the tension here. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Not a good deal. It's clear to everyone including the narrator that there's two kids and mom loves one and dad loves the other. This is not a good setup.Once when Jacob was cooking stew Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted. And Esau said to Jacob let me eat some of that red stew for I'm exhausted. Now I don't know if you've watched brothers interact. They often speak to one another in this sort of way, this rough, confrontational, not very kind way. Now, nonetheless, you are reading the story and you're thinking, okay, if you know how the story goes and you know Jacob's the chosen one, Jacob's the one who's supposed to be like God's servant, how should he respond? How should he love his neighbor as himself here? How should he love his brother as himself? Maybe he should like throw some insult back at him about what a jerk he is and then give him a bowl of stew, right? Like he's... That's what you would expect a brother to do. Yeah, maybe he's going to throw an insult back and say, wow, maybe you could go out to the manor's tree and pick something but but he's gonna give him a little stew but that's not what happens instead the first thing on the tip of Jacob's tongue is sell me your birthright you're reading that you're like wait how did we go from stew because I'm hungry to birthright.And what is obvious as you're reading this text is Jacob's been thinking about this. Jacob has been scheming. I have got to find a way to get the birthright. Now, we don't know for sure whether Jacob knows the prophecy that was given to his mom, that the older is going to serve the younger. But I think it's entirely possible because Jacob is the one that Rachel loves, that Rachel has told Jacob this prophecy that you know someday that your brother is going to be serving you. And just bide your time. I know he's bigger than you and he beats you up sometimes, but someday he's going to serve you. And Jacob's sitting here scheming, going, how am I going to make that happen? How can I make him the heel that I take hold of and bring into submission to me? Here I am making this stew and in comes my brother and I have an opportunity. I have an opportunity to exercise my will in this situation and put him in his place.Jacob said, sell me your birthright now. And Esau said, I'm about to die. What good is a birthright to me? Why do I care about a birthright? And Jacob is not happy with the, well, I don't care answer. He says, no, swear to me, swear to me that you will give me your birthright now. So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew and he ate, and he drank, and he rose, and he went his way. Thus, Esau despised his birthright.You read that story, and you walk away going, I don't really think God could use either one of these guys. They're both kind of losers. One of them is absolutely unthinking. I mean, the chapter concludes with a negative reflection on Esau. The text does not say, oh, poor Esau, he got tricked. It doesn't say, oh a bummer thing for him. It says he despised his birthright. The birthright was everything. To be the oldest son means you would inherit your father's household, either the entirety of the household or at least a double portion over what everyone else would receive. And he looks at that and says, yeah, it doesn't matter. I'm just hungry. He's driven by his stomach. And the text holds him guilty for that. He is not well reflected on here.On the other hand, you have Jacob who's, he's a little bit more of a long-term thinker. He's driven by selfish interest, but not the selfish interest of right now, but he's driven by the selfish interest of, I'm gonna get mine out here in the future. I'm gonna lay things in place so that I can have what is coming to me or what I want to be coming to me, whether it should be or not. And that's really the point of this story is to introduce us to these two characters, both of whom are undeserving of anything from God. Both of whom are undeserving of God's mercy and his grace. Neither one deserves God's involvement in their life in any way except for judgment.But the point, longer term, thinking theologically, thinking through the whole of Scripture, that the Apostle Paul draws from this text is that though neither one of these two men deserves God's mercy, salvation does not ultimately depend upon our worthiness of God's mercy. We all deserve God's judgment, and yet God chooses to pour out mercy and grace. In the book of Malachi, God is bringing an indictment against the people of Israel because they have rejected him. He has poured out his love and his mercy on the people of Israel, the people who descend from Jacob over and over again. And they have chosen to reject him. They've acted like Esau and they've said, Paul, what good is it for us that we're God's chosen people? Oh, well, what good does that do us? They just keep rejecting him. And in Jesus, Malachi chapter 1, verses 2 and 3. God says, you say, what does it matter? You say, what good is it? Is it not written that Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated? He has loved Jacob so much that his treatment of Esau seems like hatred in comparison.I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, how have you loved us? Is not Esau Jacob's brother, declares the Lord? Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I hated. I have laid waste to his hill country. I have left his heritage to the jackals of the desert. If Edom says, We are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins, the Lord of hosts says, They may build, but I will tear down. They will be called the wicked country and people with whom the Lord is angry forever. Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel.So God holds both of these brothers accountable, and Esau is ultimately held accountable for his rejection of God. When it says the people of Edom, these are the people who descend from Esau. We saw there in chapter 25 of Genesis, Esau asked for this red stew, and God changes his name to Edom, which means red. His descendants are called the people of Edom. who like red stew, like, I don't know, the association there. And they live to the south of Israel and become a thorn in the people of Israel's side for centuries to come. And God ultimately says, but I'm bringing judgment on them in a way that he does bring judgment to Israel, but not in the same way, not in the ultimate way that Edom is destroyed. And that's not because of anything inherent in either one of them.The apostle Paul picks this language up in Romans chapter 9. beginning in verse 6. It is not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all who are children of Abraham, not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named. This means that it is not the children of the flesh or the children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said, about this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son. And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad, in order that God's promise of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls, she was told the older will serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.I think when we see this story, we see Paul uses it as an illustration here of the fact that salvation does not ultimately depend on us. We are responsible for how we respond to God. Esau is held guilty because he despised that which was most important, the salvation, the blessing that was held out to him. He despised it. He didn't care about it. And God holds him guilty. But Jacob is the same kind of man. Jacob is just as sinful as his brother. And the fact that he will ultimately come to faith, that he will come to salvation, is because of the initiating love of God. The love of God that was determined for him before he was ever born.And so the truth I think that we should draw from this text is that we each are responsible for how we respond to God. But if we respond to him rightly with faith and obedience, it is not because we're smarter than our brother. It's not because we just know so much better and we're so much more enlightened. It's because God and his mercy has been gracious to us when we did not deserve it. Romans 9 there, Paul said, before they had done anything good or bad... God determined to show his love to Jacob. And if you have trusted in Christ, it's not because you are better than anybody else. It's because you, like Jacob, are an undeserving recipient of the love of God. And that's good news. Because if we look to ourselves as the basis of our salvation... and we look to our good works as the basis of our salvation or our wisdom as the basis of our salvation, we will rightly come to the conclusion that I don't have enough. I don't have enough wisdom. I don't have enough good works. I've got too much of a mess still going on either out in my life or inside in my head and in my heart, which Jesus says is just as culpable as the things that you do outside of you. If you sin in your heart, you've done it.You need a salvation that comes from the outside. And you need a God who is desiring to save you despite you. Despite your inclinations. Despite your unworthiness. And that's what we have in Scripture. A God who initiates. A God who sends. We're going to see that in Jacob's life where God will initiate with him over and over again. And we see it in the history of the world as God, the son himself enters into human history, takes on flesh and dwells among us. And in him, we have beheld the glory of the eternal father. And in him, the wrath of God is poured out and satisfied so that we might have a relationship with him so that we can respond to him in faith. But that's all a gift. It's not anything we deserve.And so as we jump back into the narrative of Genesis, we jump back into Jacob's story, jump into Jacob's story for the first time, we need to realize nothing that is good in our lives is because we deserve it. It's because God is gracious. God is going to pour out his love in Jacob's life, not because Jacob is good, but because God is loving. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you. that you are a good God, that you are a gracious God. And we ask that you would give us the grace and the mercy to respond rightly to you. We need your help in this. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit remsenbible.substack.com

Transcript generated by AI. Please comment if you notice any errors.Good morning, everybody. I will say at the gospel mission, they had a nice big podium for me to spread out on down there. Oh, it was custom made for me, don’t know, nice. Alright, good morning, everybody. Good morning. Again, you know who I am. It’s an honor to be here again preaching to you guys and teaching you the word of God. This week was a little bit of a challenge as Will always does. He’s getting me to make different types of sermons, challenging me in ways that I have not been challenged before. As it was said earlier, luckily, we have the Holy Spirit to lead us through these things. But he gave me one sentence to make a sermon off of, and that’ll be in Proverbs 10 verse one. Don’t dive too far deep because that’s where we’re stopping. And the text is: a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.I had the honor of going to the gospel mission last night and preaching this, and I feel like there’s more that can relate to this as far as the children go in this room. But the rest of you, you might be thinking, I’m not a child. Why does this even apply to me? So this was written by King Solomon. He was speaking to his child, to his son, and he’s giving him advice, and we’ll dive through more of that advice as we go through this. But I want you to kind of think about if you hear that you are a child, oftentimes, we can automatically go to that I’m a child of God. That’s who I am in this world. But Ephesians tells us that that’s not how we’re originally created, that we are naturally children of wrath. We don’t naturally follow God. We don’t naturally seek after him, but Ephesians 2:1-3, it says, and we were dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince and the power of the air. That is Satan. You guys, naturally, we follow him and not God. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.Each and every one of us, we are a child, so we can relate to this. But when we first read it, we might think for that first son that is bringing gladness to his father, naturally, that’s not the case. We are born as the second son who is bringing the sorrow to his mother. So as you’re sitting here today, any of you, do you have one that you think you more relate with? Are you that one that makes your father glad or the one that brings sorrow to your mother? Sadly, we are all the second one originally. Romans tells us that because we are naturally that child of wrath, we don’t seek God, but not only don’t we seek him, we can’t. There’s no way on our own that we can earn our righteousness by ourselves. I’ll read it, Romans 3: “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No at all.” So none of us have any upper hand on anyone else in this world. We are all, so no one has a better hand. “Are Jews any better off? No. Not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jew and Greeks, are under sin as it is written. No one is righteous. No. Not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. We’ve all turned aside together and have become worthless. No one does good. No. Not even one.”I want you to start to listen to, think, does this describe who you used to be or who you still are today? Their throats are like an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is on their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruined in misery. In the way of peace, they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. I can think of my life before becoming a child of God that this sadly described me. When I spoke to people, it was not love and kindness that came out. It was bitterness, curses. When you would look at me, what came out of my mouth revealed what was inside of me. We are naturally looked at, and you can see the death and the lack of life that is within us. So, again, I asked, which one do you relate to sitting here today? Are you the first or second child? Do you relate more to this child of wrath or to a child of God?The Bible is full of examples. Even when I ask you this question, you can naturally think, of course, I’m this first child. Of course, I bring honor and glory to my father, but there’s countless examples in the Bible of people who would answer that question that they are wise and they have understanding. One is found in the book of Matthew. We have three different cities run by these Jewish leaders. Jesus went and did most of his works in these three towns. And, again, these are people who devoted their life to the scribes and the Sadducees. They would say, yes, I’m righteous. I’m holy. I’m wise. I have this understanding. Yet Jesus himself, he denounces them. He went there. He showed them who he was, and they rejected him. He says, woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. He says, woe to you, Capernaum. Capernaum is where he was raised. Like, he went back to that town to where he was raised with Joseph and Mary. He says, do you think you’ll be exalted to heaven? I came here and I told you who I am and yet you deny me. Do you think you’ll be exalted to heaven? He says, no. You will be brought down to Hades.Oftentimes, we can think that we are righteous. We can think that we are wise. We can think that we have this understanding, and we can fool ourselves just like they did. They thought they were the best. The townsmen would look to them as something to aim for as being righteous and holy and wise, but yet they are being cast down to Hades. They too were naturally this child of wrath. Jesus goes on to describe them with the very words that we’re speaking of. He called them wise and understanding. But what he’s doing here is either being a little sarcastic because they think they are or they have the earthly wisdom, not wisdom that is from above. Do you go about your life today thinking you are wise, but yet knowing the word of God and rejecting it, thinking just like they did? I don’t need this repentance thing that you’re talking about. I don’t need to turn away from my sins. I can do it better on my own, God. That’s exactly how they were thinking, but I plead with you. You are being that second child who is bringing sorrow instead of that gladness.You may ask, okay, you’ve covered the children aspect of this. Why did the father even get brought in? Why did the mother get brought into this passage today? We did cover that it is a literal father writing to literal children, his literal son. Another thing that we have to think about is as parents, as kids, that there are roles that we have to do when we are in those positions. God tells us we have jobs to do as we are in those roles, and King Solomon was fulfilling that, and we’ll dive through some other proverbs that he has written to us showing that he fulfilled this. But as fathers, if you’re sitting here in this room, we’re told not to just make our kids angry for no reason. Don’t just provoke them, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. This is what we see King Solomon doing as he’s writing these proverbs. He’s instructing. He is disciplining his child. Mothers, on the other hand, if you notice, the father is glad, but there’s sorrow in the mother’s heart. If you’re a mother sitting here today, Proverbs has a great example of what you seek in your life, how you live out your life to your kids if you’re following what the Bible says. It says the mothers, when they open their mouths, what comes out of her should be wisdom and kindness. When you look at her tongue, it’s not that death that we saw, but it’s wisdom and kindness that’s on her tongue. And when she looks at her household, she has gladness in it. Mothers, at least the mother of my children and maybe you too, there’s a lot more emotional connection to our children, and so they take it more personally. When their children are not wise, when they are this foolish child, it hurts them even more to the core. To see a child who they brought up in this instruction, they did everything that God said. When we see them just throw it away, that brings real sorrow to her.So how can you and I not be this second child? Because we are. How can we not be it anymore? One, we can listen to the instruction of our parents if they are biblically foundational. If they follow these rules, then we should listen to them, children in the front row. If you are not living at home with your family, there’s good news that we do have another father and he has instructed us and has given us the key to how to be wise, to have this understanding. But we also have other passages that Solomon wrote that we can look at. Did I say King Saul at some point? Solomon wrote these. I apologize. Sorry. Solomon is writing this to his children. But I do wanna read something that gives us hope. Ephesians 2, we read it where we were children of wrath, but we don’t have to stay that way. Verse 4 in Ephesians 2 says that, but God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love in which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, even though we’re those children of wrath, he has made us alive together with Christ. By grace, we have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus. It is by grace that we have been saved. We don’t have to stay this child of wrath. It is by grace that God has chosen us to adopt us as his children; we can live our life for him. It is a gift. Nothing that we did. These scribes and Pharisees, they tried on their own, but all they could do is boast on themselves. A true relationship for God to be your father, for you to be a child of him is for you to put your trust in him, and it’s nothing that we did to deserve that.So how again can we not be this child of wrath? We know that we need to put our faith in God. We need to be submitted under him, but we need to not have this earthly wisdom. We can’t be set in stone thinking the fact that we have wisdom when in fact it might not be the right wisdom. So how can we know? Am I fooling myself, or am I truly having godly wisdom, wisdom that is from above? The book of James tells us a little bit about this. He asks you straight to your face, who is wise and understanding among you? The same exact words that Jesus used to describe those leaders. He says, by his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. You can see it through your good works. Works don’t save you, but if you have this wisdom, you will do good works. But here’s how you can tell. But if you, again, sitting here today with this wisdom that you think you have, but if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not wisdom that comes down from above, but it is earthly, it is unspiritual, and it is demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there will be disorder in every vile practice.I can think of the time when I was not saved. I thought I was. I was going to church for a good year before God actually saved me. If you ask me, yes, I was a believer. Yes, I was wise. Yes, I knew some scripture. That’s not what showed in my life. It was unspiritual. It was earthly. There was definitely jealousy in my life. Everything I did was out of selfish ambition. Even going to church, I selfishly went so that I could be seen. They saw me there so they wouldn’t question if I truly was saved or not. The chaos that ensued in my marriage showed the true disaster in every vile practice that was truly there. I was fooling those around me and fooling myself into thinking that I was wise and had understanding. So how do we know if what we have truly is? How do I know standing here today that I’m not fooling myself anymore? And James tells us, but this wisdom that is first pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere. That is the wisdom that we want. That is the wisdom that is from above.So when you think, when you are wise, challenge yourself. Am I doing the things I’m doing for God or am I doing them for me? Am I doing them to better my own life or to glorify him? The rest of our time will be in Proverbs. So if you do want to open up there, we will look at Proverbs 9:10. This is talking about how do we gain this wisdom. So we talked about what is it? How do I know if it’s earthly? How do I know if it’s from above? How do I get this wisdom and stop being this child of wrath? Proverbs 9:10 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. We cannot have this truly biblical wisdom if we don’t have a right perception of God. That right perception of God comes with fearing him. That doesn’t mean I should be scared to open up my Bible or scared to talk to him, but it’s having this awe and reverence of the true power of the creator of this universe and putting him in the place that he should be in our lives. I can say all day long, Jesus is Lord of my life, but if I don’t listen to him, is he truly?So Solomon, does he say any more about this? I do apologize. I hope last night I did not just say Saul the whole time, but Proverbs 1, if you wanna flip there, we see him instructing his son even more. We see him doing that duty as a father to bring up his son in the instruction and the discipline of the Lord so that his son is not the second son anymore, but instead can move into that place of the first one that’ll bring him gladness and fulfill the roles and duties that he has as a father in this world. Proverbs 1:8-9 says, hear my son, your father’s instructions, and forsake not your mother’s teachings for they are a graceful garland for your head and a pendant around your neck. When I first read this, I was thinking, like, why is she decorating me? Why is my mother supposed to be putting this onto me? When you think about the fact that when you are a child of God, when you are out in this world, you’re supposed to be representing something beautiful. You’re supposed to be representing Christ and God’s handiwork. And so we read earlier the mother’s job was to instruct and to give you knowledge and information, and she was going to make you beautiful to this world. When people look at you, they should see Christ. And so she decorates you with these graceful garlands, puts a pendant around your neck. When people see you, they will see that you are different.My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say come with us, let us lie in wait for blood. Let us ambush the innocent without reason. Like Sheol, let us swallow them alive and whole. Like those who go down to the pit, we shall find all precious goods. We shall fill our houses with plunder, throw in your lot among us. We will all have one purse. He’s saying, son, please listen to me. There will be people in your life who will try to entice you. They will promise you gifts. They will promise you a purse filled with this money. They will promise you these things that they have no right to promise you. But they don’t care who gets in their way. We need to be careful who we are around. Son, listen to my words. Do not even consent to be with them. He continues on, my son, do not walk in the way with them. Hold back your foot from their paths for their feet. They run to evil. They make haste to shed blood. For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird, but these men lie in wait for their own blood. They set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain. It takes away the life of its possessors. These people that will come into your lives don’t just not consent to go with them. Don’t even be on the same path that they are on. They don’t care who gets caught in the net. It says for in vain, they spread a net in the sight of any bird. They don’t care what the catch is. They just want to have gain from it. They will go through anyone and do anything to get what they want in their lives for this unjust gain. So don’t consent to be with them. Don’t even go on the same path they were on. We have people in our own lives today that will try to drag us down these paths, and we have to be cautious and wise about who we are with.Proverbs 4, you can turn there if you’d like. He continues to instruct his son. This is his duty. It is his job to make sure his son is wise so he continues to do so. He says, hear, oh, son, a father’s instruction and be attentive that you might gain insight. This word insight is the same as the understanding that we’ve seen. So pay attention, son, so you might gain this understanding for I give you good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching. He speaks about how his father did the same. When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me and said to me, let your heart hold fast to my words. Keep my commandments and live. Get wisdom. Get insight. Do not forget and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Again, he is pleading, son, don’t go with those people, but also get this wisdom and insight so that you can know better. Don’t turn away from my commandments. He now starts to talk about wisdom as a her. He says, do not forsake her, and she will keep you. Love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom. I always chuckled at that, but as if you’re looking and waiting for a place to start, you just need to jump in. If you want wisdom, you need to just go and get it. But whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly, and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland. She will bestow on you a beautiful crown.There’s many passages to choose from, but I wanted to tie this one in for this graceful garland. We read that that’s what the mother did when you were underneath her care. Children, she will bestow this upon you. It comes with the wisdom. But now you keeping this wisdom that you should have will continue to do so. This wisdom in your life will continue to adorn you in these things. He says, hear my son and accept my words that the years of your life may be many. I have taught you the ways of wisdom. I have led you in the paths of uprightness. When you walk, your steps will not be hampered. And if you run, you will not stumble. Keep hold of instruction and do not let go. Guard her for she is your life. Do not enter into the path of the wicked and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it. Do not go into it. Turn away and pass on. Again, even in this separate proverb, he is warning against those around you, those that are evil who are trying to drag you down.What’s interesting is how he describes them here next. These people that are in your lives even today that try to drag you back into the sins of which you once lived, it says they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong. They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. For they eat of the bread of wickedness and they drink of the wine of violence. But the path of righteousness is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until a full day. The way of the wicked is like the deep darkness, and they do not know over what they stumble. A fun experience I was pleased to have last Wednesday at Lamar’s Bible Church is the youth group does this thing called underground church. You get middle schoolers, I think, did it last night. High schoolers is the group I was involved in. We got to do it Wednesday night. It is pitch black. You turn off all the lights in the church. The leaders lovingly get to walk around with pool noodles and try to smack tag them. We were wearing bells to entice them, and, there’s different levels to this game. At first, we could only be in the hallways of the church, but the whole church was for a game. And you could just jingle that bell, and you would hear people tripping and falling and stumbling. That was a great example of the image of what is said here. It was pretty dark, wasn’t it? Yeah. But the amount of blindness that we have when we are in this darkness, we can be in a room that you could normally traverse perfectly fine. But when you’re blinded by this darkness, you don’t know the path of which you’re on. It says the way of the wicked is like this deep darkness. They do not even know what they stumble on. But what he does say is that the righteous is like the light of dawn. So you could have that same very room right after hearing these kids stumble. Could turn on the light, and they could walk out perfectly fine. If you’re living your life in the light, you can see the path of which you’re walking on.So he continues on. My son, be attentive to my words and incline your ears to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them in your heart. For they are a life to those who find them and a healing to all the flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance. From it flows the springs of life. Remember, the light is stronger than the darkness. Even the sun makes the night scatter. So how much more will the wisdom of God make these second child’s wisdom flee? He says, put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet, then all of your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left or turn your foot away from evil. Being a Christian or at least walking in the path of how God tells us to is purposeful. You don’t wake up one day and accidentally follow God. It is a purposeful path that in the light you can perfectly see, contrasted to the darkness where we trip and we stumble and we fall.So how do we get there? Again, you and I were born this child of wrath. How do we get there? How do we get this wisdom? It’s not easy. Satan is alive, and he is strong, and he is out there. He will try to stop you every single step of the way. He did it in the Garden of Eden. He went there when they had this perfect environment. They walked with God himself, and yet he came and tempted them away. The opposition to this wisdom that we want is described in Proverbs 9 as woman folly. And when you read this description of what this foolishness or this folly is, it really brings it to light. It says that she stands in the city and she yells out. If you’ve ever had a sin or a vice that keeps drawing you back, you know it whispers in your ear. It tells you, come back to me. I am better. She is loud. She will catch your attention. Says that she is seductive, and she will draw you in. The devil knows your weaknesses. He knows what will try to lead you astray. But if you follow her, Proverbs 9 tells us that the guests in her house are in Sheol. If you follow this seductive woman, this woman of folly, it will only lead you to your own grave.So we need something stronger than this opposition that we are up against. That is Christ. Today, sitting here today, we need Christ Jesus to be the Lord of our lives and to shine the light so that we can see the path that we walk on. We don’t wanna continue to be the second child bringing sorrow to our mother. We want to be this one making our father glad. We’re told that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, that you will be saved. The words that I just uttered are not my own. They are promised from God himself that if you make Jesus your Lord and believe those things, you will be saved. God loved us so much that he sent his son into this world because we cannot do it on our own. We’re told if we fail at one single point of the law, we failed at it all. We don’t just kind of miss the mark a little bit. We completely flunk this test of life. That’s why Jesus had to come for us. We are naturally the second son. But he sent him, and he can keep us. Nothing can take us from the hands of God if you put your trust into him. Not angels, not demons, not other humans. Nothing can snatch you from the hands of God.But are you in the hands of God sitting here today? Do you trust him enough for you to actually make that step into his hands? Are you just kinda sorta hanging out next to him? There’s a difference of him being the Lord of your life and you knowing a lot about him. Even the demons know a lot about God. Remember that we all were this foolish child. We all started out as this wrath. Nothing can take us from him if we make that leap of faith into his hands. But also remember that just because you say you’re wise doesn’t mean you are. Just because you say you’re a child of God doesn’t mean you are. There are countless people like the scribes and the Pharisees. Maybe even people in this room that when the day of judgment comes, we’ll hear the words I never knew you. We need to be in his hands, secure in him, not just kind of hanging out around him and around his children.The one thing that we do have and that we know we can rely on is that we have a loving God. But what that means is that we have a God that’s not gonna force us to be with him. We have a God that gives you this opportunity. We have free will down here on this Earth. But if you don’t wanna be with him here, he’s not gonna force you to be with him in eternity. He loves you too much to then force you to come kicking and screaming into his kingdom. So have you made this leap of faith? He will not force you to. But if you love him and you go into his hands, he will keep you. Do not separate yourselves from him. Instead, run towards him. I plead with you that if you are still this child of wrath, even hiding like I was in the church pews, cry out to him. He will accept you. He loves you.I pray that as we continue out our weeks, as madam Folly, day in and day out, entices us, calls to us that we walk in the paths of Christ and not towards her house. Well, thank you guys for your time. Dear God, I wanna thank you for this opportunity to dive into what wisdom truly looks like when it’s from you, Lord. I pray that we don’t rely on our own understandings, our own thought of what wisdom is. I pray that we look towards you, that we are not falling into the paths of those around us that try to drag us into our graves, Lord. I pray that we turn to you, the only one who can bring life to us. You don’t just say that we’re lost. You say that we are a pile of dead and dry bones. Without you, we cannot have the life that we need to be with you eternally, Lord. I pray that if there’s anyone here today that has not made you truly the Lord of their lives, that they take that step and they step into your hands, Lord. I know that you will take care of them and you will love them until eternity. In your name, amen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit remsenbible.substack.com