Clough Genesis Lesson 70

Isaac hates Jacob; Jacob sent away – Genesis 27:41-28:9

In looking at the passage before us this morning we continue studying the family of Jacob and Esau. And we’re looking, again, at a historical outplaying of God’s eternal plan. As we look at this we want to go back again to remind ourselves of the difference between looking at something in the eyes of God and looking at something in the eyes of the creature; that is, in the eyes of history. When we look at something in the eternal plan of God we have Esau and we have Jacob; one is elect and the other is reprobate, because there in the eternal plan of God there never was a question. It was always 100% certain; God’s plan is eternally secure. There’s not debate, there’s no counter themes to it. It rests forever as He decreed. But having said all that, we haven’t said enough because the Scriptures spend more time on the other side of the coin, on the historical side, and down looking at it from the standpoint of history we have Jacob and Esau and Esau becomes reprobate as history is this process of differentiation between those who obey and those who disobey, and it’s a stepwise thing. Jacob too becomes elect in a series of actions over a time span.

So in order to properly view things we must view things first from the standpoint of God and His eternal plan, but second also from the standpoint of history and to talk endlessly and ceaselessly about the eternal plan of God without bringing in the historical processes is to be lacking, be imbalanced; likewise to talk endlessly and endlessly about the historical happenings and never get the big eternal picture is also to be lacking. This is why we say that the concept of sovereignty and the concept of human responsibility are co-relatives; that is, they correlate one with the other; one can’t be taught without the other being taught. We can’t teach the Creator unless we teach the Creation but we can’t teach the creation until we’ve taught the Creator. We can’t teach the sovereignty of God if we don’t teach human responsibility and we can’t teach human responsibility without the sovereignty of God. The concepts go together or are co-relative. In other words, all we’re saying at this point is when you read your Bibles picture all the truth in a grid work and you must have the whole grid, not part of the grid, for it all to stand and hold together.

Now in this course, in this historical course of watching God’s eternal plan play itself out in time we’ve watched common everyday things in this family. If you turn to Genesis 25 we’ll look for three chapters at some of these elements. We’ve studied all these before but by way of review, to get a running start on the text and understand that we have here a process involving elements common to every home.

In Genesis 25:26, we don’t know whether Isaac took whatever the husbands of pregnant wives take, the course on natural childbirth or whatever, but nevertheless, in the act of birth, obviously something intimate to both husband and wife, we have just a little feature dropped in the text but a feature that’s important because it’s one of the features the Holy Spirit talks about and that was what the babies looked like at the act of birth. “And after that came out his brother, and his hand took hold of Esau’s heel; and his name was called,” literally “the heel-grabber” or “the over-comer,” Yacob, and so one of the features to notice about the story, a little innocent observation about the way these twins were born.

Then in verse 28 another observation; an observation about something true of a family that only members of that family would know about and that is Isaac’s appetite. Two things in verse 28, “And Isaac loved Esau” primarily “because he did eat of his food [venison], and Rebekah loved Jacob.” And so we have here the divided allegiance of husband and wife over the matter of children; children are experts and long before Caesar devised the famous slogan of “divide and conquer” children had been doing it for centuries. And so we have it done here, the division between the loyalty of the father to his oldest son and the loyalty of the mother to her younger son. And in the course of all this enters a theme that you see repeated over and over again in the working out of election and that is the issue, common food, the diet of this particular home. It comes in verse 28 and it comes in verse 29 when the inheritance papers are sold against the custom of the time but nevertheless in the sovereignty of God. “And Jacob boiled pottage: and Esau came from the field,” and so on; once again food enters in and as I suggested earlier that if you were a dramatist casting this for some sort of a drama or stage production you would picture Isaac, probably as an overweight old man whose primarily love in life was what he was going to eat rather than what God was going to do in his life.

In Genesis 27:1 we find the same incident of food; we find this time at the blessing ceremony, at the end of his life, and here, rather than be concerned about the issue of passing on the transference of ownership to his son the father can think of nothing better than having a delightful meal or food. Once again, nothing wrong with the food, it’s the precedent; it is the priority of food over everything else that’s a signal that all is not well.

And then to add one more feature, in Genesis 27:15 another common thing of every family; it’s the mother taking care of the clothing of her sons, cleaning it, washing it, ironing it and putting it up. And here Rebekah does this. It’s a common thing that the woman does but having done it puts here in a position of tremendous leverage. She knows how the men of that family operate; after all, when you wash your men’s underwear it puts you close to them. And so in this situation we have the woman in a position of tremendous leverage and let it not be ever said that we have a situation involving women who have no power, no influence and are given a demeaning role. The Scriptures give woman such a powerful role that it’s downright scary.

So when we have observed, as this family works out, we have a problem with the entire structure of this home. This home is a model; it’s a model of what to do and what not to do. And we go back and we can examine the role of the husband and the wife and in this case the husbands gets out of it and he rejects the Scripture, he rejects God’s pattern for that home; his wife doesn’t and we have the dilemma that many believing women are put in—what do they do in the situation when their husband is out of it and they are with it. Now obviously in this situation Isaac is not leading; he follows his father in this regard and there’s a vacuum, there’s a void, and the woman is placed in this horrible position that a believing woman is placed in; she knows what ought to take place and it isn’t taking place, now what does she do about it. And Rebekah, though her motive is godly, she executes a very ill-conceived plan. It involves deceit, it involves setting one son more against the other, it results in her never seeing her beloved son again, it results in over a thousand years of bloodshed in history, and so on and so on.

And she is pictured, along with Sarah, again not to pick on the women because primarily it was the husband that was out of it that led to it but nevertheless recognizing the disaster that happened; women are supposed to be homemakers and when you get to Genesis 27:41 you can obviously see that instead of being a homemaker this woman, along with Sarah, were home-breakers. And from this we can generalize an interesting principle and it has to do with a larger thing that involves both men as well as women and that is the issue we have often called the issue of human or relative good. By this we mean good that is the result of human plotting, of human planning, good that is a counterfeit for following God and His righteousness; it is a pseudo godliness. It is created when rebellious people want the façade of what is really good but don’t want to pay the price. And when we have human good operate in history you can wager that nine times out of ten you will always have more intense suffering the result than you would had godliness or nothing prevailed.

Let’s illustrate that from every day living, just so we understand this general principle. It’s a general wisdom principle of life. Whenever the autonomous creature rebelliously steps in to take the chestnuts out of the fire and try to straighten things up but does so independently of the Scripture and the wisdom derived from Scripture, whenever that kind of thing takes place always know that there is going to come remarkable suffering.

Let’s to back to the Vietnam War; we had a group of people in this country, many of whom were evangelicals, who argued that the best thing was peace. And no one would debate the word “peace,” the word “peace” is a nice word, it’s attached to Jesus Christ, when He comes again there will be peace. But what happened? Not thinking through the wisdom of the divine institutions, not thinking through certain realities of communism versus the free world, these people sought peace by means of a very foolish device. And we have people like Jane Fonda and others traveling to Hanoi in the name off peace, in the name of good. But what was the good the created? Ask the POW’s who rotted in their cells for seven years how much good Jane Fonda did for them. Ask the strategists that had to deal with a resolute North Vietnam military machine that received increased motivation because of Jane Fonda and her ilk. Ask yourself all the good that came from those efforts; it was nothing, it was prolonged war, it meant more boys came home in wooden boxes, it more men bled to death in the jungles of Vietnam. It meant tremendous increase in suffering because somebody tried to do “good” in an unbiblical way.

You can go down through history, in the future, for example, it was pointed out not long ago by Phyllis Schlafly over at Tech that if ERA goes through, again in the name of good, we have women put in combat positions in the future war which will cause more casualties, will distract military commanders from their primary mission and so on and so on, one can list fifteen different things, again all in the name of good, done unwisely, creates evil and creates suffering. We have today in all areas of law enforcement people who are putting their lives on the hand, officers who have to respond to calls inadequately armed, inadequately trained because the do-gooders don’t want to let the police have proper armaments to handle the war that goes on 24 hours a day on the streets. We have people who investigate crimes, who lay their life on the line because, though we have technology to eaves drop we can’t use that against criminal elements because after all, we might infringe on their personal rights. And so on it goes from one thing to another as we have people who always, in the name of good, end up messing up the system and causing suffering.

And of course it starts here with Sarah and it starts with Rebekah when in the name of good they tried to solve the problem, and you remember what came out of human good. In Sarah’s case, operating, true, in the vacuum of male leadership but nevertheless Sarah creates the Arabs, a marvelous result of human good; four thousand years of bloodshed between Jew and Arabs has come out of that little scheme. And what did Rebekah do when she tried to do her thing? She created Edom, the Edomites combined with the Arabs and today from what is now southern Jordania and northwestern Saudi Arabia, a marvelous result of a plan conceived to be good. So you see, it’s dangerous to try to create “good” in the world. We create good in our own economy; we tried to have this program and that program, surely you can’t be against the poor and the impoverished; why, of course we’re going to spend more money than we have. And what have we done? Stolen from all the old people who on fixed incomes can no longer cope with inflation… a marvelous result all in the name of good but very foolishly in the name of good.

We’ve looked at this and now in Genesis 25:41 we come to another result of this human good and that is Rebekah, instead of being the homemaker is the home-breaker and now she causes a feud to start between her two sons, a feud that will last over a thousand years as Jacob becomes Israel and Esau becomes Edom. “And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him; and Esau said in his heart,” notice the development in verse 41. Verse 41 teaches us about hate, the real biblical insight into hate and the mechanics. We’re going to spend considerable time on the doctrine of verse 41 because unlike modern psychology we have here the real anatomy of hate and there are surprises for those who think humanisticly.

Esau hates Jacob. Why? Because of the blessing, the blessing that was deprived, that he was deprived from, and now he plots; notice the mental attitude, and now he plots. Notice the mental attitude sin in verse 41 progresses from something inside the mind to something on the hands and the outside behavior. It starts with a mental attitude of hate and winds up with a premeditated murder, or at least one that is planned to take place. It always spawns this.

There are two major passages in the Bible that deal with this particular phenomenon of hate. I’m going to take one which is a central passage; all of you, anyone here, whoever will serve on a jury in this county ought to know this passage. 1 John 3:11, you ought to know this, not because we go in and be hard-nosed and indict every person accused of a crime. God’s Word says watch the evidence; after all, Jesus Christ was indicted on a basis of a charge that was false. So the Christian is always sensitive to sending the wrong person, so to speak, to the gallows or the electric chair or the injection. The Christian is sensitive to this because God the Son Himself was a victim of the miscarriage of justice. But having said all that and made all those qualifications, let’s observe 1 John 3:11-12 and what it teaches about hate over against what modern humanism teaches about it. Modern humanism would have us believe that when somebody walks into the local 7-11 and blows somebody’s brains out that number one, it was either because he momentarily flipped out in a period of temporary insanity or not accepting that proposal would suggest that so and so was deprived, comes from a disadvantaged area, never had enough money to take care of his needs in life, therefore is justified in walking around the city of Lubbock blowing people’s brains out at random.

But the Word of God in 1 John 3 has a very startling counterproposal to make. “This is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” In the context, in other words, he’s talking about Christian fellowship. So obviously if he’s talked about relationships involving love for another he’s got to talk about the opposite, hating one another, and that’s got to be coped with before we can talk about loving one another. So verse 12 is an exposition of the theology of hate. “Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, that murdered his brother. And why did he slay him?” There’s the key question, why did he slay him? It’s not a fact question; it’s a motive question. We’re not dealing with whether Cain murdered, we’re dealing with why Cain murdered, something you want to remember some time on a jury. And the answer, and this is the biblical heart of the whole answer in one sentence: “Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” That is why.

Now let’s expand on that and deduce some things. “Because his own works were evil and his brother’s were righteous.” What does this mean? Here’s Cain, Cain the murderer. And Cain the murderer looks at Abel, his brother. Abel is the victim in the crime. Let’s think through the process. The first thing that is startling about verse 12 is that it ultimately does not explain the motive sociologically. Verse 12 does not say that so and so did this because of society. It does not say that so and so did this because of imperfections in his own character. It does not say any of the other 57 varieties of explanations that go on today. It says because of the spiritual backdrop; God is the ultimate environment, not the society, not your genes; God is the ultimate environment and it’s against God that the crime primarily takes place. Therefore, see the word “righteous” and the word “evil,” that’s not talking about social righteousness and social evil, it’s not talking about society’s standards. After all, there wasn’t a society then, there was only one family. So it must be talking about God’s standards and so therefore first in the theology of hate which ultimately derives in overt violent acts that starts in a backdrop of rebellion against God Himself.

Now this is why we have the fourth divine institution of the state; this is why the state is called very precisely in Scripture the sword of God. Why is the state called the sword of God? Why isn’t it called the sword of society? Why isn’t the man who executes in the Scriptures called the swordsmen or the minister of society? Why is he called civil servant? He is all those things but that’s not what the Scripture calls him; the Scripture calls him a minister of God, he carries the sword of God. Why? Because obviously verse 12 is talking about the fact that crime is ultimately against God, not against society. So the first thing about hatred and violence is that it’s anti-God in a very, very deep way.

It looks like this if we diagram it from the Cain and Abel story, we all know the Cain and Abel story, it’s not a difficult story, it’s easy to understand. Let’s look at the steps because these same steps occur with Esau. The first step is that in some way, and we don’t know how, but in some way the person just gets out of tune with God, either because as a non-Christian he simply pushes Him aside or as a Christian, having become a Christian he turns aside, but there’s inner turning aside that first takes place. Don’t ever buy this attitude that somebody just randomly walked around and just randomly blew somebody’s brains out. If it’s a case of real murder, premeditated murder, this kind of thing, it is not due to that; it is due to a long chain of cause/effect that has, as its start, rebellion against God and His known will. Cain rebelled against what he knew he ought to do and Esau rebelled against what he knew he ought to do.

Now the vital thing that next takes place is a confrontation and the confrontation is between God, expressed somewhere in standards or circumstances, and this person. This is the first confrontation. Remember what happened to Cain? He goes ahead and he kills Abel, and by the way, verse 12 tells us how the murder took place because the verb to slay here is usually used in the Greek language to slay for a sacrifice and it involves the use of the weapon of the knife. And so we would suggest that the first murder in history was done as the first slaughter in history; Cain sat there, he noticed Adam and Abel and everybody used to slit the throat of the lamb for sacrifice so he said huh, I don’t like my brother, I wonder what would happen if I did that to him. And he did. So in this first murder and outworking of hate we have this stopping, because finally what happens? Cain walks away and God speaks; it’s that famous passage, “Cain, your brother’s blood cries from the ground.” And now Cain is confronted with what he’s done. Notice the first confrontation is not by the state, they didn’t have a state then; the first confrontation is by God through his own conscience, and so he experienced the pressure of confrontation.

At that point the stakes are decided because we all sin, we all get out of fellowship, and God confronts us all. It’s the third step where the parting of the ways occurs. At this third step two things could possibly happen. Cain could, as the Bible says, “repent,” and say God, You’re right, I deserve your judgment, it was my responsibility, and I’m sorry for this act; that would be repentance. On the other hand he could say now I’m doubly angry, I’m angry at You first and now I’m angry that you stopped my rebellion against You and so we could go the hate route. And it’s at this third step, either we have hatred or we have repentance. And it occurs after the confrontation.

Turn to the second New Testament passage where this same theme is taught; Hebrews 12:11, and it’s taught in a passage that deals with Esau. In this passage we have discipline being talked about. Now if you keep in mind these three steps: rebellion, confrontation, then response to the confrontation through hate or repentance. Now look at verse 11, talking about chastening: “Now chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who have been exercised thereby.” Now verse 11 is talking about people in a Christian environment who are experiencing discipline because they are Christians, or they profess to identify with Jesus Christ. And in this, both made up of those who are real Christians, born again, and those who are professing Christians and not really born again, in this mixed multitude, we have chastening and pressure occur. Now the point of verse 11 is that you have a tradeoff; you’ve got to make a tradeoff; tradeoff short term suffering for long term happiness. And that’s what got to take place.

Notice verse 11 says no chastening ever seems joyous, so those with a hedonist streak are always going to be upset when we reach this second point of the confrontation. Nobody can stand confrontation; it is never pleasant. And yet if it would occur then the “peaceable fruit” afterwards takes place. Notice “peaceable fruit,” it is not peaceable either, chastening is not peaceable; it’s turmoil in the soul but afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. And notice it’s even called an exercise in verse 11, “those who have been exercised” by this repeated confrontation, buzzing up against the standards of God, in other words.

And now certain cautions are laid down; it says in verse 12 when this happens to you, “Lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees,” the whole point here being don’t get discouraged by the short term pressure, the short term suffering. Remember that it is going to yield afterward “the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” Then in verse 13, be careful to “make straight paths for your feet,” now that’s talking about this third step, at this third step you can have a crooked path or you can have a straight path; the crocked path goes to hate, the straight path goes to repentance. And it’s up to you which one it’s going to be. Nobody else can make that choice for you. It’s yours. And so that’s why the admonition, you’d better “make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame,” “that which is lame” is that which is being confronted, that’s which is being chastened, “lest that which is lame be turned out of the way,” unto that crooked path of hatred, “but let it rather be healed,” the healing process of repentance. [14] “Follow peace with all men….”

Now verse 15, the explanation of what it means to follow peace with all men; it says, “look diligently,” or carefully, “look carefully, lest any man fail of the grace of God,” and the point of failing the grace of God in the context of Hebrews is talking about people who thought they were Christians, who were being disciplined by God in order to bring them to the gospel; they got to the point of confrontation and they didn’t like it. When the heat got turned on they couldn’t take it and so they spun out and went down the crooked path toward hatred, showing in this case, in the context, their reprobation. “Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and many thereby be defiled.” Notice, “many,” many “be defiled.” And it’s because of the contagious nature of this mental attitude of hate and rebellion.

Now Hebrews 12:16-17 deal with exactly the problem we’re talking about, Esau. Esau is picked out as a model of this three step, a model of this point where we have first there’s rebellion, then God’s confrontation, and then he peels out on the pathway of hatred. “Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.” Notice food again, the symbol of the fleshly lusts, it’s always something that’s easy to see, food, he sold his birthright. [17] “For you know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected,” … he was rejected! There is Esau becoming reprobate; there his moment is passed, there he turned out of the way in response to the confrontation; no repentance but hatred instead.

Now back to Genesis 27:41, back to Esau hating his brother. You see, the hating wasn’t due just to personal grievances and that’s the thing we have to correct our humanist friends. Hatred doesn’t spawn itself in a moral spiritual vacuum; it always takes place against the backdrop of God. God has always been, wherever you see the mental attitude of hatred, whether it is the guy that goes in and blows the guy’s brains out in the local 7-11 store, God has been involved in that man’s life or he’d never have gone in there and blown the guys brains out. Do you realize you can say that as a Christian? The very fact that he went in there to blow somebody’s brains out shows you God was putting the heat on him. Why would he have been so angry otherwise? He’s angry precisely because God is involved in his life, warning him, laying and impressing His standards against him and in rebellion against that impressment of the standards of God he lashes out further. This is why some of you who attended the rape prevention seminary were told that rape basically is not a sexual attack; it’s an attack of violence, it’s a hatred for women, to destroy them and that’s why, the same motive that is the motive of murder, they’re very close. So they both spawn from hatred, the hatred and the desire to murder.

So Genesis 27:42, true to form, Rebekah over hears. The word comes, and once again we find a woman being the center of the home, the center of the decision making. “And these words of Esau, her elder son, were told to Rebekah: and she sent and called Jacob,” and she informs him and notice in verse 42 she uses the word, “Esau, as concerning you, comforts himself,” the King James translates it with “comforts himself” and that’s a good word. How does he “comfort” himself? When someone spins out on this pathway of hatred they are comforting themselves in this sense. Here they have their initial rebellion against God; their initial rebellion is fighting their conscience. So here we have one force, rebellion; over here we have the other force, conscience. And because they nurse this and play with it and nurse it and nurse it and nurse it along, this becomes very powerful over against their conscience. Now since this becomes very powerful, and since they’ve already been confronted with that which cuts across, now in order to get rid of the tension they say all right, I’ve got to express this some way, I’ve got to vent the hatred, and I will vent it in some overt action. And interestingly then we have the strange occurrence of the word “comfort” in verse 42, “he comforts himself” in that he comforts his own rebellion, and he “purposes,” the means by which he comforts himself is to plan a murder.

Now again, we have to credit Rebekah; Rebekah has a good motive. Rebekah is trying to save her home but the poor woman, every time she goes to save her home she destroys it one more step. Operating in an ethical vacuum and a spiritual vacuum with no male leadership she tries to take over that position. And in verse 43 the language shows it powerfully. “Now therefore, my son, obey my voice,” notice, “arise, flee [thou to Laban my brother, to Haran]; [44] “And stay there a few days,” in Haran. Tragically for Rebekah the few days turns out to be 20 years and she probably never did see him again, “until thy brother’s [fury turn away], [45] “Until thy brother’s anger turn away from thee, and he forgets that which you have done to him,” and notice again the language in verse 45, it’s a lot stronger in the Hebrew than in this English translation. “I will send” and I will take you from there, I will “fetch” you she says. In other words, she is in total control, she thinks, in verse 43, 44 and 45; mamma is running the show and mamma is going to call the shots and she is going to boss her 40 year old son around and lead him with a little ring in his nose.

Rebekah, tragically, out of all this will at least do something in spite of herself. She wishes this would work out for the safety of her son. What it will work out is not so much his safety; it will at least get him to a place where he marries somebody that’s not a clod.

In Genesis 27:46 “And Rebekah said to Isaac,” now gentlemen, look at the indirect approach; every married man here can appreciate verse 46 because here is the classic female indirect approach. Notice, her real desire is to handle the safety problem, but being the good woman that she is, and there’s nothing wrong with this, I’m not knocking the women, this is an expression of their subordination of the home and so over the centuries they’ve learned the skills of the indirect approach, and here she tried the indirect. She makes it appear suddenly she is extremely concerned about the courtship characteristics of her son, about his deprived social life, when as a matter of fact that’s not her concern at all; her concern is his physical safety. But apparently being unwilling to confront her husband with the real issues that are going on in the home she hides it. This is where I would fault her.

This is where I would fault Rebekah; not in her motive. I wouldn’t even fault her in her indirect approach of verse 46 to at least establish communication with her husband. But where I fault her is that she doesn’t go on, there ought to be a verse 47 where she would say: And Isaac, there is something else that I want to talk to you about and that is, do you realize that we are the only second generation in the plan of God and already murder is brewing in our own family; have you observed this, to her husband. She should have gone on to confront him with this and it would have been a subordinate thing to do and a godly thing to do but she didn’t; she stopped. And in verse 46 she just makes it appear as though it’s a matter of courtship.

“I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth,” and notice the approach; she uses the word, “I loathe my life because of the daughters of Heth,” those are the two Canaanite girls that had married Esau, “if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth,” or a Hittite, “such as these who are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do to me?” In other words, if my other son goes out and marries like the first one, I might as well kill myself; I have no future if all of my sons are going to wind up marrying losers. Now it’s not talking here about the girls took ugly pills or something or had B.O., that’s not the issue of verse 45. The issue of verse 45 is that these girls did not have character, they were not founded I the Scripture, they were clods and this is often the dilemma of Christian parents to stand by and often times watch their children get involved with clods. And here’s the case of it, and you young people can look at verse 46; someday you’re going to be in that position so just have a little empathy.

So as a result of this Isaac follows his lead, in verse 46, he goes on, he calls Jacob and commissions him to go on up to the relative’s house. Of course what Jacob doesn’t realize, what Rebekah doesn’t realize, what Isaac doesn’t realize is that Laban is double the cheat that Jacob ever thought of being. If Jacob thought of cheating at one point in his life, Laban had it as a way of life; strange ironic circumstance. God seems to do this; He seems to say well Rebekah, you like to do things by the shortcut approach; you like to do things by kind of fudging and jamming the system, you never want to work with the system; you’re always working against the system. And so let me tell you something, I’ll take that dear son of yours and we’ll take him on a little vacation, we’ll put him in a little training school and in that training school I’m going to appoint a professor for his education, and this man is a specialist in wheeling and dealing. In fact, he will so teach your son how to wheel and deal and fight the system, after 20 years your son is going to be fighting the system. He is going to learn at the end of those 20 years never to do this again. In other words, what God is saying, Rebekah, because you are transmitting your learned behavior patterns to your son, I’m going to take your son out and train him for 20 years to stop that pattern that you are teaching your son.

[Genesis 28:1-2, “And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. [2] Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother’s father, and take thee a wife from there of the daughters of Laban, thy mother’s brother.”] And so as Isaac bids him goodbye he says in Genesis 38:3-4 the terms that by this time ought to be very familiar with those of you who have been regular in the Genesis series, the Abrahamic Covenant once again. Notice the blessing, “And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that you may be a multitude of people.” That’s part one, that you’ll have the seed. [4] “And give thee the blessing of Abraham to thee, and t thy seed with thee; that you may inherit the land,” second promise of the Abrahamic Covenant, the land, “which God gave unto Abraham.” So we have a reaffirmation of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Verse 5, “And Isaac sent Jacob away,” and the story concludes in verses 6-8 with Esau again. Now we may wonder, why if Jacob is the lead in the plan of God, does the story keep coming back to Esau? We saw this in chapter 26; we saw this in chapter 27 and now in chapter 28. Why is it that Esau has the lead role in all this? It’s simple: because until in the historic process of time Esau becomes reprobate he still is the firstborn son and he still bears the responsibility and therefore he’s center stage all the way. God, before He dismisses Esau from the stage and tells him go be a tree and part of the scenery for the rest of the play, before that takes place he must perform and work out his reprobation so everybody can see the rebellious pattern and where it leads. And so we come to verse 6.

Genesis 28:6; verse 6, 7 and 8, if you look at them carefully, read them slowly and think, they give an interesting portrait of what unregenerate mentality looks like. And as you read this, understand there’s no murder, there’s no violence, there’s nothing what we’ll call spectacular in verses 6, 7 and 8, but yet there is something in these verses. Notice there is just something and it’s very obvious by the fact it’s not there; there’s something missing; it’s like a car with two wheels on it. Something very vital is missing. “When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Paddan-aram, to take himself a wife from there; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; [7] And he saw that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Paddan-aram; [8] And Esau, seeing that the daughters of Canaan did not please Isaac, his father,” he “went to Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had” another one, “Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, [the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.]”

Now what is this little thing tacked on the end of the story? What’s its meaning; why does the writer of Genesis put this here? To show you what reprobation looks like, to show you what it really looks like inside the mind of a person who is unregenerate. Do you remember in the New Testament there’s a passage in 1 Corinthians that says, “the natural man cannot perceive the things of the Spirit of God.”

Now observe what Esau is doing. In verse 6 he sees the blessing but does he see the blessing? In other words, let’s draw two columns; first what Esau sees and then reality. The poor man is blind to reality. He sees blessing but he sees it as a mere transfer of material wealth; he sees it merely as that, when in reality what is it? It’s the transfer of the entire sovereign plan of God for history; it is the Messianic plan of salvation that is being transferred here. It goes from eternity to eternity, but he doesn’t see that. All he sees is the superficial, the trivial, a very shallow observation.

What else? He notes, in verse 6, nothing about the blessing of productivity. Remember when Isaac blessed Jacob he gave him the blessing of the Abrahamic Covenant. Verse 6, you don’t read anything about the Abrahamic Covenant in verse 6; all you read is one clause in verse 6 and that was don’t take a wife of the Canaanites. In other words, standing there and listening to the words roll off his father’s tongue it never dawned on him what his father was really telling his brother, and that was minus Canaanite wife; that’s what Esau hears in his unregeneracy. Why? What’s the reality that’s going on there? Don’t marry an unbeliever; that’s the reality, it’s not something physically wrong with the girls of Canaan, it’s something spiritually wrong. But again, he misses the point. And he thinks of this as a physical thing when in matter of fact it is a spiritual reality. We know, categorically, it was not wrong to marry a converted Canaanite, and you know one very famous woman who was a converted Canaanite, and that’s Rahab the whore. And she made an excellent wife for one of the great leaders of Israel. Now how come that could take place? You know another converted Canaanite; it was Ruth. A whole book was written over her. So it can’t be that something physically is wrong; these girls don’t have a disease, what’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with them is they’re spiritually out of it, that’s what’s wrong with them, we don’t need those around.

So the spiritual aspect, again, Esau is blind…blind! Now what does he do? He sees that Jacob obeys his father and his mother. In other words, he just thinks of well daddy said to my brother to do something and my brother did it and it made my parents happy. There’s something almost pathetic, almost pathetic in this. He apparently does want to please his parents. I show you this lest you walk away from here thinking Esau is just a violent man. Not at all; he has violent streaks to him and yet there is some good in his soul, he does want to please, he sees that Jacob obeys his father and his mother, Esau says “seeing the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac, his father,” he liked Isaac, his father, he was just trying to please him. But you see, trying to please somebody is not a sign of obedience to God.

So let’s look at this again; he sees what pleases dad but what ought he to see? That when Isaac talked to him, if you go back to Genesis 27:33, and the end when his father talked to him and his father experienced that tremendous shock, how he ever lived through this without having a heart attack I don’t know, but Isaac went through this tremendous shock, seeing his whole life just unrolled, but then he recovered and that’s a sign of his belief. At the end of verse 33 he said, “he shall be blessed.” Remember that? And what did we say that was all about? It was that his father shot though he was and all the smoke and the chaos and the dust all around, he saw one thing: I am wrong, and God’s program is right and I’m sorry, as much as I love you Esau, this is God’s way and this is God’s method and it’s going to be done in God’s plan, so I’m sorry son, there’s nothing I can do about it; Jacob, much though you may dislike him, much though I may dislike him, he is the one God has chosen so you’d better just salute and say yes sir, thank you sir, and move on.

Well, that’s Isaac’s attitude but you see, Esau doesn’t see that; Esau doesn’t understand that it’s not pleasing dad, it’s pleasing the Lord, so he doesn’t see that one either, and as a result of this misperception, this partial perception of what’s going on, now he makes a stupid decision, verse 9. He goes out and marries another unbeliever…brilliant? Hand him an Oscar, this guy really won on all points. He goes out now thinking that it was just a matter that the Canaanite girls had something physically wrong that his parents didn’t like so he goes over and he marries within the family, so to speak, Ishmael, but it’s the unbelieving side of the family. So now we wind up with another unbelieving wife. And so he decides to marry, but marry not on the issue of the spiritual reality but on the basis of the physical. Instead of marrying a Canaanite I’ll marry an Ishmaelite, an Arab woman. So this is where historically Edom and the Arab nation crossbred, united, and in history Esau becomes part of the Arabs and Esau becomes part of the anti-Semitic movement that harassed Israel for over a thousand years in the Old Testament and it’s still doing it today. A brilliant accomplishment, isn’t it?

Let’s look and see in Genesis 50:20 a summary statement; it’s a summary statement of the whole book but it’s a summary that we now can understand better. We’ll come back again and again to this summary verse. In my thinking this represents a key to interpreting Genesis 12-50. Each book of the Bible has its own internal theology, its own theological argument. We call this biblical theology. And in verse 20 we’ve got one of these points. Now in the context Genesis 50:20 is Joseph talking to his brothers; the brothers have tried to murder him, knock him off and it worked out all for good, but in verse 20 it says, “As for you,” brothers, “you thought evil against me,” that’s Joseph, “but God meant it for good, to bring to p ass, as it is this day, to save many people alive.” You know who the “people alive” are? Israel.

The story of Genesis 12-50 is a story of the founding of God’s plan in Israel; it’s a story of the founding of this plan on a foundation not made of mamma, not made of any family plot, not made of any human merit but what we have got painted out here in this chaos of Sarah, of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Isaac, of Esau, of Jacob, of Rebekah and all this confusion, what have we got? We’ve got verse 20, as for all the actors in the story and actresses, they thought… you might not say necessarily evil but they thought their own thoughts, if we were to paraphrase verse 20. All the actors doing their own thing, some of them had good motives, some of them bad motives, and all this chaos and from the human point of view that’s the origin of Israel. But Genesis argues that amidst all this chaos God was working out His plan; total control. Rebekah, today we’ve seen, had the idea I’ve got to save my son, I’ve got to save him physically. Well, what came out of that? He finally won, at least, a woman who was spiritually with it and qualified to be a wife in the next generation. God worked it, in other words, in spite of everybody… in spite of everybody.

Now the final conclusion: What does this teach us? There’s a general principle here and it applies to the New Testament, Old Testament, your life, my life, everybody’s life. The general principle is this: God’s plan doesn’t need us, it doesn’t work dependent upon us. Most often you will find the Lord working in spite of you; most often that is the case and it’s precisely because that is the case that we can trust God. He’s trustable; He’s dependable, precisely because He keeps on working in spite of us.

We’re going to sing….