Genesis 27

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning, morning. Welcome to coffee. No, it's not the morning. It's the afternoon. Welcome to coffee and devotions. It's so good to have you with me today. That's where every weekday you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee, which obviously I need. We get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. In this year, 2023, Lord willing, we'll make it from Genesis to Leviticus. And today we're at Genesis 27. Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll enjoy some evening time devotions. Let's pray. Well, Lord, we thank you so much for your word, and we pray now that as we read it, that you would care for us and teach us. There's a lot to get through tonight, Lord, so we pray that as we read your word, that you would watch over us, instruct us and teach us, Lord, in Jesus's name. Amen.

Genesis chapter 27. Genesis chapter 27, here we go. Now it came to pass when Isaac was old and his eyes were so dim that he could not see that he called Esau his older son and said to him, my son. And he answered him and he said, here I am. Then he said, Behold, now I am old. I do not know the day of my death. Now, therefore, please take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and make me savory food such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die.

Now, I'm going to stop and we're going to do things a little bit differently. OK, so normally we go through the whole story. We ask ourselves, A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? But instead, we're going to kind of take this chunk by chunk.

And in this first part, because it's a whole story tied together in this first chunk, we see that Isaac desires to bless Esau. He loves Esau more than Jacob because he likes his game. He likes wild food. He likes the meat that Esau likes to go get and so he wants to bless him. The birthright is already Jacob's but he still wants to give him a blessing. And so that kind of sets the scene up for this. Verse five.

Now, Rebecca was listening when Isaac spoke to Esau, his son, and Esau went to the field to hunt game and to bring it. So Rebecca spoke to Jacob, her son, saying, Indeed, I heard your father speak to Esau, your brother, saying, Bring me game and make me savory food that I may eat it and bless you in the presence of the Lord before my death. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to what I command you. Go now to the flock and bring me from there two choice kids of the goats, and I will make savory food from them for your father, such as he loves. Then you shall take it to your father, that he may eat it, and that he may bless you before his death.

And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, look Esau my brother is a hairy man and I am a smooth-skinned man. Perhaps my father will feel me and I shall become or I shall be to him a deceiver and I shall bring a curse on myself and not a blessing. So Rebekah overhears what Isaac has said to his son Esau that he wants to bless him in the name of the Lord and so she comes up with a scheming plan.

Rebecca wants to put things in motion. She wants to do things to undermine her husband. This is father against mother, husband against wife, or kid against kid. They're doing all these things. This is not a well-functioning family. We just need to put this right out there. I hope this is not what the dynamic of your own household looks like. And Jacob recognizes if his father Sees this he's not gonna be blessed. He's gonna be cursed And so he's concerned about this, but that's not going to stop Rebecca.

Let's go ahead and keep on reading But his mother said to him, let your curse be on me, my son, only obey my voice and go, get them for me. And he went and got them and brought them to his mother and his mother made savory food such as his father loved. Then Rebecca took the choice clothes of her elder son Esau, which were in the house and put them on Jacob, her younger son. And she put the skins of the kids of the goats on his hand and on the smooth part of his neck. Then she gave the savory food and the bread which she had prepared into the hand of her son Jacob." So what's the plan here? What's the ruse, right?

Isaac knows Esau and Jacob are two different ones. Esau came out red and hairy. He smells like the wild. He's got hair on the back of his neck. And so Rebecca knows she can't just make the food. But Jacob has to play the part and so she takes some of his clothes and she takes these clothes that smell like Esau and she puts them on. Now this is because Isaac is going blind, he can't see. And he still has other senses though, right?

He can feel, he can smell, he could touch, he could hear. And so she even takes some of that kid goat that has been slaughtered and she puts some of it on his arms and on the back of his neck. So when Esau, or sorry, when Isaac would grab him, he would think that he was grabbing Esau because he would feel the rough skin and the hair. And so he's literally in goat's clothing here. He's dressed as his brother. He's wearing hairy clothes.

So Jacob went to his father and said, My father. And he said, Here I am. Who are you, my son? Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done just as you told me. Please arise, sit and eat my game that your soul may bless me. But Isaac said to his son, how is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?

Now, let me just say my wife relegates my hunting. Right. There's one hunting season I'm I'm allowed to go hunt in. It's the early muzzleloader season because it only lasts a few days because she knows I can spend all day out in the field hunting. Isaac knows it takes a while for Esau to get game. So how did you get this so fast? That's his question.

But Jacob, and this is where Jacob does things that are wrong, just outright wrong. He's lying to his father, and now he continues this lie, but he even invokes the name of God. And he said, and Jacob said, because the Lord your God brought it to me. That's an atrocious sin. Isaac said to Jacob, please come near that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not. Isaac seems to be questioning things here. Some things, things aren't adding up. There's some yellow flags going on here.

So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, and he felt him and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. Then he said, Are you really my son Esau? He said, I am. He said, Bring it near to me and I will eat my my son's game so that my soul may bless you. So he brought it near him and he ate and he brought him wine and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, Come near now and kiss me, my son. They came near and kissed him and smelled the smell of his clothing and blessed him. It's worked. The deceit's worked. The plan, the ruse that Isaac is falling for is happening. Rebecca's laid out the plot. Jacob's played the part. And now it seems like this is going to happen.

Surely the smell of my son is like the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed. Therefore, may God give you of the dew of heaven, of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Be master over your brethren and let your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you.

This is a huge blessing that Isaac pronounces over his son, Jacob. Assuming that he's Esau, what was really in his heart was to make sure that the supplanter didn't get it. That Esau would rule over Jacob. But Jacob has stolen the blessing. Now it happened, verse 13, as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob and Jacob had scarcely gone out of the presence of Isaac, his father, that Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting. He also had made savory food and brought it to his father and said to his father, Let my father arise and eat of his son's game that you may that your soul may bless me. His father, Isaac, said to him. Who are you? And he said, I am your son, your firstborn Esau. Then Isaac trembled exceedingly and said, Who?

Where's the one who hunted game and brought it to me? I ate it before you came and I have blessed him, and indeed he shall be blessed. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and he said to his father, Bless me also, my father. But he said, Your brother came with the seed and has taken away your blessing. And Esau said, Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright, and now he has taken away my blessing.

And he said, Have you not reserved a blessing for me? Then Isaac answered and said to Esau, Indeed, I have made him your master, and all his brethren I have given to him as servants. With grain and wine I have sustained him. What shall I now do for you, my son? And Esau said to his father, Have you only one blessing, my father? Bless me, bless me also, O my father.

And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. Then Isaac, his father answered and said to him, behold, your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven from above. But your sword by your sword, you shall live and you shall serve your brother and it shall come to pass when you become restless, that you will break his yoke from your neck. So he tells him, you're going to be prosperous. You're going to though serve your brother, but the time is going to come when you're going to cast off the yoke of your brother's service And then there's a natural part we can understand this humanly speaking in verse 41 So Esau hated Jacob Because the blessing which his father had blessed him and Esau said in his heart the days of mourning of my father are at hand And then I will kill Jacob.

He moves us beyond just he's stolen my birthright. He's now tricked me. He's tricked my father out of the blessing. And the seed of anger in his heart has moved bitterness into his soul. And now the pit of his person. He's premeditating murder. He's just waiting for his father to die. Waiting for the day that he can, instead of being like the child of Seth that he is, he's going to put on the mantle of Cain.

And the words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob, her younger son, and said to him, surely your brother Esau comforts himself concerning you by intending to kill you. now therefore my son obey my voice arise flee to my brother laban and haran and stay with him a few days until your brother's fury turns away 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 bereaved also of both in one day And Rebecca said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, like these who are the daughters of the land, what good will be my life to me? And so we'll pick up the rest of that story tomorrow, but.

Rebecca warns Isaac. Rebecca warns Jacob, sorry. That he's going to have to flee. He's going to have to run. He needs to get out of Dodge. Give his brother some time for some cool water. To chill out and to realize what's about he's about to do. Rebecca's grieving. Because now she's worried she's lost her son Isaac to the anger in his heart. Sorry, her son Esau to the anger in his heart. She's about to lose Jacob. By the anger of Esau.

These types of stories I'm telling you time and time again, I don't want you to be surprised when you read the Old Testament. I was just watching a video a while ago where there's these people, an ex-worship pastor and his wife who are going through passages like this in the Bible and they're putting it to worship songs and they're trying to essentially expose the Bible These are stories in the Bible and they're not meant to show us that these things are perfect, but they're meant to show us that God is doing his thing. He's keeping his promises, even though people are sinful, even through people, sinful, sinful people, God is still preserving his promise.

Now there's going to come a day in time. We have to fast forward over a thousand years to get there, but there's finally going to come a day in time where he's going to do it through a perfect man. His name is Jesus Christ. He's the only perfect man.

God did not give us the Old Testament that we could go, oh, look at Abraham. He was the model of everything we should follow. No, he was the model of faith. We shouldn't look to Isaac's family and go, oh, look, there's a perfect picture of how we're to parent our children with favoritism. No, that's not why it was given to us. I can't give you principles of parenting from Isaac and Rebecca.

You're gonna be hard-pressed to find that. But what we can see is God's grace working through sinful people. We can see God keeping his promises even though families are messed up. Because this is how God works in real life. It's not a fairy tale. It's reality. With all the scars and blemishes, the warts and the imperfections, this is how God brings about his promise.

He loves Jacob. He doesn't love Esau. And it's not because Jacob is righteous and Esau is unrighteous, but it's by his choice. It's not because Jacob is the perfect one. He is a supplanter. But Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated, before either of them did anything either good or bad. It's because of his sovereign grace, not because Jacob is righteous, but despite Jacob's unrighteousness.

He loves him because he chooses to love him. And if we're honest, that's the same type of way we need God to treat us. We need him to love us despite our unrighteousness. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for hard stories. We pray that you would please teach us to love you and follow in your ways. In Jesus's name, amen. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.