THROUGH THE BIBLE - Genesis..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. We'll read it together, and I'll give, as we always do, just a very brief overview of the chapter. It is very dense, and there's a lot that can be said, but we'll just really summarize it, and hopefully have a Christ-centered focus.

So, Genesis chapter 27, and we're starting from verse 1, and I'm reading from the ESV translation. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his brother, his older son, and said to him, my son and he answered here I am he said behold I am old I do not know the day of my death now then take your weapons your quiver and your bow and go out to the field and hunt game for me 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 now Rebecca was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went on the field, out to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son, Jacob, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau. Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord before I die. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you.

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. And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.' But Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am smooth man. Perhaps my father will feel me and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing.

His mother said to him, let your curse be on me, my son. Only obey my voice and go bring them to me. So he went and took them and brought them to his mother and his mother prepared delicious food such as his father loved. Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau, her oldest son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob, her younger son. And the skins of the young goat she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck.

And she put the delicious food and the bread which she had prepared into the hand of her son Jacob. So he went in to his father and said, my father, And he said, here I am, who are you, my son? And 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.

But Isaac said to his son, how is it that you have found it so quickly, my son? And he answered, because the Lord your God granted me success. 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. 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. And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands.

So he blessed him. He said, are you really my son Esau? He answered, I am. But then he said, bring it near to me and 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.

Then his father Isaac said to him, come near and kiss me, my son. So he came near and kissed him. And Isaac smelt the smell of his garments and blessed him. And then he said, see the smell of my son is a smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you of the Jew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine.

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. 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 hunting. He also prepared delicious food and brought it in 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. His father Isaac said to him, Who are you? He answered, I am your son, your firstborn Esau. Then Isaac trembled very violently and said, Who was it then that 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. 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. But he said, Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing. 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? 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? Esau said to his father, have you but one blessing, my father?

Bless me, even me also, oh my father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. 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 Jew of heaven on high. But 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.

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. But the words of Esau, her oldest 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.

Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban, my brother in Haran, and stay with him a while until your brother's fury turns away. until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets that you have done 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?

Then Rebecca said to Isaac, I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like those, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me? Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Well, if you want an example of a dysfunctional family, an example of a family where every member fails dismally in his or her duty to one another, their duty in love, care, or to be honest even to another family member, this is, well, this is your family.

We didn't delight in that, of course, but it does go to show how honest this book really is. You see, we're a people by nature who love to praise man. And we want to identify a hero in every story. Someone we can look up to, someone we can emulate, someone we can be like. But you see, in this story, it's almost impossible to fall into that trap.

You see, in this story, everyone, everyone in this story is an example of what not to be like. And I believe the Bible is so transparent that it exposes the fallibility and weakness of man not to gloat over his sins, not at all, but rather to give a proper perspective of the true faith. because this book makes it unmistakably clear that the unconditional covenant promises of God that he makes do not depend upon people because of their virtuousness, because they're honorable, or because they're faultless in their morals, but on God's goodness and upon his faithfulness only. He will fulfill every last drop of His promised blessings, all of which find their climax in the substance of all blessings, the Genesis 3.15 seed of the woman, Jesus Christ.

Beloved, Jesus is always the hero of every Bible story. Whether He can be explicitly seen in the text, or whether the text is pointing towards Him as its goal, He's always the hero. And we will do well to remember this point. But we've been blessed as a congregation to be able to read through the narrative of the book of Genesis. And we've come to this chapter, chapter 27.

The previous chapter, our brother in the previous weeks has explained to us how the blessing, the blessing given to Abraham by God continues to be fulfilled in his son, Isaac. But now Abraham and his wife Sarah have passed and are no longer in the picture. The text now focuses on Isaac and his family and Isaac lives to 180 years. That's five more years than Abraham. Yet Abraham had 13 chapters and Isaac only gets two.

So we don't know a great deal about this man. In fact, The only other event that we know that is recorded for us, apart from the narrative that surrounds the blessings of his sons, is what our brother unpacked for us last week. We're told a famine strikes the land and Isaac is told not to go to Egypt, but rather move west and settle in a land called Gerar among the Philistines, but still in the promised land. We're told that there Isaac did something that's less than honorable, something that is reminiscent of what his father had done before. Even though Abraham's faith matured over time through experiencing God's faithfulness, he'd made some doozy errors.

Many were immersed in deception in his former years. And we've been studying through the book and we know what they are. And so this chapter, In this chapter we see that the character trait of Abraham seems to be passed on to his son. Motivated by fear, Isaac too lies about his wife being his sister, just like his father had done on two previous occasions. The apple never falls too far away from the tree.

Now Isaac is an old man and his eyes are failing. and realizing his death is coming, he decides to get his affairs into order. At this point, he doesn't realize it's not his physical blindness which requires the urgent attention, but rather his spiritual blindness. You see, he calls his favorite son Esau and asks him to hunt some game and to bring that meat, cook it just like the old man loves it, and once he's eaten and he's satisfied, he will give him the blessing. Chapter 25 tells us, hear these words, Isaac loved Esau and Rebekah loved Jacob.

But we won't go into the detail how destructive it is for any parent to show favoritism towards a particular child as Isaac and Rebekah had done. But it's needless to say that their actions would always naturally be inclined to favor the son of their own affections. Jacob was mummy's boy. He was smooth-skinned. He loved to cook and he lived in a tent.

Yet Esau, on the other hand, was a man of the wild. He was daddy's boy. Daddy loved Esau. He was strong. He was hairy.

He was a skilled hunter. And most of all, Isaac loved his keen eye and his steady hand because he was able to provide a table spread of delicious meat, game meat. to satisfy his father's stomach. So Esau obeys. He obeys Isaac and he goes on the hunt in order to receive his father's blessing.

Now beloved Isaac no doubt was aware of the prophecy that was made when the boys were yet in Rebekah's womb. Two nations were in that womb. The older will serve the younger. He knew what that meant. But in defiance, he was determined to give the blessing to the son of his choice, not the son of God's choice.

Esau is also no innocent party here either. By him agreeing, he defaults on his own oath to Jacob. Whether he likes it or not, he foolishly sold his birthright to his brother for a single meal. allowing his stomach to dictate his course of action. Again, the apple never falls too far from the tree.

Is that not what Isaac is doing? But beloved, God's purposes will always be accomplished. The amazing thing is, he will accomplish them in spite of all the obstacles that sinful people, just like us, place before him. Now Rebecca, Rebecca catches wind of what's happening and the crafty scheming begins. The Bible teaches to be shrewd as serpents.

We all know that verse. Yes. But then he goes on to say to be innocent as doves. Rebecca's plan was far from innocent. Her shrewdness was downright dishonest and detestable to God.

So she calls for Jacob. and commands him to follow her elaborate scheme, the details of which we read in chapter 27, probably knowing Isaac's taste buds were no better than his eyes at this point, because it's apparent that he was no longer able to distinguish between the distinct flavor of game meat and that of domesticated regular meat. So her plan would work, and she would deceive her own husband for her favorite son. Beloved, there's two foundational characteristics of a healthy marriage that are being violated right here, right now in this chapter. Obviously, trust is one.

And the second, well, the second Rebecca could have learned from her mother-in-law, Sarah, who'd passed before she had a chance to meet. You see, it's said of Sarah that she obeyed her husband and called him master. In simple terms, Sarah respected her husband. Rebecca's actions show absolutely no respect for her husband. But that's not the main issue here.

You see, she may have been trying to bring to fruition the promise of God that the older will serve the younger. She knew that promise, but she wasn't acting in faith. Despite being grievous to her husband, her actions were ultimately a lack of faith in God. Our study in the book of Genesis thus far has shown that God is just as concerned with the process of accomplishing His promises as He is in fulfilling His promises. This means it's not just as important for God to get or achieve the ends, but it's also important for God to accomplish the means to the ends.

Sinful means never are justified by the ends. So no matter what was running through Rebecca's mind, her actions were sinful and unacceptable. God doesn't need our sinful hands nudging him along. Rebecca may have been a demanding mother, but Jacob, well, Jacob was no innocent party either. He was a grown man.

And as a grown man, he made a choice of his own will to obey his mother. and proceed with this scam. He lies. He betrays. He swindles his old father, who Kuna cannot see.

And he even invokes the blessing of God as he does it. And he gets what he wants in the end. But at what cost? His brother, a skilled hunter, now has him on his hit list. He's compelled to leave his family home.

He's brought incredible shame upon his father. Now his aged father knows his son deceived him. And the irony is this, this mummy's boy, the apple of Rebecca's eye, will never see him again. As far as we can tell, she never sees Jacob again. I think lessons were taught this day.

You see, when Isaac realizes he was duped, he doesn't revoke the blessing he gave Jacob. He doesn't even try to. How come? Why? I think he must have remembered the promise of God, but I think at this point he's just succumbed to the fact the fact that God's plans cannot and will not be thwarted by human effort, no matter how hard one tries.

If any man should know this, it's Isaac. He was brought back from the dead, so to speak, when Abraham was only moments away from plunging his knife into his heart on Mount Moriah. So if God says the older will serve the younger, against all odds, the older will serve the younger. It will come to pass whether evil is practiced or not, preferably not. Isaac's grandson, Joseph, will one day come to understand this truth and he will speak profoundly to his brothers.

And you know the words, what you meant for evil, he says to his brothers, God meant for good. Does this not remind you how the greatest display of grace, mercy, and love purposed by God was simultaneously met with the greatest act of evil in human history? Verses 26 and 27 should rejog our memory. In the midst of Jacob's deception, Isaac says these words. Verses 26 and 27.

Come near me, he says. Come near and kiss me, my son. So he, that is Jacob, came near and kissed him. The kiss of deception was the last thing Jacob did before his father poured out his blessing upon him. But the greatest kiss of deception would come some 1800 years later by a man named Judas, one of the 12.

He also performed a kiss of deception that we're all familiar with, but with that kiss, Christ was captured, he was brutally tortured, and then hung on a Roman cross. What Judas meant for evil, God meant for good. Because through that deceit, God's predestined plan was accomplished, and the immeasurable blessings of the Father were poured out to his people, those who placed their trust in his beloved Son. That's a promise from God. And by now we should know at least this much.

The promises of God will be accomplished and nothing will frustrate His plans from being fulfilled in His beloved Son. It's up to us to trust and obey. Amen.