Category: Sermon Supplements

Sometimes the frame is as important as the picture.  Sometimes it is part of the picture.  Sometimes it is necessary to properly interpret the picture.  Don’t lose the frame for the picture.

After stealing the birthright Jacob flees Esau.  He encounters angels, He encounters God.  He heads toward Laban.  Years later after gaining the flock, he flees Laban.  He encounters angels, He encounters God.  He heads toward Esau.  Do you see the frame that unites chapters 28-33.

Now for the glue that holds the frame together.  In the first encounter with God that we call Jacob’s ladder, God promises Jacob offspring, land, and blessing.  God says that he will be with him wherever he goes, and bring him back to the land (Genesis 28:15).  God will not leave off this work, He will do all that He has promised (Genesis 28:16).

Jacob’s fear then is an expression of unbelief.  But his unbelief, or weak faith does not nullify God’s faithfulness.

Do not fear.  God will bring us home.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares,

I have already come;

‘Tis Grace has brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

– John Newton

Fathers stoop to wrestle with their sons, but woe to the son who mistakes his father’s condescension for true weakness.  Though He stoops he still sets the rules.  Here God comes in the form of a man, reserves His power, and wrestles with the wrestler.

With a touch, not a powerful blow, Jacob’s hip explodes.  Jacob will not prevail because of superior strength; he will prevail only in prayer.  But before he is blessed he must be further broken, blessedly broken.  God’s severe mercy must cut to heal.

Jacob must relinquish his name, his identity.  A lady will hesitate to give her name to a creeper because information is power.  To relinquish his name is to tap out, to say uncle.  But more than this it is to admit who he is.  Is he not rightly named Jacob (Genesis 27:36)?  Previously he stole the blessing by concealing his identity; God demands we confess if we are to receive His blessing.  There can be no masquerade, no disguise.  The truth of who we are must be owned up to.

Upon Jacob’s confession of his old self God redefines who he is, He changes his identity.  Jacob then asks the Stranger’s name, but notice the change of tone.  God demanded the name, Jacob asks politely and is refused, but He is blessed.

It is of the utmost importance to realize that in this wrestling match God bestows nothing that He has not already promised.  God has not been pinned to the mat, Jacob has, and yet in a sense he walks away winning, he is blessedly broken.  As Derek Kidner said, “It was defeat and victory in one.”  Or as Bruce Waltke comments,

The limp is the posture of the saint, walking not in physical strength but in spiritual strength.  God’s severe mercy allows Jacob a victory, but it is a crippling victory.

The self-sufficient wrestler has become the dependant-cripple, and this is a glorious thing, a good thing.  May we all be so stricken, so defeated, so devastated, so blessed.

There is much of the old Jacob here, but there is also something new.  Although upon hearing of Esau’s enigmatic approach he first plans, then he prays, and what a beautiful prayer it is. 

He calls God every name in the book, in a beautiful way.  He begins His prayer by thinking on who He is talking to.  When struggling in prayer, begin with God.  Then Jacob expresses such humility confessing he is not worthy of the least of all of God’s kindnesses.  Take all of God’s kindnesses toward us and put them in a barrel such that the greatest rise to the top and the least fall to the bottom, then scrape the sediment off the bottom – this is what Jacob says He is not worthy of, nor are we.  Only after adoration and confession does he humbly bring his petition before God pleading on the basis of God’s promises.  The Word of God fuels, informs, and empowers his prayers.  You cannot be mighty in prayer if weak in the Word.  We are to pray in faith, and faith comes by the Word.

So Jacob oscillates between planning and prayer, but God does not capitulate in faithfulness.  God is faithful when we failthlessly plan.  This is evidenced not just in God answering Jacob’s prayer, but in Jacob praying.  Prayerless Jacob now prays a model prayer.  Jacob’s prayer is both a result of God’s grace and a means to more grace.  Pray to learn how to pray.  Pray for grace to pray as a means to more grace.

Laban tries to manipulate God, Jacob tries to “help” God.  Both actions are futile, both are God-belittling.

Have you ever contemplated manipulating the sun?  When you are sick of winter do you think of moving the sun so that spring begins a bit earlier?  Or do you wish your geographical setting more temperate, tropical, arid, or frigid?  Do you desire to harness the suns energy and use it as you desire?  Is it your ambition to catch, harness, manipulate, contain, direct, and tame the sun?

Or have you ever thought about helping the sun?  “You know its life span is so short, I really must help it out, go visit it and throw a few logs on the fire as it seems to be running low on fuel.  Here Mr. Sun, let me give you my flashlight, now you will shine much brighter and longer, now people will notice you.”

Such thoughts are absurd.  If someone were really to have them we would think of committing them.  Such thoughts are insane.  If such thoughts are to be dubbed insane concerning the sun, what word could we possibly use to describe the foolishness of manipulating or “helping” God?  The sun is small compared to our God.  Infinitely smaller.  He is the God who made sheets of suns.

Yet we try to manipulate Him.  Spiritual gurus who share their seven steps to an abundantly blessed life are really just telling you that they have found the secret way to rub the lamp, tickling the genie so that he will give you all your wishes.  Christ and His crucifixion do not bring you into blessing, rather it is these seven steps.  God is still the ticket, but He is no longer the main attraction.  “God I’m living by these rules, you owe me a blessed, happy, healthy life now – that is why I ask ‘why?’”

Seeming much more pious some of us are dedicated to serving God.  Beware, there is a way to belittle God by serving Him that makes Him look just as foolish (Acts 17:24-25).  God does not need our programs.  He does not need our intelligence.  He does not need our charisma.  He does not need our gifts, He gives them.  We are always the recipients, more so when we serve, not less (1 Corinthians 15:10.  God has no lack and we supply no need.  He could work much more efficiently without us.  Rather as a dad he invites us into His work so that we may gain.

So denounce trying to manipulate your heavenly Father for worldly pleasure and realize you help him like a toddler helps his dad repair the car.  Because of His love towards you He invites you to get in His way, get caught up in His greatness, look like Him, and be filled with the joy of working with and being with Him.

If Jacobs’s home life growing up in his parents’ home would have made Dr. Phil, the home under his own authority would have made Jerry Springer.

I grew up with two sisters, that was painful enough (love you Kim and Kris); I cannot imagine being married to two sisters.  Here a war rages between the two of them and they use their children as the ammunition.  What an excellent picture of motherhood.  Have you ever heard a Mother’s Day sermon from our text?  They have their idols and they are worshipping them.  Babies function as just false saviors to save them from their false hell and deliver them to their false heaven.  But the gods are angry, they do not satisfy, they don’t deliver, they don’t save. 

Leah’s problem is not that she desires the wrong thing, but that she desires wrongly.  She doesn’t simply desire her husband’s love, she worships it.  Babies and God himself are just stepping stones to her true desire.

Rachel, like Jacob, as the younger wants to trump the older sibling.  She gives us the classic phrase for idolatry diagnostics, “Give me ______ or I shall die!”  She doesn’t have a pure desire for children, she just hates being in second place.

The issue here is not even the intensity of the desire.  Sorrow and joy are not exclusive of one another (2 Corinthians 6:10).  If you would counsel Rachel and Leah simply by saying, “rejoice in the Lord”, this is too simplistic.  Sometimes the more joyful you are in the Lord the deeper your sorrow.  For instance, the more satisfying I find God to be the more burdened I will become for the unreached peoples of the earth.  Today if Leah could read Ephesians and see what marriage is supposed to portray it would not decrease her desire for her husband, it would heighten and sanctify it.  Her desire for her husband is not tempered and purified by a white hot, holy, and greater desire for the only water that can satisfy.

Jacob’s character fairs no better in this passage.  The women speak and know of Yahweh so evidently some spiritual leadership is being exercised, but he fails pathetically in resolving and squelching this conflict.  The one time he speaks is in anger, and, as typical with dudes, it’s not so much what he says but how he says it.  Ultimately Jacob is dismally reduced to the status of a stud.  No, not stud in a juvenile cool sense.  He is pimped out by one wife to another for some “love apples”.  Jacob has simply become a male used for mating and breeding purposes.

And yet, from all this mess we discover that God again is working behind the curtain of this Jerry Springer drama to bless them and bring about His covenant purposes.  As Dale Ralph Davis wrote, “The chemistry of divine providence takes the crud and confusion of our doings and makes it the soil that produces the fruit of His faithfulness.”  Their sins don’t thwart His plans they accomplish them.  For two generations the family that is to become a nation has only been multiplying by one, but now, in the mist of this chaos, a nation is being formed.  Sound familiar, holy blessed creation out of chaos, blessing over curse?  God at the same time is disciplining them and forming the nation.  Blessing and discipline surely are not antonyms, but synonyms.

Because of sin our ears are broken such that we more easily hear a whispered lie than shouted truth.  We look to circumstances and not covenant as the gauge of God’s love.   Our car rather than the cross tells us of God’s love.  The car breaks down , the whisper “He doesn’t love you” is heard, and our heart cries, “why?” 

The “biggest” word in this whole narrative is the first one, “Then…”.  This takes us back to the divine encounter in chapter 28.  “Then” has not only chronological, but also theological significance for God has just promised to be with Jacob and keep him wherever he goes (Genesis 28:15).  This means that everything in this narrative, both halves of it, are expressions of God’s love and covenant faithfulness; both the first half in which everything delightfully seems to be falling into place, and the second half where everything in God’s discipline is seemingly falling apart.  In fact the second half is saturated with more of God’s love than the second.  God will sovereignly use a sinner to sanctify His saint, and He is loving in doing so.

If you are in Christ, God’s only stance towards you is love.  It is wild, radical, uncompromising, unfailing love, but it is love.  It will tolerate no toxic sin in you.  His discipline is an expression of His love, not His wrath.  Do not despise His discipline, esteem it (Hebrews 12:5-11).  It is not pleasant in itself, but one day the night of chastening will end, and the morning will dawn with you discovering that you look a little more like God for He disciplines us unto holiness, and holiness is the greater happiness.  Oh how good it is for us to be afflicted (Psalm 119:67, 71, 75)!

How is it that nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:31-39)?  Jesus also, more than Jacob, relentlessly and joyfully pursued a bride.  In His quest for her he deals not simply with some wily Laban.  Sure Satan is the accuser of our souls, but he is not the owner.  He will be defeated, not paid in this transaction.  If Jesus simply had to pay Satan the cost might be cheap.  Oh, what Christ would pay for His bride!  God must purchase us… from Himself.  We stand under His wrath, and He would have us stand under His love and He will compromise none of Himself in order to transport us (Romans 3:24-26).  Justice must be satisfied, His glory manifested, His name honored.  No mere 7 years of labor, but the wrath of God was suffered on the cross for this bride.

May you hear the shouts of God’s covenant love over the whispers of circumstances.

I too was sleeping when God “found” me.  Church was presented to me as an option that morning, “Josh do you want to go to church?”  Why would an eleven year old boy say, “yes”?  God was dealing with my father. There was not a spiritual blip on my radar.  My thoughts likely consisted of sleep, Nintendo, and G.I. Joe.  I’m not sure what my motivation was.  I don’t think it was because I thought church might be “fun”, or that girls would be there. If anything it was simply to please my dad.  I was not seeking God, God was seeking me.  Though I was not converted in this moment, a series of events then began that would lead to my salvation.

C.J. Mahaney was not simply sleeping, he was smoking – weed! No, he was not simply a weed-smoker when he heard the gospel, he was smoking weed when he heard the gospel.

I was smoking pot the first time I heard the gospel.

I am a Christian not because I was worthy or wanting to be saved. No, I wasn’t searching for God.

God came looking for me.

It was 1972.  I was sitting in my bedroom when my friend Bob began sharing with me the simple story of Jesus dying for my sins, a story I had never heard despite growing up in church.

But that night, as I listened, God revealed himself and regenerated my heart. I believed and repented. The cross was for me. Jesus was my Savior.  – In Living the Cross Centered Life

I’ve heard C.J. say that he was not only smoking hash, he was happy doing it.  He was not at that time a miserable sinner.  He loved sin and was enjoying it.

This is the major false premise that ruins “seeker-sensitive” logic. We don’t seek God; God seeks us.

I wasn’t just asleep when God found me, I was dead (Ephesians 2:4-5).

God is the ravenous predator, we are the lucky prey – gloriously and blessedly devoured.

The literary framework of this section is beautiful, the characters in the narrative are not.  Genesis 26:34-35 and 28:6-9 form brackets around the narrative.  They record Esau’s birth to Canaanite and Ishmaelite women.  In between these brackets there are a series of scenes portraying the covenant family.  The family is never all together, they are fragmented.  Scheming and plotting abound, sin is everywhere, no one is untainted.

Isaac is secretive and disobedient to the birth oracle his wife received in Genesis 25:23.  He, like his son, is driven by his appetite.  As Derek Kidner says, “Isaac’s palate governs his heart.”

Rebekah is an eavesdropper.  She manipulates, plots, schemes.  She usurps her husband’s authority.  She has good ends in mind but seeks to accomplish those ends with sinful means.

Jacob goes along with his mother’s plot.  He succumbs to her pressure to sin.  As a 40 year old man he is commanded by his momma.  Initially he seems resistant, but it is not the morality of the plot, but the feasibility of the plot that causes his hesitation.  In the midst of his deception one lie leads to another and he blasphemes (27:20).

If you are tempted to sympathize with anyone it is Esau.  This shows us our wickedness.  You must come to Esau in context.  First, we have seen that Esau has no right to the birthright/blessing by Divine order; God has chosen Jacob (Malachi 1:2-3).  Second, Esau has sold his birthright (25:29-34), and although distinct, the birthright and blessing are inseparably linked.  Thus the blessing is now doubly not his.  Third, he marries Canaanite wives, making his parents miserable.  Fourth, here he is breaking his vow to Jacob.  Fifth, he is unrepentant and blames Jacob wholly for losing his blessing when he was only cheated once, and only cheated out of that which was already doubly not his.  Sixth, his unrepentant attitude toward sin leads to bitterness and hatred and intended murder.  This is the guy we want to sympathize with?  And indeed we should.  We sympathize with Esau not because we also are innocent and cheated, but because we also are wicked and stupid.

Where is the hero in this Jerry Springer drama?  He is behind the curtain.  And all the sin in the covenant family does not thwart his purposes, it only accomplishes it.  He will discipline His people, sin has consequences, yet His covenant love carries on.

The first verse of this chapter tells us that there is both consonance and dissonance between Abraham and Isaac.  As his son takes the stage there is a famine, not the same famine, but a famine just as there was in the days of his father.  We are to distinguish yet remember. 

 Abraham would face two famines, Isaac one.  God would allow Abraham to sin in self-reliance by going to Egypt, He would prevent Isaac from sinning.  With Abraham He would protect the covenant using the miraculous, both plagues (Genesis 12:17) and a dream (Genesis 20:6), whereas with Isaac subtle providence would be his tool (Genesis 26:8).  Still it is the same covenant, the same promises, the same faithfulness, the same God who permeates both of their lives.

God’s mysterious ways and methods may be different, he may sovereignly order circumstances in a different way, but His covenant faithfulness is unchanging.  Do not look to circumstances as a gauge of God’s faithfulness, look to His covenant, look to His Christ.  God will be with Isaac exactly as He was with Abraham (Genesis 26:3) exactly as He will be with you.

Addendum:  Last night I mentioned how Genesis 26:12-17 is a favorite passage for proponents of the “prosperity gospel”.  Al Mohler has written a post reflecting upon the life of Oral Roberts.  Concerning the prosperity gospel he writes:

Prosperity theology teaches that God promises his people financial gain and bodily health. It is a false Gospel that turns the Gospel of Christ upside-down. The true Gospel offers forgiveness of sins and leads to a life of discipleship. Following Christ demands poverty more often than wealth, and we are not promised relief from physical ills, injury, sickness, or death. Christians die along with all other mortals, but we are promised the gift of eternal life in Christ.