Text: Isaiah 55 v9 – As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts   God declares.

God is wiser, more righteous, and more holy than us. Yet God cares for mankind in spite of man’s low down behaviour. In our reading we saw Isaac’s family behaving very badly. We see the sort of behaviour that is not only quite common in such programmes as East Enders, but also sadly features in real life for many a family.

Lets first remind ourselves of the background to the story. Isaac had married Rebecca. We looked at the story last week. All concerned had sought God’s guidance; Genesis 25 is a lovely story of how things can work when people are in tune with God. Yet for 20 years of their married life no child came along. Rebecca was barren. Isaac and Rebecca prayed and in due course Rebecca became pregnant with twins.

The twins in her womb are boisterous and she asks God what is happening to her. God tell her that there are two nations in her womb (or the fathers of two nations). But younger one will be the dominant one. He will be stronger than his brother, and his brother will serve him.

In due time the twins are born, the first one is a hairy baby, they name him Esau. His brother comes next, holding on to Esau’s heel and they name him Jacob. His name means he cheats; he takes what doesn’t belong to him. So the two boys grow up, but they have very different personalities. Esau is a hunter; he is impetuous and lives by his instincts. Jacob is a quiet boy; he stays at home.

Now Isaac who had a taste for wild game preferred Esau. There was nothing he liked more than for Esau to bring home the spoils of his hunting and cook a meal of fresh meat. But Rebecca is closer to Jacob. He is a quieter young man, but God had told her that he would be stronger than his brother. Perhaps not in the physical sense, Esau would have most likely won a wrestling match with his brother, but when it comes to strength of character, Jacob is the man.

There are a couple of incidents we are told of that give us some insight into the difference between the two. Firstly there is the occasion when Esau comes home from hunting starving hungry. Jacob is cooking a stew. Esau demands a helping. Jacob says ‘I’ll give you some stew if you give me your birthright.’ The birthright is the privileges of the elder son. We see in Jacob there something of the cheat, the schemer trying to take advantage of his brother.

But we also see a couldn’t-care-less attitude in Esau. All that matters to him is his stomach. He doesn’t value his birthright. He has no sense of responsibility that’s appropriate to the older son. He’s the sort of man who would be quite likely to go down the casino and blow the family fortune. He gives Jacob the birthright for a bowl of food, the bible comments ‘Esau despised his birthright.’
The second insight to Esau’s character is that the bible tells us that Esau gets married. He doesn’t marry one wife he marries two. They were Hittite women, native of the local area and no doubt women with a pagan outlook on life. We are told they were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca. Two brazen wenches.

Abraham had gone to great lengths to find the right wife for Isaac; he was adamant that it was not to be a local girl. We thought about the story of how Rebecca was found, a woman who was generous and hospitable. She was a woman with faith in the one true God. Faith didn’t matter to Esau.

So we come to the events we have just read about. Isaac has come to the point where he is getting near to the end of his life. He must pass on his blessing, and with his blessing God’s covenant blessing to his son. Some commentators say he should have blessed both his sons; Jacob himself was to do that at the end of his life and you can read about that at the end of the book of Genesis, I’m not sure of the validity of that argument.

An ancient custom was for the oldest son to have a double portion of the inheritance. If Isaac had been following that practice, Esau would have had twice as much as Jacob. But Isaac calls just for Esau. He sends him to hunt for food, to prepare it and bring it to him to eat; when he has done that Isaac promises he will give his blessing to Esau. He seems to have forgotten that God had said that the older twin would serve the younger.

But Rebecca hears what’s going on. She is determined that Jacob should have the blessing and so she embarks on a scheme to deceive her blind old husband. She disguises Jacob as best she can to impersonate his brother, or at least makes him feel and smell like his brother. She copies Esau’s recipe, and sends in Jacob with the food for his blessing before Esau gets back.

What appalling behaviour on the part of Rebecca and Jacob. But will the trick work? The impostor goes to his father. Isaac is confused. The voice sounds like Jacob’s. Jacob blatantly lies to his father. ‘Are you really my son Esau?’ the old man asks. ‘I am’ Jacob replies. Isaac smells Esau’s clothes that Rebecca has put on Jacob, He is taken in, he eats the food and he blesses Jacob.

Object accomplished for Jacob and Rebecca. But when we accomplish our ends by cheating and lies there are always repercussions. Lets look at what happens next. Read Genesis 27 v 30-41.

It’s not easy to allot blame for the terrible mess that ensued. Jacob was a cheat. His mother was as bad. Isaac lacked spiritual insight. Even if our eyesight is fading, that is no excuse to be spiritually blind to God’s will. Isaac had only done the right thing by mistake. Esau was a hedonist with no sense of faith, or of the importance of God’s covenant.

How does God deal with his chosen people, with these wayward descendants of Abraham?
Esau does in time get over the events of Chapter 27. He has become prosperous and influential When he meets his brother again years later. His descendants do become a nation as God had promised; the nation of Edom. But Esau never seemed to value the covenant promises of God. He has chosen his priorities and he lives by them. His descendants, the people of Edom, on several occasions fight against Jacob’s descendants the people of Israel and later on the people of Judah.

Isaac suffers the grief and distress of being duped by his nearest and dearest. He acknowledges his mistake in that in chapter 28 he calls Jacob and knowingly bestows on him the blessings of Abraham.

Rebecca sees her favourite son get the blessing, but her scheme of deception has blown her family apart in hatred and bitterness. Esau has vowed to kill Jacob. Jacob has to leave, and Rebecca never sees her son again.

Jacob doesn’t get his fathers estate. He has to leave penniless, and labour hard and long to build up his own household. He also finds that the deceit he used on his father and brother bounce back on him at later stages in his life. He learns that you reap what you sow, but he also finds that God is gracious to him. God is faithful.

Some people might say that this is only an Old Testament story. Things are different now; we are not like Jacob, are we? Aren’t we still prone to the temptations that Jacob and his family were? Sometimes Christians fall to the temptations of greed and dishonest. Sometimes we can act faithlessly. Sometimes our methods do not glorify God; sometimes we are guilty of sham.

We are clay jars. We have our frailties. But God perseveres with us. He is faithful to us as he was with Jacob. A Christian lady from more recent times, as she looked back on her life wrote ‘With mercy and with judgement my web of time he wove.’ Honest Christian testimony admits that God’s hand upon our lives includes both favours and discipline.

Although his ways are higher than ours, he has come down to us in Jesus. In Jesus he faces us with the truth about ourselves. But through Jesus, he also forgives us. We have not yet come to the end of the story of Jacob. Next week we will look at the way that God worked in Jacob’s life to change him, we will learn how Jacob the cheat became Israel. Israel means one who struggles with God.

Jacob was stronger than his brother; he was stronger in that he persevered. God calls us to persevere; he calls us to fight the good fight. Esau is an example of a person without depth, a person whose life is superficial. Lots of people today are like Esau.

On the other hand Jacob was a person who valued and pursued a relationship with God. When we seek God, when we treasure a relationship with him above all else, then we find that he embraces us in his covenant love. He also works in our life to takes us from where we are; no matter what mistakes we have made and make us more like Jesus.

So we give God thanks and praise for his blessing on our lives. And we ask him by the power of his spirit to remake us into the people he created us to be.
 

Amen.

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