Sermon Tone Analysis

Isaac Blesses Jacob - Genesis 25:27-28:5

Introduction & Review

Last week in our Chronological Bible Storying series as we work through the “big picture of the Bible”; we saw the passing of both Sarah and then Abraham.

The end of an era as the first generation of the Jewish nation passed on to glory.

Abraham & Sarah were the patriarch & matriarch of God’s chosen people.

God called Abraham at age 75 and promised to make of him a great nation.

Abraham responded to God’s call in resolute faith and immediate obedience to God; no matter how crazy or unconventional God’s instructions were.

Both Abraham & Sarah died seeing God’s promise to them fulfilled in their son Isaac, which means laughter - b/c they had a son in their old age when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90.

Abraham had the spiritual wisdom & understanding that Isaac could not take a wife from the Canaanite people who occupied the Promised Land where Abraham settled when God told him to live there.

We saw how Abraham made his most trusted servant take an oath that he would not allow Isaac to marry a woman of Canaan, but to go to his family back in Haran to find a bride for Isaac.

The servant exercised great faith and put his faith to the test with a specific request in how the chosen bride would be willing to give not only the servant a drink, but would water all of his camels.

It was literally a match made in Heaven when God answered the servant’s request exactly the way the servant prayed.

The chosen bride was a woman named Rebekah who left her family and returned to marry Isaac.

Isaac loved Rebekah and yet the couple had no children for the first 20 years of their marriage.

Isaac prayed for Rebekah and God answered his request by giving her twins, twin boys to be exact who struggled in her womb.

God made a promise when Rebekah prayed about her difficult pregnancy and said there were two nations in her womb, one people would be stronger than the other and the older would serve the younger.

So Rebekah gave birth to those boys, the first born she named “hairy” or Esau b/c he was hairy all over like a garment all over.

The second son grabbed his brother’s heel as he was coming out the birth canal so they named him Jacob - literally “the one who takes the heel.”

We’ll see more significance to his name a bit later as we pick up or story for today found in Genesis 25:27-28:5.

1. Tell the story

Setting

The story fast forwards a number of years & now the boys are adult men.

The Bible tells us that Esau became a skillful hunter, a man who preferred the outdoors and being in the field.

Jacob on the other hand was described as a mild man who preferred the creature comforts of living in a tent.

It’s interesting this word translated “mild” in Gen. 25:27 is the only place it is translated this way.

Most of the time it is translated “blameless” or complete and most of these occur in the book of Job, describing Job’s character.

Well Jacob was anything but a man of character in the first part of his life.

Esau was his daddy’s favorite and Jacob was a mama’s boy.

Isaac & Rebekah made a great parenting mistake when they played favorites.

Isaac loved Esau more because he enjoyed the wild game Esau brought to the table, Rebekah loved Jacob’s softer homebody style and we see this division in the family that will only get worse over time.

One day Esau came home after a long, miserable day of hunting without success and came home empty handed.

I’ve hunted many a time in the cold, the kind of cold that gets in your bones and your body hurts.

I’ve sat in a tree stand for hours in northern New Hampshire and not seen deer.

After a while, all I could thing about was getting warm and hopeful there was a warm meal on the stove.

That’s how Esau was, he was exhausted and hungry and came home to smell a pot of stew Jacob had cooked.

So Esau told Jacob: “Please feed me with that red stew for I am weary.”

The term “weary” carries the idea he was literally starving to death at worst from physical exertion, or about to pass out and faint at best.

You might say Esau was “hangry” long before Snickers made up the word.

His mouth was watering, his stomach was growling and he wanted that stew badly!

Rather than just give him a bowl of stew, Jacob decided to take advantage of his older brother.

I can picture Jacob ladling out a heaping portion of warm and delicious smelling stew, yet holding it just out of reach so Esau could get the full whiff of that warm stew.

Esau reaches out greedily hangry...

“Ah not so fast bubba.

Sell me your birthright today!”

What? “You heard me, sell me your birthright.”

Esau said “Look, I’m about to die, what good is a birthright to me?”

So Jacob made him swear he’d give it to him so Esau swore over his birthright as the firstborn son & sold it to his younger brother Jacob.

Jacob fed Esau and Esau went his way and the Bible makes an ominous statement: “Thus Esaus despised his birthright.”

(Gen.

25:33).

Now I should pause here in our story to give you a little background on this concept of a birthright b/c it’s not something we’re that familiar with in our culture.

As the firstborn, Esau had the right to a double portion of his father’s inheritance, it was as if the first born were actually two people!

If there were two sons, the firstborn would receive 2/3’s of the inheritance.

If there were 3 sons, the firstborn would receive 3/4’s of the inheritance.

It was a big deal!

It also meant when his father died, he would automatically become the head of the family group as their spiritual leader, taking on the role of the family priest before God.

This also meant that Esau would become the guardian of the promises of God that had been given to Abraham first and passed down to Isaac.

It would require him to live by faith in Almighty God - Yahweh.

More importantly, through the line of the firstborn, the Deliverer was to be born.

It was all of these rights, privileges, blessings and responsibilities, Esau sold to Jacob for bowl of stew!

In chapter 26, the scene shifts back to God’s dealings with Abraham’s son Isaac, Jacob & Esau’s father.

Remember how Abraham faced a famine and went to Egypt without talking to God about it?

Well another famine comes so Isaac begins heading in the general direction of Egypt; but before he gets there, he’s in the land of the Philistines where the king of the Philistines “Abimelech” ruled (the title like Pharoah, not his name).

Just like the Lord appeared and spoke to Abraham, the Lord took this opportunity to affirm his promises to Abraham now to Isaac and appeared to Isaac personally.

In their meeting, God made 7 clear promises to Isaac telling him what He would do in Gen. 26 telling Isaac clearly not to go down to Egypt but to stay put in the land of the Philistines:

“I will be with you.” vs. 3a

“I will bless you and your descendants” vs. 3b

“I will give you all these lands” vs. 3c

“I will perform the oath I swore to your father Abraham” vs. 3d

“I will make your descendants multiply like the stars of heaven” 4a

“I will give your descendants all these lands” vs. 4b

“In you all the nations of the earth will be blessed” vs. 4c

These promises mirror what God promised to Isaac’s father Abraham!

This is vitally important in the story of Isaac’s family as God is carrying on His plan of redemption through Abraham’s son, in the 2nd generation of the life of faith people group, a line of people completely unique and different than everyone else in the world!

God went on to explain why He was going to do this: “Because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”

What an encouragement this must have been to Isaac, who had heard his father Abraham tell of God’s promises, had seen first hand God’s faithfulness to Abraham, and now God is making the same promises he’d heard all his life to him personally?

Wow!

So Isaac stayed there in Gerar in Philistine territory.

Well it wasn’t long before the men of the area began to ask about Rebekah, Isaac’s beautiful wife.

Can you imagine what Isaac told them?

You guessed it, he told them she’s my sister!

The Bible tells us it was because Isaac was afraid “because he thought the men of the place would kill him because of Rebekah.”

Same song, 3rd verse, a little bit louder and just as worse!”

The sins of the father are now being commited by the son.

Abraham made this mistake twice and God divinely intervened.

Now God works in the background behind the scenes to protect Isaac, even though Isaac’s faith faltered, God’s first promise to Isaac we just discussed was “I will be with you.”

It wasn’t long after, the king looked through the window of Isaac’s home and saw him kissing his bride & showing affection to Rebekah.

Well the king saw all he need to see and he called Isaac out on it; “Quite obviously she is your wife; so how could say she is my sister?”

Well Isaac was forced to come clean and confess he was afraid of dying on account of her.

The king was upset: “What is this you have done to us?

One of the people might soon have lain with your wife and you would have brought guilt on us.”

So Abimelech commanded all of his people not to touch Isaac or his wife and whoever did so would be put to death!

Clearly the Lord was already working out His promises to Isaac.

The life of faith is a messy life because we often fail in our faith many times, but God however never fails!

Isaac began to plant crops in the land of the Philistines and the Lord blessed his work by allowing him to reap a hundredfold.

The Bible says God blessed Isaac and prospered him tremendously with flocks of sheep & herds of cattle and a tremendous number of servants, so much so the Philistines envied him!

The Philistines purposely stopped up the wells Abraham had dug in that territory out of their jealousy of Isaac, by filling them in with dirt!

In doing so, they made themselves a direct enemy of God.

God had promised Abraham many years before, I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.”(Gen.

12:3).

Water in the Middle East as it is in South Texas is an important, premium resource!

The King of the Philistines, Abimelech, told Isaac he wanted him to leave because Isaac had become mightier than they were.