Running Ahead of God

RUSHING AHEAD OF GOD

Opening

I walked a mile with Pleasure. She chatted all the way but left me none the wiser for all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow. And ne’er a word said she; but, oh, the things I learned from her when she walked along with me.

There is a hard lesson to be learned in this life and sadly, many will not learn it.

We believe that we can satisfy ourselves with the stuff of life and spend our days trying to enjoy all that we have accumulated. Yet, we are not the wiser and continue in that wasteful manner.

But then, sorrow enters our lives, and we have a choice. To try and run to our stuff and perhaps buy more of it but we discover that things can never be the answer.

Or we can learn that in our troubled times, we discover what is really important in our lives and how to appreciate people and not things.

We can grow up and be grateful for what we have enjoyed, or we can become bitter and see only what we have lost.

Today, I hope you can see the choices you have made.

Invocation

Unchanging God, we change our minds in a moment and follow after whims. We know that we do not always lean upon you when we need stability in our lives. Teach us today, not only of Your constant love, but also of your unchanging plan for our lives and this world. Protect us from ourselves and help us to look to your first. In Your Son’s name we pray. Amen.

Message

Human beings are amazing creatures. We can be so contradictory. One moment we want things one way and the next moment, we want it the other way.

How many couples originally thought they would have nothing to do with each other? They were so different and conflicted.

And yet, over time, they were drawn to each other and soon were matched. It’s almost as if we don’t really know what we want.

We stumble through one mistake after another and somehow end up where we were supposed to be in the first place.

Is there any other relationship in the scriptures more conflicted than that of two brothers who were born twins yet set on completely different paths?

Born to Rebekah and Isaac, Esau and Jacob could not have been any more different. Even when they were born, there was conflict.

Esau emerged first and with that single act was entitled to all that being the firstborn meant in that day. But even then, Jacob came out behind him hanging on to his heel.

Isaac looked at his wife with confusion. They were so different even in those first moments. One was larger and hairy with the second being smaller and almost hairless.

But Esau was the firstborn and Isaac knew which child he loved most. Even from the beginning, you had to know that this did not bode well for the family that was to follow.

Isaac held up his firstborn for all to see and Rebekah clutched the smaller child as if to protect it from what she was seeing in her husband.

Less is told of Isaac than any other patriarch. He is significant because he was the bridge between his father Abraham and his son Jacob, whose name would be later changed to Israel.

Personally, Isaac seems to have been a rather indecisive and passive person, without any great spiritual insight.

These traits are seen in his flight from a conflict with Abimelech, and in his preference of Esau because he “had a taste for wild game” (25:28).

Even though Isaac was overshadowed by both his father Abraham and his son Jacob, Isaac experienced God’s grace because in the end, faith triumphed over personal preference as he acknowledged God’s choice of Jacob over Esau and passed the covenant promises to his younger son.

Romans 9 tells us of God’s personal statement to Rebekah before her twin sons were born.

The message? God’s choice was Jacob, the younger, to inherit God’s covenant promise. That decision was made before the boys were born.

Perhaps that is why Rebekah was so protective of Jacob and plotted to ensure that her frail child would become the patriarch he was meant to become.

She knew that her husband would not accept that God’s choice did not depend on what either of them did.

So, we see this struggle played out in their family and among their tents. Isaac favoring his strong and capable son and Rebekah defending the son that God had chosen.

The boys would grow up with this tension filling their lives and it was no surprise, that Esau and Jacob would take completely different paths.

Esau was the hunter, the alpha male. He never came back without a trophy and his strength won him the admiration and obedience of his clan. Everyone agreed that this was going to be their leader.

But God knew different. Not that Esau would not be a leader or a strong man but that he would not be the one who would keep the covenant God had made with the family.

The fact that Esau proved to be uninterested in spiritual things shows how wise God’s choices are. That became evident the night that Esau came home famished and asked his brother for some stew Jacob was cooking.

There has always been the suggestion that Rebekah had plotted what transpired but we do not know for sure. But Rebekah knew what her firstborn would want, and Jacob had it ready.

Esau threw himself down and begged his brother for some stew. The aroma of the meat was driving him crazy with hunger.

So, when Jacob offered him a bowl of stew for his birthright, Jacob never imagined he would say, “What good is a birthright?" Esau was a man in his own right with his own herds and many men.

So, what was this birthright that Esau was willing to trade away for some soup?

The firstborn son had the right to inherit most of his father’s property and any intangible possessions, such as title or position.

Here the “birthright” that Esau sold so lightly included his natural right as eldest to the covenant promise of God.

In selling his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew, Esau showed how unimportant he considered God’s promises to be.

In fact, the text says that Esau “despised” his birthright which (bazah) means to “place little value on” something and can actually imply contempt.

Jacob couldn’t believe his ears. How could his brother so foolishly hand over a birthright?

We know that Jacob’s character was flawed (he was a conniver), yet he did value his relationship with God.

God can work with people who see Him as Lord, despite their weaknesses.

God would not work with Esau, for Esau had no place in his thinking for God.

In ancient cultures blessings given by parents or by one in authority were viewed as having great power. The deathbed blessing was equivalent to a last will and testament, by which a person transmitted all that was his to the next generation.

Esau may have squandered away his birthright, but he knew his father would not leave him out since he was dad’s favorite.

So, Isaac’s blessing was eagerly sought by Esau and jealously desired by Jacob.

Jacob and his mother panicked when Isaac announced he was about to give Esau his blessing. They had plotted together to deceive Isaac and to steal the blessing by passing Jacob off as his older brother.

They succeeded in deceiving a then sightless Isaac. But they alienated Esau so greatly that he swore to kill Jacob after Isaac died!

The tragic thing about this story is that their deceit was unnecessary!

Panic drove Rebekah and Jacob to lie and cheat to obtain something that God had already promised Hewould give them!

How foolish it is to run ahead of God. Our situation is never so bleak that we must use sinful means to get what we think God wants for us.

Esau was not a bad person. He was one of those human beings whose eyes are so filled with this world that they cannot see the world to come.

After Jacob fled to find a bride among relatives, it finally dawned on Esau that his parents were not delighted with his Canaanite wives. To please them, he found another wife from among Ishmael’s descendants.

How touching, and yet how tragic. Esau did the best he could. Yet his choice of Canaanite wives had been a symptom of his spiritual decline and not the cause of his rejection.

We can find admirable traits in those who have no concern for God. The world is filled with them and many we may call friends.

Yet however they try, they will always fall short. Their self-effort itself shows how little they know of our God.

In this tale of the trickster, we give our attention to Jacob and perhaps to his mother, Rebekah, who schemed with him.

Sometimes we think about Esau, whose tears and anger at losing his birthright and being robbed of his blessing are both so understandable.

Seldom do we look at Isaac. Yet I suspect that Isaac is the one who learned most from the incident and is the only one who acted with faith and nobility.

Yes, Isaac had always favored his son Esau. He was, if you will, the “jock”; the virile athletic type that his dad had always wanted, and perhaps had always wanted to be.

Jacob, a mama’s boy, just wasn’t the kind of son that a dad dreamed of! Jacob was the kind who’d rather play the piano than baseball; who’d rather go to some museum than hunt or fish.

And so, because Isaac was so drawn to his older son, he was blind to Esau’s weaknesses, and unable to see Jacob’s strengths.

How much pain do we endure and how many opportunities do we miss because we see what we want to see in other people and not how they really are?

Sometime soon, take another look at those closest to you.

In fact, for some 40 years Isaac had been blind to the fact that Esau cared nothing for God, nor that Jacob was the one who wanted God’s blessing.

Up to the very end Isaac persisted in his opinion. Up to the very end Isaac intended Esau to inherit the divine promise. And then Isaac was tricked into pronouncing his blessing on Jacob!

When he found out he had been tricked, Isaac was enraged.

He could not withdraw the blessing, but he could have replaced it with a curse! Instead, Isaac finally realized that for all those years, he had been wrong!

He realized that God intended Jacob to have the blessing and that Jacob at least cared about the covenant relationship wit God.

Realizing all this, Isaac at last acted in faith and with nobility. He confirmed the blessing he had just uttered, telling Esau, “…indeed he will be blessed.”

This was not the Cleaver family. Everyone seemed to be determined to have their way and the cost would split the family.

Jacob would get his father’s blessing, but he would have to flee for his life and hide for decades.

Rebekah would achieve her goal for Jacob but would die while her favorite son was away and would never see him again.

Esau would go one to father a strong nation and was powerful in his own right, yet his one nemesis turned out to be his little brother.

Sadly, things of great spiritual value are often handled in profane ways. Some people treat the eternal things with contempt, for they see them as of little or no value.

And others, though regarding such things highly, make even the higher cause serve themselves through deceit and manipulation. Esau and Jacob are examples of both types.

But what about you and me? How do we treat the eternal things with contempt and see them of little value?

We do so when we sacrifice our future for our present.

You see people do it all the time. They indebt themselves to have what they want now without thought to what it will deprive them of in the future.

We see it when we choose the seen over the unseen; the earthly over the spiritual. Rather than invest in the kingdom of God thru study and service, we surround ourselves with the stuff of this world and congratulate ourselves on all we own. None of it which will last even our lifetime.

Far too late, we have to reckon with the foolishness of our choices. Like Jacob, we try to run from our lies. Like Esau, we run roughshod over those who we should cherish.

Like Rebekah, we wound our family to get our way and like Isaac, we pretend we are being peaceful when all we are doing is avoiding our responsibilities.

Jesus made it clear to us that we should not be like Esau or Jacob when He said:

‘What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?[1]

The wisdom of this truth is easy to see, isn’t it? Understand it and you are on the brink of learning some great truths about God.

For example, read the Bible, and you cannot help but notice that God almost invariably chooses the poor, the widow, the stranger, the alien, the sojourner, the last, the younger son, the sinner, the publican, the prostitute.

In other words, he often chooses those who have nothing over those who have much. Every time God inverts things and chooses the poor person instead of the rich person, he tells us that salvation and justification are completely by grace.

If salvation is by such grace, then even we can be saved.

So, what will be the marks of the people who think of themselves as having been chosen by God?

The first thing is that they won’t have anything to boast about. They will be humble.

Second, they will know that their only hope is in God. The Lord who gives and the Lord who takes away.

In Washington State, a 19-year-old man named Dakoda Garren was charged with stealing a rare coin collection worth at least $100,000.

After Garren had completed some part-time work for a woman living north of Portland, the woman reported that her family coin collection was missing.

Initially, Garren denied any involvement, claiming that the police didn't have any evidence against him.

But then he started spending the coins at face value, apparently unaware of the coins' worth. He and his girlfriend paid for movie tickets using quarters worth between $5 and $68. Later on, the same day, they bought some local pizza with rare coins, including a Liberty quarter that may be worth up to $18,500.

Sometimes, we act like Rebekah and protect the thing we think everyone is trying to take from us. Sometimes, we act like Esau and toss away the most valuable things we have to satisfy our appetite. Sometimes, we act like Jacob and lie, steal and connive our way through life. And sometimes, we act like Isaac and don’t realize what we had all along.

Don’t waste these days that God has given you on a bowl of soup. Don’t try to get ahead of God to get what you think you deserve.

Do the right thing in God’s time and discover what He has already blessed you with already.

Benediction

Our memories are short, all-knowing Lord. We see and hear what we want to see and hear and by doing so, rob ourselves of much you have placed in this life. Help us to slow down, listen to you and cherish what is already ours in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Genesis 25:21-34

21 And Isaac prayed to Yahweh on behalf of his wife, for she was barren. And Yahweh responded to his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. 22 And the children in her womb jostled each other, and she said, “⌊If it is going to be like this, why be pregnant⌋?” And she went to inquire of Yahweh. 23 And Yahweh said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples ⌊from birth⌋ shall be divided. And ⌊one people shall be stronger than the other⌋. And theelder shall serve the younger.” 24 And when her days to give birth were completed, then—behold—twins were in her womb. 25 And the first came out red, all ⌊his body⌋ was like a hairy coat, so they called his name Esau. 26 And afterward his brother came out, and his hand grasped the heel of Esau, so his name was called Jacob. And Isaac ⌊was sixty years old⌋ at their birth. 27 And the boys grew up. And Esau was a skilled hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was a peaceful man, living in tents. 28 And Isaac loved Esau because ⌊he could eat of his game⌋, but Rebekah loved Jacob. 29 Once Jacob cooked a thick stew, and Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Give me ⌊some of that red stuff⌋ to gulp down, for I am exhausted!” (Therefore, his name was called Edom). 31 Then Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright ⌊first⌋.” 32 And Esau said, “Look, I am going to die; now what is this birthright to me?” 33 Then Jacob said, “Swear to me ⌊first⌋.” And he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread, and thick lentil stew, and he ate and drank. Then he got up and went away. So, Esau despised his birthright. [2]

[1]Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Genesis (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009), 199–201. [2] W. Hall Harris III et al., eds., The Lexham English Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Ge 25:19–34.