Sermon Tone Analysis

“The Deceiver is Deceived” - Genesis 28-29.

(Bible Story #12)

Introduction & Review

Well it’s been a couple of weeks since our last Bible Story in our “Big Picture of the Bible series” - telling the story of the Bible from Creation to Christ here on Sunday mornings.

This is important for us to see what Dr. W.A. Criswell famously called “The Scarlet Thread of Redemption” that is the overall theme of the Bible.

It is the story of how God would redeem mankind from the clutches of Satan and sin by sending a Deliverer, the very Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our story began in the spirit world before the Creation of the universe & the world we live in.

We traced the origin of rebellion against God’s sovereign rule over Heaven to Lucifer, AKA Satan, who rebelled against God and convinced roughly 1/3 of the angels to join him in his ill-fated coup attempt.

God flicked Satan out of Heaven with great ease.

God created the universe in 6 days by speaking it into existence, without raw materials, just the power of His voice.

God also created a man and a women, male and female, and joined them together in Holy matrimony as the first family and put them in a perfect garden environment and literally provided everything they needed.

God gave them one simple rule, you can eat of the fruit of all the trees of the garden, but of the tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil they could not eat, for in the day they ate of it, they would die.

Satan, the original Snake Oil salesman deceived the man and woman and convinced them it was okay to eat of that tree b/c they would be like God & know good and evil.

They did so and plunged the world into chaos and evil.

It was so bad, they realized they were naked and tried to cover themselves and their sin up with fig leaves.

God had to kill an animal and shed blood to atone for their sin and cover their shame.

He expelled them from the garden and cursed the ground for Adam - he’d have to sweat by hard work to feed his family.

Eve was going to have pain, sorrow and difficulty in childbirth.

God gave Adam and Eve two sons, Cain & Abel.

Cain tilled the ground and Abel was a shepherd.

By & by, they brought an offering to the Lord.

Cain brought the produce he grew and Abel brought a sheep he killed and sacrificed to God.

God accepted Abel’s offering b/c of the blood shed, the pattern God showed his father Adam.

God rejected Cains offering but warned him he knew what to do and he too would be accepted.

Cain got angry, so angry he killed his brother Abel in the field one day and covered him up.

Of course God knew what Cain did and judged him for it and cursed him from being able to grow anything else and banished him to wander and scrounge for food.

God graciously gave Adam & Eve another son named Seth and it was through Seth, a Godly line of descendents would come including a guy named Noah who found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

God warned Noah of world-wide judgment from a catastrophic flood that would cover the whole earth.

God had Noah build a large ark to rescue Noah, his wife, his 3 sons & their wives along with a pair of each kind of animal and birds to preserve human, animal and bird life.

Noah obey by faith.

It took 120 years for Noah to build the ark and God was patient to wait to judge the wickedness of man by destroying the earth by flood.

After the flood, God commanded Noah and his family to repopulate the earth.

It was through Noah’s son Shem, God chose to send His deliverer as part of His plan of redemption.

One of Shem’s descendants we were introduced to was a man named Abraham.

Abraham & his wife Sarah were old and had no children.

Abraham was 75 years old when God called him to leave his family and travel to a land 500-600 miles away that God would show him.

God also promised He would make of Abraham a great nation and through Abraham, all the nations of the earth would be blessed by a deliverer.

Abraham obeyed God by faith and went out not knowing where he was going.

Abraham was not a perfect man, he made lots of mistakes but he always obeyed God first time with a good attitude and did exactly what God told him to do by faith in God and His promises.

Because of Abraham’s faith, God blessed him tremendously.

At the age of 100 years old, Abraham had a son, Sarah was 90 when she had Isaac which means laughter.

It’s laughable that two old people would have a baby, but it highlights God’s power and faithfulness to His promises.

God provided a bride for Isaac and used the great faith of Abraham’s most trusted servant to reveal to him the exact woman God wanted Isaac to marry.

A woman named Rebekah, who was Abraham’s great niece, who went to marry Isaac, sight unseen.

Isaac & Rebekah had no children for sometime, but God had promised Isaac like He promised Abraham that Isaac would have lots of descendants.

So Isaac prayed and the Lord gave Rebekah not just one child, but twin sons.

She was having a difficult time in her pregnancy, so she prayed and asked God what was going on.

The Lord told her there were two sons in her womb who were struggling; but that the older son would serve the younger.

Sure enough, Rebekah had two sons, the first one came out red and hairy so she named him Esau, the second son, reached out of the birth canal and grabbed his brother’s heel, so they named him Jacob, which literally means “the one who takes the heel”; it also means deceiver.

Isaac & Rebekah made a sad mistake by playing favorites with their sons.

Isaac loved Esau’s wild game b/c Esau was a hunter, Rebekah loved Jacob because he was a home body and preferred to live in the tent with his mom and dad.

One day, Esau came home from a bad hunting trip, tired, hungry, famished.

You might say he was “hangry.”

Jacob happened to have a pot of stew on the campfire and Esau begged him for it.

Jacob, told his brother to sell him his birthright as the first born son that carried immense privileges and responsibilities.

Mainly he would get a double portion of his father’s inheritance and would become the spiritual leader of his family upon his father’s death.

The Bible tells us Esau was a profane man and he said “Look, I’m about to die, what good is my birthright to me?”

So he agreed to sell Jacob his birthright for a bowl of stew.

Later, Isaac was old and about to die, so he called Esau to go kill some wild game, prepare it just the way old Isaac liked it.

The plan was for Isaac to bless Esau with his inheritance.

Rebekah heard this, and she guided Jacob on how to deceive Isaac, by killing a goat from the flock, Rebekah prepared a tasty meal, and took the goat skin and put it on Jacob’s arms, hands and the back of his neck.

She even dressed Jacob in some of Esau’s clothes,.

Jacob willingly went along with his mother’s plan and deceived Isaac by straight up lying to his nearly blind father.

Isaac fell for it and gave the birthright blessing to Jacob.

Shortly after Isaac blessed Jacob, Esau returned and came in with the food.

Isaac realized he’d been had and had nothing really to offer Esau.

Esau was so angry, he threatened to kill Isaac.

1. Tell the story

This brings us up to speed for our story today From Genesis 28-29.

Rebekah heard of Esau’s plot to kill Jacob after Isaac died, so she used it to manipulate Isaac to send Jacob away to find a wife from her brother’s house back in Haran over 500 miles away.

Again Rebekah and Jacob were in cahoots in their plans to hide the real reason why Jacob needed to go away to keep Esau from killing Jacob.

Setting

So Isaac calls Jacob and reiterates his blessing for Jacob and sends him away to Haran, in hopes he can find a wife from the family of Rebekah’s brother Laban, Abraham’s great-nephew.

Esau watched this whole thing unfold & went and married a Canaanite woman to irritate & spite his parents.

Jacob’s departure was urgent, his mama Rebekah literally told him to flee to her brother Laban’s house in Haran (27:43).

So Jacob flees from his mama and daddy’s home in Beersheba, the tent home-boy is fleeing for his life and is going to have to sleep out under the stars.

He’s not going to have his mama’s apron strings to cling to; from now on he’s going to have to learn to life by faith.

Little did he or anyone else in the family know, but Jacob would be gone for at least 20 years!

Can you imagine the stress of it?

The deceiver Jacob constantly looking over his shoulder to see if Esau was pursuing him.

He was headed to Haran 500 miles a way on foot with meager provisions, used to the creature comforts of home, the sack lunch his mama made him and the water he could carry no doubt didn’t hold out very long.

Jacob is literally fleeing for his life.

(Show maps highlighting where Beersheba is located and where Haran is located.)

The average healthy person can walk about 20 miles a a day and yet the Bible tells us that Jacob finally laid down to sleep in a place called Luz, about 50 miles NE of Beersheba.

It would seem Jacob was running on adrenaline and fear if this was the first time he stopped to rest.

When Jacob laid down to sleep, he used a rock for a pillow and collapsed from exhaustion.

I would think if you were that exhausted, a rock for a pillow wasn’t looking too bad.

As Jacob slept, he dreamed a vivid dream.

(Show slide).

In Jacob’s dream, he saw a ladder going up to Heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down the ladder between Heaven and Earth.

At the top of the ladder, he saw the Lord standing at the top of it.

Not only was the Lord standing there, God Himself spoke to Jacob!

This is what God said:

Genesis 28:13-15 “And behold, the Lord stood above it and said: “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.

14 Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

15 Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.””

If these promises from God sound familiar to you, they would have sounded familiar to Jacob b/c they are the same promises God made to Isaac and to Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather.

Something Jacob had heard from his father & grandfather, now he was hearing them for the first time directly from God personally!

What an encouragement this must have been for weary Jacob.

The same God, Yahweh/Jehovah who spoke to Grandpa Abraham & Papa Isaac, is now talking to me!