The Selling of the Birthright

- God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob

In Scripture, there is the phrase you will see from time to time.

The phrase is, “The God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob.”

It is used at least twelve times, in both the old and new testaments

(https://teacher-feature.com/2021/09/26/the-god-of-abraham-isaac-and-jacob/)

The God you and I believe in is this very same God.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

We have walked together through the life of Abraham, and gotten to know Isaac, his son, and his story.

Now we enter into the complex life of the Patriarch, Jacob.

Before we do, however I want to rewind back a little bit, in order to keep up on track with the major theme.

Or rather the point of all of these peoples lives being recorded for us in Scripture, for you and I to learn about today.

In Abraham, the over arching theme was, He was childless.

God promised, he would have a son, and that through him, all the earth would be blessed?

But why? Why is all of this happening again?

Well, it all goes back to Genesis 3 when God is handing out His judgement about the Adam and Eve disobeying His command and falling into sin,

- What’s it all about?

And thereby causing the separation of God and Man, through sin.

Genesis 3:15 (CSB)

15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.

What we are witnessing in effect, is the playing out of God’s prophecy or Promise, from the very first pages of history.

After this promise, the devil went on a damage control campaign

First he tried to thwart the coming of the promised one of God to prevent him from striking his head.

By influencing Cain to kill his brother Abel, But God brought Seth into the picture.

Then the devil corrupted the whole world through sin,

It was so bad, God lamented making the world, that he chose to destroy it by a world wide flood, killing everything

Except for Noah.

Then he used Nimrod’s influence and the Tower of Babel to confuse and distort their understanding of God,

So that they couldn’t be used by God

But God separated the peoples by languages, so the devil couldn’t any longer corrupt the whole population again,

Then out of the spread out separated population,

God chose Abraham,

We remember, God said, get out from there, and Go where I tell you to Go.

Once he got there, God promised him a son,

But the devil tried to defile Sarah, twice by having her carted off by two different kings

And here we are after all that Abraham went through, until he rested with his fathers, and his sons,

Isaac and Ismael buried him in a cave.

We learned in Scripture, that Ismael wasn’t the promised son offered as a sacrifice to God, although, Islam teaches that he was, according to manuscripts dating back to before the time of Mohammad, It was indeed Isaac

When we continue to read the account of Isaac, we find that yet again the enemy is up to his old tricks again.

Isaac is married now, to his cousin Rebecca, and the promise of God to Abraham is extended now, to Isaac as well

Rebecca can’t get pregnant,

Sound familiar?

His mom waited until she was 90 yrs, old to have a a child.

Well, Isaac and Rebecca are also without children, so Isaac prays to the Lord.

You could probably imagine the sheer confusion in Isaac can’t you?

“Lord, now you promised my father, that he would have so many offspring, through me, now what gives? For my wife is childless?”

- Isaac’s Prayer

Genesis 25:20–21 (CSB)

20 Isaac was forty years old when he took as his wife Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-aram and sister of Laban the Aramean. 21 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was childless. The Lord was receptive to his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived.

There is underlying lesson here that many of us forget.

God had already planned out his master recovery.

The devil, for all of his trick, trials, and errors, can never catch God off guard.

Because, the miracle is, what ever disaster the enemy can work up, God is a master at using the shattered pieces of circumstances, and turning them into a mosaic masterpiece.

Mosaic = a decoration made by inlaying small pieces of different colored materials (such as tile, stone, glass, or marble), or in God’s case (Life) to form patterns or pictures.

So we find Isaac praying to God, then, God answers the prayer.

The lesson we take from this is prayer works. Amen

God knew all along, Isaac going to have children but he didn’t open up the womb until Isaac, prayed!

God could’ve been justified in thinking, well its about time!

You see, many of us in this very building are waiting on things to come, or needing something to change etc.

But we forget the primary ingredient, Prayer!

Nothing happens in the spiritual realm without prayer. Period.

God has a plan in your lives too, but the only way to access them is by Prayer.

Pray about it, Pray for it, and after a bit you still don’t see it, pray some more.

Thats what Isaac did, he brought the issue to God in Prayer, and God answered, with not just one child but Two

They were having twins,

You see, the world with all of its potions, and medical magic, and gene splicing can obviously do a lot with a baby once its been conceived.

But even with all the brain power in the world, they can try to get a woman pregnant all they want.

But until God breathes the breath of life into that egg, Absolutely noting happens, no matter how many millions of dollars went in the trial.

Life is still one area, God has not given to humans to trifle with.

You can spend billions trying to get the baby in your womb to come out with green eyes, blue eyes, grey eyes, etc.

You can also now take pictures of the actual babies faces in utero, with all of the technology we have today,

But all of that stuff is absolutely useless unless God Almighty, pushes the button of Life on that egg.

Tell Story of when we planted a church and prayed for a several young ladies to get pregnant.

Its true what the Psalmist said, our cup truly over flows when God decided to bless us., Amen!

But Rebecca struggle with her pregnancy, and so she went to inquire of the Lord,

“What is going on here Lord? What is this distressing all about?

God informs them that aren’t just getting one baby, they are getting two, and they are at odds with each other.

- A Womb of Two Nations

Genesis 25:22–26 (CSB)

22 But the children inside her struggled with each other, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. 23 And the Lord said to her: Two nations are in your womb; two peoples will come from you and be separated. One people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger. 24 When her time came to give birth, there were indeed twins in her womb. 25 The first one came out red-looking, covered with hair like a fur coat, and they named him Esau. 26 After this, his brother came out grasping Esau’s heel with his hand. So he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.

Here, we are introduced to two new players.

Twin brothers, Jacob & Esau.

As we go on from here, what we’ll learn about Esau is that he is going to be Hated by God, and his line fades out of history as an identified peoples.

Eventually, as you read, he deliberately goes against his parents wishes, and marries daughters of his uncle Ishmael, and together become the ancestors of the Arab world today.

But it is Jacob whom we are going to continue to follow through history.

Hence, Yaweh, Jehovah, becoming known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Because the Lord appears to all three.

But before we continue in the life of Jacob, Its necessary to dissect the issue between Esau and God.

For that, please join me in reading from

Genesis 25:27–34 (CSB)

27 When the boys grew up, Esau became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman, but Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home. 28 Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for wild game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. 29 Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field exhausted. 30 He said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stuff, because I’m exhausted.” That is why he was also named Edom. 31 Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 “Look,” said Esau, “I’m about to die, so what good is a birthright to me?” 33 Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore to Jacob and sold his birthright to him. 34 Then Jacob gave bread and lentil stew to Esau; he ate, drank, got up, and went away. So Esau despised his birthright.

You know, as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I get asked a lot of questions,

- The Birthright

One of the questions I get asked about is the subject of Tattooing.

Should a Christian, lover of all things in Christ, get a tattoo?

After quite some time in debating this question in my spirit and mind, this is one of the examples I use to explain why I believe that we shouldn’t.

Follow me here:

Esau was “born” with the right of being the first born.

That was a gift bestowed on him from God the creator.

But Esau despised his birth right. It meant nothing to him, he took it for granted, so much so, he traded it, for a temporary pleasure.

In other words like this, God is saying, you mean I gave you freely a blessing to be the prestigious first born and you didn’t care?

Well, the Bible tells us God hated Esau for this.

Malachi 1:2–3 (CSB)

2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord. Yet you ask, “How have you loved us?” “Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” This is the Lord’s declaration. “Even so, I loved Jacob, 3 but I hated Esau. I turned his mountains into a wasteland, and gave his inheritance to the desert jackals.”

In this same way, lets look at you and your body.

If God, in His good pleasure, blessed you with a clean body and skin, Made in His image nonetheless,

how do you think He feels when we go and mark it all up?

We are trading, in effect, our birth right, what we were born with, for a temporary pleasure.

So, you get to show it off to your friends, etc… But soon your skin will sag, the definition will begin to distort and you’ll be laid to rest with a blotch embedded in your skin.

Same applies to the question of sex changes,

To trade away, what the Lord gave you by birth, for a temporary pleasure of experiencing the perversion of your desire.

Men and woman alike, Men trading away their gender defining organ, and woman removing their breast,

are nothing more than trading away what was given to them by birth.

What will happen to those who trade away their birth rights?

God will hate instead of love them.

Then the following question comes,

So they all go to hell?

Well to answer that question we have to acknowledge something first.

We have Jesus!

In those times, they were under covenantal promise.

You do this and Ill so that. If not, the rules change.

You and I, have Jesus.

So, even though we make an error in judgement, rather through a momentary weakness, or just terrible choices,

You and I have something that wasn’t as available in the Old Testament, GRACE

Even if we have made that kind of irreversible mistake, it shouldn’t keep up out of heaven because Jesus forgives us doesn’t He?

- Grace to You!

I have multiple tattoos on this body, but not one of them was put on after I understood the story of Jacob and Esau.

Thank God for Jesus, AMEN!

Isaiah 1:18 (NKJV)

18 “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.

Today is Palm Sunday, marking the day that the Lord Jesus made His Triumphant entry into Jerusalem as the Messiah Christ, and Savior of the world,.

Did you know the very day that Christ entered as Christ was prophesied over four hundred years before by the prophet Daniel?

Do you know why Palm Sunday is so beautiful?

- Triumphal Entry

Triumphal / Victorious.

Because it means that God keeps His promises

Jesus succeeded even after all of the attempts of the devil to stop Him from entering the world as Savior of the world, Praise God

Also, once Jesus came in, He immediately went into the temple and started cleaning up.

There He declared, This is My house, I live here now, an My HOUSE WILL BE A HOUSE OF PRAYER!

Then He proclaimed why, because it was being made into a Den of Thieves

So how does that relate to us today?

God Promised us redemption, forgiveness, & that His Spirit would be given to us, to live in us, to take up residence in us.

He fulfills His promise when He come into us, the moment we accept Him not only as Savior of the world, but as our Lord,

When He does, He comes into your house, and makes it His temple, His dwelling place, is to proclaim it His HOUSE.

He starts to over turn the disasters of your life, and covering over your bad mistakes.

He starts to bring Peace out of your Chaos,

He starts to release the animals inside of you that were used by the devil to buy and sell sin in your life.

Then finally He Proclaims to the former evil World to which you once belonged, This is Now MY HOUSE & I LIVE HERE

And If even if you tried to keep Silent about the change in your life, about the new tenant living in you, the very Stones in your life would cry out!

YOUR HOUSE SHALL NOW BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER!

When He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He triggered a chain of events that culminated into his sacrifice on the cross for us,

When He died for you and me, He guaranteed our own individual Very Triumphal entry into His Holy presence

So, in honor of His triumphal entry into your very own life. Follow me as I give honor and Glory to God,

Let’s praise His name

Repeat after me while waiving your branches in the air then laying them down at the feet of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the “Mashiach Adonai” = The Lord’s Anointed

“Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of our Lord!”

Wave branches several times,

Play Hosanna Song

Closing Prayer

AMEN