Prayer, Grace, Inheritance

Introduction

Welcome back to team 3 everyone! This is our first service for the year.

Hope everyone had a good holiday and hope the first few weeks of school has been ok!

There’s going to be a few changes this year:

We’ve said goodbye to the year 12s, but now we welcome 2 new year 7s. Can everyone please make Surin and Sua feel welcome?

We also have a new teacher - Betty 사모님 is not only our new teacher, but she is actually the new team 3 leader. So please be nice to her, say hello, and make her feel welcome.

Lastly, there will be a change to preaching this year. Last year it was mostly me doing the sermons, but as many of you may already know, I am working in the countryside this year in a small town called Echuca. This doesn’t mean I am leaving team 3, but it means I won’t be here in Melbourne for many weeks of the year, so we will have several different people giving you sermons. It will include me, 전도사님 and Elder Daniel, and many some other people. So I’m sad I won’t be able to see you guys every week like last year, but this also means you will get the opportunity to hear preaching from lots of different people, and you will hear God’s word being taught to you in many different styles.

Now we started through Genesis last year, and we are continuing through the book this year. And today we are going through Genesis chapter 25. As a reminder, the story so far in Genesis:

God created the world, Adam and Eve sinned and sin caused a separation from God and mankind. And we see this long story arc of how God is going to save humanity and bring them back to himself.

We then see how mankind continues to sin, through Cain and Abel, through the story of Noah and the flood, and through the tower of Babel. But even though in each of those stories mankind seems hopeless because of sin, there is a glimmer of hope each time.

And we see this glimmer of hope shine through in the person of Abraham - God promises Abraham that through Abraham, God will create his own people by giving Abraham lots of descendents.

And we see God keep this promise to Abraham, even though all hope seems lost for Abraham - Abraham doesn’t have land and more importantly, Abraham’s wife Sarah is barren - she physically cannot have children.

But despite all these obstacles, God keeps his promise and gives Abraham a miraculous child - Isaac.

Now today, we are looking at chapter 25, and we see the story of Isaac and his children. And I love this chapter because it captures some really important aspects of what the Christian life is about. And this chapter talks about 3 aspects of the Christian life:

Prayer

Grace

Inheritance.

Let’s read Genesis 25:19-34 together.

1. Prayer

Now I know I’m notorious for going overtime with my sermons, so I’ll try and be concise today!

This passage teaches us 3 important aspects of the Christian life. The first is: prayer!

Read Genesis 25:21 “21 And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren. And the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived.”

Just like Sarah, Rebekah could not have children. It looked like God’s promise about many descendents and many nations was about to be broken. So what does Isaac do? He doesn’t just sit there doing nothing, just because he knows God will keep his promises. He prays. So as Christians, we need to pray - just like how we communicate with each other by talking, we communicate with God through prayer.

And God uses our prayers to keep his promises to us and bless us. But we need to remember that just because we pray for something, doesn’t mean we always get what we want. Here it looks like Isaac just prayed, and he got what he wanted straight away. But if we look carefully at the passage today, verse 20 tells us that Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah, and he was 60 years old when Rebekah had children. He had to wait 20 years! Can you imagine waiting 20 years for God to answer prayers? All of you haven’t even been alive for 20 years! So as Christians, we need to pray, we know God keeps his promises and answers prayer, but God’s answers may not always be what we expect. God answers in his own loving timing, and in his own loving way.

And also notice in this passage what Isaac prays for. So often, we pray for ourselves, what we need and what we want. But here, Isaac prays for someone else - Rebekah. And actually, this prayer of praying for Rebekah is not just for her, but Isaac is praying for God and what God wants. Because remember, it was God’s plan to use Abraham and Isaac’s families to establish his plans. So here, Isaac is not only praying for what he and Rebekah wants, but he is putting God’s interests first.

And I think this is one of the marks of a mature Christian - the more you grow in spiritual maturity, the less you pray about just your own needs, and the more you pray for the needs of others. And more importantly, the more you pray for God’s will to be done, not my own.

2. Grace

So that’s the first point. The second aspect of the Christian life: grace!

What do I mean by this? The Christian life is about grace because all the blessings that we have, and the fact that we even believe in God and are children of God, is not because we deserve it, but because God gives it to us even though we don’t deserve it.

And we see this so clearly in the passage today. Isaac and Rebekah have twins: Jacob and Esau. And as we will see in the upcoming chapters, it is the younger brother Jacob who God chooses to establish the many nations and descendents as God promised to Abraham. But God doesn’t choose Jacob because Jacob deserved it. It wasn’t that Jacob was any better than Esau:

First off, Jacob was the second born. So technically, it should have been Esau that was chosen because Esau was the firstborn.

Second, Jacob was also a bit of trickster. You could almost equate him to those scammers in India that call you and steal your money. Let’s read Genesis 25:26 “26 Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau’s heel, so his name was called Jacob.” Right from being born, we see Jacob desperately trying to get ahead of Esau by grabbing onto his heel. That’s why he was named Jacob, because the name “Jacob” means “heel”, which also sounds similar to “trickster” or “cheater”. And we see this cheating or tricking personality of Jacob later on in the story where he cheats Esau out of his inheritance. So Jacob didn’t deserve to be chosen at all! He was a sinner.

So even though Jacob was the second born and even though he was a cheater and a liar, why did God choose him?

Because he can. God is God. God can do whatever he wants. And God ffreely chooses to show mercy and love to sinners.

In fact, if God only gave to us what we deserve, all we would get is judgement, because we are all like Jacob - liars, cheaters, sinners. But because God chooses to love us even though we don’t deserve it, just like how he chose Jacob even though he didnt’ deserve it, this is why we can be saved.

So this is what grace is - the Christian life is defined by grace, which is the free gift of love and mercy of God that we do not deserve, that let’s us become his children.

So in response to this grace, as believers we must always live a life of thankfulness, worship and praise of our wonderful Saviour.

3. Inheritance

Lastly, the Christian life is about inheritance. What do I mean by that? In our lives, we need to fix our eyes on the great inheritance God will give to us in heaven, rather than fixing our eyes on the immediate things in front of us.

In the last few verses of this passage, we see Jacob tricking Esau. Esau goes out hunting, he’s tired, Jacob is cooking some stew, and Esau asks for some of this stew. And Jacob, being the scheming trickster that he is, rather than just giving Esau some stew like a normal loving brother, he says this - read Genesis 25:31 “31 Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright now.””

And Esau foolishly says yes. He trades a great inheritance - all the things he could have gotten as the firstborn - for some measly lentil soup, just to satisfy his immediate hunger.

We read that and we think - “how stupid!”. But we do the same everyday. Everyday, we are confronted by many choices and temptations in life, just like Esau’s hunger:

The choice to be lazy and not read our bibles or pray

The temptation to gossip about our friends and talk behind their backs

Giving into our anger and disobeying or being rude to our parents

The temptation of being on a website that we shouldn’t be on

The temptation to hide the fact that I am Christian with our friends, rather than boldly telling them the gospel

Whatever it may be, each of these choices are giving into an immediate hunger like Esau, and missing the bigger view about life of the great inheritance God has waiting for us in heaven. If we always have in mind the inheritance of the great blessings God will give us in heaven, then the choices we make in this life become straightforward, and the temptations to sin become much smaller than our desire to obey and please God.

Conclusion

So to summarise, today’s passage teaches us 3 things about the Christian life:

Prayer - we always need to pray! It’s our communication with God. And God answers prayer, but it may not always be in the way or timing that we want or expect.

Grace - all the blessings we have in our lives are not things we deserve, but something God gives to us as a gift. So we always need to live with thanks and praise to God.

Inheritance - Christians need to be future focused. We don’t fix our eyes on immediate desires and temptations, just like the instant gratification you get from social media. Christians see the bigger picture, of the great inheritance that God has waiting for us in the future. And when we fix our eyes on heaven, that will guide our choices here in this life on earth.