God Renews His Promise

Intro:

Recap

Isaac married Rebekah

Servant demonstrated faith in prayer life

Rebekah couldn’t have kids

Continuing the Narrative

Intro Illustration

Spencer Silver - working at 3M - tasked with developing a batter adhesive than anything else

Art Fry - needed something that would stick but could be removed

Post it Notes

How about you?

Often times, we learn and grow more from our failures or from unexpected turns, than from our successes

Hard to accept

As the narrative continues, we’re going to see God working through “failures”

So, how was God going to fulfill His promises? They needed a son

Remember…Abraham had faced this same exact thing. What was his response?

What was Isaac’s response?

Prayer - 20 year prayer

He understood that God was going to have to work, even in spite of their “failure”

Can you imagine the heartache, confusion, doubt, anger?

Put yourself where they were.....

Why was this his response?

Maybe Abraham told and taught him

And I like to think Isaac had learned from his father’s failure

Bonus Point: Your failure does not disqualify you from influencing others, if you are willing to learn from it

God responded

Again, God makes it clear that He will have to work for His redemptive plan to come true.

Rebekah becomes pregnant, and apparently her pregnancy was extremely rough. Cried out

God responded: older would serve the younger

Totally upsetting the social norms

Why do you think God’s ways often up-end and challenge social norms?

I think there is a lesson there for us. We can’t exist inside these social bubbles and expect God to work how we want him to work

Esau & Jacob were born

Esau - covered in hair

Jacob - holding onto Esau’s heel

Esau - hunter

Jacob - quiet man, a tent dweller

Esau - loved by Isaac

Jacob - loved by Rebekah

Well, the story continues with them being much older

Esau - this great hunter apparently was unsuccessful this day, came into the tent exhausted and famished…like some of you coming here tonight

Begs for food

Jacob agrees, but at a price....birthright

My sister and I

Birthright was the stuff back during this time

You received 2x the inheritance - think about the issues that families have today

I heard it put like this: Bill Gates asks you for m&ms, you say okay, but make me the majority stock holder in Microsoft…and he agrees!

That’s insane.

That’s what Esau did

We may not crave soup…but we do crave other things that we put before God, don’t we?

It was more about his desire to gratify himself, than about a bowl of soup....his concern was not for what God ordained (in )

How are we like Esau?

Not selling a birthright, but how quickly are we willing to sell ourselves for some instant gratification

When God has promised us blessing if we will follow Him