Sermon Tone Analysis

Guilty

How many of have regretted episodes in our lives and wished that we could go back and change them.

We play the scenarios over and over in our minds.

We may be having to deal with the consequences of our actions, or we maybe having to figure out how to repair the damage that we have created.

How ever the episodes turn out, the struggles are real.

There is emotional trauma in that struggle isn’t there.

We are going to look at these ideas of guilt, results, wrestling with those thought and outcomes, and then the blessings gained from it.

The Story

The story I want to look at today has to do with love, jealousy, hopes and dreams, manipulation, lack of judgement and probably a few more items.

You could probably find these going on in many families today.

Issac and Rebecca are about to become parents for the first time.

As quite often with pregnancies, there appeared to be some issues.

Esau - “covered with hair”, Jacob - supplanter or “he grasps the heel” or “he deceives”.

To brothers but oh so very different.

One loved the wide open fields and the hunt, the other, the life of a shepherd and of tents, a mild mannered man.

The 2 nations that came from these 2 men would always be at odds and would always be enemies.

Esau was loved by his father and Jacob was loved by his mother.

Because of the prophecy given to Rebekah and her love for her younger son, she pushed and encouraged and guided Jacob in the way she thought the Lord would want so that Jacob to gain the birthright blessing that would mean Jacob would be the next leader of their family.

Jacob loved both his father and his mother.

But her continued urging created in him a passionate desire that according to the idea of the time did not belong to him.

As both of the sons grew, Esau became more present oriented and Jacob became more future oriented and particularly more sensitive to spiritual values.

Then came the day that we know from Bible stories growing up, if didn’t have those stories then it says

Jacob was considering the spiritual significance of the birthright blessing, were as Esau did not consider beyond the present life and is not interested in what could take place after his death.

Jacob was looking toward the headship of the family which included not only worldly wealth but also spiritual preeminence.

He who recieved the birthright was also priest of the family.

What Esau despised was of a spiritual nature.

He did not see it any immediate benefit or profit, so it meant nothing to him.

Now lets jump an number of years ahead.

Issac was approximately 137 years old now.

He was blind both physically and mentally in the fact that he refused to see Esau’s iniquities and Jacob’s spiritual maturity.

Genesis tells us

Rebekah is of course listening and has probably expected this to happen for awhile now.

She has a plan that she wishes to implement and she goes to Jacob with it.

Of course Jacob new that he couldn’t fool his father into believing that Jacob was Esau.

But Jacob followed his mothers plan goat skins and all and did receive birthright that Issac had intended for Esau.

A wrong, a lie, a falsehood commited to initiate a prophecy that Rebekah was told would happen by God.

This situation is very ironic because the texts that we have already read show that Jacob had already earned the blessing that Esau had despised.

The blessing that Rebekah and Jacob worked so “hard” for gets in the way of God’s plan, in fact , it was God’s gift and did not depend on their human achievements and merits.

The irony is that all these human efforts were not only ethically wrong, they unnecessary.

How often have you and I screwed up God’s plan for our lives?

How often have we meddled in something that we had no business touching?

How often have we not had the patience to wait for the Lord’s timing?

We see this scenario time and time again in the Bible and as we go through our lives we make decisions that we think God would have us do and some that we no that he would not have us do.

If we stay with the Lord and let him guide, we begin to see how at certain points in our lives it would have been a lot easier on us if we had waited for the Lord to lead.

The Worry/promise?

Jacob leaves and heads to the ancestral home of Rebekah, to Laban her brother.

Threatened with death by the wrath of his brother, he leaves his father’s home a fugitive.

He goes to seek a wife in Mesopotamia.

But he goes with a deeply troubled heart.

He only has his staff and he must travel hundreds of miles.

I imagine that he stayed off the main roads for fear that his brother might find him and I also can imagine that the farther he goes the more he fears that he has lost forever the blessing that God had purposed to give him.

Do we lose our ability to see God during times of our own depression.

Is Jacob any different than we are?

How many of us can put ourselves in same spot that we see Jacob in at present?

Where do we go from here?

Don’t know, Jacob didn’t either.

On his 2nd day out the Bible says he made it to a certain place and it is suspected that it was near the city of Luz.

He new that all of this trouble had brought about because of his wrong choices.

He was utterly lonely and need of God’s protection more than he had ever felt it before.

With a heavy heart and deep humiliation he found a couple of stones for a pillow and laid down.

What grace and mercy the Lord shows to His children.

He didn’t give up on his children in the Old Testament and He doesn’t give up on us.

We we screw things up, He gives us a revised plan.

Granted, we should learn from our mistakes, but....

The only way he will ever leave us is if we give up on Him first.

Paul tells us that God’s/Jesus’ grace is sufficient for anything that I might blunder into.

As long as I keep my faith and trust in Him, I will have the power of Christ to get me through.

It worked for Jacob.

He got up the next morning and went on with a new sense of purpose to Heron and met Laban and his family and fell in love.

The Condemnation

Let’s fast forward again in Jacob’s life.

We now find him with 2 wives, 11 sons, servants, and many animals.

We find Jacob a rich man.

Did all of this come without a struggle?

First he woke up in his marriage bed with Leah instead of Rachel for which he promised to work seven years for.

He was able to marry Rachel, but his love for Rachel made Leah very jealous.

The sister wives were antagonistic to each other and the home that should have been happy was not.

Laban was another major thorn in Jacob’s side.

Laban had become rich while Jacob was his chief shepherd.

Multiple times Laban had changed Jacob’s wages, but Jacob was diligent and straight forward in his dealing with his farther -in -law according to the will of God and Jacob was blessed.

It had been 20 years now and Jacob felt it was time to move on.

Of course Laban tried to dissuade him.

Jacob would have left long before but the condemnation and the fear of encounter Esau keep him there.

Laban succeeded for a short period of time in keeping there, but in Laban’s absence, Jacob left with all he possessed, crossed the Euphrates and to the border of Canaan before Laban caught up with him.

Upon Laban’s arrival he said,

God had not forgotten Jacob and was protecting him even now.

God had not forgotten His promise to Jacob.

It had been 20 plus years since he had slept on that hard stone pillow.

God does not forget.

He will not forget you or me either.

In Him is our strength, in Him is our faith, in Him is our courage!

Laban left him without incident and they made a pact never to cross each others paths again.

Jacob was done with Laban.

Jacob left Haran and Padan - aram in obedience to divine direction.

But it was not without many misgivings and forebodings that he retraced the road that 20 years before he had come as a fugitive.

His deception of his father was ever on his mind and he had a sense within himself that his long exile was the result of his deeds.

The accusings play through his mind day and night made his journey sad.

I’m sure as he saw the hills of his home land, the heart of patriarch must have been deeply move.

As he drew near the journey’s end, the thought of Esau brought many troubled forebodings.

He sent a messenger to Esau with a message trying to find favor in his brothers sight.