Your God's Word, as you find it in Genesis the 27th chapter, beginning at verse 30 and reading through verse 41. Now it happened as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac's father that he thought his brother came in from his hunting. He also made savory food and brought it to his father and said to his father, let my father arise and eat of his son's game that your soul may may bless me. And his father Isaac said to him, who are you? So he said, I am your son, your first born, Issa, then Isaac trembled exceedingly, trembled violently, and said, who? Where is the one who hunted game and brought it to me? I ate all of it before you came and I have blessed him, and indeed he shall be blessed when Issa heard the words of his father. He cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, bless me, me also owe my father, but he said your brother came with deceit and has taken away your blessing. And Issa said, is he not rightly named Jacob, where he has supplanted me these two times? He took away my birthright and now look, he has taken away my blessing, and he has said, have you not reserved a blessing for me? Then Isaac answered and said to Issa, indeed, I have made him your master and all his brethren I have given to him as servants, with grain and wine I have sustained him. What shall I do now for you, my son? Issa said to his father, have you only one blessing my father, bless me, me also owe my father, and Issa lifted up his voice and wept. Then Isaac his father answered and said to him, behold, your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth and of the dew of heaven from above. By your sword you shall live and you shall serve your brother and it shall come to pass when you become restless that you shall break his yoke from your neck. And so Issa hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him and Issa said in his heart the days of mourning for my father are at hand. Then I will kill my brother, Jacob, the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray together. Father, please help us as we consider your word and most especially as we consider its implications for our lives. Be the one to teach and instruct us. We need your spirit and we ask for your spirit. Father, there are those of us who need to be humbled. We need to be broken down. We need to be worn down. There are those of us who are humbled and who are worn down and who are broken down and we need very much to be comforted and encouraged. There are those who are someplace in between, needing both your humbling and your comfort and encouragement. But whatever it is that we need, O Lord, as we come to your word this morning, would you grant it to us? You love your people. Now do for your people what is needful in their lives. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Maybe seated. We have a fascination for what is new. It even shows up in the way that we address one another, greet one another. What's new? Convenient and accepted way of greeting one another. We have newspapers and we have nightly news to catch up with what is new. It's not a new fascination when Paul went to Athens to preach the gospel in Athens. After he preached his first sermon, the folks who heard him brought him to Mars Hill and Mars Hill was a place that was set aside for the explicit purpose of hearing the news. Hearing what was new. That's what people used to do. They go to Mars Hill and they talk about all of the latest ideas and the current philosophies. Now I don't want to disparage what is new entirely because there is a certain news that everybody wants to hear or ought to want to hear and that is the good news, the good news of the gospel, the good news of Jesus and his life and his death and his resurrection. Even that new news, that good news isn't really new. It's a couple of millennia old and really older than that because it has its roots in the first gospel that was preached immediately after the first sin that was committed. When God promised, this was a good news announcement when God promised that He would one day crush the head of the serpent and He would deliver the seed of the woman from their oppression and from their bondage. That was the first bit of good news and all of the rest of history is an unfolding and an unpacking of that first promise and then it all comes to completion in Jesus, the story of God redeeming a people from some. What's interesting is you make your way through the scriptures and even as you think about what we do when we come together on Sunday mornings, whether you're reading the scriptures or coming here for worship, you realize that in very many respects, there aren't new things that are introduced here. It's all old stuff and much of what goes on here is simply reminding, encouraging you to remember, not presenting new ideas, new things, but encouraging you to remember and be reminded. The word remember, I counted them up, the instances of it. Just one word that can be translated, remember, over 150 times the word remember appears in the scriptures. Sometimes it is God remembering His people. Many times it is God through the prophet encouraging His people to remember Him. Remember who He is, remember His works, His deeds, remember His promises, sometimes as is true a couple of times in the New Testament. It is Peter or Paul somebody reminding His readers of things that they had heard in preach or heard in teach. Peter does it. In His second letter the end of the first chapter says that He's not reluctant and He doesn't view it as a tedious thing to remind His readers of things that He has told them before. Paul says a similar thing in Philippians 3. Remember, remember, remember, remind, remind, remind yourselves, remember yourselves. So I want to take my cue from the scriptures and I want to preach last week's sermon again this week. I told you last week I was going to do that this week. I told you last week that I wanted to rehearse again the lessons to be learned from a close consideration of the 27th chapter of Genesis. I told you last week maybe to the surprise of some that I wanted to elaborate a bit more, wanted to unpack a bit more especially those lessons, especially the implications of a consideration of Genesis 27. What do you have here in Genesis 27? Here's what you see. In Genesis 27 you see a family that has fallen apart. Family that has fallen apart. I mean, how much more relevant could Genesis 27 be for us living in the 20th century, 21st century? How much more relevant could this be a husband and wife who don't speak to each other? You read this whole chapter, they don't speak to each other. Virtually at all, only at the end that they speak to each other. Parents who have favorite sons. You read through the text. You see Esau always referred to as Isaac's son. You read through the text. You see Jacob always referred to as Rachel's son. Rebecca's son. I get those two people confused all the time. What do you see here? You see enmity. You see strife. You see intrigue. And at the end in the passage that we just read, you see threats of murder. And so real was that threat that Rebecca came to Jacob and warned him of the threat of his elder brother. And so Jacob fled his home. And there's no indication that having fled his home, he ever saw his mother again. And so there's profound astrangement of family torn apart. And as we looked at this last week, we considered what it meant for a father to bless a son we met. We considered what it what blessing meant for the people of this time. But then we began to look at these implications. What are the implications of this? What are we supposed to learn from this? What was Israel supposed to learn from this? And what are we, the Israel of today supposed to learn from this? If we're to know blessing, understanding that we only know it partially in a fallen and very imperfect world. And yet if we are to know blessing, if we are to know the favor of God upon us, if we are to know the presence of God in abundance and power. Understanding that we only know it partially and imperfectly in a fallen world. But if we are to know it at all, what are the things that we need to consider? And there are four things that I suggested. And here's the first of them. If we are to know blessing at all. However imperfectly and partially, we might know it in a fallen world. If we are to know blessing at all. The word of God is to be received and trusted. The word of God is to be received and trusted, which is to say it is to be believed. That's what the Bible means. When it talks about belief, it means that you trust it, that you rest the full weight of your being upon it. There is trouble in this family. There is trouble in this family because God's word has been rejected. His explicit purpose and will have been rejected. If you go back to Genesis 25 and please understand, I really do hope that I don't have to say this. As I remind you of this, as I encourage you to remember this, please understand, if you are feeling any conviction about this, if you are feeling any disquiet in your soul about this. Understand my intention in you experiencing that disquiet and I would say the Holy Spirit's intention in your experiencing that disquiet is not that you be crushed. Not that you be overwhelmed but that you faced something and having faced something you come to terms with that something so that you might be blessed. That is always God's intention with His people. It is never to crush His people. It is to convict, but it is to convict in order to come firm. Let me just say if there is some point in your life where you have rejected, as Isaac did, rejected the explicit, clear word of God for you and you are feeling some trouble in your heart about that, a trouble that nobody who is outside your skin might perceive. You might be perfectly complacent in the eyes of others, but on the inside there is this turbulence because at some level you know and understand that you have rejected what God has explicitly revealed. Understand that that turbulence in your soul is a blessing to you. It is a good thing to you. God would have you know that turbulence, that conviction so that you might be comforted having faced it and having turned to Him. Isaac didn't see that. Isaac rejected the explicit teaching of the word of God. He saw rejected the explicit teaching of the word of God. Rebecca and Jacob did not reject it, but they didn't rest in it. They didn't trust it and they didn't trust that the God of all creation is able to work His purpose out. And so they took matters into their own hands and the result of that is all of this alienation. Genesis 25, 22 to 23. God makes clear what His intention is. When Rebecca comes to the Lord and pleads with the Lord about this turbulence that is going on in her womb, the Lord says two nations are in your womb, two people shall be separated from your body. That passage, that verse, that word separated describes a conflict, an intense conflict. One people shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger. That is God's explicit purpose revealed for Issa and Jacob. The older was to be the servant of the younger. The younger Jacob was to inherit the blessing. Yes, it's topsy-turvy. Yes, it turns everything upside down, according to accepted practice. Yes, it represents a departure from the norm, folks to receive the word of God, to believe and trust in the word of God will always mean a departure from the norm. Always, you can take it to the bank. It will always mean a departure from the cultural and accepted norms of the world. You will always mean that. That God had revealed Himself to Isaac, to Rebecca, and to these two signs. And trouble began when the word of God was rejected. Now I want you to remember the place of the Word of God in Scripture, the place of the Word of God in the Word of God, the rule of the Word of God in the Scriptures. I want you to go back two years now to the first chapter of Genesis and remember the place of the Word of God in the creation that it is by God speaking that the worlds come into existence. God said, let there be light, and there was light. God said, let there be a separation in the Firmament. God said, let the waters gather together in one place and let the dry land appear. God said, let there be stars in the heavens. God said, let there be a sun for the day. God said, let there be a moon for the night. God said, let there be plants. God said, let there be animals. God said, let there be birds in the air and fish in the sea. God said, let us create the man and the woman in our image. And you remember from the first two verses of Genesis that the Spirit hovers over that primordial chaos. The creation was in a disordered and empty condition, and it is the Spirit in conjunction with the speech of God that brings order out of that chaos, that brings harmony, that brings beauty, that brings complexity and diversity, that brings fullness to the emptiness. And it is the Word of God, it is the speech of God in conjunction with the Spirit that brings that creation into a condition of order and beauty and harmony and fullness. The creation doesn't ask to be created because it isn't in existence. The primordial stuff doesn't ask to be filled up because it has no fullness. The primordial stuff does not ask to be ordered because it has no order in itself, within itself, by which to be ordered, it all requires something external to it. It requires the speech of God in conjunction with the Spirit to bring that order out of chaos. God is teaching His people about the place of His speech in their lives. God brings Israel out of her bondage in Egypt under the ruthless oppression of Pharaoh. He delivers them and then He gives them His Word. That's the order, you see. What was their condition? Their condition was like the condition of the primordial stuff of Genesis 1.1. They were in a condition of disharmony. They were in a condition of oppression. They were in a condition of darkness and emptiness. And God does with Israel what He did in the creation. He speaks and He calls them forth and He silences Pharaoh who is the incarnation of darkness. And He delivers them out of their oppression and then He gives them His Word and it is by His Word that their life is to be ordered. And He promises them again and again and again that if they will heed His Word and keep His commandments, they will know blessing. Now look, I know all of that grace, law, business, I understand. I understand that the law is given to expose our sin and our inability and to drive us to Christ. I understand that. But there is this other purpose that God has in the revelation of His Word to His people, in the disclosure of His Word to His people. Now with a Christian you see you are redeemed and the law has done that first work in your lives. It's made you aware of your sin, it's made you aware of your need of Christ but you don't dismiss the Word of God now that you're redeemed. You go back to it so that by it your lives might be ordered. It has that purpose, the whole of it, all 66 books. It all is there to serve in conjunction with the Spirit of God to order our lives. It is the Word of God Hebrews 4.12 that is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. It is able to penetrate way, way deep into the division of soul and spirit. Do you know where the soul ends and the spirit begins? Do you know where your soul ends and your body begins? Somehow the Word of God is able to penetrate to that level and that's where conviction comes from folks. That is the Word of God doing its work in your life. It's also able to do this comforting work where you can sit before the Word of God. You can read the scriptures and they're black words on a white page and you read them and they bring tears to your eyes and they bring a joy to your heart. The Word of God is living and active. It has power. It affects change. It transforms. It is like 11 that gets into the soul and it begins to do its work and begins to permeate the whole of your being. You can't get the leaven into the dough if you're not before it. If you're not in its presence. If you don't receive it, you trust it. No matter what changes alterations it might call you to me. Let me offer a word of caution here. I say this to a soul but I say it especially to those of us who are professionals about this. Sunday school teachers, seminarians, professors, understand this. The Bible is not something you master. The Bible is something that masters you. The Bible is not something that you ask to submit to your judgment. The Bible is the Word of God and you bring your judgments into submission beneath the Word of God. I sometimes tease my wife about her note-taking propensities. I think it's good to take notes. It's a wonderful thing. My wife takes her notes from the sermon. She's a model for the rest of you in this. I might encourage you to follow her practice. My wife takes her bulletin and takes her notes and for the rest of the week rehearses through the days of the week the content both of the bulletin and of the sermon reminding herself of the things that have been said and where they have application in her life. I sometimes tease her about her note-taking and I say to her, don't let your note-taking get in the way of the Word of God having its power over you. You understand what I'm saying? The Word of God is living and it is active and it is sharper than any two-edged sword. It does not submit to you. You submit it. You do not master it. It masters you. I'm reminded of Lucy, her little encounter with Mr. Beaver early in the story The Lion, The Witch in the Wardrobe and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when Lucy begins to learn about Aslan. She learns that he is a lion and she asks Mr. Beaver if he is safe. He is the king, I tell you. No, he is not safe. He is good. Aslan is the Word of God incarnate in the form of a metaphor. It is not safe, but you may be sure that it is good. Second, and they have to come back to these things yet another week. I don't know how far I'm going to get. Second, God works through weakness. God works through weakness. God's Word is to be received and trusted. And the second thing that you learn from Genesis 27 is that God works through weakness. You compare Esau and Jacob in Genesis 25 through 27. The descriptions there are very interesting. Esau is described as a hairy man. He is described as a hunter. He is described as a man of the fields. Jacob is described as a fine or refined man. A cultured man who lives in the tents, who stays indoors, who is not an outside man. I joked last week Esau plays football. Jacob sings in the choir. I mentioned Donovan and McNabb last week. I got to work on my illustrations, I apologize. He plays football. Esau is Donovan McNabb. Jacob sings in the choir. Isaac loved the strength of his oldest son. The outdoorsman. Before he blessed him, he said, take your weapons, take your quiver and all the rest. And those words are words associated with warfare, terms associated with conquest and strength. Isaac loved Esau. He loved his strength. And we love strength. Israel loved strength. Israel wanted a king for Samine Saul was a head taller than everybody else. He is the right guy for the job. But then David, the last and youngest son, read the least likely to be anointed king. David is chosen king. God loves weakness. Isaiah 10, 33 through 11, 5. The end of the 10th chapter describes the judgment of God upon Israel, where he will tell us. Where he will cut away, he will prune right down to the ground, the unbelief and the unrighteousness of Israel. But then a shoot will come forth, a rod will come forth from the stump of Jesse. And you see that same imagery in Isaiah 53, one through three, that tender shoot that comes forth from the stump of Jesse, something vulnerable, something weak, that weak thing, for which we have little regard, the Texas, that weak thing which in our eyes is not a beautiful form. That weak thing will become that rod in the hand of Almighty God. And with that rod, he will subdue the nation. God loves weakness. Jesus, the king of glory incarnate not with purple robe and sector and crown. But utterly and entirely dependent, weak Paul II Corinthians 10, it tells you something. I don't think Paul could get a job in the PCA, because I read the resumes, I read the data forms, I go to the assessment centers for prospective church planters are put through their paces and all of their strengths. I made manifest and all of their giftedness is upheld. I'm not sure Paul could have gotten a job in the PCA, not given what he writes in second Corinthians. Second Corinthians 10, seven. Do you look at things according to the outward appearance? If anyone is convinced in himself that he is Christ's, let him again consider this in himself. That just as he is Christ, even so we are Christ's, or even if I should boast somewhat more about our authority, which the Lord gave us for edification and not for your destruction, I shall not be ashamed, lest I seem to terrify you by letters, for his letters they say are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech is contemptible. Second Corinthians 12, again verse seven, unless I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan debuff at me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart for me and he said to me three times, he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast of my infirmities, my weaknesses, my deficiencies, my defects, my struggles, my anguish, my pains, my sorrows. I will rather gladly boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. I take pleasure in my infirmities, in my reproaches, in my needs, in my persecutions, in my distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong. God loves weakness, we love strength, we celebrate strength, we look for strength, but God loves weakness, and you know the essence of the gospel is weakness, it isn't strong people who need the gospel, it isn't weak people who get some sort of an injection of strength for a period of time, but then who are no longer weak, who need the gospel. That's what happens to us as Christians, we know we need Jesus, and so we become Christians, and then we try to be strong, and we try to impress one another with our strength. We do with our wives, we do with our husbands, we do with our friends, we do it in our local places of work, we do it at school, we do not want people to know that we are infirm, we are weak, that we are frail, that we are sinners. I've said this to you before, I'll say that if you knew 10% of what is in the heart and mind of the person next to you, you would be offended. I promise you that the gospel and its essence is about weakness, your weakness. God's word is to be received and trusted, God loves weakness, God works through weakness, He worked through Jacob, the refined man, the man who lived in tents, the second sign, not the first, third, God's purposes will prevail, God's purposes will prevail. This whole situation, Genesis 27 seems to put the promise at risk. If you read through Genesis, you see the promise being put at risk, time and time and time and time again. You see it in Abraham's life on any number of occasions. You see it in Isaac's life, in this particular instance where the promise seems to be put at risk. You see it throughout the rest of the Old Testament, even when you consider that passage Isaiah 10, 33 and following where God brings judgment upon Israel because of her unbelief and her unrighteousness. It seems that the whole thing is threatened but the stump is there and the roots are there and the spray comes forth and the promise is not frustrated. You look at the life of Job, it's such a fabulous, fabulous story of God's prevailing purpose. Job in the midst of all of his discomfort and all of his pain and all of his anguish, the whole theme of the thing is that God has failed, that God has failed. That's Jacob, but Job's fear, that God has failed him, he's lost his wife, he's lost his children, he's lost his securities, his earthly securities, he's lost his health, you know the story. And where is God? How long, O Lord? How long must I suffer like this? Has your purpose for me failed? Has your faithfulness been a lie? Job, at the end of that experience, when he finally hears from the Lord, the Lord speaks to him and reminds him of his great power in the creation, of the diversity of that creation and all that he sustains and all that he upholds. After seeing it all, Job answers the Lord and says, I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
Job's attention had been on himself, but when God finally spoke and God finally revealed himself, then Job's attention was where our attention needs to be upon God and he confessed that his faithfulness had not failed, that his purpose would not fail. That he would prevail in his purpose with Job, what of Jesus? The disciples thought that all was lost, they thought that it all failed, they thought that pilot, the great high priest, all of Rome, all of the Jews having conspired together, they thought that the purpose had been thwarted, but the purpose had not been thwarted. And the purpose of God cannot be thwarted. I want you to understand this, I want you to understand that I'm one of those people at whom you would be offended if you could see into my heart and I want to say to you, God is not thwarted by the mess in my life, God was not thwarted by the mess in Isaac's life and family. God draws straight lines with crooked sticks and God accomplishes his purposes, his purpose for you, the mysterious, perplexing, hard, his purpose for you will prevail, he will not fail. And then last, God's word is to be received and trusted, God works through weakness, God's purpose will prevail and God's grace must not be forgotten, God's grace in your life must not be forgotten. And now I mentioned in one of the two services last week that as you read the 27th chapter of Genesis eight times the word game appears. Six times the word tasty words, tasty food appear. Isaac loved Esau because of the game that he could vanquish. Isaac loved Esau because he could take that game and make of tasty food. Isaac had become preoccupied with the gifts and had forgotten the grace of the giver. Isaac was there bound, laid upon an altar, looking up at his father, holding a knife raised to slay him. Isaac was there, Jacob was there, Jacob saw Isaac saw and experienced the grace of God when he heard the bleeding of the ram in the thicket, God providing a substitute so that Isaac the sun might be spared but somewhere along the way. Isaac forgot the grace that had saved and his heart, rather than being ruled by that grace, was ruled by his palate, ruled by his stomach. There's one thing out of all of this that we cannot forget, it is the grace of God and how that grace of God has reached down and laid hold of each one of us and how that grace has provided a ram caught in the thicket who has become a substitute, who experiences the knife, who is slain in our place so that we might be forgiven, so that we might be free. God's grace must never be forgotten. Martin Lloyd Jones is not the only one who has asked this question, there have been, I'm sure dozens and scores and hundreds and even thousands who have been asked this question. Martin Lloyd Jones, this great preacher of this century was asked what he wanted on his tombstone and he in effect said don't put my name, don't put my dates, don't put anything, just put a sinner saved by grace. Just put that, let's pray together. Where Jesus, each of us is Isaac, each of us bound laid upon an altar, each of us looking up to see the knife descending, and like Isaac we deserve to be bound, we warrant being laid upon an altar, we do warrant being slain but we have sinned and our hearts are full of corruption. He said, you have provided this ram caught in the thicket, bleeding, plead a let this cop pass, yet not my will but dine be done, no father it was your will for that ram to be impaled upon that cross that the sin and the corruption of this sinner might be forgiven. Help me Lord Jesus, never to forget it, help us all never to forget. Jesus name we pray. Amen.