I didn't expect this to start crying until 0.2, but it was earlier. So I'm back. And with that said, if you were turning your Bibles of Genesis, chapter 27, if you don't have a Bible, that's fine. You can look on the back of your order of worship. And we will read from Genesis 27, turning at verse 30. I say to you, hear the word of... Now it came about. As Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had hardly gone out from the presence of Isaac his father that Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting. That he also made savory food and brought it to his father, and he said to his father, let my father arise and eat from his son's game that you may bless me. And Isaac his father said to him, who are you? And he said, on your son, your first born Esau, then Isaac trembled violently and said, who would he then that hunted game and brought it to me so that I ate all of it before you came and blessed him? Yes. And he shall be blessed. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, bless me, even me also, and my father. And he said, your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing. And then he said, if you're not rightly named Jacob, for he has implanted me these two times, he took away my birthright and behold now he has taken away my blessing and he said, have you not reserved the blessing for me? But Isaac replied to Esau, behold, I have made him your master. And all his relatives, I have given to him the servant and with grain and new wine, I have sustained him now for you then. What can I do with my son? Esau said to his father, do you only have one blessing? My father blessed me, even me also, oh my father. So Esau lifted his voice and wept. Then Isaac his father answered and said to him, behold away from the fertility of the earth, shall be your dwelling. And away from the dew of heaven, from above, by the sword you shall live and your brother you shall serve. But it shall come about when you become restless that you will break his yoke from your neck. So Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him. And Esau said to himself, the days of mourning for my father are near. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. Now in the words of her elder son, Esau were reported to Rebecca. She sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, hold your brother Esau is consoling himself, concerning you by planning to kill you. Now therefore my son obey my voice and arise. Flea to her arm to my brother, Lavin. Stay with him for a few days until your brother has spurious subsides. And so your brother's anger against you subsides and he forgets what you did to him. Then I will send and get you from there. Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day? Let us pray. Jesus, I pray that you would come by your spirit and you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the death that you would show us. The good news of great joy that comes even this morning is we look at the consequences of sin. I pray that you would be in my head and in my thinking and in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking. From your name we pray all of these things. Amen. Amen. You know, if you're like me, I tend to watch TV sporadically and every now and then. Something comes on that I have to watch season premier Buffy, the vampire slayer, things like that. And for the past few weeks I've watched a lot more TV than I usually do because the Olympics have been on. And the thing that has driven me to watch the Olympics has frankly not been watching ice skaters. That's really not my gig. Watching skiers, that's not a big deal. Watching frankly almost anything except the people last night, the aerial people who are crashing. Sort of like bloopers. That was fun. But the thing that's driven me to watch the Olympics every night for about a week is skate gate. The Canadians. Sale and Peltierde losing to the Russians because of French judge was corrupted. I mean I run home every night and turn on the news and I have to see what's happened today. What happened? And it's the most sickening thing. I mean it's just sickening to be in any one's position if you think about it. Imagine being the Russians. Did you guys really win? Come on. Did you really? Now the Russians of course would say yes to you people in the West just to have sour grapes about this whole thing. We're better skaters. And remember the ill thing that was done is they're revulpable almost. They can't take away their gold medal. So even though there was corruption, even though everyone knows it was the wrong thing, they still have their gold medal. And so what are they going to do tonight? They're going to give the Canadians a gold medal. Now how is that going to feel for the Canadians to be standing up on the podium again with the Russians playing the Russian national anthem, the Canadian national anthem, while they get their medal? Who really won? Who really gets to live with this feeling of where the best in the world? Who gets to live with this feeling, this knowing feeling like maybe we're not the best in the world for the rest of their lives? It's sickening. I mean for me and I'm not even like ice-gaining. And you watch this and it's almost like there's a sense of what Shalom has been violated. That's not the way things are supposed to be. Even in a world of competition, someone should have won and someone should have lost. And the losers should have cried and been bitter and the winners should have been happy and celebrated. And that's the way things are supposed to be. But it wasn't. You know what? I think one of the reasons that I'm drawn to that so much, and you guys are drawn to that so much, is because that's how our lives are, that's how my life is, every day of the year. Every day of the year, it seems like I'm confronted with the sixth sense of things not being the way they're supposed to be, either within my own heart or without going on around me. And then I was talking to Dave Sellers yesterday with tears in my eyes and I said, that's the hardest realization I think I ever had as a pastor's that sin just never goes away. I sort of thought I would come out and start a church and then we would preach Jesus. He'd take away everyone's sin and then we'd all live happily ever after. And yet still, even if you have trusted Jesus, you still live with the sense that things aren't the way they're supposed to be. And the big question is, what do you do then with that? Where is grace in that? Where is the gospel in the midst of the fact that things aren't the way they're supposed to be? And not only that, not only things not the way they're supposed to be, but there are consequences to all of our action. There are consequences to all the bad things I do and there are consequences to all the bad things that people do against me. And so how am I supposed to live when the world is sort of this simple place and things there are consequences for people sin and I'm constantly having to deal with them? Where is grace? Where is the gospel in all of that? In today's text you see it. I hope, or I'll hope to show it to you. Remember last week or the last time I like to think it was last week, it was three weeks ago. When I preached about Jacob stealing the blessing from Esau, in a sense he didn't really steal it. You remember God promised Jacob that he would be the blessing bearer through whom the Messiah would come. So Jacob was promised the blessing and Isaac the Father decided that he would give it instead to Esau. So Isaac and Esau, simply, decided to fort God's plan and God's promise. And so if you remember they said, you go out and come back and I'll give you the blessing sort of in the dark. And Rebecca being the sinner that she is, she listened and Rebecca and Jacob deceived Isaac and Esau into getting the blessing. Now here's the irony to the whole Jacob story. Jacob stealing the blessing is about the same as robbing a bank and only taking the money that's in your checking account. It's like robbing the bank and going in and helping the teller at gunpoint and saying, give me all the money that's in my checking account. And she said, you just could have had it. Why don't you just ask and say, I'm an idiot. And she said, now you get the consequences. You're on security cameras, the cops are coming, everything, because you broke into the bank to get what was already yours. You see, that's the irony. And so, but Jacob has broken into the bank to get what's already his and now he's going to have to live with the consequences. And that's what I think is so important about today's text because all of us are constantly always living with the consequences of our own sin and each other's sin. And you, that living with the consequences of your sin will either kill you or it will encourage you. I hope this morning to encourage you. We're going to look at three things this morning. We're going to look at first the game of chicken. Remember chicken, like in old James Dean movies, were two cars, go to each other and see who's going to score off first. We're going to look first at a game of chicken. Then we're going to look at the rebellion of sin, but then finally we're going to look at the blessing of consequences. So if you would look at verses 30 through, I think, 32 or 3 will read. Verse 30, as we look at this game of chicken, now it came about, as soon as Isaac had finished with blessing Jacob, Jacob had hardly gone out from the presence of Isaac's father. The Esau came in from his hunting and then he made savory food and brought it to his father and he said to his father, let my father arise and eat of his son's game that you may bless me. And Isaac's father said to him, who are you? And he said, I'm your son, your first born Esau. Then Isaac crumbled violently and said, who was it them that hunted the game and brought it to me so that I ate all of it before you came and blessed him. Yes, he shall be blessed when he saw the words of his father. He cried out with an exceedingly great bitter cry and said to his father, bless me, even me also my father. And he said, your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing. What's going on? What's going on in this text? You see, you don't get to the game of chicken until well into this first point, but what's happened so far? If you remember that Jacob stole the blessing and the text here is so chilling. I mean, think of your Esau. Esau did everything right. He did everything right. Sorta. I mean, sure they were trying to use Serb God's promise. But as far as just being a beautiful son to his father, he did everything right. He went out and he hunted game and he brought it back and he walked in and he prepared this great meal and he walked into his blind father. And so father, I've done everything you've asked me to do. Bless me. And what is the worst possible thing you could hear when you walk into the presence of your father and ask where is blessing? Who are you? Who are you? He doesn't even say no. He says, who are you? I don't even know who you are. Why? Because the blessing was given to someone else. And now the question is, how do you deal with that? How does Esau deal with the fact that Jacob took the blessing and how does Isaac deal with the fact that Jacob took the blessing? And you see two different ways of dealing with Jesus here. The first way is Isaac's way. Isaac's a myth. I mean, in a sense, he trembles violently. He is definitely dealing with the pain of his sin. He's dealing with the pain of being violated by Jacob. He's been stolen. But when Esau says, father, bless me. And he says, no, Jacob has your blessing. He says, can you not bless me? What does Isaac say? I've made him your master in all his relatives and I've given him everything and it's not going to change. Now is that just because Isaac has some kind of mojo thing, once he's given the blessing, he can't take it back and he can't play with it? I don't think so. Isaac has finally believed in the promise himself. God gave this promise when those boys were born that Jacob would be the bearer of blessing. And now there has been all of this grievous sin. There has been all this deception. There has been all of this stuff going on. And when it finally comes down to it, Isaac trembles with great fear. I think because he realizes that he has been busted. And now the question is, is he going to embrace the promise that God gave that Jacob would be the bearer of blessing or is he going to buck it? In other words, the promise of God has come in barrel and add him if he can a bear off the side of the road or if he can butt heads with it. In the game of chicken, Jesus wins if you will with Isaac. Not so with Esau. Notice what Esau keeps saying over and over again. Isaac says, he got your blessing. And he says, can't you just bless me also? And he says, he got it. I'm telling you. Can't you bless me even me, your oldest son? Notice he keeps appealing to his social standing. What he's done. I brought your meal. I'm the oldest son. All of these things. Can't you do it? And Isaac says, nope, nope, nope. Instead, he says something even worse to someone like Esau. He says, not only has he got your blessing, but I've made him your master. Here's the rub. Isaac does not say to Esau, you can't have any blessing at all because here's how the blessing works in the Old Testament. There is one blessing and one blessing bearer but that blessing is mediated to all who will take it. In other words, Esau, you can have Jacob's blessing but you must have it by dealing with Jacob. You can have the blessing of this great redeemer who will come by submitting to him. And what is Esau's response to that? He weeps bitterly because Esau is just like you and I are. Esau is constantly playing chicken as well. You see, he's playing chicken with God, if you will. And you and I are constantly playing chicken with Jesus because Esau says, bless me. And he says, you can have a blessing but it has to be mediated through your brother. He's your master. And so if you submit to him, you will partake in his blessing. And that's what we're constantly saying to God, we're saying God, bless me. I know I'm a sinner, I know I'm screwed up, I know I'm wicked but I want you to bless me. I want you to bless my efforts. I want you to bless the life I've chosen. I want you to bless all this kind of stuff. And God says, you know what? Every blessing that you could ever imagine, everything that I've got, all of my righteousness, goodness, holiness, everything is yours. You've got to get it by dealing with this guy now. Jesus, the great blessing bearer. And that's where we begin to play chicken with Jesus because we look at Jesus and we say, well, if I deal with Jesus, if I submit to him, he might want me to give up my lifestyle, my sexual identity that I've formed for myself. All of these things, he might want me to give up. So what we do is we're walking to Jesus and we say, Jesus, okay, here's the deal. You give me the life that I want and let me cling to the things I want to cling to and then I will trust you. And Jesus is very good at playing chicken. He says, well, let me tell you what? He says, I live the life you should have lived and I die of the death you should have died. He said, the reason you have trouble trusting me is you doubt my goodness. Now, here's what I have to say. You look at the cross. At the cross, I took away every one of your sins and at the cross, I gave you my own righteousness. When God looks at you, he doesn't even just see you as some forgiven little sinner. He sees you as righteous as I am. Tommy, I made the first move. Now what are you going to do? Are you going to trust me or not? Are you going to embrace me or reject me? It's all up to you, pal. What's it going to be? And notice I'm talking about myself because we tend to think that only people who don't believe in Jesus need to believe in Jesus. You know what? If you're not a Christian here today, you have a choice before you. Do I embrace Jesus freely offered? Here it is, all of his righteousness, all of his blessing. But what that might mean is you have to give up all the rest of your life. And it means the exact same thing if you're a Christian. If you're a Christian, you wake up every single day of your life and you say to yourself, okay, I'm going to trust Jesus today and believe his goodness or I'm going to trust myself. We sort of live with one foot in relationship with Jesus and one foot in relationship to the world, just in case one or the other options don't work out. And what Jesus is constantly calling us to do is they put both feet in my work, pal. And to the extent that you trust his goodness, you will be able to do that. In the extent that you don't, you become like Esau, a rebel. Let's look at the rebellion of sin next. It says here in verse 39, or Esau asks in 38, do you only have one blessing? Yes, one. Bless me even me until Esau looked up his voice and went, then Isaac his father answered and said to him, be hold away from the fertility of the earth. She'll be your dwelling and away from the dew of heaven from above. By your sword you shall live and your brother you shall serve, but it shall come about when you become restless. Then you will break his yoke from your neck. So Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him. And Esau said to himself, the days of mourning for my father and year then I will kill my brother Jacob. You look at the rebellion of sin here. Esau says, there's only one blessing and Isaac says there is only one. And then Isaac gives him. It appears almost contradictory. He gives him a blessing. But it really sounds more like a curse. He says, my son, away from the fertility of the land and away from the dew of heaven. And by your sword you will live. Now remember the corollary to that. If you live by the sword, Jesus says, you die by the sword. In other words, you're going to live away from the fertility of the land and your life will be violent. He's giving him this sort of prophetic word here. And then he says, you will serve your brother. Your brother will be your master, but you will break the yoke from his neck from your neck rather. That's what your life is going to be like Esau. Away from fertility and prosperity filled with violence and not being a slave, if you will, to the blessing bearer. Now here's the problem with that. The language that he uses here is almost the same language that Jesus uses for talking about us and submitting to him. Listen to Jesus' words. And I use them every week in communion actually. Listen to when Jesus talks about submission in the gospel. Listen to what he says. In 1st 28 of Matthew 11, he says, come to me. All who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I'm gentle and humble and hard. For you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy. And my burden is light. You see, being in relationship with the blessing bearer is nothing less than being yoke to him. And Jesus says, come unto me all you are weary and heavy laden. Take my yoke upon you. For my burden is easy and light. Now that is the most offensive thing in the world. You could say to a religious person. If you're here in your religious and your duty driven, that probably strikes you as very offensive. I mean, it sounds good, but if you really think about it, it's offensive. Why? Because it's easy. Many of you are so religious, you spent your whole life trying to be good. And Jesus comes along and he says, take my yoke upon you. Easy. My burden is light. You spent your whole life carrying around your sin and your guilt. And on top of that, you're carrying around all of your goodness, which is even more damnable. And Jesus says, take my yoke upon you. Notice in a yoke usually there would be two animals. And if the other animal in this yoke is Jesus, guess who's doing 100% of the work? That's why it's so light. That's why it's so easy. And Jesus has come take my yoke upon me. Certainly, you'll be serving me, but I'm doing all of the work. And if you're religious and your intent on doing it yourself, that should be offensive to you. But it's probably even more offensive to you, if you're irreligious, if you're not a Christian, if you think that you're just sort of your own God and your own authority, because Jesus is implying here that you will be a slave. And the worst thing you can say to an irreligious person is that you're a slave. And you know the truth, not just of the gospel, but the truth of life is this, that everyone is a slave to somebody. Everyone is a slave. You are either wearing the yoke of Jesus, or you're wearing a yoke of your own making. You either wear the yoke of Jesus, which is light, and it's burden is light, and it's easy, or you wear a yoke that you form for yourself. Maybe you're driven by the approval of others. Maybe you're driven by your sexuality, maybe you're driven by your guilt, maybe you're driven by the need to make money, to be successful, to be seen as being right, to be boastful, all of these things, maybe you're driven by those things. If you're driven by those things, are you really free? You're not free at all. In fact, you're probably more weighed down than anyone. The difference between the promise Jesus makes and the promise that all of your idols makes, and all of the false things that we yoke ourselves to as this, is that all of our false yokes and our false idols make promises to us that they have no ability to keep. You know, all of your idols promise you that they will make you fulfilled, that they will satisfy you, that they will help you, that they will bring joy to your life, and at the end of the day, they not only don't bring joy to your life, but they make you twice the son of hell that you were when you started. That's what happens with Esau. Notice Esau just doesn't wipe bitterly. He goes from weeping bitterly to plotting to kill Jacob. Notice he's not only irreligious, he's breaking the yoke, but he's very religious because he says, I'll wait till the days that my father's mourning are over. I'll wait till Isaac dies, and then I'll go through the motions of mourning for him, and then I'll kill Jacob. You see, he's exchanged this yoke of the blessing bearer that's joy, prosperity, and peace for the yoke of his own making, which is anger, and resentment, and jealousy, and bitterness. How do you think he fared with about 20 or 30 years of that? You think he cannot the other enjoyable and happy? He didn't. You see, his only hope, and your only hope is to embrace the blessing bearer, to put on his yoke for it is easy, to put on his yoke for it is light, because to do anything else is basically to commit suicide, a long, slow suicide. And only when you understand that Jesus' yoke is easy, that Jesus' burden is light, then you can actually look at the next part of the text and realize that all the consequences that we have in our life for doing bad things are actually blessings. That the consequences for your sin are the greatest blessings that you have. Let's look at the last part of the text. It says in verse 42, now the words of the elder son Esau reported to her back and she sent him called her younger son Jacob and said to him, Behold your brother Esau is consoling himself concerning you by planning to kill you. Now therefore my son obey my voice, arise and plead to her on to my brother, Laban. Stay with him a few days until your brother's fury subsides, until your brother's anger against you subsides and he forgets what you did to him. Then I will send and get you from there, and why should I be bereaved if he both, in one day?
We see in this last part of Jacob having to deal with the consequences of his sin. It's actually pretty funny if you think about it because he's done all the scheming and all these wild things to get the promise and in the process of getting the promise, he loses everything because his mother, the other schemer comes and says, I would visit my brother, Laban, for a few days until your brother's anger subsides. You know how long Jacob ended up staying with her brother, Laban, outside of the land of promise, about 20 years. So here's Jacob who has left a life of relative comfort, maybe very comfortable life, frankly, he probably even had cable TV, you know, all these things and he had him and he schemes to get the blessing of God and in the process of getting the blessing of God, he ended up being a fugitive for almost his whole life. Now the big question, is that a good thing or a bad thing? And the answer to your question is completely defined and determined by the way you view the gospel and the character of God. You see, on the one hand, most of those view consequences, we view the benefit of consequences is that they're deterrent. That people say, you know, Tommy, if you commit sin X, the consequences are going to be Y, until you shouldn't do it. Now the problem is, for at least Tommy Allen, is that the consequences of sin X are often much more attractive than the consequences of obedient B. And so if the consequences are very attractive, then I have a problem and you have a problem. And the other problem is, is normally, by the time the person comes to me to talk about the consequences, the consequences are already there because I've already sinned. And so then I'm shafted. I'm stuck with the consequences. What do I do? And it's not only that I'm stuck with the consequences of my sin, but you and I are stuck with the consequences of everyone else's sinned. Because we're not the only ones who sinned. People sin against us, and that causes consequences. And now the question is, how do I view those consequences? Most people view them as deterrent. If you don't do it, then you're going to stay out of trouble. That's a good thing. On the other hand, most people view them, the consequences of our sin is just a harbinger for a greater punishment to come. But the consequences are just sort of God's warm-up act for when he is really going to get you. And you believe that's true. You believe it's true if you walk around guilty all the time for the consequences of your sin. You see, if you have consequences in your life because you've committed some big sin, like you're a really big nasty sinner, not just a small sinner, like Feldman here. I'm kidding. John's really big sinner. You look at the consequences of those sins as a blessing or curse. Most of them look at them as a curse. You hear what the gospel looks at them? If you look at the consequences of your sin for the lens of the gospel, they're the greatest blessing that you have. Because here's Jacob, who now he has the blessing of God. I finally got it, and now he's a fugitive. And don't you think it's funny that now God, the person who God promised would have the promise, has the promise. And he's actually stuck out in the woods with nothing to do but think about the promise. That's not a bad place to be from God's perspective. And the other thing that I've said before is that God used our consequences just as a harbinger of greater discipline and nothing could be further from the truth. Many of you have heard stories about mercy. There are some of these stories about mercy. I just have to start conflating them into one story. You know, mercy every week, this scenario plays itself out several times with me raising my voice. Mercy stop running through the house. Mercy stop standing on the table. Mercy stop standing on the sink. Mercy put down the razor blade. Mercy, and in the midst of me saying that, in the midst of my anger, you often hear, she'll run through the house, she'll trip, she'll fall, and crack her head up. And then I, like a loving father, I am, do what? Same thing I do to my other kids. I walk out. I light up the cigarette that I keep just for such occasion. And I say, mercy, you know what? As soon as your head stopped bleeding, then I really got something for you. As soon as all those bruises heal, you haven't seen anything yet. You know what's interesting? She actually thinks that. The fat part is she thinks that. And I don't know why, because every time she does that, you know what I do instead? I run up to her, and I hold her. And I pick her up. Why would I punish her when the consequences of her sin are punishment enough? Why would I discipline her when she has already disciplined herself and now has to live with a bump on the head? My job now is putting together the pieces. My job now is to show her how the consequences of her sin actually now can lead to blessing, because hopefully she won't do it again. Now I can talk to her about the promise of her father who will never fail her and forsake her. And what amazes me is that every single time she does that, she thinks I'm going to hurt her more. And the only thing that keeps it from me too amazing is that's exactly how I am. That's exactly how I am. When I sin, instead of saying, I have a huge God, I'm the biggest sinner in the world. And the biggest sinner in the world has been saved by the biggest savior in the world. That the worst my sin is, the more hopeful I am, instead of saying that, I think the worst my sin is, the more utterly detestable I am in God's sight. You know, I felt like that yesterday morning. I felt so detestable in God's sight that I was ready to quit the ministry. That's not an overstatement. And then I wrote myself a catechism question. I have my own little catechism questions I wrote for myself. And the question I wrote was Tommy, question. Even now, is God in heaven cheering for you and smiling upon you and strengthening you to cross the finish line and deal with all of the issues in your life? Or is he sitting like a distant father across the desk tapping his fingers, nodding on a pencil, waiting for you to screw up again? Answer, cheering. And it was like my whole life changed in that moment. Less than 24 hours ago. That God actually smiles upon me. That all the consequences of my sins are not the things that actually he holds against me, but they're the things that actually make him that much more precious. Because the greater my consequences, the greater my need for him to rescue me from them. And so I'm here today to tell you that if you are a huge sinner, you're the most hopeful person in here. The bigger your sins, the greater your hope. Because Jesus comes ready to save. He'll never fail you or forsake you. And the consequences of your sin are not harbingers of greater doom, but in fact, they're the things that wean you unto him. So think about that. Let me pray. Father, I thank you that you are so gracious in loving that you look upon us without a scowl, but in fact, you look at us and smile upon us. That you love us and you'll never fail us or forsake us. That as we live with the consequences of our sin, let us embrace them. It's the things that draw us unto you. And so we thank you and praise you for this great hope we have in the gospel. In your name, we pray all of these things. Amen.