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SERMONThe Stew Is Divine (FREE)Having the faith and foresight to treasure the life God blessesLee Eclov
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Introduction
Jacob, at 130 years of age, stood before Pharaoh, the great ruler of Egypt. Jacob was the grandson of Abraham and the son of Isaac. He was the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Jacob was Israel. God had given him that name, which means "he struggles with God."
That day, when Jacob's son, Joseph, introduced Jacob to the great Pharaoh, the ruler asked, "How old are you?" Jacob replied, "The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers." Then the text says, "Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence."
Here was a man on whom God fixed his love even before he was born. He was a blessed man. Yet Jacob says, "My years have been few and difficult." He implies his father and grandfather had it better than he did. Then this sad, old man does something really bold: he puts his hand on Pharaoh—this great king—and blesses him. This poor, old man—a refugee from famine in his own country—gives Pharaoh God's blessing.
At first, I thought about preaching on Jacob just because I never had—because he is interesting. Then I found myself asking a more important question: Why does our church need to think about this man, Jacob? How would his stories help us be better disciples of Jesus Christ?
I thought about the people who come to see me at the church. They tell me of marriages that are a terrible disappointment. Some have endured cruel blows of ill health. For others it is joblessness, no matter how hard they have tried to find work. Sometimes the problem is a job that is sucking the very life out of them. There are kids who break parents' hearts. Loves that are lost. Tedious seasons of helplessness. The sense I get from people I talk to is, "This is not the way it is supposed to be when God promises to bless your life." In fact, I think it is safe to say that to know God is to struggle with him.
When Jacob said, "My years have been few and difficult," he could be speaking for a lot of God's people. In some ways, God himself made Jacob's years difficult, and in other ways—mostly by taking things into his own hands—Jacob made his life with God especially difficult. And that's why we are going to study Jacob's stories.
The life God blesses may not be the life you'd choose.
By the time we get to Genesis 25:19-34, we've already heard the amazing story of Genesis 12:1-3—how God promised Abraham to make a great nation from him and that "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." That is the great God-promise that drives Genesis. And the tension in Genesis is what these patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—will do when that promise seems threatened. Will they trust God or will they take matters into their own hands?
By this point in the book, we've already seen how, true to his word, God gave Abraham and Sarah a child in their old age—a boy they named Laughter, Isaac. If you know nothing else about Abraham, the Bible repeats this one thing four times: "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness."
Look at verses 19-21. Rebekah was childless for 20 years. Even though God had promised Isaac and Rebekah that a great nation would come from them, there were, as one commentator puts it, "a lot of anniversaries without a baby." The same thing had happened to Rebekah's in-laws, Abraham and Sarah. But where they had done all kinds of crazy things to have the child God promised, Isaac simply prayed. I'm sure he prayed hard and long, but he prayed. He waited and trusted God.
Imagine the joy after 20 years when God answered their prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant. But then, trouble. Look at verse 22. The Hebrew could be translated this way: "But the children almost crushed one another inside her." Rebekah didn't know she was carrying twins. Other mothers would talk about how they could feel their babies kicking, but for Rebekah, it was like a scrimmage was being held in her belly! It wasn't just uncomfortable; it was terrifying. Her words are hard to translate. "Why is this happening to me?" could also be something like, "I can't live like this!" She's finally pregnant, but her pregnancy is unbearable.
To Sarah's credit, she inquires of the Lord in her distress. In verse 23, the Lord explains what is going on. This verse is an oracle—a prophecy—that shapes all that will follow in the Book of Genesis. If this verse was omitted from our Bibles, what follows wouldn't make sense. The real "kicker" in this declaration from the Lord is the last line: "and the older will serve the younger." That's not how life is supposed to work! In ancient culture—indeed in most cultures—the firstborn child would get a double portion of the inheritance. The firstborn would be seen as the next in line as the head of the family after the father. I'm sure that when Rebekah heard this word from the Lord, she winced. She probably though, Oh, that's really going to complicate things! After all, her husband, Isaac, was living with an older half-brother who had been cut out of the will, you might say. It wasn't a happy arrangement.
Then, when you read verses 24-26, verses that speak of Esau and Jacob's birth, you cannot help but go, "Eeeoww!" Imagine this, mothers: you look up from your labor, and you see that your firstborn is "red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment." That's Esau. The second boy, then, has a firm grip on the heel of the first like a crawdad, bawling his lungs out that he didn't get to go first. About that time I wonder if Rebekah was thinking, If this is the blessed life, I'll take a little less blessing! As someone I once visited said, "You've got to wonder sometimes, why does God make it so hard?" But here's the takeaway for us: the life God blesses may not be the life you'd choose.
Like Isaac and Rebekah, God has brought Christians into his blessed family because of our faith. We are descendants of Abraham because, like Abraham, we "believed God and it was credited to us as righteousness." We have inherited the blessed life. That's why I can pronounce over you, "The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you, the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace." That is your birthright, because you have put your faith in Christ, and God has brought you into his blessed family.
But when we determine to live by God's promise instead of what we see now, life takes on a precarious feeling. God himself makes it precarious. Consider that in the text God arranges Rebekah's barrenness. He ordains the sibling rivalry. We can only assume, then, that he might be the one who pulled the plug on the job, brought the lingering sickness, allowed the heartbreak or the failure—all so that we can't see how his blessing will come and therefore will live by faith that this is indeed the life God blesses. It's in the struggle that we learn to treasure God's promises, to keep walking toward the glorious city we cannot yet see, to believe that if God is all we have, we have enough.
When God himself seems to complicate the life you thought he would bless, what should you do? Do what Isaac and Rebekah did—pray, inquire of the Lord. Review God's promises with God in the room. Tell him again and again that you're putting your full weight on those promises—that you don't have a backup plan, and you refuse to take matters into your own hands. And then you wait and trust God.
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