Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church Isaac’s Broken Home
(Part III) As we conclude this critical episode in the life of Jacob, we see how God in His grace is able to take even the problems His people create and carry out His will. Whether His people are a part of the blessing, however, is another matter. Our final three conversations:
How many of you have said, “If I had only known how this was going to turn out, I would never have done or failed to do what I should have done.” If those folks in California had known their houses built on those cliffs at Laguna would break into pieces and float away in the mud, how many of them would have built there? How many would have had an insurance company to allow them to build there? If Isaac had known where his family would end up, I am sure he would have done some things differently beginning at the very first. Isaac is old, he is about to transfer a blessing to his son Esau, the illegitimate recipient of the blessing, and the family finds itself in crisis. They all come together, but they really don’t. Esau and Rebekah are not speaking. Jacob and Esau don’t talk. The family is in crisis. It is interesting how everybody shows their hand in crisis. That seems to be the way it goes, and the family disintegrates even to the point where Esau has sworn to murder his brother -- and all this from the patriarchal family. How did this happen? While the text gives indications, I can only conclude because Isaac, as the head of the home, trusted in himself. Perhaps in his standing before God as the patriarch he thought that automatically means everything will be well spiritually. It was not. He was not trusting in God. He had lost the big picture. He had failed the commission and now his family is going every which way. Nobody is happy. Things do not look real good here. I am hopeful that we will come away from these seven conversations realizing we truly do need to trust God more than we trust ourselves. 5. Rebekah and Jacob (27:42-45); disbelieving God. Genesis 27 He will get over it! It will take a few
days. He’ll get over it and then you can come home. 45until
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?" We have another crisis. This one is a
murderous one. Another reaction by Rebekah, another emergency plan (escape and evade)
– here she goes again. Now, however, things have changed a bit. Her previous plan,
earlier this same day, was to connive to get her favorite son a blessing. Now she is
frantically trying to keep that same son from getting killed. Things didn’t go very
well for them. Here’s the question I ask. She was
successful at getting Jacob the blessing. It worked, didn’t it? He got the blessing
from his father, didn’t he? And had not Isaac even said, “He shall stand
blessed.” It’s done. So, I ask, Rebekah, do you really trust the God of the
blessing you so coveted and had to have? That Jacob would advance, be the head of a large,
perpetual, dynastic family. Do you really believe that, Rebekah? No, she does not. She is
not like Abraham. Abraham was given a miracle son. God promised him that from his son
would come a nation. It was a promise by God to Abraham and Abraham believed it! Abraham trusted God rather than any other
so that in Genesis 22 when God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son Isaac,
take him to a mountain where I will show and there sacrifice him to me.” Abraham did
it! He took his son; he took the donkey, the firewood, the knife. He made the journey
fully intending to sacrifice his son. Why? The book of Romans tells us why – because
Abraham was convinced that what God had promised, He would follow through on. Abraham
trusted because Isaac had come from the dead anyway. Even if he killed him, God would
raise him back. God would take care of it. He is trusting God. Rebekah supposedly had gotten the same
promise to this third generation son, Jacob, but she is afraid he is going to die. So she
steps in once again and interferes. She does not believe God. She doesn’t trust Him. It seems to me that Rebekah has two
problems. The first is the more obvious one – she doesn’t trust God. She has
heard all the promises. She has received one herself. A couple chapters back, “Those
two sons in your womb, they are two nations, and the older shall serve the younger.”
That evidently has slipped her mind and she is not trusting. That’s her first
problem. She is far more trusting of herself than she is of the God who made the promise. Her second problem is that she is
self-centered. Before, when she is arranging things, she wants Jacob to get the blessing.
It was in her mind a worldly blessing. She is thinking, “Which of these two sons will
take care of me? My husband thinks he is dying. I don’t have a future apart from
these boys. I don’t think I have a future with the hairy one with two wives. But I
should have a future with the one I’m devoted to. We share the kitchen together. He
is my homebody boy. He needs the blessing for me.” She is being self-centered. It comes
through in these verses. “Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?" What
is she saying there? Because, for one, Esau kills Jacob, that takes care of one. Then
secondly, what happens to Esau? He either falls victim to an avenger of blood or he is
going to have to leave just like Cain did. Then she has no boys and has an old, blind
husband with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. She doesn’t like
the idea of that prospect. She is concerned about herself here in her role as a
mother. It turns out that it is all about her. It looks like she is all about them, but she is not. She is more concerned about herself, probably not in a selfish way or a grasping way. It seems as if that is a common trap. It can be for a lot of moms. Moms, so many times, naturally gain a sense of purpose and meaning being moms. That is the way God designed it and that is the way it is supposed to be. The Bible says there are times of transition. The Bible talks about older moms, older women, engaging the kingdom work directly, once the kids are reared. They have the time, the experience, the wisdom, the flexibility, to engage the kingdom directly, teaching younger women, practicing hospitality, advancing the kingdom in ways they could not before. That is where it goes. That way, a sense of
purpose and a sense of worth come together in our identity in Christ rather than in our
role in the home. 6. Rebekah and Isaac (27-46); ignoring God Rebekah is not there. She is disbelieving
God and that leads to the next problem because when we do not believe God, we will take an
alternate route and ignore Him. That is exactly what this little one-verse conversation
(verse 46) is all about. She has to get Jacob into a safe place, but she needs Isaac’s
green light to do it. 46Rebekah
said to Isaac, "I am tired of living because of the daughters of Heth; if
Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land,
what good will my life be to me?" The daughters of Heth are Esau’s
wives. This has to be a miserable home. Here she has a son, she does not like, with two
wives of his own. They can’t be a happy triad. It’s all about her. We don’t see
God here. She goes to Isaac and says Jacob cannot do what Esau did or she will be more
miserable. It’s like she is saying, “We’re both feeling pretty old right
now, aren’t we?” He is 137 and thinks he is dying. She is not far behind and
thinking she is tired of living. It’s interesting that she has already made a plan.
She has already talked to Jacob. It is set up, so now Rebekah, being Rebekah, sidles up to
Isaac and says something has to be done here. Again we have indirect and not honest
communication. There is a pattern in this home. There are certain things they just don’t
come out and say, certain topics evidently they just don’t broach. They work through
innuendoes, through possibilities, through indirect issues. It seems nobody wants to come
out and say what is going on here. I look at this and say to myself, “How do they do
this?” Many families don’t talk, communicate, and they really need to. Back in the 80’s, the expression
surfaced – “the elephant in the living room.” There is this huge problem in
the home, maybe it’s mom or dad or one of the kids, but something is just really
wrong. It is too difficult or awkward to talk about so we just let the elephant stay in
the living room and we just work around it. We pretend. That is what Rebekah is doing. She
is not dealing with anything. She is working again through her indirect route. I think,
“Why don’t you four just sit down and talk openly. Admit shortcomings.” I can recall a number of years ago being in
an extremely tense and difficult meeting. There was a lot on the line. Feelings were raw
and people were tense. It was an extremely tough meeting. There was a lot of maneuvering,
a lot of positioning, a lot of alibis, and a lot of excusing. Finally I said, “Has anyone here done
anything wrong, or must we continually dance here?” I’m only a fly on the wall in Isaac’s
house and I can look at each one of these four and say this is what you did wrong and this
is what you did wrong. Why don’t you sit down, admit your shortcomings, confess your
sin, ask for and offer forgiveness, and then perhaps for the first time in decades look to
God for what He would want. Wouldn’t that be novel in the home of a patriarch, or
even in the home of a Christian? Here is Rebekah thinking back decades. Her
long-term memory is just fine. She can remember living in Haran with her brother, Laban.
She can remember this fellow coming from the west looking for a wife for Isaac. She was
that woman. She remembers leaving her home. She remembers the significance of the fact
that she had to come from there. Abraham had said no way can Isaac have a wife from among
the local people. There is a reason for that. Rebekah is remembering her own sacrifice in
leaving her father’s house, the distance that she came. They did not visit in those
days. Her own pilgrimage was a big deal for a good reason. This is the one thing this
little verse, in this conversation between husband and wife, does for us. In the course of
the story line, this whole dilemma and solution, this verse is where the story turns. This
is the pivotal point in the story because they are all doing their own thing. She has this
plan and Isaac is wrong with the blessing. Esau is upset. Jacob is in on the deceit. They
are all doing their own thing. At this point, God is separating Jacob from his immediate
family and sending him where he ought to be to get a wife. That is where it is going. That’s
the point in God’s plan. He is separating Jacob for His purposes. Maybe Jacob never had any intention of
leaving. That is the implication here. He wasn’t going anywhere, especially with the
blessing. But in God’s plan he needed to go elsewhere for a wife for the sake of God’s
kingdom and he knew it. It’s interesting how this works. All
these people running around doing all these wrong things. Why didn’t God just step in
and draw them a map or send them a note and say, “Hey buddy, go get a wife from
Haran.” I sense God does this a lot in steering us, in getting us to where He knows
we need to be and He wants us to be. I am convinced, more often than we know, that God
lets us be us. That is a natural thing. We will go the natural, self-centered, sinful
route automatically until we listen, until we are where He wants us to go. So far, that is what we are seeing in this
story. These people are just being normal. Jacob is going to end up where God wanted him
all along. That being said, please understand that they are paying a high price for being
normal. They are missing God’s blessing. They are sacrificing God’s best. They
are paying a high cost, each one of them. But God will have His way. That’s how it
is. God will keep a promise. God will get done what God intends to do. Whether God’s
people participate in the blessing, however, depends on whether or not they obey, whether
they trust Him more than they trust themselves. 7. Isaac and Jacob (28:1-5); obeying God That leads to the final conversation and the only happy one. We hear Isaac now talking to Jacob and we see a completely different kettle of fish. Things have changed. Remember Isaac has changed. Remember what happened when he discovered that he had misplaced the blessing? He trembled violently. He was radically shaken. He was wrong and he knew he was wrong and it shook him to the core. He told Esau, “I have given my blessing, it went to your brother. And he shall stand blessed.” From that point on we see Isaac holding his ground. He has changed. So Isaac calls Jacob in. He decided to get back to what he knew to be right, to send his son Jacob to where he should have sent him long ago as his father had done for him. Let me explain why. In order for me to explain why, we are going to have to mentally, at least, pause, take a mental deep breath and prepare for a very brief, theology lesson. There is a promise God made, that Abraham understood, that Isaac should have understood and missed. It comes to us from the book of Genesis right after the flood of Noah. I want us to go to Genesis 9 because this helps us understand what is going on in Genesis 27. God is building a miracle nation. He started it in Abraham. He had Abraham leave his home country and travel hundreds of miles to the land we call today, Israel. Abraham came from the family of Shem, one of the three sons of Noah. The locals, where he moved, were of the family of Ham, including the Hittites, the daughters of Heth. The descendants of Heth became known as the Hittites. It was important to God that Abraham’s miracle son, Isaac, have a wife from the family of Shem, that Jacob also get a wife from the family of Shem. The nearest Shemites who believed in Yahweh, the God of Abraham, lived in Haran and are related. For Esau to ignore that and to take local women as wives was just an indication of the fact that he couldn’t care less about his blessing or his birthright. He disqualified himself. Jacob thus far has remained single. Rebekah is concerned for her future, I believe, but Isaac is thinking, “Oy Vey!” Genesis 9 is after that embarrassing incident where Noah planted his vineyard and made himself some moonshine. Something bad happened, and he was shamed by his son, Ham, who would be Canaan. Genesis 9:25 That’s the son of Ham. That would be the Hittites. 26 He also said, So we want Canaan, the Hittites, the Hamites – they are all the same -- to serve Shem. So Shem is on top. We call them today the Semites. They were originally the Shemites. 27 “May God enlarge Japheth, Japheth went north and west. This is where we have to make a shift. I have changed the wording in my Bible because not all Bibles are translated this way. I’m going to say verse 27 should say, “May God enlarge Japheth but He (God) will dwell in the tents of Shem.” God will dwell in the tents of Shem. That is linguistically sound and contextually accurate. I believe that is exactly what is being said here. God is going to dwell in the tents of Shem and the others will be his servants. Canaan, Ham, Heth, Hittites will be the servants of the Semites (or Shemites). Knowing that is what God is doing to lay the foundation for His
people, Isaac is saying, “Jacob, you can’t take a local woman. They are Hamites.
We have to honor God in His covenant promise to Noah and the sons of Noah and you must go
get a Semitic wife. So off Jacob goes. That’s the point. The point is what God is doing in Jacob and the nation and clear down to you and me is to get Jacob where he belongs. To have him choose a wife from the place where God wants him to choose one. So at long last, we see what Isaac has finally done – lay hold of God’s big picture. What is God doing? What does God want? What is God’s will? Wouldn’t that be nice if all families did it this way instead of all the conniving and machinations of Rebekah? So he steers Jacob in the right direction. Look what he says to him: Genesis 28 Isaac blesses Jacob; he invokes God’s blessing on him. What a
different atmosphere we have. What a different attitude. What a different posture. 2"Arise, go to
Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and from there take to yourself
a wife from the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. Let’s connect with Genesis 12:3 and get back to where we
ought to be. Now Jacob, the blessing of Abraham is yours. Jacob doesn’t know it yet.
Probably Isaac didn’t either and Abraham didn’t either, but that blessing will
take us to a tribe, Judah, and of the tribe of Judah to a family that will bring us a
Messiah who is Jesus the Savior. It all comes back to here. God knows what He is doing.
That’s why we need to trust Him more than we trust ourselves. 4"May He also
give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants with you, that
you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham." Here is an interesting epilogue. Isaac, on his deathbed so he thinks, lives another 43 years. I wonder if he doesn’t sense a new lease on life. I wonder if his dodging God’s will all those years, being wrapped up in himself all those years, failing all those years, might have weighted him down to the point where he was saying, “I think I’m dying.” Sin will do that (Psalm 32, Psalm 51). He lives another 43 years, which is good for him, but there is a price tag. Everyone is now scattered. The home is broken and fallen to pieces. Rebekah loses everything. Do you think her relationship now with Esau is improved or does he despise her as never before? She will never see Jacob again. There is no further mention of Rebekah except for a reference that she has died. All that she sought through her fleshly conniving and machinations is gone. Do you think that she and Isaac trust one another? Do you think he trusts her? I don’t know why he would. Jacob is leaving for a 100-mile trip,
supposedly away for a few days. He will be gone for 20 years. This family is in serious
trouble. Mistrust and hatred and bitterness now mark their home. Where is God? Maybe God
decides that He just can’t work with people like this. No, God is going to jump in
the middle of this. He is going to take Jacob and change this guy. That’s one of the
reasons I am excited about following God’s working in Jacob because Jacob is so much
like you and me. Now God has him. There isn’t any Rebekah around and there isn’t
any comfort zone around and he has a clue now of God’s calling for his life. God is going to take Jacob and do an amazing work. But the price tag is that these people have sacrificed all the blessings they might have had -- had they simply put first things first, had they simply abided in the Lord as they should have, had they simply trusted God more than they trusted themselves. But God is still at work and He is going to do some amazing things. After all, God made a promise and He is going to keep it. Far better we trust him and not ourselves. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2005, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |