This morning, we turn to Genesis 27, continuing in our study in the book of Genesis and the first book of the Bible. If you're visiting with us, we are only considering this morning the first 29 verses. We'll read together the first 29 verses this morning of Genesis chapter 27. Let's give our attention to the word of the Lord. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau, his older son, and said to him, My son. And he answered, Here I am. He said, Behold, I am old. I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me. And prepare for me delicious food such as I love. And bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die. Now, Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son, Jacob, I have heard your father speak to your brother Esau. Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord before I die. Now, therefore, my son. Obey my voice as I command you. Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. And you shall bring it to your father to eat so that he may bless you before he dies. But Jacob said to Rebekah, his mother, behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man and I'm a smooth man. Perhaps my father will feed me, and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing. His mother said to him, Let your curse be upon me, my son. Only obey my voice and go, bring them to me. So he went and took them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared delicious food such as his father loved. Then Rebecca took the best garments of Esau, her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob, her younger son, and the skins of the young goat she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. And she put the delicious food and the bread which she had prepared into the hand of her son Jacob. So he went into his father and said, My father. And he said, Here I am. Who are you, my son? Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Now sit up and eat of my gain, that your soul may bless me. But Isaac said to his son, how is it that you have found it so quickly, my son? He answered, because the Lord your God granted me success. Then Isaac said to Jacob, please come near that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not. So Jacob went near to Isaac, his father, who felt him and said, the voice is Jacob's voice, But the hands are the hands of Esau. And he did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. He said, Are you really my son Esau? He answered, I am. Then he said, Bring it near to me that I may eat of my son's game and bless you. So he brought it near to him and he ate. And he brought him wine and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, Come near and kiss me, my son. So he came near and kissed him, and Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you. May the Lord bless the hearing of His Word. One of the things that I love about studying these narratives, these Old Testament narratives, and the lives of these saints that have gone before us, is how honest the Bible is. not pulling any punches how honest the Bible is in telling us their stories and the sins that we would hide. We're going to get into stuff that we all would hate to have revealed about us here in this text, and some of it's very uncomfortable, and it should be. Particularly, we see this when we look in Genesis and we see how family is playing itself out, how the family of Abraham is showing itself. And you really do see in this particular story this morning how the fall has really affected the family. Fathers and mothers don't communicate. Love seems to dwindle. Bitterness seems to fill the home. It can be commonplace. Children, a giant disconnect. Did you notice this? A giant disconnect between parents and children. Think we have that problem? i mean you can go right down where's the mutual love where's the mutual trust in the family and you look at this and you start to think well this is not so uncommon to us if we'll admit it this is not so uncommon some of you right now have a giant hole in your heart over things like this i just sat with someone last week who said she hardly knew her dad growing up because he was gone all the time. Some of you grieve over children, the choices that they've made and what they're doing right now and how that has played out. There are those hurting terribly right now and every week we don't see that. We don't see that. We see the smiles, how are you doing? Doing great, you know, and we share a bun. We don't see what's really going on. And sometimes it's really hard for people to open up about what's going on. There are those maybe here today who really haven't yet, younger families probably, and I've struggled with this, haven't yet to realize how great of a problem this is because they just don't see it yet. They're in kind of the prime that kids are young and they're going through it and they don't really see what's transpiring and how this is going, that there is a real problem that is set before us. And then there are families sitting here right now who are in absolute, complete turmoil. And everything looks great, but right now you're distressed. You're distressed. Something has happened this week. Something has happened in the lives of one of your children. You feel like a giant hypocrite sitting here right now. You feel like a giant hypocrite. Pull the veneer away and you would be absolutely ashamed to reveal what you're doing and what's going on. The consequences can be devastating, absolutely devastating. Tell me, what father on his deathbed ever regrets that he, you know, you think about it, that he didn't spend more time at the office? What father on his deathbed doesn't, I mean, spends time regretting that, you know, that he didn't fly around or didn't travel more away from the family? It's always, always, always, always he wasn't there for his children. I told you the stat that parents and fathers give less than three minutes of undivided attention to their children per day. That's it. you don't get it back. Once it's gone, it's gone. And all of this can get a little bit distressing. The damage that you can do, the damage that you can do, it's significant. What does divorce do to children? Much more than you realize. What is infidelity really doing to your marriage? Destroying it. And if you at all have a sensitive conscience, this is distressing, especially when at times just the sheer pressures of life, you don't even feel like you know how to be a good father or a mother. All this is there. What will I regret? What am I doing right now that I don't see that will have terrible effects on my children? You ever think about it? And can my failure wreck the outcome. Why do I raise all that this morning? I want to build you up. Why do I raise all of that this morning? Because Genesis 27 is an absolute mess. You ever read a mess this bad? I mean, I don't know how much worse it could be described. This family of Abraham at the moment is a complete disaster. And I'm going to show you that. Genesis 27 chronicles and it outlines the worst list of sins chalked up in a family here and the destructive consequences of this. You think, well, why is God showing us this? Why is God putting this right here? It's awful. I want to really explore the question, how did God respond to this? And what did God do in the midst of this? Can I wreck His plan? Can you wreck His plan? Is there ever a point at which God says, you know, that's it. I've had it. I'm done. Does He ever do that? Does He ever walk away because of your unfaithfulness? I want you all to think about that this morning because I have been reckless at times with the promises and careless and stubborn towards His will. You know, the reality this morning is what you're going to see is that we're all fighting against the will of God in various ways, and that's why that petition of the Lord's prayer, that request, not my will but your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we don't even begin to see how important that petition, that request is until you open up a passage like this because oftentimes you're not even seeing this stuff going on. You are completely blind to what you're doing. And you're just going along thinking everything's great. And you are wreaking havoc in your home as fathers. Everyone in this scene is fighting against God in some way. Everyone. No one is submitting to His will. How do you think God should respond? how does he respond? That's Genesis 27. I struggled with how to break this down. The kind of traditional three-pointer didn't work. It just didn't work. I thought, I'm just going to walk through each character. I don't know how else to look at it. The characters, it seems to me it's stacking on character after character after character to ask the question, who's the good one? And that's what I want to look at this morning with you. Who's the noble character in this story? Let's begin with Isaac this morning. Fast forward from where we were last time. Years have now gone by and we read that Isaac is old and he is on his deathbed, really, in verse 1. He is confined to his bed. And Isaac begins to think, it's time. I better pass the blessing. It's time to pass the blessing on one of my sons. So this was a great moment in the life of a patriarch and even in that culture. When you would pass the blessing on to the son, it would be a giant banquet. It would be a great feast. It would be a public event. Everyone would gather. It would be a moment of real joy and everyone would know about it, but you'll notice as you open up Genesis chapter 27 that Isaac calls Esau to his bed privately and in secret. Look at verse 2. Behold, I am old, and I don't know the day of my death. Now therefore, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and prepare for me delicious food such as I love and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die. Now, the first question you should all be thinking about here for a minute is, wait, wait a minute. What are you doing, Isaac? You're blessing who? I mean, you really have to feel how crazy this is, how much rejection of the Lord's revealed will this is right in front of you. He's doing it in secret. He's doing it in secret because such actions he knew would cause absolute upheaval in the family. And so he hides the whole thing from mom and has a secret plot to bless Esau, to bless his favorite son. And why? Well, the text gives you a few reasons, but one of the most intriguing reasons is Esau could give him the best food he loved Esau's savory food now we critique Esau a little bit for selling the birthright for a bowl of soup didn't we but I don't know how to get away from the fact the hard plain fact that that sin seems to have come from dad isaac loved to fill the belly isaac loved a steak i want some of your savory food esau go prepare me this so that i may pass the blessing on to you now the first thing i think about when it comes to isaac is the man is not really finishing that well, is he? I mean, this is Abraham, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And here he is at the end of life, and I'm not seeing a saint finishing well. It has been a problem. I've seen it often. But the most painful thing here is that God had said in Jacob will be the seed. The older will serve the younger. I'm choosing Jacob. And I believe the text wants you to think about for a minute, Isaac knew this. Don't think that Isaac forgot this. What is recorded right before this to help you with that? Well, in verse 34, you see something said about Esau that should make all of us have pause when we read it. I didn't read it this morning, but I want you to back up and look at verse 34. When Esau was 40 years old, he took Judith, the daughter of Bire, the Hittite, to be his wife, but Samoth, the daughter of Elon, the Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah. They were of grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah. why did the spirit put that there you have this whole story and then you have that and then you have isaac's passing the blessing to esau and right before that is that statement and i believe the spirit wants to make it very clear that what isaac did was not ignorant isaac made a choice a willful choice against the will of god and you think about that scene here for a minute um abraham would have never allowed this for isaac to go and get a pagan wife from canaan and here esau in complete rebellion against god's covenant complete rebellion against the promises made to abraham he completely repudiates the whole thing i'm going to show you that here in a few minutes he completely repudiates the whole thing, walks away from the faith of the fathers, walks away from the faith of Father Abraham and Isaac and says, I'm done with it. And took two pagan women, two of them, specifically against the will of God. Now, what do you have here then? You have complete disregard of father and son for God's will and promise. it's unbelief isaac has lived blinded to the will of god probably a play there with the emphasis on blindness too bible often does that but isaac here was around 140 and he dies at 180 so he was confined a long time he was down a long time but we know that jacob and esau were born when he was 60. That means for almost 100 years he fought God on this. And we stand back and we say, what a terrible thing that's happened here. But is this so uncommon? Is this so uncommon? How many parents support children in their sin against the will of God? Think about it. Has it ever happened when the church tries to go and recover a wayward child that has defected and has run from the faith that the parents secretly support that, support the children in their running and support their sin? Do you think parents secretly side with sinning children against the will of God? Happens all the time. How often are children put before God's will and we turn our faces away from God's will so that we don't have to deal with it? And we support it. We're all on the edge of our seats right now because this is who? It's Isaac. It's Isaac. Let's move to mom. This is really bad for Isaac at this point. One thing I've learned in life, piece of advice for young fathers, when it comes to a mother, never slight her children. You want to start a mess. You want to start a war, mess with mom and her son. That's like standing in front of a herd of elephants. She will rip you up. Here is Isaac with his secret plot. And lo and behold, in verse 5, Rebekah is standing at the tent door. And she goes in and she's hearing this whole thing. She's hearing the whole thing. You can see the mouth drop. And she goes right to Jacob. I heard your father speak. He's going to bless Esau. No way. Notice how it comes out in the text. Obey my voice. You obey what I command you. Go to the flock and you bring me a couple of good young goats so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father such as he loves. And you shall bring it to your father to eat so that he may bless you before he dies. You ever heard the saying, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Hell's worse. That's what the saying means. It's not true, but... Isaac should have gone out of the master tent room, I suppose. There is no way mom is going to let this happen. And favoritism has plagued this family. Favoritism has plagued. Son, I command you, listen to my voice, son. We're going to cover you. I know how dad likes his food. I'm going to prepare it. Doesn't matter how we get the promise. We're going to go get it our way. You see how we're never really patient with the fulfilling of God's word and promise His way, in His timing. How satisfied, if we were to apply this, how satisfied are we with the Lord's will for us today? You look at how things are playing out before you with your marriages and your husband and your wife and your children or the church and worship. let me go right down the line here, right down the line, a whole bunch of things that are in life that matter to you. And do you ever look at those things and deep down in all honesty, you're very unsatisfied with the way that whole direction's going. Very unsatisfied. And things are happening and you hate the way they're happening. You hate the way it's going and what is the immediate default what is the immediate thing that we do in these kind of situations we grab them and we are going to solve it our way and we're going to get it done we do it with children we do it with our lives we do it with church we've got to have this we've got to have this we've got to have this then it'll work then we'll get results. Look at the disorder that we bring to homes, church, life, when we're doing it our way. Look at the absolute disorder and chaos in the home and marriages. You know, you think about this, when these things happen, how many wives say today, how many wives say, I have no communication with my husband. How many wives, how many husbands say about their wives, she just tries to control everything. I feel no love. Goes on all the time. And so far, look at the scene that's painted in front of you. So Isaac has rejected the will of God, choosing the son that was of grief of mind to both of them. Choosing the son that would do the most for him for pleasure and food. Rebecca returns the favor by now deceiving, dying dad in order to fulfill her own agenda, her way. And then we come to Jacob. Here's a model character in the Scriptures. Let me tell you, Jacob, I still think this is the greatest rebel in Scripture. He's 70 years old now, by the way. He's not a kid. That'll help give you some perspective. 70-year-olds can be rebels, by the way. Jacob said to Rebekah's mother, Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man and I'm a smooth man. Perhaps my father will feel me and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing. Where's the affection for dad? Your dad is dying and all you care about in the deception is that maybe you'll get cursed. Mom, I need collateral if I'm going in and doing this. Mom says, I'll take it. I'll take the curse. Only you obey me and you go deceive dad. So mom puts on the favorite clothing of Esau on Jacob and covers him with the goat, the skins all the way over his neck and his arms and his hands so that when Isaac feels him, he'll think it's Esau, and she sends in the best savory food that she could, and she sends him in, and now you can imagine the scene. It's all quiet. Jacob walks in. He is strikingly effective carrying out this sin. He is good. And now you have it, the text, kind of walk through how bad the lies are. Lie number one, notice what happens. My father, here I am. Who are you, my son? I'm Esau, firstborn son. I've done as you told me. Please arise, sit and eat of my game that your soul may bless me. Isaac thinks, how'd you get it so quick? Lie two, God brought it to me. Oh, that's not really right. The Lord, your God, gave it to me. He just takes the holy name. Did you notice it? This is the name that when revealed to Moses, Moses is down, feet are off. He takes the holy name of God and he drags it right through the mud. God did this, your God. Notice, not my God, your God. This is like a bank robber with $5 million in his hand. Hey, where'd you get the money? The Lord gave it to me. Let me feel your hands, son. Isaac knows that in the ancient Near East, when these blessings were given, it's done. You don't take them back. You can't alter it. Are you really my son? Jacob says, with no shame, I am. You know, God had covered Adam and Eve with garments. Remember that? In the Garden of Eden, he killed an animal and he covered them, teaching us without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. And God covered him and God wanted Adam and Eve and all the generations to understand that that's what we need in Christ and that's what he does for us in Christ. He sheds blood so that we can be covered in rich robes of righteousness. It is interesting to me that there's an old Jewish apocryphal tradition that says that these garments that Esau wore were the ones passed down that God made for Adam. Did you know that? That these garments, that they were passed down to the firstborn throughout. Now, it's probably a myth. But whatever the case, have you ever thought about the verse, don't let your liberty become a cloak for vice? Don't let who you are become a garment, putting on a garment to deceive people about your life. Don't let this gospel liberty that has freed you become that. Don't take the gospel and mask it. Use it as a mask for a deceitful life. Meet Jacob. Come here, my son. Kiss me. And he kissed him. Now, I don't know how much to make of that, but the only other time I see that kind of betrayal is with Judas. Betraying his Lord with a kiss. blind Isaac, deceived by his son. And he smells the blessing. And what does he do? He smells the food and he passes the fullness of the Abrahamic blessing onto him. I want to say first, at this point, Jacob's unconverted. We know what God's going to have to do in a few chapters to this rebel. He's going to have to take him down and wrestle him to the ground and pin him and dislocate him so that he'll cling. We'll get there. But he doesn't know the God of Abraham. He's dead. Seventy years old and dead and trespasses and sin. And in some kind of strange comfort for us, you need to remember that when your children have run. What about Esau? We're going to come back to him next time. He had already despised his birthright. He had married these pagan women. I want everyone to look at verse 6 of chapter 28. Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and he went away to Paddan Aram to take a wife from there. That as he blessed him, he directed him, you shall not take a wife from the Canaanite women. and that Jacob had obeyed his father and mother and gone to Panam, Iran. So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac, his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives that he had, Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Neboiath. But anyways, my point is, his whole life is pictured here as rejection of the promises. he comes in, seething with rage. He sees his brother. The story ends up with, I'm going to take him out. I will kill my brother. Brotherly hatred fills the family to the point of murder, and this is exactly what plays out that Esau will be on a murderous tangent to kill Jacob. So, here's what we have. Parents grieved over children. The children treating their parents and using them for whatever they want to do. They show no love for their parents. Everything's about them. Everything's about their happiness. The parents feel used, obviously, by the children. And here's what's so amazing about the whole thing this morning. This is the family of Abraham. This is the covenant holy family. Now, if you accept this nonsense today, you could accept a couple different nonsenses that we just need to find the good in everyone. Help me. Help me. I don't find it in Genesis 27. Or if you accept this crazy notion that the fulfillment of God's covenant depends upon my obedience, help me. the reality is this dad and mom aren't listening to one another marriage is on the rocks dad is doing things secretly to accomplish his own will against the will of the lord rejecting clearly the revealed will of god doesn't want his strong-willed wife to know less chaos break out in the family strong-willed mom is behind the scenes scheming with her favorite son to get it done her way. Both sons right now are living in total unbelief, and now one of them wants to kill the other. Let me summarize the position of each one. Isaac, have not, have not, what? Have thine own way, Lord? No, no, no. Have my own way, Lord. Rebecca, we'll try it my way, Lord. Jacob, I'll take it if it works my way, Lord. Esau, I'll get it back my way, Lord. What a mess. All of them fighting over God's will in their lives. All of them. And where's prayer? The whole thing kind of reminds me of the American family, doesn't it? Teenagers rebelling. Dad absent. Mom and dad have completely polar different planets on how to deal with the problems. Doing everything they can, though, to build the happy, prosperous American life. and yet everyone's on edge in the family because none of it's working real well or nobody's happy, all trying to get results their own way, and the parents don't understand. They're getting duped by stick-up artists in their own homes. Can you imagine the nightmare this would be if it all hinged upon them? And now we get to what I really wanted to get to today. Who's the shining character in this whole plot? Who's the overwhelming one full of goodness? Through all of this mess, you see the Lord's commitment, unwavering, relentless, to fulfill the promise He made to Abraham. And not one of His people that he loves fell from grace. God's election is all over this. But did God give up on Isaac? Well, when Esau walks in, he says, I'm your firstborn. If you look there carefully at what happened, the thing that happens is Isaac trembles violently. It's a fascinating statement. Did you see it there? Who are you? He answered, I am your son. This is verse 32. And Isaac, verse 33, trembled violently. What did God do for him? Well, Hebrews says, some even make the case this was Isaac's conversion, but Hebrews makes the case. By faith, listen to what Hebrews says about Isaac. By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. That is an amazing statement. I mean, what do you mean by faith? He invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. The whole thing was done deceitfully. He was blind. He didn't even see. And I think the key to that is when he trembled violently right then and there, he submitted to God's will. He saw, what am I doing? And from that point on, he blesses Esau and he blesses Jacob again in faith. And you'll notice, he says there carefully to Esau, you'll notice there, he says, I have blessed him, yes, and he shall be blessed. He submitted. He repented. And from that point on, he blessed Esau. He didn't fall out of grace. God kept him. And then Rebekah, oh, Rebekah, buried in the cave with Abraham. And Jacob, the heart of it this morning, the worst to me, the Lord your God did this. The Lord your God brought this to me and I'm using this sin to blame him. The worst character has this pronounced on him. The worst character in this story has this pronounced on him. May God give you the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. And you say, why is that so important? Because that is the Abrahamic promise. God said before any of this mess, it's going to Jacob. And before any of this disaster on this scene before you, God works through this mess, through their sin and accomplishes the blessing that he said he would give to Jacob and he does that for you too. The message here is the same that Paul said to Timothy. When we are faithless, he remains faithful and he can't deny himself. Cling to that verse. When we are faithless, it doesn't change. He can't deny him. He can't deny the promise and oath. He'll remain faithful. When He gave these promises and gave these promises to us and our children, He said, I'm going to complete the work that I started. And no matter how bad we screw it up along the way, He's going to fulfill it. Unreal. The greatest character in this story is the Lord God. And it's remarkable because it was Jesus Christ, our Lord, who when He came here as our kind of elder brother, Had the blessing, had the birthright, who willingly chose to become the curse for us. And never demanding what was his by right, never stealing it, freely became the cursed one as Esau was the cursed one, that we might wear the rich robes that he has given to us. Garments that he covers us with. The son by right, the son of God's choosing, the son in which he was well pleased, gave us His clothing and became the curse that we might become, as Corinthians says, the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus wore the robes and gave them to us that deceivers like Jacob might become clothed. It's a knowledge of that kind of love that's going to take you down and pin you. A knowledge of that kind of persistence in your own lives. A knowledge that He's always there and He's not leaving you. and that if you want to go that route, He loves you so much, He's going to chastise you as a son. He'll be there. He'll do that. You don't want to go through the consequences of that though. But when people refuse to bow the knee, He doesn't give up. He'll bring that knee down. And you're going to see Him wrestle down 70-year-old Jacob. We should confess our sins to the Lord. We should bow the knee to His will because the consequences are serious. I close with this. The other day at classes, Derek Vandermillen gave a really good devotional at the very end of classes. And it was on Psalm 46. And he focused on the very last statement, the God of Jacob is with us. And I love what he said. Of all figures in the Bible, Jacob, he says, interests me the most. Why? Because he was a rebel. He was a scoundrel. and he's the one that I identify with the most. He talked about his recent struggle with cancer and said, through all life's hardship, it's the greatest comfort to me to realize that if God said that he would be with Jacob the whole way through, then I can be sure that he'll be with me. I can have absolute confidence as the chief of sinners, and if you know your life, that's what you say with Paul, I'm the chief of sinners. that He will be my help, that He will sustain me, that He has given me this blessing because of His Son, and that He's clothed me with rich groves, and nothing can take that from me. That's the kind of faith the Lord wants us to have. That's the kind of message that begins to help us to bow the knee in submission to His perfect will. Let's pray. Oh Lord, our God, we realize and confess as we go through life that we don't even see how often we're pursuing our own wills and doing our own things. Imposing our own wills upon You. And if You would just take away that lid off our hearts and let it all come out so that we could see it would be absolutely scary what would happen. Instead, we ask that You would forgive us. Not giving us what our sins deserve, but being merciful to us in this new covenant that was promised to Abraham, that in him all the nations would be blessed, that we and our families would remember what you are like to us, what you've announced to us, what you've done for us in sending your beloved Son. And may we love you with a sincere heart, repenting and turning to the Lord our God. Yes, Lord, you are our God. and may our children be able to say that too this day. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.