Esau's Rejection

Good morning.

Our reading is from Genesis 27, 30 through 40.

As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac, his father, Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting.

He also prepared delicious 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.

His father Isaac said to him, Who are you?

He answered, I am your son, your firstborn son, Esau.

Then Isaac trembled very violently and said, Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me?

And I ate it all before you before you came, I have and I have blessed him, yes, and he shall be blessed.

As soon as 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, O my father.

But he said, Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.

Esau said, Is he not rightly named Jacob?

For he has cheated me these two times.

He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.

Then he said, Have you not served reserved a blessing for me?

Isaac answered and said to Esau, Behold, I have made him Lord over you, and all his brothers I have given to him for servants, and with grain and wine I have sustained him.

What then can I do for you, my son?

Esau said to his father, Have you but one blessing, my father?

Bless me, even me also, O my father.

And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.

Then Isaac his father answered and said to him, Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be, and away from the dew of the heaven on high, but your sword shall live, and you shall serve your brother.

But when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from your neck.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

I was holding my uh 18-month-old daughter and she took my microphone off.

So I for I forgot it was off.

Good morning.

Welcome to church this morning.

Thanks for joining us.

Um that last song was worth waking up early.

Um thanks for joining us this morning.

Uh we're mixing up the order a bit.

Today, instead of doing announcements right now, we're going to try doing announcements at the very end of the service.

So we're going to sing the doxology.

Did somebody say woo?

Whoa.

Whoa.

Yeah, I know.

Whoa makes more sense.

Woo.

Yeah, where I come from, that's the only way we do announcements at the end of the service.

Um we are uh the we just kind of want to maintain this flow of we just heard the scripture, let's pray and get into the scripture.

And then what's going to happen is we're all going to sing the doxology at the end, and then your muscle memory is going to kick in.

And you're going to say it's time to get out of here.

And then there will be announcements, and your woos will turn to nays.

But we will um, but we'll we'll make it through together.

Let's pray and move into today's text.

Holy Father, we thank you for your forgiveness of our sins.

Lord, we thank you for your scripture.

We're in a world where it is so difficult to find honesty and truth, and with hearts that are so deceitful even of ourselves.

Lord, we thank you that you speak to us in truth, that your word is effective, effective for us to parse the world with wisdom, and effective to allow us to discern our own hearts when we allow you to speak to us, and when we humbly come under your word.

Thank you for your honest warnings.

And Lord, I pray that we would hear you like a close, trusted friend who tells us some honest and hard information this morning, but that we might hear it in a way that is received with love and trust in your hope for our own goodness.

Lord, we praise you for being that friend to us.

We pray that you would give us hearts to receive that this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So we're at the second half of our story of the blessing moving from Isaac to Jacob.

And last week we saw that the story is about two twin brothers.

Two might be redundant.

There's not four people, twin brothers who are um uh uh vying to receive the blessing from their father.

So their father's name is Isaac, and Isaac has conspired against the revealed will of the Lord to give the blessing to his oldest son, whose name is Esau.

Now, God had said that it is the older who shall serve the younger, and so the blessing ought to move to the younger son, named Jacob.

Well, Rebekah, Isaac's wife and the twins' mother, heard of Isaac conspiring against the revealed will of the Lord, and she went to her youngest son, Jacob, said, Here's what we'll do.

Isaac is blind, and so we'll take advantage of that.

You'll dress up like your brother, and I'll cover you in goat skin because your brother is hairy, and you will go in and deceive your father into thinking that you are your older brother, Esau, and then Isaac will bless you so that you receive the blessing.

Last week we saw everyone is sinning in this story.

Isaac is sinning by going against the revealed will of God.

Esau is sinning by seeking the blessing of his younger brother, which he has already sold to his younger brother.

Rebecca is sinning by not approaching her husband in love and faith, and instead viewing the promises of God as something to be manipulated outside of the framework of love.

And Jacob is sinning by deceiving his father and pretending to be his older brother.

The plan works.

Jacob receives the blessing in place of his older brother.

And in the second half of the story today, we see Esau come back in from hunting prepared to receive the blessing from his father.

And there is a tragic reveal.

Aristotle is one of those guys where he must have been a lot of fun to talk to.

Or I've been thinking about physics lately.

And he's like, Oh, physics, yeah, read Aristotle's physics.

Or I've been thinking about uh drama lately.

Oh, excellent.

Here, read Aristotle's Poetics.

Okay, I've been, you know, you could go on and on.

He was wrote about everything.

So he describes tragedy as requiring these three components for a tragedy to take place in his poetics.

So these are pretty standard.

For a tragedy to take place, you need to see a reversal.

You need to see the recognition of that reversal, and then you need to be then you need to be exposed to the scene of suffering.

And this scene follows precisely what a tragedy is.

There is a reversal, there's the recognition of the reversal, and then there's the scene of suffering.

So we're going to walk through it under those headings, reversal and recognition, and then we're going to look at the scene of suffering that takes place in this story.

Genesis 27, 30, let's begin.

As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting.

Don't you just recognize how how intense this narrative is?

You know, this is like um hiding from the Velociraptor in the kitchen, you know?

Like everything the camera's just moving around corners and we're passing in the hallway.

This is, they're literally like passing one another in the hallway.

Esau passing Jacob and is like, that looks like my jacket.

And uh Jacob, you know, perhaps hiding his face as he moves on outside.

It is such a close call that the text forces us to wonder, actually, what the question was last week, forces us to wonder, what if Esau had gotten there just moments earlier?

You know, what if his hunt had been just a little quicker?

Perhaps he had his bow drawn on an animal that he thought, you know, I can do better, and then he waited a little bit.

But then it happens precisely in time, so that Jacob would receive the blessing and Esau would just miss it.

The closeness, the almostness of it happening the other direction is meant to raise this question of what if?

What if?

And what we're shown with that question is that there is no what if.

There is no counterfactual in the providence of God.

It all, everything, happens in precisely the way that God intended it to happen.

And so they pass in the hall, not by happenstance.

That's not what we're meant to see in the closeness, but by providence is what we see in the closeness.

31 through 32, he also, Esau, also prepared delicious 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.

His father Isaac said to him, Who are you?

He answered, I am your son, your firstborn son, Esau.

Now, why is Isaac asking, Who are you?

Well, it's because Isaac, in his mind, had just blessed Esau.

Isaac had blessed who was actually Jacob, but when he asked Jacob, who are you?

Jacob said, I am your son.

I am Esau, the one who you were going to give the blessing.

Here, feel my skin.

Isn't it hairy like Esau's?

Because he was wearing goat skins.

And uh, smell me.

Don't I smell like the field, like Esau?

And eventually Isaac is worn down and trusts that he is blessing Esau.

So then when Esau walks in, expecting to receive his blessing, and says, Hey, I'm here with the food that's prepared.

Isaac's like, I think we just did this.

Who are you?

He answered, and he gives all of the information necessary.

I am your son, your firstborn, Esau.

He had to include firstborn, because the conspiracy that they were working together all hinges on that.

It was ordinary, it was typical culturally for the blessing to move to the firstborn.

But God had revealed that the right movement of this blessing was not to the firstborn, but to the younger, to the secondborn.

And so when Esau says, it is me, your son, your firstborn, he is saying, look, remember this conspiracy that we're in together?

Remember our plan together?

We were going to, we were going to gather, and in secret, hidden, we were going to use the promise of God as though it were magic.

And you were going to cast your blessed spell upon me.

And so I am here with the food to seal the covenant, as though the promise was yours to possess and then to give to whomever you pleased.

This is the reversal.

Tragedy's plot must include two crucial moments, the reversal and the recognition.

Aristotle says reversal of the situation is a change by which the action veers around to its opposite.

So this is common, you know.

Aristotle does this, Imnite Shamelan, you know, does this.

There's a uh there has to be a reversal.

Esau walks in prepared to receive the blessing.

And in his seeking of the blessing, precisely according to plan, he reveals that all that's left for him is a curse.

Esau doesn't see the reversal yet.

It is Isaac who sees the reversal.

Now it's worth noting that when a reversal happens and it's a positive thing, that's what we call a comedy.

You know, the the wealthy sisters whose stepmother is advocating for them are sitting on the side.

And and then the the the maiden who is off cleaning the floors, being hidden.

Well, what if we tried the slipper on her?

And the slipper fits, and there's a reversal of their fortunes, and it's a comedy.

That's um from a Disney movie called Cinderella.

I recommend it.

But when the reversal happens in a negative way, that's what makes it a tragedy.

You know, uh oh, kill my father, sleep with my mother, that doesn't sound like me.

Comes across the horizon a messenger to reveal your true identity.

Ah, that is me.

That's a negative way.

That was not a Disney movie.

That's um Oedipus.

Now the reversal must come with a recognition.

And Aristotle says that recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune.

It's a change from ignorance to knowledge.

Okay, so so what happens in the tragedy at the moment for it to be a real tragedy is not a move from knowledge to ignorance, okay?

This isn't the moment of deception.

It's worse than that.

It's the moment of truth.

A moment of deception.

You might think there's still more of the story to come, and possibly this could resolve itself, but that is not what makes it a tragedy.

What makes it a tragedy is the revelation that you have come up against the truth.

And the truth cannot be shifted, it cannot be moved, it cannot be bent to your will.

Instead, it reflects back onto you to reveal your own lie.

That is what makes it a tragic moment, a moment of no escape, of absoluteness.

Look at Isaac's recognition of the reversal.

Genesis 27, 33.

Then Isaac trembled very violently.

Think of how spare the biblical writing is.

You know, like it barely when there's a very, you know, like it says things like, and like Jesus predicts the resurrection.

And he's like, I'll go to Jerusalem, I'll be killed, and then I'll rise again on the third day.

That's it.

If I were to describe that, I'd send out like three prep emails and then like a you know meeting reminder, and we'd get everybody together, and you know, it'd be like, okay, here's what resurrection is.

No.

So when you see a very, he trembled very violently.

This is a big deal.

And said, Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me?

And I ate it all before you came.

And I have blessed him.

Yes, and he shall be blessed.

His recognition is not first articulate, it's physical.

He trembles very violently.

This takes place within Isaac's body, this revelation of who he has come in contact with.

Now there's another moment when we see uh there's another moment in Genesis where this very same phrase is used of trembled violently.

Uh, and it takes place in Genesis chapter 42.

Genesis 42 · chapter mention

And briefly what happens is Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery earlier.

They conspired to sell him into slavery.

Joseph, through a series of fortunate events, becomes uh second in command to Pharaoh.

You know, the story of a uh slave who became more powerful than the Emperor of Rome, you know.

Gladiator?

Read seriously?

My wife also hasn't seen Gladiator.

Uh, but that's the story, the Joseph story is Gladiator.

Um his brothers come back to him.

Now, the one that they sold into slavery, they come back to, and now they're like they need food from him.

So they buy some food, and they look in their bags of food that they're taking away, of grain, and they look on top of them, and they see that the money that they had paid for the food was sitting on top.

And they think, oh my goodness, this is going to appear as though we stole this grain, and we're going to go back to our brother, whom we harmed, and our sin will finally come back on our own heads.

We thought we could outrun the truth, but now look, it has come back upon us.

And so when they look back in and they see the money in their bags of grain, this is what it says in Genesis 42, 28.

At this their hearts failed them, and they turned, trembling to one another, saying, What is this that God has done to us?

What is it that is happening inside of Isaac's violent tremble?

If we were to read it at first glance, we might think he's trembling, Jacob, Jacob, I can't believe you deceived me.

Or trembling inward at himself, Isaac, Isaac, you fool.

I can't believe you allowed yourself to be deceived, and he trembles.

No, it is nothing so imminent.

It is something much more transcendent at which he trembles.

He trembles with a question like this in his mind.

What is this that God has done to us?

Because he is not coming in contact with a duplicitous son.

He is realizes that he is coming into contact with the absolute truth, sovereignty, providence of the God who is there.

What does he realize?

Who have I been going up against?

What did I think I could do with this promise?

How did I think I could take the very things that God has given me and somehow turn them against God Himself?

Who did I think I was?

Who am I dealing with here?

And he is exposed terrifyingly before the living God.

He trembles violently in himself.

You can see his mind begin to change at this recognition in what he says, because his questions become about himself and what he has done and what experiences.

He has had, and his certainty becomes about God and about God giving his blessing to whomever God desires.

Listen to what he says.

Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me?

And I ate it all before you came, and I have blessed him.

Who is this?

What was the shape of this deception?

How did this take place?

How was I deceived?

All of his questions are about his own experience.

And then he says, yes, and he shall be blessed.

His certainty becomes about God.

In a godly recognition, this is exactly the way that our minds and our frameworks shift.

You know, when you come in contact with the living God, you no longer have questions about Him.

When we're running around in our own minds and we're considering what type of God would prove Himself to me such that I would believe in Him.

And we think things and we put these riddles on God and we construct these problems and obstacle, philosophical obstacle courses that we then try and run God through.

And we say things like, I could never believe in a God who creates objects of wrath destined for their own destruction.

If God is like that, then I would not believe in him.

And we stand certainly on our experiences to determine what justice is, and all of our questioning points outward towards God.

But that's because we're not seeing him clearly.

When we see him clearly, there's this grand reversal.

And we say something like what Job would say.

Who am I to raise my voice to you?

We say something like what Paul says of us.

What is the clay to speak back to the potter?

I mentioned my daughter earlier because she took my microphone off, which is actually a perfect example.

My son's not a hitter.

My daughter's a hitter.

And so you'll be holding her, and she'll get mad, and then she'll just like slap me in the face.

She can slap me in the face because I'm holding her.

How is it when we question God's goodness?

What is it like when we run him through our obstacle courses, our own ethical paradigms, that we filter his goodness through, and we put ourselves in a position where we consider we are the ones that hold what is good, and he is the one who is to be tested by it.

We slap him in the face, but here's what happens: we see it taking place with Isaac and Esau.

They realize, oh, I was only able to slap you in the face because you were holding me up.

At the reveal, he is set down and trembles violently as he looks up at his God and considers this is not somebody that I stand next to as equals, somebody that I can reach up and slap in the face, but rather I look up at this God as a creature looks to his creator.

That is a very different paradigm.

What can I give to him that he hasn't given me?

What thoughts can I think about him that he hasn't thought before me?

How can I outsmart the one who made the brain?

How can I have vision beyond the one who made the eye?

How can I whisper so quietly that the one who made the ear can't hear it?

And you realize that all of your reasoning has been done in this false paradigm where you have not been considering God as God, but rather you have been considering God as a more powerful creature.

He is not a more powerful creature.

He is the one from whom all things come.

It is good because he says it is good.

Aristotle says, Two parts then of the plot reversal of the situation and recognition turn upon surprises.

A third part is the scene of suffering.

But he said, Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.

There's this conspiracy with Isaac and Esau.

Esau knows what Isaac doesn't know, which is that he has already sold the birthright, and it doesn't rightfully belong to him anymore.

It belongs to his younger brother Jacob, who he sold it to.

And think of the hope that must have come.

Think of the hope of Esau when he's on the hunt.

This seems to be working.

When he shoots the animal and he brings it back, and he's cleaning it, imagining what it will be to be the one whom the blessing falls upon, to finally receive clarified his rightful place as the firstborn son.

To have this intimate connection with his father in a way that's so guarded and private and secret.

And then here it is revealed together the wretchedness of their conspiracy.

See, there is no such thing as a loving relationship outside of the will of God.

There is no such way that we can do good for one another outside of drawing one another towards the revealed will of God.

It might feel wonderful, it might feel thrilling, it might feel like a deeper connection and deeper love than you had imagined possible, but there will come a day where the truth of the matter is revealed.

And the truth of the matter is that goodness belongs to God alone.

And we can manipulate no situation to avoid that.

In verse 36, well, Isaac responds to this, asking for this other blessing.

And Isaac says, I've already blessed Jacob.

You can see that there's this shift in Isaac's mind, that trembling violently was a conversion.

In the way that he thought he could approach the world, the way that he was relating to God, he sees I wasn't relating to God as God.

But in the violent trembling, he begins to relate to God as God and sees the blessing is gone to your brother, because that is what God has ordained.

I'm not going to put myself in a position where I'm against God anymore.

And Esau responds to this and he says in verse 36, Is he not rightly named Jacob?

For he has cheated me these two times.

He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.

Then he said, Have you not reserved a blessing for me?

Isaac doubles down.

No, I have given him the fat of the land, I have given him peace, I have given him the service of his brothers.

You are all what else is there to give to you?

There's nothing left.

Esau said to his father, Have you but one blessing, my father?

Bless me, even me also, O my father.

And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.

There was a time when Esau was discussing this blessing, this birthright.

And he was discussing it with his brother Jacob.

And Esau came in from the field, and his brother was preparing a stew.

And Esau said, Give me some bites of that stew, that red stew.

And Jacob said, Sell me your birthright.

And Esau said, Of what use is a birthright to me?

And he sells him the birthright for a couple of bites of stew.

And then here, over the same blessing, when he realizes it's revealed to him the weight of what he has traded, the gravity of what he has missed out upon, he is weeping to get it back.

And the opportunity has passed.

You know.

In Hebrews it says this, Hebrews 12, verses 16 through 17.

Hebrews 12:16–17

It's talking about the church helping each other to keep the promises of God at the forefront of our minds.

And see to it that we remember the promises of God together, and we hold to them, and we don't trade them for something foolish.

So in verses 16 through 17, you've got to add, to get the context, you add a see to it, see to it that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.

For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.

This is the thing about a reveal, uh about the recognition of a reversal, is that from the stakes of our faith are so unthinkably high.

They are heaven and hell with God, rejected by God, unthinkably high stakes of our blessing.

And yet we play with it down here on this side of the reveal, to where we can't tell the difference between the weight of the blessing and the weight of a few bites of stew.

We can't tell the difference between the weight of what's coming and the weight of some temporal satisfaction that we think might be the height of our fulfillment as humans.

We even craft our identities around our temporal satisfaction.

Look at Esau.

Be warned.

How could I be your pastor and be worth anything and not tell you this?

A day will come when it is too late.

And you may seek it with tears, begging that you might receive the blessing that has already been offered to you.

And though you seek it with tears, it will be too late.

The day is coming.

That is not this day.

Hebrews thirteen through fourteen it says, but exhort one another every day as long as it is called today.

That none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

What is the deceitfulness of sin?

This temporal satisfaction seems like it is as valuable as heaven.

But if it's called today, that means we're not in this moment Esau is in.

You might still come to Christ.

You might today receive this blessing.

You might today cast off that sin that so easily entangles and no longer let it just fester in your life as though it didn't really amount to anything.

Today is called today.

For we have come to share in Christ.

If indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, how do we hold our original confidence firm to the end?

We constantly return to the cross.

The story of the cross, it has it's everything, right?

Right?

It's a it's it has everything in the story of the cross.

It has a reversal.

What is the reversal?

Well, it's every reversal is in the story of the cross.

God became a man.

Life is dead on a cross.

He who had no sin became sin so that we might share in his glory.

The reversal, it's every reversal.

What is the recognition?

It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.

The one being treated like a criminal is innocent.

I am the criminal.

But there's another reversal.

My great sin of abandoning him is this joyful recognition of him bringing me in.

What is the scene of suffering?

It is my suffering taken upon Christ.

I can look up and see the suffering that I deserve happening on the cross.

There's another reversal.

The one who is buried in the grave three days later rises again because death cannot hold him.

And this greatest evil that takes place in the world is transformed into the source of a new creation, that our very hearts that sin against him, when we come to him by faith, even those might be changed.

That we might be transformed into ones that don't cast off the blessing, but instead cling to it and are held by it, by a faith that the Lord gives to us, and that we pass around to one another freely.

Remember the grace of God that he has shown to you on the cross.

And there will come a day when all are resurrected and all stand before Christ on his great white throne of judgment, and he will say to those who are in him by faith to come to him, and those who are not, he will cast into hell forever.

And in that place, what is there?

Weeping, gnashing of teeth.

It looks like Esau, because it is too late.

It is a reversal.

To some, the reversal will be a tragedy.

To those who are in Christ, it is a comedy.

What will yours be?

It is called today.

What will yours be?

See if there are any questions.

Is there something more simple than human failing to the errant belief of Jacob and Esau that they had total control of God's blessing?

Did they have any historical reason to believe this?

The way that the framework that they're operating in is a framework of magic.

That's the that's like the most helpful way to think of this.

That's the promises of God are something given to me to manipulate to my own ends.

So God is a means to an end, not the end in itself.

This is the same shape as the prosperity gospel, which says that if I align my life in these particular ways, and if I use these certain prayers, uh, and if I speak to God in this certain way and I claim these particular promises, then all things will go well for me.

And it's like, well, what about Job?

Or I can think of another example.

Can anybody else think of another example?

Jesus! And so they're approaching the promises of God.

This is a good distinction.

The promises of God are not things which we possess, they are things which possess us.

They are not things that we own, they are things that we receive.

And so, what is our posture towards the promises of God?

It is the same posture of faith, which means that our lives are lived not looking towards what we can get in ourselves, but in looking towards who God is.

There's this outward shape to our life where we're looking outside of ourselves for our salvation.

Do you know that?

Do you know that your salvation comes from outside of yourself?

Outside of yourself, not within yourself.

There is no meditation that you can do to get deep enough within yourself to find the answers.

You must be saved.

From the outside, someone has to come and rescue you, atone for you.

You're enslaved to a wicked dragon.

You've sinned against the king.

Somebody has to come kill the dragon and atone for your sins and adopt you back into the kingdom.

This is what Christ has done.

Come to him.

Don't use him like magic.

Come to him in faith.

Encourage one another to do the same.

Don't forget this old story.

All of life in eternity, isn't it?

Isn't it going to be weird to do announcements after this?

In 1 Corinthians 11, 23, Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, that promise of eternal life in Christ that we hold by faith.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes, and he will come.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this time of communion.

Lord, that our faith might be renewed and cemented today because it is called today, that we might look up and be encouraged by the hearts of others and the actions of others as they take the bread and wine and declare your death until you come again.

Lord, let us hold this promise as the center of our lives.

Give us a moment of clarity of the pettiness of the things that we exchange for you.

Lord, let us be realigned to see you as God, our Savior.

You are mighty to save.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.