Isaac Blesses Jacob

Good morning.

Today's sermon is from Genesis 27, 1 through 29, and I'm going to read a selection of that.

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 Rebecca was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau.

So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebecca said to her son Jacob, I 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 for 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 Rebecca, his mother, Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am 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.

His mother said to him, Let your curse be on me, my son.

Obey, only obey my voice, and go, bring them to me.

He said, Are you really, Isaac said, Are you really my son Esau?

He, Jacob, 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 me, come near and kiss me, my son.

So he came near and kissed him.

And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning, everybody.

Way to make it out in the snow.

Great work.

I'm going to invite up Carolyn Kellum to announce an exciting thing.

Nice.

We just think after especially a season like COVID where a bunch of people have been pretty isolated, it's really important to come together as the body and as the church and remember the things that unite us and just get to know each other a little bit more.

So we thought it'd be really fun to do that over wine and the breaking of bread and cheese.

We would love for you to bring your favorite wine to share so everyone can get a taste of it.

If you have a favorite cheese, bring that also.

And we'll have a charcuterie arrangement so there'll be more than just uh wine and cheese to eat.

But um would love for you to come.

It will be here at the church at 6:30 on uh Tuesday, uh March 29th.

Great.

Sounds good.

Thanks, Carolyn.

Yeah, clap.

It's uncomfortable if we don't clap.

Yeah, Carolyn did a great job.

Um yeah, wine and cheese night.

That's gonna be really fun.

My favorite cheese is night cheese.

It's cheese that you eat at night.

I don't know what y'all's favorite is.

Yeah, you're welcome.

So um a couple more announcements.

Today, right after the service, we have a members meeting.

Um so just stick around.

It'll be about an hour if you're a member.

Stick around.

Um, or if you're becoming a member today, then yeah, this is a good day to be here.

Uh also, while the while we're having members meeting, there's child care available.

They'll be in the ball room, which is not not like Cinderella.

It's more like a room with balls in it.

Um think, dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.

Uh so yeah, meet over.

Uh so you can drop your kids off over there.

It's actually for this building, a little um uh background.

It's the old coffin showroom.

Which is pretty cool.

I hear that they used to also play dodgeball in there as well.

But it was also the coffin showroom too.

Uh and this Friday, March 11th, we are hosting a worship night here.

So starting at 6 p.m., uh, we're going to worship and pray.

So it's just a night of worship and prayer.

Isn't that great?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That was how you all responded.

That was my impression of you.

Um, yeah, and so we're hosting it with a church called Emmaus Church.

They meet downtown um just off Broadway.

And uh it's just two congregations coming together just for a night of worship.

I think it's going to be a wonderful time.

Uh, that's this Friday night here at RCD.

Emmaus Church is joining us here.

Um, yeah, it's gonna be a wonderful thing.

It happened one of those ways that I love when things happen.

There's some mutual friends connected uh Zach with a worship pastor that they knew, and then they started talking, and worship night happened.

All right, that's all the announcements for today.

Let's pray and we'll get into today's story.

Holy Father, we thank you for your snow and the image that it gives us.

Uh that it reminds us that uh uh you make us white as snow.

You make us uh pure.

It reminds us of your word, that uh just like the snow that falls or the rain that falls onto the earth, it always waters the earth.

Your word, when it goes out from you, always accomplishes your purpose.

Lord, we pray that that would be true this morning, that as we look at your word, that it would accomplish in our hearts precisely your purposes for it, that our minds might be transformed as we come under your word, and that we might learn to see ourselves in these stories, these pictures of what it's like to be a human in Genesis.

Lord, I pray that that would take place for our children as well as they're gathered together and singing and learning to sing catechism.

Lord, I pray that uh you would attend that time as well.

Uh, Lord, we thank you for this time together as a church.

What a joy to get to participate with a congregation.

What a rare thing in the world.

We praise you for that.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So the shape of this story is uh pretty simple.

This is one of the first official, you know, written down in an ancient text, examples of what's come to be known as the switcheroo.

So Isaac uh is getting old and he's ready to bless his oldest son, and he wants to bless his oldest son, Esau.

God had made explicit that it is not the older son who should be blessed, but it is the younger son, Jacob, who should be blessed and receive the birthright, be heir of the promises of God.

Rebekah, Isaac's wife, Jacob and Esau's mother, gets word that Isaac is ready to bless Esau.

And so she steps in to ensure that Jacob is the one that gets the blessing.

And so Jacob goes in disguise, disguises himself as his hairy brother by putting goat skin and hair on him and smelling like him, and goes and tricks his blind father into blessing him instead of blessing Esau, so that Jacob, as God intended, receives the blessing.

So the question that this sort of helps us come into and the truth that it exposes to us is well, what what happens to the promises of God when everyone involved in receiving them and participating in those promises is only acting in their own sinful self-interest?

Are the promises of God still valid?

Will they still work?

Will they still take place?

What happens when those whom God gives his promises to are absolutely faithless?

What do the promises do?

So today we're going to follow this story through four characters: Isaac, Esau, Rebecca, and Jacob.

And we're going to look at the sin of each of those four characters and how everyone involved in the transition of this promise is just sinning.

And that through that sin, through the deliberate sin of everyone involved, God's purposes are accomplished.

It's very strange.

So let's go ahead and jump in and we'll see how this can possibly be.

Let's look first at the sin of Isaac, understand its shape.

Genesis 27, 3 through 4.

Uh Isaac uh has committed himself to bless Esau, and he says this to his son Esau.

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.

So what is the sin of Isaac here?

The sin of Isaac is that he was told explicitly, he and Rebecca were told explicitly, that it is the younger son who will receive the blessing, not the older son.

In Genesis 25, verse 23, it says, The older shall serve the younger.

Genesis 25:23

And yet, here, in the face of that promise and this command from God, Isaac is relying on his own judgment and saying that his judgment of the situation is more important and better than God's judgment.

And so what he's doing is he's saying, the way that he's imagining the promise of God is this is uh almost like a spell or an incantation that he can just speak over whomever he wants, and then that will accomplish its purposes.

The way that Isaac is thinking about his Christianity is actually more like magic than it is like faithfulness.

If I just say the right words, I will be able to accomplish the purposes that I desire.

That's the way that he's thinking of his faith.

And so he doesn't think of the promises of God as something to be faithful to, that God is ultimately in control of, but instead he thinks of the promises of God as a power that he has been given to accomplish what he desires.

It's like a mini little prosperity gospel.

What are the promises of God?

They're a power that I've been given to accomplish what I want to happen in my life.

Now, you might be thinking, James, you're being a little harsh on Isaac.

I mean, we know that Jacob, the younger brother, was a real scoundrel, a real scallywag.

I'm trying to think of another pirate slur, but I can't.

It would be great to have a third.

Imagine I got a third there.

That would have been cool.

So perhaps Esau is actually the one who is more deserving, who is more faithful.

But the text actually doesn't allow that assessment.

Because just before this, we are told that Esau married two women from among the Canaanites.

Now that's bad because you're meant to marry within the family of promise.

And in case we had any wonder, was that bad?

Was that a sign of Esau's lack of character?

The text lets us know explicitly because it says in Genesis 26, 35, and these wives made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.

So we see in the text that Isaac had no reason to think that Esau was a man of character and therefore should receive the promise.

In fact, he had good reason to think the opposite.

Because, you know, like one bad wife from among the people we could let slide.

Like, ah, he just didn't expect her to be so bad.

But when it's the second one, it starts to look like this might be you, Esau.

So we see that happening in that there is no good reason that Isaac should think Esau should receive the blessing.

So why is it that Isaac loves Esau?

Why does Isaac so badly want Esau to receive the blessing?

The text tells us explicitly.

In Genesis chapter 25, verse 28, it says, Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

Genesis 25:28

Why did Isaac love Esau?

The food.

You can hear it, and prepare for me delicious food, such as I love.

You know, the last time we heard a phrase like that was God talking to Abraham and saying, Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and sacrifice him for me.

And he's I Isaac is saying the same thing.

Prepare for me that delicious food that I love.

Well, what are we meant to see in that?

Like this is too much of a love of food?

Probably there is such a thing.

We'll find out on our wine and cheese night.

But there's more than that here.

What we see is that when we abandon the judgment of God as the determining factor of what is good or what is right and what is wrong, the only thing that's left is appetite.

The last remaining judge is our own cravings.

So that when we say this is right or this is wrong, all that we're really describing is a matter of taste.

And we think of morality like this often in our culture, where we think that really there is no true morality, there is no absolute goodness or absolute wrongness.

There's not even such a thing as real beauty.

It's just in the eye of the beholder.

And so we we hold up uh objects and artwork that are that are miserable and awful, and we don't even have language to say that it's not beautiful.

Because we describe everything, all that matters in our lives is just a matter of taste.

So when we say something like the way the way that this was described in um philosophy class was with an example of Hitler, because that's the law.

He means bad.

He was bad.

I'm not apologizing for Hitler.

For the podcast.

But what we're saying when we say Hitler was bad, really, what we're saying is, boo, Hitler.

I don't like that.

That doesn't fit my appetites.

I don't like the way that that experience is happening.

Because we don't have the language when we've abandoned God to say that is wrong.

It doesn't matter if the whole world would agree with it, that is wrong.

It doesn't matter if it met all of our tastes, it's wrong.

You know, we need categories like right and wrong.

If we lose those, then we abandon any real hope of experiencing something like justice or distributing something like justice.

But instead, what we see and something like what happens with Isaac here is he's just a slave to his appetites.

And what's right is whatever tastes good, and what's wrong is whatever prevents him from getting what tastes good.

The whole world is centered on him.

The Bible describes that as being a slave to your appetites, which is ironic because we think of that, the ability to satisfy whatever cravings take place in you.

We think of that in our culture as the highest picture of liberation.

I am able in an unimpeded way to satisfy my appetites, which I determine for myself.

We think of that as absolute freedom.

The Bible describes that as slavery.

You're tossed around by your appetites, unable to participate in what is truly good.

Truly good comes from God.

If you're taking notes, you should write that one down.

Truly good comes from God.

So Isaac loves the food.

And that's why he wants to bless Esau.

That's Isaac's sin.

What's Esau's sin?

We might think, hearing this story, okay, Esau just goes out to go hunting, being obedient to his father.

So what's the sin in that?

Your father says, I'm going to bless you, you're the older son, go hunt.

I love the game that you hunt, and bring it back to me and cook for me, and I'll bless you.

Going and honoring that request doesn't seem like a sin, but remember, this birthright that he's going to get blessed with, Esau has already sold to Jacob.

So it's no longer in his ability to receive it.

What Esau should have said when Isaac said this was, Dad, thanks so much.

Like I love that you want to bless me.

But the blessing that you're going to give me, this birthright of inheritance, I actually already sold to Jacob.

And so it's no longer rightfully mine.

I vowed to him that I would sell it to him.

And do you remember the context in which Esau sold his birthright?

Or eat it to you.

And Esau said to Jacob, Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted.

Therefore his name was called Edom, because Edom sounds like red.

Red, Edom, you hear it?

Just kidding, only in Hebrew.

That's twice I've made that joke.

Jacob said, Sell me your birthright now.

What is the context?

What does he sell his birthright for?

Food.

For the stew.

What is he driven by?

What is right and wrong to him?

What is the foundation of morality to him?

Is it God says it so it's true and it's right, and my life needs to fit this because there is a real authority over me?

Or is it the only fundamental reality in existence is my appetite?

I wonder where Esau learned that.

You know, it makes you wonder what is it that they really loved about one another, Isaac and Esau?

When you read a parallel like this, it makes me think, I bet it wasn't just the food.

You know, just that he gave the food.

This is codependency.

This is when we're together, we justify one another's living just by our taste.

That can create a strong bond.

Outside the judgment of God, all the judgments we can make are reduced to appetite.

You can hear it.

Here's one way to hear it.

When we make moral claims in our culture, we add this little phrase, to me.

That just seems really wrong to me.

Okay, who cares?

You know, like we don't invade sovereign nations to me.

Congratulations.

Like we need words.

We need words like right, wrong, bad, good.

We need those categories.

We don't have them, then we're just competing appetites.

And then what happens when you're just a world of competing appetites?

You just have to legislate your appetite over the other person's appetite.

And you command them to submit to whatever your appetite is.

And so the highest ethical value that we have left in our culture is something like, don't yuck my yum.

You can't you can't build a society on that.

Because what why not?

That's not bad to me.

It's a imagine if a society were built on something like that.

What you'd probably see develop is something like some warring factions, each with these different preferences, and then they'd shout them back and forth at each other, and they'd have nothing outside of themselves to appeal to to say one of them is right and one of them is wrong.

You'd see a real fracture ripple down the middle of a culture if this were to become its central value, a value of just appetites.

If I ever see something like that happen, I'll write to you and let you know.

The sin of Rebecca.

Okay, I gotta say this.

This is why absolutes, moral absolutes, are agents of true unity.

Do you see that?

Saying whatever fits your tastes or your preferences feels like a move of radical inclusion, but it's not.

Because we aren't included by all of us throwing our preferences at one another.

We're included by appealing to something outside of ourselves that we can all look to and all aim at.

And that because what this does is it means that what happens when there's a moral absolute outside of us that's just taste.

Like when I like when I'm like, you know, if you're evangelizing someone and it's like, Christianity seems like it's good for you, and then I would want to say something like, that's not what I think.

I think Christianity is good for you, that feels like, oh, this is so oppressive, and you're um this is a you know, this will create just disunity and fracture, but it doesn't because when you appeal to something outside of yourself, you're saying, you're under this thing, but so am I.

Now we have something that we're all under that can actually create unity amongst us.

Because how is unity developed?

It's by looking at something higher, it's by looking at a at a at a value above you.

You know, we we we don't design a flag and then bury it in the ground.

You design a flag and then you wave it above a people.

And you wave it above so that we all look up towards a higher value.

And in that higher value, there's unity of something that we're all beneath.

And so don't let this foolish language of absolute inclusion trick you into thinking that it will lead to anything other than radical division.

It is actually a language of clear authority that creates true unity.

The sin of Rebecca.

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.

Okay, so Rebecca here is talking to Jacob.

Rebecca overheard Isaac saying she was going to bless Esau, and she comes to Jacob and is like, Hey, we gotta move quick.

Go get me some of those goats, I'll cook them.

I know how to make that delicious food that he loves.

Doesn't it make you wonder, since Isaac has been blind, how often the food that he ate from Esau was from Rebecca?

And Rebecca is willing to deceive her husband Isaac.

But we also know that she's deceiving him in the right direction, right?

I mean, it doesn't it seem like the ends might justify the means?

We've got to get the promise of God to the right place.

And the right place we know is Jacob, because God already told us.

And so in that circumstance, shouldn't we just uh do whatever it takes, pull out all the stops to get the blessing to Jacob, especially when the margins are that thin.

What we see is that Rebecca's approach to the promise is loveless and faithless.

Now, it's loveless because she sees the sinful weakness of her husband Isaac, and she never provides him the opportunity to come into the truth.

Instead, she thinks something like, Isaac is a slave to his appetites.

Always has been, I bet he always will be.

So she writes him off.

Never gives him the opportunity to face, hey, Isaac, I was just in the other room.

I heard you saying you were going to bless Esau.

Do you remember the oracle of God when I was pregnant?

Do you remember when I felt the warring in my body and we were given a vision of what the future held by God?

What might Isaac have said?

We don't know.

We don't know.

He could have repented, he could have been brought into the light, but instead she refused to hope on behalf of her spouse.

It's loveless.

And it's faithless.

She viewed the promise of God as something that she needed to do.

The promise of God is guidance for me to accomplish.

And so she approaches it with no real faith.

Because faith would say, even if I come to my husband and I might stir up all of this chaos in our family and in our relationship, I know that there is no threat to the promise ending up in the right place.

I know that in me trying to move and bring this into the light, I am not risking at all the promise ending up where God intended it to end up.

Why am I not risking it at all?

Because it's the promise of God.

What makes me think I could thwart it?

And so because the promises of God are so certain, we can remain faithful and loving to God even when it looks like they won't accomplish what he is trying to do.

We know they will.

We know it will succeed.

I think I've mentioned this movie before.

Have any of you seen the movie A Hidden Life?

It's a Terence Malik movie.

He's the best Christian filmmaker.

Yeah.

Who wooed?

No, Bo.

Yeah.

We've already talked about it.

Um it's a movie about um an Austrian soldier who gets drafted to fight with the Nazis.

And then and he doesn't go.

And instead he goes and he goes into prison.

And I don't want to give away the ending, but it's not happy.

And the whole time people are just telling him over and over again, you are accomplishing nothing.

This is a useless protest.

This amounts to nothing, you know, for to stand against the Nazis like this.

And even it's such a good movie because it's a even all the arguments are just right.

The things that we would say to one another are just said to him.

Of this is useless, it's impractical, it's foolish, God doesn't want this for your life.

Look how hard it is on your family.

And then the point of the movie is that in this hiddenness, in this space where it seems like he's doing nothing, we can draw no line to the promises of God, the accomplishment of a better world, the kingdom of heaven moving towards the earth in this invisible protest, and yet there's this glory that shines from it.

That's faith in the promises of God.

It's able to say, like, I will follow what is right because it is right.

And I can do that because I know that the outcome is in God's hands.

Well, Rebecca does the opposite here.

She says, the outcome, the promises of God are not certainties, they're mere direction.

And I am the one who must realize them.

And so it's faithless in how solid the promises of God really are.

Now let's look at the sin of Jacob.

Genesis 27, 12 to 13.

Perhaps my father, he raises some concerns, practical concerns about the plan.

Perhaps my father will feel 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 on me, my son, only obey my voice and go bring them to me.

His concern was that Esau was a very hairy man, and Jacob was a very smooth man.

The Bible's words.

Thus saith the Lord.

And he thinks, when my father, when I come near to my father and he lays his hands on me to bless me, he's going to be like, What, you're too smooth.

You're not Esau.

So she Rebecca comes up with a plan, which is like, I'll take some of the goat's skin and we'll put it on your forearms and on the back of your neck, and we'll put you in Esau's clothes, and we'll make you into Esau.

But here's this phrase.

Now that might seem like this should belong in the Rebecca's sin category, but it belongs in Jacob's sin category, because this shows a pattern of how Jacob lives his life, which is always outsourcing the cost onto someone else, and then entering a lie which allows him to reap the reward.

His lies are crafted so that he never has any skin in the game.

In this way, literally, it's not his skin in the game.

This is where that phrase comes from.

I don't think that's true.

But there is a, so he's saying, he he goes through with this plan after his mother has said, I will bear all the cost.

So Jacob says, okay, if this goes wrong, then it will just be on you.

Don't you see this is the perfect anti-gospel?

The gospel is where Jesus says, I will take responsibility even for your sins, and I will bear the cost so that you might gain the reward.

Jacob lives in this perfect anti-gospel where he says, I won't, Jesus says, I will identify with you.

Here we see in Jacob, I won't even identify with myself.

So he dresses like Esau.

He puts Esau's clothes on, as I said, and they smell like Esau.

He puts the skin of the goat over his skin so that he feels hairy.

He takes the food from his mother's hand so that he has the right food, so it looks like he went out hunting.

Let's just look at the image of this.

Jacob has brought his identity exclusively into the world of externals.

His dress, what covers his skin.

He is all and only those things that you can see on the outside.

There is no internal Jacob.

Jacob thinks that if I can live my life in such a way as I can get my externals right, if I can just get the right clothes at the right place at the right time, if I can say the right words, whether they're true or not, true of who I am or not, if I can just line up those externals, then I will be able to bring the blessing into my life.

What is the blessing?

For him, it's literally the blessing of his father.

Who doesn't need to hear the blessing of their father?

But he's doing in order to receive that, he is fabricating a reality around himself and creating an absolute denial of the real Jacob.

And so how does he receive the blessing?

Genesis 27, 24.

Isaac says, Are you really my son Esau?

He answered, I am.

And what does the blessing mean?

What does the blessing mean when you know that the blessing is of a fabrication of your own creation?

What does it mean to receive all the rewards that the world can offer when you know this isn't you?

To be honest, you can barely even say your own name.

Esau feels his hands, they're hairy.

He asks again, your voice doesn't sound like you.

He draws close, he smells him, he eats the food.

What we see in, excuse me, Isaac does that.

I think I said Esau.

Isaac, he is marching down his senses.

He can't see already.

Now, what does it mean for a man of faith when he can't see?

How much of a loss is that?

Not much.

We walk by faith, not by sight.

But when he couldn't walk by sight, instead of walking by faith and calling for Jacob, you know, he could even be certain that he could call for Jacob in front of Rebecca, his wife, and know that Jacob would show up because he knows Rebecca wants to see Jacob blessed.

But instead of walking by faith when his sight failed him, he just marches down his senses to things that are less and less reliable.

So he goes to touch.

And then from touch, he goes to taste.

Well, it does feel like him.

Well, it actually goes to hearing first.

Doesn't quite sound like you, is it you?

Yeah, I'm Esau.

Okay, well, let me feel you, okay.

Well, let me taste this food.

Yeah, this is what it would taste like.

And then finally, the the thing that he makes most reliable.

Well, listen, in verse 27.

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.

Isn't that weird?

He can't see, remember.

But he says, see the smell.

He's trying to make this least reliable mode of identifying someone.

I used to work with a carpenter.

I know, Pastor worked with a carpenter, it's a little on the nose.

When I was uh just out of high school, and when uh whenever there was like a very complicated thing that he was working on, and I was handing him tools to work on, which is what I did, um, I would say, How are we gonna uh you know figure out how to get that piece to fit in that one?

He used to say, uh, probably by smell.

It's funny.

Especially it's carpenter funny, it's not like so the point is you you can't do things by smell.

And then Isaac is saying, see the smell of my son.

Look at how we're supposed to see, like, wow, he is foolishly confident in the least reliable aspects of himself.

It says the smell of the field that the Lord has blessed.

We'll keep going into verses twenty-eight and twenty-nine so we hear the whole blessing.

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.

I just want us to see the weight of this moment.

Isaac thinks he's saying these words to Esau.

Jacob knows, Isaac thinks he's saying these words to Esau.

So think of what that means for Jacob.

Be Lord over your brothers.

He hears spoken over him, and he knows it's not him.

May your mother's sons bow down to you.

He hears being spoken over him, and he knows it's not him.

It's the the one that it's being spoken over is just the externals.

Jacob couldn't even say his own name to receive the blessing.

Now, I don't want to step on future James' toes, but there's uh there's another sermon here because this becomes the story of Jacob's life.

Jacob's life is a story of learning to say his own name.

And Jacob's name is a hard one to say.

Because in one sense, in one sense, it means it's grabber of the heel.

There's a sense in which there's a doggedness, a faithfulness, an inability to let go.

He's driven and determined.

And there's a there's a not letting go feature to this, but there's this other feature which is deceptive and wicked and cruel and cunning, and will do or become whatever it takes in order to gain, whatever that next thing is, in order to gain the blessing.

And finally, we'll see later.

Jacob will wrestle God.

And when Jacob wrestles God, he doggedly holds on to this angel.

And Jacob says, I won't let go until you bless me.

Do you hear how that's just in his name?

And then God says, What is your name?

Then at that time, Jacob says, Jacob.

And God blesses him, changes his name to Israel.

The only way to really receive the blessing that your heart needs to hear.

The only way that it's actually meaningful is when you say it with your name.

How do we come to the Lord?

We come to the Lord as us, as you, your sin, your glory.

Your fears, your deceptiveness, your cowardice, your triumph.

You can only receive the blessing from the Lord as you.

This is the nature of the gospel.

How hard it is to be honest with ourselves before the Lord.

It requires us entering into an incredible mess of looking at clearly who we are.

And there can be times where there's nothing else in the world I would there, I would rather see anything else in the world than who I am.

And yet that is how God calls us to Himself to receive the blessing.

That's why we practice confession at the beginning of our services.

Now, there's one final point that I want us to see in this.

Because I think a lot of the fear is if God knew who we really were, he wouldn't bless us.

And if our lives were to really get involved with the promises of God, we would only corrupt them.

You know, it this is a church.

We're a congregation.

Some folks will become members today.

You know what that means?

If you really get involved, start making friends, you're going to start to hurt each other.

And others are going to hurt you.

This is what it's like out here.

So, what does it mean when the promises of God are hurled into people that are really themselves and as are corrupt as the Bible says we are?

Well, the transition of this promise shows us what happens.

And there's a parallel that I wanted us to see.

When the disciples had just started preaching Jesus Christ crucified around Jerusalem, they were healing people, and thousands were being added to their number.

And they were told by the high priest to stop preaching in the name of Jesus.

And so they're called into a council and told, don't speak anymore in the name of Jesus.

And the threats are mounting.

You'll be killed if you speak in the name of Jesus anymore.

And so the disciples get together and they pray.

And remember, the crucifixion is fresh on their mind.

They know these aren't empty threats of murder.

And this is one of the phrases that they pray.

For truly, in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

How would you describe Pontius Pilate and Herod and the Gentiles and the Jews together shouting, crucify him, crucify him, crucify him?

I would probably say something like, Oh, yeah, you mean the ones that stand in direct opposition to the promises of God?

And then how did the disciples see it?

They said, all those people, they didn't stand a chance in the face of the promises of God.

What were they really doing?

Whatever God's hand and God's plan had predestined to take place.

So we could replace the names.

The promises are being passed from generation to generation.

But then Isaac and Esau and Rebekah and Jacob were all gathered together to sin and work against the good propagation and movement of this promised family and what happened?

Whatever God's hand and God's plan had predestined to take place.

So then how do we relate to the promises of God?

We relate to them with an absolute faith.

What does it mean to participate in the promises of God?

This isn't just some magical spell that we will into our lives to make good things happen.

The promises of God are also a warning.

This will happen.

You can participate joyfully.

Or you can work things in such a way where your whole family hates you now.

In Christ, we see the promises of God absolutely fulfilled, working through the sins of humanity.

I want you to see that absoluteness and come to him, trusting that you can tell him your name.

Because God himself enters into the mess and the chaos of our sinful lives.

But the difference is when he touches someone who is unclean, he doesn't become unclean.

He makes them clean.

When he enters the faithlessness of the way that we approach him, he remains faithful.

He is the only one who can give the blessing that your heart desires.

A blessing that sees you as you are and justly blesses you because of the sacrifice that he has made.

Okay, let's.

Are there any questions today, Eric?

Was Isaac's blessing correlated with God's blessing?

If Isaac had blessed Esau, would God's blessing have transferred to him?

You know, part of what I was thinking with this passage was that when we see such a high view of God's sovereignty, God's being absolutely in control of everything, like what we see in a passage like this, it means that there's there are no counterfactuals.

Do you see what I mean?

Like there, you you you literally can't run a counterfactual on your life.

There is no sliding doors.

You know the movie?

There's only the way things have have run through this one story of redemption that God is weaving.

There aren't counterfactuals.

So this means that we enter our lives in this strange way where questions, it's a good question, uh, but I it points us to this deeper thing of I think with the sovereignty that we've seen described here, I can't even ask a question like that.

So, what does that mean for your life?

Did I marry the wrong person?

No such thing.

There's no such category.

Would my life have been better if I took this career or this other career?

What are you talking about?

Your life where you didn't take this career.

There is no such thing.

So what does that mean?

That means we're living in this.

In one sense, it's like, wow, I'm very trapped in my life.

And in another sense, it's I can trust the Lord that I'm not living in the wrong one.

So what faithfulness is he calling me to today?

Does that make sense?

Okay.

Now in first Corinthians, let me pull it up.

1123, 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.

Skin in the game.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

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.

The greatest news we have is that throughout all of our sinfulness, the Lord is accomplishing his promises.

And his promises are yes towards us because of Christ's sacrifice.

And so we come to him as we are, and then we're able to receive his blessing as we proclaim that the sacrifice that he made is counted to us, so that we are freed by him.

And we realize that our lives are not amounting to the satisfaction of our appetites, but they're amounting to something far greater and far more glorious and meaningful, to the very glory of God Himself.

So come to the table, Christian, eat today.

Eat with Jesus, your friend, who knows you as you are.

Say your name before Him.

Let Him bless you there, not with externals, but with a transformed heart.

Holy Father, I pray that you would attend this time, Lord, that we might know you more clearly, the glory of your gospel, Lord, how you call us to know who we really are, that we might lay down that false self, take up the reality of who we are, and hold it before you and trust in your sovereign goodness, that we might be renewed, transformed, a new creation in you.

Father, let us find ourselves in you.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.