Scripture: Genesis 27: 1-45
Sermon: Blessing and Deception
Topics: Blessing, Fighting, Families
Preached: March 2, 2008, Woodlawn CRC
Rev. Mike Abma
GENESIS 27: 1-45
When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called his elder son Esau and said to him, ‘My son’; and he answered, ‘Here I am.’ 2He said, ‘See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. 3Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me. 4Then prepare for me savoury food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.’
5 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, 6Rebekah said to her son Jacob, ‘I heard your father say to your brother Esau, 7“Bring me game, and prepare for me savoury food to eat, that I may bless you before the Lord before I die.” 8Now therefore, my son, obey my word as I command you. 9Go to the flock, and get me two choice kids, so that I may prepare from them savoury food for your father, such as he likes;10and you shall take it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.’ 11But Jacob said to his mother Rebekah, ‘Look, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a man of smooth skin. 12Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him, and bring a curse on myself and not a blessing.’ 13His mother said to him, ‘Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my word, and go, get them for me.’14So he went and got them and brought them to his mother; and his mother prepared savoury food, such as his father loved. 15Then Rebekah took the best garments of her elder son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob; 16and she put the skins of the kids on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. 17Then she handed the savoury food, and the bread that she had prepared, to her son Jacob.
18 So he went in to his father, and said, ‘My father’; and he said, ‘Here I am; who are you, my son?’ 19Jacob said to his father, ‘I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, so that you may bless me.’ 20But 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.’ 21Then Isaac said to Jacob, ‘Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.’ 22So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, ‘The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.’ 23He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands; so he blessed him. 24He said, ‘Are you really my son Esau?’ He answered, ‘I am.’ 25Then he said, ‘Bring it to me, that I may eat of my son’s game and bless you.’ So he brought it to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank. 26Then his father Isaac said to him, ‘Come near and kiss me, my son.’ 27So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said,
‘Ah, the smell of my son
is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.
28 May God give you of the dew of heaven,
and of the fatness of the earth,
and plenty of grain and wine.
29 Let peoples 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!’
30 As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of his father Isaac, his brother Esau came in from his hunting. 31He also prepared savoury food, and brought it to his father. And he said to his father, ‘Let my father sit up and eat of his son’s game, so that you may bless me.’ 32His father Isaac said to him, ‘Who are you?’ He answered, ‘I am your firstborn son, Esau.’ 33Then Isaac trembled violently, 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 blessed he shall be!’ 34When Esau heard his father’s words, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, ‘Bless me, me also, father!’ 35But he said, ‘Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.’ 36Esau said, ‘Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright; and look, now he has taken away my blessing.’ Then he said, ‘Have you not reserved a blessing for me?’ 37Isaac answered Esau, ‘I have already made him your lord, and I have given him all his brothers as servants, and with grain and wine I have sustained him. What then can I do for you, my son?’ 38Esau said to his father, ‘Have you only one blessing, father? Bless me, me also, father!’ And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.
39 Then his father Isaac answered him:
‘See, away from the fatness of the earth shall your home be,
and away from the dew of heaven on high.
40 By your sword you shall live,
and you shall serve your brother;
but when you break loose,
you shall break his yoke from your neck.’
41 Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.’ 42But the words of her elder son Esau were told to Rebekah; so she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, ‘Your brother Esau is consoling himself by planning to kill you. 43Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran, 44and stay with him for a while, until your brother’s fury turns away— 45until your brother’s anger against you turns away, and he forgets what you have done to him; then I will send, and bring you back from there. Why should I lose both of you in one day?’
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION – The Blessing
For the book of Genesis, this is a long story.
It is also something of a strange story.
Part of the strangeness comes because we aren’t quite sure what to make of this “blessing” that is being fought over. What is this blessing? And once Isaac realizes that he has given it to the wrong son, why couldn’t he simply say, “Oops, I made a mistake. Jacob, you give it back so I can give Esau the blessing.”
What is there about this blessing that is irreversible?
Perhaps we should think of the blessing in terms of a promise.
These words of blessing, these words of promise
were like the last will and testament of the aging Isaac.
Instead of being written on paper or preserved on scrolls,
they were spoken in words.
These spoken words have a power all of their own.
These words somehow have the power to bind a person’s life
to the promises of the past
and to the promises of the future.
Once a promise is made, once a promise is spoken,
it cannot be taken back or removed without being broken.
That is why it is good to see this “blessing” as having
both great power
but also great fragility.
The words have to be honored and kept intact.
They cannot simply be scattered or divided.
According to the custom of the day,
the oldest son received the blessing of his father.
In keeping with that custom, Isaac is determined to give his blessing to Esau,
his oldest son.
FOUR MAIN CHARACTERS
Whenever we hear a story, I think it is only natural to think
“who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?”
It is also natural for us to think that since the promise follows Jacob,
he and anyone who helps him must be the good guy.
But that is sort of hard to do in this story.
Take Rebekah for example. Rebekah is the one who seems to push Jacob to get that blessing before Esau could get it.
She is the one orchestrating things in the background.
She is the one who get the goats ready to eat;
Who wraps Jacob’s hands and arms in goathair;
Who is willing to take the blame if it all goes wrong.
Rebekah sets this all in motion.
So is Rebekah to be congratulated or is she to be scolded?
That certainly is difficult to figure out.
Theologians from Augustine to John Calvin have said that she did the right thing.
That she displayed a holy zeal in making sure Jacob received the blessing.
But does that mean it had to go this way?
If God had planned for the promise to follow Jacob,
did he need such an elaborate lie,
such a bold deception, to get him the blessing?
Then there is Jacob.
Read Genesis 25-27 and Jacob really does sound like “a momma’s boy.”
Here he seems more than willing to listen to what his mother says.
His only hesitation is not a moral qualm about lying,
but rather a practical qualm about, “Will this even work?
What if it back-fires and I get a curse instead of a blessing?”
(Jacob always was good at looking out for himself.)
Once Rebekah offers to take the blame, Jacob goes to his father as if he were Esau.
No matter how you cut it, Jacob tells his father at least 3 bald-faced lies.
Again, theologians from Augustine to Calvin have been ready to try explain these lies.
Augustine fudged. He said they weren’t really lies, they were mysteries….hmmm?[1]
And Calvin, he portrayed Jacob as the victim —
Esau was the bully and Jacob was his punching bag.
Sort of like in the Harry Potter books,
Cousin Dudley is the spoiled bully
and Harry Potter is the picked-on hero.
Calvin writes that it is no wonder that Jacob did what he did.[2]
But is that really fair to say?
Does the Bible really give us enough evidence to portray Esau as a bully?
Besides, is that a good enough reason for Jacob to tell such a whopper of a lie?
Regardless of how you look at it,
it is hard to see this as one of Jacob’s finest hours.
If anything, our sympathies are with the losers in this passage – with Isaac and Esau.
Poor blind old Isaac.
There he is groping for the truth, asking again and again,
“Are you my son Esau or not?”
He can’t trust his blurry eyes.
He isn’t quite sure he can trust his hearing either.
But when he feels this boy, he feels like Esau.
Then, when he holds him close,
and smells his clothes, he certainly smelled like Esau.
And so Isaac, tellingly, is betrayed with a kiss.
And then there is Esau. How can we not feel for Esau?
When he discovers what happened, the Bible is very explicit that he gives an “exceedingly great and bitter cry.”
We can almost sense his anguish when he pleads,
“Bless me, me also, father.”
We can see the picture of this sobbing son who desperately wants a blessing from his father, and this sobbing father who has so little left to give.
FAMILIES
We see this sort of thing in families throughout history.
One person in the family seems to succeed and another seems to fail miserably.
One is seemingly a winner and another seemingly a loser.
I read a book about the American President Theodore Roosevelt not so long ago.
That book reminded me that Teddy Roosevelt had a brother named Elliott.
For some reason,
wherever Teddy succeeded, Elliott floundered;
wherever Teddy grew in confidence, Elliott sunk in despair;
whenever Teddy triumphed over adversity, Elliot became overwhelmed by demons,
especially the demon of alcoholism which killed him at age 34.
Why is that?
Why was one Roosevelt seemingly blessed with all the confidence and charisma,
and why was the other Roosevelt seemingly left with so little?
That happens to be the story of more American Presidents.
Think of all the Presidents who had brothers who often embarrassed them:
Richard Nixon had a brother, Donald, who had a scandalous career in finances;
Jimmy Carter with his beer-drinking, hard-living brother, Billy Carter;
Bill Clinton with a brother Roger who spent time in prison for cocaine possession;
George Bush with a brother Neil, known for his involvement in the savings and loans
scandal.
Why is it that some seemingly succeed and others seemingly fail?
That is a very difficult question to answer.
There are no easy answers to questions like this.
FATHER’S BLESSING
What we can say is that everyone, absolutely everyone,
needs the Father’s blessing.
Here, in this season of Lent, we remember that
Jesus is the one betrayed by a kiss.
Here, in this season of Lent, we remember that Jesus is our brother,
who, by all appearances, was the failed king, the loser.
But it is through Jesus, and Jesus alone,
that we all are eligible for the Father’s blessing.
It is through Jesus,
that all the promises of the Father come to us.
Receiving this blessing is not based on how good we are,
or how smart we are,
or how crafty we are.
Receiving this blessing is a gift, always a gift of grace.
It is a gift we don’t deserve.
Receiving the blessing of the Father has always been a gift;
it was a gift Jacob did not deserve…and yet he received it.
Receiving the heavenly Father’s blessing is a gift we do not deserve…and yet we receive it.
AMAZING GRACE
Perhaps no hymn expresses this more clearly than the hymn Amazing Grace.
You may remember that this hymn was written by John Newton.
Newton had lived the hard life of a sailor,
He had also lived the brutal life of a slave trader.
He knew he was living a lie, and yet, he lived it because it promised him wealth.
It wasn’t until he almost died in a storm at sea
that he resolved to change his ways,
to ask God for his blessing,
and to ask that his sins might be forgiven.
Newton eventually did change his way,
did feel forgiven,
and did feel blessed by God.
He became a preacher and someone who spoke against slavery.
But he never forgot how amazing grace was:
how unexpected,
how undeserved.
Even on his grave,
He asked that these words be put on them:
John Newton…once an infidel…a trader of slaves,
Was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed
to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.
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