God's People Birthed: Birthright and Blessing

Preached by Josh McCoy on 6/2/24

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We're startup church. We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together. And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more. You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that. We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today, his life, um, Jacob story is such a pivotal moment, but it's such importantly woven into everything that came before him and especially everything that comes after him. So we're going to dig right in. So we're going to get right in this vehicle. We're going to drive, please, you know, strap in, get buckled. We're going to jump right into this thing. Yeah, yeah, I do. I think I already said I do have a vehicle now. It's great time. Um, I, I, I feel, I feel, uh, I'm adulting a little more, uh, in the last few weeks than I had beforehand. I'm really excited about that. Um, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna jump in. So this first part kind of want to do a little background info into this, right? The greatest promise, right? This is what happens before Jacob. This is so important, right? Genesis 12, one through three. One thing that we've read before, right? Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you. I will curse and all in, in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So this is your first time here, or if you've been traveling with this, the same pace that we've been. If you're reading this, something that we've proposed is how will God make Abram, Abram's family a great nation, right? How will one family, one line be blessed through the entirety of human mankind, right? God reaffirms his covenant with Abram a couple times and he has to keep reminding Abram because he waits until Abram is basically as good as dead to, to finally give him a son, right? And right, this is, this is all through kind of looking at the timeline here as we get into Jacob, right? So they name their son, Isaac, right? They have a son, you know, Abram is a hundred years old and they named him Isaac because that's the one, it means he laughs, but Isaac is more than just a firstborn. He's the son of a promise. His physical inheritance of sheep and tents and servants was large because Abram was being blessed. He's a very wealthy man of the earth standard, but his spiritual inheritance was priceless. Isaac held the promise of Abram and the promise would be passed down through him. And then Isaac marries Rebecca and they get pregnant and the drama intensifies and we'll kind of, you know, this, this car stopping at this, uh, this pit stop and they have twins. The promise has to run through one of them, not both. And now here's where the drama kind of sets. Esau is born first, but Jacob is grasping at his heel. Esau means red and hairy. That will matter later. I'm just going to set that for you. Jacob means heel grasper, which was an idiom for trickster or deceiver. That will also matter as we get into the text. But first a bit of a background of the title of this lesson. It was Jacob, birthright and blessing. So go to the next slide. The birthright. Esau had the birthright. He was the first son out, the firstborn, which meant he would get a double portion, a double portion of everything Isaac had. Jacob would get a single portion. And then the second, the blessing, more of the spiritual side of this, you know, inheritance. This was like a prophetic word spoken over the oldest son that he had, that had the greatest meeting. It was passed down of the leadership and direction for the future of the family. Most importantly for this family, the future of God's family. And if you don't know Jacob, we're going to get into it a little, it'll make a lot of sense. If I grew up religious, so like the story of Jacob, right? Everything we've been looking through Abraham, right? And Isaac and Jacob, like it's like refreshing old cod libs that had kind of been sitting there since, you know, it was eighth grade, the first time we did like a real deep dive in the Old Testament. And let's be honest, I probably was sleeping through at least half those classes. So I'm really grateful to get to look at this from a strong spiritual, I really want to dig into this, but it's so innate in our human nature to look at this story and have great insight, in hindsight, knowledge, you know, it's like, oh, well, I would, this is obviously would have done it this way. I would have done it this way. This is the way that I would want to do this. What I love about Jacob, and more importantly, the story of birthright and blessing is it's simplistic relatability. The story can come down and circle around one word. That word is hunger in the literal and the figurative sense, right? How relatable, how relatable. As humans, we are driven by hunger. You know, that has not changed since the Old Testament, whether we like it or not. Our hunger determines a lot of the actions we do on a day-to-day basis. How many times you're like, I'm not doing anything until I have some food. You know, even the idea of like, we kind of hunger for coffee as a substance, right? This morning, right? I tried to get there early, and there was no coffee, and I was like, I'm going to need coffee before I go out there and speak, right? I'm like, I need it, right? A lot of the things we do are determined by this, you know, this desperate need for hunger to fulfill it, to satisfy it, right? So what we do is really determined by the satisfaction of hunger. I'm going to tell you a story about this, all right? Uh-oh, uh-oh is right. So when, not the bean burrito, when I, there's a story about bean burrito, if you want to hear it, Jaren will tell it halfway. When I was 15 years old, I got my first elk when I was hunting. It was in this place called Gunnison, Colorado. Kind of like everything, that will matter, the place matters. You know, there are different types of hunts that you can do for different animals. I know in the Midwest, especially, it is very typical to sit up in a tree blind or some kind of, you know, stationary, you know, setting and wait for the animal to come to you, right? Be patient, sit, let it come, and then when it comes, you can imagine the rest, right? For elk especially, and especially in Colorado, you're hiking. You're hiking in the places to get it. You know, the hike that we had to do, so Gunnison sits in this little valley. It sits in this, and there's a massive canyon on the back side. So there's a lot of hills and little valleys to get up and down places, and I could talk a lot about how, what valleys and how we did it, but that would take so much time to explain. But the whole lesson, we're going to, we're going to condense it into this. We hiked up across some valleys and some hills. It was about three to four miles in, and God bless my brother. My brother does more hiking than me. He is more athletically in shape, and he's just a, he's a crazy hiker guy. He's one of, you know, he's one of those guys. He'd be Alex's, like, best friend right there. They'd go hiking everywhere, right? And he hikes on the top of the mountain, scares all the elk down. I get an elk, but in all the excitement, kind of forget one thing. We hiked three to four miles in. You have to hike three to four miles out. And when I hiked in, I didn't have 200 extra pounds of meat to carry out. And that time, it was getting so cold. Gunnison is extremely cold, because it sits on the backside of a canyon. A lot of cold air blasts through it. It's probably somewhere in, like, five to zero degree range. I have to take my gloves off to, you know, properly dress the elk. Get it ready to transfer back to the car. And I just remember, we got some rope, got it in the hind legs. And me and my brother carrying the whole thing behind us, just rope over the shoulder, and just carrying it up and down these hills. I'd die today if I tried that. I'd just be like, it's either the elk or me are going. One of us is staying, one of us isn't, right? Like, if you guys want the elk, that's fine. Like, I'll stay here. This is my, I guess this is my time to see Jesus. But 15-year-old, I was like, I'm getting this elk. And we got back to that car. My hands were so cold. It was probably one of the coldest I've ever felt in my life. And I was hungry, right? I got there. And so we traveled about 10 minutes back into town, 15 minutes. It's not far from it. And we stop at this little diner. Gunnison is a po-dunk town. It is the idea of a one-horse town. It's not known for its five-star food dining. We get to this meal. And I remember it to this day. I ordered a full rack of ribs. I can guarantee you those ribs weren't good at all. We're in a small town. I guarantee you today, if I were to eat that, I'd be like, that probably wasn't a good meal. But after all that walking, after the highs and lows of getting into my first animal and all the pain, those are the best ribs I've ever had in my life. I was so satisfied. No one could tell me differently. I would have done just anything to satisfy that hunger in that moment. And so enough with that hunger. Take that in mind, that desperateness. And now we're going to take that right into what Jacob and Esau and their story, the hunger, the different types of hunger they have. So let's jump into this. Genesis 25. Genesis 25, verses 29 through 34. This is the first part. This is about the birthright. Verse nine, it says, once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. When he said to Jacob, quick, let me have some of the red stew, I'm famished. This is why he was also called Edom. Jacob replied, first, tell me your birthright. Look, I'm about to die, Esau said. What good is the birthright to me? But Jacob said, swear to me first. So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank and then he got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright. Just a quick little thought here. Jacob secures the double portion birthright that we talked about in the beginning. Should have been Esau's. I just explained how I'm a hungry man. I would have done a ton for that full rack of ribs. I'd like to say I would not been so hungry to give away a birthright, but that's the idea we're in. Coming home from such a famished time, the willingness to change anything and Jacob's willingness to get anything. There's something deeper going on with Esau than just hunger, but first let's see what happens to the second part, the blessing. This is a big one. It's gonna be on here. I don't know how well you can read it. It was tough to put 40 verses on two slides, but Genesis 27, verses one through 40. I'm gonna read it all. Once again, buckle in, get on your Bibles, read it with me here. When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called for Esau, his older son, and said to him, my son. Here I am, he answered. Isaac said, I am now an old man and don't know the day of my death. Now then, get your equipment and your quiver and your bow and go out to the open country to hunt some wild game for me. Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat so I may give you my blessing before I die. Now Rebecca was listening as Isaac spoke to his son Esau. When Esau left for open country to hunt game and bring it back, Rebecca said to her son Jacob, look, I overheard your father say to your brother Esau, bring me some game, prepare me some tasty food to eat so I may give you my blessing in the presence of the Lord before I die. Now my son, listen carefully and do what I tell you. Go out to the flock and bring me two choice young goats so I can prepare some tasty food for your father, just the way he likes it. Then take it to your father to eat so that he may give you his blessing before he dies. Jacob said to Rebecca, his mother, but my brother Esau is a hairy man while I have smooth skin. What if my father touches me? I would appear to be tricking him and he would bring a curse on myself rather than a blessing. His mother said to him, my son, let the curse fall on me. Just do what I say, go and get it for me. So he went and got them, brought them to his mother and she prepared some tasty food just the way his father liked it. Then Rebecca took the best clothes of Esau, her older son, which she had in the house and put them on her younger son, Jacob. She also covered his hands and the smooth parts of his neck with goatskin. When she handed to her son, Jacob, the tasty food and the bread she had made, he went to his father and said, my father. Yes, my son, he answered, who is it? Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Please sit up and eat some of my game. So you may give me your blessing. Isaac asked his son, how did you find it so quickly for me? The Lord gave me success, he replied. Then Isaac said to Jacob, come near so I could touch you, my son, to know whether you really are my son, Esau or not. Jacob went close to his father, Isaac, who touched him and said, the voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau. He did not recognize him for his hands were hairy like those of his brother Esau, so he proceeded to bless him. Are you really my son, Esau, he asked. I am, he replied. Then he said, my son, bring me some of your game to eat so I may give you my blessing. Jacob brought it to him and he ate and he brought some wine and he drank. Then his father, Isaac, said to him, come here, my son, and kiss me. So he went to him and kissed him. When Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, he blessed him and said, ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you heaven's due and earth's richness and abundance of grain and new wine. May nations serve you and people bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers and may the son of your mother bow down to you. May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed. After Isaac finished blessing him and Jacob had scarcely left his father's presence, his brother came in from hunting. He too prepared some tasty food and brought it to his father. Then he said to him, my father, please sit up and eat some of my game so that you may give me your blessing. His father, Isaac, asked him, who are you? I am your son, he answered. Your firstborn, Esau. Isaac trembled violently and said, who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me? I ate it just before you came and I blessed him. And indeed he will be blessed. When Esau heard his father's word, he bursted out with a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, bless me too. Me too, my father. Esau said, but he said, your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing. Esau said, isn't he rightly named Jacob? This is the second time he has taken advantage of me. He took my birthright and now he's taking my blessing. Then he asked, haven't you reserved any blessing for me? Isaac answered Esau, I have made him Lord over and he made all his relatives and his servants and I have sustained him with grain and new wine. So what can I possibly do for you, my son? Esau said to his father, do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, father. Then Esau wept aloud. His father, Isaac answered him, your dwelling will be away from earth's richestness, away from the dew of heaven above. You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from your neck. There's a lot here. You can hear even from Isaac, the greatness of this promise. The promise that now is in Jacob's hands. It's so interesting because all five of the senses are mentioned in this account. Isaac hears the voice of Jacob, but he feels the goat skin of the hairy man who resembles Esau. He tastes the wild game that he loves that reminds him of Esau. And then when he brings Jacob in, what does he smell? Smells the clothes of Esau. The only sense missing in Isaac was the sight because he could not see. But God allows Isaac to see in a greater way and choose the son that he thinks he wants and Rebekah wants. Esau begs for a blessing through tears, but it really sounds more like a curse at the end. So Jacob takes the blessing and the birthright. And in doing so, he has jumped the line into what we know is the greatest promise any man has ever received. A promise from God himself to save the whole world through your family, through your line. So much to take in. So what are we to take from these accounts? It's interesting that both of the blessings and the birthrights are taken by trickery and they're revolved around food. Once again, not much is new around the son. How many things do we do for hunger of any type? Something important here, the wrong takeaway would be to look at Jacob and imitate Jacob by exactly what his actions were. Jacob was a man of trickery. It's in his name. He's a deceitful person. This is a descriptive text. It's not a prescriptive text. Is God condoning cheating? No. We have to be careful not to moralize this story and use it word for word what we're supposed to do. There is a moral to this story, but we need to look in the New Testament book of Hebrews to see it more fully. I don't know if it's on here, but you can... Oh, it is. There we go. Who's in the wrong? Hebrews 12, verses 15 through 17. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral or godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance right as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done. You're gonna find out real soon, Esau's catching a lot of straight bullets in the New Testament. You know, Esau is called unholy, immoral, and ungodly. From what I read, in my mind, my instinctual mind, I'm like, yeah, what Esau did was certainly rash. It was extremely foolish, but unholy? Godlessness? These are serious accusations. And we can look at it this way. Let me go to the next slide with this. Part of holiness is honoring the greatness of God. It's understanding that God is a completely different level. And then treating God and the things of God like they deserve to be treated is essential for holiness. These things are not mundane. Like we're gonna get into in a few weeks, when God talks to Moses through the burning bush, he says, this ground is holy. Take off your sandals. It's special. It's set apart. And we might think that holy means kind of reverent songs, or these rituals, or just kind of these things that we do in our silence, and our trying to be like reverent. But it just means that we need to recognize the holy and treat it differently than we treat anything else. Put it in its place, which is way, way greater than anything in our place. Holy means set apart. And we saw glimpses of this in the cutting of the covenant in Genesis 15. So think of that. Think of what the Hebrew writer says. The Hebrew writer accuses of Esau of not understanding this greatness of the promise. Or maybe even worse, Esau knew and didn't care. This is the promise that has to go through one line and will ultimately result in all nations being blessed. This is the line that salvation runs through, that the future of our world depends on, that the only reason that we are in this room, this is the promise. It's the most important thing that has ever happened. And Esau gave it up for soup. God uses the second round of trickery to make sure the blessing wouldn't run through this man who refused to understand how great his blessing was, or even didn't care enough to take it seriously. We can look at this and shake our heads at Esau. We got great hindsight. This is one of an all-time great mistakes. But we shouldn't be so quick to judge Esau. The Hebrew writer is calling us to examine if we haven't become unholy or godlessness ourselves. And we would be wise to examine Jacob's ambition. We shouldn't be more aggressive about receiving God's promise in our lives like he was. You know, interestingly, Jacob is the star of Genesis. Genesis has some big names, right? We've covered Adam and Eve. We covered Noah. We covered Abraham and Sarah. Just covered Isaac. And later on, we'll be covering Joseph in the awesome technicolor dream coat that that man has. You know, Jacob is in half of the chapters. More air time than anyone else. He got a good slot for the evening show. Next week, we'll see how Jacob wrestles with God, and he is renamed Israel. Yes, these people who are going to become a blessing to the whole earth through Abraham's promise are named after Jacob. This is the second part. The Bible has quite a bit to say about this. Malachi begins his prophecy with this, and Paul even quotes it in Romans. It's not on here, but I'll have these two verses. I'll say them out loud. They both go around this. I have loved Jacob. I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated. It's in Malachi 1, verses two through three in Romans 9, 13. Malachi 1, verses two and three, Romans 9, verse 13. Once again, Esau's getting dragged through the mud. Why such a strong reaction, even from God himself regarding these two brothers? Could it be that Jacob understood just how important and amazing the promise of God was? He would do anything to get it and live in it. To raise his family, the next generation, with the greatest promise in the world. A promise that should have been available, except God initiated with his grandfather, Abraham. Jacob, for all intents and purposes, he believed the promise. He gave it the right value, and knew that he had to have it, even if it meant living up to his name, being a trickster, being someone who isn't looked at with great esteemed value in his family. Except for Rebecca. Rebecca loved her son. But he did. He gave it the right value. Esau had a worldly hunger. Jacob had a different hunger. A hunger to seek out God's promise. There's something about a hunger that isn't physical. Something that drives you. Something that is so stronger than anything that the world can offer. And that's something that Jacob would have done no matter what. Esau hungered for bean soup. What are you hungry for? Jacob, I loved. But Esau, I hated. There's an obvious application here. Jacob was hungry for the promise, and he didn't even know how it was gonna work out. It's only Genesis 26. There's a lot of Bible left to go. What faith? And here we are. Old and New Testament complete. We can see the big picture of Jacob's blessing. Amen? We get to read the story of Jesus's death, his sacrifice. The first church being put. Acts. Everything that has fallen in. Everybody here that studied the Bible. We are the living embodiment of the promise lived out. But he became the nation of Israel because he had a hunger deeper than Esau's. John tells us how the promise was fulfilled in Jesus. John 1, 12 through 13. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born out of natural descent, nor of human descent, or of a husband's will, but born of God. Because of God's plan to fulfill his promise, we can now become children of that promise. We inherit the blessing. We inherit the birthright to be called sons and daughters of God. Not through a bloodline or human blessing, but through our faith. And the faith that we have that Jesus is bigger than anything in this world. We can look at all of that. I'm gonna take this question again and add a few more to it. What are you hungry for? Which son are you more like? What promises are you living for? What blessings are your heart going after? Do you yearn for a holy blessing or a quick fix to your hunger? We're more not like Esau a lot of times. We love just the simple soup. I can sit here and I'll be first in line and be like, yeah, I am kind of the, where's my soup? Just give it to me. I don't care. Like, give me, right? But we can look at this in a lot of ways. Obviously, maybe not in a straight like hunger for the literal sense of food, but how many things going back to the holiness do we see as just as holy as God? Think about the little things like a job that takes over a Sunday, right? Or a job that takes over just your life in general, especially in college. I did this too. I did this my first summer when I was working construction. I was like, I can't have my quiet times in the morning. I gotta wake up at 4.30 to get this done. And I just don't know if I'm gonna do that. I gotta get my sleep, right? Like I was taking this job or this money I was making it. It was just as holy as my quiet time, right? That's what my action showed, right? The slightest inconveniences can cause us to miss our quiet times that day or something like a small group meeting or church even. Haven't shared our faith in months because we just don't remember how good it is to fulfill that promise and share that promise. We may not despise the blessing sometimes. We definitely don't give it the holiness that it deserves. And if we don't, what will happen is we're gonna be very much like Esau. When we want the blessing, it's already been taken. And then we come to it like, well, why isn't the blessing to me? Why did God do this? Or why am I not being blessed? Because you didn't reserve it as holy in the first place. We've only just begun the biblical story. This journey through the thread. But we're already picking up on so many powerful themes and we're gonna end with this idea. One such theme is that of covering. Adam and Eve try to cover themselves after their sin exposes them. Even as they're being punished, God graciously makes a covering for them out of animal skin. It's technically the first sacrifice in the Bible. And it's from God to his people. And now we see it again, Rebekah covering Jacob in animal skin so he'll be rough and hairy like Esau so he can secure the blessing. It's not fair. It's not fair to Esau. When Esau hears about the covering up, he cries loud and begs his father. And when we read it, we think this isn't fair. Well, this theme continues. Right, it's gonna be something that we see over and over and over again. It goes all the way through Jesus. That's the great cover up. And it's so unfair. Have you even considered just how unfair Jesus covering you up is? Right? Jesus has covered up our sin on the cross. Become the Lamb of God. It's not fair. He didn't deserve the cross. We don't deserve such a great sacrifice. You see, God doesn't just switch firstborn Esau to bless Jacob. He makes us the new Israel. He does it because he loves us. He's covering our sin, allowing us to switch places to be his firstborn. We are living in the greatest cover up the world has ever seen. We've been inserted into an unbelievable and undeserved promise. It's all the biggest thing. It's all the biggest thing that's ever happened in our world. We've been given a birthright and a blessing because of the sacrifice of Jesus. And we get to remember it every time that we come into church, that we read our Bible, that we just make God holy. Let us pray. Dear God, I am so grateful that in our unique human nature, through someone like Esau who was just stubbornly hungry, just didn't care, and through someone who was a trickster, you saw ways to use your promise to give us your Son. You used our human nature, the way we are, some of our faults, some of our failings to make sure that we're covered in all of our sin. I'm so grateful for that, God. I'm grateful that you showed us great people like Jacob who had a deep hunger for your word. God, let us have a hunger. Personally and as a church. As a church, we should hunger to love people in a way that we maybe haven't before or even just to make it stronger. Personally, hunger for great quiet times to get closer to you, God. Hunger to invest in His people and to the church. Just have a hunger to make everything that you are holy. We love you and praise you in your name. Amen. All right, that is church. Please go pick up your kids because they're probably hungry and want some food. Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast. If you're in the Kalamazoo area, we'd love to get connected. Please go to kalamazoo.church and fill in your information to come to a Sunday service or any other event that we have going on. In any case, you'll be hearing from us next week. Come on. Too busy saving souls.