Genesis 27:23-25, 33, 41
23 And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands. So he blessed him. 24 He said, “Are you really my son Esau?” He answered, “I am.” 25 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.
33 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 came, and I have blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed.”
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.”
The account of Jacob and Esau along with Jacob’s deception of his father Isaac is one of those stories that many Christians have heard since children’s Sunday School. Isaac was blind. Rebekah preferred Jacob while Isaac preferred Esau. Rebekah aided Jacob in deceiving his dad, tricking the poor, blind, dying Isaac into transferring the blessing to Jacob instead of Esau, his firstborn. Esau is upset and plots to kill Jacob once Isaac is dead.
What are we to do with a passage like this? If we treat it the way that it is most commonly handled—at least in my experience—we will make it into a morality tale. How mean Jacob was. How wrong Rebekah was. How sad for poor Esau, though we should not feel too bad for him; he did sell his birthright for some beans after all. So, the obvious sermon points should be:
- Wives, be honest with your husbands.
- Sons, don’t lie to your dads.
- Older brothers, take your younger brothers hunting with you if you think they might be scheming against you.
- Older brothers, it’s not OK to plan to kill your younger brothers.
Now, I’m being a little silly with that third point, but the first two (and maybe the last) actually sound like sermon points that would be preached from this passage. I’m not sure that I haven’t heard them preached from this passage.
Recently, I wrote a post called “Preaching Grace is Harder” in which I challenged the cheap and easy way we tend to want to make the teaching of Bible passages about rules rather than about the bigger and more difficult picture of grace. A dear friend of mine said that the post would be strengthened with an example of how a pastor might take a passage that is often made about rules and laws, dos and don’ts, and show how to preach grace from it instead—the grace intended by God, not an inserted grace not found in the passage. Can such grace be found in this odd little passage?
Let me take just one swing at this passage, without real sermon prep time or commentary research, and see if I can’t bring out something of the grace and glory of God in this passage that would be better than a mere moralism. First, context is everything. Where does this event fall in the light of Scripture? Look at the following promise that had been made by God to Rebekah before the boys were born: And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23).
The Book of Genesis is most certainly about the introduction of the promise of God. God created man. Man rebelled against God. God made a promise of one to come who would crush the enemy and eventually bring restoration to mankind. Abraham’s family would carry this promise. Isaac, not Ishmael, would carry this promise. How now would the promise continue? God said that the promise would continue, carried through Jacob and not Esau.
How could Jacob carry the promise of the blessing of God. Jacob was the younger brother, not the older. The right of the firstborn should go to Esau. Besides, Jacob is simply not likeable. He swindles his older brother with food. Now he again swindles his older brother by lying to his dying, blinded, hungry father. Jacob is not right. He does not deserve God’s promise to be upon him.
But therein lies the grace of God. Nobody that God has used so far has been an impressive figure. Noah, the great man of God, got off the ark, got drunk, and passed out naked in his tent. Abraham, the great man of faith, did not trust God enough to claim Sarah as his wife, telling her to pretend to be his sister. Isaac, our pitiable father-figure in this story, followed his dad’s lead, and subjected Rebekah to the same forced fib (I wonder where Rebekah learned to trick people with false identity claims).
So much of the story that we just read in Genesis 27 is about how God would bring to pass his plan of the promised Rescuer. God has chosen to use weak, sinful, frail people. God has chosen to take sinners, real sinners with ugly lives, and to make them carriers of his promise. It is as if God wants to show us our need for the Rescuer, our inability to provide the Rescuer for ourselves, and his gracious willingness to use sinners like us to accomplish his plan.
Later, when Esau decides he wants to carry out his plan to murder his younger brother, a plan that would thwart God’s promise to let the younger carry his blessing, we will watch as Jacob is protected by his mom. Jacob will move away, find a wife, and father the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. The schemer, the liar, the sinner will learn many lessons, will learn to trust God, and will be lied to by his own scheming sons. But, through it all, Jacob will receive God’s grace and be a tool in God’s hand to bring his grace and his promise to others.
Is there grace to be preached from Genesis 27? I think so. We too are sinners. We cannot earn God’s grace. We are tempted to lie and scheme to get ahead in life. But God has a plan and a grace that is bigger than us. He can use sinners like us to accomplish his plan. He can make us instruments through whom he brings his offer of salvation and rescue to others just as he used Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and even Esau to bring his promise of Rescue into the world.
What then is the response to this passage? First, how about worship? God is worthy of it. We could never imagine using sinners like we see in this passage to accomplish the salvation of all of God’s children, but God could and did. Then, how about obedience? If God is that great, we should trust him and offer him our lives. He is better than us and is worthy of all we have to give. This will lead us to change how we live, not because of rules, but simply because we want to please the God who is so great and gracious. How about wonder and joy? God saves sinners. He saves sinners like Rebekah and Jacob, like you and like me. We should be stunned by this love. We should be driven to our knees in gratitude. Maybe we could even say that this kind of passage would lead us to tell others about such a wonderful offer of grace, making us tools in God’s redemptive hands just as Jacob was.
I certainly can’t say that I’ve exhausted the passage above. I won’t even promise I have it all correct. What I will say is that this passage, if preached in context, offers a gorgeous picture of the grace of God working in the lives of sinners, sinners who are even unaware of what God is doing through them. I believe we can benefit far more from looking at this passage with such a picture of grace in mind than we could ever benefit from making this passage about a set of rules on what to do or what to avoid. Obedience that pleases God always is a result of receiving grace, a very natural and reflexive response. I’m not at all saying God does not have rules. God forbids lying. He forbids stealing and cheating. He even forbids tricking blind people (I like that one). But we do not build our lives on those rules. WE build our lives on the God of those rules, and then we will follow his standards as we love him and find joy in pleasing him.
Pastor Travis Peterson 