40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 38

Episode Date: January 20, 2016

Chad, Daniel and Brandon discuss Jacob and Rebekah coming up with and executing a plan to deceive Isaac and steal from Esau. What do the victims of this plot show us about God and Christ? And what do the perpetrators of it say about us? Maybe not what you think.

welcome to 40 minutes in the old testament this is episode 38 Hey, did you guys know that we are officially a project of 1517 Legacy? We are. You can go over to 1517legacy.com and check out all the stuff they have going on over there. You can check out the articles and the books and other podcasts like Virtue in the Wasteland. You can check out the League of Faithful Mass, all that stuff. And let me tell you this. We have an exciting thing.

We have released an audio book of one of our favorite books, Martin Luther's On the Freedom of a Christian. And we are giving that away for a donation of any amount. You can give a dollar. You can give $100. You can give whatever you want, and you can get this audio book. We have produced it. Brandon has read it. It's really great.

So this is kind of a fundraising campaign. So if you're interested in that, go over to ChristToldFast.org, and you can probably see the banner. Or if you're listening to this a while from now, you can go over to the store, and you will see the book in the store. All right. That being said, I am joined by Brandon Hanson. Hey, y'all. And Mr. Chad Bird. Morning, everybody.

Brandon sounds southern this morning. Hey, y'all. Hey, y'all. He's got the Texan coming there. I lived there for a while. i'm glad we were able to influence proper speaking proper speaking yes i learned my proper southern english you're uh second person plural of y'all yeah yeah southern is chad's job i suppose since i uh i'm speaking to a wider audience than just two of you should have been

hey y'all y'all is that right that would be more that would be uh that would be formal Texas English. Is that all y'all? All y'all. All y'all. Because y'all can mean in reference to one person. All y'all is always plural.

What about, isn't the plural of y'all just like yins? Maybe in certain parts of Texas, but I haven't lived there. Hey yins. All yins. Okay.

That was fun. Chad, where are we at in Genesis? We are at the beginning of chapter 27 we uh have the story of the deception of rebecca exception of isaac by rebecca and her son jacob to cover today so it's a it's a lengthy chapter lots of good stuff here though should be fun all right let's do it all right so uh uh we've we've encountered heard more than once now the struggle between these two brothers, Jacob and Esau. And of course,

this is like the struggle that we see throughout the scriptures of other brothers, beginning with the first two brothers, Cain and Abel. But it kind of reaches its, I guess it's crescendo here in this chapter. The first time we saw this was when they were both born, because of course, Esau comes out first. Jacob is holding on to his heel, and he already then is trying to get ahead of his brother to supplant him. And then later on, we saw the episode with the sell of the birthright. Esau comes in for the field. He's famished. Jacob says, hey, I'll give you some of this food if, and only if you sell me your birthright, which Esau did. And so Jacob gains possession of his his brother's birthright then. But we still have the blessing, the blessing that the father gives

to the firstborn son. And that's what the focus of this chapter is on. And a bit of more background is to remind everybody about the perspective of the two parents here. We're told right away when these boys are born, well, after they grow up, this is back in chapter 25, that when the boys grew up. Esau becomes a hunter. Jacob stays at home. And it says Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game. But Rebecca loved Jacob. So we've got parents having a favorite son. And we see this favoritism coming full circle here when finally it's time for Jacob to give his blessing to the firstborn i mean isaac to give his blessing to the firstborn isn't that kind of a strange uh strange reason to prefer someone over somebody else like like man he's the food you like

you saw loves that venison that's my dude yeah he's uh he's all culinary you know he's he knows what he likes to eat it is a rather strange reason it is it is i mean he just loves that gamey meat he's a real man he's a man's man he's a man's man so he loves his uh he loves his hunter son yeah does it mean does it more imply that i mean i mean obviously we're joking here but it's got to more imply that he was like sort of like like a hunter and like rugged and this kind of thing right yeah yeah i i think so i think that probably uh he saw him he saw himself that Isaac saw himself more in Esau than he saw himself in Jacob is the way that I read that.

And we're going to find out that Jacob's a little smooth. Yeah, Jacob is smooth in more ways than one. Yeah. Yes, yes. He doesn't have the hair that Esau has, but he's also a smooth dealer, highly skilled in deception. And his mother is is also well, she's not only part of that, but it's actually her plan to do what he does. So here's what happens. So we're jumping ahead here.

And Isaac is old and he doesn't he doesn't know what he's going to die. But I guess he actually lives quite a bit longer. But he he thinks that he is near death. And before he dies, he needs to verbally bless his oldest son. So his eyes are too dim to see. And so he calls his older brother Esau and says to him, my son. And he said to him, here I am. And as it goes on to say that he doesn't know the day of his death. And so it's time for him to excuse me.

It's time for him to give the blessing. so he basically tells him to go hunting and to bring the game back and to prepare it in the way that his father desires it and then as they eat the meal he's going to give him the blessing now the the the detail that is added there that is significant is uh in that first verse it says his eyes were too dim to see. I've said this before, that almost every time that a physical characteristic of a person in the Bible is given, it becomes significant as the narrative unfolds. This is unlike modern novels, where you'll have a lot of descriptions of characters given simply to kind of give more color to the story.

The scriptures are extremely sparse, conservative in their descriptions of the physicality of people. So anytime that you have a physical description given, that is going to play a part later on. And that's what we see here. His eyes are too dim to see, and of course that becomes the means by which his son is going to deceive him. So after Isaac gives this command to his son, we hear that Rebekah was eavesdropping, kind of like Sarah was eavesdropping when the three men came to visit Abraham and told him about the upcoming birth of Isaac. So here Isaac's wife is listening.

She overhears what Isaac says to Esau, and as soon as Esau leaves, Rebekah calls her son Jacob and gives him instructions. Now, this is just a parenthetical comment here, but I think it is interesting when you when you pay careful attention to the biblical text. These things sometimes jump out at you because it says in verse five and Rebecca was listening while Isaac spoke to his son Esau. It doesn't say their son Esau to his son Esau. And then in the very next verse, it said Rebecca said to her son, Jacob. again, not their son Jacob, but her son Jacob. So you can see even in the personal pronouns that are used here,

his son, her son, that you have a division between the parents here. One is the favorite of the father, one is the favorite of the mother, and that comes out even in the way that their relationship with these boys are designated. So just to kind of summarize what Rebecca says, She tells Jacob what she heard Isaac saying, what the plan was. He's about to bless the firstborn. And so she says, here, here's what you need to do.

You go to the flock. You take a couple of kids from there, baby goats. You give them to me. And she's going to prepare this savory dish that she knows that her husband likes. And then he's going to get the blessing because he's going to pretend to be his brother. But Jacob, he's thinking this through a little bit more than his mother is because he says, look, look, mom. Esau, my brother, is a hairy guy and I'm a smooth guy. What if my father feels me?

Then I shall be as a deceiver in his sight, and I shall bring upon myself a curse and not a blessing. Now, I find this fascinating because here we have Jacob and his mom preparing this elaborate scheme to get the blessing from Isaac. And what's he worried about? He's not worried about whether this is right or wrong. he's not worried about what he's doing to his brother he's not worried about what he's doing to his father he's not even worried about his mother's involvement in this scheme instead all he's worried about is getting caught yeah yeah it's funny that he's like what if he he reached out touches me figures out that uh i'm not esau and then i mean he'll think i'm trying to deceive

him it's like yeah yeah then i shall be as a deceiver in his sight well i got news for you guy that's what you are yeah you then he's gonna find out that i really am like i really am and that would not be good yeah that's amazing how we can self-justify as we're in the process of premeditating you know whatever sin or crime it's like i really you know i'm really not that bad so you know what if people found out and they would they would see what's going on and they wouldn't get it like no this is like i'm not really a deceiver i'm not really trying to deceive you i'm just trying to deceive you see yeah i'm not trying to deceive you i mean i'm just deceiving you it's all in the how can i how can the tone of voice we use how can i deceive dad into not

thinking i'm a deceiver that's that's the real question mom yeah we got it we got a double deception going on here and perhaps behind it all uh we have a self-deception going on so he's he's lying to everybody including including himself uh so he's he's worried about what's going to happen to him he's not worried about his dad his mom his brother uh he has not changed from the moment he left the womb he's always trying to get ahead of his brother and here's his chance all i know is that in light of what what they pull off here you saw must have been like a really hairy dude yeah he must have been i mean they uh they put these goat skins on uh on uh on jacob and of

course the father feels that at some point and so he i guess that uh esau's skin must have felt like skin of a goat uh just just like he had straight fur going on man yeah i'm not a i'm really big into conspiracy theories here but I do believe that Esau's his line has carried forth and today we know the Esaians or whatever

the Edomites I suppose right as Sasquatch they are real we have finally found biblical proof for the existence of Sasquatch right here in Genesis people a man who feels like a goat come on i've got a friend i don't know if he ever listens to this show but he loves uh you know like what is it hunting bigfoot or something finding bigfoot

i've never watched it but he loves it like he gets really into it i don't think he really believes they're real but yeah there we go they're the edomites we better be careful they're going to be contacting us as you know biblical theologians who have proof for the existence of trace it all the way back to genesis i can't i can't prove scott sasquatch goat man yes yeah so we have we have goat man here uh who's out hunting and uh and here we have we have a jacob and he so he says to his mom you know what are we going to do what if i get caught doing what i'm doing so his mother comes up with this plan and but first interestingly she says uh your curse be on me my son only obey my voice and go get them for me so she is fully invested

in this she's taken she's taking responsibility even if he is found out and his father is uttering a curse, she says, let that curse fall on me. So the mother is not just doing this half-heartedly. She's fully into it. So what happens? Well, Jacob does what she says. He's an obedient son. He goes out. He gets the kids. He brings them to his mom. Mom makes a savory food that her husband loves. And then she took the best garments of Esau, her oldest son, and they were, which were with her in her tent. And she puts them on Jacob. So she dresses him like his brother. She prepares a meal like his brother prepares. And then to top it off, she puts these goat skins on the back of his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. So he's all, he's all prepared. I mean, the, the,

the deception is, is ready, is ready to be tried. So let's, let's see if it works. Jacob goes to his father and he says, my father. And he said, here I am. Who are you, my son? So right away, right away, Isaac might be old. His eyes might be dim, but he's not dumb. He's all there and so right away he knows that something just doesn't seem right so he and this is the first of of three times that isaac is going to say something which which uh implies that he's he's he's not all at all certain about the identity of the the man that he's about to bless and here we have the first outright lie verbal lie that jacob says i mean it's just in black and white Jacob says to his father, I am Esau.

I am Esau, your firstborn. And I have done as you told me. Get up, please sit, eat of my game, that you may bless me. But he's not done yet. Because Isaac says, how is it that you have it so quickly, my son? I mean, you don't just go out. I don't care how good a hunter you are. You know, you don't go out and just, oh, there's a deer, and all of a sudden you kill the deer.

You bring it home, you cook it, and you bring it. These things take time. This has happened far too rapidly than it should have. So what's Jacob going to say to cover himself here? Well, obviously, the choice will be to take the Lord's name in vain. Because he says, because the Lord your God caused it to happen to me. What do you think of that? uh-huh yeah that's uh you know you blame you you blame god you look like when you i remember when

i was um are you about to confess i should i should tell this story uh i remember when i was like 15 i uh there was there was this girl and that i was dating and her oh man but she was there she was super super christian and i was a pastor's kid and i was i mean i grew up fairly charismatic so this this works better if that's the case it's not you i mean i'd like i want to keep this you know i want to keep this going and stuff but you know god just you know he just told me that i need to like solely focus on him you can't argue with that like there's no argument with it it's God's breaking your heart, honey. I'm sorry.

I mean, I'd date you to the end of time. That's going to be the worst breakup line ever. It really is. Blame God. But it worked, right? Yeah, you can't argue with that. Well, what are you going to say, right? You cannot argue with that.

Yeah, if it were up to me, I would stick with you. But God wants me to end this. I mean, I love you like crazy. But I love God more, you know, clearly. Well, the use and the misuse of the Lord's name is not isolated to episodes in Genesis, nor to dating relationships. It happens all the time. In fact, you could see this already to some extent in the Garden of Eden, maybe not taking the Lord's name in vain. But we notice that Adam, Adam blames God for for causing him his problems.

Right. The woman whom you gave to be with me. So God is a God is not unused to being pulled into the schemes of schemes of man. So we have the second lie here of Jacob. First, he claims to be Esau. And then secondly, he says, because the Lord, your God caused it to happen to me. But Isaac is not yet convinced, so he says to his son to come closer, because he wants to feel him. You know, he might not be able to see, but his hands are still working. And he says, whether you are really my son Esau or not.

I think in the back of Isaac's mind, he knows what kind of son Jacob is. A father knows his son. And so in the back of his mind, he's fully aware that from infancy that Jacob has always been trying to get ahead of Esau. And even though he never outright asked him, are you Jacob? His hesitancy seems to have been at least partly fueled by his knowledge of his son's personality. so that's what uh what happens uh jacob comes close to uh to isaac his father and he uh he feels him and he says the voice is the voice of jacob but the hands are the hands of esau he didn't recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother esau's hands and so he blessed him but then we have we have one more one more question he finally says are you

really my son Esau? And Jacob says, I am. So he's finally convinced his father that he is indeed who he is not. And the deception has worked remarkably. His mother did not think of the whole voice problem, but in the end, Isaac was convinced by the lies of his son, as well as by the uh the smell and uh the feel of uh of jacob now i was thinking about this and you guys can give me your two cents here but uh i've always liked the 22nd verse for uh for reasons that are not immediately obvious when jacob came close to isaac his father he felt him and said the voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau. I've often used that verse as a description of how we appear before our Heavenly Father, because here we are. We are not Christ.

we are anything but Christ but when we are presented to the Father we are clothed in the garments of Christ we are covered with his righteousness we have become like him our brother

he has made us to be like himself so that when we appear before the Father we appear as one who is like our older brother Christ and in the strangest reversal of all. Christ is the one who receives the curse, and we are the one who receives the blessing. He's the one who receives the crucifixion, the one who receives

the condemnation, the one who is cut off, the one who is forsaken, the one who is abandoned. And we, the undeserving ones, the liars, the ones who engage in deception all the time, who take the Lord's name in vain, who are complicit in all sorts of evil, we are the ones who get ahead. We are the ones who receive the blessing of the Father. And Christ is the one who receives the curse of the Father on the cross. So when I read that verse, I often connect it to who we are in Christ, our brother, that he has not been deceived, but rather he has willingly given to us his own clothing. He's clothed us in his own righteousness. We feel like him. We smell like him. We have become like him because he has taken us into himself.

And all this he does quite willingly because unlike Jacob and Esau, he loves us as brothers. And he was willing to take the curse upon himself in order that we, the undeserving ones, might receive the blessing and be the ones who are justified as if we are the firstborn himself. I can compare myself to any other person on the earth and I can find people that push me up the ladder or rung because their deeds are worse than mine. And then, of course, I'll find people that are better than me and they can look at me and go, yeah, I deserve the blessing more than Brandon because I'm better than him. But really, if we're going to be honest here, like who in all of history is most deserving, is most worthy? Well, there's no competition if we're comparing ourselves to Christ. I mean, he he's going to win every time. He is the son in whom God is most pleased, well pleased.

This is my beloved son in whom I am pleased. listen to him and the feel of the garments. And then later on in verse 27, and Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, so we've got the garment of Christ, the pleasing aroma of his sacrifice goes up before God and we receive the same blessing that Christ receives. I have often referred to the plan of salvation, the plan of redemption as holy collusion that's a good phrase yeah and uh that's what it is i i mean if we were if this was to happen and uh if we were to do something like that if we were to turn over and sacrifice even if he did it willingly uh an innocent person for the guilty everyone

and we were to have them punished and then we were to make all the guilty everyone look like this good person because we made this innocent person look like these bad... I mean, we would cry foul for sure. All of our sensibilities

would be horribly offended and say, you can't do that. That's not how this works. I mean, you can't take... You can't have all the murderers and the thieves and everything like that.

you can't let them all go because you dressed them up like this other guy and you can't punish him just because you dressed him up like them like that's not that's not how justice works okay but this is this is what god does he's got he's got a a trinitarian holy collusion going on that takes place at the cross to get the guilty everyone off we do cry foul on this even though it's god the trinity pulling this off we still want to call foul because from our perspective we're like no that can't be like if i'm gonna get in i gotta get in on my own merit we can't be tricking god here but god isn't this isn't some trick god is playing on himself god knows exactly what's going on and he's intentionally doing it to get the guilty off and it's like

and we can't just stand by and let it happen that's well that's the better than god oh god that isn't just yeah that's the fence that's the offense of the cross man you say like no no no that's not that's not yeah you you can't you can't have other people paying for your stuff no such thing as a free lunch certainly no such thing as as a imputed record yeah there's a you know i when i was listening to you talk i was thinking too there's a there's a further parallel here between uh the way this works in a way that in the way that the cross works and the imputation of christ righteousness to us because in the you look at this chapter and i guess the overarching question this chapter is uh you know how could the blessing actually be

given to the person that god desires to receive it in the midst of all of this lying and deception and backstabbing and and everything else evil that's taking place here because we're told early on we're told well when when uh when she's when rebecca's pregnant with these boys she's told that the the older shall serve the younger but when it comes right down to it the way that this is accomplished is through evil through sin through lies through uh all sorts of all sorts of wickedness but isn't that how our our salvation was accomplished uh you have christ who is betrayed by Judas, who's betrayed by Peter, who's abandoned by his disciples, who, of course, is unjustly convicted, who is an innocent man and yet is put to death as if he's guilty.

So you have all of this sin, backstabbing, abandonment, deception going on at the crucifixion of christ and yet through that despite that god is accomplishing the blessing of salvation for us and that's the way that i see this broadly speaking i see this whole chapter i don't i don't make any excuses for uh for rebecca i don't make any excuses for uh for jacob for what they did They were acting out of self-interest. They were acting out of out of wrong motives. And yet, despite all of this, God was able to give his blessing to the person that he said he was going to give it to, to the younger. And it's just like that with with our salvation as well. You have all of this wickedness taking place in the crucifixion of Christ.

And yet all of this happened according to the predetermined plan of foreknowledge of God, because this is the way that he was going to give his blessings to all of us. Yeah, yeah. So maybe a little bit different way of hearing the story for some folks, but that's the way that I like to read this whole episode of Jacob and Esau. Yeah, well, there's no doubt that God reveals his plan of salvation and things that we would look at and say, well, that's a bad thing right there. I mean, this isn't the only time he does that, where it's like, well, no, no, that person is messing it up real bad. He still takes those things and says, you know what this is like? This is like what I'm going to do. Yeah.

Now, we see this later in Genesis with, of course, with Joseph and his brothers, when he finally says to them, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to bring about the saving of all these people. So you always have God's plan of salvation for us, which is accomplished even in the midst of this mess that takes place. That happens in our lives. It happens in the lives of the people in the Bible. that's any god is dealing with sinful messed up people so there really is no other way there's always going to be sin in the mix but god is the kind of god who is able to accomplish his saving will for us despite that and even through the sinful actions of people which is a really good thing because we don't have any other option

there's there is no uh there is no way that we cannot act as we as we are sinners sin that's what they do i'll tell you this too um when esau gets back he's he is going to be justly hacked off yeah and he is he is uh when he gets back here it's almost as if jacob and esau are passing each other you can almost because as soon as one ends the next section begins so esau comes in he makes he prepares the the game that he killed he brings it he says you know let my father rise and eat of his son's game that you may bless me and uh his father asked him who are you and he says i'm your son your firstborn esau and it's at that point that isaac trembles violently and realizes what has happened and uh esau is is rightly i mean if there's ever righteous indignation

this is it he is rightly angry because as he says is jacob not right is he not rightly called jacob for he has supplanted me these two times he took away my birthright and behold now he has taken away my blessing you know like i mentioned before jacob's name means heel but it's in the sense of like the one who grabs the heel like one who's trying to yank somebody back to to supplant them to get ahead so he has earned his name he's lived up to his name more than once and actually he'll continue to do this uh as his story as the story unfolds is it is it almost like impossible to not feel bad for Esau? You know, I was thinking about this

because when you read this, just trying to read it just simply as a story, if you can think of it apart from the biblical context, apart from being the inspired word of God, just as a story. The narrator tells this story in such a way that I think it betrays the sympathy that he feels for Esau

because he makes no excuses for what isaac and uh what rebecca and jacob are doing but he gives and there's a lot of just of pathos there's a lot of uh sympathy for esau that's written into this account yeah i feel i feel terrible for him because uh he he did what he was supposed to do he was the firstborn and uh he did what his dad told him to do and yet his uh his birthright is the blessing of the of the firstborn is taken away from him and maybe it's you know as you think in the context of you know jacob i loved you so i hated and you're like you add that on top of it and you're like man like by the way god doesn't like you either yeah before he saw before he saw you know i was uh i was talking to a friend about that

that verse the other day about jacob i love esau hated and uh you know it again it kind of fits with this whole uh messianic typology we talked about earlier with uh christ being the one who's cut off and he's cut off precisely in order that we might be adopted and brought into the family of God. It all kind of fits. It's not ordinary to think of Esau as a Christ figure, but at least read in this way, I think it does fit. But of course, as with any parallel, it's not perfect because Esau is none too happy about what's happened. In fact, he's so angry that he begins to uh he begins to to plan how he's going to how he's going to get revenge his father does give him a sort of a blessing i guess you could say but uh it's not it's certainly not the blessing of

the firstborn and the blessing of the firstborn is a verbal blessing that god is going to give him all sorts of agricultural richness and dominion over other people's dominion over his own family but esau doesn't get any of that uh he doesn't get uh those blessings he doesn't get the double inheritance that jacob is going to get so he bears a grudge verse 41 bears a grudge against jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him and so esau says to himself the days of mourning for my father are near then i will kill my brother jacob the first two brothers over again can't enable yeah yeah even even that's a little bit commendable he's like my dad's gonna die soon so i'm not gonna kill my brother while he's still alive because

i don't he'll be upset about that and and you know and and my father is worth mourning yeah yeah so it's like okay well that's that's i mean that's that's thoughtful but man the second the second he's gone second he's gone the second the days of mourning are over we're gonna have another funeral yeah jacob will will quick be joining him yes i will send my brother to be with my father yeah dude and uh yeah and jacob will i mean we'll see i mean jacob is rightly freaked out about this happening and uh yeah you should be yeah he uh he he believes as does his mother he believes every word that uh that his brother says so uh rebecca finds out about what's going on and uh she calls jacob and she says look esau is uh is very ticked he's uh he's

planning on killing you so here's what i want you to do run away get out of here go stay with my relatives and uh there's a bit of humor here because she says stay with my relatives a few days until your brother's furious subsides well it's like 20 years before he comes back so a few days lengthens into much into much longer but to get to that uh next episode yeah what you always want is a is a master hunter after you yeah yeah just what you want some guy who's obviously good with with a bow to want to kill you tracking stuff down that's exactly who i want that's who i want after me yeah so he better hightail it while he has a chance it's interesting why couldn't isaac have simply taken the word back you know today we think i i made an oopsie i take

it back i'm sorry i didn't mean that but here the word comes out the word is spoken and it is it's simply that's i i've given him your blessing you know he's going to be the lord over you like what in the world dad like but yeah it's something else for me no it's something else yeah and you know Well, Esau realizes this because he doesn't say, can't you take back the blessing? He says, don't you have another blessing? When this word of blessing the Father speaks has the divine imprimatur upon it. So these words are not only the words of Isaac, but they're also the words of God. And when the words of God are spoken, they are irrevocable.

So what they speak into existence is and cannot be altered. So this blessing can no more be undone than one can be unbaptized. so what is blessed is blessed just like the one who is baptized is baptized not the attitude of the recipient that matters but it is the fidelity and the power of the one who speaks it

yeah, God says that you're righteous, you're righteous end of story yeah, end of story and that is the end of the story for us today so we will be back next week guys thanks for hanging out with us

Thank you for watching.