The Bible Recap - Day 020 (Genesis 25-26) - Year 6

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. I want to start today out with a bit of encouragement. I love seeing that you're all looking to Scripture for truth. In Acts 17 11, Luke praised the Bereans who did this. He said, Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Please do that with everything I say here.

Because first of all, there may be times when I'm just plain wrong about something. I go to great lengths to avoid that, but it's bound to happen at some point. And then at other times, I may not communicate something in the clearest way possible, and it may end up being confusing. So please forgive me for any missteps I make in communication, and know that I make every effort to speak truth with clarity. And keep searching the scriptures, because I'm not the final word on anything. Today in our reading, we opened with Abraham

remarrying after Sarah's death. His second wife is named Keturah, and even though he was super old, he had six more kids, which brings us to a grand total of eight. But all his inheritance goes to Isaac, as God told him, because Isaac is the child through which God would establish his promise to Abraham. He was also the only child of Abraham's first wife.

Abraham died at 175 years old. His son with Hagar, Ishmael, died a few decades later when he was 137. We encountered a few lines of genealogies there, but resist the urge to skip past those. Let your eyes fall on every word. You won't remember it all, but once you've seen something several times, it will start to stick with you little by little. Then we got bits and pieces of a few storylines throughout the rest of our reading today. I'm going to follow the Isaac storyline first, then I'll jump back to the part about his kids. So I'm not necessarily

always going to recap in the exact order we're reading it. In chapter 26, God appears to Isaac just like he did to Abraham. And then, right after God's promise to him, he starts lying. He manifests the same sins of his father Abraham, calling his wife his sister. But this time, it wasn't even half true. And some commentators say this could have also been the same King Abimelech that Abraham dealt with about this same thing. In both of these stories, we see that King Abimelech actually has a higher view of God's holiness than Abraham and Isaac seemed to.

In response to Isaac's sin, God shows him mercy. God protects and blesses him. And quickly, within a year, Isaac has sowed and reaped one hundredfold. Because of his success, King Abimelek tried to get rid of him, which is one thing we'll see a lot of. Any time this family that God has established a relationship with starts to flourish, the people around them notice. They become jealous of them or afraid of them.

They want them dead and gone. But then God appears to Isaac again at the very first well his father Abraham had taken possession of back in chapter 21, Beersheba, and God promises again to bless and multiply him. This promise that was originally for Isaac's father Abraham must extend through Isaac because he is the child of the promise, the only child of Abraham and Sarah. As we learned yesterday, Isaac got married at age 40, and today we saw that he and Rebekah had their first child when he was 60.

This actually all happened 15 years before Abraham died, but sometimes Genesis likes to give these weird flash-forward moments, so just bear with it. Anyway, Rebekah was barren for 20 years, but Isaac knows the God who grants life, so he intercedes on behalf of Rebekah, and God answered his prayers with a yes. Sometimes God answers with a no, but all of God's answers to our prayers, whether yes,

no, or wait, serve to establish his very good plans. In this instance, in order for God to fulfill his promise of many offspring to Abraham and Isaac, God would have to open Rebekah's womb. And when he did, Rebekah became pregnant with twins. I wonder if these were the very first twins ever. Rebekah had a lot of questions about what was happening, and I love that she took her questions to God. And he answered her.

God's answer was kind of perplexing though, because he basically told her that his plan for these two children would go against the cultural norms of their day. The older son would not take prominence. Instead, the younger son would rule. This would be kind of like if the crown passed straight from King Charles to Prince Harry,

skipping over Prince William and his kids. Then, through a whole tangled mess of sin, God accomplished his purposes to that end. We saw part of that unfolding today and we'll see the rest tomorrow. The part we saw today was where Esau's impatience and Jacob's scheming added up to a transferred birthright, which is the thing bestowed on the firstborn.

It signals inheritance and prominence. Using a bowl of stew, God kind of flipped a script. I relate to Esau a lot here. If you want to see me sin, wait for me to get tired and hungry. Give me a string of nights where I've only had a couple hours sleep each night and all my wisdom goes out the window. I would be wise to remember Esau's lot in life. Also, this promise for the younger child, I want to point out that this isn't just a one-off situation as far as God is concerned. This has actually started to be a bit of a theme He establishes in Scripture.

Let me point out a few other times this has happened so far. The offering of Abel, the younger child, was accepted while Cain, the firstborn, was not. Isaac, Abraham's second son, got the promises that normally would have gone to Ishmael. And then it happens again here with Jacob and Esau. Here's my take on what this is showing us. There are a few places in Scripture that establish Jesus as our older brother. Romans 8 says he is the firstborn among many brothers. And if he's the firstborn and we're the younger brothers and sisters,

then he should get all the inheritance. But guess what? He shares. We know this because Romans 8 also tells us that we share in his inheritance. This reminds me of what we saw in Job, where the daughters got part of the inheritance too. We wrapped up today's reading with a little section on Esau. Like his dad Isaac, he married at 40.

Sometimes when people talk about sexual purity, they say it's an outdated idea because the Bible was written when people got married young at like 13 or 14. And maybe some of them did. But according to the few marriage ages we do have recorded, that's not necessarily the case. There's one thing I want to make sure we don't miss

in this final short paragraph. Esau married two Hittite women. Not only did he marry two women, which is descriptive, not prescriptive, meaning it's telling us what he did, not telling us what to do. But in addition to that, both of these women were outside the family God had set his blessing on. His brother Jacob was committed to God's plan for this family, but Esau was indifferent or possibly even antagonistic to it. Rest assured assured though, even his rebellion fits into the big picture. What was your God shot for today?

I loved seeing how God is no respecter of persons. He shows attention and favor to those who are not in the position of honor, the sojourners in the land, and the latter born kids. Granted, I am the youngest child in my family, so maybe that's why it caught my attention, but I've seen this aspect of God's character extend far beyond birth order. For instance, my homeless friends know things about God I couldn't possibly understand. They're more content in Him than I'll probably ever be. And I have a friend whose child has debilitating mental and physical issues, and

sometimes he'll just be alone in a room and start laughing or smiling. And even though science would deem his brain inferior to mine, I think he knows things about God I don't have the capacity to understand. The God who made the human brain is certainly not limited to the number of its functions that we're currently aware of. I think there's a special way God communicates himself to those who are in situations that seem less desirable or more impossible. God is endeared to the needy, the lowly. And that's all of us really.

Psalm 116 tells us he bends down to listen. And Hosea 11 tells us that he bends down to feed us. The more I can be aware of my neediness of him, the more I'll delight in his nearness and provision, and the more my heart will remember that he's where the joy is. We love the local church. Every year, churches around the world recap together. And if you're one of them, here's a special hello from all of us at The Bible Recap.

But if you're not one of our church partners yet and you'd like for your church to join us, check out the webpage we've created specifically to answer any question your church staff might have, thebiblerecap.com forward slash church. Happy New Year. Maybe you've pulled out a journal to write down what you want for 2024, or maybe you've posted about your New Year's resolutions on social media.

It's always wise to have a vision for the future, but we don't want to be so focused on our own plans that we fail to think about God's purposes for our lives. Thankfully, God has already revealed some of the things He has for us. To find out more, click the link in the show notes for some words from my friends at Hope Nation.