Don’t try to “fix” God’s blessings

Genesis 27:1-46

Big Idea: Manipulating God’s blessings only breaks us and our families, but God allows his Son to be broken to bless us.

1.        The foolish attempt to manipulate God’s blessings

2.        The deceit and disintegration of a broken family 

3.        The heavenly Father breaks his Son to bless us

Today we’ll be starting a new sermon series in our Church called Faith of the Fathers.

Who are the fathers? In Judaism, a group of three men are known as the fathers of Judaism, or simply, the Patriarchs. They are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Over the past few years, we’ve looked at Abraham and Isaac.

Over the next few months, our Church will focus on Jacob and his sons.

Our aim is to finish Genesis 50 by the end of May.

If you haven’t started any Bible reading plans yet this year, Genesis will be a good place to start.

Here’s a quick summary to remind us of what’s happened up to this point in Genesis.

God has called Abram to take his immediate family and to leave his wider family in Haran behind to go to a place that he promised to give him.

Abram obeyed God and learnt to trust God even more along the way.

Even though Abram was almost 100 years old, God promised to give him a son.

And so, Abram’s name was changed to Abraham, which means Father of Many Nations.

God kept his promise and gave him and his elderly wife Sarah, the son Isaac.

Isaac grew up and married Rebekah. Rebekah was childless, but Isaac prayed for her, and God gave Isaac and Rebekah twin boys, Jacob and Esau.

Esau grew up to be a hairy man, a hunter, who once came back from a hunt and sold his birthright as firstborn to Jacob for a bowl of red stew.

Why was that a big deal? Esau’s family was especially chosen by God through whom the whole world would be blessed.

As the firstborn, Esau had the responsibility to receive God’s blessing and to pass it on to his descendants and as well as the wider world.

However, Esau despised his birthright, treating it as cheaply as a bowl of stew.

In today’s passage, we’ll see what happens when Isaac, Esau’s father, attempts to give Esau his blessings. Before we look into it, let’s pray,

“Father, we thank you for your word the Bible. Please help us to understand it more clearly so that we love you and our Lord Jesus more dearly, as we walk by the power of the Holy Spirit. We pray by faith in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

1.    The foolish attempt to manipulate God’s blessings

Please turn your Bible with me to Genesis 27, beginning from verse 1, “When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could not see,^a he called his older son Esau and said to him, “My son.” And he answered, “Here I am.”

He said, “Look, I am old and do not know the day of my death.”

Isaac summoned his son Esau to come to him and told him that he was old and he didn’t know when he was going to die.

He told Esau to go out to the fields and hunt, make some delicious food for him, so that he could bless Esau before he died.

When I first read this, I thought he was saying something like “I’m old and I’m about to die, and so this is what I want you to do.”

That’s what you would expect someone who was about to die might do.

Sometimes, when someone is about to die, if they were able, they would often leave instructions for their family about what to do after they die.

Some of them would even prepare their funerals well in advance.

That’s what the royal family of England did.

There were plans for the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth of England in the 1960s, even though she died in 2022.

In fact, she chose the music of her funeral, with many hymns reflecting her faith in the Lord Jesus.

Was that what Isaac was doing? Was he about to die and preparing for his funeral?

Though he did mention death, it wasn’t because Isaac was about to die.

Isaac said he didn’t know when he was going to die.

He could be five days, five months, or five years away from his death.

And yet, Isaac was giving what sounded like death-bed instructions, his last set of instructions, to Esau. It was a little strange, but maybe it was just him being super-prepared for his death.

However, even if that’s the case, it was strange that he gave his death-bed instructions to Esau only, when usually, you would invite the rest of the family to come and listen to the instructions so that there can be no doubt what you wanted to see happen after you die.

After all, Jacob, Isaac’s other son, and Rebekah were living at the same place!

It was as if Isaac was deliberately trying to hide this conversation from Rebekah, his wife, and Jacob, his other son.

Isaac wasn’t just an old man giving his last death-bed instructions to his son.

Isaac was deliberately trying to manipulate God’s blessings.

He was deliberately trying to ‘fix’ God’s blessings.

When Rebekah was pregnant with the twin boys, and the two boys were struggling against each other inside her womb, she asked the Lord about it.

The Lord said to her, Gen 25:23, “Two nations are in your womb; two peoples will come from you and be separated. One people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.^”

The older will serve the younger - that was God’s word about the two boys.

Isaac would’ve known what God’s said; Rebekah would’ve made sure of it.

More than that, Isaac would’ve heard about how Esau, despite being the firstborn, sold his birthright for a bowl of stew.

Isaac knew that Esau despised his birthright.

And unlike his father Abraham, who went out of his way to make sure that Isaac did not marry someone who would jeopardise his family’s obedience to God,

Esau went and married not one, but two foreign wives, who made life bitter for both Isaac and Rebekah.

God had said that the older (Esau) would serve the younger (Jacob).

Esau had demonstrated his contempt for God’s blessings by despising his birthright and marrying foreign, almost certainly unbelieving, wives.

Despite God’s prophecy and Esau’s own sinful lifestyle, Isaac still chose to bless Esau instead of Jacob.

Why would Isaac do that? Why did he choose to go against God’s will?

Throughout the passage, there’s an item that keeps turning up.

Whenever this item comes up, Isaac’s name is mentioned.

Did you spot it?

It’s the delicious meal that Isaac loves.

Isaac told Esau to hunt, bring back some game, and make the delicious meal that he loves.

Rebekah makes the meal that Isaac loves.

Jacob brings the meal for Isaac to eat.

Esau makes his own delicious meal for Isaac to eat.

Isaac loved this food, and in particular, he loved this delicious meal that the family knew so well.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying food, but in Isaac’s case, it became the focus of his life.

In fact, in Gen 25:28, we read that Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for wild game.

He loved wild game, and so he loved Esau.

His desire for the comfort and the joy that food brought turned him into a fool.

In his mind, Isaac would rather see God bless Esau than Jacob, perhaps so that Esau would continue to bring him good food.

And so, rather than seeking God’s will about who to bless, especially in light of what God had said to Rebekah, Isaac made his own call and decided to bless Esau instead of Jacob.

He had to do it quickly, before Rebekah comes to intervene, before Jacob the younger son finds out, and before God takes his life away.

Isaac knew what God had said, but he thought he knew better.

And so, while he still could do something about it, he wanted to manipulate God’s blessings.

He wanted to bless a son who openly despised God’s blessings.

He was a fool for even thinking he could manipulate God’s blessings.

But we can be like that too, can’t we?

Throughout the Bible, we’ve seen what kind of people are blessed by God, the kind of people who are approved by God.

Jesus tells us that blessed are those who are humble, for they will inherit the earth.

We know that it’s right to walk in humility before God and men.

However, even though we have heard God’s word, the default of our sinful hearts is that we try to improve on what God’s word says.

We might have heard and even understood what God said, but we think we can do better.

Like Isaac, we ignore the clear instruction of God’s word, we even ignore the obvious flaws in our plans, to try to bring God’s blessings to our lives or God’s blessings to our family’s lives.

And like Isaac, the reason for our attempt to manipulate God’s blessings is almost always our desire for creaturely comfort.

We want to enjoy our lives more than obeying God’s commands.

We would rather live in comfort than trust in God’s promises. 

There’s a saying that goes “Like Father, Like Son.”

In this case, it’s a case of “Like son, Like father”.

Just as Esau despised his birthright over a bowl of stew, Isaac despised his responsibility to bless according to God’s will, because of his love for game food.

What’s your bowl of stew? What’s your game food?

From the outside, it’s so easy to dismiss Esau and Isaac as fools.

But if you have a chance, listen to the conversations you have with your family, your friends, even people at church.

If someone eavesdrop on your conversation, what would they say is your love?

What would they think is the one thing you’re most excited about, what would they think is the one thing that gives you comfort?

From your conversations, what would they know about what it means to be blessed by God, if at all?

For those of us who are fathers and mothers, as well as those who are spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers to our children, God has given us the responsibility of passing on his blessings to our children, and to show them what it means to walk as people blessed by God in the Lord Jesus.

Don’t attempt to manipulate God’s word to show an alternative way of what it means to walk in Jesus.

Don’t despise your children because they don’t give you the comfort and joy that your sinful heart is yearning for.

Also, don’t overlook the faults of your children if they do give you the comfort and joy and even the pride that your sinful heart seeks.

Instead, point them to Jesus, and show them what it means to find true, lasting comfort and joy in him.

Whether you’re walking, or eating, or preparing for sleep, teach them the love of Christ, the Source of all blessings.

If we attempt to do it any other way, if we try to manipulate how God blesses, it will only make our already broken family even more broken.

2.       The deceit and disintegration of a broken family 

Unbeknownst to Isaac and Esau, Rebekah was eavesdropping on their conversation.

The Bible doesn’t tell us what was going through Rebekah’s mind, but her actions showed us three things for sure:

1. One, she didn’t agree with Isaac’s decision.

2. Two, she would rather see Jacob blessed, even if it meant lying to Isaac and taking advantage of his blindness.

3. Three, she was convinced that the act of Isaac’s blessings was irreversible.

Once the blessings were given by Isaac, and received by either Esau or Jacob, they were permanent and could not be undone. More than that, it’s very possible that Rebekah believed that the blessings Isaac would give were limited.

That is, there wasn’t an unlimited supply of blessings that Isaac could summon.

If all the blessings were given, there would be none left for Jacob.

And that’s exactly what we’ll see later on in the passage.

Isaac’s supply of blessings was not infinite but limited.

And so, Rebekah had to act quickly, while Esau was still away on the hunt.

She told Jacob the news and told him to bring her two goats so that she could make Isaac’s favourite dish.

Was Jacob trying to change Isaac’s mind to bless him instead of Esau?

No! The plan was for Jacob to pretend to be Esau so that Isaac would think that Jacob was Esau and bless him instead.

A lot of things could go wrong, but one obvious one was their skin.

Esau was a hairy man, but Jacob’s skin was smooth.

How could they have possibly pulled this off?

All Isaac needed to do was to touch Jacob, and he would know who Jacob was.

More than that, in verse 12, Jacob said he would then be revealed as a deceiver.

The word can also be translated as mocking or bullying.

We see this come through in the Chinese translation.

It’s a pretty low blow to take advantage of a blind man for your own gain.

It’s much worse if the blind man you’re trying to take advantage of is your own Dad!

In Deuteronomy 27:18, God’s word says that anyone who physically misleads a blind man is cursed.

That’s what Rebekah was asking Jacob to do – to mock his own blind Dad.

She was asking Jacob to risk being cursed by God instead of being blessed by God!

Rebekah was so determined to go ahead with the plan that she said she would take the curse.

Rebekah might have overpromised because curses are generally not transferable.

It might spread to other people, but you can’t get rid of God’s curse on yourself, or ask God to transfer it to somebody else.

Even so, Rebekah wouldn’t let that detail get in the way of her plan.

To prepare for the possibility of Isaac’s touching Jacob’s skin, Rebekah put skins of young goats on Jacob’s hands and the smooth part of his neck.

She even got Esau’s best clothes and made Jacob wear them.

If Isaac could see it, Jacob was a poor and ridiculous imitation of Esau.

II.         When I was a pharmacist, back in the last century, I had to learn how to spot fake prescriptions.

Most of the prescriptions we get are fine, but every now and then, we get someone who comes in with a script for a dangerous drug in horrible handwriting, often with the wrong spelling and almost always as if it was written by someone in kindergarten.

But even when it looked dodgy, I would still need to give the doctor a call, just to be sure, because sometimes, we do get doctors who have very bad handwriting. 

In Jacob’s case, he was a very bad imitation but also had a high chance of succeeding because Isaac was blind.

However, though Isaac was blind and foolish, he wasn’t stupid.

He still had other senses he could use.

Would Jacob succeed in tricking his father into blessing him?

Would Isaac detect the fake Esau who came to see him?

The Bible almost uses all five senses as five tests for Jacob.

Test One: Sight test. Obviously, Isaac couldn’t use his eyes to see if it was Esau, since he was blind. And so, Jacob ‘passed’ this one.

Test Two: Hearing test. Jacob said, “My Father”.

Isaac replied, “Here I am. Who are you, my son?” Failed.

Jacob might have forgotten to imitate Esau’s voice.

Rather than confessing his sin, Jacob continued with the lie.

He got so nervous that when Isaac asked him how he got the food so quickly, he said, “Because the Lord your God made it happen to me”.

It sounded nice but it was an outright lie. God didn’t help Jacob get the food cooked that quickly, his mother did.

Jacob lied about God to try to convince Isaac, but Isaac wasn’t convinced.

Test Three: Touch test. Isaac felt hairy hands and thought that it was Esau.

Jacob passed this one, but still Isaac wasn’t sure.

Test Four: Taste test. Isaac had the meal.

It was his comfort food.

Rebekah knew exactly how to cook the meal to Isaac’s taste.

Jacob also brought wine along to go with the food and maybe even dampen Isaac’s senses a little.

Test Five: (what’s left?) Smell test.

When Isaac asked Jacob to kiss him, he smelled his clothes, that is, Esau’s clothes. It was only then that he was convinced (wrongly) that it was Esau.

Isaac then gave Jacob his blessings.

Genesis: 27:27-29, “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed. May God give to you- from the dew of the sky and from the richness of the land—an abundance of grain and new wine. May peoples serve you and nations bow in homage to you. Be master over your relatives; may your mother’s sons bow in homage to you. Those who curse you will be cursed, and those who bless you will be blessed.

Rebekah’s plan worked! Isaac blessed Jacob instead of Esau!

Isaac blessed Jacob, asking God to give him abundance from the heavens and from the earth.

He also asked God to make Jacob’s brothers serve Jacob.

He even ended his blessing like how God had blessed Abraham, “Those who cursed (Jacob) would be cursed. Those who blessed (Jacob) would be blessed.”

And they did it just in time as well, for as soon as Jacob left, Esau came in.

Esau hunted, cooked, and was ready to receive his father’s blessing.

Even though Isaac would’ve recognised Esau’s voice, he still asked, “Who are you?”

When Esau answered him, Isaac instantly knew what had happened.

He began to tremble uncontrollably.

He blessed the son that he intentionally tried avoiding to bless.

Even though Jacob wasn’t the son he wanted to bless, Isaac was manipulated to bless him unknowingly.

When Esau tried to get a blessing from Isaac, it was too late.

Isaac had already made Jacob master of Esau, as well as asked God to sustain him with grain and new wine.

Isaac had no more blessing to pass on to Esau.

Esau wept loudly and Isaac gave him a fairly weak blessing at the end.

27:39-40, “Look, your dwelling place will be away from the richness of the land, away from the dew of the sky above. You will live by your sword, and you will serve your brother. But when you rebel, you will break his yoke from your neck.

The only respite that Esau had was that one day, he would break Jacob’s yoke of slavery from his back.

It was a pale blessing compared to what could’ve been for Esau.

Esau had it rough, but please, don’t spare any sympathy for Esau. Esau held a grudge against Jacob and comforted himself by imagining how he would kill his brother Jacob after his father Isaac died.

Esau was preoccupied with the natural death and violent death of his family members.

Once again, Rebekah found out about it and urged Jacob to flee to Laban, her brother.

Even though Rebekah said it would be only for a few days, it would turn out to be years.

As far as we know, Rebekah would not be seeing Jacob after this.

Esau would comfort himself at thinking how he would kill his own twin brother.

And Isaac would continue to live for years, perhaps even decades, before dying at the ripe old age of 180.

Isaac’s decision to try to manipulate God’s blessings, as well as Rebekah’s and Jacob’s response of lying to Jacob to get his blessings, not to mention the bitter hate Esau had towards his twin brother, had caused irreparable damage to the family.

They were already a broken family before this.

They were even more broken afterwards.

There are no heroes of faith in this family.

No one prayed to God to seek his will.

No one trusted in God’s promises.

Even Rebekah and Jacob, though they had understood that God had prophesied that Jacob would rule over Esau, would rather use their own deceitfulness to have Isaac bless Jacob, instead of trusting that God doesn’t need their lies to achieve his will.

The end of seeing Jacob blessed by God cannot be justified by their means of taking advantage of blind Isaac.

Brothers and sisters, we must never let our ends of doing things for God’s glory and for men’s good be justified by harmful and sinful deeds.

We want our Church to grow, God wants our Church to grow, but it mustn’t be done at the expense of truth and integrity.

We must preach and practice the truth of the gospel, even if we’re not liked or loved by all.

We must never lie or overpromise to make ourselves look good.

Rather than pretending to be perfect, we must come before God and be honest about our brokenness.

That’s one of the marvellous things about reading through the Old Testament accounts.

There are so many broken families there.

If it’s up to us, we might try to hide the brokenness of our family.

We don’t want people to know about the foolish decisions we made, or the foolish decisions our ancestors made.

There’s a saying in Chinese, “every home has a book that’s best not to read aloud 家家有本难念的经”.

But We want to show people how good we are, that we’re perfect, when we’re in fact broken.

We know it and God knows it.

There’s no one who righteous, there’s no one who perfect, there’s no family that’s unbroken, not even one.

But God kept all these accounts of broken families in the Bible to show us that we can be honest with Him.

He knows about our brokenness and yet, He still chooses to love us.

Now notice that God’s love is not indulgent.

God’s love for us is not like Isaac’s love for Esau.

Isaac indulged Esau and chose to bless him despite his disrespect for God.

That’s not loving Esau; that’s spoiling Esau.

Ultimately, it leaves Esau out of God’s blessings.

When Esau realised what happened, it was too late.

Hebrews 12:17, “For you know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, even though he sought it with tears, because he didn’t find any opportunity for repentance.“

Here it shows us that it’s even more ominous in the Hebrews than what we saw in Genesis.

A time came for Esau when there were no more opportunities for repentance.

It came and it was gone; Esau was too late.

No crying in the world would change that. The Bible tells us not to be like Esau, but to come to God when the opportunity is there.

Esau had plenty of opportunities to come back to God but he didn’t take it until it was too late.

Don’t be like Esau and despise all the opportunities that God’s given you. Confess your brokenness and come before God.

3. The heavenly Father breaks His Son to bless us

Isaac loved Esau and tried to manipulate God’s blessings and give God’s blessings to him.

Rebekah loved Jacob and so both lied and manipulated Isaac to get him to bless Jacob with God’s blessings.

These were broken parents who both loved their broken sons and they both manipulated to get what’s good for them.

At the end, they brought even more brokenness into their broken family.

Contrast that with God’s love.

God loved Jesus far more than Isaac loved Esau, far more than Rebekah loved Jacob.

God’s love is infinitely greater, infinitely more beautiful than any love any parent could have for their child.

However, the heavenly Father, who has a perfect love for Jesus, God the Son, broke Jesus, in order to save broken people like us.

Look with me at Isa 53:4, “Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains;  but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God,  and afflicted.”

God struck down Jesus and crushed him for our sins.

And also, 2 Cor 5:21, “He made the one who did not know sin  to be sin  for us,  so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

He made Jesus sin to make us right with him. He broke Jesus to heal our brokenness.

Early in January a CMS couple who were preparing to go to the Middle East were interviewed on stage.

The husband’s first wife died of cancer many years ago.

The husband’s second wife, a Christian woman, came into the family, always remembering that someone died so that she could be part of the family.

She said that’s what the gospel of Jesus is like.

 And she’s right!

Jesus died so that we can be part of God’s perfect, eternal family.

That’s the blessing that Isaac and Rebekah longed for.

That’s the blessing that we’ll one day have in the Lord Jesus.

We can be sure of this because Jesus’ body, though broken by God and left to die on the cross, was made alive by none other than God the Father himself.

On the third day after his death, Jesus came back to life to show that everything he said is true.

In fact, in Jesus, all those who trust in him have every blessing in Christ.

There’s no more blessing that God could give to us who belong to Jesus then what he’s given us in Jesus.

In Christ, we have every blessing in the heavenly realms.

In Christ, we also find the limit of every blessing in the heavenly realms.

Though God’s blessings in Christ for us are infinite, they are infinite in Christ.

Since God’s given every blessing in Christ, there are no more blessings to give for those outside of Christ.

That is, if we want to experience any blessing of God, we must come to Jesus Christ and put our trust in him.

Esau sought blessings from Isaac, but Isaac had none to give.

Don’t end up like Esau, trying to find blessings outside of Christ when God’s given every spiritual blessing in Christ.

Don’t end up like Esay and don’t look for perfect families, or perfect families of Christ, in a broken world.

Of course, do everything you can to build up your family and your church, but don’t have unrealistic expectations of perfection.

While we’re on this side of heaven, we’ll still have brokenness in our lives.

We need to be patient with one another, asking God to heal our brokenness as we pray that His Spirit will continue to heal us and shape us to the image of Jesus.

At the same time, don’t look down on broken families.

Our Churches should be safe havens for the lost and the broken.

If anything, we ought to be a place where broken people can feel safe to come before God to find healing and Christ’s own comfort.

What a shame if would be if we only point out the brokenness in other families and forget that as families, as individuals, we’re broken as well.

And so, what happens when we try to fix how God blesses us?

When we try to fix how God blesses us, we foolishly believe that we know better than God, bringing more brokenness into an already broken world.

When we try to fix how God blesses us, choosing our end instead of his, it often shows that we are more concerned about our comforts than God himself.

When we try to fix how God blesses us, choosing our way instead of his, it often leads to lies and deception, means that God does not approve of.

And so, don’t try to fix how God blesses us.

Instead, be amazed at how God mends our brokenness in Jesus Christ.

Thank God that he broke Jesus to make us whole in Jesus.

Praise God for the blessings that he gives us in Christ.

For we know that Manipulating God’s blessings only breaks us and our families, but God allows his Son to be broken to bless us.

Here are three questions for us to think about:

1.         Esau has his red stew. Isaac has his delicious meal. What’s creaturely comfort that might tempt you to try to manipulate God’s blessings?

2.         What godly goals might be tarnished by ungodly means in your walk with God?

3.         Think of the times when Jesus faced our brokenness. How does this help you face the brokenness of our world that you’re facing?

May God help us in our brokenness, and keep us from trying to fix God’s blessings, for: Manipulating God’s blessings only breaks us and our families, but God allows his Son to be broken to bless us.

Let’s pray, “Father, we thank you for breaking Jesus for a broken people like us. Please forgive us when we think we know better than you, trying to fix and improve on your perfect word. Please forgive us bringing more brokenness into a world that’s already so broken. By your Holy Spirit please heal our brokenness by the resurrection power of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may bring your blessings to a world that badly needs it. We ask for all these in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”