Our desires and God’s free choice
Passage: Genesis 25:1-34
Big Idea: Desire God, who blesses those He’s freely chosen in Christ, and choose to slay the desires of your flesh.
1. Near but not chosen by God
2. A choice to despise God’s blessings
3. The chosen ones desire God’s Chosen Son
Many years ago, before we were married, Jenny and I attended the wedding of a friend.
As you may know, it’s a tradition at weddings for the bride to throw a bouquet of flowers over her head and the one who catches it is supposedly the next one to get married (it’s a tradition and not a prophecy!)
And so, at the end of the wedding, the bride threw a bouquet of flowers over her head.
Now the bride was standing at the end of the aisle and all the girls were ready to catch it.
I got out of the way so that the girls can all compete for the bouquet.
The bride threw the flowers very far, over the girls and landed right at my feet.
I had a look at everyone around and didn’t really know what to do.
And so, they went for a re-run and I stood even further away.
And guess what, the bride threw further this time, over the girls and went straight for me.
I literally opened my palms and caught the flowers.
I didn’t choose the flowers; the flowers chose me.
It’s nice to be chosen, isn’t it? It’s a good feeling.
The wedding I went to was pretty civilised; the girls weren’t too fussed over who gets the flowers.
But there are weddings where catching the bouquet was a very serious moment.
These girls would be very competitive; they wanted desperately to get the flowers because they really wanted to be a bride.
They wanted someone to choose them to love and to hold, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.
When we read the Bible, God is said to choose his people.
God is said to choose people to love; God’s the one who chooses people whom he saves.
Do we want to be chosen by God? If so, how much?
How desperate are you for God to choose you?
That’s what we’ll be looking at in today’s passage.
And so, please open your Bible with me to Genesis chapter 25, beginning from verse 1.
We’ll see three things:
1. Near but not chosen by God
2. A choice to despise God’s blessings
3. The chosen ones desire God’s Chosen Son
Before we begin, let’s pray, “Father, by your Holy Spirit, would you please inflame our hearts as we hear your word, that we might want nothing and no one else besides Jesus, in whose name we pray, Amen.”
1. Near but not chosen by God
After Sarah, Abraham had another wife named Keturah.
Together, they had six sons, and these sons had their own families.
All of them were Abraham’s sons.
Now earlier in the book of Genesis, God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations.
That promise is looking like it’s finally coming true.
However, these sons, as wonderful as they must have been, weren’t the ones God had chosen to inherit God’s promises to Abraham.
God said that it would be through Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac, that he would fulfil his promises.
And so, Abraham gave everything he owned to Isaac, but he also gave gifts to his concubines and their children.
Isaac was to stay and live in the land God promised to Abraham, but Abraham sent the sons he had with Keturah eastward, away from Isaac.
How about Ishmael, the son Abraham had with Hagar, the Egyptian maid of Sarah? Abraham had sent them away earlier, and Ishmael also had many sons—twelve to be exact!
Ishmael went down to the south, to a place called Shur, which was opposite Egypt. When Abraham died, Ishmael came back home to bury his father with his half-brother, Isaac.
Abraham lived to be 175 years old, a good age; old and contented.
He was buried with his wife, Sarah, in the field he had bought from Ephron, the son of Zohar the Hethite.
After that, Ishmael went back home, but Isaac stayed near Beer-Lahai-roi.
Ishmael and the sons of Keturah, though they were sons of Abraham and received good things precisely because they were sons of Abraham, didn’t receive the special covenantal blessings God’s promised to Abraham.
Only Isaac was chosen to receive these blessings from God.
They were so close, they were practically there, but they didn’t receive the blessings for Isaac, the one whom God had chosen.
Think of them like the girls around me when I caught the bouquet at my friend’s wedding.
They were so close, so near, and yet they didn’t get it.
The Bible then shifts its focus to Isaac’s family.
In this family, we’ll meet a boy who was also very close to receiving God’s blessings, but he didn’t quite make it.
Remember a few weeks ago, when we read about how God provided a wife for Isaac through Abraham’s servant?
The wife’s name was Rebekah and she married Isaac was 40 years old.
I’m sure their wedding would’ve brought a lot of joy to the family.
However, a problem soon appeared in their marriage.
Look with me at Genesis chapter 25 verse 21, “Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife because she was childless.”
Rebekah couldn’t have any children and so Isaac prayed for her.
Maths question time: How long did Isaac pray for Rebekah about her childlessness?
Here’s a clue: according to verse 26, Isaac became a father when he was sixty.
How old was he when he was married? 40.
He probably would’ve started praying for Rebekah to have children soon afterwards.
And so, how long has Isaac been praying for Rebekah? He was faithfuly praying for Rebekah for 20 years.
The LORD was receptive to his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived.
The LORD answered Isaac’s prayer by giving him not just one, but two boys!
Imagine that! Twins!
While Rebekah was pregnant, she felt the boys inside her, struggling with each other.
The word in the original language (Hebrew) is quite strong; the word can also mean crushing.
They weren’t just moving because they were uncomfortable; they were fighting, trying to crush one another inside Rebekah’s womb!
Like Isaac her husband, Rebekah was also a person of prayer, so she asked the Lord what it meant.
This is what he said to her, in verse 23, “And the LORD said to her:
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.”
These two boys would become the fathers of two nations.
But here’s the unexpected part: the older boy would serve the younger boy.
Before the boys were even born, God had already chosen who would be the stronger one.
God didn’t just predict the future; He’s actually shaping it.
God chose them to be who they would become even before they did anything good or bad.
This is what’s known as the doctrine of election.
In the Bible, we learn that God can and does freely choose the person whom He wants to bless. It’s completely up to Him who He wants to choose to bless or curse, who He wants to love and who He doesn’t want to love.
It’s God’s sovereign, free choice.
When the boys were born, the first one was covered with hair, like a little furry coat.
This little furry ball of a boy was called Esau.
The second one came out, clinging to his brother’s heel, as if trying to pull his brother back so he could come out first.
The second one was named Jacob.
God chose Esau, the older boy, to serve Jacob, the younger boy before they did anything bad or good.
It was completely God’s free choice.
Paul talks about the doctrine of election using these two boys as an example in Romans 9:11-13
“For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand — 12 not from works but from the one who calls—she was told, The older will serve the younger. 13 As it is written: I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.”
If there was anyone who was really close to someone who was chosen by God, it would be Esau.
He was in the womb with the one whom God chose; you can’t get closer than your twin brother in your mother’s womb!
Even though he was so close, he wasn’t the chosen one to receive God’s special covenantal blessings to Abraham.
The doctrine of election shows God’s complete control over everything He’s made, including their destiny.
It’s God’s free choice.
No one forced God to choose one person or another; in fact, no one can force God to do anything.
There’s no higher principle that God must follow in order to choose.
God can freely choose whoever He wants to choose.
God has free will, but do we?
Have you ever wondered if we truly have free will?
We often think we do, but we don’t.
We’re all limited by our abilities and capacities.
Just like I can’t fly off the ground or keep running without getting out of breath, we can’t make choices that defy natural laws.
Our choices are shaped by our abilities and the culture we’ve grown up in.
However, God, who’s all powerful, all wise, and all knowing, can make truly free choices.
His choices aren’t random; they’re made out of his infinite wisdom and he has every right to do so.
Imagine being chosen by God!
The Bible tells us how amazing it is to be chosen by God, to be blessed by him, and to be loved by him.
There’s nothing we do that makes God choose us.
For reasons we don’t and can’t fully understand, God has chosen people to love and to bless.
Now imagine the tragedy of being close to people chosen by God but not actually chosen by God.
Take Ishmael, Keturah’s sons, and Esau for example.
They were so close to God’s chosen ones, they lived with them, and Esau was even born with one of them.
But being close to chosen ones doesn’t mean you’re chosen.
My friends, one of the greatest tragedies in our churches is that many people are so close to God’s kingdom, yet they’re still outside of it.
God blesses those who are in the Kingdom of His Son, whom he loves, that is, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the One whom God loves, is the Ultimate Chosen One. God chose Jesus to be the One through whom we come to know him.
To be chosen in Christ is the greatest blessing in the world.
And yet, there are many who are close to Christ but are not in Christ.
You can be tragically close to knowing Jesus without knowing Jesus at all.
I wanted to share a story about a young man I knew in another church I served in. Let’s call him Lionel. Lionel was raised in a Christian family and attended Sunday School regularly.
He was bright, charming, and an overall lovely guy.
But soon I discovered that he was living a life that didn’t align with what the Bible teaches.
The way he was living was different from what he was teaching the children in Sunday School.
I wanted to talk to him about it and planned to meet him near Chinatown in Sydney, but he declined.
He stopped teaching Sunday School and eventually left the Church.
He was tragically close but was never actually in Christ.
I hope Lionel will come to his senses and turn back to God someday.
But sadly, Lionel wasn’t the only person I met who was close to God but didn’t seem to be chosen by Him, at least at that time.
Friends, we can’t hide our hearts from God.
We can pretend to follow Jesus, but He knows if we truly do.
How do we know whether our hearts are truly following Jesus?
One way is to see how we respond to God’s blessings. Do we desire God’s blessings? Or do we despise them?
2. A choice to despise God’s blessings
Esau shows himself as someone whose heart was not with God by despising God’s blessings.
Look with me at verse 27, “When the boys grew up, Esau became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman, but Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home.”
Esau was an expert hunter, probably started shaving when he was 3 months old; he was a manly man.
But Jacob, on the other hand, was a quiet soul, happy to stay at home and enjoy the simple pleasures of life, like cooking.
The two boys were very different, and Isaac’s favouritism of Esau and Rebekah’s favouritism of Jacob didn’t help either.
If anything, it probably drove even more of a wedge between the two brothers, Instead of loving his brother and being happy for him, Jacob started to feel jealous and wanted to take Esau’s place as the firstborn.
It all started with a bowl of soup.
Jacob was cooking a stew when Esau came in from the field, exhausted and hungry.
He asked Jacob to give him some of the red stuff, what do you call it again, soup? Esau was so tired that he could barely speak in sentences!
Jacob said, “You can have it, but it’s going to cost you! You must sell me your birthright.”
In that moment, when he was so hungry he could die (he was exaggerating), Esau swore to Jacob and sold him his birthright.
Esau sold something precious, and Jacob gave him something cheap in return.
Why did Jacob want the birthright so badly?
Well, it seems like he understood how precious and how important the promises God made to Abraham and Isaac were.
Isaac and Rebekah would’ve told them bedtime stories about God’s promises.
They would’ve explained to the boys that as a family, they’d been chosen to receive God’s blessings.
They might’ve even told them about Uncle Ishmael and their other uncles, and how he hadn’t received God’s promises.
They might’ve even joked about what would happen when Esau would one day receive all these promises because Esau was the firstborn.
Back in ancient Israel, the firstborn would get double the inheritance.
In Isaac’s case, he got everything that Abraham owned, while the other sons had small gifts in comparison.
Is that what’s going to happen to Jacob?
Is he just going to get a participation award for being part of Abraham’s family when his brother Esau gets everything?
Not if he could help it! And so, Jacob made this deal with Esau: Sell me your birthright and I’ll give you my soup
Now, this wasn’t a good deal, not at all. It was a terrible deal.
Why would anyone want to give away everything God promised to Abraham and Isaac for a bowl of soup?
But that’s exactly what Esau did.
He agreed to the deal and took the soup instead of God’s promises.
He was probably hungry at the time, but no amount of hunger could justify him selling his birthright for a bowl of soup.
His desire for food was greater than his desire for God’s promises.
By doing this, Esau despised his birthright.
Come and look with me at Hebrews chapter 12:16-17, to see what the Bible thought of Esau, “And make sure that there isn’t any immoral or irreverent person like Esau, who sold his birthright in exchange for a single meal. 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.”
Esau was both immoral and irreverent.
He was morally corrupt because he was literally letting his gut make moral decisions.
He was letting his heart and his flesh, make decisions about whether to trust God or not.And so, it was ultimately an irreverent decision as well.
Esau made his decision without the reverence or fear of God.
He take over and making decisions based on his own desires, not on God’s will.
As long as his stomach and his heart is satisfied, who cares what God thinks?
You know what? Many people in our world are like Esau.
God is offering them eternal life, eternal life, in Jesus Christ, but they turn around and say they’re busy and don’t have enough time for God.
God is offering them the kingdom of heaven but they would rather have a few more dollars in their bank account.
God is offering them love for all eternity, but they would rather spend time loving themselves.
It’s so foolish, so immoral, but what we are, when we despise God’s promises for us in Christ.
Just like Esau, there are many people who know about God’s blessings and are so close to receiving them.
They’ve been brought up in the Church or spent most of their lives there, but instead of being grateful, they despise God’s promises.
Next week, we would find out that Esau wanted to repent and turn back, but by then, it was too late.
The same goes for us as well.
We can’t despise God forever; there will come a time when it’s too late.
When the writer of Hebrews is talking about Esau, he is actually speaking to people in the Church.
He’s warning us not to slip back into the world, not to despise God’s promises, and not to be like Esau.
So, don’t make foolish and irreverent choices; don’t despise God’s blessings.
When I was still in Bible College, I remember that a student jokingly asked our lecturer, “can you tell us what’s in the exam?”
He replied, “You can’t afford me.”
What does he mean? He means his price is too high.
Why? Because there’s nothing that the students could offer him that would make him dishonour Christ.
How about you? What’s your price?
I hope it’s really high.
I hope people can’t afford to offer you anything that would lead you to dishonour and despise Christ.
I hope there’s nothing in the world that would turn you to disrespect Christ, because whatever it is, it’s nothing compared to what God gives us in Christ.
3. The chosen ones desire God’s Chosen Son
God’s choice for us is not random; God’s freely chosen us in Christ.
God’s chose us because God’s chosen Jesus Christ; we’re chosen by God because we’re in Christ.
Or to put it another way, God chooses to no one, apart from Christ.
This is what we read in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4-5, “For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,”God chose us before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless and He chose us according to His good pleasure and will.
It gives God joy and pleasure to choose us.
And if God has chosen us, then loving God and following Jesus will give us joy.
That’s how we know that we are chosen by him.
To love God, to glorify God, is what our heart truly desires.
And so, what our heart desires gives us a glimpse of the state of hearts before God. If being with God in Jesus and His people is what makes us happy, then we know that our heart is in a good place.
If our heart has no desire to be with God’s people, then it tells us that our hearts are in a bad place.
And you can’t make this desire, you can’t make yourself want God; only God can do that.
Galatians chapter 5, verses 16-17 tells us that our heart, our desires, is the battleground between the Spirit and the flesh, “ I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want.”
What do you want? What gives you joy?
You can desire good things and you can desire the bad things.
You can find joy in God’s things and you can find joy in what seem like good things. If you have God’s Spirit, you will desire God’s things even more than what seems like good things.
If you desire good things more than God, then you’re letting that thing takes God’s place in your life.
Whatever good thing that you give priority over God is your red soup.
God’s choice and our choices, God’s desire and our desires; they all intersect.
God freely chooses those who belong to Him. Those who belong to him would choose what pleases Him, what He desires.
We will choose God’s things over what our flesh and our heart want because we desire to choose them.
Choosing God’s things give us joy.
That is, God’s choice of us will move the way we choose.
God’s Spirit in us will give us joy when we desire God’s things.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t find joy anywhere else.
Our flesh will still tell us to desire sinful things, and we might find temporary joy when we do sin.
But if we are truly chosen by God, we will repent and turn back to him because being found in him, being forgiven by him, gives us a far more satisfying, far greater joy.
C.S. Lewis once said, “It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Our problem is that we’re far too easily pleased. We want the temporal joy and forsake eternal joy.
And so, ask God to help us have a far standard of joy, that is, His standard of joy. Ask for a joy that can only be filled by Him.
Despise anything that stops us from having the eternal joy that can only be found in Christ. If you have any disdain for God’s promises – despise them.
Despise any disdain for God’s promises.
Repent from any ill feelings you have towards God and ask Him to forgive you in Christ.
Only in Christ will we find real joy and satisfaction.
And so, friends, desire God, who blesses those He’s freely chosen in Christ, and choose to slay the desires of your flesh.
Here are three questions for us to think about this week:
1. What do my desires tell me about my relationship with God?
2. How do I know whether I’m only near the people God’s chosen or that I am one of those whom God’s chosen?
3. What desires do you need to slay so that you desire God even more?
Let’s ask God to help us desire him, who blesses those he’s freely chosen in Christ and to help us choose to slay the desires of our flesh.
Let’s pray, “Father, we thank you for choosing us in Christ before the creation of the world. Father, you chose us not because of what we’ve done but because of Jesus Christ. Father, please let us hold on to Christ. By your Spirit, let us desire what you desire, let us find joy where you find joy. And please give us the wisdom to find joy as we make our choices, knowing that whatever we choose to give up is nothing compared to Jesus, whom you’ve given for us. We pray this in his name, Amen.”