TODAY’S READING: GENESIS 25-27
OVERVIEW:
The death of Abraham; the birth of Jacob and Esau; Esau sells his birthright; Isaac sojourns in Gerar; Isaac blesses Jacob with the Abrahamic Covenant.
HIGHLIGHTS & INSIGHTS:
After the death of Abraham, Isaac finds himself in the same predicament his father was in some 50 years previous. He is the recipient of God’s promise of seed, but his wife of 20 years remains barren. The fulfillment of God’s covenant promise demanded that Isaac and Rebekah have sons. Rather than follow the sin of his father, Isaac learns to “intreat the Lord” (25:21) for the very thing that his father had looked to the world and the flesh to provide. (Praise the Lord, the Scripture says the sins of the fathers (Ex. 34:7; Num14:18) are VISITED upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. When a VISITOR comes to your door, you don’t have to let them in! Do note, however, that when the sin of his father visits in chapter 26 and verse 7, Isaac responds just as his father, Abraham had done. He seeks to pass off his wife as his sister. Always be on guard against the sins your father was susceptible to!
As a result of Isaac’s faithful prayers, God grants Isaac and Rebekah conception. Rebekah sensed a struggle within her womb, and enquired of the Lord as to the meaning. The Lord explained in 25:23, “Two nations are in thy womb (Israeland Edom), and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” God comments further in Malachi 1:2-3 and Romans 9:13 – “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” When God says that he hated Esau and loved Jacob in Malachi, he was making a reference to the flesh and spirit of a man. The flesh is the 1st born and God hates the flesh and the spirit is that which is our 2nd birth (born again) and god loves the spirit.
We have seen this previously in the story of Ishmael and Isaac, God continuously finds ways to point us to the fact that he rejects the first birth (“that which is born of the flesh” – John 3:6a) and accepts the second birth (“that which is born of the Spirit” – John 3:6b). This time God points us to that fact in the picture He paints through His record of the lives of Jacob and Esau.
But there is also another incredible picture that God paints through the bizarre story in Genesis 27 of the firstborn blessing coming to Jacob, the younger, instead of Esau, the older. Christ, our older brother, (Heb.2:11), the One to whom belonged the firstborn blessing (Col. 1:15; Rom8:29), was cursed (II Cor.5:20), and rejected of His Father (Matt. 27:46), that the firstborn blessing might come upon us!
CHRIST IS REVEALED:
The SEED THROUGH WHOM THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD WOULD BE BLESSED – Gen. 26:4 (Gal.3:16)
In ESAU – Gen. 25:23 (Mal. 1:2-3; Gal.3:13)