Genesis 25 - Fighting For God’s Will
Main Idea: Believe God will accomplish His work, & release the impulse to accomplish it by human means.
What God has promised, God will perform. (vs. 19-21)
You can have confidence that God is true to His Word.
You can boldly ask God to prove His faithfulness again.
You’ll always be welcome in your Father’s presence.
What God allows, God has a plan for. (vs. 22-26)
God’s plans normally involve difficult circumstances.
God’s plans circumvent human wisdom & strategies.
What God blesses us with should be valued. (vs. 27-34)
God’s given you people to love, care for, & forgive.
God’s given you gifts to bless others with.
God’s given you His grace so you can know Him & love others.
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Well, if you got your Bibles, let's turn over to Genesis 25. I am super, super excited that we are beginning a brand new sermon series in a very familiar book.
So you might say, is it really all that new if we've already been in Genesis once this year? Listen, it's brand new, brand new characters, including a couple of the ones that we already met before too.
But I'm looking forward to walking through both this month, so this is August, September, and October. We're going to be looking at Genesis 25 through 36 in a series I've entitled Family Feud.
And it's because it's looking at the lives of Isaac, Jacob, Esau, and Jacob's 12, 13-ish kids. It is a wild ride.
If y'all think some of your families are messed up, that there's some fighting, that there's some unhealthy dynamics, you guys have seen nothing yet. You will, if nothing else, you'll walk away from this series going, I'm thankful for my family.
They're not that bad. And hopefully you'll get some encouragement in that way.
But this is a portion of scripture that as we have been walking through Genesis, we did Genesis 1-11 last year, and then we did the life of Abraham, Genesis 12-24-ish at the beginning of this year.
We're seeing what God is doing in and through people. Broken, finite, flawed individuals, just like you and me.
As we look at the book of Genesis, we see a world that has been broken by sin, that the world is not the way that God created it, a very good.
Instead, as mankind decided to go its own direction, and to disobey God, and to not live in the way that He had called them to, that God didn't just leave us to our own devices, but instead, He promised the Messiah, Jesus, who would come in to save
the world. He would end death. He would crush our soul's enemy, the devil, who wants nothing more than for you and I to live our life completely apart from God, and to spend eternity without Him.
And so God promised to send the Messiah into the world, and He was going to bring the Messiah in. The Messiah wasn't just going to be God, He was going to be God and man.
And so if the Messiah was going to be man, he needed to come through a human family. And God selected the man Abraham.
He was called out from the city Ur of the Chaldean people, and God told him, in you all of the nations of the world will be blessed. And so that was what we learned in the first 24 chapters of Genesis.
We also saw one particular aspect of the Abraham story was, Abraham was 99 years old before he finally conceived a son. And if you're going to have a lineage that ends up in Jesus, you probably need some kids to start off that lineage.
And Abraham, in the time that he was in the land of Israel, he had some times of doubting God, where he thought, God's not going to make this happen for me, so I'll make it happen for me. And we saw some of the effects of that.
And you can look back in our sermon series, if you have any questions on that, you're like, listen, I wasn't there, I missed that day, what in the world went on? I encourage you to read through that or to listen to that message.
It's a great picture of what happens when we go, okay, I can rely on God to make it happen, or I can try and force it to happen. And it's never a good idea when we force it.
And in Genesis 25 through 36, now as we look at this next step, so this is Abraham's son, Isaac, and then his, Isaac's son, Jacob, we're going to see what happens when God's chosen people have to interact with one another and with the world that they
have been called to be a blessing to. As you can tell by the series title, it's fighting, it's arguing, there's bloodshed and hatred and jealousy. It's a mess.
What we're going to see each week in God's Word, though, is that there is another way, the way of Jesus, in which you are chosen by God to be a blessing to others, not to fight with others.
By way of kind of review or encapsulating the first part of this chapter, what happens at the beginning of chapter 25 is Abraham dies, but not before he marries another girl named Keturah, and he has a bunch of kids including one named Midian, and
that's something that the writer of Genesis puts in because we need to know that when it comes to the life of Moses for the book of Exodus. So he wants them to know, hey, where did the Midianites come from?
Oh, they get traced back to Abraham as well. So Abraham, he has some kids, he sends them off into the east, so that way they're not fighting over the same land that Isaac is supposed to be inheriting.
And then Abraham dies at the ripe old age of 175, much longer, Lord willing, than you or I will last. If I'm still around at 175, I don't know, I don't want to be there. Take me off life support, just let me be with Jesus, I'll be good.
So Abraham dies at 175, and his two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, they bury him. And Ishmael at that point is 89, and Isaac is 75. So we just jumped a large, large period of time in chapter 25.
So the writer tells us Abraham married, had some remarried, had some more kids. He dies, his sons bury him.
Then it goes into detail on, hey, remember Ishmael, the kid that Abraham had to send away, the son of Hagar, who was the servant of Sarah, that Sarah was like, listen, God's not working on my timetable, so why don't you have a kid with Hagar, and
I'll count it as mine. And then it caused all sorts of problems. And so Ishmael, he has a great life, and he has 12 kids. It's supposed to remind us of the blessing that God gives to Jacob.
There's the 12 tribes of Israel, or when you think of the New Testament, the 12 apostles.
There is rich abundance, and Ishmael ends up dying, and so there's so many years encompassed in chapter 25 and verse 1, all the way through chapter 25 and verse 18. So, in those first 18 verses, it's almost kind of 100 years.
Ishmael dies at 137 years, so there's 50 years past the death of Abraham. And then the writer says, All right, I gave you the backstory. Now I want you guys to know something specific about Isaac.
I'll tell you about the other guys, put a ribbon on the story of Ishmael, put a ribbon on the story of Abraham. Abraham dies, he's buried in the cave plot that he bought from the Hethites for his wife Sarah, and he was buried there too.
They have a legitimate claim to the land because not just they showed up and said, this is mine, but because they actually purchased it. And so they have a right to be there.
What we're going to see is in verses 19 through 34, this thought, fighting for God's will, fighting for God's will. This passage is a glimpse into our own lives. What it looks like to pray for something for decades and not get a yes.
What it looks like to undergo difficulty and hardship when we thought that God was going to bless us. And what it looks like to try and get God's blessing or the good life through our own manipulation.
In essence, we're going to look at the difference between receiving God's will for our lives and fighting for God's will in our lives. And not like in a good sense of fighting, like, God, I want to know your will.
But when God has made his will known and we can either choose, I'm going to receive this or I'm going to be impatient with God and try and demand it on my own timetable or in my own way, or getting it through a means that is not godly.
That's what we're going to look at in the passage.
Many people are sure of what God wants for their life or their family or their workplace or their church, and they will kick, punch, scream, amass an army and fight tooth and nail to accomplish what they think God wants them to have.
But what I want us to see from Genesis 25 today is that we don't have to live that way. Instead, we can believe that God will accomplish his work and we can release the impulse to accomplish it by human means.
Believe that God will accomplish his work, release the impulse to accomplish it by human means. Would you pray with me? Dear Lord, thank you for your word.
God, we are so prone to become impatient with you.
God, may today you encourage us with patience that is based in the fact that you are good, that you actually want our blessing, and you are not withholding it from us, you're not playing games with us, you don't need us to sin in order to get the
good life that you have for us. God, I pray that you would open up our hearts.
Lord, if there's someone here today that doesn't know Jesus as their Savior, Lord, help them to realize that the life that they need to have, the life that they desire to have, a life of fulfillment and purpose and joy is found in knowing and walking
with Jesus. God, I pray that you would help me to only say what you want me to. And I pray all of this in your name. Amen.
Amen. Well, we're going to look at first in verses 19 through 21. If you've got your handout today and your bulletin, you can also look at that.
We're going to see that what God has promised, God will perform. What God has promised, God will perform. Verse 19, these are the family records of Isaac, son of Abraham.
Abraham fathered Isaac. Isaac was 40 years old when he took as his wife, Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Patan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean. You're going to need to remember that name Laban.
It's not just there for no reason. You're going to interact with him later. He's a piece of work.
Everyone in the story is a piece of work, but especially Laban. Isaac was 40 when he got married. Some of you maybe that are single and you're like 25 or you're 30, you still got time.
You can still find a Rebecca in your life, so don't give up hope yet. Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was childless. The Lord was receptive to his prayer and his wife, Rebecca, conceived.
I love in this verse, you can just read through this and you're like, Yeah, great, great, great. We'll learn in verse 22. This is a time elapsement of 20 years.
There were 20 years of barrenness, 20 years of childlessness for Isaac and for Rebecca. And during that waiting period, I'm sure there were some doubts. I'm sure there were some questions.
But I love that Isaac praise where Abraham was like, All right, well, I don't think that God's going to do this. So I guess I'll hook up with Hagar and that Sarah was like, Listen, where's this, you know, big blessing to all the nations thing?
Like, hurry up with it. Isaac has a different response. It's he prays to the Lord.
And I love that second sentence there. The Lord was, what's that word? Receptive to his prayer.
God receives it. We're going to look at that a little bit more later. I want to notice first here what God has promised God will perform.
If God has said that he's going to do it, then you can trust that God will accomplish it.
Baseline level, before we get to some practical stuff, is God has promised salvation to every person that will repent of their sin and believe in Jesus for salvation. That is the promise of God.
He says, not from works, so that no one is able to boast. We are saved by grace, that is God's gift through faith, belief in what God has said and done. And what God has promised in our salvation, we can know that he will perform.
Many people today, they get really scared about their eternal destiny. They don't know if they've been good enough to earn heaven. I can promise you, based on the word of God, Jesus has provided the way of salvation.
God has performed it. He has promised it.
Today, if you don't know Jesus as your Savior, you can trust in what Jesus accomplished on the cross, dying in our place, taking our justice that we deserve for the wrong things that we have said and thought and done that go against God.
We can trust that Jesus' payment for sin is sufficient. There's never going to be a person that goes, hey, charge my sins to the account of Jesus Christ. And God goes, eh, insufficient funds.
That will never happen. Jesus is all-sufficient for every person. No matter how long you have been away from the Lord, no matter how much you have messed up, you can always find a safe haven in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Then perhaps a little bit lower level for us would be this. You can have confidence that God is true to his word. God has promised it, and you can have confidence that God is true to his word.
Here, Isaac, he knew the promises that God had made to his dad, that their descendants would be like the sand on the seashore, or like the stars in the sky. He had that promise of God, and so he had confidence that God would answer the prayer.
If God has promised something, and if God wants you to receive something or do something, you can have a settled confidence that you don't have to manufacture or force what God has promised to do. It always cracks me up in my life.
I've got my two kids, B's five, Ev turns three next month. Whenever I'm like, all right, kids, we're going to the park, we're going to church, and they're like, are you gonna take us? And I'm like, yes, we're your parents.
Of course, we're taking you like it. Come on, get in the car. It's a they can have confidence.
We're not leaving them behind at the house, and me and Samantha just going to hang out. We've never done that. And so they can have confidence in asking.
You can have confidence when you ask God to keep his word. Now, this is where a little bit of Bible interpretation comes in.
Don't just like pick out a random sentence in the Bible and then be like, OK, God, you have to give me, you know, the wisdom of Solomon, or God, you need to give me the riches of Solomon. Keep your word. God's never promised that to you.
Read through scripture. Find out what the heart of God is. What he has promised us is his Holy Spirit, forgiveness of sin.
He has promised us a home in heaven with him. He has promised us that he will never leave us or forsake us.
He has promised us in Philippians 4.19, as Paul says there, my God will supply all of your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. Those are the things that we can go to God and say, God, I know this is your purpose for my life.
I'm going to ask for it. I mentioned it, I think, a week or two ago, Matthew 5 and the Lord's Prayer, that we ask, give us this day our daily bread. If you already have the daily bread, you wouldn't really have to ask for what you already have.
There are times in our life where God encourages us to call out to Him for our daily necessities so that we would recognize that everything that we have comes from Him. So you can have confidence that God is true to His Word.
You can boldly ask God to prove His faithfulness. Again, I love that Isaac, he didn't go out and find a concubine like his dad had. Instead, he prayed to the Lord.
He asked God to fulfill his promise. If you today believe that God wants something for your life or for your job situation, for your house search, for that strange relationship or for your church, you can ask God in prayer to make it happen.
You are only responsible for two things in your life. You're responsible for yourself, like your thoughts, words, actions, attitudes, and you are responsible for your prayer life to God. You can't control any other person.
You can't control the economy or the political world or your workplace. You can't control who will come to this church or what other people's words or actions will be. But you can go to the person who is responsible for everything.
And you can ask him to change people and work in people. One of my favorite quotes is by Chinese missionary Hudson Taylor, who said, When we work, we work. But when we pray, God works.
I promise you, your heavenly father is able to do more than your sibling can to help the situation. He's more resourceful than your boss is. He's got a better plan than your pastors.
So talk to him when you want to see something done. He is the way maker, the miracle worker, the promise keeper, the light in our darkness. So call out to him because he is able to accomplish what no human can.
He can change a person's heart where we can't from the outside. He's the one that works. So boldly ask God to prove his faithfulness again.
Then you'll always be welcome in your father's presence. I love that word in the passage. God was receptive to the prayer.
We're told in the letter to the Hebrews that we can come boldly before the throne of grace and find help in times of need. We're told in John's first letter that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One.
Paul told the Roman churches that the Holy Spirit takes what we should be praying for to God where Jesus intercedes for us. When you pray, you are in the will of God. You are joining in the work of the Trinity, and God is pleased.
Come to your God with your frustrations, with every bit of fear and anger and doubt and frustration and bitterness and fury that you have towards yourself, your family, your world, your fellow church members or pastors, your co-workers.
Bring all of these emotions to the only one who it is right to bring everything to. Don't be afraid of being real with your emotions with God.
He knows how you really feel anyway, so just unload the hurt and the fear on him because he actually cares about you. And he will work in people and places and circumstances that you could never change on your own.
So first, what God has promised, God will perform. But then we can see in verses 22 through 26 that what God allows, God has a plan for. So they pray for 20 years for a kid.
God hears their prayer. He's receptive to it. He gives Rebecca a kid.
And in verse 22, but the children inside of her, okay, we're working with at least two at this point, the children inside her struggled with each other. And she said, Why is this happening to me? So she went to inquire of the Lord.
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.
When her time came to give birth, there were indeed twins in her womb. What God tells you, you can believe. The first one came out red-looking, covered with hair like a fur coat.
And this red and hairy one, they named Elmo. No, just kidding, his Esau. It's not original to me.
I have a dear pastor friend that made that joke many years ago, and I can never get it out of my head. Every time I read the passage, I'm like, red-looking, covered with hair, named him Elmo. Esau, it's red, is his name.
After this, his brother came out grasping Esau's heel with his hand. So he was named Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when they were born.
They name him Jacob. Colloquially, we would say Jacob's name means like trickster. In Hebrew, it literally means heel grabber.
It's like, you know, you're in a race with someone, and the person that trips up someone else, you know, they grab their heels, they fall down. That's Jacob's name. So right at the very start from the womb, there is a family feud that's going on.
There's fighting. Mom knows it. She's like, oh, goodness, you know, what's happening?
And God tells her kind of the future of what the people of Jacob and what the people of Esau, what they'd be like and what their interactions would be.
And he also gave the promise that the older Esau would serve the younger, Jacob, that God's blessing, the line of the Messiah, would come through Jacob. So what God allows, God has a plan for. I want to tell you this.
God's plan normally involves difficult circumstances. Come on, does it have to? Unfortunately, yes.
Normally it does involve difficult circumstances. When Jesus came to this world, did he have everything easy? No.
Did everyone like him? Did everyone approve of everything he did? Then why do we expect life to be easy for us when it wasn't even easy for God?
But if there is hardship in your life, and I know there is, know that God will work in the situations. What he has allowed, he has a plan for. He's never taken aback by it.
He's not like, this ruins everything that I wanted to do. No, God is working all things together for good to those that love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. God will work in the hard situations.
He will change you to become more like Jesus. He'll give you opportunities to show Jesus' love and values to others. He may even solve the difficulty so that you can proclaim his miracles.
But you can know whatever difficult circumstance that you're in, God is going to work. Let me apply this on a church level. When I look at our church's recent history, I see some difficult circumstances.
Did you know that 77 family units in our 2019 directory no longer attend Tabernacle today? Whether due to passing, moving, or no longer being at the church.
That's more family units that have left the church in the last six years than we have members today. Did you know that we received, factoring in cost of living and inflation, we received about three-fourths of the giving in 2024 as we did in 2014?
Again, cost of living, inflation adjusted. Did you know that half of our elected leaders, about 30 people in 2016, are no longer at Tabernacle today? That's a problem.
If you lose that many people in six years, if you lose 77 family units, you might think, well, the church should be dead. But I want you guys to look around real quick. The church ain't dead.
There's still people here. I'm so thankful for that. I see a God that works in impossible, in difficult circumstances to bring new people to faith in Christ.
He brings people that maybe were in a different location to a new location. God works in impossible circumstances. He's the God that makes virgins able to have a kid.
He's the God that turns the barren womb into a fruitful womb. He's the God that turns, you know, some of our singers, he's the one that turns graves into gardens. He's the one that turns bones into armies, the red sea into a highway to go through.
There's nothing that he can't do. So I believe that God can work in difficult circumstances. God has allowed for our church to go through everything that we've gone through over the last 75 years.
Which means that he has a plan for it. God had a plan for Job and his suffering. He had a plan for Joseph and his hardships.
And since God is the one that said, this is my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, then I firmly believe that God wants to do something special at Tabernacle over the coming years.
I believe that God wants this place to be a safe haven for those who are seeking, who have questions, who need love, who want to belong and to know Christ. But I can't control that. I can't control y'all.
I can't control giving. I can't control who visits the church or who stays at the church. And that makes me happy.
If I control it, then it will only be as good as I am. But since God is in control of it, then it will be as good as God is.
If God controls, if he controls you and the giving and who visits and who stays, then we have a future as bright as the promises of God. In the same mental exercise of like hard circumstances, faith, that can go for your family.
It can go for your relationships. It can go for your marriage or for your job. God is the God who overcomes difficult circumstances and shows himself powerful on our behalf.
Then God's plans circumvent human wisdom and strategies.
It would normally be the older is the one that gets the birthright, the older child is the one that receives the stuff, but God was constantly in the Old Testament subverting that, that it's Jacob the younger who gets the birthright.
Isaac wasn't Abraham's first born son, he was the second born son, and yet he received the blessing.
You can even think in the days of creation in Genesis 1 that it wasn't the angels from day 4, the shining lights that rule the night, it wasn't the animals that were created, that were the pinnacle of creation, it was humans.
Kind of the last on the scene that God said, these are the ones that I want to set up. And so this is how God works. He circumvents our wisdom and our strategies.
He always chooses the weak things of this world to confound the wise. He chooses an 80-year-old man to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus. He chooses the death of Jesus to bring eternal life.
So don't presume to tell God, or to tell yourself, or to tell others that God is incapable of doing anything. Can God do anything he wants? Then no person on planet Earth is finally forever stuck how they are right now.
People can change, people can get better, people can improve. How do I know that? Because God's constantly working on me, and I know that I'm not the person that I was five years ago.
I'm not the person that I was ten years ago. Some of you in this room were once addicts. Some of you were atheists.
Some of you are still shocked that you are sitting in a church service this morning. God is in the business of changing people, so never write anyone off. And then lastly today, what God blesses us with should be valued.
You can see this in verses 27 through 34. When the boys grew up, Esau became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman. This is immediately meant to make us think of the previous hunter that was mentioned in Genesis.
That would be, I've completely lost his name. It's from Genesis chapter 10. He was a mighty hunter before Nimrod.
Thank you. I was looking at Pastor Ron. He didn't actually tell me Nimrod, but looking at his face made me go, you're a Nimrod for not knowing this.
It's Nimrod. Nimrod was a great hunter. He was one that was in charge of Babylon, and he was not a godly person.
He was a person that was worldly, very accomplished, very strong, very skilled, but he did not have a relationship with God. So Esau here is being painted in that exact same light. If you're like, is that kind of a stretch?
Just wait, the whole rest of the Bible will tell you that that is intentionally what the author is doing. Esau became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman, but Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home. We'll have to pause real quick.
I know we have some hunters in the room. This is not saying if you're a hunter that you don't love the Lord, by the way, just so we're very clear. Just these particular people did not.
So don't be like them. Be a great hunter who loves the Lord. Shoot that deer in the name of Christ and feed the hungry.
Jacob here is a quiet man who stayed at home. Verse 28, Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for wild game. But Rebecca loved Jacob.
This verse makes me so sad. Parents, are you supposed to love your kids? Okay.
Grandparents, are you supposed to love your kids? Are you supposed to love them for what they do for you, what they can get for you? No, you love them because like God gave them to you, and that's not the relationship that was had here.
It was a very utilitarian relationship where the parents are playing favorites with the kids. We'll look at that more in one second. Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field exhausted.
He said to Jacob, let me eat some of that red stuff because I am exhausted. That is why he was also named Edom. So here, what's translated red stuff in Hebrew, it's like red red.
Give me some of that red red. And so they call them Edom, which is also like red. It's the clay.
It's the dust. Think Adam, Edom, kind of that stuff. He's just a earthly centered, earthly focused person.
So he says, let me eat some of that red stuff. Jacob replied, first, sell me your birthright, something God had already promised to him. But that he's looking to manipulate in order to get.
Look, said Esau, I'm about to die. So what good is a birthright to me? Jacob said, swear to me first.
You know, if you will, sign the contract. So he swore to Jacob and sold his birthright to him. Then Jacob gave bread and lentil stew to Esau.
He ate, drank, got up and went away. So Esau despised his birthright. He looked down on the promise of God.
Lastly, today, what God blesses us with should be valued. First, as we see in the passage, God has given you people to love, care for, and forgive.
God gave these boys to Isaac and to Rebekah, and they were called to love and care for them, to value them. God gave these brothers each other to love and to care for. But that wasn't the relationship.
Even as we'll see over the next like two or three weeks, their relationship was, how can I get what I want from this other person? That's a horrible family relationship. Can I encourage you guys as family members, don't do that to your family.
Love them because God has given them to you for a period of time. You don't have them forever. I got to talk with Owen a little bit earlier this week, and he was mentioning having that conversation with his family too.
Like, I don't know if the Lord will give us 30, 40, 50 years more together, or God could take any one of us at any point. So we need to love one another as a family. Do you love the people in your care?
Do you tell them that you love them? Do you show them that you love them? Do you view people as an obstacle to you enjoying your work, or an obstacle to you enjoying your church or your family?
Or do you view people as the reason why God has put you in those places? God has not put you and I here at Tabernacle to do stuff. We might do stuff, but he's put us here to love people.
That includes the people we don't naturally get along with. You're not here to do stuff. You're here to love people.
Jesus died not for the stuff. He didn't die for the lights in the building and the whatever. He died for you, and he died for me, and he died for every person in this room, and every person that we interact with.
Do you have a love for them? Do you view them as the point of your existence? Do you view them as material goods?
God has given you those gifts so that you can help and bless others, not so you can exploit them or control other people. I'll mention one way that I've heard this play out in other churches.
Someone has a particular affinity for an instrument or is incredibly wealthy, and instead of them using their gifts to bless others, they try to leverage their gifts so that they can get what they want from a church.
As I've heard my friend Myron put it before, they go, well, I'm just going to take my ball and go home. And they think that somehow if they try to hold the bride of Christ captive to their desires, that it's going to go well for them.
Let me put it plainly for us today. If you think or say something like, here's this thing that benefits the bride of Jesus Christ, and I'll withhold it from her if you don't do what I want, you are in abject sin, and your heart is corrupt before God.
Repent of that mindset. Choose to use what God has blessed you with regardless of what other people do.
For some of you, God's putting things on your heart that he is wanting you to personally invest in first, that he's given you a gift he wants you to use to bless others, starting with what you individually do first.
Not every good action that God will wants to accomplish will be accomplished by a formal program at Tabernacle, but it could be that the seed you begin sowing, what you personally start doing to bless others, might be something that the rest of your
brothers and sisters see at Tabernacle and join in too. We want to see where God is already working through his spirit, in his people, and go where he's leading. We don't just want to throw paint on the wall trying to guess what his will is.
Work and serve and use your gifts personally in your own life, then call others to join you in what God is doing. Don't expect others to serve where you are not. So God's given us people to love, care for, and forgive.
People are the point. God has given you gifts to bless others with, not to manipulate, not to exploit, not to get what you want, but to bless others. And then lastly, God has given you his grace so you can know him and love others.
Here, Esau rejects this birthright, and it betrays a deeper problem of not caring about the things of God. You can read that in Hebrews chapter 12, verses 16 and 17. Esau did not care about being a blessing to the nations of the world.
He didn't care about knowing and worshiping God or valuing a relationship with the Lord. For you today, God has extended his grace to you in the person of Jesus Christ.
He's given you his Holy Spirit to live inside of you and to guide you in every decision. He has given you his word so that you can know what he has done, what he's like and what he wants for your life.
He's given you his bride to love and to care for. What will you do with that? You have a birthright, if you will, a spiritual birthright.
Are you going to value it or are you going to despise it? Will you choose to have an active, vibrant relationship with your God and with his people, or will God just be another activity that you get to when you feel like it?
You can choose to know Christ by growing in his word and by showing his love to others.
Today, we can either receive God's will, trusting that God will accomplish his work in his way, in his timing, as we obey him, or we can choose, like Jacob here in this passage, to try and twist it, to try and get our way on it, to go about it
through exploitative or manipulative means. But what God has promised, God will perform. So ask for the Lord to work. Trust in the power of prayer, specifically, trust in the power of the God that you are praying to.
What God allows, God has a plan for. So when the difficult circumstances come, know this isn't that God has abandoned you. It's not that God hates you.
In fact, God has a specific plan for how he is going to work it all out for his glory and for your good. And then lastly, what God blesses us with should be valued.
His grace, the gifts and abilities that he's given to us, and the people that he has given us. Today, will you believe that God will accomplish his work and release the impulse to accomplish it by human means?
