Scottsdale-Bridport Presbyterian Church Sunday March 4th, 2007 - G.S.Munro

 

Today we return to where we left off the story of Abraham and his descendants in April last year. Let’s take a moment to revise that story, just so we remember what has happened up until now.

First, remember how God came to Abraham and chose him to be the recipient of his gracious promises? What was it God promised and covenanted to do for Abraham?

[field responses – refer to chapter 12:1-3; chapter 15, 17 etc. People, Land, Blessing]

 

And what did Abraham have to do in response to the covenant God made with him?

[go to the Promised Land; be circumcised as a sign of the covenant]

 

Every part of scripture is there for a purpose. These opening verses of chapter 25 are important, because they show the unfolding and unchanging will of God to keep his promises to Abraham. And they do so by providing a kind of backdrop by which we see the picture of God’s choice of Isaac and Jacob.

 

I saw an episode of Foyle’s War last week, a detective story set in wartime London. In that episode, Foyle’s driver, a lady called Sam, was looking after a little boy and doing some puzzles with him. One of the puzzles involved laying down a square made of playing cards and then taking four other cards and placing them in the middle to form the shape of a swastika. The solution, which no one but Foyle got of course, was that you had to look behind the cards. The swastika shape was formed not by the cards themselves, but by the blank spaces between them. These verses here are a bit like that. They are not really here to tell us about these children and the nations that came from them. They are here because these are NOT the children of promise. They are like the frame for a painting, or the blank space that forms the pattern in the puzzle. They are here as a contrast with the children of promise who come through just one son of Abraham, namely Isaac. They are mentioned not because of who they are, but because of who they are not.

 

And this whole chapter teaches us a truth that we cannot avoid, even though it is one that is not always palatable to us. That God has the first and the last word in the affairs of humanity, and that he sovereignly chooses whom he will for his own good purposes. But before we think more about that, let’s look more closely at verses one to eighteen.

 

1. Abraham’s Other Children (1-18)

The Father of Many Nations

Keturah and Other Concubines (1-11)

Here we learn a little more of Abraham’s complex family life. It says Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah.  And the following verses tell of his offspring through her.

 

Now Keturah was not a full wife like Sarah. 1 Chronicles chapter one calls Keturah Abraham’s concubine. And here in verse five it says “while they were still living, he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away to the land of the east.” It’s very foreign to our (theoretically) monogamous culture, but a concubine was a secondary wife who did not enjoy all the legal privileges of the main wife, and whose sons did not share in the inheritance. Ancient custom allowed the sons of concubines to be sent away to protect the inheritance of the legitimate sons. But if they were sent away, they received their full freedom and were no longer considered bound to the tribal authority of their father. They could effectively start their own tribes.

 

Now this marriage to Keturah is almost certainly before the death of Sarah. Keturah must have been one of Abraham’s concubines long before Sarah died. The bible tells us that at age 100 when Isaac was born miraculously, Abraham was as good as dead when it came to fathering children, so if the children born to Keturah came along after Sarah died, they would have been even more miraculous than Isaac, since Abraham was around 140 when Sarah died!

 

But why are these verses here at all? One reason only. To show that Abraham truly did become the father of many nations, but that it was through Isaac that the blessings and promises of the Covenant would be realized. By the time Abraham dies, God is already fulfilling at an earthly, literal level the promise in Genesis 17:4: “As for Me, this is My covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations.” Here they are.

 

But because he believed God’s promises that the whole earth was to be blessed through the one special offspring, the child of promise, verse 6 tells us that Abraham gave gifts to his other children and sent them off, out of Isaac’s way. He recognized that there was to be a separation, a division in the purposes of God for humanity. God does divide people according to his sovereign purpose and election, and that is a hard truth to accept. But we must get it right. Because both Jews and Christians at various times have misinterpreted and misapplied that truth by thinking that there was something in them that made them somehow more worthy of God’s choice than others. We must not think that God chooses to work out His Purposes in us because of something in us that makes us deserve His favour and attention. It is purely by grace.

 

Well, after a rich and full life Abraham died at the age of 175. This fulfilled the word of God in Genesis 15 where God said that his descendants would inherit the land: “You however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age”. Abraham knew that he himself would not see the promise come to fruition and he died in faith. But he did all he could to facilitate the working out of the promise in the next generations, and these arrangements he made for his other sons are part of that.

 

Now Ishmael and Isaac don’t seem to have shared the animosity to each other that their mothers had. They co-operated in the burial and mourning of their father. They buried him in the cave of Machpelah in the field that Abraham had purchased for Sarah, himself, and their descendants. The only part of the Promised Land Abraham ever owned was his burial plot. He died in faith.

 

The Offspring of Hagar (12-18)

Verses 12 to 18 tell us of the descendants of Ishmael, Hagar’s son. He holds a position of honour in the family above that of the concubines’ sons, yet not equal to that of Isaac as the heir to the promise. And that’s because he is an heir to a lesser set of promises from God. Verses 12-18 reveal God’s fulfillment of Genesis 17:20 where he promised Abraham:

“And as for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful, and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac…”

 

We read here in Genesis 25 the names of those twelve promised rulers. Once again God has kept His minor promise as well as his major promise to Abraham. But his covenant is with Isaac. Eventually Ishmael died and was buried. But notice that he was not placed in the cave of Machpelah. This was a monument of hope for the people of the promise. The land of Canaan was not to be the possession of Ishmael nor of his descendants.

 

There is more to say about Ishmael*, but time does not allow today, and we have to go on to the second half of this passage, which is about the descendants of the child of promise, Isaac.

The story starts with a familiar problem.

 

2. God Has no Grandchildren (19-34)

Another Long Wait (20-26)

Rebekah was barren twenty years! (20, 26)

In Genesis we see a recurrent theme of faithfully waiting for God’s promise through years of uncertainty and hardship and doubt. Here we see that Isaac and Rebekah have to wait in faith for God to work, though thankfully, not as long as Isaac’s parents did! “Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The LORD answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.” Now Isaac was 40 when he married Rebekah and 60 when the twins Esau and Jacob were born, so Rebekah must have been barren for 20 years! That’s a long time to wait for God to act, and perhaps that’s something that should make us think twice about the way we react when God seems to take a vacation from our life. God promises us blessings in Christ and that He is at work building His church. Yet sometimes we wish He would hurry up and do something a little quicker, a little more spectacularly. Sometimes we tire of fighting against sin, the world and the devil. But his promises to us haven’t failed any more than his promise to Isaac had failed during that long period of Rebekah’s barrenness. You really can trust God’s promises in Christ that he is with us even to the end of the age, and that he works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

 

And when God decides to bless, he doesn’t do it by half measures! After 20 years of no children, we read in verse 24 “When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb.  The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau.  After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob.

 

Esau’s name probably means hairy, and he was later given the nickname Edom, which means red. But Jacob’s name is more significant. It means ‘one who grasps the heel’ and he was given that name because he literally had hold of his brother’s heel when they were born, but figuratively that expression meant someone who deceives, one who is cunning and shrewd and gets his way by sneakiness. And in the following tale of two brothers, we find that Jacob often lived up to the name given him at birth. Jacob is one of the great proofs in the bible of the doctrine of salvation by God’s grace and mercy alone, apart from good works. Whenever I’m tempted to think God couldn’t have saved me because I’m so bad, I just think of Jacob!

 

A Tale of Two Brothers (27-28)

Rebekah’s Favourite, God’s Choice

Well in verse 27 the boys grow up, and Esau becomes “a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents.  Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.”

 

I love the way the bible paints such great character studies of real people. All these thousands of years later we can recognize in these two very different brothers people we know. And family dynamics haven’t changed.

 

Esau seems to have been one of those good Aussie blokes that everyone likes. A great sportsman, the one that would be team captain. An open, honest man that you could read like a book. Probably wore his heart on his sleeve. What you saw was what you got.

Jacob on the other hand was an introvert, perhaps lacking physical strength and courage. But what he lacked in brawn he made up for in brain. He was shy and reserved and liked to hang around with the women and old men at home instead of going out hunting with the young men. He preferred cooking to killing. If he grew up today he’d probably be more of a chess player than a footballer like Esau. Definitely a geek rather than a jock. Jacob was chardonnay and a sushi takeway at home. Esau would’ve been into a beer and pizza with his mates down the pub.

 

Jacob and Esau really show so clearly that God is no respecter of persons. If we were to choose the one most suited to be leader of the tribe, the one through whom God’s promise would continue, we most likely would have chosen Esau. But when it comes to spiritual matters, being a good bloke, or an extrovert, or a mighty sportsman is not enough. And Esau shows in verses 29 to 34 how little spiritual understanding he has of the significance and importance of God’s promises to Abraham.

 

A Costly Pot of Stew! (29-34)

Jacob Inherits the Promise

Verse 29: Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished.  He said to Jacob, ‘‘Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!”

Jacob replied, ‘‘First sell me your birthright.”

Here we see two things about Jacob. First he’s thinking on his feet. He’s a quick witted opportunist. He’s not afraid to take advantage of a situation. Later we see that he is also not above using deception and trickery. But another thing that this shows about Jacob is that, unlike Esau, he has been thinking about the birthright and what it means. He knows the promises that God made to Abraham, and he values those promises. Why does he want the birthright? Is it just so that he can get the double portion of Isaac’s goods when he dies? Perhaps, but I suspect it’s more that he wants to be the one through whom the promises to Abraham will continue.

 

Now what’s going on here? Is Esau fair dinkum when he says he’s about to die from hunger? Surely he’s exaggerating, since he could have got a feed from one of the other tents. It does seem quite juvenile behaviour. Perhaps they are both still quite young and there’s an element of clowning around happening? Does Esau think Jacob is just kidding? Whereas Jacob is deadly serious? Maybe it starts out that way, but in those days to swear an oath was no light thing. Whatever the exact dynamics, one thing we are told for certain is that “Esau despised his birthright.” Esau was one of those people who live for the moment. Eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. He had no thought whatsoever for the bigger picture in life. He had no time for abstract things like birthrights and promises. God and His purposes for humanity, or even his purposes for Esau and his offspring, was just not on the agenda. You can’t eat a covenant.

 

So we see that Esau becomes the Ishmael of his generation. Just as the promise did not go through the elder child of Abraham, so also the promise did not pass to the elder child of Isaac.

 

3. A Hard Truth (Romans 9)

Now why did God choose Isaac and not Ishmael, or Jacob and not Esau? And Romans 9 uses this as just an illustration of an even harder question. Why does God choose some for salvation in Christ and not others? Is that just?

 

Well, whatever we do, we cannot deny what the bible so clearly teaches. If you want to reject the idea of God’s divine election, then you have to reject the bible as God’s Word. If you do that, then you reject Jesus, who believed the bible was God’s Word. You cannot avoid the fact that both Genesis 25 and Romans 9 clearly teach the principle of divine election.

[following quote adapted  from Bob Deffinbaugh of Biblical Studies Foundation]

“In theological terminology, God elects men and women unconditionally without regard to what they will do, and not just because he foresees what will happen. That is pure grace.

But while election to salvation is never on account of good works, the opposite of election is on account of bad works. God chose Jacob based on his own divine purpose and not anything Jacob would do. But he rejected Esau because Esau “despised his birthright” (verse 34). It was Esau himself who cut himself off from inheriting the promise, and it was not God who made him do that.

 

The Westminster Confession of Faith puts it like this. “God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeable ordain whatsoever comes to pass;  yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”

 

Election is unconditional. God chooses men because of His love and grace, not because of man’s future good deeds. While good works cannot be the basis for our election, evil deeds are adequate reason for a person’s rejection by God. You can’t save yourself, only God can save you by his sovereign will and choice. But it is your rejection of God that condemns you.

 

Dr. B. B. Warfield pointed out that “when Christ stood at the door of Lazarus’ tomb and cried, “Lazarus come forth!” only Lazarus, of all the dead that lay in the gloom of the grave that day in Palestine, or throughout the world, heard his mighty voice which raises the dead, and came forth.” He then asks whether the choice of Christ to raise Lazarus from the tomb caused all the others to remain in death. Warfield’s point is that it was not Jesus’ choice of Lazarus that made the others die or kept them in death. In the same way, if people end up in hell, it will be because of their own willful actions and rejection of God’s grace in creation and redemption. But if they end up in heaven it will be by God’s choice alone. Otherwise grace is not grace but is based upon our own will and merit. Lazarus could not choose to be raised any more than we can choose to be saved, because we were dead in our sins. It is God who chooses us.

 

Now why does the bible teach such things? Is it to turn us away in disgust that God is not more democratic? Is it to discourage us from evangelism on the basis that nothing we do can make a difference? God has already decided which ones are his? The answer is no to all such questions. The biblical doctrine of God’s sovereignty, that it is His will, not our will, that is supreme, is given for our comfort and encouragement and is actually an incentive to evangelism, because God has promised that he calls those he has chosen by the preaching of the gospel. By the Word of Life held out to them. And it is a comforting doctrine to Christians because we know that not even our own will can snatch us from His hand if we have placed our faith and trust in His promise.

 

To quote again from the Westminster Confession, “The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men, attending the will of God revealed in His Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual calling, be assured of their eternal election.  So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation...”