Genesis 27:5-17 - Only obey my voice

27:5-10

The word about the elder serving the younger had been given to Rebekah, so she did know God’s plans, Jacob was also her favourite. So she was both concerned about the blessing going to Esau, and saw the opportunity that presented itself. So Rebekah hatches a cunning plan, and gets Jacob to go and bring two good young goats. She would make delicious food, and Jacob would take it to his father, pretending to be Esau.

27:11-13

Jacob sees the apparent flaw in the plan, Isaac might not be able to see very well, but Esau was hairy and Jacob was not. So surely Isaac would realise that something was up. Rebekah has a plan to address this, but does not reveal this plan to Jacob at this point. She only says that any curse that Isaac announces on Jacob should fall upon her.

27:14-17

Jacob went to get the goats, and Rebekah did the cooking. She also took some of Esau’s garments and put them on Jacob. She also covered him with the skins of the goats. The garments would lend Jacob the smell of Esau, and goat skins were presumably there to make him feel hairy. The plan does seem rather suspect!

John 6:46-48 - I am the bread of life

6:46

Now no one has seen God. This learning from God does not mean that we have seen God. Only the Son has seen the Father. This is further reason why we need to go to Christ. Jesus knows what He is talking about, the Jewish leaders did not.

6:47,48

We now get another “truly, truly”. “Whoever believes has eternal life.” Note that this is not just future. Eternal life is more than living forever, it is about the whole nature of life. Eternal life is a God dependent life, a God focused life, one where we draw our strength and everything else from God. A life where we do and live the will of God. Jesus is the bread of life, repeating an earlier claim. We need to feed off Jesus, to learn from Him.

Genesis 27:1-4 - Behold I am old

27:1

This is a very important incident, but also one which I guess many of us find somewhat bemusing. It is also the first of two incidents where one of the patriarchs bestows a blessing on his children, the other being Jacob which we will encounter towards the end of Genesis. This event is a continuation of the incident at the end of chapter 25 when Esau “sells” his birthright. He may well have forgotten the time he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew, and it is also worth noting that there is no formal taking of the blessing by Jacob. Jacob does not say “Esau sold me his birthright so the blessing is mine”, that is not what happened. Instead Jacob, with the help of his mother, used subterfuge. It is also a fulfilment of God’s words in 25:23, “the older will serve the younger”. So we see an example of the sovereignty of God at work. The plans of men were very important, but it was God’s will that prevailed.

Isaac is now old and blind. Both these matter, the age because it is time for him to bestow a blessing, and the blindness because this helped with the success of the subterfuge.

27:2-4

Isaac calls Esau and tells him that his days are nearly over. So he asks his son to go out into the field to hunt some game and prepare “delicious food” for his father. Then he would bless his eldest son. In Gen 25:23 the Lord had spoken to Rebekah, one wonders if she had told Isaac this, and if she had whether he took her words seriously.

John 6:43-45 - Stop grumbling

6:43,44

Jesus, as He did on several occasions, “makes matters worse”, in the sense that He gives no quarter to the perspective of the thinking of the religious leaders. Their thinking was totally wrong. First He tells them to stop grumbling, it was achieving nothing. The basic fact of the matter was that no one could come to Jesus unless the Father drew them. There are two points of offence here. The first is the reiteration of the fact that Jesus was sent by the Father, and the second is that coming to Christ is primarily in God’s hands not ours. Our destiny is in God’s hands. We need to recognise our dependence upon the Lord in all respects. The Father draws men to Christ, and on the last day Christ will raise that person from the dead. Let me note again that this does not obviate us from human responsibility. At the same time the teaching in John does not fit with the concept of “prevenient grace”. This is the concept that grace operates by making it possible for us to believe in Christ, the teaching of Jesus in John is far stronger than that. 

6:45

“It is written in the prophets”. The words following are not a direct quote, but Is 54:13 and Jer 31:33,34 contain the idea that we need to be taught by God. Ezekiel also foretells God giving us a new heart. We need to learn from God. The Jewish leaders thought that they knew it all, that they could teach. Many theologians today think that they know the truth, that people need to learn from them, not learn from God. Does this mean we don’t need teachers in the church? Of course not, but if we are involved in teaching it is the word of God that we teach, and we point people to God. And the people have a personal relationship with God, they are not dependent upon us as go-betweens. And the sign that someone has learnt from God is that they come to Jesus, for it is the Father’s will that we put our trust in Christ.

Genesis 26:26-35 - We've found water!

26:26-29

Abimelech had previously sent Isaac away, but now he comes to Isaac with the commander of the army. Isaac is somewhat bemused by this turn of events, and so he queries Abimelech. They may have been keeping an eye on Isaac and seen how things were working out for him. They wanted to have a treaty with him, thinking either that this would somehow protect them, or enable them to share in Isaac’s blessings. The attitude of the state to the church can sometimes be similar. There are times when the state wants the church, and times when they want to send the church away.

26:30-33

Isaac exercised hospitality towards them, then in the morning they made a treaty, and Isaac then sent them away peacefully. So there was a kind of reversal of the situation, with Isaac being the one dictating the situation. That day Isaac’s servants came to him delighted that they had found water. So the place was called Beersheba which can mean “well of the oath” or “well of seven”.

26:34,35

Our lives are usually a mixture of blessing and trouble. Things were no different for Isaac and Rebekah. They have been walking in the light of the Lord and seeing things progress, but now we read of their son Esau. He married two Hittite women. This was a failing on two counts. The first is having two wives, the other is marrying Hittite wives. This was a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah.

John 6:41,42 - I came down from heaven

6:41,42

“So the Jews grumbled about Him”. “The Jews” are the religious leaders, rather than the ordinary people. They objected to Jesus saying He came down from heaven. Their grumbling is reminiscent of the Israelites who grumbled their way into, through, and out of the wilderness. The root of the grumbling is twofold. The primary part is that they did not want to admit that they needed someone from heaven to sort them out. We get a similar thing today when sceptics will object to our saying Jesus is the only way to heaven, or that we need to listen to God and have a responsibility to Him. This causes a reaction in man who wants to decide for himself how things should work.  The second part of the objection is that they knew who his human family was. So they could use this as an excuse to reject Jesus’ claim. But man is not just material. This is uniquely true of Jesus who was born as we are all born, but came from heaven, He is God incarnate. But it is also true of all of us. We are not just material, and when someone is born again by the Holy Spirit things change. Paul says he no longer viewed Jesus from a purely human perspective, and should no longer view anyone from a purely human perspective (2 Cor 5:16).

Genesis 26:23-25 - Do not be afraid

26:23,24

There had been a small victory for Isaac and he had trusted God. The Lord now appears to him to encourage him further. This is similar to the Lord’s appearance to Abraham after his rescuing of Lot and meeting Melchizedek. Although Isaac had acted in faith and had prevailed it is easy for fear to creep in, so the Lord assures him to “fear not”. Why? The Lord would be with him, and would bless him. This is similar to God’s words to Abraham that He was Abraham’s shield and his great reward. The promises would be fulfilled “for my servant Abraham’s sake”. It is not just a matter of our faith, but it is a generational thing as well. We are influenced by our forebears, and our faithfulness influences future generations.

26:25

“So he built an altar there”.  And his servants dug wells there in Beersheba. We should dig wells in the place of God’s blessing. We should not dig them in places where the world promises to bless us. We do this if we go along with the world’s thinking, and it never ends well. We trust in the Lord, and seek our sustenance from him. If we dig wells in the world’s kingdom they will ultimately let us down and poison us.