we are looking at the man in the old testament whose name means, “schemer”. jacob had many phases in his life that may be common to you and me. one of them was his scheming phase where he schemed his older brother, esau, out of his birthright.
then he steals a blessing. skip to chapter 27 of genesis. we’ve heard this story, the story of the blessing. rebecca overheard in verse 5 as isaac spoke to esau that he was wanting to give him a blessing before he died.
“go out and kill me some game and bring it in,” so rebecca said to her son jacob, “i overheard your father say to esau,” ‘bring me some wild game.’ “why don’t you cook up something that tastes like this, bring it in and why don’t you get the blessing?” jacob [spiritual man that he is] said, “but my brother esau is a hairy man and i’m a man with smooth skin. what if my father touches me? i would appear to be tricking him.” [notice he doesn’t say, “mom, this is wrong, immoral.” he says, “what if i get caught?” that’s his major fear in life. that’s the fear of every schemer. they don’t care if it’s right or wrong. the real wrong in life is getting caught in their scheming. but they tried anyway. he takes a little fur – isaac’s very old here, he’s barely able to see, to feel – and they trick him. he takes the food in. isaac’s got some suspicions. he says, “let me touch your arm.” and jacob puts the fur out and he touches that and isaac thinks, “i guess that must be him,” and he gives him the blessing.
when esau comes in with the wild game the blessing has already been given to jacob. they took words so seriously then that once a word was spoken it could not be taken back. maybe we should take it more seriously sometimes too. so isaac couldn’t take the blessing back. it had been stolen.
in this case, it’s much easier to blame jacob. immediately he hears that esau is out to kill him. he’s stolen his blessing, the most precious thing in his life. so jacob and rebecca get together and hatch a great plan – run. get out of here. “let’s make sure he has no opportunity to harm my life.”
and jacob was going to spend the next twenty years of his life paying for this decision. there’s a shocking truth behind all of this. he steals a blessing. he steals a birthright. but he didn’t have to! he didn’t have to steal them. GOD had already told him that they were his. but he has to plan where he’d help GOD out a little bit.
have ever done this? you can relate to jacob if you’ve ever tried to do the right thing the wrong way. jacob was supposed to get the birthright. but that wasn’t the way he was supposed to get it. in fact, jacob spends much of his life trying to get for himself, earn for himself, what GOD wants to give him as a gift. isn’t that sad?
and we do that as believers today. we spend much of our lives trying to earn for ourselves what JESUS wants to give us as a gift. if we build that kind of relationship with GOD rather than a “i’m working for you, GOD. now you can give it to me,” the joy would soar in our lives.
just a thought from the front porch…
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