Isaac and Jacob: Hopeful Faith

Hebrews 11:20-21

Very early on in the development of digital forms of communication – first with online message boards and then email and then text messaging and social media – we found a need to be able to communicate the mood or feeling we intend the message to be received in. We needed a way to communicate sarcasm, or a joke, things like that. These days we use emojis to help with that, don’t we? But before smart phones and emojis, back in the days of flip phones and slide phones, we used the same idea in a more basic form – the emoticon.

Dr. Scott Fahlman has been working on artificial intelligence for his entire 40-year career at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. He wanted to revolutionize our human-computer interactions. But on September 19, 1982 he created something that will outlast his career working with AI – the emoticon, those little symbols we’ve grown to love, like “the smiley”: :-).

He invented the smiley when his CMU colleagues were having trouble recognizing sarcasm on an electronic bulletin board. “The need for a ‘joke marker’ arose after a series of posts speculating about various things that could happen in a free-falling elevator. Would a pigeon in the elevator keep flying? Would a lit candle go out? What would a puddle of mercury do? Because those are the things college professors think about and joke about. As Fahlman says in the story, “What’s amusing is that [after] a forty-year career working on AI – I could solve AI and I know what the first line of my obit would be.” Dr. Fahlman will forever be known as the guy who invented the emoticon.[i] Of all the things he’s accomplished, inventing the emoticon is the story about him people are going to tell.

Today we’re continuing kind of a series within a series of sermons. We’ve been walking together through the New Testament book of Hebrews, and we’ve come to Hebrews 11, the great “Hall of Faith,” or “Faith’s Hall of Fame.” Now, remember, Hebrews is a sermon that was written to encourage a harried and beleaguered little group of Christ-followers to hang on to their faith, to hang in there with Jesus, because life for them was getting hard specifically BECAUSE they followed Jesus. They were beginning to experience different kinds of persecution, and the threat of being killed for following Jesus was becoming more real with each passing day. And so they were tempted to leave Jesus behind and go back to their old pre-Jesus lives to save their skin, and their businesses and social connections.

And in Hebrews 11, our loving pastor goes into a series of examples of people from the pages of the Old Testament who exhibited great faith. We get several of these examples quickly, one after the other in rapid fire succession. Each one illustrates vibrant faith in a slightly different way, emphasizing a different characteristic. Taken together they’re like the different facets of a large and beautiful, perfectly cut diamond. But these people, people like Abraham and Joseph and Moses, aren’t superheroes. They’re very normal, real people who were very broken and who struggled with sin, just like we do. But they had an extraordinary faith in an even more extraordinary God.

Today we come to Isaac and Jacob, Abraham and Sarah’s son and grandson. The thing that stands out about these two men is that while they both lived incredible lives and saw God do some incredible things – the parts of their lives that Hebrews emphasizes are kind of odd. They’re things most of us don’t even realize happened. Because we come to each of them as old men, nearing death, and we see them bless the generation that will follow them, carrying on God’s promise to Abraham into the next generation. Pull out your Bibles, I hope you always have your Bible with you, and turn to Hebrews 11:20-21.

Of course, we know that Isaac was the son of Abraham and Sarah. And he was miraculously born to them in their old age, when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 91, and Sarah had been barren throughout her fertile years too. But God gave them Isaac. And then when Isaac had grown up God provided him a beautiful wife from Abraham’s extended family back in their homeland. A woman named Rebekah. The Bible even emphasizes her beauty. It says that she was “very attractive in appearance.” And she agreed to marry Isaac. But she couldn’t get pregnant either. Just like her now dead mother-in-law, Sarah. So Genesis 25:21 says that “Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren.” And God answered Isaac’s prayer, and she conceived. In fact, she became pregnant with twins.

Now, they didn’t have ultrasounds and things like that back then. So when Rebekah decided that something was unusual was happening inside her – almost like the two babies were fighting in the womb – she went to a prophet to ask God what in the world was going on inside her. And she received this prophecy, recorded in Genesis 25:23. “And the LORD said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.”

That prophecy is incredibly significant, because it was clear that God had a special plan for the younger of the two twins, the one who would be born second, and that went against cultural trends at the time. In that day, it was the firstborn who was seen as special and who received primary control of the parents’ estate, whatever that might be. If the firstborn happened to be twins, as it was here, the one to come out of the womb first would be the firstborn.

And when the time came for the babies to be born, the first one out was covered with red hair. I don’t know, but it kind of sounds like he was born with a full beard or something. Or at least a 5 o’clock shadow. So they named him Esau. Esau means “hairy,” as in covered with hair, or “rough.” And then right behind him came the other twin, and he was holding on to Esau’s heel. Almost sounds like their birth interrupted an in utero scuffle. And they named that son Jacob. In Hebrews, Jacob meant “He takes by the heel,” but it also meant “he cheats.” So they named their twin boys Hairy and Cheater.

And Esau and Jacob – Hairy and Cheater – may have been twins, but they couldn’t have been more different. Esau was a strong outdoorsman. Genesis 25:27 says that “Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field.” He liked to be outside, hunting and in his fields. He was strong and boisterous. But Jacob was “a quiet man, dwelling in tents.” Jacob didn’t have the hairy, muscular masculinity of his brother. He preferred to be quiet, thinking. Staying inside. And the Bible tells us that “Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob” (Gen. 25:28).

And while Esau could outhunt and outmuscle Jacob, Jacob could outthink Esau. One day Jacob was inside cooking, and Esau came in famished. And he asked Jacob for some of the stew, because he was hungry and exhausted. And Jacob agreed to give him some, IF Esau would give HIM, Jacob, the younger,

His, Esau’s, the older’s, birthright. He took advantage of Esau being hangry and not thinking clearly. He’s living up to his name.

Fast forward and now we find Isaac, Esau and Jacob’s dad, old, almost blind, and nearing death, asked Esau to go out and hunt some game and then prepare his favorite meal for him, and then Isaac would speak his birthright blessing over him. And that’s significant. Because in that day, this was akin to your last will and testament. It wasn’t viewed as “just words.” What you blessed one child with you couldn’t bless another child with. So whatever of God’s blessings you spoke over one child you didn’t speak over another. Isaac is preparing to name Esau as the one through whom God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah would pass.

Now, we already know that God has spoken to Rebekah, and was planning to do something different. But, as was true at one point of Abraham and Sarah too, Rebekah and Jacob thought they were responsible for bringing God’s promise to fruition, so they took matters into their own hands. And seems kind of obvious that Isaac and Rebekah’s marriage is no longer what it once was. Maybe it was each of their preference for a different son, maybe it was other disagreements too. Isaac certainly knew about the prophecy to Rebekah. But he wants to name Esau heir of the promise anyway. And Rebekah is scheming against her husband and his desires.

She overhears Isaac speaking to Esau and believes she has to act fast. So she tells Jacob that she will prepare Isaac’s favorite meal herself with goat meat. At his advanced age he won’t know the difference. And Jacob was going to take it in to Isaac, pretending to be Esau, so that Isaac would bless him with the blessing he intended for Esau. And in case Isaac reached out and felt Jacob’s smooth, hairless arms, he needed to cover his arms and neck with the skins of the goats his mother cooked.

Now, if someone needs to cover themselves with the skins of dead goats to approximate the amount of hair on your arms and neck, you’re maybe a little bit TOO hairy. And Jacob wore some of Esau’s clothes so that he would smell like Esau too – probably like deer guts and armpit, instead of the perfumes an indoor type like Jacob would have used. And he goes in, and Isaac falls for it, and speaks the blessing he intended for Esau over Jacob.

When Esau figures out what has happened, he’s distraught and threatens to kill Jacob the next time he sees him, so Jacob has to flee. And just as we don’t know what would have happened if Sarah wouldn’t have taken it upon herself to bring God’s promise to fruition using her servant girl Hagar, or even how our world might be different today; we don’t know how things would have been different if Isaac had accepted God’s promise OR if Rebekah would have trusted God to bring about his promise without her and Jacob conniving. Jacob would never see his mother, Rebekah, alive again. Rebekah would never see her beloved son Jacob alive again. But the promise of God and the purpose of God still moved forward.

Now we fast forward to the end of Jacob’s life. God has renamed him Israel. He has reconnected with his long lost son Joseph, who he had believed for years to be dead. Joseph is now the second in command in the powerful nation of Egypt, answering only to Pharoah himself. When he speaks, it is as if Pharoah is speaking. Jacob, Israel, is now living in Egypt with all of his grown children to survive a region-wide famine. And Joseph, who has an Egyptian wife and has two sons with her, brings his two sons to his father to bless them, just as Isaac had unwittingly blessed Jacob.

Only there is no conniving with Joseph. When a father spoke a blessing over his children, the right hand was considered the hand of blessing. So Joseph makes sure that his older son, Manasseh, is on Jacob’s right, and his younger son, Ephraim, is on Jacob’s left, so that Manasseh will receive the blessing appropriate to the oldest.

So as he blesses Joseph’s two sons, he crosses his arms, placing his right hand, the hand of privilege and blessing, on the younger son Ephraim’s head, and his left hand on the older son Manasseh’s head. And when Joseph tried to correct him, Isaac held firm. “I know, my son, I know. He (Manasseh) also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations” (Gen. 48:19).

Each of Jacob’s sons became one of the tribes of Israel. But there is no tribe of Joseph, even though Joseph, too, was one of Jacob’s sons. But there are the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim. Jacob bestowed upon each of Joseph’s sons the birthright of a son, rather than a grandson. They were raised in rank, even though they came from an Egyptian mother and were born and raised in Egypt. They were different than all of the others. But they became not as grandsons to Jacob, but sons. And they became two of the greatest of the tribes of Israel.

Now, let’s go back to Hebrews 11:20-21. What do all of the broken relationships and conniving and outright lying that the incidents these verses refer to have to do with faith? One word – GRACE. God’s love, God’s forgiveness, and the future God has for those who trust him a gift to be received, not a reward to be earned.

Have you used our wi-fi here in the sanctuary? Hopefully you’re using it to access the Bible online, not play Pokémon Go, during church at least. What’s our wi-fi named? “You are loved,” right? You ARE loved. You are loved by God. Not because you’ve made all the right decisions in life, because you haven’t. Not because you’re perfect, because you aren’t. Not because you’ve earned the right to be loved by God, because you haven’t. God loves you because God is a God of love. God’s nature is love. God’s character is love. Not broken love, imperfect love, conditional love. Perfect love. The love our hearts were created to receive. God created you SO THAT God could love you, and so that you can love God.

God chose Jacob before Jacob had even been born, and he was a poor candidate. God’s love is a gift to be received, not a reward to be earned. 1 John 4:8 says that “God IS love.” Now, love doesn’t define God. No, God defines love. To figure out what love really is, we have to get to know God as God really is. So we have to get to know Jesus, because Jesus is God translated for us. God making himself understandable to us. And Jesus standing in for us, taking our place on the cross, and dying our death for us, shows us just how deep the love of God goes. You are loved because God made you to receive his love.

Abraham lied to protect himself, and Sarah took matters into her own hands and made a mess of things. Isaac and Rebekah’s marriage clearly wasn’t great. Isaac tried to skirt around the promise God had made to Rebekah and pass the birthright of God’s promise to Abraham on to Esau. Rebekah took matters into her own hands and lied to her husband and dragged Jacob, who had already tricked his brother, into the mess. Isaac’s sons sold their brother Joseph into slavery in a foreign land and then told their father he had been killed. Not a great start for the people of God. Not great candidates to receive the blessing. Not great candidates to receive the love of God. But God in his grace chose them anyway.

Every life is a mess in some way. We all have skeletons in the closet. Aren’t you glad yours aren’t on display in the Bible and taught from every week? Can you imagine Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and Solomon and Peter standing around in God’s presence like, “Great, another sermon from THAT screw up of mine.” God’s grace is bigger than your mistakes. That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences in this life. Abraham and Sarah’s screw up with Sarah’s servant Hagar has led to conflict in the middle east to this day. Rebekah never saw her beloved son again. Jacob never saw his beloved mother again. But God kept loving them, using them, blessing them, even as he disciplined them. And God’s plan and purpose for them was never derailed.

God’s grace is bigger than our messes. Bigger than our mistakes and missteps. God’s grace is greater than our sin. When we look at our lives, the messes are all that we see. And they are messy. Families are messy. Church families are messy. But God keeps bringing us to his desired in. And so, when Isaac and Jacob looked forward, they looked forward in hope. Hope that God could do something with the mess, and that in the end, God would clean it all up. Not because we’ve earned it, but because that’s what God wants to do.

That’s grace. And that is the source of our hope. The chapter of life you’re in now, whether it’s a good one or a tough one or a downright messy and messed up one, isn’t the final chapter. God is still writing, and God will continue writing his story until we are all in his presence and there is no more mess to clean up. Let’s pray.

[i] Rachel Wilkinson, “The Father of the Emoticon Chases His Great White Whale,” Narratively (Accessed 10/8/20)