The Blessing - Genesis 27 Series

We use the word ‘dysfunction’ to describe a family that has some challenges in it. Many of you know what that means when we talk about dysfunction because you grew up in a dysfunctional home, a challenging home where there was dysfunction and difficulties. Others of you have challenges inside your own heart of dysfunction and you know “oh man, I’m just a dysfunctional person.” We understand that. But you can have a dysfunctional government, you can have a dysfunctional [audio glitch]. There can be a lot of dysfunction that exists in our world today. [audio glitch] for us to understand particularly what it means for us to have an understanding of God because the more we understand God the less dysfunction that we experience in our lives.

I started talking to you about dysfunction. We experience dysfunction and today as we go into our passage in Genesis 27 we’re going to see a dysfunctional family. As we look at this dysfunctional family, we’re going to see the challenges they faced and we’re going to learn some very important things about our own lives. But we have to go through the dysfunction to see this very important part of what’s going to happen in their lives.

I want to introduce you to the characters in this story. The characters in this story are significant. There are four of them in Genesis 27.

The first one is Isaac. Now Isaac is the dad in this story. Isaac knows that he should be passing the blessing on to Jacob. Because there was a prophecy about Jacob that he would be the one to receive this. But he doesn’t do that. He wants to subvert what God is doing. So he, because he favors Esau, is going to try to pass the blessing onto Esau. So he’s character number one.

The second character in this story is Rebekah. Rebekah knows what should be happening here, but doesn’t know how to talk rightly to her husband. So what she does is she uses all these conniving techniques to try to manipulate the situation to make it happen. That’s the second character.

The third character is Esau. Now Esau is a man’s man. He’s the kind of guy that drives a truck. I mean he’s a hunter. He’s into gaming. He’s out there being a man’s man. In fact he’s not the guy who just has a truck; he has a gun rack in the back of his truck. He’s one of these real men kind of a guy.

Now yesterday John Snee and I were working out here on the Barn with some others, a whole team of people, to get things set up. And John (this is a man thing, okay) is looking at my power tools that I brought and he says, “Oh where did you get those from? Hasbro or Playskool?” He’s joking with me about my tools. When I grow up I want to be like John Snee. I want to be a man like him and have his manly tools like he’s got. If I’m ever going to buy tools I’m going to check with John Snee beforehand. That just reminded me about Esau. He’s a man’s man kind of a guy.

Then we’ve got Jacob. Jacob has a completely different personality. If you want to learn more about Jacob, you’re probably going to sit down and watch the cooking channel. I mean he’s this guy who is very different than his brother Jacob. Jacob’s going to be conniving too, cooperating with his mom to trick his brother out of the blessing.

In the center of this story is the blessing. That’s the beautiful part of this story that we’re going to take with us and we’re going to understand more about as we proceed through. So go ahead and let’s look at this story. I’m going to take you into Genesis 27 and let’s see what God has to say there.

Genesis 27:1 says this: When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.” He said, “Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death.”

Now the reality is this guy’s going to live another forty-three years. He may have some hypochondriac tendencies here. It reminds me of the woman who before she died had her tombstone created, so when she died and they put it up it said “I told you I was sick.” It’s the same thing that sometimes I think Isaac’s the kind of guy who goes to WebMD and he looks at all the symptoms and he’s convinced he has twenty different diseases. Anyway, he’s going to die. Now I think the reason he’s coming at this point is he’s 137 years of age and his brother Ishmael died when he was 137. I don’t know about you, but when you pass the age of some of your relatives, you start asking the question am I next? So Isaac is asking that question. He says, “Hey, I’m old and I don’t know when I’m going to die.” He’s got some challenges. It says his eyes were dim. When you start getting older, things usually come together, at the same time other things are falling apart. That’s what’s happening with Isaac. His eyes were dim, so he had some challenges.