All right, take our Bibles and turn over to Genesis 27. Genesis 27, we're in the middle of a couple scenes in the life of Jacob and Isaac and Rebekah and Esau in the middle of this family. And we titled this, I guess this short series here ended up being One Messed Up Family. And this is part three. Didn't intend to do it all at one time, but there's so much that can be dealt with here. First of all, we realize, before we even get to the boys, we realize there's a messed up marriage. You see, it's mom and dad that makes up the family first, not the children. Children aren't the center of the family. It's mom and dad, as God has made husband and wife, and then the children. And it starts at the top, but it starts with dad. Isaac had some wrong priorities. He had a love for the things of this world, not a thing for God. Rebecca got in the flesh as well and she had a desire to control the situation and not trust God and be patient when things weren't working out like even God intended them to work out from her standpoint. And then she got ahead of the Lord. And when you live in the flesh, the scripture says in the book of Romans, you're not going to please the Lord. Romans chapter 8 and verse 8. You cannot please the Lord if you live in the life of the flesh. and you'd be foolish, and the flesh just brings division. And so here we come in chapter 27, look at verse 6. And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me venison, and make me savory meat, that delicious meal, that I may eat, and bless thee before the Lord before my death. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command thee. Go now to the flock and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats, and I will make thee the delicious, savory meat for thy father, the one that he loves. And thou shalt bring it to thy father that he may eat and that he may bless thee before his death.' And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau, my brother, is hairy man, and I am a smooth man. My father preadventure will feel me and I should seem to him as a deceiver and I shall be a curse upon me and a curse upon me and not a blessing. And so we'll just kind of stop there in our reading. In Genesis we meet two boys who will be known for conflict. Jacob is one of those boys that for his life he will be known for his wrestling. I mean, he wrestles when he is born, one who snatches the heel. So here in his birth, he's reaching out and grabbing the heel of his twin brother, and then there's this conflict. He wrestles for the birthright in the previous verse, when he sells that pot of portage for the birthright of Esau. And then now we see him wrestling for the blessing of his father, Isaac. And then later on, we will see he will continue to wrestle. He'll wrestle with Laban. Then he'll wrestle with his first wife, Leah. Then he'll wrestle with Rachel. And then eventually, later on in the chapters, until chapter 31, he will continue to struggle and wrestle until he meets the angel of the Lord. And that's when life begins to change, for Jacob now in that place is no longer the deceiver, the wrestler, the schemer, the one who grabs the heel, the one who's wrestling to get first place, but then he has changed to be Israel, and there he has wrestled with the Lord and found the victory. There's a lot of struggle in the life of Jacob. His whole life is going to be one struggle from one point to the next, from birth, even until his death as he wrestles even with his older brothers or his older boys in the life of Joseph and Jacob and trying to keep those boys, Joseph and Benjamin, and trying to keep those boys alive. Another one that is known for wrestling or for conflict is in Genesis chapter 16 and verse 12. And you remember Hagar, the angel of the Lord, came to her and said, the child that is in your womb is going to be a wild man And His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand will be against Him. That was the promise as He was born. Just like the promise in the womb of Rebekah that these two boys would be wrestling and one would come out over the other, the younger would be stronger. In the womb of Hagar, there was a boy that was going to come out and he would be wild and he would be known as having a conflict and wrestling and having a fight and a war with everyone and that was Ishmael. So interesting in the book of Genesis, you have these two figures whose lives are characterized by struggle. And interesting as we think about that in the lives of these two boys. But when we come to Jacob, we realize, let's just look in his life here, when the plan is set in motion for Rebecca to make this soup, and to make this venison and bring it in to her husband. Remember, there's already a mistrust there. She's been listening in behind the tent. She's come up with this plan and now she wants to make sure her favorite son, the one that she knows that the promise is going to be given, that he's not cheated out of anything, and that he gets his place. And she's going to have to step in and make sure this plan works. But notice that Jacob has a concern here. His conscience bothers him in verse 11. He says, but mom, Esau my brother is hairy and I'm smooth. And dad may come in and try and feel me. And if he feels me and I'm smooth, he'll know that I'm not Esau. So you notice that here, there's a measure of conviction in his voice. He seems to be bothered by the plan of his mother. He doesn't seem to be as confident as in her abilities to get this plan across. Not in her cooking. He seems to be confident that she can make the venison. But he's not fully convinced. And you look at what it says in verse 12. And he said, My father, pre-adventured, will feel me, and I will seem to him as a what? A deceiver. Oh, Jacob's conscience is bothered. He doesn't want to be presented to his father as a trickster. I mean, if I come in there with a pot of soup and say that I'm Esau, when he does it and he feels me, this plan's not gonna work and then he'll see me as a deceiver. Okay, it bothers him enough in some extent in his conscience. In other words, he's worried about his testimony. He doesn't want to live up to his name. One who grasps the heel, one who struggles to get first, one who will do what it takes to get what he wants. You would think that Jacob hearing something that doesn't settle well with him would be enough. But he doesn't listen to his conscience. Interesting that just like his dad, Isaac, who doesn't listen to his conscience in the story when something just doesn't sound right, something just doesn't seem right, and yet Isaac blows right by it because he listens to his senses and his feelings more than he does trust the plan and the will of God. Jacob does the exact same thing. When his conscience bothers him about the plan, Instead of just saying no, this story rings out the danger in ignoring the warning signs built inside of every believer. Listen, God built within you a voice. And within us there is an indwelt consciousness about right and wrong, because we are made in God's image. But as a believer, God has placed within us the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is there to convict us and to convince us of the truth and to warn us when we get into the wrong place and we start making the wrong decisions. Beware when you grieve the Holy Spirit. Beware when your conscience begins to bother you about a decision and a choice, or something you've clicked on the internet, or a conversation that you've had out in secret, or something that you begin, the Holy Spirit begins to convict you about, and those warning signs start, you know, flaring up, red, red, red, there's something wrong, that you don't ignore those warning signs. That's God's grace and God's mercy and the Holy Spirit that's in your life saying, don't go down that road. And instead of Jacob saying no, Hamilton says in his comments on this passage, he who wrestles later with the Lord wrestles little with his mother. Or we can say with his conscience. He'll go to great lengths to hold on to the angel of the Lord until the break of day. I won't let you go. But when it comes to his conscience and when it comes to his mother telling him to do this, that he knows is wrong, he just has just a little bit of conflict. Remember when Sarah came to Abraham with a plan to sin? When God wasn't coming through on the plan to give them a child, and it had been years, and Sarah said, I'm not getting any younger, so Abraham, why don't you take Hagar, have a child through her, and then he will be the son of blessing, and I'll adopt him to me. And you remember Abraham had a choice. He could say yes, and go with the plan or he could say no and stand against the plan and go for the Lord. And Abraham in that place, in a moment of weakness, listened to the voice of wrong counsel. Proverbs 1 and verse 10, if sinners entice thee, what's the rest of the verse say? Consent thou not. You know what? We would save a lot of problems in our marriage if we would just learn to say no. when our consciences begin to bother us, when the Holy Spirit begins to convict us. You know, a lot of teenagers' lives would be saved from ruin if they would just learn to consent thou not. When you just learn to say no. It takes more courage to say no in the face of a mother who's telling you to sin, or a wife who's telling you to sin, or a best friend who's telling you to do what's wrong, or a girlfriend or a boyfriend that says, nobody, it won't matter, God won't listen. It just boggles my mind in this passage, because you know the story. Abraham doesn't give in. Abraham says he doesn't say no. Isaac lives a life and doesn't say no. Jacob doesn't have the courage to say no. Until you get to the end of the book of Genesis, when no one's around, mom and dad aren't there, brothers aren't there, The pastor's not there, the youth pastor's not there, and it's just Joseph and Potiphar's wife. And Joseph says, how can I do this great wickedness against God? Joseph? When nobody would have ever found out? And yet, under the most intense of pressure, Joseph, as a man of God of courage, was willing to bear the consequences of being thrown into prison. to not break his integrity, he said no in the face of temptation. One author indicated that Jacob is not so much concerned about the fact that his mother is asking him to sin, but that he's actually afraid of being caught. That could be what is going on in this story, it seems to be. He's not necessarily concerned that what she's asking him is wrong, but he's concerned that he wants to get away with it. Because he doesn't want to get caught in the situation. I don't want my father to mock me or to be offended by me because I deceived him. So we have to find a way around this. It's not going to be enough to make the soup. We're going to have to do something more. I wrote in my Bible here, Jacob didn't answer, this is wrong, but how do we do this without getting caught? That was his answer. We need to play this safe, mom. I don't like your plan. We need to think through this a little bit more. You see, his heart was deceptive. His heart wanted to deceive. His heart wanted the blessing right then and there, but he wanted to play it safe. He was trying to find out how to get ahead in life, but to do it in the most safe, deceitful, hidden manner. how to grab the heel, how to get first in line, how to scheme through life without being found out. Now, let me say this, if you have a son or a daughter who is like that, I mean, who has a conscience but wants to try and scheme and is clever and creative about doing it without getting caught, your hands are full. All right? You need to be on your knees praying before God for mercy and patience and that God would do a work in that stubborn little one's heart. Times are going to be tough ahead for you and you're going to need God's word. And in child training, as parents, we are so disadvantaged against sin. Our own hearts are sinful. We make sinful decisions, and the hearts of our children are sinful. And if we leave it up to ourselves, no wonder we have a generation of self-centered Jacobs who are scheming to try and get ahead in life without getting caught. But we should take heart as believers because the scripture says we have the victory and we can trust the grace of God and greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. We have what it takes to be able to train our children. But ultimately when it comes down to it we have to pray and plead with God. It is important for us to note one of the passages that our studies that I was reading this week said We have to be reminded as parents, a godly heritage never makes spirituality inevitable. A godly heritage never makes spirituality, talking about in the children, inevitable. Esau and Jacob were grandsons to the greatest man of faith in the Old Testament. Isaac and Rebekah were believers and built altars to the Lord, but that does not mean that your children are going to have a heart for God. We all must do our own wrestling with the Lord, and that means mom and dad must live right and plead with God to intercede, because no one is perfect and every person must make their own decisions. So just because you have a godly heritage, you step back and say, oh, all my kids are going to turn out right. It's not inevitable. But another, as I read this week, a bad example does not mean spirituality is impossible. I mean, we have examples of boys and girls who were raised in the Old Testament with bad circumstances and bad parents, but made it and followed the Lord anyway. Joseph is one of the prime examples of that. Samuel as well in the life of Levi and his home. But we do as parents, we have a heavy responsibility and that's why we need the grace and mercy of God to help us through. Each one of these little children with their different hearts and different personalities and different strengths and weaknesses, we must plead with God that he gets through and that we see the fruit and that God will wrestle with them until he gets a hold of their heart. and that we will continue to wrestle with them to point their will and their heart in the direction of God's word. Not only does Jacob ignore his conscience, but Jacob also ignores the consequences. Look at verse 13. And his mother said unto him, upon me be thy curse, my son. Only obey my voice and go fetch me them. And he went and fetched. You know what mom was saying? Mom says, don't worry. Jacob, if anything goes wrong, I'll take the blame. This is all on mom. Don't worry about that. This ignores the consequences. In other words, you won't get in trouble. This is the deception of sin. This is what Satan deceived Eve with in Genesis chapter 3. You won't surely die. This is the lie of the devil. Someone else will take the blame for you. Moses wrote again in Numbers 32, 23, Be sure your sins will find you out. So as we come to this scene between mother and son and dressing Jacob up now, I'm sure this scene in this tent looked kind of funny and weird. So he's got goat hair coming out the back of his neck. He's got goat hair and skins wrapped around his arms. He's got his brother's clothes on, you know, I don't know, is he a short guy and his brother was a tall guy and so they're a little bit baggy or maybe they were a little bit tight, I don't know, or whatever. And then he's got, you know, he spritzes his brother's cologne on, you know, the smell of the field. All right, so he's, you know, spritzing this on all over. And then he stands there and says, okay, mom, how do I look? I mean, if Isaac could see when Jacob walked into that tent, I'm sure he would have chuckled and laughed. Here he's dressed up, he probably looked like a clown. You ever in a theater where you played a part? My one time in college that I became a movie star or a theater star. I was in Much To Do About Nothing at Maranatha and Shakespeare play. And I was the vocalist in two scenes where I sang a song, Nani Nani or whatever. And some, you know, Shakespeare writes all these, you know, old English songs. And then I sang the dearth song, you know, the Requiem at the end during the funeral scene. And I had to dress up in this weird outfit and put makeup on and my eyes and they did it on my nose and all this other stuff. And I walked out and I looked at it and I thought, You know, I look like Spock. That's kind of my first thing when I looked in the mirror. I was like, I got all these eyes in there. But you know, from the stage. When you put on in a theater, you put on an outfit, you look kind of funny, you look kind of weird. Normal things that are going on. And I'm just seeing Jacob as he's putting on this show. He's putting on this costume. And he looks ridiculous. He smells horrible. You know, he's like half man, half goat, all right? And he comes into the room, and he said, you know what sin will cause us to do? Sin will cause us to do some foolish things. You look foolish, you feel foolish, you smell foolish. And everybody around that can see it said, what in the world are you getting ready to do? Oh, I'm going to go in my dad who can't see, and I'm pretending to be my brother. So I can get ahead in life. So I can get ahead. You know, that's what sin will do. Sin will cause us to do some foolish things. When we give into our flesh and start living for the things of this world, we do some pretty stupid things in the flesh. So be careful. I mean, they go to great lengths to make sure this plan works. And the mother's plan, finally, in verse 14, is she plans to make this meal and deceive the dad. And here, Rebecca and Jacob are manipulating his father and her husband. She seems pretty confident that it's going to work. I wonder if she's still walking around in this outfit thinking that it's actually going to pull it apart. I mean, the manipulation. This marriage. is built on one spouse, one son, one husband, one mother, one son, just manipulating one another, trying to get ahead. Manipulation, the definition of it is the skillful handling, the skillful controlling and using of something or someone for your purposes. So here she uses food. They are cunning. They are creative. They are crafty. They're clever in achieving their aim. They're skillful in achieving their aim. They're imaginative and creative in achieving their aim. They're actually planning this out and saying, okay, hey, I think this is going to actually work. They go to great lengths to get this done. In this passage, Jacob lies three times. Verse 19, if you'll look down. The scripture says, and Jacob said unto his father, or in verse 18, the question is asked to him, he said, he came to his father, and my father, and he said, here am I, who art thou my son? There's the question, here's the first lie. Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau, thy firstborn. There's lie number one. Line number two comes after question number, in verse 20, Isaac said unto his son, how is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? Okay, I think in this part of the story, this is where Rebecca and Jacob's plan didn't anticipate. Okay, so Isaac is aware that how in the world did you get that deer so quickly, bring him back, skin him, Put him in the pot. All of you hunters, people who are hunters, you know, you don't just walk out the back porch and there's a deer and you bag it and put it and then get it unless you're maybe Jackie Campbell. I think that's happened a couple of times for him out of the back porch. You know, hunting takes a long time, right? Isaac knows that. Esau knows that. Jacob don't know that. Rebecca doesn't know that. I think they planned everything out except the timing. And dad asked Jacob, how in the world did you get that so quickly? And Jacob's like, oh, I didn't think through this one. So notice what he says. He says the second line. He's got to come up with something. Because the Lord thy God brought it to me. Ah, that was pretty clever. But you know what he's doing? He's bringing down the name of the Lord into his scheme. into his tricks, into his lies. And this is ultimately what it means to take the name of the Lord in vain. Yes, you can use God's name as a swear word to take it in vain. But when you use God's name accompanied with a deceptive means to get your agenda across and tag God onto it, God had nothing to do with this plan. But Jacob needed a quick answer to his witty dad. And Jacob proved to be more witty than his dad. Oh, your Lord brought it to me. That's how it came so quickly. That's lie number two. Lie number three is found down in verse 24. Isaac then again doesn't discern him because his hands were hairy and his brother hands, so he blessed him and he said, one more time, are you really? Esau, and here's the dagger for Jacob. This is the one time that Jacob could have said, okay, I'm gonna step back from here. I've gone too far. My conscience is bothering me. I'm gonna make this right. But for the third time, the lie that comes out of his mouth, I am. And now he's just thrown the dagger into his life by semening this lie and this deception. And there's no turning back. Notice in this passage, and we need to close here, Isaac senses something wrong. Three times in this story, Isaac is suspicious. The voice, who are you? How did you get the food so quickly? Are you really, after feeling you and smelling you, are you really? Three times. And notice as well in verse 26, we'll look down in verse 26. And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now and kiss me, my son. One author stated this may have been the first time that Jacob had ever kissed or been kissed by his father. I wonder, if it was true, if he had ever shown affection to Jacob, because you remember Esau was his favorite son, not Jacob. And yet, as Esau receives this kiss and gives this, or Jacob gives this kiss and receives this kiss from his father, deep down in his heart, he knew it wasn't genuine love from either angle. You see, love does not deceive, love does not disrespect, love does not act in selfishness, love does not manipulate. This home from top to bottom is built on self, not love. It is built on fear, and manipulation, and selfishness, and bitterness, and greed, and deception, and the flesh. Notice in verse 33, the scripture says, and Isaac trembled exceedingly. and said, Who, where is he that hath taken the venison and brought it to me? And I have eaten all before thou came and have blessed him, yea, and he shall be blessed. Esau, so sooner than Jacob goes out the door, Esau comes in the door. And immediately, in the phrase that he says here, that he trembled very exceedingly, is the word meant he shook violently. It's the same word that is used later in the scripture for earthquake. I mean, he all of a sudden realizes he just made a terrible mistake from his standpoint. Have you ever been hit with something, you know, a decision that you made and you immediately regretted that decision? That's exactly what happened to Isaac. Here's some conclusions and applications. Men, don't be stubborn. Don't be stubborn. Stubbornness can ruin a marriage. And Isaac was a stubborn man. Women, be careful of manipulation. When you want your way, and you want what you want, and yet you use manipulation to get. When marriages and homes are built on manipulation, and it's just one person trying to use the other person for its advantage. Parents, don't provoke your children to wrath. Be careful of jealousy. and showing partiality to one child over the other, or loving one child, or showing favor to one and not to another. And then also this evening, don't ignore and grieve the Holy Spirit in your life when He gives you those warning signs. You see, Rebekah and Jacob got what they wanted, right? I mean, they won in the end. Their plan worked. However, what they received, God had already said was Jacob's. They received what was already His. They didn't get anything that God had not already promised to Jacob. But now because they did it their way and not God's way, they received a whole lot more than what they bargained for. They lost peace in their home. Rebecca lost her son who ends up running for 20 years. She never sees him again. Jacob lost years of relationship with his family as he ran to Laban. Isaac lost both of his sons in the end. Esau lost it all. And the consequences of this disharmony in the home was grief, separation, and eventually discardment by the Lord. Because Isaac, after this story in the first part of chapter 28, Isaac and Rebekah are not seen from again until their death. That means that God moves on from their story and moves on to someone else's story. And when the flesh fills your life, there can come a point in your life that God then will discard you and no longer use you and the consequences of sin have stained your life. Isaac lives another 40 years before he dies. However, Isaac and Rebekah are not heard from again. God no longer worked in their life. Don't be an Isaac or a Rebekah and learn not to live as a life of a deceiver like Jacob. Father, I praise we can close tonight. Thank you for bringing this to our attention this evening. Help us to be so careful with the flesh and how it can ruin our home and our lives. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, God bless you. You are dismissed.