Would you open your Bibles to
the 27th chapter of Genesis? We'll be breaking into the middle
of a story, but in the message we'll set up the context. We'll
begin reading in verse 14. So he, that is Jacob, went and
got them, that is the various things to make up the kind of
stew that Isaac liked. And he brought them to his mother
and she prepared some tasty food just the way his father liked
it. Then Rebecca took the best clothes of Esau, her older son,
which she had in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob. She also covered his hands and
the smooth part of his neck with the goat skins. Then she handed
to her son Jacob the tasty food and the bread she had made. He
went to his father and said, My father. Yes, my son, he answered. Who is it? Jacob said to his
father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Please
sit up and eat some of my game so that you may give me your
blessing. Isaac asked his son, How did
you find it so quickly, my son? The Lord your God gave me success,
he replied. Then Isaac said to Jacob, Come
near so I can touch you, my son, to know whether you really are
my son Esau or not. At this point, Isaac was virtually
blind. That's why he had Jacob come
close. Verse 22, Jacob went close to
his father Isaac, who touched him, and said, The voice is the
voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau. He, that
is Isaac, did not recognize Jacob, for his hands were hairy like
those of his brother Esau. So Isaac blessed him. Are you
really my son Esau, he asked. I am, Jacob replied. Then Isaac
said, my son, bring me some of your game to eat so that I may
give you my blessing. Jacob brought it to him and he
ate and he brought some wine and he drank. Then his father
Isaac said to him, come here my son and kiss me. So he went
to him and kissed him. When Isaac caught the smell of
his clothes, he blessed him and said, Oh, the smell of my son
is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. May
God give you of heaven's dew and of earth's richness, an abundance
of grain and new wine. May nations serve you and peoples
bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers, and
may the sons of your mother bow down to you. May those who curse
you be cursed, and those who bless you be blessed. I've entitled this message very
simply, The Blessing. To understand the story, We must
understand something of the ancient customs of the Middle East. I say of the Middle East, it
was probably true everywhere and actually it still has some
practice even in our day. The firstborn son in the household
was everything. The scriptures say that the firstborn was proof of the father's strength.
Now understand, God understood that it is not the father's strength
that makes children. Nonetheless, God would use the
opinions or attitudes of a culture in order to make a point to them. It is kind of strange, is it
not, that if a child was born, a son was born, they gave credit
to the father. But if no child came, they generally
blamed the woman. Nonetheless, that's the way it
was, and therefore, in the household, the firstborn son was proof,
it says, of the strength of the father. And therefore, he was
especially cherished They made no bones about it. We work hard,
do we not, to let all our children know that while we may love them
differently, we love them equally. That while our love toward them
might have to have different kinds of expression according
to their needs, nonetheless, we love them all and have equal
plans of goodness and happiness for them all. But that's not
the way it was back then. Everybody knew, anybody who came
after knew who the firstborn was, and they knew that they
were subservient, they were under Him. And if anybody got fed, the firstborn
would. And if anybody had to go hungry,
you could be sure it wasn't going to be the firstborn. Now that's
just how it went. To have no son was considered
a curse. to the firstborn son belonged
a double portion of the inheritance. If the inheritance were 10,000,
or if there were nine children and the inheritance were 10,000,
the firstborn would get 2,000, everybody else would get 1,000.
Just the way it was. But there was more. The firstborn
not only inherited a double portion of the value of the household,
he ruled the household. In essence, he took the place
of the father once the father was gone. He was head of the
household. Now this is called the birthright. And with Esau, or with all the
firstborns, the birthright belonged to him simply by virtue of being
born first. It doesn't matter what character
such a person was. If he was the first man born,
first boy born, he was the firstborn of the household. But while the
birthright was his from the very beginning, the blessing, the
actual possession of all that that birthright meant wouldn't
come until much later. Let me relate this story. Isaac
and his wife remained without children for 20 years. Isaac married Rebecca when he
was about 40, and it was not until he was 60 that Esau and
Jacob were born. It says that God allowed Rebecca
to conceive. And behold, it was two children. And Rebecca noticed that there
was a whole lot of fighting going on, even in her womb. And the
Lord told her why. He said, the elder will serve
the younger. Now, of course, At this point
in the womb, neither Esau nor Jacob were conscious of what
they were doing, but evidently they moved around a lot inside
the womb, and it just seemed like from the very beginning
those two were fighting. And there was an issue between
them from the very beginning, though they were unaware of it,
and that was this, that God was going to overturn the natural
way of doing things and make the secondborn to be the firstborn. When those children came out,
Esau came out first, and it said he was red and he was hairy.
And therefore they named him Esau, which means red. At other times they called him
Edom, which also means red, and is related to the name of the
first human being, Adam, whose name also means red earth. And so Esau was a redhead. And evidently, hairy all over. Jacob came out smooth. Didn't have much hair, never
did get much. And you know, Esau was Isaac's
favorite. It says that Esau was a man of
the field. So was Isaac. When Abraham's servant went back
to Abraham's homeland to get a wife for Isaac, and he comes
back, where does he find Isaac? Isaac is out in the field meditating. Isaac loved the field. I assume
that he loved hunting just like Esau did. He liked being out
there in nature, as we would say, to smell the smells of the
earth and the field, both the cultivated field and the wild
field. You know, we miss some of that
in our modern age. Our atmosphere is so filled up
with the smells of commerce and the artificial chemicals we create,
we don't get the smell. natural smells quite like we
used to. And in fact, one of the things I notice that I miss
the smell of it, I don't notice it till I go back to West Virginia.
It's going to sound funny, but this is a very appealing smell
to me, and that's the smell of rotting leaves on a forest floor.
Back in West Virginia, I'd walk on those hills, and of course,
trees continually dropping leaves year after year, and they would
lay there, and they would rot, and you'd kick through those
leaves, and that smell would come up. That's home to me. And for Isaac, the field was
home. And the smell of the field was home. And Esau was a man
of the field. He was a hunter. Now, the Bible
does not give us a description, I get the idea he was a big,
strong man, at least for that day. And then when he walked
and left the family compound to go out and get food, it was
a sight to behold. And his father, there's Esau,
that's my boy, that's my boy. Jacob, not so much. It says Jacob lived in the tents,
there with the women. learned more the talents associated with keeping
a household than going out and being a man in the old sense
of the word and grabbing the world and getting control of
it. His mother loved him. Jacob was a mama's boy. It's exactly what he was. And
given that women in that day had virtually no power No authority
to make their own choices. The only way they got their way
was by learning to manipulate things. They had to learn how
to work behind the scenes and just try to arrange things behind
the scenes so the outcome came out like they wanted. They couldn't
just come out and say, it's going to be like this. They weren't
allowed to do that. And that's exactly how Jacob learned how
to work. He was a manipulator. He was a deceiver. He was never
doing what it looked like he was doing. It would look like
he was doing you a favor, but when in reality, he was taking
advantage of you. Now Esau was a straightforward
shoot from the hip kind of guy. If he meant you wrong, you could
tell from a long way off. He came at you looking like he
intended to do you harm. Jacob, intending you harm, would
come to you with a smile on his face. And an offer that, well,
no sane person would turn this down. That was Jacob. Now God's way has always been
to lay down a pattern, a law if you will, then overturn that
pattern and law in order to show the sovereignty of His purpose.
He laid down the law on Mount Sinai. And then what did He do?
He flipped it over. by sending His Son to accomplish
the law, and then receiving people, not on the basis of their keeping
the law, but save them through Jesus Christ. The law says God
will save the righteous. The law says that the man who
does these things will have life by them. And then God turns it
all upside down. It says, He that hath the Son
hath life. And God is about to flip things
over. You see, He purposed this before the world began. This
little story going on here was no surprise to God. He even said
to Rebekah, the elder is going to serve the younger. In chapter 25, we see this process
begin. Jacob takes advantage of Esau's
weakness. Esau's been out hunting. He's
on the way home. He's weary. He's tired. He's
hungry. And Jacob sets him up. He goes out there with some food.
He goes out there looking like he intends Esau some good. I'm
sure as Esau approached him, he goes, well, there's Jacob
and he's got some food with him. Well, that's awful nice of my
brother to meet me out in the field, not make me wait till
I get all the way home before I got something to eat. Well, as I said, Jacob looks
like he's going to do you good. He always has something up his
sleeve. And Esau says, give me some of
that, that nice soup you made. And Jacob says, sure. And you
can just see it, you know. Jacob reaches out the bowl and
Esau reaches for it and Jacob goes, wait just a minute. First,
give me your birthright. Give me the position of the firstborn
in the house. Now to this day I don't understand
why Esau gave it up for a bowl of soup. I know what he said. He said, well sure you can have
it. What good is a birthright if
I die out here in the field? He couldn't have been that bad
off. or he wouldn't have been walking home. He had what it took to get home.
He was a man of the field. He could have found something
to eat. Do you know why Esau was willing to give up the birthright?
He had no respect for what it entailed. He had no faith. The birthright of that household
involved promises beyond the ability of the eye to see. Because
they were promises not only of a land, not only of some real
estate over there, it involved promises regarding eternal things
and Esau had no appetite for eternal things. He had an appetite
only for the things of this world. And Jacob came to him with some
of the blessings of this world. And God Esau to give up the blessings
of the next world. And Esau got his bowl of soup,
and when he was done, he wiped his mouth, grabbed his pack and
went home, and didn't think about it again for almost 40 years. Now these two men were about
40 when Jacob stole the birthright, or cheated him out of it. And
they were in their 70s. When Isaac says, I'm old, don't
know how much longer I'm going to live. Esau, you go out and
you make some of that food that I like so much. You go out there
and you hunt, you find some fresh game. And you fix me up a meal
like you fixed for me before. And you bring it in. And then
son, I'll bless you. It's time for me to turn over
the reins of this household. It'll be yours. And so Esau goes
out to do what his father said to do. And while he's gone, Jacob,
who was the favorite of his mother, she'd overheard what Isaac said.
And she told Jacob, look, we got to work fast. We got to get
this done before your brother Esau gets back. You bring me
A goat. And I'll use a goat to make some
of that kind of stuff that Esau makes, because after all, I told
Esau the recipe. I know how to make this. And
I'll make what Isaac likes. I've been feeding him for, what,
a hundred years by this time. I know what kind of food he likes.
And then you, she went over to Esau's closet and she got out
the nicest piece of clothes, I don't know whether it was a
robe or what they dressed in back then, but whatever it was they
dressed in, Esau's nicest piece of clothes. And he said, here
Jacob, put this on. And he says, now, on the back
of your hands, she put a covering of goat skin, so it'd be hairy. And on the back of his neck,
smooth parts of his face. He said, why? So he would Smell
like his brother and feel like his brother And she said now
Jacob you take this too and you go in there to your father. Don't
worry. He can't see And you give him this too and you get the
blessing and that's what Jacob did I Now understand, all of
this was foretold by God when He said to Rebekah, while those
two boys were yet in her womb, He said, the elder will serve
the younger. That does not change the fact that what Jacob and
his mother did was flat out wrong. You're not supposed to do that.
That was deceit, that was theft. And Esau was right when he got
angry and said, well, did you name my brother Jacob? Which
name means deceiver. Cheat, scoundrel, ne'er do well. But you know something? That is where God glorifies himself. He takes the wicked deeds of
men and brings out glorious consequences. I remember when I was in Bible
school, particularly my first year, they tried to hammer into
us how we needed to purify ourselves and be good. Because you know,
God can't use an unclean vessel. Brethren, if He can't use an
unclean vessel, just who in the world is He going to use? Tell
me. If He can't use a sinner, who's
He going to use? In fact, In that great work that
our Lord Jesus Christ did, God foreordained it. And how
did He make it come to pass? Through the wretchedly, awful,
sinful acts of Romans and Jews. And on the day of Pentecost,
Peter said, you with wicked hands have killed the one that God
approved of. And that was exactly according
to his purpose. God and only God can take our
mess-ups. We call them mess-ups. You know,
they aren't just mess-ups in the sense of, I made a mistake. They usually
call them foul-ups because we foul everything up. We make the
pure foul. We make the good bad. We make
the pure polluted. And we might think that when
we do that, and I tell you, you know, the conscience of your
childhood, it never fully leaves you, does it? Consequently, I've
always got this nagging sense in the back of me that my sin
He's going to render the ministry that I do of none effect. Brethren,
if sin makes a man's ministry of no effect, then nobody's ever
going to have any effect in this world, is it? I'm not saying this to make us
careless about sin, but oh, that God would work in our hearts
to make us realize that the sin problem really has been taken
care of in Christ. And that we cannot separate ourselves
from His love, nor His gracious purpose, because we sin. David thought he had. Oh, David just covered up with
his sense of sin over what he had done. It wasn't the only
time he sinned, but that was a rather notable one, wasn't
it? When he took another man's wife and then took his life. And I'll tell you, if we ever
found ourselves in that position, we might likewise think, oh no,
there's no coming back from this. And Nathan the prophet came to
him and laid out a story, a fictional account to illustrate what David
had done. And David got mad. He got red
in the ears, mad about this story. And he says, you find that man.
The Lord do it unto me even more severe if that man outlives today."
And Nathan looked at him and said, you're the man. Interesting thing how we can
bury our sins. Keep them out of our conscious
thought. We do that long enough, we forget about them. And then
somebody comes in, tells us about something somebody else did that
was bad, and we get all mad at them. Righteously indignant at
what they did, forgiving. We're the man. Boy, as soon as
Nathan said that, Nathan the prophet said that to David, and
that sin he hid suddenly come tearing out of the closet. And I don't know if David crumbled
physically or what, but I know inside he just fell into a heap. And he said to Nathan, I have
sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said the most wonderful
thing that could be said at that moment. And the Lord has forgiven your
sin. Now, if you had told David that
he won the Powerball lottery, it would not have meant nearly
so much to him. as did those words. You know, we show something about
how spiritually weak we are when we get excited more by earthly
blessings than we do by spiritual ones. All the sweetness, the blessedness
of the testimony of the gospel that says the Lord has forgiven
your sin. Now did you notice what Nathan
said? He did not say now the Lord forgives your sins because
you know you made this confession. He didn't say okay you go write
a nice psalm about it in which you confess your sins and plead
for mercy then the Lord will forgive you. Before Nathan ever
came, before Nathan was ever sent before he ever told the
story that he made up. And then applied it to David.
Before David ever said, I have sinned against the Lord, the
Lord had already forgiven his sin. In fact, God who dwells
outside of time and from the very beginning has known the
end, He forgave David's sin before
David ever committed it. The Lord has forgiven your sin. God, and blessed be His name
for this, He saves wretched sinners. He uses wretched sinners to accomplish
His glorious purpose in this world. And even as we hate our sins
and are brought low by the knowledge of them, we who have hope in
Christ Jesus need never think that our sin is going to diminish
God's love for us, diminish His goodness for us. Because He never
loved us because of anything good He saw in us, because there
was never any good to see. I thumbed through a book one
time. I think it was called, What's So Amazing About Grace?
I'm not sure, but I think that's the title of it. And each chapter had a title
and then a subtitle under it. And the subtitle of one of the
chapters was, There is nothing you can do to make God love you
more. There's nothing you can do to
make God love you less. Because His love has nothing
to do with what we've done or shall do. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that
as good a news as there ever was? He says, I've loved you
with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn you with loving
kindness. He did not say, well, you straightened
up, you were going wrong there, but now you've cleaned up your
act, so I love you. No, He said, I've loved you from
before the world began. Before you did good or evil,
I set my love upon you. I set my love upon you knowing
what kind of scoundrel you would be. I revealed myself to you
and my love to you through the Lord Jesus Christ. I gave you
spiritual life, but even when I did so, I knew. I knew. that there'd still be sin. Your sin may surprise you, says
the Lord, but it does not surprise me. You may be shocked by what you're
still capable of doing. I am not. He knows our frame. He knows
what we are. And knowing full well what we
are, He has loved us with an everlasting love. It started
before time. It extends throughout time. And
when time shall be no more, it shall still be there, unchanged,
undiminished. The only thing that's going to
change is our ability to perceive it. Many years later, Esau went in
for the blessing, but Jacob had beat him to it. And Esau, who despised his birthright,
found out in so doing he'd forfeited the blessing. Now, in this part of the story,
Esau is a representative or a symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
not in his conduct. Esau was a godless man. The Lord
Jesus Christ was as godly a man as ever lived. A perfectly godly
man, for he was the God-man. Rather, Esau is representative
of Christ in his relationship to the Father. He is the Lord's
firstborn. As Esau was the firstborn, so
is the Lord Jesus the firstborn of God's household. And just
as Esau was the favored one of his father, so the Lord Jesus
Christ is the favored one of the heavenly Father. Everything Jesus Christ was and
did, was pleasing to the Father. You know what it's like for your
heart to just be filled up with joy when you see your children
doing the things you wanted them to do and think they should do? And yet, no matter how good our
children are, none of them are perfect. And we're not perfect. So that feeling of love doesn't
flow evenly for them. They have their good days and
bad days, we have our good days and bad days, and that all affects.
Not so with the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ never
had a bad day. Christ never had one of those
days when he had to come in and say, Father, I messed it up today,
I'm sorry. No, every moment From the time
he was conceived in the womb of his mother, until he was seated
at the right hand of the Father, he did always those things that
pleased the Father. And the Father said, this is
my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. I commit all things
to his hand. I give him the inheritance. He
is the firstborn. However, there are a lot of us
sons of Jacob who must receive the blessing. Us sons of the
scoundrel, us sons of the cheat, us sons of the one who is willing
to take what rightly belonged to someone else. The older I get, and that's the
only way we get is older, you know, we never do get younger,
but the older I get, the more I'm flummoxed at people saying,
I'm proud to be a Christian. You're proud to say that you're
going to take the blessings that someone else had a right to? You're willing to say that you're
going to go into the presence of God in the name and under
the name and character of someone else and receive blessings that
you don't have a right to? By taking them away from the
One who has a right to them? Do you know that's exactly what
faith is doing? It is taking for ourselves the
blessings that rightly belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is written, say ye unto the
righteous, it shall be well with them. Well, there's only been
one person righteous by what he did. That's the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we sinners go into the presence
of God under the name and the character of the only righteous
one and claim the blessings of the righteous. And in so doing,
we have thrown upon Him the curse of the wicked. Now, are you proud
of that? Oh, I'm proud of the one who
was willing to do that in my behalf. I'm proud of the one
who didn't have to be deceived about this, but freely went into
his own closet and took off the best robe of his own glorious
righteousness and said, look, you're going into our Father,
you better wear this. You better wear this. And when you go there, you tell
them, that you're me. You go in my name. Yeah, but
I still sound like me. That's what Isaac said to Jacob.
He said, boy, the voice is Jacob's, but the smell is Esau. And we go into the presence of
God like Jacob went into the presence of his father. Wrapped up in the glorious robe
of the Lord's righteousness, wearing upon ourselves the skins
of His sacrifice, smelling like the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we say, Father, bless me. And he says, that sounds like
a Jacob, but it smells like my son, the Lord Jesus. Here, I
bless you. The smell of my son, said Isaac,
look in here in verse 27. Ah, the smell of my son is like
the smell of the field. When the gospel is preached,
it is the sweet aroma of the person and work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2.15,
we are under God, a sweet smelling savor of Christ. Whenever we
preach the gospel, whenever we meditate on the gospel in our
hearts, whenever we tell it to our neighbors, whenever we sing
about it, it is to God the sweet smell of His Son. And when we
hear that gospel for the first time, when the Spirit of God
is pleased to open our eyes to the truth of it, when Christ
by His Spirit first puts that royal robe of righteousness upon
us, clothes us with Christ, and sends us into the presence of
the Father in the name of Christ. When we go in there through the
gospel, we are the sweet-smelling savor of Christ unto God. Isn't
that amazing? That's why we're blessed. Now,
God's not a blind man like Isaac was. He knows who we are. But
we have come to Him in the name of His Son. We have come to Him
in the clothing of His Son. We have come to Him in the fragrance
of His Son. And He says, Oh, the smell of
my Son. The smell of His righteousness. The smell of His justice. the smell of His sacrifice, the
smell of His mercy, and the smell of His finished work. You think
those things are pleasing to you? You think those things are
pleasing smells to you? I love them, don't you? I love
it when God is pleased to give a man the ability to, as it were,
spread forth the savor of Christ. And I can breathe it in and smell
that. If you think it smells good to
you, imagine what it smells like to the Father. And on account of that, He blesses us. Oh, the smell
of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.
And we go into the presence of the Father dressed like the Son.
We feel like the Son. We smell like the Son. And it
smells like the blessing of the Lord. Because you see, Christ
is that field blessed by the Lord. He is the field that brings forth
the grain. from which the bread is made, the bread of life. He is the field that gave rise
to the grape, which was pressed out and made into wine, the wine
of his blood. That's why it says in verse 28,
as Isaac goes to give out the blessing to Jacob, he says, May
God give you of heaven's due and earth's richness, the abundance
of grain and new wine. And all, we go into the presence
of our Heavenly Father. And He smells Christ and He says,
all be upon you the bread of life. And be given to you that
new wine of the blood of my firstborn. It brought in the new covenant
which says, your sins and iniquities I will remember no more. Oh, our blessing comes from that
field which the Lord has blessed, the Lord Jesus Christ. He says,
May nations serve you and peoples bow down to you. Be Lord over
your brothers and may the sons of your mother bow down to you.
May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed.
Now, if all that the Lord had ever blessed Jacob with, or Isaac
had blessed Jacob with, was that God gave heaven's due and earth's
richness, which meant you'd always have good harvests. That would
have been pretty good. Jacob would have become a rich
man. But he went on and said, may nations serve you. He went
on and on. Now, understand that this is
looking forward to Christ. And it's fulfilled completely
in Christ, but also we'll find a fulfillment in us. Nations
serve us and peoples bow down to us. You say, well, I don't
see that happening. Give it time. It's going to happen. Because
you see, all the nations and all the peoples of the nations
are going to be brought into the presence of the Lord. And
every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that He is
Lord. You say, yeah, but that's Him. We're going to be standing
right there. Think about this, brothers, what
we're going to see. We're going to see the whole universe brought
into the presence of Christ and bow down and we're going to be
standing right there with Him. We're His brethren. And we participate in all the
glories that the Father has given to Him. All who curse Christ will be
cursed. And that means all those that
curse those who are in Christ will be cursed. That's what the book of Revelation
is about, believe it or not. It's about God cursing those
that cursed his people. Do you honestly believe? This
is a glorious thing to think about now. That God's going to deal with
this world, with nations and with people, according to how
he treats his church. And if we're his church, that
puts us in a pretty good position. He will not allow his son to
be harmed without retribution, and neither will he allow any
of his other sons to be harmed without retribution. There are some people who think
that the United States must maintain good relationships with Israel,
that nation over there, because if we were to ever turn our back
on Israel, God would turn His back on us. Wrong Israel. Wrong Israel. When a nation turns its back
on Christ and on Christ's people, then, Does God judge them? Oh, what blessings you and I
have. We have been made to look, feel,
and smell like the Lord Jesus Christ to God. And we have been blessed with
all spiritual blessings in Christ, because of Christ, and for His
sake. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ has
remained in all of this, the firstborn. And I'm glad of it. I don't want to be firstborn
in God's household. That's more responsibility than
I can deal with, isn't it? I'm glad to be one of His lesser
sons. And I'll tell you, to be a lesser
son in God's household, that's a wonderful place to be. To be
a son of any sort in His household is a good thing to be. And I
will be glad to leave the double portion for Christ. Because I
am very happy to leave running God's household to Christ. I
think that's too big a household for me to handle. Too much for
me. But Christ can handle it. Well, may God add His blessing
to the message. I hope there's been some savor
of Christ in it. And I hope you've smelled it,
hope the Father has. And I hope that everyone here
will go into the presence of the Father, in the name and under
the character of the Lord Jesus Christ, and from the Father's
hand, receive those very blessings which belong to Christ. Father,
bless Your Word, only You can. I can preach it, but only You
can bless it. Receive us for Christ's sake. It's in His name
we pray it. Amen.