Confusion About Good and Evil
Genesis 27
is one of those chapters that really puzzles me. This chapter seems to be all about people
acting deceptively and not only getting away with it but also prospering
because of it. But, I do think that it
goes to set motive for Jacob – and we’ll get a few chapters here to see that
unfold. So if you read these chapters
and feel like the people who are getting blessed don’t really deserve it
because their motives are impure, just know that from my opinion you are
reading it right and just hold that thought for a little while longer.
Isaac’s Role
So in the
spirit of poor choices, let’s start with Isaac.
Now, I know the love of a parent is strong. I know that a parent loves their children
regardless of their choices. So know
that I am not talking about love here – I’m talking about blessing. Esau has twice now proven to the family that
he thinks very little about God’s ways by forfeiting his birthright and by
marrying Hittite women. Yet Isaac
chooses to give him the blessing anyway.
I’m sorry,
Isaac. I know all about customs and
tradition. But when we put customs,
tradition, and personal feelings above God’s ways it is always the wrong
choice. What is the first
commandment? “I am the Lord your God,
you shall have no other gods before me.”
Isaac could have taken this opportunity to say to Esau, “I love you, and
I always will love you. But until you
follow God’s ways before the ways of man I will not give you a blessing.” It would be a hard thing to do, but it would
show Esau how important God’s ways are.
I think
this is one of the main problems in America today. We have such a culture of acceptance and
universality! For the record, neither of
which is inherently a bad thing unless pushed too far, as I believe we are
headed in America. That culture of
universality and acceptance also means that we don’t stand up for what is
important often enough. So we accept
people’s behavior because it might cause problems if we don’t. That behavior can lead to problems. When we accept people’s behavior without
upholding the ways of God, we are headed down a poor path.
I’m not
saying that we should be intolerant, of course.
There is a certain amount of acceptance that has to go on because all of
us are human beings. So we should not
take our faith to mean we are intolerant, but neither should we take our faith
and have us to be weak minded. There
should be a happy medium in there somewhere.
We should seek to always show love, but also make sure that we live as
though God truly is the most important priority in our life.
Rebekah’s Role
So, now
let’s move on to Rebekah. What does
Rebekah do here? Rebekah is the
schemer! Rebekah comes up with the plan
to deceive her husband. Clearly this is
not only wrong, but evidence of some unhealthy family leadership role
modeling. I cannot give Rebekah a pass
on this one. I’d really like to because
I know that Jacob is the one that God chooses to carry through the line of
Jesus, but I cannot.
At the
very least, I think she could have sat down with Isaac and discussed Esau’s
choices and expressed concern over blessing Esau. At the very least there could have been
dialogue and possibly consensus. But
when Rebekah schemes, she follows in the pattern of Sarah when she points
Abraham in the direction of Hagar. Again
we see evidence of the sins of one generation creeping into the life of the
next.
In fact,
not only does she scheme but she is the one who prepares the food, she is the
one who grabs Esau’s garments to deceive her husband, and she is the one who
encourages Jacob! She is taking matters
into her own hands and at the very least showing a lack of faith and trust in
God and her husband. That is
unfortunate. It is forgivable, of course, since all things are forgivable with
repentance. But it is certainly
unfortunate.
Jacob’s Role
Now we
look at Jacob. Jacob could have said,
“No, mom, I don’t want to deceive my father.”
But instead he helps his mom scheme against his father. He takes Rebekah’s plan and adds to it the
thought “What about my brother’s hairiness?”
Jacob helps increase the deception against his father. In fact, Jacob’s initial participation in the
planning phase of the scheming turns into flat out lying before his father when
he claims to be Esau! So in Jacob we see
even more sinfulness and poor family dynamics shown. When sin abounds, people start playing behind
the scene, people start having back-door meetings, and trust in God’s will is
lost.
Esau’s Role
Then, of
course, we turn to Esau. At first we
pity Esau. At first we think of him as
the abused one here. He does his
father’s bidding and is legitimately cheated this time. Here, he has a cause to be angry. Yet, let us not forget. He is still guilty of forsaking God’s
ways. He is still guilty of thinking
lightly of the things that he should think heavily about. While that does not justify what happened to
him in the least, we can see that he is not without guilt.
Furthermore,
notice how he reacts when he discovers he has been cheated? He claims that this is twice that Jacob has
cheated him, which is inherently a lie.
Esau sins because he is unwilling to see how his own poor choices have
impacted him. Yes, he was cheated and
outmaneuvered this time. But the issue
with his birthright was his own fault in shallowness. Unfortunately, Esau is not the innocent man that
we might like to think if we took this story out of context.
Conclusions
So what
can we say about all of this? Well, little
has changed! We struggle with these same
problems today. Humanity continues to
struggle with sin. So I look around and
don’t really believe the world is worse off today than we were 4,000 years
ago. Same struggles, same problems. I think this is precisely why it is so neat
to have a holy book that can remind us of this.
As we look
forward, keep this in mind. Sin that is
not dealt with will continue to evidence itself. Sin that is allowed to go unchecked will
continue to haunt those involved. We’ll
see how this family dynamic of deception will continue to haunt Jacob until it
is dealt with by God. So the question
that I am left asking today is – what sin am I aware of that is left unchecked
and is rearing its ugly head over and over again? Am I going to continue to allow it to do so
or am I finally going to rise up against sinfulness and challenge it? That is the question we should all ask more
often.
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