Genesis 25
“The older will serve the younger”

The story of Israel
Once upon a time there was a man whose name was Israel. That wasn’t the name that he was born with - when he was born his mother called him Jacob, and it was later in life that God renamed him ‘Israel’, which means, ‘he struggles with God’. And along the way he had children of his own and they became known as the children of Israel and eventually the nation of Israel. But originally Israel was one man, and to start with his name was Jacob, and over the next few weeks on Sunday mornings we’re going to be reading his story together.

There’s a reason why we’re doing that, of course, and it’s not just historical or literary curiosity. There’s a much more personal reason than that for reading these stories. Nor do we read these stories as moral example stories, holding up Jacob as the great hero of the past for us to imitate and emulate - quite the opposite; we’re going to find out very quickly that Jacob is a far from heroic character. It’s a bit like that opening line from David Copperfield: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,” and in Jacob’s case they show very clearly that he’s not the hero of his own life at all.

So why do we read this story? I think the answer is because it’s our story. The New Testament tells us in Galatians chapter 6 that if we are in Christ then we are ‘the Israel of God’, and it also tells us that the God we belong to is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. So when we read these stories, if we are people who belong to Jesus, we are reading about our God and us. We’re reading about where we came from and who we are and who God is and what it means for us to be in relationship with him.

This is of course a profoundly different way of learning about these things from the way our society says to learn them; our society says we make up our own view of God, and we also construct who we are - we make it up as we go along, and we create an identity for ourselves through the clothes that we wear and the things that we buy and the music that we listen to, or we find ourselves by going on an overseas trip. The Bible says our identity is something that is given to us - it’s about where we come from, what our name is, who our father is; it’s about the rock that we were cut from and the tree that we are grafted into. If that’s true, then these stories in Genesis are foundational stories for understanding who we are, and even more for understanding who God is.

What that means will become clearer as we go, I think, and what we learn about ourselves and God will probably be a mixture of things that are very familiar and other things that are quite surprising and strange, and we’ll try and leave room each week for questions and discussion to tease these things out together a little bit further.

Pain and prophecy
So let’s begin - let’s look together at this story about Israel, whose name was originally Jacob.

It’s a story that begins before he was born - in fact, verse 19, the writer wants to put a heading over it all and tell us that it’s the story of his father Isaac, or more literally, it’s the story of ‘the generations of Isaac’, the story of Isaac and his sons. And it begins before Isaac had any sons.

- Painful blessing (v.21-22)
Verse 20: “Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, sister of Laban the Aramean. 21 Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived.”

This is not an unusual way for these stories in Genesis to begin. In fact, at every point, in each generation of the family of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in each generation the story of how they conceived their children is a story that begins with childlessness and barrenness and desperate prayers to God to give the gift of children. God makes a promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 that he is going to make him into a great nation, and that that through him and through his seed all the nations of the world are going to be blessed. And then in each generation it seems that the promise hangs on a thread, and God reminds them that conception and children and family and life are not an automatic property of us and our fertility; they’re not to be taken for granted - they are a blessing and a gift and an act of God. Right at the start of Jacob’s story it’s clear that his very existence is an answer to prayer and a sign of the blessing of God.

It’s a blessing, verse 21, but it’s also a painful blessing, verse 22. So Rebekah becomes pregnant and the babies jostle within her - it’s twins - and she says: “Why is this happening to me?” Literally: “If it’s like this, how am I still alive?”

And so she goes and enquires of the LORD.

- Prophecy (v.23)
The answer comes back in verse 23 in the form of a prophecy. Verse 23: ‘The LORD said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”’

* Two nations
It’s a particularly graphic image, isn’t it; having one baby inside your womb seems to me to be a pretty painful experience; but having two nations in there fighting out a war - that sounds unbearably difficult. But it’s more than just an image for a difficult pregnancy. It really is two nations in Rebekah’s womb; it’s Israel and Edom, and the whole history of their interaction down the centuries into the future is already beginning inside her.

The God who enabled her to conceive and to have this pregnancy is also the God who knows exactly where it is all headed and why it is the way it is and how it’s going to happen; and so he’s about to speak about it all before it happens, and his words not only describe reality - they create reality.

There’s no getting away from it, is there. The God of Genesis is not just an interventionist God; he is a predestining God. He doesn’t just answer prayers; he plans the future, and he incorporates those prayers into the way he makes it happen. You and I may feel a little uncomfortable with that - not as uncomfortable as Rebekah, I suspect, but still intellectually a little uncomfortable. It may seem hard to get your head around the idea that God can know the future, and not just know the future but make it happen. It’s hard to get your head around but the writer of Genesis keeps telling us that it’s just true, and it starts at the very beginning with God creating the world out of nothing.

So Isaac and Rebekah pray to God for a baby, and he answers by making Rebakah pregnant not just with a baby but with two nations - two nations that God has already planned and purposed and can prophesy the future of while they are still in the womb.

* One will be stronger
And so in the remainder of the verse he foretells what the destiny of these two sons, these two nations will be. Verse 23: “One people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”

The first line is kind of ambiguous, isn’t it. It could be saying the same thing as the second line - that the younger will be stronger than the older, and so the older will serve the younger. That’s how most of the commentaries interpret it. Or it could be saying the opposite of the second line: the older will be the stronger one, and yet the older will serve the younger.

And we’ll see pretty soon, I think, as the story unfolds, that it’s the actually the second of those two versions. It is the older brother who is going be the stronger one, in almost every way that you can measure it.

* The older will serve the younger
And yet, despite the fact that he’s older; despite the fact that he’s stronger; the older will serve the younger.

That’s the prophecy that Rebekah is given while her children are still in the womb, and as we’ll see later in the story, she ends up playing a key role in making it come true.

* Names (v.24-26)
Well, the two sons are born, verse 24, and Esau comes out first, and he is ruddy and healthy and hairy, and they call call him a name that sounds like the Hebrew word for ‘hairy’. And then Jacob comes out, with his little hand hanging onto Esau’s heel, desperately trying to pull him back in and get ahead of him. And so they call him ‘Jacob’, which means ‘schemer’ or ‘trickster’ or ‘deceiver’ - literally, ‘he grasps the heel’, which is an idiom for tripping someone up and throwing them over. And so, even in the womb, the story of these two brothers’ lives is already being played out.

Despising the birthright
- The two brothers (v.27-28)
Well they grow up, verses 27-28, and the two brothers turn out to be completely different from each other. Esau is the skilful hunter, the man of the open country, his father’s favourite. And Jacob is the quiet one; literally the word means ‘complete’ or ‘self-sufficient’. He stayed among the tents, and he was the one his mother loved.

Humanly speaking, everything said that Esau was the one who would inherit everything. He was the firstborn; he was the strong one; he was the one his father loved. If there was a birthright to be passed down, an inheritance, a promise about the line of Abraham’s descendants through which the blessing would come, then everything pointed to Esau.

- Jacob’s trick (v.29-31)
But then, verses 29-31, Jacob begins to live up to his name. Verse 29: ‘Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. 30 He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.) 31 Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.”’

You can see Jacob’s character coming through, can’t you. He’s the younger brother, stretching out his hand, grabbing at his brother’s heel, desperate to have the thing that his older brother takes for granted. The strategy that he uses to get it is morally pretty murky, and I think we’re meant to see it that way. After all, we’ve already been told that his very name mean’s ‘schemer’. It’s morally pretty murky, but then the point of the story isn’t about the morality, really - it’s about the hunger. It’s about the way Jacob hungers for the birthright, the inheritance, the blessing of God.

- Esau’s decision (v.32-34)
Esau couldn’t be more different. Verse 32: ‘“Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?” 33 But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left.’ And then, at the end of the verse, the punchline that sums up the story: “So Esau despised his birthright.”

That’s the bottom line, isn’t it. Jacob schemes and dreams and connives and plots and longs for the birthright, the inheritance, the blessing and the promise of God. His whole life is devoted to pursuing it. And Esau just says, “What good is the birtright to me?” and he sells it for a bowl of lentil soup.

Why this story matters
What’s the point of the story for you and me today? If this is a story about us and God, not just about two brothers four thousand years ago in the middle east, what is it about the story that matters so much? What does it tell us?

Two things, I think. The first is to do with the sovereignty and the foreknowledge and the election of God. It tells us that the God of the Bible is the kind of God who chooses and decides how things are going to work out before they happen. He doesn’t stand back and wait to see how things turn out; he predicts and foretells and chooses and makes the future. So Paul the apostle quotes from this story in Romans chapter 9 and he says: ‘Rebekah’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad — in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls — she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”’

That’s the first thing that this story drives home for us; if we are in relationship with God it is not because we were good enough or clever enough or strong enough or religious enough to choose God - it’s because he chose us in Jesus; as it says in Romans 8, in the chapter that we were looking at last week: “For those God foreknew he also predestined... those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”

This is one of the many many passages in the Bible that make the point emphatically that God is a predestining kind of God. And yet - and this is the second point - it’s a story that tells us equally clearly that the way the choice and the election and the predestination of God are worked out is through the choices and decisions that we make, and that we are responsible for those decisions. Anyone can create a wooden puppet and make it dance when you pull the strings; the incredible thing about God is that he can create real human beings - not puppets but real people, who make real choices - and somehow work through those choices to bring about the things that he has planned from the beginning.

At that level, there is only one difference that really matters between Jacob and Esau. It wasn’t that Jacob was nicer than Esau or better than Esau or more religious than Esau. It wasn’t that he was a smooth man and Esau was a hairy man. It wasn’t that he was clever and Esau was stupid. It was the fact that for all his faults, Jacob valued the blessing of God and relationship with God as the most precious thing in the world; he wrestled for it, he craved it, he longed for it, he begged God and struggled with God for it. And Esau despised it. He sold it for a little bit of lentil soup here and now.

The point is not that he sold his birthright for something evil - he didn’t sell it for a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of vodka or a stash of pornography - you can’t get more wholesome than bread and lentil soup. The point is not what he sold it for - the point is that he sold it. In Esau’s case, the thing he sold it for was a bowl of lentil soup. Something warm, filling, comforting, satisfying, immediate, right here and now. And the more the aroma of the soup curled up into his nostrils, the more the inheritance, the birthright, the promises of God seemed abstract and distant and useless - and so he traded them in for the soup.

There’s a lotm of soup on the menu in the world around us today, isn’t there. Good stuff, harmless stuff, wholesome stuff, a lot of the time. Stuff that people sacrifice their relationship with God for. So I want to ask you the question that begs to be asked in the light of this story this morning. What price do you put on the promises of God? How much do you value your inheritance? Would you sell it for a promotion at work? for a bigger house? for a husband or a wife? for a better education for your children?

If it came to the crunch, if you had to make a decision between your faith in Jesus and your career or a house or a relationship, which would you choose? And if it never really came to the crunch - if it was just a question of expanding one at the expense of the other, putting one at risk for the sake of the other, which one would it be?

The point is not really to love the soup less; it’s to love the birthright more - to love it more than anything. So let’s pray again this morning that God would make us people who love Christ and the things that come with knowing Christ more than anything else in all the world, and that we would weigh everything else in comparison with that.