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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Aaron Schmid

Promise Throughout

I hope you brought your Bibles this morning, because we're going to be studying in God's Word.

And we're going to start by opening in Genesis, Chapter 12.

And this is the call of Abraham, Abram at the time.

Genesis, Chapter 12, and I'm going to start in the first verse here.

The Bible reads, Now the Lord had said to Abram, get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you.

I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

Verse 3, and I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Skip down to verse 7, then the Lord appeared to Abram and said to your descendants, I will give this land, And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him." These promises, at the heart of these promises, these simple promises, is an even bigger promise.

And that is the covenant relationship of God that began with Abraham and that is continued throughout his Word.

And this promise, the promise of a covenant relationship, the promise of God seeking a covenant relationship with us, is the promise throughout.

And that is the title of this morning's message, The Promise Throughout.

If you could please join me for a brief word of prayer.

Father God, Lord, it is such a privilege to come to you on such a beautiful morning, to come to you on a day set aside, a 24-hour period where your presence is actually in this period.

And I pray now that, Lord, that you would be with me as I speak.

Lord, that the words that I would say would not be my own words, but that they would be your words.

That they would be your words straight from the throne of grace.

But I pray more importantly that your spirit would be present and speaking to the hearts of all those here.

I pray that you would speak to the issues of the heart and can convince and convict them in only the way that you can.

Be with us Lord as we open your word in Christ's holy name, amen.

So this morning we're gonna be talking about Jacob and I'm just gonna get straight to the point.

We're going to talk about Jacob, and we're going towards his big wrestling match, the big wrestle.

And to do that though I want to build some context because there's a lot that went on before this big wrestling match and I think there is huge lessons and implications in there for us.

And I'm going to be talking about a lot of things this morning, and I think there are good lessons and good things we can pick up, but ultimately I want to keep 1 thing at the forefront of your mind, and that is God's promises through this whole process, and ultimately God's promises to us.

And so as I opened briefly before my prayer, I spoke briefly on the call of Abraham and these promises that God gave Abraham.

He promised that he'd give him land and he promised that he'd give him descendants, that he'd be the father of a great nation.

And it's actually a couple chapters later that God establishes his covenant with him, that he establishes this relationship with him.

And so I'm linking these promises with the beginning of a covenant relationship with Abraham.

And there was a covenant before this, there was a covenant with Noah as well, but but but this starting throughout the whole word, throughout this whole word, we can see God's covenant with his people.

And this promise was passed down from Abraham to his son Isaac, these promises, and these promises were then passed down from Jacob, or from Isaac to Jacob and Esau, his sons.

But there's 1 more promise I want to touch on before we get to Jacob and Esau.

So turn with me, if you will, to Genesis chapter 25.

And this is God speaking to Rebecca, actually at the time, Isaac's wife.

And we're in Genesis chapter 25 and verse 23.

And the Lord said to her, Rebekah, 2 nations are in your womb.

2 people shall be separated from your body.

1 people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger." So in addition to these promises that God gave to Abraham, that Abraham passed down to Isaac, and Isaac would then pass down to his children, God also gave this promise.

And in part, this promise is speaking to who would inherit the spiritual birthright.

Who would inherit the spiritual birthright of Isaac's children?

And so we know, We know, I think most of us have a pretty good idea of what the physical birthright is all about.

The physical birthright is where the first born in that time had a greater inheritance to their fathers, to the family's wealth, but the inheritance.

But in this context, there was also a spiritual birthright.

And this was very important because through this person, Christ's lineage would come through this person, and they would be the priest of their household.

Now, this promise was given to Rebecca, and Isaac was very aware of it.

And even though he knew this promise he still intended, I don't know I don't know if parents have, I'm not a parent, I don't know if parents have favorite children.

In this story it kind of looks like there's some favorites going on.

But Jacob, excuse me, Isaac knowing this promise intended that Esau should receive the full birthright, the physical and the spiritual side of it.

And Esau, as we see the story unfold, we see that Esau is more leaning towards the physical side of the birthright.

He's more interested in the wealth and the inheritance, and not so much with the spiritual aspect of it.

Rebecca, on the other hand, given this promise, and this was a promise, this was a prophecy of what would happen, Rebecca preferred Jacob.

And Rebecca, yeah, preferring Jacob, and Jacob didn't really care too much about the physical side of the birthright.

He didn't really care too much about inheriting all this wealth.

His bigger goal, his bigger mindset was in the spiritual.

He was more spiritually inclined, and this is a good thing, yes, to be more spiritually inclined, but If you see the story unfold, you will see that this became the overwhelming idea in Jacob's mind.

That he knew this promise and he knew God's will, that this was God's will, and somehow he had to just like, you know, ram it, like get to it.

You know, he had to figure it out how this promise was gonna come to be.

And we see this unfold in a very, in a very critical exchange between Jacob and Esau.

But before we go to read that in God's Word, I want to read from the book Patriarchs and Prophets, and this is page 178.

And she writes here, Day and night the subject, the subject of the birthright, the spiritual birthright, Day and night the subject occupied his thoughts until it became the absorbing interest of his life.

But while he thus esteemed eternal above temporal blessings, isn't that a good thing to be concerned with eternal things?

But while he thus esteemed eternal above temporal things, Jacob had not an experimental knowledge of the God whom he revered.

His heart had not been renewed by divine grace, and he believed that the promise concerning himself could not be fulfilled so long as Esau retained the rights of the firstborn, and he constantly studied to devise some way whereby he might secure the blessings which his brother held so lightly, but which was so precious to him." Even though, if it's God's promise, if it's God's will, would God use deception and deceit to get this promise?

So I want to read here later on in Genesis 25 and 29.

This exchange between Jacob and Esau is very familiar to all of you, I'm sure, but it tells us a lot about their character.

Genesis 25, starting in verse 29, Now Jacob cooked a stew, and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary.

And Esau said to Jacob, please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.

Verse 31, but Jacob said, sell me your birthright as of this day.

You can tell that this was, this was going on for quite some time.

He was looking for his foot in the door to get this birthright.

Verse 32, and Esau said, "'Look, I'm about to die, "'so what is this birthright to me?' "'Then Jacob said, "'Swear to me as of this day.' "'So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob.

"'And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils that he ate and drank, arose and went his way.

Thus Esau despised his birthright." So this tells us 2 really important things about Jacob and Esau which we've already already already kind of touched on.

It shows how Esau, by virtue of birth, by order of birth, was determined to have this birthright.

God intended to give it to him by order of birth.

But it shows his indifference towards it, that he is so willing to give up something of eternal value for a temporal gain.

But it also shows us something about Jacob.

Even though he was concerned about spiritual things and that was something on his mind, that was something at the forefront of his mind, She writes something very interesting in Patriarchs and Prophets that he did not have an experimental knowledge of God.

And so I kind of, I didn't know what to make of this at first.

But when I think of experimental or experiment, it takes me back to like chemistry class in high school.

You know, when you're sitting in class and you're learning about all these cool elements and the periodic table and all these chemicals, and then you get to the fun part, where you mix everything together and things change colors or you blow something up or you know something like that.

You know you experience something that you've already studied in lecture and that is what Jacob was lacking so much.

He had a head knowledge of it and he had an idea that yeah this is God's will for my life, but he didn't have the experience of fully surrendering to God, that experience of a relationship with God, that covenant relationship with God that his father had and that his grandfather had, the covenant relationship.

So we fast forward some years and we get to Genesis chapter 27 is where I'm at now.

Genesis chapter 27 and some years have gone by And Isaac is getting old and his eyes are kind of failing him and he maybe senses that his time is near to pass away or that, you know, he's just, you know, getting to the time that he would like to pass on this blessing, this birthright blessing, to his children.

And so at this time he still is intending, knowing God's promise that God gave to Rebecca and him, knowing God's intention, he still intended to give Esau the spiritual blessing, the birthright blessing.

And so you know the story, you know the story.

He calls Esau and he says, you know, go hunting for me and pick out some of my favorite meat and prepare that for me and come in and I will bless you.

And you know the story too where Rebekah caught wind of this and informed Jacob and they went in and deceived Isaac in order to gain this blessing.

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Promise Throughout

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