In this passage, we see human sin run rampant, but we also see the grace of God on full display. The world is discipling us in many different ways, but we have been called to live lives distinct from the world around us. All of us need the forgiveness and grace of Jesus Christ, and we are the ones to bring the world this good news.
In this passage, we see reconciliation between Jacob and Esau, which ultimately points us to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the perfectly obedient Son of God, yet who took the punishment for sins we deserved, so that we might be reconciled to God through faith in Him.
In this passage, Jacob wrestles with God and is confronted with his need to fully trust in God alone. In the same way, we too must let go of our self-sufficiency and cling to Jesus who took the blow of justice we deserved, so that we might receive the blessing of grace.
In this passage, Jacob experiences the prosperity and protection of God. Jacob's experience, however, is not unlike that of the believer in Christ. We see that Jacob's Mesopotamian exodus points forward to the Person of Jesus Christ who plundered the power of evil, and who leads His people out of bondage to Satan and into the true and better Promised Land, the new heaven and the new earth.
In this passage, there are multiple wives, multiple births, sister hatred, and the use of surrogacy to celebrate and gloat. But it would be the beginning of God making Jacob's descendants as numerous as "the dust of the earth" (Genesis 28:14). Though the world around us hurts, we can be confident that God is ransoming a people "from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9).
In this passage, we see that the Lord can fulfill His promises even through human deception. Though we are surrounded by all kinds of deceptions, we can be assured that God is not absent or unaware, but that He is transforming us into the image of Christ, who “committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22).
In this passage, Jacob the exile meets the God of his grandather Abraham and his father Isaac. But rather than cursing Jacob for his deception, God blesses Jacob with His very presence. We may sometimes feel forsaken by God, but we who trust in Jesus Christ can be assured that God will be with His people wherever they go.
While things may have looked really bad on Good Friday, in three days, Jesus would be raised from the dead in accordance with the Scriptures. In this sermon, we look at several examples in the Old Testament where God does resurrection things on the third day, and how these point to how Christ would be raised from the dead on the third day.
In this passage, we see that Jacob deceitfully takes the blessing from his old and blind father Jacob, while his brother Esau receives a kind of anti-blessing. Yet it was God's good plan that "the older shall serve the younger." This doesn't mean that God approves of this deception, but that God can use even human deception to accomplish His redemptive plan, ultimately culminating in the Person of Jesus Christ, who was betrayed and condemned to death, bearing the curse on our behalf, so that we might receive His blessing.
In this passage, we don't encounter anything new. Everything that happens in this chapter to Isaac has already happened in the previous chapters to Abraham. Thus, Isaac's life is a parallel to the life of his father Abraham. Each of us is passing on a legacy to the next generation, are we passing on a legacy of faith?