The Problem of Blessing (Gen 27:18-34)

I knew a medical student whose parents blamed him for their unhappy life. Despite being a brilliant student, his mom often said to him, "My life is miserable because of you." When he graduated from medical school, he committed suicide with a fatal overdose. Before he lapsed into unconsciousness and death, he called up his mom, and said with tears, "Mom, I am granting you your wish. I love you." His tragic life was the result of not receiving any blessing from his parents.

Theme: God wants to give us the ultimate blessing that we all desperately need. (God uses even human deception to accomplish his redemptive plan to bless the world.)

Goal: Seek the ultimate blessing that our soul needs. (Reassure God's people that our sovereign God's redemptive plan of blessing cannot be derailed.)

Application: Seek the blessing of God so that we can truly bless others (and not use them).

Jacob is a very contemporary figure. He is easy for modern people to relate to. He has more struggles, failures, doubts, weaknesses. He is the most unheroic hero in the Bible. To see his story in context, God calls Abram to save the world through his family (Gen 12:3; 18:18-19). In each and every generation there will be a bearer of the messianic seed carried by one of his descendants. One day, the seed will be the messiah who saves the world. The seed was passed on through Isaac, not Ishmael. Then the seed will be in one of Isaac's 2 sons: Esau or Jacob. Which one is it? Who is the bearer of the seed? Who is the son of promise? Who is the one who will be blessed?

Our key word from this text is blessing. Our concept of blessing today is so shallow and wimpy that we do not properly understand this text. We need a much richer understanding of blessing, without which this passage is confounding. This passage, which is all about blessing, will show us:

1. The Power of Blessing
2. Our Deep Need for Blessing
3. The Wrong Way to Get Blessing (How we usually try to get blessing, which does not work)
   
4. The Right Way to Get Blessing

I. The Power of Blessing

What is this blessing? Both Rebekah and Jacob thought they could steal it. At the end of this encounter, both Isaac and Esau thought that it was stolen. Why doesn't Isaac just take back the blessing from Jacob since he was tricked? Why didn't he call Jacob back and say, "You're just a fraud and a crook. I take back my blessing!"?

Our idea of a blessing might be to compliment people and to be nice to people. Then they say, "Bless your heart. You just blessed my heart." That's what the English word "blessing" means. What is blessing in the Bible? What is so powerful about it? Is it a last will and testament? It could be (Gen 27:28-29). Why couldn't Isaac give any further blessing to Esau (Gen 27:34-38)? Are they just primitive people?

Words of blessing from a significant figure have tremendous power to shape one's life. We could reshape the well known nursery rhyme along biblical lines, as such: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make or break my very soul." We know that off handed comments and casual comments (both words of blessing or cursing) made to us/about us, affect us more profoundly than we care to admit: "You're useless. You're ugly. You're stupid. You're a loser." These words are still operating like a power in our life today, though they were uttered just once decades ago. These words are still programing and dictating our lives. Words have a power to them, especially words of affirmation/blessing/valuing, or words of condemnation/criticism/cursing. These words move into us; they go to the very depths of our being. They become a part of us. They shape who we are. We all know this. The ancients knew this.

Words can ruin/devastate us, or comfort us and lift us up for years and years. If casual words have such an impact on us, how much more words spoken in an authoritative climactic setting, like a death bed blessing. What do words of blessing teach us?

1. There is the power of blessing. It is a deep accurate spiritual discernment of who this person is, how God has gifted them, who they truly are (Gen 27:28-29, 39-40). One who has spiritual discernment, who looks into a person to perceive who they truly are, and who carefully uses words of affirmation and blessing, it empowers them to the very heavens all the days of their life. If you have ever truly been blessed, you can never ever forget it all of your life. Isaac knew that his words of blessing to Jacob had a power of its own. It wasn't just well wishing. It would empower Jacob to become the person God had created him to be.
   
2. There is our deep need for blessing. Thus, our lives would be distorted without it. We would wrestle and struggle forever if we don't perceive we have experienced the power of blessing.

II. Our Need for Blessing

The struggle for blessing is the theme of Jacob's life. He does everything possible to get the blessing (Gen 27:6-29). When struggling all night with God at the climactic moment of his life, he says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Gen 32:26). No one can bless themselves. Jacob's intense need for blessing is seen when Isaac asks Jacob who he is. Jacob said, “I am Esau your firstborn" (Gen 27:19). But when Isaac asks the real Esau who he is, Esau said, “I am your son, your firstborn, Esau” (Gen 27:32). Robert Altar, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, says in his Genesis: Translation and Commentary (1996), "He (Jacob) reserves the crucial term 'firstborn' for the end of his brief response." Jacob's emphasis is "I am your firstborn," for the last word of the sentence is the most crucial. In that hierarchical and patriarchal society, sons, not daughters, and the oldest son, not any other son, was the one who received the lion's share of the wealth and inheritance. Thus, the father dotes on his firstborn, since the future of his family is dependent on his firstborn. As a result, all the daughters and all the other sons were ignored by comparison. Gen 25:27-28 say, "The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob." Esau was like a man's man, while Jacob was a quiet, unimpressive mama's boy. Isaac, over the years, doted on Esau and gave him the informal blessing of the firstborn. What is this?

It is to have the most powerful person in the clan--the father--look at you and say, "No one's like you. You're special. I love you more than anyone else." It is to have the uniquely valuable person say to you, "You are uniquely valuable to me."

Why is Jacob exploiting his father? Why is Jacob risking everything in such a cold calculating way? When he says "I am your firstborn," he is saying, "I should have been the one that you dote on. I am the unique one. I am the special one. I am your firstborn. I should be the head of the family, not my impetuous impulsive shallow temperamental brother. I should be the one you should have loved most. Give me what I want. Give me blessing. Smile on me. Dote on me. Bless me."

This is what every human being wants more than anything else. We all want the blessing of the firstborn. When we do not have it, it poisons our life. When Isaac favored one son, it poisoned everybody's life. Jacob became a cold calculating conniving opaque person. Esau, though likable fun loving person, became a rotten spoiled brat. Isaac was poisoning his own kids by giving the informal blessing of the firstborn all along to Esau, and now he wants to give him the blessing formally.

No one wants general love from general people. But we want unique love from uniquely special people in our own lives. We need a person we look up to say to us, "There is no one like you. You are special. You are unique. I love you more than anyone else." We all want/need this. We cannot bless ourselves. Our self worth cannot come from ourselves. We need a smart person say we are smart. We need a good person say we are good, in order to feel good. This is the blessing of the firstborn. We all need this. We all need blessing.

III. The Wrong Way to get Blessing

 

Jacob is a frightening example for how to get blessing. He became like somebody else. He hid himself and dressed up as somebody else. He dressed up as someone he is not. He dressed up like Esau. He got hairy like Esau. He changed his voice to sound like Esau. Isaac probably thought, "You feel like Esau. You're hairy like Esau. But there is something about the voice." To get blessing, Jacob could not be himself. He had to be someone else in order to be blessed. He was different from Esau. He was smooth. He was domestic. He couldn't be himself if he wanted to be blessed by the most important/significant person in his life.

 

We are all doing this. How are we getting blessing from others? From the world? How are we getting the blessing we really need? We don't let others see who we are, see our flaws, weaknesses. We dress up like someone else. If we like someone, we think, "What if this person loved me? Wow. Then I would be blessed." Someone who is stunning, attractive, lovely looks at me and says, "There is no one like you. You are my everything." To get what we desperately feel we need, we dress up like someone we are not. We put a lot of time into our appearance, our clothes, our mannerisms, that may not be who we truly are. We dress up as someone else to get the blessing we think we desperately need. Some desperately need their parent's approval. They try to be something they think their parents want them to be. Or they rebel. They become the opposite of what their parents hope/expect, saying, "I don't care what my parents think." But why are they so upset? Their lack of blessing from their parents, or others, cause them not to feel blessed. So they can't be themselves.

 

Another way to get blessing is to come to church and Bible study, and dress up as a really good Christian, with no gross sins or temptations or weaknesses or hangups. Why? They want other Christians to think well of them; they want their blessing. So they dress up to be like the Christian that the other Christians think they should be. But this does not work.

 

One of the saddest verse is when Isaac says, “Come here, my son, and kiss me” (Gen 27:26). This is a sly way for Isaac to have 1 more test to confirm that this really is Esau; he can then smell him. Gen 27:27-28 say, "So he went to him and kissed him. When Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, he blessed him and said, 'Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed. May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s richness—an abundance of grain and new wine.'" What did Jacob see when this was said? Jacob saw the look of his father that he had always wanted--the look of pride, affection, affirmation--the radiant look of joy that he had always wanted to see from his dad toward him, and the words from Isaac's lips that he always wanted to hear. Did this help? Did this change him?

 

This blessing sat inert for many hears, because Jacob knew it wasn't him that Isaac was loving/blessing. It must have been incredibly bitter to get that close to get from his father the love he always wanted, but it was not Jacob for he had dressed up. So, though he was blessed, yet he was not blessed at all.

 

Anyone who dresses up and is blessed for dressing up does not experience blessing at all. If someone hides his sin, his flaws, his weaknesses, and even if they are blessed, they are not really blessed because they have dressed up. All the compliments and blessings in the world are not going to sink in and fill up that vacuum. What then can we do?

 

This narrative is extremely bleak for everyone's life falls apart. Esau screams for blessing, saying, “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!” (Gen 27:38) Then he plans to kill Jacob (Gen 27:41). Rebekah had no choice but to send Jacob away (Gen 27:42-25). She never sees the son she loves ever again for the rest of her life. She never again sees the only one she has a loving relationship with. Jacob, who received the blessing of the firstborn, goes away penniless. Everyone's life falls apart. What is the moral of the story?

 

Be a better parent. Bless all our children, not just one of our children. Pray for insight to see our children's gifts, strengths and aptitude and bless each of them with affirmation and confirmation with the wisdom of God. We do learn this from this text? But there are 2 problems:

1. Those who have already been messed up by bad parenting and have already left home.
2. But even those who received good parenting are also still like Jacob.

The need for blessing is not just the result of bad parenting. Bad parenting makes it worse. God parenting makes it better. But even with good parenting, we are still covering up, hiding ourselves, dressing ourselves up to be someone in order to get others to give us their approval and blessing. We are like little kids who say with our silent inner voice, "Bless me. Bless me, too" as we dress up like a great husband, a great father, a great worker, a great doctor, a great teacher, a great Christian, a great man, etc. Outside we dress up like someone great and honorable, but inside we are like a kid, saying, "Bless me. Bless me too" (Gen 27:38). Why? There is a spiritual problem here. What is the solution?

 

It is hinted at by what Isaac says. After Esau came and Isaac realized that he has been deceived, Gen 27:33 says, "Isaac trembled violently and said, 'Who was it, then, that hunted game and brought it to me? I ate it just before you came and I blessed him—and indeed he will be blessed!'” There is a complete shift toward the end of Isaac's sentence. He begins with "who was it," and shifts with the word "indeed" which is similar to "behold." He is saying, "Who is that crook, liar and cheat who just came and deceived me, and behold he will be blessed." He is realizing 2 things:

1. God works even through Jacob, and the crooks, liars, failures and the bad people. That is what God does. God works through and brings his grace to unworthy people. Commentators say that Esau is the more likable character, and even the narrator/storyteller likes Esau more. Thus, God's grace is working even against the taste of the narrator. There is almost nothing about Jacob that is appealing. With Abraham there were good chapters and bad chapters. But with Jacob every chapter is bad. He does not do anything that is a good example. In a way, he is the weirdest person possible for God to choose/bless. What is the moral of the story? It is not that if you have a great family God will work, and if you have a bad family with bad parents God won't work. Instead, God is blessing the one who is the most screwed up member of the whole family. The moral of the story is that God brings his scandalous intervening grace into the lives of people who don't seek it, don't deserve it, who resist it, and who don't appreciate it even after they have been saved by it--over and over and over again. God works through sheer grace.
2. Isaac surrenders to God's grace. When Isaac says, "—and indeed he will be blessed!” he is not only saying that God will bless Jacob, but that he will accept it. Derek Kidner, in his Genesis (The Tyndale OT Commentary Series),1981, says that this "expresses more than mere belief that the spoken word is self-fulfilling; he knows he has been fighting against God, as Esau has, and he accepts defeat." How has Isaac been fighting against God? During Rebekah's pregnancy the Lord revealed to her that "the older will serve the younger" (Gen 25:23). Surely, Rebekah shared this with her husband. But he has been fighting against this all of his life. He wants to follow the world's way of blessing the older son. He follows his own preference of wanting the man's man Esau rather than the mama's boy Jacob. He realizes he has been resisting the whole approach of grace, for he likes the stronger one, the better one, the older one, the more appealing one, but he doesn't like the weaker one, the less likable one, the younger one, the marginal one, the failed one. But now he not only accepts the God of grace, but he also rests in that grace and surrenders his resistance to the God of grace. How can we do this? How can we get the blessing by accepting God's grace?

IV. The Right Way to get Blessing

Jacob was wrong when he said, "I am the firstborn." The word "firstborn" occurs 109 times in the NIV. The Bible tells us that Jesus is "the firstborn over all creation" (Col 1:15), God's firstborn whom he brought into the world (Heb 1:6), "the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom 8:29), "the firstborn from the dead" (Col 1:18; Rev 1:5). This means that Jesus lives through out eternity in a state of firstborn blessing, living in the very bosom of his Father, "in closest relationship with the Father" (John 1:18; NIV 2011). The Father, the ultimate person, doted on his Son, and poured out love and blessing into his Son's heart. What love, joy and delight any father has when he just watches his child sleep. This might be just a dim hint of what the Father saw in his Son through out eternity. But the Son leaves his firstborn blessing. He comes to earth and dies on the cross. As he dies he prays. Every other time Jesus calls God Father. But as he dies he says, "My God, my God" (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34), instead of Father. Why? 

On the cross, Jesus lost the blessing of the firstborn. How? Paul says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.' He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit." (Gal 3:13-14). Jesus dressed up like us and got the curse we deserve, so that when we believe in Jesus we can be clothed like him. 

The way of salvation through our own effort is where we dress up saying, "I am a good person, though I sin a little here and there." We dress up for God through our effort, hoping or expecting that he should bless us. It does not work. Why? We will be as nervous as Jacob was when he was dressing up like someone else hoping not to be discovered as a fraud in order to be blessed. 

The way of the gospel is that Jesus dressed up as us, so that he got the curse we deserve. Then when God sees us, he sees us as though we did everything Jesus did. When we believe in Jesus, we receive what is too hard to believe and too good to be true: we get the firstborn blessing. Heb 12:23, says, "to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven." What kind of family has nothing but firstborn? How can a parent with 12 kids have all firstborn?

What this teaches us is that the love, blessing, affirmation we experience from the Father when we stand on the basis of Jesus' work and righteousness, and what he did for us on the cross, makes us feel like we are the only one in the world, and the most loved person who ever lived. We experience exactly what it feels like to be the firstborn. God makes us feel like "there is no one like you." Jesus said, "the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:23). A Christian knows that God has loved him even as God has loved Jesus. We know God's love when we see Jesus losing the firstborn blessing so that we can have it, when we see Jesus dressing up like us so that we can dress up like him. Jesus is the one who fulfilled what Rebekah said, "may the curse fall on me" (Gen 27:13). She didn't know what she was saying, and she couldn't do what she said. But Jesus did. He took the curse that should fall on me. Jesus is our true Rebekah. Jesus took our curse and lost his firstborn blessing, so that we, who should have been cursed, could have the firstborn blessing of the Father.

What does this mean practically?

1. The blessing of the firstborn is available now. Though we are not in control of it, we need to go and seek this blessing experientially, for as Christians this is available to us. Rom 8:16-17 say, "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ..." This is only done by God through the Spirit. Yet we can experience this now (Rom 5:5). 
2. Truly bless others. "Bless and do not curse" (Rom 12:14). We can do so only when we have personally experienced the blessing of the firstborn. Humanly we can bless and compliment others. But we do this so that others will like us. This is not blessing; it is using. We are not really discerning who they are, or what God is doing in their lives, or thinking of them, but only thinking of ourselves. Only when we know that we are truly blessed, can we truly be a blessing to others (Gen 12:2), by empowering them to be the person that God intended them to be. 

Truly blessing others is not clairvoyance. No one can just pronounce a blessing on others without truly knowing that person. To bless others requires that we are their friend, and that we know them with deep meaningful discernment, as Jesus blessed Nathaniel (John 1:47-49). 

This is from a sermon by Tim Keller (The Problem of Blessing [Gen 27:18-34]).

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