Jacob Buys a Birthright

29Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. 30Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished!” (Therefore he was called Edom.) 31Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” 32Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” 33Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. (Genesis 25:29-34, NRSV)

What would you give up for food?

Of course if you are dead a birthright does you no good, but really?

Esau gave up a bigger portion of his fathers estate and the right to carry on the family name.

So for a bowl of stew Esau gave up his birthright.

What would you sell your birthright for?

Two Sons for Isaac and Rebekah

19These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham was the father of Isaac, 20and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, sister of Laban the Aramean. 21Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived. 22The children struggled together within her; and she said, “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” So she went to inquire of the Lord.23And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” 24When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. 25The first came out red, all his body like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau. 26Afterward his brother came out, with his hand gripping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them. 27When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. 28Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game; but Rebekah loved Jacob. (Genesis 25:19-28, NRSV)

Rebekah was barren, which is interesting because Rebekah means answer to prayer. Because Rebekah was the answer to the prayer of Abraham and Sarah that Isaac would have a wife, and of the servant who went to their homeland to find her. But she was not able to have children, so Isaac prayed and the had twins.

And the twins fought in her womb and she was told that the two sons would become two nations that would be in battle. Not really what you want to hear when you struggled to get this blessing.

But therein is the story, and everything works together for good through God.

God gives a Promised Child

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. 2He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. 3He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. 4Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. 5Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” 6And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” 7Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it.8Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate. 9They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” 10Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. 11Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. 12So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” 13The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’14Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” 15But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.” 21The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. 2Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. 3Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. 4And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. 5Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” 7And she said, “Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” (Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7, NRSV)

When have you laughed at something that you thought couldn’t happen?

Here we see a person who sees some visitors and offers them hospitality. He gave them water to wash their feet and gave them a place to rest. Then he went and enlisted the help of Sarah for bread and a servent to help prepare a calf. He then was a good Wisconsin resident and grabbed some curds and milk with the bread and calf, and the reading seems to imply that Abraham prepared it all, as he sat it before the visitors.

But the visitors had a reason for visiting. They asked Abraham who was with them alone, “Where is your wife Sarah?” Now they knew this couple well enough to know their new names God had given them. and they asked where Sarah was. Did they not know where Sarah was or was this something deeper? But Abraham says in the tent as if to possibly say where else would she be? So the visitors continue, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah laughed because she didn’t believe in her old age that she would have pleasure with her husband. She didn’t understand how this would be possible. The whole narrative here implies there is tension between Abraham and Sarah and they are not happy. The laughing is not because it is funny, the laughing is that nervous laughter of unbelief. Sarah and Abraham did not believe God could do what the visitor said.

And then when Sarah and Abraham have a son, not by miraculous ways but the way it always happens and they name him Isaac, which means laughter! Because God has brought their relationship back together and brought joy to their lives, even when we can not see it, the joy in the Lord is there.

Know that even in the darkness that the laughter will come.

The Promise of a Child

15God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” 17Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”18And Abraham said to God, “O that Ishmael might live in your sight!”19God said, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. 20As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. 21But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year.” 22And when he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham. (Genesis 17:15-22, NRSV)

What a promise!

What would you think if God told your wife who is 90 will have a son?

We would all probably laugh at that. We don’t see how that can happen.

There are many times when God tells us or shows us God is going to do something and we can not believe it because it has never been done before or we do not understand how it can happen.

But when God makes a promise you can believe it!

A New Name

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. 2And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” 3Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, 4“As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:1-8, NRSV)

Here God makes a promise to you. The promise is to Abraham that him and his offspring will have the land that God is giving them. We will always have a place with God.

Do you believe this promise? Abraham believed it and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Abraham had seen the mighty works of God and the promises God had kept to that point. Abraham knee God would keep promises.

Do you believe that? Do you trust God?

Battle and Blessing

When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred eighteen of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. 15He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and routed them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus.16Then he brought back all the goods, and also brought back his nephew Lot with his goods, and the women and the people. 17After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). 18And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. 19He blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; 20and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him one tenth of everything. (Genesis 14:14-20, NRSV)

This is an interesting snippet of the story of Abram/Abraham.

Here we hear about how Lot was taken captive and Abram goes to get him free and he is able to do this we hear at the end of the story because he is blessed by God.

And because he was blessed by God Abram gave a 10th of what he got to the priest and to God.

God has richly blessed all of us and what do we give to God?

God’s Promise to Abram

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 4So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. 9And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb. (Genesis 12:1-9, NRSV)

How many of us if we were 75 years old would up root our families and go to an undisclosed location because God told us to?

God made a promise to Abram and Abram believed it. God has made promises to all of us, but do we believe them?

Will you follow God and know that the promises are true and trust even when you don’t know the destination or the plan?

Introducing Abram and Sarai

27Now these are the descendants of Terah. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran was the father of Lot. 28Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.29Abram and Nahor took wives; the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. 30Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.31Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan; but when they came to Haran, they settled there. 32The days of Terah were two hundred five years; and Terah died in Haran. (Genesis 11:27-32, NRSV)

Abram and Sarai who God renames Abraham and Sarah.

These are the two who are the parents of many nations and people.

These are the two that links all of us together.

We can all trace our lineage back to Abram and Sarai. They received God’s promise and passed it on to us.

How can we pass it on again?

The First Sin

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ 4But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; 5for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. 8They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”10He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” 11He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” 13Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” 14The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” 16To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” 17And to the man he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” 20The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them. (Genesis 3:1-21, NRSV)

Why were Adam and Eve removed from the garden?

Was it because they sinned?

Or was it another reason. You see when God created Adam and Eve God created them in the image of God. So they are like God in every way. Except…

What tree did God tell them not to eat from in the creation story from yesterday and how many special trees were there?

There were 2 special trees and God said not to eat from one of them, which one. The tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. But what was the other tree?

That is in the verses just after our reading,

22Then the LORD God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

The other tree was the Tree of Life which gives eternal life and God didn’t say to eat from that tree, but since Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they had to be removed from the garden so they would not become exactly like God. We were removed from the garden so we couldn’t be like God, not because of sin. we could have lived in the garden forever if we hadn’t known good and evil, which is better?

 

The Garden of Eden

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,5when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. 11The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. 14The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” 18Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” 19So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.22And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” 24Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:4b-25, NRSV)

This is the second creation story in the Bible. It has God forming man out of the dust and breathing into his nostrils the breath or Ruach, the wind, breath, Spirit.

God filled the man with Spirit, and he lived, and then God formed every animal and every bird form the dust and brought them to man to name and to find a companion for man. But a companion was not found so God caused a sleep to come over man and God took a piece of the man’s side and closed it back up and then made woman. And woman was made from man. Every other being made was formed from dust except the woman who was made form man, Why?

Thin about communion and how when we partake of it we are partaking of Jesus body and blood, We are becoming one with God through the meal. And the church is the bride of Christ. And we are made alive through Jesus. So, in essence, the original creation mimics the creation of Christ and His church. It is that the church can only exist if it is made from Christ.

So be made of Christ and live your life in Him knowing He gave it all for you.