We have watched as the Promise of God to restore creation and all of its relationships was put at risk by God's own self…and saved by God as well. This week we watch as the Promise appears to take a significant detour. It will appear to go by a route no one was expecting.
The Promise has been given to Abraham and through Abraham and to his son Isaac. Isaac carries on the promise and is prepared to pass it to his oldest son Esau. Now for those unfamiliar with the story Isaac had two sons Esau and Jacob. They were twins with Esau being born first (Genesis 25:24ff). Esau was his father's favorite and was a real man's man. He was the guy who was always out hunting and doing manly things.
Jacob in the other hand appears to be a momma's boy. He is always hanging out with his mother Rachael while talking about his feelings (not really but it sounded good). He was someone who was much practiced at deception and learned how to get his way by working behind the scenes rather than confronting things head on.
The Promise by all intents and purposes was supposed to be passed (through a blessing) from father to first born son. Thus Esau was the intended recipient of the Promise. Rachael and Jacob (and evidently God) had other plans. Together they concocted a plan through which they would steal the promise and the blessing (Genesis 27:5ff) First Jacob buys the birthright (the privilege of receiving what would go to the first born) from his brother for a bowl of stew (hey even back then the way to get something from a manly man was through his stomach). Then Rachael and Jacob trick nearly blind Isaac into giving the blessing to Jacob.
Suddenly the Promise has taken a detour. Instead of moving through the obvious hero Esau it now moves through a trickster and deceiver named Jacob. What is going on here? This hardly seems to be the way that the God of justice and righteousness would work. Jacob does not deserve it and certainly hasn't earned it. Why would God allow such a thing?
Perhaps the lesson we need to learn from this story is that God seldom does the expected. This is one of those discoveries that often confuses and irritates people. If there is one "person" we expect to always do the expected it is God. What the Bible teaches us however that God, while always being faithful, is seldom predictable. God is not some sort of blessing dispensing machine where we put in our faith and always receive what we ask for. God is regularly upsetting things by choosing the wrong person to carry the blessing, forgiving those who we think ought not to be forgiven and asking us to do what we consider to be the impossible.
Jacob's story (Genesis 24-35) is one that often surprises people because it is so human. Jacob is not some caricature of the perfect person, but a rather atypical antihero who happens to be God's chosen Promise bearer. What I believe we can take from this is first, we do not have to be perfect to work for God. God can, has and will use ordinary persons for extraordinary tasks. Second we can always expect the unexpected from God as God works to insure the restoration of God's good creation and God's relationships with us.
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