The Birthright Explained: Why God Chose Jacob Over Esau

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now here's your host, Les. And we're going to be turning back to Genesis 25. Now in our previous programs we kind of digressed after we had left off Isaac receiving his bride, Rebekah, and I alluded it to the out-calling of the Church, which also is a Gentile bride. And so the last several programs have been dealing with more or less the out-calling of the Church, and the Rapture, and so on and so forth. But now I think we're ready to come back to where we left off in the account of the patriarchs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So if you'll turn to Genesis 25, and we try not to have an axe to grind, I'm not trying to attack anyone or ridicule anyone's belief. We just simply like to teach the Book, and help you to understand what it really says. You know so many people have got misconceived ideas. They think the Bible says such and such, but it doesn't. And so I've stressed over the years in my teaching, be just as aware of what the Bible does not say, as what it does say. And you will be amazed at how often you will see something, and you'll say, Well I thought it said such and such. Well it doesn't, and so that's what I mean by preconceived ideas. Anyway now in Genesis 25 we're going to pick up once again with Abraham, and remember just shortly before all this takes place, Sarah has died, she's off the scene, and then several years later, I think probably about 10 years if I got my timing right, Abraham, even though we thought he was near death a few years back, yet the old boy gets married again and has a bunch of sons. I think it's one of the quirks in Scripture that's kind of hard to understand, that Abraham now has another bunch of male children, sons, from this wife Keturah, and out of these children again become more of the tribal enemies of the offspring of Jacob. It's just unbelievable. Well anyway, verse 1. Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah, and near as I can tell from trying to figure out the time back here, Abraham is now 150 years old. Again his whole span of years can pretty much be divided in terms of 5, which is the number of grace in Scripture. We feel he was called out of Ur of the Chaldees when he was 50, and he got a further command to move down into Canaan when he was 75, and then when he's 100 he has the child Isaac, and now at the age of 150 he marries Keturah a second time, and then of course he will die at the age of 175. Now all of those basic figures are divisible by 5, which means that the man was really the epitome of the grace of God. Now then out of the sons that are born to this woman Keturah, the main one I like to point out is in verse 4. The sons of Midian. Now you remember the Midianites were the arch enemies of Israel through their antiquities, and these two were sons of Abraham. Now even as we look at the Middle East today, and it's in the news constantly, I trust you understand that all of these Middle Eastern people are interrelated. Now the Egyptians of course were a group of people before the Hebrews came on the scene, but by virtue of the intermarriage of the sons of Abraham, even the Egyptians began to intertwine with all of these tribes there in the Middle East. First you have Ishmael, whose mother was an Egyptian. And then you'll come on a little further, probably in this half hour, Esau. First he marries some of the Hittite women, which were a grief of mine of course to Isaac and Rebekah, but then he goes even one step further and he marries the daughters of Ishmael. And Ishmael remember had married an Egyptian. So all of these Middle Eastern families all come from Abraham, except the original Egyptians. But they all are associated with the patriarch Abraham. Now you take the present day Palestinians under Arafat and so forth, and they maintain that they are the children of Abraham, and they are in the line of the covenant promises and not the Jew. But we who understand our Scripture of course have to disagree with that concept that the covenant promises were only associated with the line of Isaac and Jacob and the 12 sons. So even through these sons of his second marriage comes some more of Israel's mortal enemies. But now verse 5. Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. Why? Because now come back with me to chapter 17. We have to compare Scripture with Scripture, whether it's Old Testament or New, or whether we go to the Old and the New. We always have to compare Scripture with Scripture. Genesis 17, and let's just look at verse 15. And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah, and I will bless her. Now here's something again I think we've pointed out in previous programs. Just like the number 5 was associated with grace, the letter H was associated with Yahweh or Jehovah. And so when God now brings Abram and Sarai to the place of the covenant promises, He changes their name to Abraham, and the H is included. Now He tells Abraham that even Sarai's name will be changed to Sarah, and again it's that H connotation. Then He says in verse 16, I will bless her, and I will give thee a son of her. Now those are all promises, it hasn't happened yet, and the poor man has already been waiting almost a hundred years, but no not a hundred, fifty. He probably got his first call when he was fifty, and Isaac is born at a hundred. So he's been waiting fifty years for the promise of this son. And He says, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations, and kings of people. Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear? And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael may live before thee. Now look what God said in verse 19. Thy wife Sarah shall bear thee a son indeed, and thou shalt call his name Isaac. Now here it is, underline it, mark it down. This is the Sovereign God, and He says, I will establish my covenant with him, Isaac, for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. In other words, that Abrahamic covenant is going to continue on, not through Ishmael, but through Isaac. Now the next verse, and this is to pacify our Arab people. And I've said it before, and I'll say it again. God loves the Arab when it comes to salvation just as much as He does anybody else. An Arab has just as much opportunity for salvation by grace through faith as you and I. And so now in verse 20, He says, As for Ishmael, that son of the bondwoman, I have heard thee, behold I have blessed him, I will make him fruitful, will multiply him exceedingly, he will have twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation, but, but God says, my covenant I will establish with Isaac. Don't lose that. My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. And He left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham. Now let's jump back to chapter 25, not losing sight of the fact that only through Isaac will the covenant promises be valid. All these other sons of Abraham, they are given gifts and so forth, they are pacified, but they are sent away. They cannot partake of the covenant promises. Now in verse 7 we have the demise of Abraham. And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life, which he lived, or he lived to be 175. Now if I remember correctly then, he was married to Keturah at about 160, and so he is probably married to this Keturah for another 15 years or so. Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man full of years, and was gathered to his people, and his sons Isaac and Ishmael. See they are still in contact, so Ishmael knew when Abraham died, and so he comes and associates himself with Isaac in the burial of Abraham in the cave of Mephila. Now we know that this is in the city of Hebron, which is still a valid city in Palestine, and it's a city that is under constant controversy between the Arabs and the Jews, because again of this family relationship Hebron is the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, and I think Isaac and Rebekah if I'm not mistaken. But you see the Arabs are claiming Abraham as their father, and so they associate themselves with the burial place of Mephila, and of course Israel does. Now you remember a short time ago there was a big upheaval in Hebron over the cave of Mephila where Jews and Arabs both like to worship and pray. But it all comes back to this Book of Beginnings, and it's all still evident in our Middle East even today. Now then beginning at verse 12, we have again according to the Law of Scripture, not the genealogy of Isaac first, but Ishmael. And remember this is the Law of Scripture, that first the natural, and then the spiritual. And so we're going to see first the lineage of Ishmael the natural, and then of course we get over in verse 19 then the genealogy of Isaac. This is just one of the interesting facets of Scripture, first the natural, and then the spiritual. Alright, let's drop down to that which we're most concerned about then, and that is the genealogy of Isaac in verse 19. And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. He begat Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian, of Padam Aram the sister to Laban the Syrian. Now for those of you who are not acquainted with all of this in the Old Testament, remember that when Abraham first left Ur of the Chaldees, he went up the Euphrates River near the headwaters in what is now more or less eastern Turkey or Syria. Then God had told Abraham to leave Terah and his relatives behind, but he didn't. And so before he could permit Abraham to come down into the Promised Land, Terah had to die. That was up in this same area now where Bethuel is holding forth. It's that area of Syria where Terah died, and where Laban sets up and begins to be an owner of flocks and herds and so forth. And then Abraham came on down into Canaan. Now it's time for Isaac to have a wife. He's 40 years old. But contrary to the behavior of Ishmael, who married Canaanite women, I imagine God laid it upon the heart of Abraham and Terah that Isaac has to have a wife from the place of their forebears, which was up in Syria. And remember this is then when we went back several lessons ago and studied the call of Abraham, or the wooing of Rebekah up there in Syria, and the servant brought her back down to Isaac, and they became man and wife. This was up in the area of Syria, so actually Isaac marries a Gentile, which is a picture of Christ calling out the Gentile bride. Now the first thing someone's going to say is, well how do you call the offspring of Abraham Gentiles, and he's a Jew? Well this is interesting. You want to remember that Abraham was of that one race of people coming out of Adam, but when God put the finger on Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, and gave to him the covenant, he is brought out of that mainstream of humanity, and is now going to be the father of a whole new race of people, the nation of Israel. This is why we study then the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who now will bring about the nation of Israel, and it's a separated race of people. They are no longer part of the Gentile families. So when people ask me, well who is a Jew, and who is a Gentile? Well a Jew is anyone who has come from the bloodline of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the twelve patriarchs. A Gentile is everybody else. That's the best way I can put it. Whether they are Arabs, or Oriental, or African, or European, or American, if we're not of that line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then we are a non-Jew, and we are a Gentile. If you don't remember anything else in this half hour, remember that. That the Jew came about because of that distinctive call of Abraham, that I will make of thee a nation of people, and they were a separated people off of that main stream of humanity. He takes Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian, and years go by, and the first thing you know, Rebekah conceives, and she's with child in verse 22, they're twins. And the children struggled together within her, and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord answered, Now mark this down, because I know that when we go on in our study, and we see how Jacob seemingly connives to get everything away from Esau, it was in the sovereign plan of God in the first place. This is the way He intended it to be, so we can't fault them too much. And so the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy being, and the one people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder, who of course will be Esau, shall serve the younger, who will be Jacob. Now God said that before they were ever born. Verse 24 And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red all over, like a hairy garment, and they called his name Esau. And after that came his brother, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel, and his name was called Jacob. So here you have the two sons of Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Esau, and Isaac was three score years old when she bared them. Now remember he was 40 when they got married, so now he's 60. Now here's one of the interesting things when you study the Old Testament, and it takes a lot of time, I know it does. But here in verse 27 it says, "...and the boys grew, and Esau was a cunning hunter." Now listen, he didn't become a cunning hunter in three or four years. You know how old the boys were at this time? They were 24. You might want to mark that in the margin of your Bible. Verse 28 "...at the time of the famished Esau begging for a bowl of bean soup, the twins were 24 years old." Now you know the story, Esau was a man of the field, and Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents. They were grown young men, and Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison, but Rebekah loved Jacob. In other words, you have two totally different personalities. One was more or less a mother's favorite, and Esau was the father's favorite. If ever there is a potential for family problem, there it is. We cannot show favorites, but they did. Verse 29 "...and Esau came from the field, and he was faint, and Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I am faint, and therefore was his name called Edom." Which again goes back to his name Esau, which meant red. And so what kind of a soup was Jacob cooking? Well, plain old red bean soup. That's what it really was. I know here in Oklahoma you just love pintle beans. My wife could just live on nothing but plain old pintle beans and corn bread. But actually that's what was in it. I can just about imagine for someone who loves that, nevertheless when you're hungry and you smell the aroma of your favorite food, what happens? You just get all the hungrier. And so I can just see Esau as he came in from a day of hunting, and he was probably what we call skunked, and he just didn't get a thing. And he smells the aroma of that bean soup, and boy his gastric juices started eating him up. And he says, Jacob give me a bowl of that bean soup, I'm about to die. And oh Jacob, the smart guy that he was, what does he say? Verse 31 "...and Esau said to Jacob, Sell me your birthright." Caught him in a weak moment didn't he? But it wouldn't have made any difference. And so now read on. And Esau said, "...and Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die, I am so hungry. What profit shall this birthright do to me?" Now here's where I always have to stop. Remember that the birthright was the spiritual blessing that back in the ancients was a part and parcel of the eldest son. So by virtue of his being born first, the spiritual birthright as well as the material blessing would have gone to Esau. But in the sovereign plan of things, Esau now comes in and glibly gives up his birthright for a bowl of bean soup. Now it wasn't because Esau was that hungry, not that alone. But Esau had no faith. He was destitute of faith. He had none. And since the birthright was a spiritual thing, he saw no value in it, none whatsoever. Now of course for these people, the spiritual birthright was associated with the coming of the Messiah. They probably didn't have a full understanding of all the ramifications, but Jacob did have that much that he understood that there was something to be gained even in the spiritual realm by being in the line of this promise made to Abraham and his father Jacob. And so he's after it. And when Esau, who is destitute of faith, has absolutely no concern about things of the spiritual, because he is a man of no faith, he'd ten times rather have a bowl of soup as anything of the spirit. And so he gives it up for a bowl of bean soup. All right, now let's just go back to Hebrews and get an idea that this man Esau wasn't just physically hungry. He was spiritually destitute, and when there's no faith, then of course it shows throughout their whole being. Let's come back to Hebrews chapter 12, and this tells us more about Esau than anything in the Old Testament. Remember this, when we look at Jacob in a future program, also ending up with the blessing which was the material part of the estate. That's when Esau got all shook up, when he was more or less robbed of the blessing. He didn't care about the spiritual, he didn't care about the birthright, that meant nothing. But the blessing, which was the double portion of the herds and the flocks, that he didn't like the idea of losing. Verse 16. And so Paul now writing to the Hebrew believer says, "...lest there be any fornicator," now that's a pretty strong word, or a profane person like whom? Esau. So not only was Esau a hunter, not only was he destitute of faith, he was immoral. He was a fornicator. "...and for one morsel of food sold his birthright, for you know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing," which comes I think 37 years later, "...he was rejected," that is by God as well as by his parents, "...for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tear." I don't think it was his own repentance he was looking for, Esau had no need for repentance, he had no faith. He didn't believe a thing that God had said or revealed. So who do you think is he trying to change his mind? Well Isaac. When Isaac had already given the blessing to Jacob, thinking it was Esau, Esau tried his best to get Isaac to repent, I think is what's talking here, and to get Isaac to change his mind and say, sorry Jacob, I made a mistake, I'm going to give it to Esau after all. No, no. According to the Law of the Ancients, when it was spoken, it was done. And so Isaac could not change the decree that the blessing as well as the birthright now ended up in Jacob's domain, but Esau deserved nothing, either the birthright or the blessing because he had no faith. So don't feel sorry for Esau. He was not cheated, he was not rooked, he did not deserve it. On top of that, he was an immoral man, and he showed it when he went and married amongst the Hittites and the Canaanites. So if you don't remember anything else from this lesson in this half hour, Esau was a man of God.