God Looks At Who We Will Become

Emerging Butterfly

In the last post, I talked about how God’s promises are always fulfilled—just typically not in the manner expected. The example used was God having his promise to Abraham passing down through his descendants. Today, let’s look at another promise God gave to Abraham concerning the birthright of spiritual blessing.

In Genesis 17, God promised the covenant he was making with Abraham would have the following characteristics:

·       It will be an everlasting covenant

·       Abraham will become the father of many nations

·       Many kings will come from Abraham’s descendants

·       All of Canaan will become an everlasting possession to Abraham and his descendants

·       God will be their God for all generations

·       Circumcision will be the sign of this covenant between himself and all of Abraham’s descendants.

It took 25 years from the time God first promised Abraham a son until Isaac was born. Abraham and Sarah felt they were too old and they were running out of time for God’s promise to come true as they first understood him to say, so they began to question whether God’s promise was true as they thought they had heard it. They then considered other options to make things happen according to their understanding couching it with the idea that it would still lead to God’s promise to them (Gn 16:1). It only led to heartache.

Normally, the birthright blessing, which typically included a double inheritance portion, would pass to the firstborn son who was considered the might of a married man. Yet, this did not always come true when a spiritual blessing was attached to the birthright promise. God looks not only as a person is, but as a person will become.

While Isaac was not the firstborn of Abraham, he was the firstborn of God’s promise to him and Sarah. Therefore, the spiritual blessing inheritance passed to him (Gn 17:19). Such was true for both Isaac’s sons as well as Jacob’s sons. The true firstborn son of either Isaac or Jacob did not receive the spiritual birthright blessing.

Even before Esau and Jacob, non-identical twin sons of Isaac, were born, God told their mother, Rebekkah, that the younger would serve the older (Gn 25:23). This started when Esau was willing to sell his birthright inheritance to his brother Jacob for a bowl of porridge (Gn 25:33). Likely this emboldened Rebekkah to aid Jacob, whom she favored above her other son Esau, in deceiving Isaac, who in his old age had bad eyesight, so Jacob could receive the birthright blessing as well (Gn 27:27-29). Both Jacob and Rebekkah were deceitful, but God saw who both Esau and Jacob would become.

Because of Esau’s anger against Jacob, Rebekkah convinced Jacob to leave and visit her brother until Esau’s anger subsided. Jacob traveled from Beersheba where he lived to Haran where his mother’s relatives lived. Along the way, he stopped at a place named Luz to sleep. There, he had a dream of a ladder going from Earth to Heaven with angels going up and down and God at the top who affirmed to Jacob that his promise to Abraham and Isaac would now pass to him. The next morning, he named the place Bethel, meaning “house of God” (Gn 28:10-19).

Jacob learned how painful deceit can be when he came on the receiving end as his Uncle Laban outdid Jacob in the deceit category (Gn 31:38-42). When he finally left his uncle to head back home, he realized he would now have to face his brother, Esau, and four hundred of his men. This is why Jacob wrestled with God at Peniel (meaning “face of God”) and would not let him go because he knew he could not withstand his brother’s wrath without God’s blessing upon him (Gn 32:24-30).

Esau had come with four hundred men because his anger still seethed against Jacob, but now, Esau hugged Jacob instead of attacking him (Gn 33:4). This was the Lord’s doing and is likely why Jacob did not go back with Esau to live because he knew Esau’s attitude toward him was temporary because of God’s intervention. We know the animosity continued between them and was even inbred into Esau’s descendants as they would not let Jacob’s descendants pass through their land on their way to Canaan because of this animosity which still continued over 500 years later (Nu 20:14-21).

When Jacob was near the end of his life, he called his 12 sons together and made several prophecies about each of them (Gn 49:1-28). Much is revealed about Jacob’s prophecies concerning his sons if we look at the way God instructed the Israelites, under the leadership of Moses, to set up their campsite.

This is the topic for our next post. I hope you join me.

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Visit Books & Words to Inspire by Randy C. Dockens

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