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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] thank you pearly for reading the text for us once again it's my joy and privilege to be standing here sharing you from the word of god after a two-week break where brother arnold took us through two important sermons on biblical mental health this morning we continue with our long-running series on genesis we are right now right in the middle of the of the book with a text taken from chapter 25 verses 19 to 34. the sermon title is simply jacob and esau now this is the beginning of the account of these twin
00:00:59 brothers which most of you are very familiar with now the account of jacob and esau stretches all the way to chapter 36. at this point in genesis the account of abraham comes to an end verse 8 in genesis 25 which is outside our text says that abraham briefed his last and died at a good old age we started learning about abraham from chapter 12 and so we have 14 chapters on the story of abraham but from this point on until chapter 35 the focus shifts to jacob and we have about 11 chapters in all on this
00:01:44 any between there are passages that spotlight isaac but not nearly as much as the narratives on abraham and jacob and then from chapter 37 the main character would be joseph and that goes all the way until the end of the book 14 chapters so about 80 percent of genesis is a lot about abraham a little bit about isaac a lot about jacob and a lot about joseph and this is to give you a sense that the bulk of a study of genesis is really character studies studies on the all these old testament paychecks
00:02:25 but as we saw in the genesis 22 which i preached on earlier this month these character studies are really floating on the surface so to speak they are the apparent themes that come right out from the from the verses but also the the latent themes uh lying beneath the verses which we need to uncover and they can teach us a lot about god and his character and his will which is what we are going to do later uh this in the sermon when we dig deeper into this block of verses from genesis 25 but shall we first commit
00:03:01 this time to the lord in prayer how far in heaven your ways are higher than our ways your thoughts higher than our thoughts even so grant us a larger glimpse of yourself and your nature as we embark on this passage from genesis 25 through these verses from your word may your spirit illumine our finite minds so that we may align our lives with your perfect will for this we ask in the name of your son amen whenever my wife and i travel overseas and if it's a sunday we will try to find a church near the
00:03:41 hotel so that we can attend sunday service to be found in the house of god on the lord's day is good and it has become such an integral part of our lives and that's why when we resume a physical service and in the middle of last month and i were very eager to go to church so to say anyway as an introduction to the sermon i want to highlight the four churches that i visited over the years in the summer of 2014 i was in london for a week to attend a meeting and each morning when i told honor each morning when i walk from the hotel
00:04:25 to the station and each evening on the way back i would pass by this lovely church uh with tall steeple somewhere in london okay now i cannot remember the the name of the church but it was always locked i never saw a cow or anybody inside the compound there was also no notice you know uh to say about church meetings or anything like that but nevertheless i told myself sunday morning i would come by and see if they had a worship service that i could attend sunday morning came i walked to the church and still the same thing
00:05:02 not a soul in sight and so i gave up in 2018 lyfan and i were in perth australia for a holiday and and we found this beautiful church in the city center which i shall not name for reasons you realize afterwards at this time i googled for information and i found out they they conducted a worship service every sunday morning which we attended but sadly they were owned they were barely a dozen or less than a dozen parishioners inside now i know quality is more important in quantity but by any measure it appeared to me
00:05:42 like a dying church then in 2015 we were in phnom penh cambodia and we were become you came across this new life church uh somewhere in the city where we attended the sunday service at the building in contrast with the other two churches wasn't as spectacular but inside the worship hall it was filled with hundreds of worshippers many of them children and young people although i didn't understand a word of what was going on it was in cambodian but i enjoyed this choir presentation by their young adults
00:06:20 for the last example the fourth example in may 2019 last year okay my wife and i were in wuhan china yes wuhan ground zero of the of the kovic 19 pandemic we were there like six months before the virus was first detected anyway we found this church glory church about 10 minutes walk from our hotel and we were there sunday morning for worship service the auditorium was packed with thousands of worshippers and they ran for such services every sunday you may be you may be able to guess why i'm talking about these
00:06:59 four churches although i realize all this is just anecdotal and i shouldn't be making generalizations but it appears to me that churches in the poorer underdeveloped or developing countries they tend to be far more vibrant and doing very well compared to churches in the rich developed world i just wanted to contrast the state of the church in some parts of the world with other parts of the world but what has this got to do with genesis 25 this tale of four churches now we will revisit this later
00:07:34 when we come to the application part of the sermon i will make the connection between what i've just shown you and with what the passage is trying to teach us now as i alluded to early on there are two parallel texts apparel tracks in the text one the account of jacob and esau which we can glean directly from the verses and two the less apparent theme beneath the verses that will teach us about god and how he relates to his people now first let's dive into the text and discuss what happened between these twin
00:08:09 brothers we'll pick up some secondary lessons along the way before we uncover the more important lessons when we dig deeper into the text later now if you look at the whole chunk of text there is a clear demarcation across in the middle of the text we have eight verses on the events leading to the birth of the twins and the further eight verses uh on what took place when they grew up now to make it easier for you to digest the text i've divided it into five segments one the barrenness of rebecca
00:08:42 two the battle in the womb tree the birth of the twins for the behavior of the boys and lastly the barter between them namely the exchange of esau's birthright for jacob's bow of steel now the narrative opens with a problem a huge problem isaac's wife rebecca was barren from verse 21 isaac himself was a child of promise he was supposed to carry the line from abraham that would go all the way to jesus but now this couple was childless and this went on for 20 years verse 20 says that isaac was 40 years old when he
00:09:24 married rebecca then if we jump to verse 36 further down we read that isaac was 60 when his wife gave birth to not one but two sons so they waited 20 years before they became proud parents of two baby boys a long 20 year wait many couples if the wife cannot conceive after 10 years they would have simply given up here it is interesting to note that rebecca's mother-in-law sarah was also barren from genesis 16. it's even more interesting to note that rebecca's daughter-in-law rachel jacob's wife later was also
00:10:08 unable to conceive from genesis 29 and so we have three couples over three generations who were all unable to have children abraham abraham and sarah and now isaac and rebecca and later jacob and rachel talk about history repeating itself twice here in genesis there's a lesson for us here when we look at the response of each couple to their situation genesis 16 1 says now sarai abraham's wife had borne him no children but what did she do you know well in the next verse she concorded a plan where she would get her maid hagar to
00:10:51 sleep with the husband and abraham went along with the plan and so in their predicament they took matters in their own hand maybe god has forgotten and so they thought of lending god a helping hand instead of trusting in his mighty hand you skip one generation and we have another couple jacob and rachel who was also childless in genesis 30 verse 1 rachel became so frustrated that he complained to her husband jacob she said give me children or i'll die in the next verse jacob got angry and told off
00:11:29 am i in the place of god who has kept you from having children in other words hey what can i do so she just brushed her off so what did rachel do she sent her maid bilhah to sleep with jacob which is exactly what her grandmother-in-law did just like what sarah did she took matters into her own hands history repeating itself again but in our text what did isaac and rebecca do in contrast to abraham and sarah and in contrast to jacob and rachel they didn't try to concord a human plan instead in verse 21
00:12:11 isaac prayed to god and god answered his prayers the long 20-year wait surprisingly is squeezed to just one verse there is no description of disappointment on their part nothing is written about their feelings they waited patiently for two decades now isaac must have remembered how god provided ram to be sacrificed instead of him back in genesis 22 in addition i believe abraham must have often told his son about god's covenant and so harboring the faith that god would somehow provide and standing on the god and on the
00:12:49 promises of god isaac went to the lord in prayer it's not clear how long he prayed but i believe he must have prayed for the longest time the new king james version says that he pleaded with the lord the verse is translated as he pleaded with the lord he persisted in his prayers and here the lesson for us is that when we are out of options when we reach the end of the road with no way out when we feel like giving up we can always go to god in prayer we can always approach the throne of grace and our father in heaven
00:13:29 will listen to our prayers and he will also answer our prayers although not necessarily in the manner that we wish for or in the timing that we prefer the outcome may not turn out to be what we desire but god always has our best interest in mind the bible exhorts us to pray persistently whatever the outcome isaiah 40 31 says those who wait upon the lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings like eagle they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not be feigned you'll be better off in life if you stay
00:14:13 in constant prayer contact with god i repeat if you'll be much better off in life if you stay in constant contact with god and so rebecca became pregnant but it turned out to be a rather difficult pregnancy the babies inside her were jostling with each other from verse 22. some translations say that the babies struggled with each other or the babies pushed against each other a few translations even put it as the babies fought each other inside the womb she asked why is this happening to me now in the
00:14:51 original hebrew the meaning of this phrase is is rather uncertain some translations render this as it is going to be like this why go on living or i can't endure this hence it's likely that rebecca was in great distress and discomfort and the thing to note here is that she went to inquire of the lord just like husband isaac in the previous verse she prayed for answers from god and god responded to her with the prophecy in verse 23 two nations are in your womb and two peoples from within you will be
00:15:26 separated one people will be stronger than the other and the older was the younger now what this what is meant here is that rebecca was going to have uh was going to give birth to two sons who would each father a nation and the two nations would be rivals at odds with each other later as as history unfolds we see that esau the elder son will be the forefather of the and there's a whole chapter i think genesis 36 devoted to the genealogy of esau on the other hand jacob the younger son would be the father
00:16:01 to twelve sons from whom came the twelve tribes of the nation of israel the israelites and will become bitter enemies and one example is in numbers 30 remember 20 when moses actually sought permission from the edomite king at that time for the israelites to to pass through edomite territory on their way north from sinai to the promised land but the edomite king refused and threatened to attack the israelites if they came close and so god's people had to take a longer route to canaan as for the second part
00:16:36 of the prophecy one people will be stronger than the other and the older will serve uh the younger this simply means that jacob will be god's choice to inherit the covenant promise and not esau it also means that israelites will be god's chosen people and not the and also it says one people will be stronger than the other this means that the israelites would prevail against the and this will be fulfilled in 2nd samuel verse 8 when king david finally subdued the in short the battle between the babies
00:17:10 inside rebecca's womb can be seen not only as a foreshadow of the struggle between jacob and esau later in their adulthood but it also points to the amnity between the israelites and the enormous the immediate lesson for us here is twofold one on the macro level and one on the micro on the macro level it reminds us that on the world stage in national politics there will always be the there has been there has always been a clash between the good and the evil between the dark and light and darkness often when we look at
00:17:49 the situation our country we lament over you know the politicking in our country but we can take comfort in the fact that in god's sovereign plan good always defeats evil light always overcomes darkness it's a matter of time god will see to that and what we need to do is to pray from the earlier lesson pray persistently that god's will be done on earth on the micro level on the personal level the battle in the wound can also be taken as a metaphor for the conflict in our hearts between doing what is
00:18:23 right and what is wrong between righteousness and sin between obeying god and displeasing god in other words it points to the constant tussle in our hearts between the spirit and the flesh and part this at the back of your mind because later on we are going to look at this again in the meantime be assured that in this conflict too in the micro level as in the macro level we will emerge victorious you'll be better off in life if you have the confidence that you are on the winning side paul writes in one corinthians 15 verse
00:19:00 57 but thanks be to god he gives us the right the victory through our lord jesus christ as a matter of fact this victory this being on the winning side is ours to claim even right now we don't have to live a defeated sinful life but more on this later we come to the third segment the birth of the twins and true enough as what god told her rebecca delivered two boys and in this 14th century a medieval painting the babies look rather bigger and no wonder rebecca had such a hard time during her pregnancy
00:19:41 the text immediately goes on to describe the new arrivals in verse 25 the first to come up was red all over wow and very hairy and he was named esau but experts in ancient hebrew language are not very certain of the meaning of the of the name he saw some says that it means the hairy but esau was given another name edom later in verse 30 and edom means red as for the baby born next he came out grasping the heel of esau from verse 26. it must been it must have been quite a sight for the midwife you know
00:20:23 to see this going on the second baby was like telling the first one hey you come back come back in i'm supposed to be the one to come up first and hence he was given the name jacob which means he'll grabber and interestingly the hebrew phrase to grab someone's heel means to decease someone and so the name jacob means trickster or deceiver and it turned out to be rather prophetic because this boy grew up to be quite a conniving and cunning character who had no qualms resorting to deceits and lies
00:21:02 he took advantage of his brother and make him sell his birthright which we shall see shortly in genesis 27 he cheated his father into blessing him instead of esau and this will be the sermon for next sunday and later in genesis 36 genesis 30 he also swindled his uncle laban and so this boy he corned his brother his father and his uncle now perhaps the immediate lesson for us here is that maybe we shouldn't give a child the name jacob i mean if you know the meaning behind the name jacob sorry i said that in jazz okay just
00:21:44 joking otherwise all the parents of boys named jacob will come after me jacob is a good name okay i mean it okay because it connotes someone whom whom god renews or transforms because later on this this is going to happen this will happen later in jacob's life jacob's story is a story of of renewal but that's not part of of today's sermon is for another sermon now as the boys grew up their their character or behavior turned out to be so different and completely opposite when they when they were born their appearances were
00:22:23 very different the older one was hairy while the younger one was smooth skin now jacob's skin being smooth is not mentioned in our text huh but in the genesis 27 because otherwise you ask how you know his skin is smooth here not only would would would they very unlike each other physically their temperament their personality quality will pose apart in verse 27 of the of this fourth segment esau is described as the outdoor type he was a man of the open country a skillful hunter he's always your strong
00:23:04 tough and active kind of guy someone whom any father will be proud of jacob on the other hand was the mama's boy hanging around the house most of the time verse 27 in some translations describes him as a plain and quiet man he must have helped around the kitchen a lot learning how to cook from rebecca which may help to explain why he was later able to prepare such a delicious meal that his brother could not resist he is a sunday school uh exercise to illustrate the differences between jacob and esau and children were given
00:23:42 these slips of paper you know and told to pin them in the correct column so stayed near the tents okay that goes into jacob's column hunter that goes into esau's column but to really understand the twins better the jail differences we should realize that the family was actually rather well to do in genesis 13 we read that god had blessed abraham materially from genesis 13 verse 2 he had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold and in verse 5 of chapter 25 which is outside our text
00:24:20 it is recorded that abraham left everything he owned to isaac and so isaac was a very very rich man the family had large herds of cattle and sheep and goats so why did esau go hunting certainly not to make a living or to look for food he didn't have to do that because they had plenty of livestock esau went hunting because he loved to he did it for recreation as a sport another possible reason why he hunted is because he wanted to please his father because day in day out isaac had been eating uh beef and mutton every day beef and
00:25:10 mutton beef and mountain until he got so fed up and so he yearned for more exotic meat and verse 28 says that isaac had a taste for wall game so in a way isaac was very chinese because the chinese love wall animal meat they have wall animal markets all over china and the most famous of them is in wuhan which is believed to have triggered the pandemic we didn't visit that market because nobody knew at that time besides as you know we went to church now here i have a quiz for you some people say a sermon quiz
00:25:53 this is the painting i showed you earlier uh in the opening slide you see uh he saw taking you know that bowl of stew and and jacob you know quickly stretching his hand out hey the quiz is like this can you find something wrong with this painting something is not right here can you point it out now some of you may say oh rebecca shouldn't be in the painting which is true because when esau sold his birthright to jacob later in the text nowhere is mentioned that the mother was there the artist must have painted rebecca to
00:26:38 symbolically show that she was such an influence in jacob's life she was the one coaching him and you can see the look of approval on his honor face but that's not the answer what is the answer anyone the answer is the rabbit with that esau is holding what the rabbit you see in leviticus 11 6 there is a specific and strict prohibition against eating rabbit meat if you like to eat rabbit meat look up leviticus 11 6 rabbits were considered unclean and isaac wouldn't touch rabbit meat ah you see the artist didn't know his
00:27:32 bible well so what animal did esau hunt to please his father what meat did isaac crave to eat in some translations the term wild game in verse 28 is translated as venison isaac loved dear meat now sorry for the digression talking about eating meat let's continue with jacob we were talking about the differences between the twins now because the family had large herds of cattle and sheep and goats i don't imagine jacob hanging around in the kitchen all day rather i imagine him learning to manage the family's assets i imagine him
00:28:18 supervising the servants to care for the livestock while his brother was out there enjoying himself hunting jacob concerned himself with duties and responsibilities or esau occupied himself with what was pleasurable to him and here's the immediate lesson for us you'll be better off in life if you pursue first the more important things over the less important you'll be more you'll be better off in life if you pursue first the more important things over the less important don't busy yourself with the less important things in life
00:28:55 at the expense of the important ones and this includes matters pertaining to family relationship to maintenance of your health and especially your work with god and because isaac enjoyed so much the venison that esau brought to him he loved esau while rebecca loved jacob so says verse 28 each parent favored one child over the other there were two camps in the house some bible teachers use genesis 25 to teach about the dangers of parental favoritism which is fine of course but it's also missing the point
00:29:40 my wife likes to ask me this trick question between the daughter and the son whom do you love more how to answer as i shake my head my politically correct answer is i love both of them equally but somehow she doesn't believe me anyway let me declare no parent should practice favoritism towards the children i don't practice favoritism and so i'll just leave it at that la because there is another more import more important point in this part of the text for me to cover you see i'm baffled by isaac's actions
00:30:20 i mean rebecca the wife must have told him many times that jacob jacob was god's choice to inherit the covenant promise not esau but this guy he still think he still thought that esau should be the one so why did he act against the grain of god's will maybe he felt sorry for esau jacob was god's choice jacob was the mother's favorite so i better love his soul otherwise putting but i don't think that was the case because in genesis 27 isaac actually planned to bless esau as the firstborn he actually wanted esau to receive the
00:31:01 covenant promise he failed only because jacob and rebecca cheated him and that's the subject for next sunday sermon i'm at a loss to explain why isaac did what he did maybe it was the venison now rebecca was the smarter one she aligned herself with god's choice wives are always smarter another politically correct statement in any case here's an immediate lesson for us blessed is the man who lives his life in sync with god's plan and not contrary to god's plan you'll be better off in life if your
00:31:45 actions are aligned with god's will otherwise god might force you back on his track and that might be painful and coming to the last segment of the text the butter between the twins namely the exchange of a birthright for a bowl of stew what kind of a stew verse 34 says it was lentil stew and lentil is what you get when they serve you dal to go with your roti chennai dal is lentil and also it says in verse 30 that the that it was a bowl of red stew i don't know why the the steel was red maybe jacob added
00:32:30 a lot of tomatoes and chili in any case you know the story well esau came back from his day of hunting and he was very tired and very hungry when he saw that bowl of lentil stew it was irresistible he must have it quick let me have some of that red steel i'm famished jacob was indeed quick but quick to see esau's moment of weakness as an opportunity for himself verse 31 jacob replied first sell me your birthright and to ensure that the transaction was binding on esau jacob further said further demanded in
00:33:12 verse 33 swear to me first to which esau agreed and in doing so he unwittingly passed his birthright to his brother jacob the hill grabber who was born second finally upended the one born first now to be fair to jacob he didn't actually he didn't actually receive esau but he took advantage of his not so smart brother his motives were not pure although esau was a consensual party to this lopsided deal although it was as we say a case of willing buyer willing seller however the larger question is
00:33:52 didn't esau recognize or understand the value of what he was signing away was he such a gullible person birthright was a big deal in those days it meant a double portion of the inheritance double of what the next one get it also meant leadership of the family that came with privileges and authority now to say that esau wasn't aware of the value of his birthright would be rather incredulous he knew but he was willing to give it up to satisfy his stomach it was a desire for the for the instant gratification of the
00:34:31 flesh it was based on an attitude of i want it now and it was a continuation of what we saw earlier this careless disregard for what is important and here again lies an immediate lesson for us you'll be better off in life if you can control the appetite of the flesh and not let it control you you'll be better off in life if you can control the appetite of your flesh and not let it control you realize the dangers of instant gratification which can cause you dearly understand the benefits of delayed gratification
00:35:10 in other words instead of saying i want it now we say i can wait remember those who wait upon the lord shall saw like eagles our text ended on the sad note at the end of verse 34 so esau despised his birthright it's so tragic and just before this phrase it says that esau got up and left he didn't just leave he left behind a glorious future that could have been his time and again i've seen people who hears the gospel but they choose to walk away not realizing that they are also walking away from
00:35:48 spiritual inheritances that could have been dears and it's sad to see that happen especially if that person is someone dear to you now i one last point to make on this on this verse it is evident to me that esau walked away out of his own volition he walked away out of his own free will nobody forced him and in doing so he affirmed god's sovereign for sovereign choice of jacob god already chose jacob you may ask if god has already made up his mind who can resist his will how can there be free will on our part
00:36:26 in the debate between predestination and free will we think that these two are mutually exclusive but yet in this verse we see predestination and free will happening at the same time side by side god's sovereign choice of jacob and esau's willful rejection of his birthright they were in play simultaneously they were there are two sides of the same coin well we have finished our detail examination of the text we have picked up several secondary lessons along the way i say secondary because we are going to
00:37:00 look at the main lessons from genesis 25 right away after this but just before that here is a summary of what we have learned under the heading you'll be better off in life if dot dot dot number one you'll be better off in life if you stay in constant prayer contact with god and i trust that you all lead an active prayer life number two you'll be better off in life if you have the confidence that you're on the winning side and i trust that you all also lead a victorious life of faith number three you'll be better off in
00:37:33 life if you pursue first the more important things over the less important get your priorities right especially on spiritual matters number four you'll be better off in life if your actions are aligned with god's perfect will don't go against the grain of god's plan and lastly you'll be better off in life if you can control the appetite of the flesh and not let it control you now we come to the concluding part of the sermon this time we will dig deeper into the text to discover two underlying lessons now the biggest question hanging
00:38:05 over the text is why did god choose jacob over esau with no we talk about the sovereign choice of god in the person of jacob but why jacob over he saw what was the basis of his choice of jacob and god later affirmed his decision when he spoke through his prophet malachi in malachi chapter 1 which is quoted by paul in romans 9 god spoke yet i have loved jacob but esau i've hated this is very strong language but don't take this to mean the usual emotions of love and hate hebrew is a much much older and deeper
00:38:43 language compared to english what this simply means is that jacob was a god's choice and not esau still what did jacob do so that he was selected what did he saw do so that he was rejected the answer is nothing nothing they did or would do mattered and so the main point of the text if you look deeper is to illustrate that god's suffering choice is not based on any merits that we may have it's not conditional on who we are what we are what we have done if based on human logic the natural choice would have been he
00:39:18 saw he was the first born he was a stronger between the two besides jacob would have been would have been a poor choice he was cunning and conniving so through these verses god is like saying to us you have been chosen not because of a position if it is esau would have been chosen he was the firstborn not because of your goodness if it is esau would have been chosen he was not deceitful like jacob not because of yours or your talents or skills because if it is esau would have been chosen he was a skillful hunter human qualities
00:39:53 like position goodness skills are not the criteria for salvation in other words in the dynamics of god's salvation our attributes or merits count for nothing god doesn't take any of these into account so what we can really learn from the text is the manner in which we came into salvation we are called not because of our social status not our morality no intellect or not anything that we might boast about how then will we call into god's kingdom if not based on merits the answer is grace is because of god's grace that
00:40:35 we've been saved so grace is unlimited i'm a merited favor given to someone who doesn't deserve it it's a gift to a person who shouldn't be receiving the gift the gospel of jesus christ is about the good news of god's grace and paul puts this very nicely in the in ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9 for it is by grace you have been saved through faith this is not i repeat this is not from yourselves it is the gift of god not by works so that no one can boast i know you know this well the reason why i'm trying to drive this
00:41:12 home is because many of us still think that we are somehow worthy of god's salvation that there is something about us that qualifies us you may argue i don't think like that but i believe at a subconscious level this idea still looks in our mind and let me demonstrate this let me show you uh some pictures take a good look take a good look at these people what is our reaction when we see these people we say thank god i'm not like them i'm better than them i don't identify with them and that's how we think maybe at the
00:41:55 subconscious level but what if i tell you that in god's eyes we are no different from them in terms of qualification because there is none none of us are qualified not as not them and god may call them the way he called you and me and all of us including these people come to the throne of grace empty-handed without merits otherwise it's salvation by works and paul wrote not by works so that no one can boast and hence our response to this crucial question lesson from the text should be one of humility
00:42:33 humility before god and man there's nothing to shout about nothing to boast about we keep our heads low and speak softly figuratively speaking and this is well illustrated by the words of the song who am i sung beautifully by the end just now not because of who i am not because of what i've done but because of who he is because of what he has done many years later in jacob's life so i told you jacob's life is a life of reduel later and later he himself said this uh something to this effect in genesis 32 he told god i'm unworthy
00:43:13 of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant and this is the posture that we should assume throughout our christian life when i attended the churches in perth and phnom penh and wuhan which i showed you just now i was sitting around the congregation and who did i see i see worshipers from all walks of life they were rich people they were poor people they were young people they were old people they were tall people they were shorter people they didn't come from one particular
00:43:44 social class or a specific income group or a certain demographic they were people of diverse backgrounds the only common denominator is that they all recognize that they were sinners saved only by grace that's who they were that's who we are and finally after coming into salvation the next thing is our transformation through the work of the holy spirit within us so that we become more and more christ-like now the text not only teaches us about the manner but in which we are called the second underlying lesson within the
00:44:16 text relates to this process of transformation and how so we really seen earlier how the battle between the twins in the womb is a metaphor for the struggle between the spirit and the flesh in our lives and this struggle continues from the moment we were saved until the day we leave this world and while that is going on the text is also trying to warn us to be on guard to be vigilant and we saw esau when we saw how esau went hunting for pleasure instead of concerning himself with the more important matters of life
00:44:48 no i have no uh i have no i'm nothing against hunting if you enjoy hunting go hunting by all means or fishing or catching butterflies but the but the text is pointing to the dangers of pursuing pleasure for his own sake if that pleasure mostly physical pleasure is slowly becoming an end in itself then alarm bells should start to ring and when that happens when it happens we are allowing the flesh to control us and earlier we learned about the dangers of letting the flesh uh control us when the flesh ends up controlling us it
00:45:24 can be very costly to us in spiritual terms and that's why that's what we see happen when esau saw his brother's lentil stew and he couldn't resist the urge to satisfy himself immediately to the extent that he was willing to give up his birthright and so this second big lesson from the text teaches us not to feed the flesh to the degree of allowing it to control us and this feeling of the flesh can be a real struggle in our lives because it is compounded by the attractions of the world we are pulled left and right by
00:45:59 what we see around us and to finish the sermon i'm not suggesting that christians should deny themselves totally the pleasures of life if you enjoy having a good meal by all means if you love to travel go right ahead but this year cannot lie if you want to travel this year then you go to the malaysia so if you like to travel if you like to eat go ahead just don't let these things control you don't let them be an end in themselves if or when that happens you risk losing the battle between the spirit and the flesh
00:46:39 and to underscore the dangers of feeding the flesh that's why i started the sermon with the tale of the four churches you see when the society becomes affluent when lives become so good people start to crowd their lives with pleasurable activities the increase in the affluence of the society you must know this is often accompanied by a corresponding rise in the in godlessness in secular secularism and in atheism and they start to abandon god the uk and australia are very wealthy countries but this chart shows the trend of church
00:47:19 attendance in the uk over a period of 35 years until 2015 and the rate of decrease is nothing short of alarming and hence it's no surprise that the church i try to attend in london was closed it's no surprise that the church in perth was so poorly attended at the same time it didn't surprise me that the church in phnom penh or wuhan was vibrant and alive brother muriel in the recent letter shared the lyrics of him i'm resolved no longer to linger charmed by the world's delight things that are higher things that are
00:47:56 nobler these have alloyed my sight and these words are echoes of paul's exaltation in second corinthians 14. so we fix our eyes on not what is seen but what is unseen since what is seen in is temporary and what is unseen is eternal and may the text from genesis 25 teach us to be humble and to and to value our high calling into god's kingdom which was made possible only because of his amazing grace and may the texts also guide us not to jeopardize or to minimize this calling as we remain constantly on guard
00:48:35 against the power of the flesh shall be close in prayer our father in heaven may your word resonate in our hearts and minds and may your spirit continue the good work that you have begun in us and carry it to completion on the day of christ jesus your son for it is in his name we pray amen
