The Blessing Passes to Jacob

October 27, 2013 Background Scripture: Genesis 27, 28; 32:22 – 30; 35:9 – 15 Lesson Passage: Genesis 28:1a, 10 – 22 God’s promise to Abraham included a blessing that would pass from generation to generation. In last week’s lesson we saw how God’s promise had become a family dilemma when Abraham and Sarah agreed to help the process by bringing an Egyptian woman, Hagar, into the picture as a surrogate mother to bear a child to be an heir for Abraham. Unbeknown to them, the child born of this arrangement, Ishmael, was not the heir that God promised Abraham. So when God returned with some clarity about the heir of promise, Abraham found himself with a serious family dilemma. God made it clear that the blessing would pass from Abraham through the heir of promise, Isaac. After Isaac became an adult and married, another dilemma quickly emerged: his wife gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. Again, there was a legal custom of that day that the first born of the twins would become the heir. The first born, Esau, had the legal right but his fleshly desire for food exceeded his spiritual desire for the birthright. On the other hand, the second born, Jacob, had the desire for both the birthright and the blessing and he was willing to go to extremes to get them. After taking advantage of Esau’s worldly desire to trick him out of the birthright, Jacob then turned his attention to the blessing. With guile and help from his mother, Jacob tricked his aging father, Isaac, into praying the blessing upon him. Jacob is a good example of someone intercepting a blessing. Jacob was true to his name. He was a trickster. Although his method of receiving the blessing was through guile, nevertheless, God honored the fact that Jacob had received the blessing through their father, Isaac. In our lesson today, God confirms to Jacob that the blessing of Abraham would transfer to him and his offspring. A multitude of people would descend from him. Even better, through Jacob’s offspring, all families of the earth would be blessed. The same night in which the blessing was confirmed to him, Jacob also received the assurance that no matter where he decided to go, God would be there to protect and keep him. God promised to not forsake Jacob until He had fulfilled the promise He was making to him. Jacob graciously accepted God’s promise and in return he promised to reverence God as his God and to be obedient just as his grandfather, Abraham, by giving back to God a tenth of all that God would give him. It should be noted that God did not endorse Jacob’s action of tricking his brother out of the birthright nor was it an endorsement of Jacob’s lying to his father to trick him out of the blessing that was due his brother. Rather, God endorsed the prayer of Isaac because Isaac carried the blessing of Abraham within him. Therefore, when Isaac prayed that the blessing would be transferred to Jacob, God honored Isaac’s prayer. When Isaac learned of the error he had made, he quickly acknowledged that in spite of the way it happened, Jacob would indeed be blessed because of his prayer. In our lesson today, God answered the prayer of Isaac and the blessing of Abraham passed to Jacob. Robert C. Hudson October 10, 2013