A recording of this sermon is available here:
As a twin, the story of Esau and Jacob, or, as it is better known, “Jacob and Esau”, has always intrigued me. I am extremely thankful for my precious relationship with my twin sister.
Sadly, Esau and Jacob’s relationship was defined from the moment of their birth, when Jacob emerged clutching at Esau’s heel – an image that echoes a Hebrew idiom for deceit and dishonesty. From the moment they were born, Esau and Jacob were rivals, rivals for their parents’ favour and for God’s blessing.
Imagine being so desperate for God’s blessing that you are prepared to do anything to get it – including dressing up as your brother and deceiving your blind and ailing father.
Imagine too, being the other twin, the older twin, cheated out of the birth-right and blessing that is rightfully yours, by your lazy brother who didn’t even bother to go out and hunt to provide the special food to your father! Are you angry?
Esau is so angry that he threatens to kill Jacob in revenge.
We enter the story as he sets out on his journey.
You may want to close your eyes. Imagine what it would be like to have the dream that Jacob has.
As you sleep, a stairway, ladder, or perhaps a slope or hill appears, reaching heaven. On it, you see angels moving up and down towards and away from heaven. At the top is the LORD, the God that your father and grandfather had spoken about, but that you never really knew, but had longed to do so, speaking to you, and giving you a three-fold promise:
God promises you:
- the land on which you lie to you and your descendants. You recognise this as the family promise, given also to your father and grandfather.
- that through you and your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed.
- to be with you, watch over you in all your journeys and bring you back to the land of the promise
It’s pretty amazing and awesome – as Jacob himself says in response. How would you respond?
Jacob set up a sacred place there, a place to which he would later return and build an altar to the LORD. But this promise, in this dream, is not for you! This promise and this dream were a continuation of the history of the promise made to the patriarchs, and the story of how God chooses a people for Himself. A select family, from which many were excluded – Esau, Ishmael and Lot, and their descendants.
Jacob was striving to obtain a blessing from a God he did not know and did not have experience of – his experience of the LORD was so limited that he did not recognise until this manifest encounter that he was in God’s presence. Sometimes, we, like Esau, wonder how God can choose so arbitrarily, but the whole point about God’s blessing is that it is something we cannot earn or obtain for ourselves.
Jacob discovered this the hard way through a broken relationship with his twin brother, separation from his father and mother and an exile from the land of the promise, all consequences of him trying to obtain the blessing he so craved in his own strength. Yet, as he fled from his brother, he discovered that God gives His blessing out of grace. It involved NO effort on his part – he didn’t even realise he was in God’s house and at the gateway to heaven.
Before Christ, God’s relationship with humanity was concentrated through a particular family, chosen by God’s grace, in spite of their own failings, it left many excluded from God’s grace. Before Christ, the chosen people of God are a selected family. But…
Through Christ you can receive a grace so much greater than the blessing that Jacob received. Through the Spirit, we are adopted as children of God. As children of God, we are co-heirs with Christ, and so we get to freely experience all the benefits that Christ won on the cross.
All history turns on the events of Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension. In Christ we can receive the gracious gift of the Spirit of Life.
This LIFE is an alternative existence only experienced by those who have believed in Jesus Christ. Someone living the new life of the Spirit is:
- Freed from the law and so lives beyond the reach of the Law’s penalty
- Living according to a new system or principle. Now, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is what governs their existence – their direction has turned towards God and the LIFE that He gives in the Spirit
The Life that the Spirit gives is both the new quality existence already enjoyed here and now, and our future, eternal existence with God.
Paul seems to suggest that, with the Holy Spirit, we can do what our sinful bodies cannot do – live according to God’s law. How?
- The Spirit dwells IN believers & empowers them to fulfil ‘the just requirements of the law’ – that is the spirit of the law, the ways that God desires, rather than their own desires, which Paul calls ‘the deeds of the body’ which are in contradiction to God’s ways. The Spirit gives the desires of God to them, so that they share in those desires and want to live God’s way.
- The Spirit:
- Leads believers
- Witnesses to them that they are God’s children
- Intercedes for them with sighs too deep for words
Unlike the blessing given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, this LIFE in the Spirit is open to all, open to everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. When we believe in Jesus Christ, the Spirit lives in us, and enables us to live in accordance with God’s desires, so, as children of God, adopted with an inheritance,
- We are not slaves, so we have no reason to fear
- By the Spirit we are able to have an intimate relationship with God – we call Him “Abba” which is an intimate Aramaic term that children would use with their own fathers – like ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’.
Take a moment to let that sink in.//
It is the EVIDENCE of the Spirit living in us – through the fruits and gifts of the Spirit being demonstrated in our lives – which shows that we belong to Christ, that we are children of God.
Some of you listening here today may be unsure whether you are a child of God, and you may feel uncomfortable with the idea of calling God something so intimate as “Dad” or “Daddy”. You may have always thought you needed to have a ‘formal’ relationship with God as ‘Lord’ and ‘King’. God is indeed ‘Lord’ and ‘King’, He longs for an intimate relationship with you as well. If this resonates with you, I invite you to use the time of response that follows to ask the Spirit to testify to your spirit that you are a child of God, and to help you to cry out to God ‘Abba, Father’.
It is also a sad reality that sometimes our relationships with our earthly fathers are broken, and so that can make it hard to see God as an intimate, loving, Father. If you find yourself in this situation, I encourage you to use the time of response to ask the Spirit to bring healing to your pain and hurt and enable you to understand something more of the Good father-heart of God, as God intended fathers to be.
If, as you have listened to this, you have realised that you have never consciously chosen to live according to the ways of the Spirit, I invite you to make that choice now, by praying this simple prayer with me:
“Lord Jesus, I thank you that through your death on the cross, I can be set free from the law of sin and death. Please forgive me for living life ‘my way’ rather than your way. I choose today to live life as you want me to live. Please fill me with your Holy Spirit, so that I may have the desire and power to live according to your ways, and know myself to be a child of God, calling you ‘Abba, Father’.” Amen.
If you have prayed this prayer, I invite you to contact me, a Christian you know, or a church local to you so that you can be supported and encouraged you as you take this step.
Finally, if you know with confidence that you are a child of God, I invite you to draw closer to God during our response time and discover more of what it means to be a co-heir with Christ, participating fully in the benefits won by Christ in His death and resurrection.
Amen.
repairerofwalls 