We're talking about God's choice today and, and I want to, I want
to anyone ever choose teams when you were a kid, like on the
playground at the park, at a friend's house, you get
together, you're playing. We used to, we never had enough
kids were very rarely had enough for a full baseball team.
So we played a game we called straight bass.
Anyone ever played straight bass baseball?
That was that was a lot of fun. You only needed like four people
to play straight bass. I always wanted to be one of the
people that got to choose the teams.
You never wanted to not be that person, right?
Because there was always the risk that you wouldn't get
chosen or you get chosen really, really late.
And when I was playing with my brother and his friend and one
other person, I was always chosen last.
They were all older and better at that stuff than I was.
But you know, I always wanted to be the person choosing because
if you're the person choosing teams, you get you get Otions
and generally you have two different ways, or at least I
did had two different ways of choosing teams.
Either I was going to pick the best players at every
opportunity. Whenever it was my turn to
choose, I was going to pick the best person in hopes of getting
the best players on my team. So again, whether it was
football or baseball or straight base or kickball or whatever it
was that I could get the best players on my team or my other
strategy, pick my friends because I wanted to have fun and
I was more likely to have fun with my friends on my team.
So I would pick the people that I liked or I would pick the best
players, the people that I thought were the best players.
What you didn't do was pick first.
The people that you weren't your friends and couldn't play.
And you know, let's be real, generally speaking, even if they
were your friends, but they were terrible, you still picked them
late. But you know, maybe that was
just me. I don't think so.
That was my choice when I was picking teams.
When we're talking about the Kingdom of God, we're talking
about God's choice. Who is God picking?
Why is God picking them? What's the basis that God uses
for picking people? To be on his team, to be part of
the Kingdom of heaven, to be one of his disciples and one of his
followers. One of the bases for picking
people in the ancient world was a a custom and tradition that
eventually was codified not only in Hammurabi's law, but also in
Moses's law. You can find it in the book of
Deuteronomy, not by this name, but the concept is primogeniture
or primogeniture. And I'm going to mess up
pronunciation on that at some point this morning.
Keep track, you know, do whatever sort of game you want
to do with my, my pronunciation failures.
But the, the custom and law of primogeniture was this.
There was the right of the eldest son to inherit the entire
estate of one or both parents. This was a deeply rooted
tradition in the ancient Near East and it eventually became
law. And it was a law that was
eventually adopted in into the Roman Empire.
It spread throughout Europe and and the eldest son had the right
to inherit, if not the entire estate, the majority of the
state of one or both parents. This is what was happening at
the time Isaac and Rebecca were having their babies.
Well, Rebecca was doing 99.9% of the work here and she was having
twins and the first baby born was Esau.
And by the custom and law of primogeniture, Esau would
inherit Isaac's estate and Rebecca's whatever she brought
to the party as well. And with Isaac, that included
inheriting the birthright, the blessing of God from your
descendants. I will make a great nation.
And through your descendants, all nations of the world will be
blessed. Which of Isaac's sons would
carry that birthright, would carry that blessing, would
inherit Isaac's wealth? If you recall, when Abraham
died, he sent all of his other sons away.
He gave the first born son of his marriage with Sarah, Isaac.
He gave him the vast majority of his estate.
He provided a little for his other children.
His oldest son was Ishmael. He gave Ishmael some stuff too.
But he made Isaac his heir. And Isaac's plan from the get go
was to make Esau his heir from the get go.
Esau was the apple of Isaac's eye.
Esau was the one Isaac wanted to inherit.
Esau was what today we might call a man's man.
He was an outdoorsman. He loved to hunt, he loved to
travel. He worked the he worked the
fields. He cared for.
You know, he did all of the things that men's men kind of
do. And he was really hairy, too.
That was a thing that the Bible felt was important to point out
even from the time it was not only apparently had a full head
of hair, he had back hair and chest hair already in place when
he was born. Jacob was the second born.
And by any definition, Jacob was a mama's boy.
He was favored by Rebecca. He didn't go out into the fields
and work. He stayed among the tents and
work. He didn't go hunting.
He stayed home and learned to cook.
And Isaac didn't think too much of Jacob.
And it was his plan to make his first born son his heir, receive
his estate and his blessing. The blessing of God to be carry
on this tradition of being the father of nations and a
blessings to all nations. But God had a different plan.
God chose Jacob, God chose the second son, the younger son, God
chose. In this case, God chose the
mama's boy to be the heir, to be the to receive the blessing.
So with Esau and Jacob, God violated the cultural custom and
tradition of primogeniture. God said, all right, that's
that's your rule. It's not mine, says God.
I've done this before. God might have reminded them,
remember Cain and Abel when when it was a little bit different
with Cain and Abel, but it was similar.
Cain was the older son, the first born son.
God did not accept Cain's sacrifice.
God accepted Abel's sacrifice, the second born son, and it
caused Cain great jealousy and hostility toward his son.
So God has a track record of doing this on occasion, picking
not the eldest but the younger to inherit the blessing, to
receive the estate, to carry on the tradition.
People for centuries, probably for millennia, have been asking
the question why? Why did God choose Jacob and not
Esau? And I've heard an extraordinary
range of very passionately given explanations, very confidently
given explanations telling This is why God chose Jacob, one of
the earliest ones I heard. Because we, we, we know in the
story, you know, Esau, he's out being a man's man.
He's out in the wilderness, he's hunting, he's gone for days at a
time. He comes back and, and, and he's
very hungry because he hadn't had anything to eat.
You would think he would have learned enough cooking to at
least have, you know, cook a rabbit while he's out there or
something, but didn't bother with that.
Apparently Jacob's got a pot of Stew that he's made fresh and,
And Esau says, I'm hungry, give me some food.
Jacob says, I'll give you a bowl of Stew if you give me your
birthright. And Esau said, well, what
birthright's not going to do me any good right now.
I'm hungry. You could have my birthright if
you give me a bowl of Stew. What are the worst business
deals in history, by the way? But Esau sold his birthright
literally for a bowl of Stew, and I've heard it explained This
is why God chose Jacob is because Esau didn't value the
birthright from God. God, all wise and all knowing,
even at the time that Jacob and Esau were still in their
mother's womb, knew that Esau would not have the proper
respect and concern for the gift of this birthright, of being the
heir, of receiving the blessing of of God's nation coming
through his line. Jacob just wouldn't there.
Esau didn't have enough respect for that, and so God chose Jacob
instead. It's a question of character.
I think that explanation is
awful for one big reason. Jacob had no better character
than Esau did. He swindled his brother, for one
thing. You know why not as a brother.
You want hungry? Here, I've got some Stew.
Eat some Stew. No.
Give me your birthright or starve to death.
Ha. You know, where's the character
in that? And later, when his father was
blind and was going to give the blessing, which was another
tangible gift, a meaningful thing that could only be given
once, Jacob, at his mother's request, disguised himself as
his brother. He saw must have been a hairy
guy 'cause they took goat skin and and glued it on Jacob's
hands and, and, and Isaac thought that was Esau.
What a hairy dude. My, I'm not that I'm hairy, but
I'm not that hairy. But he swindled his father, lied
to and deceived his father, later swindled his uncle.
Jacob was not a man of high character.
Jacob was a man who who was was eager to manipulate
circumstances and people to get what he wanted and do things
that were best for him. Romans, which which Aubrey read
earlier, gives us a picture of why and and it's an answer
without being an answer and and it's it's the biblical
equivalent to when our children ask us something and we say
because I said so This is the summary of what Paul was right
in Romans is because I said so let's let's take a look at a
portion of that again. Yet before the twins were born,
or had done anything good or bad, in order that God's purpose
in election might stand, not by works, but by Him who calls, she
was told, the older will serve the younger, just as it is
written, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.
What then shall we say, Is God unjust?
Not at all, For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom
I have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I
have compassion. It does not there therefore,
depend on human desire or effort, but on God's mercy,
because God says so. Why did God choose Jacob instead
of Esau? God says I chose Jacob instead
of Esau to show you that I could.
That was it. God, I'm in charge.
I'm picking the teams. I picked Jacob.
Why Jacob? Is he better than Esau?
Because I picked him? God never explains.
God never gives rationale anywhere in the Scripture.
There is no rationale given for why God picked Jacob instead of
Esau. The rationale we're given is
that God was trying to say to the whole world, I am not bound
by your customs, I'm not bound by your laws, I am not bound by
your traditions. I will pick whom I want to pick
because I said so, and that's it.
That's it. Trying to explain or justify
God's choice of Jacob is a waste of time and misses the point
entirely, because the point is just this, that God's choices
supersede our choices, our customs, our traditions, and our
laws. God is God.
God gets to pick, and one of the most important things God does
throughout Scripture and throughout human history is to
remind his people, I'm God. I'm God, and I'm not bound by
your laws. I'm not bound by your customs.
I'm not bound by your traditions.
I'm not bound by your systems of morality and ethics.
The entire book of Job is about that.
The primary one of the laws and customs was primogeniture.
The eldest son inherits. One of the more sweeping customs
and traditions and ethical systems was reward and
retribution. Society was in a hierarchy.
The people at the top controlled land.
They gave blessings and gifts to people below them to secure
their loyalty and the people below them.
It's like the godfather. You do what your patron asks,
and you do it faithfully, and your patron rewards you.
If you violate your patron's trust, your patron will punish
you, will seek retribution against you, the law of reward
and retribution. Faithful service brings
blessing, infidelity, traitorous behavior brings punishment.
Except with Job, who provided absolutely faithful service to
God and got suffering and pain and punishment instead of
blessing from God. Why?
When God, when Job asks God why God answers?
Because I said so. I'm God, that's why.
And that's really the only answer that Job ever gets.
God is not bound by our laws, our customs, our traditions,
even our moral and ethical systems.
God is God, we are not. And even when we go into God's
word itself, into the Scripture itself, and we distill and bring
out moral and ethical systems and laws and customs and
traditions and say, well, it's based on the Bible.
God must follow this because it's based on the very word of
God that we have before us. And God says, yet no, you don't
worship the Bible, you worship me.
The Bible is there to guide you, to guide us, not to limit and
contain and control God. God is not bound by any of these
things. Now, at some level, this is all
very theoretical, so let's get practical a little bit.
I created this heading and then I put 4 points under it.
We're going to look at all four points, and you will probably
realize before I did that none of them is practical.
Practical implications. I wrote them all out.
I got a lot prepared. I was like, they're really not
practical. There's practical stuff under
here, so bear with me. We'll get to the practical
stuff. First of all, the Kingdom of God
is not based on what humans assign value to.
That's a system of society that's often called a scriptive
society, that people are valued based on immutable
characteristics, unchanging characteristics about them that
society decides to ascribe to assign value to the law of
primogeniture, where the eldest son inherits all is that kind of
thing. There's there's nothing
inherently more valuable about an older child or an older son
than, say, the middle child. You can tell my brother that the
next time you're getting surgery at Holzer, you're no better than
your brother. Tell him that right before you
go under the knife, you have my permission.
We middle children touchy about this subject, but that's what
human society says. We we I mean, there really there
is nothing inherently better about being a son than a
daughter. And there's nothing inherently
better about being older than being younger.
But for the sake of well, there were reasons it it makes it
makes inheritance easier and simpler to have this kind of
law. There's less room for I'm not
sure what's going on up there. I think it's the Ki think we got
a bad K. I'm not sure we'll figure it
out, but it it makes things easier so there's less conflict
when dad dies or dad and mom die.
If everyone knows and the law and the customs says that the
oldest son gets it, then there's no room for fighting, there's no
room for arguing, there's no room for bloodshed.
So it greases the world of it greases the the wheels of
society to have rules and customs and traditions like
this. But God wants to make it clear
that that's not how he operates. That's not how he operates.
The fact that humans decide that men are better than women or
older is better than younger. God says you all can make that
decision, but you understand that's not how the Kingdom
works. The New Testament tells us that
specifically there is no male or female, all or one in Christ
Jesus. Things like skin color and
nationality have been given a scripted value, assigned value
in different ways at different periods in history.
The color of a person's skin mattered in a very great degree
in society, valued some skin color more than other skin
color. God says you can do that, but
that's not how the Kingdom of God works.
The New Testament says that as well.
In Christ, there is no Jew or Greek.
It covers nationality, ethnicity and everything that we would
label as race today. All of those things God says,
hey, that doesn't, one is no more valuable than the other.
Social and economic status, talent, you know, these kinds of
things we value. We value people that are really,
really good at getting an orange ball through an orange ring.
We place a great deal of value on people that can do that,
place a great deal of value on people that that that can do
certain kinds of skill, have certain kinds of skills and
education and training. God says, you know what, that's
not how I do the Kingdom of God. In Christ there is no slave or
free, doesn't matter. You're economic or social
standing in human society. All of that gets washed away in
the Kingdom of God. All of that gets relativized in
the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is not based
on what humans assign value to. The practical thing here is, is
we need to be deeply cautious about ascribed value, about
assigning value based on immutable or social
characteristics. Things that were born with or
roles were assigned based on those things that were born
with. There are still cultures in this
world that are deeply and clearly embedded in this with
caste systems. And there are other cultures in
this world where it's much more implicit and and less explicit.
But it's all suspect. It's all suspect and it all gets
washed away in the Kingdom of God.
The waters of baptism washed all of these kinds of sign values
away #2 here flip side of this is the OR the other side of this
coin. The Kingdom of God is also not a
meritocracy. This is often the the response
of those who who want to reject and a society a society based on
assigned value. They say we need a meritocracy
and and their functional reasons for meritocracies, just like
people find functional reasons for assigned values.
We want the best person doing, you know, we were just the best.
The people that have the most merit, those are the folks that
need to advance. The Kingdom of God is not a
meritocracy either. God did not choose Jacob because
he had more merit than Esau. God chose Jacob because God
could choose Jacob. We don't know why God chose
Abel's offering over Keynes. God never explains that.
We don't know why God punished Job even though Job had done
nothing deserving of punishment. God never explains that.
But the clear implication is God has not created his Kingdom on
the basis of human merit. Now we you've heard that before,
because meritocracy in the Kingdom of God is what
theologically we would call works salvation, that we get
into the Kingdom or we advance in God's Kingdom based on how
good we are on our merit, on our good deeds, on our good works.
But the Bible says God through Paul says it's by grace.
We're saved through faith. It's a gift of God, not of
works. Why?
So that nobody can boast. Nobody could boast, Jacob.
There was no point. He might have done it, but there
was no point in Jacob's life in which he could legitimately
brag. God picked me over you, Esau,
because I'm better than you. And God says no, no, no, no.
I picked you, Jacob, but not because you're better.
Not because you're better. This is a tough one in, in our
culture and in our society, there's such a strong tendency
for, to, to aspire to a meritocratic society in, in the
United States. And I'm not saying that human
meritocracies are, are evil or necessarily evil or always evil.
I'm just saying that the Kingdom of God is not a meritocracy.
And so we need to be cautious about this of ascribing value to
people of, of assigning value on the basis of merit is as
dangerous a practice as assigning value on the basis of
immutable characteristics like gender and skin color.
That's just, that's just, that just isn't how my Kingdom works.
That isn't how my cultural system within my Kingdom works.
We call this heaven, by the way, This isn't how the Kingdom of
heaven works. We don't earn our way in.
None of us can brag or boast for being there.
This was Israel's. This is one of the reasons why
Israel got sacked first by the Babylonian Empire and later by
the Roman Empire, because they came to believe we are.
We're God's chosen people. What?
Why would God choose us if we weren't better than all of the
other nations in the world? And they started acting like
they had earned, received by their merit, God's favor.
And then God said no, that as soon as they started thinking
that way, they started heading down the wrong direction, a
direction that led them to do abominable things, trusting that
God would protect them because they were all, after after all,
better than all of the other nations in the world.
And God was so determined for them to unlearn that, that He
allowed their nation to be destroyed not once, but twice.
The Kingdom of God is not a meritocracy.
Here's a third one. Not getting our preference is
often a sign of God's will being done.
It was Isaac's preference that Esau inherit his estate.
He didn't get what he wanted, and that was God's will being
done. I had a pastor tell me this a
few years ago when I was whining about something.
I don't remember what I was whining about.
I was whining about something. I whine.
You know how it is. You know you whine too.
I understand. But you understand.
We pray every Sunday and ask God not to give us what we want,
right? That's that's what we your
Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Another way of praying that is God, don't give me what I want.
We pray that every week in here. Jesus prayed explicitly, God,
your will not mine be done. God, not what I want, but what
you want. And one of the best ways to deal
with the disappointment of not getting what we want is to say,
OK, well, maybe this is because it's God's will not getting what
I if I'm not getting what I want is a good chance it's God's
will. And when I am getting what I
want, that's really the dangerous part.
Because then suddenly it's it's easy to start to think, well, my
will must be God's will. Not a bad thing.
When we get what we want, we always have to deal with the
possibility. Am I getting this because I made
it happen and because I wanted it to happen?
Or is this happening because God wants it to happen?
Odds are much greater when I'm not getting what I'm want that
it's God's will that stinks. I wish God thought more like me.
Make my life a lot happy now. That's not true.
My life is much better getting what God wants rather than I
want. But that's the thing with both
descriptive societies and meritocracy.
It's about a certain group of people getting what they want
and constructing society in a way that they think is going to
work and it's going to be best for everyone.
And God repeatedly steps in and breaks those things up to say,
just remember, I'm still God. I'm still God, and in my Kingdom
you're not going to always get what you want #4 reception into
God's Kingdom is a matter of God's choice, not our immutable
characteristics. Not because of skin color or
gender or nationality or any of those kinds of things.
Not because our works, not because we're better.
Not a meritocracy, but simply because God chose.
So let's go back to choosing teams.
Let's go back to choosing teams. And this time it's Jesus, and
he's picking teams. And Jesus, Jesus, I want you, I
want you, I want you. I want you, I want you, I want
you, I want you, I want you. God.
He points to all of us. Doesn't matter what color our
skin is, doesn't matter what our nationality is, doesn't matter
what our economic status is. Does not matter what our gender
is. Does not.
None of those things matter. God just says I want you.
Well, why? Because I'm God and I pick you
because I'm special. Because I'm better.
Stop. No, because I picked you.
That's why you get to be in the Kingdom.
There's so much more security in that than having it be because
of assigned value or merit. If it's assigned value, what
happens when the values change? If it's merit, what's happens
when I can't? The only way I get to be in the
Kingdom of God is God's mercy and God's grace.
That's the only way I can guarantee you I haven't earned a
spot on the team. I had an uncle, played football
at WVU. This was a long time ago.
Did well, was a good football player by all accounts.
And he decided he wanted to try out for the Dallas Cowboys, and
he did. He became a hog farmer in West
Virginia. Yeah, because he wasn't good
enough for the Cowboys. It wasn't good enough, wasn't
big enough, wasn't strong enough, wasn't fast enough,
wasn't good enough. We made some good bacon.
We never have to worry about not being good enough for the
Kingdom of God. We never have to worry about not
being good enough for to be chosen by Jesus.
We never have to worry about not being the right skin color.
We never have to worry about not being the right gender.
We never have to worry about not being the right nationality.
All of those things matter to human beings, but not to God,
not in that way. They matter to God.
And the God values folks in all of those categories, not in a
hierarchy, but for the beauty of their differences.
It's God's choice and we can be thankful for that.
In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.