We're talking about God's choice, God's choice.
I don't know about you, but one of the potentially most
traumatic experiences of my growing up was every time we
were picking teams for something every anyone else find that
traumatic when they were growing up?
I I was never never is probably a stretch.
I I had a wide array of friends. It was unusual if I was ever the
first pick, very, very unusual. Most of the time I was just
hoping not to be the last person picked and it because what, what
are there 2 criteria? When you're choosing up teams as
kids to play whatever you're going to play, the people doing
the picking have one of two criteria who can friendship and
skill. Friendship.
There are those team captains are like, I don't care if my
friend can hit, kick, throw, run, whatever.
They're my friend. I want them on my team.
And then there are those kids that are picking her like I'm
going to win this game. I'm going to get the best people
on my team, even if it's my worst enemy.
Friendship and skill. We're going to see today from
through the story of Jacob and Esau, how God blows all of that
out of the water when God chooses, when God chooses.
So have you ever heard the term primogeniture?
It's, it's an old word. It's a, it's a scholarly word.
It's not, It's one that's difficult to work into the
conversation when you're hanging out with folks at the restaurant
or the bar on Friday evening. It's just tough to work it in.
Can I guess? Sure.
First in the family, Yes. Yes.
The law or custom at the time of Jacob Deesaw, probably more of a
custom than a law, was the right of the eldest, usually the son,
to inherit the entire estate of one or both parents
primogeniture. And this was law or custom at
somewhere depending on. We don't know exactly when
Abraham lived. If he predated a hammer Robbie
then it was probably just custom.
If he post dated a hammer Robbie, it might well have been
law at the time that Jacob and Esau were born that the first
born son inherited it all. And there were some socially
useful reasons for this. You didn't want families
literally going to war after the death of the patriarch and
matriarch to divide up the spoils.
You wanted a peaceful transfer. You didn't want the chaos or the
cost of that. And if everyone just agrees, or
if the law says that the eldest son gets it all, and it's the
responsibility of the eldest son to provide for all of the
siblings, then that makes things smoother and simpler in matters
of inheritance. There were reasons for it.
Whether those reasons justify, we'll talk, but there were
reasons for it. That was the rule of prime and
generature, and that was the very rule that God ignored with
Jacob and Esau. And that wasn't the only time
that God ignored it. But with Esau and Jacob, God
violates the cultural custom and tradition of prime and
generature before they were born.
God said to Rachel, the older will serve the younger blowing
it out of the water. The older will serve the younger
Now since that and it wasn't the only time that it happened God,
it was shadows of this with Cain and Abel when God accepted the
offering of the younger brother but not the offering of the
older brother. God was even more dramatic with
this with David when when David, the youngest son was chosen to
be king over all of the older sons wasn't exactly this since
that wasn't inherited. David's dad wasn't king, but it
was very close but but but God often blows up these kinds of
customs and and traditions and laws and says that's not what
we're doing. That's not what we're doing.
God violated the cultural custom and tradition of primogeniture,
and people since then have been asking why, Why, Why did God do
this? And folks have looked for all
sorts of rational, reasonable explanations.
Why did God choose Jacob rather than Esau?
The one that I've heard most often has to do with generally
has to do with character. And folks try to make the
argument that that God being God, could see that Jacob was
higher character, better suited to be the new patriarch than
Esau was because Esau didn't value his birthright enough.
Esau clearly didn't have great value for his birthright.
But Esau was the older. We were told that when he was
born he was hairy. And not just that, he was
apparently born back hair, arm hair, chest hair, everything.
Hairy baby. That'd freak me out a little
bit, but you know, hairy baby. And Esau was a man's man Esau.
Jacob loved her or Isaac loved his son.
Esau, he saw, was a hunter. He was out in the fields.
He worked with the animals and, and, and he was the favorite of
his father. Jacob was clearly a mama's boy
by every definition. He didn't like to go out in the
fields. He didn't want to go hunting.
He wanted to stay home. He learned to cook.
He hung out in the tents. He hung around with his mom.
And one day he saw came back from a hunting trip and he was
hungry. You would have thought, I mean,
you know, you would have thought he would have learned enough
cooking to at least, you know, kill a rabbit and cook it over
and open fire. But but apparently he saw knew
nothing about cooking. He gets back.
He hasn't eaten for days. And he says to Jacob, who just
finished a big pot of Stew, I'm hungry, give me some food.
I'm going to die. And Jacob says, I'll give you a
bowl of Stew if you give me your birthright.
And he saw made the worst deal in the history of deals and he
sold his birthright, his inheritance for a bowl of Stew.
He was they were very rich. It was a dumb move, but he did
it. He did it and people say, well,
you know, how could God have given the blessing of Abraham to
someone like that who didn't even value that blessing and
that birthright enough? Clearly Jacob had higher
character. Now, clearly Jacob did not have
higher character than Esau when they were when their father was
very old and had gone blind. He'd already Jacob already
gotten the birthright, and then he stole the blessing, which was
Blessings were more than just words.
Blessings made an impact on a person's life.
They had an actual effect on the future.
When someone in in Isaac's position gave a blessing, he
couldn't just give it to everyone.
He gave a blessing to a specific person.
And Jacob, with the help of his mother, disguised himself as
Esau. He did it by taking goat skin
and gluing it to his hands. That's how Harry Esau was.
His father felt goat fur and thought, oh, that's my son Esau.
He was that. That's a hairy dude.
I have no idea why the Bible was so intent on telling us how
hairy Esau was, but there you go.
And Jacob pretended to be Esau and Isaac gave Jacob Esau's
blessing and and and Jacob just stole it.
He just flat stole it. Jacob manipulated his brother,
took advantage of his brother, stole from his brother, then
later on manipulated and took advantage of his uncle.
Jacob did not have higher character than Esau did.
Why then why did God choose Jacob?
Was it wasn't? Was there something about him
personally, or would he somehow deserve it more?
Had he earned it in some way? Let's take a look because Paul
discusses this in his letter to the Romans.
And the letter to the Romans, just so you know, is often used
as a guidebook on how to be saved.
One of these days we'll preach through Romans.
We'll get there eventually. It is not so much about how to
be saved, but who can be saved, who can be in the Kingdom of
God. And this is a key part of what
Paul says about that. Yet before the twins were born
or had done anything good or bad, there was no known
characteristics about them. There was no moral behavior, no
way to earn anything either by having certain characteristics
or behaving better than the other, before they done
anything, good or bad, while they were still in their
mother's womb. In order that God's purpose and
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
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 therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on
God's mercy. God chose Jacob to demonstrate
that God could choose Jacob. It's like when our kids say,
Mom, Mom, why do I have to do that?
Because I said so. Dad, Dad, why can't I do that?
Because I said so. God, God, why did you choose
Jacob? Because I did.
Because that's the answer we get.
It's a most unsatisfying answer from where I'm sitting.
I would like to know the reasons, right?
What if we know the reasons? Then we can imitate Jacob and
try to get God to show favor to us.
This is why God doesn't give us the reasons or why It simply is
the reason God chose Jacob, to demonstrate that God can choose
whomever God wants, whomever God wants.
Trying to explain or justify God's choice of Jacob is a waste
of time, and it misses the point because the point is this.
God's choices supersede our customs, our traditions, and our
laws. God is not bound by the custom
or the law of primogeniture. Now here's an interesting thing.
Primogeniture was made a law for God's people through Moses.
Book of Deuteronomy says the first born will inherit, first
born son will inherit, will inherit, and God is telling.
God is giving us an example in Scripture clear as day can't be
erased, can't mean it's this is a big part of the main storyline
in the Bible. This is not some little side
quest. This is the main storyline and
God blows up his own law. It is so important for God, for
to God, for us to know that God is in charge, that God says you
can't even hold me accountable to the laws that I've given you.
Here's another way of saying it, God saying I don't want you to
worship the Bible. I don't want you to worship the
law. I want you to worship me, God.
Follow me, God. That's the point, that God is in
charge, that our task is to follow God, not to take things
God has said or done in the past and craft them into laws and
philosophies that we now then enforce on ourselves or others
and expect God to enforce to. It was so important to God for
his people to understand this, that he did it repeatedly and he
did it. He did it very early and he did
it often throughout the Scripture to say I'm in charge
and we'll talk about why that's so important in just a minute.
I want to talk about I entirely, completely, horribly mislabeled
this slide because I've got 4 bullet points under here and
none of them are practical. It's theology, it's doctrine.
There are some practical things I'm going to pull out when we
get there, but the bullet points themselves are not practical.
I apologize. I need to do a better job of
labeling my slides. First one here is this, that the
Kingdom of God is not based on what humans assign value to life
in the Kingdom. When we're praying, God, your
Kingdom come, your will be done here on earth just like it is in
heaven. God's Kingdom, God's society,
the culture that God is creating is not based on what humans
assign value to. Now there's a technical word for
that, like there is your primogeniture.
And the word for this when we're talking about cultures and
societies is ascriptive societies.
We're ascriptive value, where human beings ascribe assigned
value to certain things that are generally immutable
characteristics, characteristics we can't change, have little or
no control over, and we assign value on them.
Like when we say that somehow the son is more important than
the daughter, or the first born is more important than all of
the others. We can't change.
Well, you can change the first born.
People would do that when younger brothers would kill
their older brothers. Oh, now I'm the first born.
But you can't change the birth order and, and, and when we
assign value, which is what the cultures in those days did, they
assigned greater value to being a son and greater value to being
first born. There are still some cultures in
this world. I mean, most cultures still,
whether they openly admit it or not, tend to value males over
females, men over women, Not every, you know, things are
getting better, but there's still work to do.
But there's some cultures that still openly and clearly value
men over women. And having sons is a much better
thing than having daughters. Why?
This is very arbitrary to me. It's, it's, I mean, I've, I've
heard philosophical justifications for it, but
they're, they're, they're all these, they're, they're
philosophical justifications made by men to explain why we
need to keep this in place, right?
It's arbitrary. We're justifying an arbitrary
decision. First born is even more
arbitrary. You know, sometimes a first born
is a knucklehead. Why do you want to make the
Because it was simple and it was easy and it greased the wheels
in ways that, that, that, that you know, but it was assigned
value. Assigned value.
Skin color has been an incredibly significant assigned
value, at least for the past 400 years, maybe longer, but at
least for the past 400 years, that people were more valuable,
literally more valuable if they were white skin as opposed to
brown skin. And and God is blowing all of
that out of the water saying whatever you assign value to
doesn't bind God. You can't bind me with that.
The New Testament makes it very clear when God says in Christ,
when we are in Christ, when we are in the Kingdom of God, there
is no Jew or Greek, there is no male or female.
You're all one in Christ Jesus. This business of assigned value,
whatever you human beings are doing with that, whatever
arbitrary things you decide about some people, you're
height. Height is a weird one.
I can't remember the numbers, but something like 90% or 95% of
Fortune 500 CE OS are over 6 feet tall.
Somehow we value tall people over short people.
I don't get it. Society has yet to figure out
that bald is better than Harry. But you know, I'm still waiting
for that assigned value. Now that we do that, we get
whatever we do. God says I am not bound by that.
I'm not I'm not. Kingdom of God is not based on
what humans assign value to. The flip side on this too is
which is the other type of society.
That, or the other aspect that that many in society pursue with
with great intensity is that the Kingdom of God is not a
meritocracy either. It's not.
There is no sense in which Jacob merited the birthright and the
blessing more than Esau did. None.
And Paul makes that clear. The Holy Spirit speaking through
Paul, there was This was not a question of Jacob being gooder
than Esau was, of Esau somehow being morally bad and Jacob
being morally good. It was not about that God chose
Jacob and it had nothing to do with merit.
That's also in the New Testament when God says in Christ, not
only is there no Jew or Greek, there's no male or female,
there's also no slave or free. Being a valuable, significant,
high achieving, powerful human being does not make someone any
more valuable to God than if they have none of that.
It's not about those things. The Kingdom of God is not based
on what we assign value to, and it's not based on what we can
achieve or the achievements that we assign value to, which is the
other, you know? Well, I don't go too far down
that rabbit hole. We, the Kingdom of God, neither
assigned value nor earned value. Meritocracy, the Kingdom of God.
Well, not getting our preference is often a sign of God's will
being done. It's a very different concept,
but we're going to tie all of these three together before we
get to the 4th 1. So you know the Lord's Prayer,
our Father, let's say it together, our Father, which art
in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done. We'll stop there.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done.
God, when we pray that we're praying God, we want your will
to be done. The implication every time we
pray that is we're saying, God, please don't do what I want to
be done. We're praying for our will not
to be done. We want God's will to be done.
Jesus prayed both sides of it in the garden.
God, thy will not mine be done at one of those times in my
life, adult life, that I was whining.
I I'm a whiner. I admit it.
One of my moral failings, character flaws.
I'm a whiner. I was whining to a pastor friend
of mine and he said, you know, Scott, if, if, if what you want
is being done, there's a really good chance that that's not
God's will. But if what you don't want is
being done, then there's a good chance that that is God's will
because that's what you pray that I will not mine be done.
I hated that. I still hate that.
That is so irritating. I want God to want what I want.
I want God to value what I value.
I want God to reward me based on my merits and kind of, you know,
overlook and forgive my flaws. When we're not getting our
preference, there is a much greater chance that God's will
is being done than ours. Let's tie this together and, and
make this actually practical instead of just theoretical.
There are two times in the history of the nation of Israel,
the nation of Israel back in the ancient days, they got, they got
this stuff wrong. They got the assigned value
wrong and they got the meritocracy wrong, and they
began to believe not only that they were God's chosen people,
which was true. God made that clear.
I chose Abraham, I chose Isaac, I chose Jacob.
I've chosen their descendants. You are my chosen people.
I chose to rescue you from slavery in Egypt.
I chose to give you land in, in around the Jordan River and, and
that is the land I have promised you.
It belonged to other people. I give it to you now your land.
I've chosen you. And they took that being chosen
by God and said God chose us. It must be because we're better.
Why else would God have chosen us?
And they assumed they were in a meritocracy.
And since God had chosen them, that made them better.
They merited being chosen by God.
They'd earned being chosen by God.
Or they would have said, you know, God values us more than
God values other people otherwise would.
God wouldn't have chosen us. God has assigned us value that's
greater than value of other people.
And we're better either way you slice it, we're better.
And that's why God has chosen us.
And because God has chosen us and because we're better, God's
going to protect us and God's going to care for us.
And, and God has to do that because that's the promise that
God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
That's the promise that God made to David.
One of your descendants would sit on the throne forever.
That's God's bound to do those things.
And they began in their pride and in their arrogance of we
deserve this because we're inherently better or because
we've earned it. They began to do really awful
things. And they got so far away that
the only way that God could show them that they hadn't earned it
and that they weren't more valuable was that God let first
the Babylonians and then a few 100 years later the Romans come
in and destroy their nation and destroy their capital and kill
or deport the majority of their people.
And somehow out of all of that, their prophets saw and learned
and tried to teach them. We got it wrong.
We're not better. We're not more valuable.
Our destruction was not a sign that God has failed.
It is a sign. It is a sign that God's will is
being done. Our destruction is God's will
because we became the sort of people that God did not intend
us to be. We were no longer living out
God's Kingdom. We were living out our own will,
believing ourselves to be more valuable than others, ourselves
to have merited grace from God that we have not merited, and
not getting their preferences. God will redirect us.
I believe God does it in the gentlest way possible to get our
attention. And when we get far enough off
track, the further off track we get, generally the more painful
the exercises that we have to go through to get back on track.
Not getting our preferences often a sign of God's will being
done and reception into God's Kingdom and life in God's
Kingdom is not a matter of our value or our merit, but of God's
choice. And that's the best news there
can be. Because Jesus is the one
choosing teams. Jesus is the one choosing sides.
And Jesus isn't just picking his friends.
And Jesus isn't looking for the people that are going to help
him win. Jesus doesn't need our help
winning. He's looking for people who will
live in his Kingdom. He picks you and you and you and
you and you and you and you and you and you and you and me and
you and all of they got I want you.
I want you. I pick you.
You don't have to earn it. You don't have to have some sort
of characteristic that the rest of the world finds valuable,
whether it's birth order or gender or skin color or wealth
or status or what. You don't have to have any of
those things. Nationality.
I pick you. You're included in my Kingdom
because I chose you. I chose you.
That is such good news because if entry in and life in the
Kingdom of God is based on merit, we are all going to fall
at some point. We will all fall.
We will all fail. If entry into the Kingdom of God
is based on some sort of immutable characteristic, then
the vast majority of people will not be included right off the
bat because they don't have that characteristic.
And even those that do have it will likely eventually lose it.
They'll be superseded. They'll be supplanted.
Or the values can change, which they always do in cultures and
kingdoms. What's value changes.
But God doesn't change. And God's promises don't change.
And God's choice doesn't change. We get to be in the Kingdom of
God. We get to be a part of this
mission, in this ministry, because God has chosen us.
Not because we've earned it. Not because we deserve it, not
because we have. Somehow we're more special than
other people are just because God has chosen us.
It's a very humbling thing and it's a very freeing thing.
We don't have to earn it. We don't have to deserve it.
And whoever we are, regardless of our skin color, regardless of
our gender, regardless of our social status, regardless of our
intellect, regardless of what we have achieved or failed to
achieve or not even tried to achieve, God says, I want you
mighty come on over. And all we have to do is say yes
and receive it and live. It is not easy.
There's there's work to do that our, our position in the Kingdom
of God is based on God's promises, not on our merit and
not on our characteristics. And that's the hope we have that
it's God's choice. It's God's choice in Jesus name,
Amen.