A great man takes his lumps for the plan of God

A great man takes his lumps for the plan of God.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Grace Bible Church
Pastor-Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Thursday,
April 2, 2009

1. Isaac was born about 2061 B.C.; Abraham was about 100 and Sarah was about 90.

2. So around 2021 B.C. when he was about 40 years old, father Abraham decided to help him out and so he sent one of his trusted servants to go and pick up a wife for him, Gen 24.

3. The servant found a magnificent beautiful woman named Rebekah; her name in the Hebrew is Rivqah which means to chain or shackle by beauty.

4. So at forty years old he finally marries according to GEN 25:20; Isaac was in reversionism at this time, living in the Negev, and he was very lonely because mom had died.

5. After 20 years of being married, which is a good time to have children if you’re going to have any, about 2001 B.C., Rebecca had some children.
She gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob.

The mother preferred the hairless one, Jacob.
The father preferred the hairy one, Esau!

6. In Gen 26, Isaac repeated the reversionistic trend of his father Abraham; he lied about his wife Rebecca who was very beautiful, and he claimed that Rebecca was his sister.

2TI 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself.

Peaceful - adjective “tam” = a pious, gentle, or dear man.
He lived in tents with his mother or as one writer says at this time he was a momma’s boy!

7. At age 100, Isaac was in great sorrow because of the failures of Esau who had married two Hittite women and had not believed in Jehovah Elohim, TLJC.

ROM 9:13 Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

8. He finally reached spiritual maturity and supergrace, and he was a strong supergrace believer when he was deceived by his wife Rebecca and by his younger twin son Jacob.

So through doctrine resident in the soul he recognized that giving the blessing to Jacob was the will of God.

It takes a great man to learn from being deceived that something was the will of God and not to get bitter about it.

1. Isaac’s acceptance of the disappointment of Jacob getting the blessing over his favorite son Esau demonstrates to us the way in which we ought to bear the consequences of making wrong decisions.

2. Many times the Lord will allow people who are close to us to hurt us even if it’s unintentionally on their part, for the purpose of guiding us into the correct path.

GEN 50:20 “And as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”

3. The Lord can turn the curse of deception and the wrath of man into a situation which can ultimately bring glory to Himself -
PSA 76:10 For the wrath of man shall praise Thee;

2CO 13:8 For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth.

4. Esau only saw the deceiver Jacob and vowed to be revenged; Isaac saw God in the matter and trembled because he almost made the wrong decision.

5. We should be able can bear the pain inflicted upon us by others when we see that they are merely the instruments of a divine blessing or divine chastisement.

6. To this day the method of Rebekah and Jacob is largely adopted by religious people who believe that the ends justifies the means.

ROM 3:8 - “Let us do evil that good may come”? Their condemnation is just.

JOH 16:2-3 “They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. And these things they will do, because they have not known the Father, or Me.”

7. The destiny of all the attempts to try to play God or manage God’s affairs by deception or misrepresentation is brought out by the scheme of Rebekah and Jacob.

8. God had promised that the birthright would be Jacob’s, and God would have given it to him at the proper time, but their timing did not line up with God’s timing.

GEN 47:9 So Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my sojourning are one hundred and thirty; few and unpleasant have been the years of my life,”

9. The sin of Rebekah and Jacob was the sin of blaming God for forgetting His promise or accusing Him of being unable to perform it.

10. While each member of Isaac’s family tried their own plans, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Esau, the result was that God’s purpose was still accomplished.

Jacob was a con-artist, and he was conning his father out of the birthright and the double portion blessing and God still chose Jacob.

Upon the discovery of the deception, Isaac took a doctrinal stand and for the first time in his life on record in the Scripture, he did not do what a wimp would do.
He recognized that it was God’s will that the elder should serve the younger.

GEN 25:23 And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb; And two peoples shall be separated from your body; And one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger.”

But Isaac was such a great believer at this time that he recovered immediately, and when Esau came whining and crying to him, which is exactly what he did in HEB 12:16-17; when Esau came whining and crying like a baby and asked dad to give him the blessing because they both had been cheated, well dad took a stand on doctrine and said no, it stands.

So Isaac who reached spiritual maturity and entered God’s hall of fame did so by taking a stand on Bible doctrine.

He loved his wife and he was deceived by her and that’s enough to make any man bitter, but he wasn’t bitter!

Upon the discovery of the deception, Isaac stood his ground and he stood on the principle of doctrine which he knew well, the elder would serve the younger.

Doctrine resident in the soul took precedence over his great love for Esau his favorite son.

“Approved” - noun dokimoi = to be tested and approved, to pass with integrity.

A man can take his lumps in life - when he has doctrine resident in the soul.

“Blessed” - aor-act-ind -eulogesen = to bless for success, power, and prosperity.

1. Even though Isaac loved Esau who was his favorite, he would never reverse the decision though Esau worked on him for years, HEB 12:16-17.

2. This therefore was an act of supergrace nobility based on resident doctrine in the soul and is comparable to the test of Abraham in Gen 22, although not as great as Abraham’s test.

3. In addition to the principle of doctrine that the elder should serve the younger there was a second principle by which Isaac held to his decision,
ROM 9:6-14, in which we have an extensive treatise on the fact that Esau was an unbeliever.

Love and hate are anthropopathisms expressing God’s approval of the regenerate and disapproval of the unbeliever.

Even though the unbeliever, Esau, is genetically related to Abraham, he is not spiritually related to Abraham through regeneration, and so was rejected from the new racial species.

So the line of Israel and the future of the race must follow the course of regeneration.

As much as he loved Esau, Isaac knew from divine viewpoint that the unbeliever Esau, his eldest and favorite son, was excluded from the Abrahamic covenant.

Here are two boys from the same parents, one’s a Gentile, the other is a Jew, Esau and Jacob, Jew and Gentile,GEN 25:23; 36:9.

A real man always sees the true issue and never allows his pride to interfere.