Transcript generated by AI. The Sermon Was Not. Please comment if you notice any errors.
Do the ends justify the means? Now, if I phrase the question that way, you're all pre-prime to say, no, of course not, unless you're a pragmatist, in which case you say, yeah, maybe. So I'll rephrase the question a little bit. If the end of something is God's blessing, does that endorse everything that happened beforehand? If God pours out his blessing, does everything that came before that blessing represent things that are endorsed by God?
We're about to look at a familiar story here in the 27th chapter of Genesis. And that question is a big question that is raised by this passage. Does God endorse the means by which Jacob acquires blessing from his father?
Now, before we get going, I'm going to do something I don't normally do. Normally, I would read the passage, and then if I had comments on how it was structured, I would spell them out there. But because this is a familiar story for many of us, I'm going to talk about the structure ahead of time, just so you can kind of see what's happening here, and it's not just a familiar story washing past your ears and being ignored.
This chapter, actually starting at the end of chapter 26, we're going to look at chapter 26, beginning in verse 34, and read all the way through the end of chapter 27. And this story is bracketed by two references to Hittite women. And that technique of bracketing the story is a common one in all storytelling, but especially ancient storytelling where they were mostly oral cultures not like he's writing down a final product here but this story has been passed along by means of speech for years and years and years and years and inside of those brackets i think what we actually have is also a chiasm which is if you're looking at a piece of paper a story that kind of does this it comes down to a point and then it comes back out and if you're reading things outside of biblical studies, they'll call this a ring composition because it circles down to the story and then circles back out. It works in rings.
And I just want to point out a couple of these things to you. If I'm wrong about this, blame me. I didn't find this in any of the commentaries. I just noticed it as I was reading. I think the... Like I said, the brackets we have there. So if you were writing out a chiasm, I'm gonna nerd out here for a minute, okay? If you're writing out a chiasm, you would write out, here's section A, here's section B, and then in this case, you go C, and D is the center. And part of what the storyteller is doing when he comes down to the center is he's emphasizing that thing that's in the middle of the story it's not that everything else doesn't matter but this thing is the focal point and so this argument goes a or the story goes a b c d and then it comes out c prime matches up with c b prime matches up with b a prime matches up with a and so a and a prime are The reference to Esau's wives at the end of chapter 26, who are Hittites. And then at the end of chapter 27, Rebecca tells Jacob she doesn't want, or she tells Isaac that she doesn't want Jacob to marry Hittite women. So that's bracketing this story.
Then in between, we have what happens where Isaac is an old man. And he is concerned about the fact that he needs to pass on his blessing to his son. But instead of blessing the son who is chosen by God, he instead wants to bless his preferred son, his favorite son, Esau. And we see references to his age in verse 1, his death approaching in verse 2, the fact that he wants Esau to use weapons in verse 3, and that he's going to bless him in verse 4. And down in verses 41 to 45 We see Isaac's death approaching. Esau planning probably to use weapons to kill his brother Jacob. Esau lamenting over the fact that his blessing has been stolen. And in both of those sections, verses 1 to 13 and verses 41 to 45, Rebecca overhears what's happening and then goes and talks to Jacob.
And then verses C in our outline here, verses 14 to 25, we read of Jacob going out. Verse 30, Jacob went out. Verse 14, Rebecca prepares delicious food. Verse 31, Esau prepares delicious food and so on. So what I'm wanting to say is that as the story moves, it kind of moves down to a point and comes back out. And the author, Moses, wants us to see The emphasis that lays in the middle of the story, which is where Isaac blesses Jacob. That is, there's all kinds of other things going on in this story, but the center of what is being told to us is that God continues to bless the family of Abraham. And in this case, it's in spite of themselves.
So having said all that, we're going to read the text. I know we just read Matthew 23, which is pretty long. Genesis 27 is pretty long too, and we're going to add two verses here. Genesis 26, beginning in verse 34, says this.
Genesis 26:34-27:46 (ESV)
34 When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite to be his wife, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite, 35 and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.
27:1 When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. 3 Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, 4 and prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die.”
5 Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, 6 Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, 7 ‘Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food, that I may eat it and bless you before the LORD before I die.’ 8 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. 9 Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. 10 And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.” 11 But Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. 12 Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing.” 13 His mother said to him, “Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my voice, and go, bring them to me.”
14 So he went and took them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared delicious food, such as his father loved. 15 Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob her younger son. 16 And the skins of the young goats she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. 17 And she put the delicious food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.
18 So he went in to his father and said, “My father.” And he said, “Here I am. Who are you, my son?” 19 Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me.” 20 But Isaac said to his son, “How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?” He answered, “Because the LORD your God granted me success.” 21 Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.” 22 So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, who felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” 23 And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands. So he blessed him. 24 He said, “Are you really my son Esau?” He answered, “I am.” 25 Then he said, “Bring it near to me, that I may eat of my son’s game and bless you.” So he brought it near to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank.
26 Then his father Isaac said to him, “Come near and kiss me, my son.” 27 So he came near and kissed him. And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said,
“See, the smell of my son
is as the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed!
28 May God give you of the dew of heaven
and of the fatness of the earth
and plenty of grain and wine.
29 Let peoples serve you,
and nations bow down to you.
Be lord over your brothers,
and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.
Cursed be everyone who curses you,
and blessed be everyone who blesses you!”
30 As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting. 31 He also prepared delicious food and brought it to his father. And he said to his father, “Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that you may bless me.” 32 His father Isaac said to him, “Who are you?” He answered, “I am your son, your firstborn, Esau.” 33 Then Isaac trembled very violently and said, “Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me, and I ate it all before you came, and I have blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed.” 34 As soon as Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!” 35 But he said, “Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.” 36 Esau said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.” Then he said, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?” 37 Isaac answered and said to Esau, “Behold, I have made him lord over you, and all his brothers I have given to him for servants, and with grain and wine I have sustained him. What then can I do for you, my son?” 38 Esau said to his father, “Have you but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.” And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.
39 Then Isaac his father answered and said to him:
“Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be,
and away from the dew of heaven on high.
40 By your sword you shall live,
and you shall serve your brother;
but when you grow restless
you shall break his yoke from your neck.”
41 Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” 42 But the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him, “Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. 43 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran 44 and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away— 45 until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?”
46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?”
First point, as we look at this passage, is this. No one deserves the blessing of God. This story centers on a blessing, but no one in the story deserves it. And this is a point that is made clear for us explicitly, numerous places in scripture, that no human being, this side of the fall, deserves God's blessing, his kindness, or his mercy. Romans chapter 3, beginning in verse 9, says, There is no one righteous, no, not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God. Together they have turned aside. Altogether they have become worthless. That's Paul's authoritative, Holy Spirit-inspired description of humanity. We naturally hate God. That's what Romans chapter 5 says, is that we are born at enmity. We are born enemies of God. And you see that in this story, all four characters. We're just going to walk through them by just like in a movie in order of appearance. We'll list them out here and look at the fact that they don't deserve God's blessing.
And the first is Esau. He's introduced to us there at the end of chapter 26. And we're told that age 40, he marries two Hittite wives. Not a good start for Esau. Okay. First of all, he's practicing polygamy, which... We don't have the law yet given through Moses, but we do have the pattern. Genesis chapter 1, and it's very clear from the very beginning of Scripture that any time a man starts taking multiple wives, he's running away from the Lord. This happens when Abraham obeys the voice of his wife Sarah and takes her concubine, or takes for himself her servant as a concubine, like he's moving away from God's will for his life. And every time one of the patriarchs or those in their family take multiple wives, they're moving away from God's design. And so we see Esau doing that. Furthermore, he's taking wives of the land. He's taking Hittite wives who would come, coming with them would come the Hittite gods and Hittite religion. And it is making life miserable for his parents. So in that sense, he is not an admirable character.
Now he does some other things in the story that are perfectly fine. He's a man of the field. He goes to hunt game for his father. He's a good cook. Like, that's great. There's things about Esau that there's nothing wrong with that are even admirable. He prepares game for his father. He desires the blessing of his father. That's a normal, natural desire. That's a good thing about Esau. But when that blessing is stolen from him, in verses 34 and following, we see that his response is not a response of godliness. It's not a response that has any indication of faith. When Esau heard the words of his father, he is angry with his brother. He desires to kill Jacob. We see that later on in the passage. We can have empathy for him. I mean, you just hear his words and you hear like the pain, like Do you only have one blessing, Father? Can you not also bless me, Father? And yet when Jacob does give him or Isaac gives him some sort of blessing, kind of a mixed blessing in verses 38 and 39, what Esau does afterwards is start to plot the death of his brother. He starts to plot the death of Jacob. He's understandably angry, but he's far from guiltless in this story.
The second character that we meet is Isaac. And what we are told about Isaac in verse 1 is that he is old. And if you Google, I don't really suggest Googling answers to Bible questions because you get some weird stuff, especially now with AI. Like, AI will make up answers to things in the Bible. But if you Google, how old was Isaac when this happened, you're going to get all kinds of answers. But the... Most common answer from commentators is he was probably about 137 years old when this happened. And so Isaac is old. It says his eyes have grown dim. He can't see clearly. Now, he's not about to die. He's not going to die until he's 180 years old. So he's actually got 43 years of life left. However, he is probably thinking about his mortality because his brother Ishmael, who was 13 years older than him, had died at age 137. And so if Isaac is also 137 here, he probably is considering that my days may very well be numbered. And so he calls in. his son to bless him before he dies. This is the right thing to do. It's the right fatherly procedure. The blessing needs to pass from Isaac down to the next generation.
But the problem is, instead of listening to the prophecy that God had given in chapter 25, that the older son was going to serve the younger, so here he should be blessing Jacob, he's instead planning to bless his favorite son, And we see back in chapter 25 that Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. So instead of listening to the plan of God, Isaac's going to listen to his personal preferences and he seeks to bless his older son. As blindness here is mentioned because it's a physical reality that's important for the story, it's also a spiritual reality. When the Bible mentions physical details, almost always there's something more going on than just the physical reality that's being talked about.
An example of this elsewhere in Scripture would be like in 2 Samuel 4, when Eli, the priest, is old and fat. He's heavy. He falls over when he hears the news of the Ark of the Covenant being captured and breaks his neck. While his fatness had come from his sons stealing the fat off of the Lord's sacrifices. And then that word heavy is similar to the Hebrew word for glory, kavod. And... What happens when his daughter-in-law gives birth is that she names her child. The glory has departed because Eli had died and the Ark of the Covenant had been taken away. So the reference there to his weight helps explain why he died when he fell over and landed on his head. But it also indicates a spiritual reality that he had grown fat and dim and dull because of his... turning a blind eye to his son's sin. Similar thing here with Isaac. His blindness is a physical reality that plays an important part of the story. He's also spiritually dim to the things that are happening in his home and in his life. Though he, as we saw last week, is a true worshiper of God, he is not a sinless man. He is faltering here big time by choosing the wrong son.
The third character that we meet is Isaac's wife, Rebecca. And she maybe is a little bit more of a sympathetic character than Isaac, because if you remember what we looked at last week in chapter 26, Isaac had taken her to a foreign land, to the land of the Philistines, and said, hey, can you pretend to not be my wife? Like, maybe she doesn't really trust this guy. And furthermore, he's, again, acting contrary, she knows, to the word of the Lord, to prophecy. And so she doesn't have confidence in his judgment. She doesn't have confidence in his abilities to do the right thing. And so instead of going to him directly and saying, hey, why are you planning to bless Esau and not Jacob? Instead of confronting him directly, which is what Leviticus 19 would say to do, Don't harbor bitterness in your heart against your neighbor, but go and reason frankly with him. Instead of going and reasoning frankly with her neighbor or her husband here, she instead decides to deceive him. And she ropes Jacob in on this plot to deceive his father.
And when Jacob, whose name means like a schemer or a swindler, He doesn't even like this scheme. He's like, I feel like this could falter and not turn out so well for me. She says she treats blessing and curse as if it's a flippant thing. She says, let your curse be upon me. So she's not concerned about being cursed, presumably by God. Then at the end of the chapter, After her plan kind of works but also kind of backfires because now Esau wants to kill Jacob, instead of telling Isaac, here's the situation, your older son wants to kill your younger son, we should send him away, she instead turns to manipulation and gives just enough of the facts in hopes that Isaac will do what she wants. She's lying all throughout the story. I mean, this is characteristic of people who give themselves over to lies, isn't it? Like if you hear one lie from someone, do you ever trust anything else they say? Maybe if they're a small child, then you feel like the issue was corrected. But if you hear it from an adult, you're probably not going to trust that person again. And for good reason, because lies become a characteristic pattern of the human heart. And that's what's happened here with Rebecca. She's characterized by falsehood, not by truth.
Finally, we come to Jacob, who in some sense is going to become the focal point of the story for the next number of chapters in Genesis. Now, the schemer here, even he doesn't like this scheme. He says, hey, this could backfire. Like if I go to dad and pretend to be Esau, he's going to notice that Esau's a big, strong, hairy guy, and I'm kind of a little not. Like smooth, I don't have the testosterone that he does. Like I can't produce the facial hair or the arm hair or whatever. And what if he curses me? Now, it's interesting here, Jacob's thought process. He never mentions God. He doesn't think about the potential of the blessing All he's worried about is the curse that could fall upon him.
And it was interesting reading this week about blessing language in the Old Testament. And ancient Near Eastern societies were run primarily, no, I shouldn't say primarily. One of the key features of ancient Near Eastern religion was this emphasis upon curses. So like huge parts of ancient Near Eastern religion are focused upon breaking curses. And so you would have these treaties or these covenants that were administered by a Lord and the with them would come blessings and curses we see this even in the book of Deuteronomy where god gives the law a second time and then he gives blessings if the people obey the word of the lord and he gives curses if they disobey but the dominant note of the old testament of Hebrew and Israelite religion is that of blessing the focus like the curses are present but blessing is the focal point
And the concern is not so much, oh, we don't want to be cursed. The concern is I don't want to walk out of the blessing of God. But the religions all around them were the opposite. There's very little mention of blessing and there's lots of mention of cursing. And so Jacob's priorities here seem to be ordered along the lines of the nations all around them. He's more worried about curses than about anything else. He doesn't want to fall under a curse. Nonetheless, he still listens to the voice of his mother here at probably about 77 years old. He can't decide for himself what's right and wrong. He just listens to his mom.
And there's an interesting thing here, like to jump back to Rebecca for a minute. Like the instruction of a mother is supposed to be a blessing. Proverbs chapter one, verses eight and nine says, it's a father speaking to his son and he tells him to listen to his instruction and do not forsake the teaching of your mother. And if you hold onto it, it's going to be like a garland for your head, a pendant for your neck. Like a mother's instruction should be a blessing to her children. It should lead him or her towards godliness and maturity and wisdom. But here, Rebekah is going in the opposite direction. She's leading her son into deception and into sin.
Isaac is oblivious to this. Jacob follows his mother's instruction. And when he comes to his father, he tells at least four explicit lies. Verse 19, he says, I am Esau. Verse 19, again, he says, I've done as you told me. I went and I killed this game and I made this food. And when Isaac says, how so fast did you kill something and make food already? Well, Jacob invokes the name of God in this lie. He says, the Lord your God has granted me success. So he's not only lying to his father, he's also blaspheming the name of God. He's taking the Lord's name in vain, using it in a flippant way to... stamp an endorsement on his lie and in verse 24 when Isaac again asks are you really my son Esau—Jacob says oh yes I am so there's not a character in this story who is guiltless there's not a character in this story who has earned the blessing and the favor of god all are in some degree some measure pursuing disobedience rather than obedience.
The second thing that we see here though is that the blessing of god is invincible The blessing of God is invincible. God had promised in chapter 25 before the boys were born to lift Jacob over Esau. Does Isaac's rebellion against that promise or Jacob's practice of deception invalidate the promise of God? No. Romans chapter 11 and verse 29, the apostle Paul says, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Like they can't be called back. Once God has spoken a blessing, he's not reeling it back into his mouth. When God has poured out his blessing, it's there. And so their sin does not change, does not overthrow the plan of God.
And we see when Isaac blesses Jacob, It doesn't seem like a very spiritual blessing, and that's characteristic of Isaac. He's not a man with a very spiritual mind, it seems, throughout his life. But he blesses him richly with physical prosperity. Verse 28, may God give you of the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. So he's pouring out verbally this blessing from God. He's also promising earthly prestige. Let the people serve you. Nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers and may your mother's sons bow down to you. So everyone who descends from your mother is going to honor you as their lord, as their king, as their covenant head.
And then a reiteration at the end of verse 29 of the promise given to Abraham in chapter 12 and verse 3. Cursed be everyone who curses you. and blessed be everyone who blesses you. Isaac passes on the blessing to the correct son, not because he planned to, but because God determined that's what was going to happen. And so he uses the deception of Rebecca and Jacob in order to pass on the blessing to Jacob, even though Isaac wasn't intending to do that. He's speaking here, Isaac is speaking, an authoritative prophetic word over Jacob's life.
And we see that when Esau comes and says, hey, why can't you just give the blessing to me? Like, don't you have an extra one? And if the understanding of blessing in the Old Testament were the same as we have today, like just some nice words that you say to someone... Isaac would be able to reel it back here and go like, Oh, I made a mistake. And you could call Jacob on the phone and say, you dirty, rotten trickster. Why in the world would you lie to me like this? I'm writing you out of the will now. And until he saw, yeah, you do get everything, but that's not what happens instead. Isaac recognizes that this blessing was spoken with the authority of God, even though he was unconscious of having done it to the right person.
This happens in other places in Scripture, the story of Balaam and the book of Numbers. It also happens in the New Testament. Caiaphas, the high priest, after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, The Sanhedrin gets together and they're trying to decide, what are we going to do about this Jesus? Everybody's following him and now he's popular enough that we can't really do anything about him. And Caiaphas, the high priest that year, it says he was speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit. What he's about to say, he means one way and God means something else by it. And what Caiaphas says is, do you not understand that it would be better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish? And he's thinking, if we don't kill this guy and get rid of him, the Romans are going to come in and cause the nation to perish. But he's speaking prophetically, being high priest that year, because of his office, God speaks through him.
and god is saying through Caiaphas that when Jesus dies the people of god's sins will be paid for so that they do not have to perish and it's not just the people of Israel who trust in him but he's dying to gather into one the people of god who are scattered abroad john 11 and verse 52 says so this is a thing that happens in scripture god speaks through people better than they know and that's what's happening here with Isaac he tries to bless the wrong son But God works and he so blesses the correct son. And that blessing is irrevocable. He can't take it back. He can't change his mind.
God didn't leave Esau completely out in the cold like Ishmael before him. God says, I'm not going to bless. Ishmael, he's not the child of promise. Isaac is. But God still gave earthly prosperity to Ishmael. He became a father of 12 princes. He became a great and mighty man. Same thing's going to happen for Esau. He's going to become the father of the nation of Edom, which is going to become a prominent player in the Old Testament history. Even into the New Testament, King Herod, who calls himself king of the Jews, is actually an Edomite king. who tries to kill baby Jesus. Like the Edomites still play a massive role in the scriptures narrative.
And here in verse 40, he says, your brother, you shall serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from your neck. And eventually during the reigns of David and Solomon, the Israelites rule over Edom. But eventually after that time, the Edomites break away and help actually conquer Israel and Judah. through the Assyrians and the Babylonians. So God gets his work done in this world, often in spite of his servants. Even though all the people in this story, all the human characters are failures, God is not a failure. God's plan will not be stopped even by our sin.
But the third and final point here is God's blessing does not excuse our folly. To come back to our original point, A wrong inference from this story would be to say that God blesses their deception. Deception is culpable and condemnable before God. But God wasn't waiting for Jacob to be worthy of his promise, worthy of his blessing. So, don't worry... Don't worry. This is something that Christians worry about a lot. What if I mess up God's plan? What if I screw up his plan for my life by this sin? Or what if somebody else does something to me that messes up God's plan for my life? Human beings can't mess up God's plans. We don't have that power, so don't worry about it. What you do need to worry about is being faithful and obedient where he has put you.
Here, Jacob and Rebecca are grasping for the thing that God had already promised to give. That's folly. God's promise to give was not going to go away. They did not need to grasp for it. They did not need to walk into sin here. Which brings us to our second point. Don't use God's providence, the fact that he can work all things together for good. Don't use that to whitewash sin. We can look at the result and say, well, Jacob got the blessing. That's good. But that doesn't excuse him. It doesn't excuse Rebecca. Don't use it in your life to excuse your own sin or the sins of others against you. It's so easy to say, well, I can see the good and the growth that came from this. So it wasn't that bad what they did to me. That's never the way the Bible treats sin. Call sin what it is. Even if God brought good about it, that's because God is good, not because the event, the thing was good.
Third, The fact that God is complete in his providence, Providence is comprehensive over every single thing that happens, does not excuse us from making unwise or cavalier choices. Our actions still matter. And you see that in this story because Rebecca's favorite son is Jacob, right? And she plans this scheme to make sure he gets the blessing. But then Esau hates him so much he wants to kill him and she has to send him away to Paddan-Aram. And what we don't see yet, but we're going to see as the story continues, is that Rebecca disappears from the story. And probably what that means is that she dies before he comes back 20 years later. Her sin leads to her not seeing her favorite son again in her lifetime. So God brings good about, but there are still real painful earthly consequences to their sinful actions here. So don't be cavalier and unwise about your actions.
Fourth, Finally, do have confidence that the word of the Lord will come to pass. Nothing that you do, that others do, that any human being can do, will stand in the way of God bringing about his purposes in your life and in the world. That's what we read in Psalm 2 as we opened up the service. The kings of the earth gather together to plot against the Lord and against his anointed, and he who sits in the heavens laughs at them. God is not intimidated by human actions. So neither should we be. Brothers and sisters, we need to trust God to be God. Do not trust in your own schemes. Do not trust in your own wisdom, your feelings, your experiences, or your ability to manipulate the situation to bring about what you think is the desired result. Trust in the Father who, according to his promise, will abundantly supply all your needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus. Would you pray with me?
Father God, we thank you. for your goodness. We thank you that you are in control of everything. And so we pray now that you would give us hearts that have a firm confidence in your capacity to do good because you are good. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
