The Deceptive Patriarchs
Part 2: Jacob
Genesis 25:26
Introduction.
Jacob is the man for whom the people of God are named after he is renamed Israel.
This must mean he was a pretty great guy, right?
Maybe, but he certainly wasn’t perfect.
Where it seems the faith of Abraham somehow transferred to Isaac, it does not appear to have transferred easily to Jacob.
But what did transfer was the deceit from his parents, and it amplified.
Honesty oftentimes is all that we have.
In our daily reading the other day, we read Eccl. 7:1a, “A good name is better than precious ointment” – something we discussed in class this morning.
When we lie, we besmirch that good name, turning it into a bad name.
When our reputation goes down the tubes, it will take a lot to turn that around.
When people lose trust, you must go above and beyond to regain it.
Jacob, however, seems to have done well for himself despite his deceit.
But we will see the dangers of such deceit.
One such danger that we talked about last week is hurting our relationships, and even the fear that might go along with that.
But we will begin this sermon discussing the very beginning of Jacob’s story.
One of the things that accompanies deceit is theft—you have taken something by dishonest means.
We have five points: the first three are things that he stole through deceitful means, and the latter two are things that were stolen from him.
Preview.
Stolen Birth.
Stolen Birthright.
Stolen Blessing.
Stolen Bride.
Stolen Boy.
Body.
Stolen Birth (Gen. 25:21-26).
Obviously Jacob cannot be held accountable for what he did at the moment of birth.
As the Apostle Paul writes that these “children [Jacob and Esau] not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil” (Rom. 9:11).
But the fact that this story is preserved shows a pattern of behavior.
After all, the name Jacob means “supplanter.”
The definition of that word is: “someone or something taking the place of another, as through force, scheming, strategy, or the like.”
It almost shows he was doomed from the beginning.
This foreshadows his own scheming, lies and deceit used to get ahead, to replace his older brother.
But why was he named “supplanter”?
Literally the name means “heel holder,” and the concept of “supplanter” came from it.
His father Isaac prayed that God would open up his wife’s womb, because apparently she was barren.
And He did twenty years after they were married, and she had twins whom we now know as Jacob and Esau.
Esau, however, was born first, and the deceptions that follow and Jacob’s later prominence in the narrative are why we know them as Jacob and Esau and not Esau and Jacob.
Well, when these boys were born, Jacob was holding onto Esau’s heel, hence “heel-holder,” which also meant “supplanter.”
Some say that’s impossible, but knowing about Seth’s (my son) grip when he was born, I don’t think it’s as unusual as you might think.
Well, he ended up living up to his name as we’ll see.
Stolen Birthright (Gen. 25:27-34).
A few things have happened between the birth of these boys and what we see next that has happened to them.
Around the time the boys turn 15, their grandfather Abraham dies.
It seems to have occurred before if you’re just reading straight through, but lining up the ages and dates, it must have occurred after.
The Holy Spirit lines them up the way they are to quickly show that Jacob lives up to his name.
Well, we might speculate as to how much influence Abraham had on Jacob, but we really don’t know.
We do know that they never met their grandmother Sarah, only their step-grandmother Keturah who was later sent away.
We literally know nothing else about Keturah, what kind of woman she was.
But Jacob and Esau were likely the stories of what happened to Abraham earlier in his life along with his great faith.
As this was happening, the boys grew up and their personalities began to take root.
We might say that Esau was the outdoors type, while Jacob was the indoors type.
Because of this, their parents played favorites—something I make a conscious effort not to do with my children because I know the tendency is strong and I see the results here in Genesis.
Favoritism like this breeds a sense of competition between siblings and can even encourage underhanded dealings to get that upper hand, as we see here.
Sold for a pot of stew.
Esau comes in from the field and he is tired.
Have you ever come home from a long day of work, either around the house or at your job, and when you enter inside the house you smell something most delicious? Your wife has dinner cooking in the oven, and you can wait to dig in.
Sometime I’ll come home and I can smell it through the open window before I even enter the house.
Or maybe you’re the wife and your husband did the cooking that day—in any event, you are really looking forward to it.
That’s how Esau felt here, and he gets a bit dramatic over it later as we’ll see.
Jacob, taking advantage of the situation, wishes to trade the stew for his birthright.
Esau gets dramatic, “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?”
It even gets to the point of swearing his birthright over to Jacob.
You know when you accidentally delete something on your computer, and it prompts you saying, “Are you sure?” and out of habit, we click it and instantly regret it?
It seems kinda like that here, and “Esau despised his birthright.”
The text seems to put the blame on Esau here, but surely Jacob bares some responsibility here.
I know this was all part of God’s plan, that God was using underhanded deeds for his glory, but that doesn’t excuse Jacob, does it?
Esau hadn’t forgotten about this, as we’ll see. Later, after Jacob stole his blessing, Esau says, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright (in which Esau isn’t totally innocent), and now look, he has taken away my blessing!” (Gen. 27:36).
And, with what we see next, you might wonder what influence Rebekah had on his deceitfulness.
Stolen Blessing (Gen. 27).
Some things happen between the taking of Esau’s birthright and his blessing.
First we see a famine in the land.
Recall last week we talked of Isaac traveling to Gerar to escape that famine.
The Lord renewed his promise to Isaac, and Isaac quickly showed his lack of faith by lying to the king there.
No doubt Jacob sees this deceit, but neither he nor Rebekah learn the lesson from it, when the people of Gerar kick him and his family out and later have disputes with him over the wells nearby.
Then Esau gets married to Hittite women, and the Bible says, “they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah” (Gen. 26:35).
The deceit.
We know the story: Isaac tells Esau to go hunt some game and cook it for him before he receives his blessing; Rebekah takes the opportunity while Esau is away to dress Jacob up like Esau to fool blind Isaac into thinking he is Esau so that he would get his blessing.
We might have in our minds a young Jacob and Esau here, but when I did calculations for these events, they were both about 77 years old!
So they knew full well what they were doing.
What lessons had they learned from their parents?
What lessons had Rebekah learned from hers to include her son in this deceit at the expense of her other son?
Sure, Esau had married women that she couldn’t stand, but how many people don’t get along with their in-laws?
She had her machinations, and was willing to drag her son into it.
Now, that’s not to say Jacob was innocent here—after all, he was 77, he could have said no.
Well, the scheme works, and Isaac blesses Jacob with the greater blessing—all that work being his father’s favorite, and Esau gets nothing.
Well, almost nothing. Esau returns and he and Isaac realize what happened.
Esau is distraught and asks if there’s anything more he could receive, and indeed, Isaac had one more blessing to give—it’s almost better not to have received one (27:39-40).
The effect.
As we keep finding out time and time again, lies hurt your relationships with people.
This is most certainly the case between these twin brothers, as we see in 27:41.
He wanted to kill Jacob!
And so Rebekah hears of it and urges Jacob to run to her brother’s house in Haran, where Abraham was before moving to Canaan.
It takes 20 years before Jacob and Esau meet again and make reconciliation for this deception.
Again we keep about how lying hurts relationship, and some worse than others.
Can you imagine not talking to your brother for 20 years?
Well, a lot happens in those 20 years, including our next point, the stolen bride.
And what we see in the next two points is the chickens coming home to roost.
Stolen Bride (Gen. 29:1-30).
What we see here is a turning point in Jacob’s life.
Jacob is fleeing from his brother who is in a murderous rage after he stole his blessing.
As he is fleeing northward from Beersheba, he lands in what will be called Bethel.
He sees a vision of angels ascending and descending on this ladder to heaven.
And at the top of the ladder is God, declaring to him a continuation of the promise earlier given to his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac.
It has such a profound impact on Jacob that he makes a vow (Gen. 28:20-22).
After these events, whether it was because of the threat to his life or the glorious vision, his life makes a sharp turn.
No longer is he the conniving individual he was, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of his actions.
You see, even when we convert or repent of a sin, we are free of any eternal consequences, but not of our earthly consequences.
We know that to some extent, but God isn’t always going to fix things for you the moment you convert and/or repent.
If what you have was attained through lies and deceit, that follows you, and even gets to your children.
A tricky uncle.
Recall how deceitful Rebekah was? Well, her brother Laban wasn’t much better.
And that’s who Jacob was to seek out to see if there were any women he might marry.
And he finds beautiful Rachel, Laban’s daughter, so he agrees to work for Laban for seven years for her hand in marriage.
Seven years come and go, and it’s the big day!
But ol’ Uncle Laban has done a switcher-oo, exchanging Rachel for her older, not good-looking sister, Leah—a stolen bride.
Jacob somehow doesn’t figure this out until after the marriage was consummated.
So he’s upset that his choice bride was stolen from him.
Since polygamy was okay back then, he arranged to get married to Rachel for real this time after he completed the week-long marriage celebration with Leah.
But he had to work for Laban another seven years without any other compensation.
Jacob was beginning to see what it’s like to be on the receiving end of such trickery and deceit, and I don’t think he liked it very much.
Further deceit.
After the second seven years that Jacob agreed to work, he agreed to work for Laban longer, that he might be paid in sheep and goats.
And even then, Laban was deceitful, changing Jacob’s wages ten times!
Despite the fact that he and Jacob had entered into an agreement, and Jacob earned what he had fair and square, Laban chases him down accusing him of stealing from him.
Of course, Rachel had stolen from Laban without anybody else knowing about it, but that’s not all Laban was upset about.
He still felt like Leah and Rachel were his and all the flock that Jacob worked hard for.
No, the women were upset with their father for how he was treating them, and they were happy to go.
And I’m convinced the only reason Laban didn’t attack Jacob right here was because God warned him not to.
So what Laban wouldn’t get by trickery, he would get by force if God had not intervened.
Again, Jacob isn’t liking being on the receiving end of such deceit, but it doesn’t stop there.
Stolen Boy (Gen. 37).
A lot happens before his favorite son is stolen from him.
Jacob wrestles with an Angel that turns out to be the Second Person of the Godhead and his named is changed to Israel.
He has proven himself no longer to be a heel-holder or supplanter, but is now one who recognizes that God prevails—which is what Israel means.
And Jacob’s name is changed to reflect his change.
His name now really is better than precious ointment.
He even reconciles with his brother Esau, mending that broken relationship.
But then some terrible things happen to his daughter and two of his sons take it upon themselves to seek vengeance in a rather barbaric and deceitful manner.
Then Jacob returns to Bethel and the promise is renewed and the name change is reinforced.
Yet some further calamities arise, such as another son is born to Rachel, but Rachel dies not long after giving birth.
Then Reuben, the eldest son, has an affair with Jacob’s concubine Bilhah, making him as “unstable as water” as Jacob will say later.
Finally, Jacob and his family go to where his father is in Mamre (Hebron).
And a boy is stolen from Jacob.
Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son, only one of two sons born to his favorite wife Rachel.
His other brothers get bitter over this treatment and conspire to sell this young man, 17 years old, into slavery.
They trick their father into thinking that Joseph had been killed by wild beasts.
Further deceit on the part of Jacob’s children.
Again, the chickens coming home to roost, though we’ll talk more about this next time.
The point now is that Jacob had lied and cheated his way early in life, and later he’s paying the price, even costing him 13 years with his son believing him to be dead.
Conclusion.
Jacob lied, cheated, and stole early in life.
It seemed that way at birth, but it was no doubt encouraged by his mother.
This was clearly a trait Rebekah learned from the same place as her brother Laban.
Not that lying is learned behavior, necessarily—we have caught our children lying on occasion.
But the difference is, when we caught our kids in a lie, we punish them; Rebekah encouraged her child in the deceit.
Yet it cost him dearly. It cost him a relationship with his brother, and he even had to flee from his parents because Esau was there.
But Jacob turned it around.
After he had become an honest man, it would have been so easy for him to return to his old ways, particularly when dealing with his treacherous Uncle Laban.
But he stuck to it and remained an honest man throughout the rest of the biblical narrative, at least what we have recorded.
We can change and turn things around, but we still have to deal with the consequences of those actions.
Jacob’s sons end up being deceitful, too, as we’ll see next week.
Let’s learn from these encounters.
We don’t have to lie, cheat, and steal to get ahead.
Especially because when we do, we harm those closest to us.
Oh we might get some temporary gains, but in the long run we lose so much more.
Life is not a zero sum game where there are winners and losers and we must win at any cost.
Let’s treat each other with the love and respect we ought to by being honest with them.
When we lift other people up, we lift everyone, including ourselves, up.
When Jacob worked for Laban, he made Laban prosperous, helping him, lifting him up.
The best way to start that journey is to become a Christian.