Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Promise Under Pressure: God’s Sovereign Word in the Birth of Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:19–26)

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The Promise Under Pressure: God’s Sovereign Word in the Birth of Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:19–26) · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to the show you are listening to Reformed Thinking.
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  It is good to be back in the studio.
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  Today we are doing something that I think is going to be
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  really, really special for the learner out there.
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  We're taking a massive stack of resources, you know,
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  commentaries, sermons, theological essays, the whole
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  thing. And we are aiming to break them
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  all down to find the absolute theological core.
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  And we're looking at a text that I think a lot of people know, or
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  at least they think they know. From Sunday school, you mean?
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  Yeah, the flannel graph favorites.
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  That's it. But we're going to look at it
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  through a very specific lens. We're both Protestant
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  Christians. We hold to Reformed theology.
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  We adhere to the West Minster confession.
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  We certainly do. It's the it's the framework that
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  helps make sense of what can feel like chaos sometimes.
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  So we aren't just reading this as a nice story, we're reading
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  it as theology. The text for today's deep dive
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  is Genesis 25 verses 19 through 26.
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  The birth of Jacob and Esau. The birth of Jacob and Esau.
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  But here's the hook. And this is what grabbed me
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  right away in the reading. We live in a world, and frankly,
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  you see this in the church culture too, that tells us we
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  are the captains of our own souls.
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  Oh, absolutely. You write your own destiny if
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  you want it. You just, you know, manifest it.
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  That is the modern mantra, isn't it?
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  Autonomy is the idol of the age. And then you open this text and
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  you are just hit with this completely countercultural
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  reality. I mean, you have a barren womb.
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  You have a 20 year wait where manifesting it clearly doesn't
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  work. You have a war, a literal war,
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  happening inside a mother before the kids are even born.
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  And then, and this is the most shocking part, you have a God
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  who decides the future of these two nations before they take a
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  single breath. It's jarring.
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  It completely flips our whole understanding of how the world
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  works. It moves the center of gravity
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  from man back to God. So that's our mission today.
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  We want to strip away the cartoon version of two brothers
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  fighting over some soup and really get to the heart of what
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  this text teaches about unconditional election and God's
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  sovereignty over our own inability.
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  Which is really the core of the passage.
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  If you miss that, I think you miss the gospel and the story.
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  Let's jump in then. The sources make a big deal
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  about the context here. They all talk about this being a
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  quiet transition in redemptive history.
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  What? What does that mean?
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  To see that you you really have to look at how the book of
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  Genesis is built. It isn't just a random stream of
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  consciousness, you know. It is structured by a very
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  specific repeating phrase. These are the generations of.
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  In Hebrew, it's the totally dot. The totally dot formula.
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  OK, break that down for us. It happens 10 times in Genesis.
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  It's a structural marker. Think of it like a curtain
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  dropping on one act of a play and rising on the.
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  Net or like the camera angle shifting in a movie.
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  That's a great way to put it. So in Genesis 25 verse 19, it
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  says these are the generations of Isaac.
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  The camera has officially moved off Abraham.
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  Abraham is dead. And that raises a huge question,
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  doesn't it? Because Abraham was the guy.
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  He was the charismatic leader. He was the visionary, the one
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  who heard the voice from the stars.
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  He was the patriarch. So if he's dead, does the
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  covenant die with him? Is the whole project over?
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  That is the question the text is answering, and the answer is a
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  loud, resounding no. The text immediately anchors
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  Isaac to Abraham. It says Abraham fathered Isaac.
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  It's reminding us that the promise isn't carried by a
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  personality cult. Right, it's not about the
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  superstar leader. No, it's carried by God's
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  faithfulness to a line, to a promise.
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  It's interesting you say that, because the setting here feels
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  so, well, so ordinary. I think that's what stood out to
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  me in the notes. You expect, I don't know,
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  fireworks for the next chapter of Redemption, but you just get
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  a wedding announcement. It is mundane, isn't it?
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  Verse 20 just gives us the stats.
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  Isaac was 40 years old. He married Rebecca.
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  It gives us her lineage, Daughter of Bethel the Aramean,
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  sister of Laban. Laban Now, for anyone who knows
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  the rest of Genesis, that name should trigger some alarm bells.
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  Oh absolutely. That is a narrative breadcrumb.
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  The author is planting a seed there.
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  Laban is going to be the bane of Jacob's existence later on.
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  For sure. But here he's just an uncle.
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  But the point of all these details, the age, the geography
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  of Padanaram, is to ground this story in history.
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  This isn't a myth. This isn't Once Upon a time in a
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  magical land far, far away. This is real geography, real
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  people, real history. And from a Reformed perspective,
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  this ordinariness is actually really significant, right?
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  Because it shows how God usually works.
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  We want the lightning bolts. We want the burning Bush every
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  day. But God gives us marriage
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  licenses. He does the Westminster
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  Confession called this secondary causes.
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  God is the first 'cause he decrees everything that comes to
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  pass. But he administers His covenant
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  of grace through families, through history, through
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  biology. So he doesn't just, you know,
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  ZAP the Messiah into existence out of thin air, no.
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  He uses a husband and a wife. He uses the messy, ordinary
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  stuff of life to bring about his extraordinary plan.
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  OK, so we have this transition. Isaac is the new patriarch.
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  He's 40. He's married to a woman from the
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  Wright family line. Everything looks great.
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  The line of promise is secure. The system works.
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  And then the crisis hits. The system breaks immediately.
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  The threat motif, as the commentators call it.
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  Yep. Verse 21 Because she was barren.
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  It's just 4 words in the ESV, but it stops the story cold.
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  It absolutely does, and if you've been reading Genesis up
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  to this point, you are having some serious Deja vu.
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  Right. Sarah was barren.
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  And later on, Rachel will be barren.
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  Why? Does God do that?
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  Seems like every time the promise is supposed to move
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  forward, God hits the pause button.
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  Is this just for dramatic tension?
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  It's not just drama, it is theology.
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  In Genesis, barrenness is like a giant theological billboard.
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  It strips the characters of any self-reliance.
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  Think about it. God promised Abraham that his
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  descendants would be as numerous as the stars.
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  Right innumerable a great nation.
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  But if the matriarchs are barren, that promise is dead on
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  arrival. It forces the reader, and it
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  certainly forces the couple to realize that they cannot produce
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  the seed of promise by their own willpower.
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  You can't just hustle your way into the covenant.
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  You can't. And this is a picture of human
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  inability. OK, there it is.
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  This is where we get into the doctrine of total depravity, or
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  maybe more specifically here, our spiritual inability.
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  Just as Rebecca cannot produce physical life in her womb by,
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  you know, trying really hard or being a good person, humans
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  cannot produce spiritual life. We're dead in trespasses and
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  sins. We're barren.
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  We need a miracle of life from the outside.
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  We need God to act. The sources also point out
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  something about the timeline here that I think is really easy
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  to miss if you're just skimming the text.
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  Isaac gets married at 40. Yes, verse 20.
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  But then you jump down to verse 26 and it says Isaac was 60
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  years old when the twins were. Born You got to do the math.
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  That is 20 years. 20 years of silence, of waiting, of
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  wondering. I looked at the CDC statistics
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  that one of our sources mentioned just to get a modern
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  perspective on this. They say that nowadays, if a
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  couple tries for a year without success, that's technically
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  considered infertility. Roughly one in five women
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  struggle after a year, and that's a huge trial.
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  It is. It's a very real grief, a deep
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  pain for so many. But imagine 20 years in the
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  ancient world where there was no IVF, no adoption agencies, and
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  where you're her entire social value, especially as a woman,
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  sadly, was tied to producing an heir.
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  And for 20 years, nothing. Every single month, a reminder
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  of failure, of emptiness. It really highlights the
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  severity of the trial, doesn't it?
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  And it also highlights the patience God requires of his
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  people. The promise is being put under
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  pressure. It is This long delay proves
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  that the covenant seed is a gift of grace, not a product of
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  nature. If they had a baby nine months
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  after the wedding, they might have thought, hey, look what we
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  did. We're good at this.
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  We're a fruitful plan. Exactly.
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  We are the architects of our dynasty, but after 20 years of
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  tears and unanswered prayers, no, when that baby comes, they
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  know without a shadow of a doubt this is from God.
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  So how does Isaac handle this? Because his dad, Abraham, didn't
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  always handle this kind of waiting Well.
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  When Sarah was barren, they tried to, you know, fix it
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  themselves. They did.
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  They brought in Hagar. They tried to engineer a
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  solution. The pragmatic solution.
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  Right. God isn't moving fast enough, so
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  let's help him out. That is the default human
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  response to God's delay, isn't it?
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  We try to take control. But Isaac doesn't do that.
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  No he doesn't. And this is where Isaac really
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  shines. He often gets a bad rap as the
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  boring patriarch, kind of stuck between Abraham and Jacob, but
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  here he is faithful. The text says He entreated the
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  Lord. Now the sources did a deep dive
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  on the specific Hebrew word atar.
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  It isn't the normal word for prayer, is it?
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  No, it isn't. The standard verb for prayer is
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  Palau. You see that all over the Old
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  Testament. Atar is rare.
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  It's only used about 20 times. So it has a different flavor.
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  A very different flavor. It implies something much more
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  intense. It's associated with the imagery
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  of burning incense. Oh, OK.
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  Think of the aroma. Thick smoke rising up.
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  It implies A sacrificial plea of beseeching.
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  This wasn't Isaac just saying a quick grace before dinner.
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  Lord, please give us a kid. This was 20 years of agonizing.
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  Of sacrificial pleading. He was besieging the throne of
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  grace on behalf of his wife. There's a theological tension
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  here that I want to press on because we just said God is
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  sovereign. God promised Abraham that this
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  line would continue. That was a divine guarantee.
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  So why does Isaac have to pray? I mean, if God is going to do it
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  anyway, isn't the prayer kind of?
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  Redundant. That is the classic objection to
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  sovereignty, isn't it? If God is sovereign, why pray?
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  Why evangelize? Why do anything but look at the
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  text. The sequence is vital.
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  Isaac entreated, the Lord granted his entreaty, and
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  Rebecca conceived. Divine causality.
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  Yes, God is the one who opens the womb, make no mistake, but
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  he uses Isaac's prayer to do it. This is the Reformed doctrine of
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  means. God ordains the end, the birth
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  of Jacob and Esau, but he also ordains the means by which that
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  end comes about. And in this case, the means was
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  the prayer of Isaac. The desperate 20 year long
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  prayer of Isaac. So prayer isn't overcoming God's
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  reluctance. It's not like we're twisting his
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  arm. No, not at all.
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  It's laying hold of His willingness.
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  It's participating in His plan. That's a great way to put it.
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  And it robots 2 common errors. It robots fatalism, which says
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  God will do what he wants. I'll just sit here.
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  Isaac didn't sit there. He prayed.
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  And it rebuts pragmatism. Yes, the I need to fix this
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  myself error. Isaac didn't take a concubine,
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  he looked to God. He used the right means.
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  It is a rebuke to how we often operate today.
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  We want a strategy. We want a five step plan for
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  church growth or personal growth.
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  We want a technique. And this text is saying no, get
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  on your knees. And stay there for 20 years if
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  you have to. So God answers.
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  The Lord grants the plea. Rebecca gets pregnant.
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  Great news. The deep dive is over.
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  Everyone is happy. If only over that simple.
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  It's not that simple. It isn't happy at all.
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  Verse 22 says the children struggle together within her.
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  And again, the Hebrew here is really evocative.
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  Rat sats. This isn't just a flutter.
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  No rat sats. It means to crush, to smash, to
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  violently jostle. That sounds terrifying for a
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  mother to feel that inside her. It is.
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  This isn't just a baby kicking. This is a cage match happening
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  in the womb and the text is escalating the threat.
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  First the threat was external, no child.
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  Now the blessing has arrived and the threat is internal conflict.
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  And one of our sources points out the connection to Genesis
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  3.15, here the Proto Evangelium. The first Gospel promise.
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  Back in the garden, God said there would be enmity warfare
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  between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.
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  And here, literally inside a woman, you have two seeds of
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  war. This is a cosmic battle playing
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  out in a microcosm in a womb. And poor Rebecca, she's in the
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  middle of all this. She is the battlefield.
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  And she asked this question that I think is just so raw, so
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  human. If it is thus, why is this
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  happening to me? Or some translation say why am I
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  like this? It's just pastoral realism.
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  Yeah. She received the gift she prayed
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  for for two decades pregnancy. But the gift brought pain, and
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  it brought confusion. And I think so many believers
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  can relate to that. Lord, I prayed for this ministry
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  or this spouse or this job. You gave it to me.
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  And now it feels like it's crushing me.
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  Why it? Just shatters the prosperity
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  gospel idea that God's blessing always feels good and easy.
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  Completely. Sometimes the blessing brings
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  the burden. Yes.
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  So what does she do? She doesn't go to WebMD.
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  She doesn't, you know, call her friends for advice.
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  And she doesn't consult the local Pagan fertility idols,
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  which would have been the temptation in that culture.
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  What did the omens say? No, she went to inquire of the
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  Lord. And that is the key.
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  She sought divine revelation to interpret her experience.
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  And that is a huge reformed principle.
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  Suffering is not self interpreting.
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  If you just look at your pain, if you just trust your feelings,
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  you will come to the wrong conclusion.
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  You need God's Word to explain your reality to you.
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  You do. You need an outside word to make
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  sense of the internal chaos. And God gives her an answer.
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  And boy is it an answer. This brings us to the Oracle in
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  verse 23. This is the theological
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  centerpiece of the entire section, maybe of the whole
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  chapter. It is poetry, right?
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  The structure is very deliberate. 2 nations are in
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  your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided.
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  One people shall be stronger than the other.
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  The older shall serve the younger.
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  The first thing to notice is the scope two nations.
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  This isn't just about two babies, Jacob and Esau, having a
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  sibling rivalry. No, this is bitter.
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  This is about Israel and Edom. The conflict will span history.
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  It's a national, a generational conflict being foretold.
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  It will. But the kicker, the line that
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  changes everything, the line that subverts all human
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  expectation, is the last one. The older shall serve the
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  younger. We have to unpack why that is so
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  shocking, because today we might think, OK, the younger brother
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  is more successful. It happens all the time.
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  We love the underdog story. We do.
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  But in the ancient Near East, this was a violation of the
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  cosmic order. Primogeniture, the right of the
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  first born, was the law of the land.
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  It was the gravity holding society together.
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  The first born got the double portion of the inheritance.
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  He became the head of the clan. He got the Father's blessing.
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  It was the structure of reality. It was.
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  It was just how the world worked.
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  And here God says I am overturning it.
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  Why? Why disrupt the entire social
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  order like that to? Show that He is free to show
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  that His covenant, His grace, is not bound by human custom or
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  biology or birth order. He has not a predictable God who
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  just rubber stamps human systems.
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  This brings us to the big doctrine unconditional election,
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  and you can't talk about this text without talking about
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  Romans Chapter 9. You have to.
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  We have to use the analogy of faith, letting Scripture
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  interpret Scripture. The Apostle Paul looks back at
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  this exact moment in Romans 9, and what does he say about it?
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  He says God made this choice before the twins were born and.
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  This is the key part though. They were not yet born and had
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  done nothing either good or bad. That is the crucial point.
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  It just destroys the idea of merit completely.
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  But let me play devil's advocate here for a second, because this
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  is where people get tripped up. The Armenian view or just the
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  standard human intuitive view is that God looked down the
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  corridors of time. He saw that Jacob would have
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  faith or be a better guy, and he chose him based on that foreseen
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  faith. That's the foreseen faith you It
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  tries to get God off the hook, so to speak.
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  It makes his choice seem less arbitrary to us.
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  But it fails on 2 counts. First, the text in Romans
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  explicitly says the choice was made in order that God's purpose
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  of election might continue not because of works, but because of
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  him who calls. So Paul is ruling out anything
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  in The Boys as the reason for the choice.
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  He is. It's not based on them, it's
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  based on the one who was calling.
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  And 2nd, was Jacob a good guy? No.
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  Not at all. He was a deceiver.
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  His name means heel, grabber or supplanter.
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  He's a trickster. He lies to his blind, dying
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  father later on. He's a mess.
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  If God was looking down the corridors of time for moral
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  quality, neither of these guys was a great candidate.
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  Jacob was a snake and Esau was a brute.
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  So God didn't choose Jacob because Jacob was good.
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  No, God chose Jacob because God is gracious.
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  The choice was based entirely on his own purpose, His own good
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  pleasure. That is hard for people.
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  I get it. It feels unfair.
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  It feels arbitrary. It feels unfair if you think
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  salvation is a wage we earn. If salvation is a reward for
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  being pickable, then yes, it would be unfair.
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  But if the Bible is right and we are all rebels, if we are all
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  barren spiritually as we discussed earlier, then the fact
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  that God chooses anyone is a miracle of mercy.
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  The surprise isn't that he rejected Esau.
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  The surprise is that he chose Jacob.
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  That's it. So the older serving the younger
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  isn't just a reversal of family roles, it's a reversal of how we
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  think the universe works. We think the strong, the first
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  the deserving. They get the goods.
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  God says no. I choose the weak, I choose the
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  second, I choose the undeserving.
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  And that's the pattern all through the Bible.
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  It is. It creates a complete dependence
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  on God. If Esau got the blessing,
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  everyone would just say, well, naturally he's the first born of
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  the system works. But when Jacob gets it, you have
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  to say this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
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  So the Oracle sets the theological stage.
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  Now we get the actual birth, and the text gets very descriptive
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  here, almost awkwardly so. It does.
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  The prophecy becomes visible reality.
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  First comes Esau, and he is a sight to behold.
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  He is the text says he was read the Hebrew is he had moni and he
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  was hairy CR like a hairy cloak, a hairy.
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  Cloak. That's a lot of hair for a
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  newborn. It's evocative language, but
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  these words are not accidental details.
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  The narrator is loading them with meaning.
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  Red and Mona connects him to Edom, his future nation, which
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  means Red. And later he sells his
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  birthright for red Stew. Right, and Harry SAR connects
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  him to the region of SER, which is where the Edomites, his
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  descendants, lived. The narrator is embedding his
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  entire future into his physical appearance at birth.
• 18:19
  And what does he represent? The sources call him earthy.
• 18:21
  He is the man of the flesh. He is immediate.
• 18:24
  He's visible. He's strong.
• 18:26
  He is everything the world looks for in a leader.
• 18:28
  He looks like a first born. He looks like a king.
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  And then comes Jacob. And he is holding on to the
• 18:33
  heel. That is the image that just
• 18:34
  sticks. It's with you, isn't?
• 18:35
  It it is the defining image of his life.
• 18:38
  His name, Yakov, sounds like the Hebrew word for heel, which is
• 18:43
  aquafa. It means he grasps the heel, or
• 18:47
  idiomatically the supplanter, the one who trips you up from
• 18:50
  behind. So even at birth, he is
• 18:53
  contending he is striving. Even at birth, the struggle the
• 18:56
  Oracle predicted is physically visible.
• 18:58
  Esau has the position, he came out first, but Jacob has the
• 19:01
  hold he is grasping. It foreshadows his whole life of
• 19:04
  striving, of trying to grab the blessing for himself.
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  And that's the irony, isn't it? God had already promised him the
• 19:10
  blessing in the Oracle. He didn't need to grab it.
• 19:13
  That is the tragedy of Jacob's early life.
• 19:16
  He spends decades using fleshly means, deception, bargaining,
• 19:21
  scheming to get what God had already sovereignly ordained was
• 19:24
  His. He had the promise, but he
• 19:27
  didn't have the faith to just rest in it yet.
• 19:29
  Not yet. He thought he had to make it
• 19:31
  happen. He thought it depended on his
• 19:32
  grip. And then the section closes with
• 19:34
  that time marker again. Isaac was 60 years old when she
• 19:37
  bore. Them it closes the loop.
• 19:38
  The 20 year wait is over. God is faithful, but He is
• 19:43
  faithful on His own timeline, not ours.
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  So we have walked through the text, we've seen the context,
• 19:49
  the crisis of barrenness, the prayer, the struggle, the
• 19:51
  Oracle, and the birth. Now let's land the plane.
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  What does this mean for us? Because frankly, unconditional
• 19:56
  election is heavy doctrine. How do we apply it without just
• 19:59
  getting a headache? Well, we have to deal with the
• 20:02
  systematic and pastoral application.
• 20:04
  We can't just leave it as an intellectual exercise.
• 20:07
  It has to change how we live. Let's start with that big
• 20:09
  tension, God's sovereignty and human responsibility, because
• 20:13
  this text has both in spades. It absolutely has both, and
• 20:16
  reformed theology refuses to let go of either one.
• 20:19
  We are compatibilists. We believe they work together.
• 20:22
  OK, explain that in the context of this story.
• 20:25
  How do we see both? Well, God decreed the outcome.
• 20:28
  The Oracle said the older shall serve the younger.
• 20:32
  That was fixed. It was certain God wrote the end
• 20:35
  of the book before the characters even showed up.
• 20:37
  OK, that's sovereignty. But the characters act according
• 20:39
  to their own natures, and they are responsible for their
• 20:42
  actions. Esau acts profanely.
• 20:45
  He despises his birthright later because he cares more about his
• 20:48
  belly than God's covenant. That's his choice.
• 20:51
  It is, and Jacob acts deceptively because he is a
• 20:53
  schemer. God uses these free, sinful
• 20:56
  actions of men to accomplish His holy decree.
• 20:59
  Without being the author of their sin.
• 21:01
  Precisely. God didn't make Jacob a liar.
• 21:04
  Jacob was a liar. But God, in his Providence, used
• 21:08
  Jacob's sinful nature to steer history exactly where he wanted
• 21:12
  it to go. It's a mystery, but it's how the
• 21:14
  Bible presents Providence. God draws straight lines with
• 21:17
  crooked sticks. The sources also mentioned the
• 21:20
  three uses of the law as a helpful grid to apply this yes.
• 21:24
  This is a classic reform tool. How do we use a text like this
• 21:27
  in our lives? So walk us through that.
• 21:29
  What's the first use? The first use of the law is a
• 21:31
  mirror. It shows us our sin and our
• 21:34
  inability. When we look at Rebecca's
• 21:36
  Baroness and the prenatal struggle, we see a picture of
• 21:39
  ourselves. We're helpless.
• 21:40
  We are. We cannot birth the promise.
• 21:42
  We cannot save ourselves. We need a miracle from the
• 21:44
  outside. So it drives us to our knees, It
• 21:46
  drives us to Christ. It does.
• 21:49
  Then there is the third use of the law.
• 21:50
  It's a guide for the believer. Now that we're Christians, how
• 21:54
  does this text teach us to live? We live like Isaac by prayer,
• 21:57
  not by pragmatism. Yes, and we live like Rebecca,
• 22:01
  by trusting God's revelation when life hurts and makes no
• 22:04
  sense. We don't live by demanding
• 22:06
  instant results. We don't live by relying on our
• 22:09
  social status or our birthright or what we think we deserve.
• 22:13
  We live by dependent faith. I really like the point about
• 22:16
  comfort and election because usually people treat the
• 22:18
  doctrine of election as a scary thing.
• 22:20
  What if I'm not chosen? What if I'm Esau?
• 22:22
  That is looking at it from completely the wrong direction.
• 22:26
  Think about it this way. If your salvation depended on
• 22:29
  you, on your will, your works, your consistency, your ability
• 22:32
  to hold. On I'd fail 100%.
• 22:33
  I fail every single day. If it's up to my dating average,
• 22:36
  I'm off the team for good. Precisely if it depends on us,
• 22:40
  we are lost. But since it depends on God's
• 22:42
  steadfast fidelity, on His choice that He made in eternity
• 22:46
  past, it is secure. God doesn't change his mind.
• 22:49
  So if he chose Jacob before he was born, knowing full well what
• 22:53
  a mess Jacob would be. Then he isn't going to be
• 22:56
  surprised by your messiness either.
• 22:57
  Yeah, his choice of you wasn't based on your performance.
• 23:00
  So your security isn't based on your performance.
• 23:02
  That is incredibly comforting. My security is based on his
• 23:05
  promise, not my grip. And we have to make the Christ
• 23:08
  connection here. We cannot preach the Old
• 23:10
  Testament without finding Jesus. Yes.
• 23:12
  So where is he in this text? Who is the true seed?
• 23:16
  Who is the true Jacob, the true chosen one, Jesus.
• 23:19
  Jesus is the elect of God, the beloved Son.
• 23:23
  But strangely, on the cross, he was treated like Esau.
• 23:28
  How so? Esau was the one rejected.
• 23:31
  Esau was the one who lost the blessing and was cast out.
• 23:33
  Jesus took the curse of Esau, the rejection, the casting out
• 23:36
  into the darkness so that we who are deceivers like Jacob could
• 23:40
  receive the blessing of the first born.
• 23:42
  So he becomes the rejected older brother.
• 23:44
  So we can become the chosen younger brother.
• 23:46
  That is the gospel in the Old Testament, the great exchange.
• 23:49
  God chooses the weak things to shame the strong.
• 23:52
  He chooses A cursed cross to shame the wisdom of the world.
• 23:55
  There's one more application point.
• 23:57
  The sources hit hard on a rebuke of modern pragmatism.
• 24:00
  We touched on this with Abraham and Hagar, but let's drive it
• 24:02
  home. Oh, this is huge.
• 24:04
  The church today is obsessed with technique.
• 24:07
  How do we market the gospel? How do we create spiritual
• 24:10
  growth? We act like if we just get the
• 24:12
  right lights, the right music, the right programs, we can
• 24:15
  manufacture spiritual life. We act like Abraham and Sarah.
• 24:18
  God needs our help. Let's go build a Hagar strategy.
• 24:21
  But Genesis 25 stares us in the face and says the womb is
• 24:25
  barren. You cannot manufacture life.
• 24:29
  Life comes only from God opening the womb.
• 24:31
  It comes from God opening the heart.
• 24:34
  All our marketing is just noise if the Spirit doesn't
• 24:36
  sovereignly move. So our job isn't to scheme, our
• 24:39
  job is to pray. To entreat the Lord to preach
• 24:42
  the Word faithfully, and to trust that God will call his
• 24:45
  sheep to Himself. That takes the pressure off,
• 24:47
  doesn't it? It takes the pressure off of us
• 24:49
  and it puts the glory on God, which is where it belongs.
• 24:52
  So let's summarize what we've seen today.
• 24:54
  This has been a really dense deep dive.
• 24:56
  We started with a quiet transition.
• 24:58
  Abraham is dead. Isaac takes the stage.
• 25:01
  We hit the wall of barrenness, which is a picture of human
• 25:03
  inability. We saw the power of prayer,
• 25:05
  God's ordained means. Then we saw the struggle,
• 25:08
  suffering that needs divine interpretation.
• 25:10
  We heard the Oracle, God's sovereign, unconditional
• 25:13
  election, and we saw the birth, the physical foreshadowing of
• 25:17
  that spiritual reality. The central truth through it all
• 25:20
  is that the covenant is preserved not by biology but by
• 25:24
  theology, by God's Word. It rests on the promisor, not
• 25:28
  the performer. Amen.
• 25:30
  Now before we go, I want to leave you with a final thought
• 25:32
  to chew on. And this is something to really
• 25:34
  let simmer in your mind. What is it?
• 25:36
  God spoke the destiny of these nations before they took their
• 25:39
  first breath. We tend to think that history
• 25:42
  shapes God's plan, that God is reacting to what world leaders
• 25:45
  do or what the economy does or what our kids do.
• 25:48
  But this text says no. God's speech shapes history.
• 25:52
  That changes how you watch the news.
• 25:53
  It changes everything. And that pattern, the older
• 25:56
  shall serve the younger. It isn't just about two
• 25:58
  brothers. It is the pattern of the gospel.
• 26:01
  It is God choosing the weak to shame the strong.
• 26:03
  It is God choosing A crucified Carpenter to be the king of
• 26:06
  kings. It's the whole logic of the
• 26:07
  Kingdom. That is the paradox of grace.
• 26:10
  It always flows downhill to the lowest place.
• 26:13
  If you want to dig deeper into this, go read Romans 9.
• 26:17
  Read it right after you read Genesis 25.
• 26:19
  Let the Bible interpret the Bible.
• 26:21
  It will open your eyes. It's a dangerous chapter, but a
• 26:23
  good one. It will mess up your autonomy,
• 26:26
  but it might just save your soul.
• 26:27
  Thanks for diving in with us on Reformed Thinking.
• 26:29
  We will see you next time.