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Gen. 27
Just a curiosity question here….but I wonder if Isaac knew that Esau sold his birthright to Jacob or if he knew of God’s prophecy to Rebekah regarding their two sons. Would his behavior have been different one way or the other, if he knew or if he didn’t? I tend to think that favoring Esau, whom God said would serve his younger brother and who despised his own birthright, wouldn’t be the in-step-with-God position. To knowingly give Esau the blessing seems to me to be in opposition to God. So did Rebekah wrong Isaac in deceiving him? Or did she protect him from opposing God? Was she being obedient to God and His plan or was she taking things into her own hands?
The Bible gives very little indication of whose actions were right or wrong in these Old Testament stories. Thus, I don’t think the “right” and “wrong” of each individual action is at all the point. Actually, I think the “right” actions are very few and far between. And that, I think, is more to the point. As with most of the Old Testament, there is clearly a lot wrong about everyone’s actions in this story. In fact, maybe nobody is “in the right” here. And Yet God consistently continues to work out His plan through all of the wrong-doing.
God’s plan does not rely on righteous human beings, because there aren’t any. Faith absolutely plays a role, but that is not personal righteousness. This is precisely the reason that God had to intervene on our behalf in the first place. Thus, it is because of stories like this that we know why we need God’s help and that we know His help will not fail.
Matt. 26
When a woman anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume, He said of her, “Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.” (Matt. 2l6:13). Interesting, then, that we don’t get her name. Although I note that Jesus said that people would speak of what she had done, not that they would speak of her. So they remember her, not by her name, but by what she did. I think that should be every Christian’s desire. People should remember us by how we knew God and made God known. After all, it is His name, not ours, that matters.
Est. 3
Mordecai would not bow down to Haman, or any other man, because he was a Jew. Therefore, Haman wasn’t satisfied with simply punishing Mordecai. He wanted to wipe out everyone associated with Mordecai through their Jewish heritage. Mordecai wasn’t the real target of Haman’s hatred. It was the truth by which the Jews lived. It was their different laws and standards that drove Mordecai’s refusal to worship Haman.
Haman’s irrationally enraged behavior makes me think of the dragon and the woman in Revelation. “So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (Rev. 12:17). This is all part of the curse God put on the serpent in the Garden of Eden. “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed” (Gen. 3:15a). The serpent’s seed are those who love evil, and evil will always hate truth. They reveal themselves by their truth-opposing bad fruit.