The Poison of Unbelief: The Fruit of a Stolen Blessing Text: Genesis 27:41-45
Introduction: A Dysfunctional Covenant Family
We come now to the inevitable and messy fallout of the previous scene. If you were to read the story of Jacob and Esau as a standalone drama, you would be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled into a particularly sordid daytime television program. We have a blind and failing patriarch, a manipulative mother, a profane and worldly older son, and a grasping, deceptive younger son. Every character in this story is deep in sin, and yet, this is the family God has chosen to carry His covenant promises to the world. This is the line through which the Messiah, Jesus Christ, will come.
This should be a profound encouragement to us. God does not wait for us to get our act together before He works. He does not look for perfect families to accomplish His purposes. He writes straight with crooked lines. The story of our salvation is not the story of noble men and women making wise choices. It is the story of a sovereign God dragging a rebellious and stiff-necked people into His glorious future, often kicking and screaming. The family of Isaac is a mess, but it is God's mess. And because it is God's mess, He will clean it up. But the cleanup operation is often painful, and that is what we see here. Sin always has consequences. It is a poison that, once introduced into the family system, works its way through every relationship, causing bitterness, fear, and exile.
In this passage, we see the immediate, toxic fruit of the deception that Jacob and Rebekah perpetrated. Esau's profane nature, which we saw earlier when he sold his birthright for a bowl of soup, now blossoms into a murderous hatred. Rebekah's cunning plan to secure the blessing now requires another cunning plan to save her favorite son's life. And Jacob, the "supplanter," the heel-grabber who now has the blessing, must become an exile. He won the prize, but he has to run for his life. This is not victory; it is the bitter harvest of sin. And yet, through all this human failure, God's sovereign plan rumbles forward, unstoppable.
The Text
So Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him; and Esau said in his heart, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”
Then the words of her elder son Esau were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, “Behold, your brother Esau is consoling himself concerning you by planning to kill you.
So now, my son, listen to my voice, and arise, flee to Haran, to my brother Laban!
Stay with him a few days, until your brother’s wrath subsides,
until your brother’s anger against you subsides and he forgets what you did to him. Then I will send and get you from there. Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?”
(Genesis 27:41-45 LSB)
The Grudge of the Profane (v. 41)
We begin with the state of Esau's heart.
"So Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him; and Esau said in his heart, 'The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.'" (Genesis 27:41)
The first thing to notice is the nature of Esau's hatred. It is a settled grudge. This is not a momentary flash of anger; it is a cold, calculated decision to commit murder. Esau is the firstborn, not just of Isaac, but of Cain. The spirit of Cain, who murdered his brother Abel because his offering was not accepted, is alive and well in Esau, who wants to murder his brother because the blessing was not his. The conflict between the two seeds, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, is not an abstract theological concept. It happens in families. It happens between brothers.
Esau's problem is that he is a profane man. The book of Hebrews tells us this explicitly, warning us not to be like "Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son" (Hebrews 12:16). A profane man is a man who cannot see spiritual realities. He lives entirely in the world of the physical, the immediate, the tangible. He sold his birthright because his stomach was rumbling. Now he wants to kill his brother because his feelings are hurt. He valued the blessing, but only for its material benefits, for the worldly power and prosperity it represented. He did not value the God who gave the blessing. He wanted the gift, not the Giver. When he didn't get the gift, his only recourse was the logic of this world: violence.
Notice his reasoning: "The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother." This is a thin veneer of piety masking a murderous heart. He is willing to show a modicum of respect for his father's life, but not for God's law. He will wait until the funeral is over, and then he will make another one necessary. This is the kind of man who thinks he can schedule his sins, putting them on the calendar for a more convenient time. He is consoling himself with the thought of murder. This is what happens when a man is cut off from the grace of God. His only comfort is found in nursing his bitterness and plotting his revenge.
A Mother's Machinations (v. 42-43)
As is often the case in a dysfunctional home, secrets don't stay secret for long. Esau's murderous intent reaches his mother's ears.
"Then the words of her elder son Esau were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, 'Behold, your brother Esau is consoling himself concerning you by planning to kill you. So now, my son, listen to my voice, and arise, flee to Haran, to my brother Laban!'" (Genesis 27:42-43 LSB)
Rebekah, who orchestrated the first deception, must now orchestrate a rescue mission. Her sin has created the crisis, and now she must manage the consequences. She is a woman of action, a schemer. But notice that her solution is entirely horizontal. There is no indication that she cries out to God, no prayer for deliverance, no repentance for her role in this mess. Her first instinct is to fix it herself. "Listen to my voice," she says. This was her command to Jacob before, when she told him to deceive his father, and it is her command now.
She tells Jacob to flee to her brother Laban in Haran. This is a practical solution, but it is also a tragic one. She is sending her favored son into exile. The blessing was supposed to establish him as lord in this land, but the sin used to get it has driven him out of the land. This is the irony of sin. We grasp for a good thing in a wrong way, and the thing we grasp turns to ash in our hands. Jacob got the blessing, but he lost his home. He became the heir, but he has to live as a fugitive.
Rebekah's plan is born of fear and frantic energy. She is trying to outmaneuver the consequences of her own sin. But as we will see, her human plans, however clever, are no match for the sovereign, disciplinary hand of God. She is sending Jacob to her brother Laban's house, a place that will become for Jacob a school of hard knocks. The deceiver is about to meet a master deceiver. God is sending Jacob to a twenty-year seminar on what it feels like to be on the receiving end of deception.
The Miscalculation of Sin (v. 44-45)
Rebekah's instructions reveal a profound naivete about the nature of sin and its consequences.
"Stay with him a few days, until your brother’s wrath subsides, until your brother’s anger against you subsides and he forgets what you did to him. Then I will send and get you from there. Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?" (Genesis 27:44-45 LSB)
"A few days." This is one of the most tragically optimistic phrases in all of Scripture. Rebekah thinks this is a temporary problem. She believes that a little time and distance will solve everything. She thinks Esau's murderous rage is like a summer storm that will quickly pass. She completely underestimates the depth of the bitterness she helped create. Those "few days" will turn into twenty long years. And in all that time, there is no biblical record that Rebekah ever saw her beloved son Jacob again. Her plan to save him cost her everything.
She says Esau will "forget what you did to him." This is another fool's hope. The kind of wound inflicted here is not easily forgotten. She is not dealing with a godly man who understands forgiveness. She is dealing with a profane man who lives by his grievances. She thinks the problem is Esau's anger, but the problem is Esau's heart. And time does not heal a profane heart; it only allows the bitterness to put down deeper roots.
Her final question is heartbreaking: "Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?" She is terrified of the consequences. If Esau kills Jacob, then under the law of the land, Esau himself would be liable to be executed by the avenger of blood. She would lose both her sons. Her fear is understandable, but it is a fear born of her own making. She pulled the first thread, and now the entire tapestry of her family is unraveling, and she is desperately trying to hold it together with more schemes and more human plans. But the situation is now out of her control. It has been in God's control all along.
God's Sovereignty in Our Sinful Messes
So what are we to make of this sad and sordid tale? We must see that even in the midst of this sinful, dysfunctional family, God is at work. He is not the author of their sin, but He is the sovereign Lord over their sin. He weaves even their rebellion and foolishness into the grand tapestry of His redemptive plan.
First, God is using this conflict to fulfill His own word. He had told Rebekah before the boys were even born that "the older will serve the younger" (Genesis 25:23). Isaac, in his fleshly favoritism, tried to thwart this. Rebekah and Jacob, in their faithless scheming, tried to "help" God. Esau, in his profanity, rejected it. All of them were sinning. And yet, what was the result? The elder was made subject to the younger. God's decree stood, not because of their righteousness, but in spite of their sin.
Second, God is using this exile to discipline and mature His chosen man, Jacob. Jacob leaves home as a clever, grasping, mama's boy. He will return twenty years later, having been cheated, humbled, and having wrestled with God Himself. He leaves as Jacob, the supplanter. He will return as Israel, the one who strives with God. This painful exile is not a detour from God's plan; it is central to it. God often has to lead us into the wilderness to get our attention. He has to strip away our self-reliance and our clever schemes so that we learn to rely on Him alone.
Finally, this story points us to a better brother. Jacob stole the blessing and fled. Jesus Christ, our elder brother, possessed the ultimate blessing of fellowship with the Father from all eternity, and He willingly left it. He went into exile for us. He came down from heaven to a world that bore a grudge against Him, a world that said in its heart, "Let us kill him." And they did. He took the curse that we deserved so that we might receive the blessing we did not. Esau was comforted by the thought of killing his brother. But our comfort is found in the fact that our Brother was killed for us.
The poison of sin that runs through this family in Genesis runs through every one of our families. The bitterness, the deception, the fear, the broken relationships, this is the air we breathe in a fallen world. But the gospel is the antidote. In Christ, the feud between brothers is ended. In Christ, the exile is brought home. In Christ, the stolen blessing is freely given to all who will repent and believe. God's plan was not derailed by the sins of Isaac's family, and it will not be derailed by ours. His grace is greater than all our sin.