Rebekah, like her mother-in-law, was barren, so her husband
prayed for her and she conceived.
Rebekah is concerned about the twins fighting in her womb and inquires
of the Lord concerning the matter. She is
told that the older shall serve the younger.
How much better for the family would it have been if she had been like
Mary and pondered these things in her heart and trusted the Lord that His will
would be done? Instead, she favors Jacob
and acts on her own to see that this is the case. How would you like to be born with a name
like "heel grabber" or "he cheats"? Jacob spends much of his life living into his
name until God changes it. The contrast
between the two brothers was evident from birth and only sharpened as they
got older. Rebekah loved Jacob, the first true mama's
boy in the Bible. What sort of brother
is Jacob that he would withhold food from his brother until he got his
birthright? What sort of man was Esau
that he would sell his birthright for some lentil stew? He says he is about to die and yet eats the
stew, rises and goes on his way. Each
wants what they want, their desires rule their lives.
This feast was a feast of faith. It was just prior to when the rainy season
was to begin and one of the rituals of the festival was the pouring out of water in faith that the
rains would come as the Lord promised. Rain
is a blessing not a privilege and drought would be devastating. The faith in pouring out the water was the
faith that it would not be necessary because the Lord would provide. When Jesus stands then at this ritual and
promises living water, it is poignant and powerful, it would have commanded
attention and it came at a time of a faithful action on behalf of the people. His time, however, had not yet come. Some have faith He might be the Prophet,
remember Moses was the agency through whom God provided water, but Paul says
that Jesus was the rock that followed them in the wilderness, the rock from
which God provided that water. Unbelief stops
the flow of that water. The Pharisees
search the scriptures and find no prophet comes from Galilee and they are
certain Jesus hails from there but they are wrong, aren’t they? Like Esau, they want something material.
What is it that satisfies you? The writer says that we are not to be seeking
satisfaction elsewhere. We are to be
perfectly satisfied in Jesus. There are
some positive admonitions here, show hospitality to strangers, remember those
in prison, hold marriage in honor, remember the leaders who shared the Gospel
with you, offer a sacrifice of praise continually to God, and do not neglect to
do good and to share what you have. Those
are all faith based actions. We share,
show hospitality, remember prisoners, etc because we believe these to be
"good" and pleasing to God. There
are also negative admonitions here, don't commit adultery, don't be led away by
diverse and strange teachings, don’t seek popularity in the world or what it
has to offer, don't be thought well of in the city but go outside and bear the
reproach that Jesus bore. In all these
things we show faith, that righteousness may not be rewarded in this life but
that the Lord will reward these things in eternity.
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