Cheaters Never Win! Part 1
CONNECT Nobody likes a cheater. There have been many recent allegations of cheating in professional sports; the Patriots and Astros come to mind most vividly, and I was a fan of both. The idea is that ‘once a cheater, always a cheater’. If you take shortcuts to winning, you will do it in every area of life. Whether it’s a team sport, an individual sport, or wealthy parents cheating to get their kids into prestigious universities, it goes against the rules of fair competition. You skew the outcome to your advantage; You cannot be trusted.
Jacob was such a man. He was cheating from his very conception and birth. The difference is that Jacob had a call on His life. His last chapter would be different that his beginning. He would be changed into another man. The process was arduous, but the result was magnificent. The good news is that Jacob is not the exception. He is the rule for everyone who will come to God and cry out to Him for a change in life, a new last chapter.
His story is told primarily in the book of Genesis, chapters 25-35. He is also mentioned later in Genesis and in various other books of the Old and New Testament. He is the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham. He is the father of the sons who will become the twelve tribes of Israel. He is the father of Joseph, who would become the prime minister of Egypt and save the people from famine and starvation. He is one of the patriarchs of Israel by whom Jehovah is identified to His people, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Jacob’s life can be seen like chapters in a book or episodes in a miniseries. Central of these are his encounters with God. We will look at the first of these this morning.
Episode 1: His birth was miraculous.
Genesis 25:21-26 (NKJV) Now Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived. But the children struggled together within her; and she said, “If all is well, why am I like this?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. 23 And the Lord said to her: “Two nations are in your womb, Two peoples shall be separated from your body; One people shall be stronger than the other, And the older shall serve the younger.” So when her days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb. 25 And the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over; so they called his name Esau. 26 Afterward his brother came out, and his hand took hold of Esau’s heel; so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.
Esau means ‘hairy’. Jacob mean ‘supplanter’ or ‘heel grabber’, ‘deceiver’, literally ‘the tricky one’. Today we would simply call him a cheater. Jacob’s name became a prophecy of his character. But overshadowing it all was the Lord’s word that Jacob was a man of destiny. God had a plan!
Episode 2: Jacob cheats his brother out of the birthright.
Genesis 25:27–28 (NKJV) So the boys grew. And Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field; but Jacob was a mild man, dwelling in tents. 28 And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.” Therefore his name was called Edom. 31 But Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright as of this day.” 32 And Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?” 33 Then Jacob said, “Swear to me as of this day.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.
Here the character of both men is revealed. Jacob is jealous for the birthright.
James 4:1-3 (NKJV) Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Esau is a carnal man of the flesh. He sees no value in spiritual things; he only wants what he wants, and he wants it right now. He is controlled by whatever passion or desire engulfs him at the moment.
Hebrews 12:16–17 (NKJV) lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. 17 For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.
Episode 3: Jacob lies to his father and steals the blessing.
Genesis 27:28-29 (NKJV) “Therefore may God give you Of the dew of heaven, Of the fatness of the earth, And plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you, And nations bow down to you. Be master over your brethren, And let your mother’s sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, And blessed be those who bless you!”
Esau has been cheated. Isaac did give him a blessing.
Genesis 27:34-36 (NKJV) When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, “Bless me—me also, O my father!” But he said, “Your brother came with deceit and has taken away your blessing.” And Esau said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright, and now look, he has taken away my blessing!” And he said, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?”
Genesis 27:39-40 (NKJV) Then Isaac his father answered and said to him: “Behold, your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth, And of the dew of heaven from above. By your sword you shall live, And you shall serve your brother; And it shall come to pass, when you become restless, That you shall break his yoke from your neck.”
What was the result? Hatred and vengeance.
Genesis 27:41 (NKJV) So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him, and Esau said in his heart, “The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”
Episode 4: Jacob’s first encounter with God.
Jacob flees from Esau and goes to find a wife in the family home in Haran. Along the way he stops to spend the night. He pulls a rock up for a pillow, goes to sleep and has a dream.
Genesis 28:12 (NKJV) Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
Then the Lord appears to him and gives Jacob the same promise that He has given to Abraham and Isaac. He is renewing the covenant with a new generation. Why Jacob? Because God saw his end, the finished product. God looks at us the same way. We must go through process, but our worth is judged by how we finish.
Genesis 28:16-19 (NKJV) Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it. ” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!” Then Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put at his head, set it up as a pillar, and poured oil on top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel; but the name of that city had been Luz previously.
God is often working when we don’t realize it. God is there when we don’t recognize it.
Bethel, house of God. Have you had a Bethel? Have you come to a place where God met you? Geography is important in the Bible; places and names have meaning. Jacob has some important stops to make along the way: Bethel, Manaheim, Jabbock, and Bethel again. They are all significant. But it all begins at Bethel.
Where does your life begin? Jacob was running. In fear and solitude God met him. Where will He meet you?
Jacob speaks to God the only way he knows, “Let’s make a deal!” Have we ever done that?
Genesis 28:20-22 (NKJV) Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God. And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.”
That’s as far as we will get this week. Let me make some applications for from these beginning chapters. Let’s go back to verse 12, the angels going up and down the ladder.
Jesus refers to this experience and applies it to Himself.
John 1:43-51 (NKJV) The following day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and He found Philip and said to him, “Follow Me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” And He said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
The context is the calling of Nathaniel to be one of His disciples. Phillip has found him and took him to Jesus. Jesus called him “An Israelite who has no guile”, literally no Jacob. All Jacob knew was guile and trickery and deceit. God would break it from him in the years to come. But Jesus said this was the beginning of an open heaven, where earth and heaven meet and God speaks to us and we speak to God.
Jesus said we would see it, an open heaven. What a promise! Do we live with an open heaven in our lives? T. Austin Sparks describes it this way in a chapter called “An Open Heaven” from his book “The School of Christ”.
I know this thing as the greatest reality in my history. I know what it is to have been laboring with all my might for God and preaching the Gospel out from myself for years. Oh, I know; I know what hard labor it is with the dome over your head. How many times have I stood in the pulpit and in my heart have said, “If only somehow or other I could get a cleavage through this dome over my head, and instead of preaching what I have gathered from books and put into my notebooks, and having to study it up, I could scrap the whole thing and, with an opened heaven, speak out what God is saying in my heart!” That was a longing for years. I sensed there was something like this, but I had not got it until the great crisis of Romans 6 came, and with it the open heaven. It has been different ever since then, altogether different. "Ye shall see the heaven opened"; and all that strain has gone, all that bondage has gone, that limitation; there is no dome there. That is my glory today.
Pastor Austin-Sparks was frustrated until his breakthrough. I have been frustrated with the Christian life. The heavens are brass and God seems a million miles away. Why can’t I get it right? Why is it such a struggle? He would go on to write…
'Lord, why is it that I am always caught out, always making a blunder? Somehow or other, I always say and do the wrong thing, I am always on the wrong side! Somehow I never seem to come right in line with You; I despair of ever being right!'
I have felt that way. Haven’t you? Paul felt it; others have felt it. Only God can live this life; we cannot!
The key to an open heaven is the death of the self sufficient life, to come to the end of ourselves, our goodness, our ability, our strength, our resolve, our duty and dedication. To see Christ as our only hope, our entire life and set all of our affections on Him.
2 Corinthians 4:10-12 (NKJV)
always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
Galatians 2:20 (NKJV) I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Have we come to the end of ourselves? Have we seen the fruitlessness and frustration that comes by serving God on our terms? We have to die to what we want, what we desire, our ambitions. We must lay everything on the altar and submit our selves completely to God.
Closing: Abraham and Isaac
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