Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRO

TNCC Verse

What do you have planned for tomorrow?

TNCC Answer

Many people buy American made...

Craftsmen / Snap-On

Lifetime Warranties

quality products

INTRO

“You Reap What You Sow”

My mother-in-laws garden

What about the warranty?

Her green thumb / my black one

propper technique

propper care

bountiful harvest

Illustration of need addressed.

Connect illustration to present day hearers.

“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”

Transition = Show this need or similar issue was also the question behind the biblical text.

Clearly state the theme of the text/sermon.

Title & Text

The Time Is Now

Theme

Esau wanted to receive the blessing from Isaac but by then it was to late.

Pray

That God would renew our minds by His Word.

That today God would change us and not allow a mere exercise in religion.

Text

THE SERMON BODY

Talk about missing it by the skin of your teeth.

Jacob has a narrow escape from the wrath of Esau and the anger of his father.

He just barely escapes with the blessing as his brother is walking in.

You can almost feel the tension as they pass each other in the hallway from Isaacs chamber.

Have you ever been in either of these mens positions?

Have you ever just barely squeaked out a victory or just narrowly lost in defeat?

Did they speak to each other as they passed by? Did they even make eye contact?

How could Jacob have looked Esau in the face after this charade?

We can tell by the text how narrow a gap of time has passed after the one to before the other with the words the author uses.

The way the Hebrew reads it is almost as if Jacob holds open the tent flap for Esau to cary in his meal!

Have you ever been so excited about something that you don’t notice something else happening?

Like when you are a kid you are so excited about playing a game with your friends that you don’t even notice that you have to go to the restroom until it is an absolute emergency?

How excited would Esau have had to be to miss his brother wearing his best clothes with a couple of goat skins hanging from his neck and arms?

Remember Jacob does nothing for this blessing all he does is brings the two goats to Mamma who prepares them.

Esau now is coming in from seeking to be obedient to his fathers request after his successful hunt.

The text says that he also prepared food for his father.

While Jacob was stealing and deceiving Esau was working, Esau was hunting, Esau was seeking to be obedient!

You can almost hear the swell of self satisfaction in his voice as he heralds his own return bringing with him his fathers feast.

Listen to the respect and honor that Esau has for his father, it is different then that of the words of Jacob.

He says “Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that you may bless me.”

Jacob said “now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me.”

Jacob just wants to get this thing over with so he can get out of here before anyone figures it out and Esau on the other hand wants to revel in the ceremony of it all.

Well Isaac might have been blind but he sure was not stupid.

Who are you would be a natural answer if you thought you had just said goodbye to your son Esau and in comes your son Esau.

This is obviously more serious then loony tunes but it reminds me of when Bugs would put on a costume to fool Elmer Fudd.

By the way if you are visiting and don’t know me well I bet you can still guess the age of my children by my frame of reference so far I have talked about wetting pants and loony tunes, just take a wild guess right!

Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that you may bless me.

now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me.

Anyhow, Isaac is just confused for a moment as he asks the question.

Who are you?

Making sure this is not just Deja-vu and that he really does understand the situation his fear and anger are confirmed as Esau responds that he is his firstborn son, that he is actually Esau!

Isaacs anger is palpable!

His anger is white hot!

The Hebrew here again could not be more descriptive.

He trembles very violently is our translation in the ESV.

His neck veins bulge, his face turns red, his knuckles white, and through gritted teeth he responds to Esau’s answer with a rhetorical question.

Who was that who just got blessed then?

We can know this question is rhetorical because of the doubts that Isaac had earlier as well as the statement he makes in verse thirty five referring to Jacob.

Place yourself for a moment into this story.

Lets say your Isaac, and this gets revealed to you.

You are absolutely livvd by the trickery of your son who just stole from your other son and deceived you in one dastardly scheme.

What do you do?

Well of course you do what any good parent would do you scream out for the naughty child to come to you.

You make sure that you use the first middle and last names just so that if your tone failed to communicate your seriousness at least the fullness of their name would convince them that you mean business.

You tell them to march right in and to explain what they did.

You tell them that they owe both you and their brother an apology.

You tell them that they are going to have to give their toy back to their little sister and go to time out until you can come and talk to them again.... wait a minute that is my house not Isaacs right?

But that is what we do right?

Palpable

What does Isaac do… “Yes, and he will be blessed”.

Wait a minute whats up with that?

Lets put a pin in that and come back to it in just a minute.

Lets look at Esau’s response to this information.

The text says:

“He cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry”.

Of course he did, can you imagine how he must be feeling right now.

The Hebrew used to describe Esau’s emotion in his weeping is as one who just lost a horrific accident take place where they lost a dear loved one or the scream of a person who is in the process of being violated.

When I was in KY going to school I worked at a hospital as a heart tech while there I had a friend who suffered the loss of a baby who was born early due to complications and battled for life for seven days until he finally went to be with God.

Neither parent was a believer.

I will never forget the gut wrenching scene of that mother on her knees with her face and hands in the dirt as she whaled over this child.

Words fail us to speak of such sorrow, of such anger, of such pain.

This is Esau...

Esau’s knees buckle and he clings to Isaacs robe as he pleads with him for something, anything.

“Bless me! even me also, O my father!”.

Isaacs answer brings no comfort to Esau.

In fact they again seem a little strange given the chain of events so far.

Like the bottom dropping out of a paper bag, so Isaacs answer drops all hope out of Esau’s heart.

Isaac tells him that their is no other blessing to give that Jacob has taken his for himself.

We see that Isaac even recognizes the deceit that transpired but yet does not retract his blessing from Jacob.

This is the instant that the seed of bitterness is planted in the heart of Esau which we see later starts to sprout in verse forty one of this same chapter when he plots to kill Jacob.