Before They Were Born

Today, we're back to Genesis. This is our third visit to Genesis in recent years. The last place we left off, about two years ago, was the death of Abraham.

And today we pick up where we left off. If you have your Bible open to Genesis 25, you can see down in verse 8 that "Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people." After his burial, we get a brief history of Ishmael and his descendants, and then verse 19 says, "These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son."

The nineteenth verse of a chapter might seem like a weird place to start a series, but you might remember that chapters and verses were added long after the original text was written. In the Hebrew text, that phrase "These are the generations of" is what we're really zeroing in on, because that's the phrase, used throughout Genesis, that marks off the major sections in the book.

The NIV translates this phrase as, "This is the account of the family line of Abraham's son Isaac" (Gen 25:19, NIV). And that's not a bad way of understanding it. It's not just the story of Isaac. It's not just the story of his "family." It's the account of his family line—his descendants, his generations.

This is important because it shows us how Genesis fits together. It's not just a random collection of stories, but a series of family lines from Adam to Noah to Abraham and now to Isaac.

And why does that matter? Because back in chapter 3, God promised the serpent that one of the woman's offspring would crush his head. And as Genesis follows the family line of Adam and Eve through Seth up to Noah and Shem and then to Abraham, and God tells Abraham that one of His offspring will bring blessing to the earth, we know that we're very carefully being led down one branch of a family tree on the hunt for the serpent-crusher.

We're weaving our way through these generations, following the family line, looking for the Messiah. If you've been with us in our Adult Sunday school this year this is familiar to you because this is what we've followed and traced out over these past months.

And this family line has been traced now all the way to Isaac. Isaac, the child of promise, born to Abraham and Sarah by pure miracle in their very old age.

Have you ever wondered what Isaac's life was like? What is the story like from his perspective? He was born to old parents, and his earliest memories were probably not mom or dad down on the floor playing with him. He grew up living in a tent, son of a very wealthy nomad.

Would he have had any memories of his older brother Ishmael, who was sent away when Isaac was probably only two or three (Gen 21:8)? Hard to say. No doubt he remembered the day that his father woke him up early and took him on a three day journey, when he walked up a mountain carrying wood for a burnt offering, watching as his father build an altar and laid the wood on the alter and then, bewilderingly, tied him up and make him lay down on top of the altar.

I assume Isaac heard the voice from heaven that stopped his father from that one final knife-stroke that would have ended his life. How did he feel as the bonds were untied, as the ram was killed and offered instead of him? Did he have long talks with his Father about faith and promises and this God who tests His people in such difficult ways?

We know very little of the next years of Isaac's life, until his mother died and he was comforted by the arrival of his wife, Rebekah, which we read about at the end of chapter 24. He loved his mother, and he loved his wife (24:67).

We know that Isaac became very rich as Abraham gave all that he had to him (25:5). Did Isaac feel lonely or strange as his father's other sons were all sent away from him (25:6)? Did he feel the burden of being the child of promise?

What must it have been like to have Ishmael return and together with this older brother you barely knew, bury your father together after he died (25:9)?

Did Isaac know that God had blessed and was blessing him after his father's death, like verse 11 says?

We can only imagine. There's lots we don't know about Isaac's life, a life that, like Abraham's, appeared to contain decades of normalness punctuated with strange and supernatural events.

2. A Familiar Problem (vv. 19-21)

And that's even true after the story picks up in verse 19 here with a focus on the generations of Isaac. We're told that he was forty years old when he took Rebekah to be his wife.

40 might seem like a late age for marriage, but during this time, people appeared to live longer and didn't seem in a big rush to get married. Esau, for example, was also 40 when he got married. Jacob might have been closer to 80 or 90. So 40 was probably not strange.

What is not so normal, yet at the same time weirdly familiar, is the fact that Rebekah is unable to have children. Verse 21 says that she was infertile. Unable to conceive children.

When a couple is married and wants to have children, the inability to conceive is a real difficulty and can be extremely painful. How much more so in the ancient world, when bearing children was even more important to them than it was to us. And how much more so for a child of Abraham, who had been promised he'd have descendants like the sand on the shore and the stars in the heaven (Gen 15:5, 22:17)? How much more so when you are the child of promise through whom Abraham's offspring would be named (Gen 22:12)?

And how much more so when your wife has been hand-selected through what appeared to be God's direct leading and provision (Gen 24:12-14, 26-27, 50)? All of that behind you, and you can't get pregnant.

It almost seems like a bad joke. Why would the child of promise get married to a woman so clearly picked out for him by the Lord, and they can't get pregnant?

a. God's reason

But this was not an accident. Just like it wasn't an accident that Abraham and Sarah couldn't have children, or that Jacob and his wives wrestled with infertility, or that this issue pops up again and again throughout the story of the Bible, all the way up to a young woman from Galilee who is promised a son even though she's never been with a man at all.

God's reason for this infertility, like God's reason for all of the other impossible situations He puts His people into, is to make crystal-clear that these promises He's given about offspring and children are going to be fulfilled by His power and because of His promises. Nobody is going to think that these things "just happened." God is not going to share any of His glory with people.

This is a pattern in how God works, all the way up to the scandal of the cross and the foolishness of preaching. God delights to work and to save in ways that highlight our weakness and powerlessness so that His strength is magnified.

So knowing the whole story of the Bible, we shouldn't be surprised. Of course Isaac, the child of promise, spared within an inch of his life, all the weight of the history of the world resting on his ability to have offspring—of course he'd marry an infertile woman. That tends to be how God works.

b. Isaac's Response

But let's be clear about something. When God works in this way, it's not so that we can just sit back and say, "What will be, will be." God wants His people to be active participants in this process.

Think of Abraham. He wasn't just sitting around all those 25 years, passively waiting for a child. The struggle, the questions, the uncertainty, the impossibility, drew him deeper into a living walk with His God. Which is one of God's goals here.

And so it is with Isaac now. His response is not to check out. And, from what we're told, his response is not to second-guess whether his dad's servant had made a mistake and whether he'd married the wrong person.

His response isn't even to do what his dad did before him, and what his son will do after him, by getting himself a concubine to have children with. Isaac, apparently, learned something from his parent's mistakes. He saw and even experienced first-hand the wreckage we bring in our lives when we swerve from God's intention and plan.

So Isaac waits. Isaac stays faithful to his one wife. And what does he do instead? How does he respond? He prays.

That's actually how verse 21 is introduced. It doesn't say, "Now Rebekah was barren, so Isaac prayed to the Lord for her." No, this whole matter is introduced with Isaac's prayer. “And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren” (Genesis 25:21).

That's what marked his life in those years of waiting. That's the one activity that is highlighted here. This is what Isaac did in these years of waiting for God to keep His promises in the face of impossible circumstances. He prayed.

Now we're not told what kind of prayer this was, but I highly doubt that this was a single prayer one time. I can't imagine this was anything other than frequent, fervent, active prayer, bringing this burden before the Lord again and again.

And one reason I think this is because of how long this time period lasted for. In a way that is typical for Hebrew narrative, a very important detail is snuck in at the very end of this account. Verse 26: "Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them." Meaning, Rebekah's period of infertility lasted for 20 years.

And how are those 20 years summed up? "And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife."

b. Two Lessons

There's three big lessons we can learn from this. One, this is one of God's purposes for the difficulties in our lives: to draw us closer to Himself. Don’t we see that in the Psalms over and over again? That’s what David does in Psalm after Psalm after Psalm. Suffering brings us closer to the Lord.

And that’s true even when our prayers are pure lament. When we say, ”What's going on, Lord?”, that prayer at least partially contains its own answer. Because what are you doing as you ask that question? You’re talking to God. You're turning aside from yourself and bringing your complaint before the Lord. And from there it’s just a small step to say, ”I can't do this without you, Lord.”

So, when you suffer, know that God is seeking your prayerful faithfulness, just like with Isaac.

Second lesson: you are not condemned to repeat your parent's mistakes. Many of you had parents whose history you don't want to repeat. And you don't have to. Just because they blew it, doesn't mean you have to. Like Isaac did with Abraham, you can learn from your parents' sins and, with God's help, determine not to repeat them.

Third, there's a specific call here for husbands to pray for your wives. We talked about this at the last marriage workshop—how a husband's key job is to protect his wife spiritually, to get in between her and Satan. And one of the ways we do this is by prayer.

Husbands, do you know your wife's struggles? And do you pray to the Lord for her? If the history of your family was being written down, and a 20-year period of heartbreaking struggle was being summed up in a single sentence, would a narrator write these words about you? "And he prayed to the Lord for his wife?" Married brothers, pray to the Lord for your wives.

3. A Sovereign Choice (vv. 22-26)

a. The struggle (vv. 22-23a)

That's what Isaac did. And, after 20 years, God answered his prayer. Rebekah conceived.

And yet the struggle is not over. Verse 22 opens with the words, "the children struggled together within her." Once again the narrator slips in the truth that there is more than one child within her. Children. And they are struggling together.

The word for "struggle" here suggests more than normal jostling. It's a word that's translated as "crushed" other places in the Hebrew Bible (Deut 28:33, Jud 9:53, Psa 74:14). There's some serious struggle going on in there, enough that Rebekeh is seriously worried.

After waiting 20 years to get pregnant, Rebekah is unprepared for the fact that her womb has become a battleground as two babies almost crush each other within her.

And Rebekah is perplexed by this. Verse 22: "And she said, 'if it is thus, why is this happening to me?" That's a interesting way of translating some very sparse Hebrew words. Robert Alter renders her words here as, "Then why me?" That's the sense here. What's going on, and why me?

But she doesn't just leave it there. Verse 22 says that "she went to inquire of the Lord." Look at that. It seems like in 20 years of marriage she's been shaped and influenced by her husband's faith, and she knows where to take her questions.

And God answers her. Verse 23: “And the Lord said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided.’” (Genesis 25:23).

Rebekah finds out that the struggle within her is a foreshadowing of a far greater struggle. There are not just two babies in her womb, but two nations.

Now, that might sound like good news. God told Abraham that nations, plural, would come from him, and so we might be expecting this and miss the sad news here. The sad news is that there are two nations, not two tribes, within her.

She probably wanted Isaac to be the patriarch of a great nation, and for his sons to be the heads of tribes within that nation. Kind of like what later happened to Jacob with his twelve sons.

But that's not going to happen with him. These two boys will father their own nations which means they are not going to be at peace with one another. They aren't going to be brothers dwelling together in unity. They're going to part ways. As verse 23 says, "two peoples from within you shall be divided."

The struggle in her womb is just the first scenes in a struggle that is going to play out on a national scale between the two nations that will come from these sons. And history reveals that. There was ongoing struggle between these two nations all throughout their shared history.

And the fight has already started.

b. The swap (v. 23b)

But not only is there a struggle. There's also a swap. As verse 23 goes on to say, "The one shall be stronger than the other." In other words, this won't be a fair fight. It won't be two rivals. One is going to come out on top.

And who is that going to be? Not what anybody would expect, because, "the older shall serve the younger."

The younger is going to be stronger and the older shall serve him. This will be true both for the boys and for the nations they will father. The younger shall dominate.

This goes against the grain of every instinct in the ancient world. In the ancient world, property and inheritance was a big deal. You didn't just go out and make something of yourself. You got what you got by inheritance from your father.

And being the firstborn son was a big deal because the firstborn inherited a double portion. The firstborn got the best and had the prime position within the family.

If any brother was going to serve any other brother, it was obviously going to be the other brother serving the firstborn. That's just how it worked.

Or was it? God had already shown how he was in the business of overturning expectations with Isaac, Abraham’s second-born. As He does time and time again, God is flipping human expectations around and working in a way that shows how his plans, His desires, His intentions are what win the day and not normal human conventions.

c. The significance (Romans 9:10-13)

Now, we probably want to pause here and ask an important question. Because we could wonder, is this struggle and this swap really about God's purposes? Could this not just be about the fact that God happens to know the future?

Maybe that's all that's happening. Maybe we shouldn’t assume God has a plan here for these two boys, but just that He knows the future. He knows that the younger is going to trick the older out of his birthright and become a stronger nation and He's just telling Rebekah this information.

In other words, this isn't a promise, it's just a prediction.

That could be the case. If all we had was these few verses we might say that’s at least possible.

But if we go back throughout Genesis and consider the times that God makes pronouncements like this to His people, that's not the pattern we see. Whether it's announcing the flood to Noah, or telling Abraham about His offspring, God does not just announce the future as something that He's staying out of but happens to know what's going to happen.

No, when God makes pronouncements about the future, He's announcing things that He Himself is going to do. When He tells Abraham, "Your very own son shall be your heir" (Genesis 15:4), that's because He's going to make it happen.

And in fact, this is how God knows the future exhaustively. Because He's in control over everything that happens and is going to make sure that His plan is accomplished.

Listen to how God explained this through Isaiah: “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’” (Isaiah 46:9–10).

God declares things ahead of time because He is the one who is going to make it happen. Like Ephesians 1 says, He "works all things according to the counsel of His will" (Eph 1:11).

So with the backstory in Genesis, and the rest of these Biblical testimonies, we can be confident that God's statement to Rebekah here in verse 23 is not just a prediction, but a promise, a decision God has made.

And that is confirmed for us in Romans chapter 9, verses 10-13: “And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’”

Paul highlights the details of the situation accurately. Rebekah had conceived two children by one man. Before they were born and had done nothing good or bad, she was told "The older will serve the younger."

But what does Paul attribute that statement to? According to verse 11, it's not just because God happened to know the future. Instead, this happened "in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of Him who calls.”

"Election" there refers to a choice—God's choice. And God's choice is not random. There is a purpose to His election.

Romans 9 goes on to show that God's purpose of election is His own glory. God's choice, especially God's unusual choices, like choosing the younger brother, make it clear that salvation belongs to Him. Just like with Rebekah's infertility, it shows that this isn't normal human processes happening. This comes down to God, not us.

Paul makes that very clear when he adds, in verse 11, "not because of works but because of Him who calls."

In other words, God didn’t make this choice because of anything Jacob or Esau had done or would do. He didn't look down through time and see who they would become and base His choice on that. The choice is God's choice. Jacob was chosen "because of Him who calls."

And then Paul goes from the prophet Malachi in verse 13 when he says, “As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated’” (Romans 9:13). In the context of Malachi 1, "loved" and "hated" are covenant words that refer to setting your covenant love on someone, or rejecting them from your special purposes.

And Malachi is explaining that Jacob, the younger brother, and the nation that came from him, would receive God’s undeserved grace, while Edom, which came from the older brother Esau, would receive God’s deserved judgement. And the only difference is that God chose one and not the other.

The effects of that choice were still being experienced hundreds of years later in Malachi's day. In fact, the effects are felt all the way to our day. Have any of you ever met an Edomite? And yet this world is full of Israel's offspring, both physically and, in the truer, spiritual sense as well.

Think about it: the fact that you and I are here today, reading and preaching from the Hebrew Scriptures, spiritual descendants of Abraham through a Jewish Messiah, all flows out of God's promise to Rebekah here in verse 23. "The older shall serve the younger."

4. Crucial Questions (Romans 9:18-24)

There's some crucial question for us here as we conclude. I understand that in our cultural setting, the things that we've heard in the past few minutes here can be somewhat unsettling.

Most North American Christians, when they first encounter God's sovereignty in this regard in this clarity, really struggle. The idea that God would make a choice between two babies before they were born, not based on anything they would do, just strikes us as unfair.

And even after seeing this so clearly in the Bible, even after hearing Paul unpack this so thoroughly in Romans 9, the idea of God being this in control really makes us struggle. And some Christians I know have struggled with this kind of truth for years before finally coming to peace with it.

So I don't want to presume that I can preach one sermon and answer all the questions and settle all the doubts and make us all believe the same thing. We’re a church that has room for us to wrestle with the tough parts of God’s word as we try to understand it together.

But at the same time, I am preaching on this text this morning and I can't see how this text, especially next to Romans 9, can mean anything differently than what it means. Jacob and Esau had two very different lives, the nations that came from them had two very different histories, and the reason was not that they came from different families, had different opportunities, or that one was better than the other. The reason was God’s choice. God’s election.

If you struggle with that, can I encourage you to make sure that you struggle with it for the right reasons? Make sure that you struggle because you're not sure how that fits together with other passages in the Bible.

If it all comes down to God's choice, then what role does our response and faith and obedience play? Why all the commands and exhortations in Scripture? Clearly, with everything else He’s said, God intends for us to have something to do with His unfolding plan, right?

If that's your struggle, that's a good struggle. That's a putting-the-Bible-together struggle, a listening-to-everything-God-has-said kind of struggle.

And if that's your struggle, what I can tell you, briefly, is that everything the Bible says about God's sovereign choice, and everything the Bible says about our response to God, is compatible with one another. God's sovereign choice and our meaningful choices are compatible with one another. We might not understand or disagree on exactly how they fit together with one another, but they are compatible because they're both here in the Bible.

We see it here in our passage. Did Rebekah get pregnant after 20 years because God promised Abraham offspring through Isaac, or did she conceive because Isaac prayed for His wife? The answer is that both are true. Both are meaningful ways of describing the same event.

One way we can explain this is that God's sovereign plan includes our meaningful involvement, and that our involvement—like prayer—is a part of God’s plan all along.

But the key truth I want to emphasize here is that these two truths do not cancel each other out. It’s easy for people to say “ya, but,” and jump to the passages they’re more comfortable with as if the other side cancels out the uncomfortable truth.

But it doesn’t. This whole book is God's word. It's all true. And that includes Romans 9:18: “So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”

Are we okay with that? Even if we don't understand how it all fits together, are we okay with God being as big as He wants to be, because we recognize it's His world, not ours, and He's the main character, not us? And it’s about His glory, not ours?

So wrestle with the truth the right way. Don’t wrestle with this truth for sinful, prideful, reasons. Don’t say, ”Nobody's going to make decisions for me. Nobody's going to be my king or rule over me. I'm the captain of my fate, the master of my soul. I decide my own destiny."

That's very popular thinking in our culture, and the doctrine of God's election totally destroys it. Because the doctrine of election tells us that if you are going to enjoy salvation, it's not because you're smarter or better or more clever than the rest of the people who rejected Jesus. It's because, in the end, the Father chose you, Jesus died for you, and the Spirit drew you to Himself.

And in fact, 1 Corinthians 1 says that He might have called you because you were less impressive, humanly speaking, then your unbelieving family or neighbours. We don't deserve grace any more than anybody else, and we might actually deserve it even less. But choosing to show it to us brings God praise, forever and ever, not us.

The doctrine of election, properly understood, humbles us. It lays our pride low. It makes us say, "Why me?" in the right sense. It makes us say, "If you had not  loved me first, I would refuse you still.” It makes us praise.

And it makes us pray. Like Isaac did. He knew the promises, and so He prayed. And His prayers were one of the means that God used to keep His promises.

I've heard people say, "if God is in control, why pray?" And the answer is, if God isn't in control, why would we bother praying? We pray because the one who rules over everything invites us to pray and so often uses our prayers in the outworking of His sovereign plan.

Now, we're going to the Lord's table here, where we remember that our unity as a church is based on the death and resurrection of Jesus, and not our ability to all be at the same spot in our understanding on these matters.

But I'd also invite you to use this opportunity to remember that our salvation depends not on our efforts or our smarts but upon the work of God, start to finish.

“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:30–31).

Even as we think through big questions, we can boast in the Lord, and confess that our salvation, our hope, our everything depends on God, and not us.

And that attitude has a profound effect on our humble walk with God and each other.