Listen carefully now to God's word from Genesis chapter 25 beginning in verse 12. These are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's servant, bore to Abraham. These are the names of the sons of Ishmael named in the order of their birth. Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael, and Kedar, Abdeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Duma, Masa, Haydad, Tima, Jetur, Naphish, and Kadema. These are the sons of Ishmael. These are their names by their villages and by their encampments, 12 princes according to their tribes. These are the years of the life of Ishmael, 137 years. He breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people. They settled from Havilah to Shur, which is opposite Egypt in the direction of Assyria. He settled over against all his kinsmen. These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, the Aramean of Paddan Aram. the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife. And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren. And the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived. The children struggled together within her. And she said, if it is thus, why is this happening to me? So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb. Two peoples from within you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger. When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak. So they called his name Esau. Afterward, his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel. So his name was called Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them. Grass withers, flowers fade. The word of our God endures forever. Let's ask his blessing upon it, a moment of prayer. Lord, we pray tonight. that as we read these accounts of genealogies and the bearing of sons, that you would help us to grasp the spiritual significance therein. Speak to us powerfully through your word, and may your Holy Spirit be active in applying it to our lives. We look to you now in expectation and in hope that you will indeed do as we've asked. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen. Sharing the same family or even sharing the same parents does not always lead to the same outcome for good or for ill. And experience teaches us. Perhaps you can think of cases in your life where two children went in very opposite directions. Perhaps you can think of examples where siblings went in very different direction, a brother or a sister or a cousin, whoever. You can surely think of people in your life who had a very similar background to your own, but then they made very different decisions from you and went in a different direction, perhaps even walking away from the Lord. your common background, your common familial inheritance did not guarantee that you would have equal outcomes. And as readers of the Bible, we have no real reason to expect that that would be the case because the Bible demonstrates for us over and over again that coming from the same family does not necessarily mean that all the members of that family will end up the same sort of people. We've seen this on a number of occasions already in the book of Genesis. We'll see this both tonight and in other points in the book of Genesis. Think back to one of the very first examples we were given, the story of Cain and Abel. One presented an offering which the Lord accepted, the other didn't. And one became, in a moment, a murderer and killed his brother. One family, two sons, very different directions. And our text tonight provides us with a vivid illustration of this principle, because it confronts us with the disparate destinies of four men. I know there are more than four men mentioned in this passage, but really four are the focus. Isaac Ishmael, Jacob and Esau. It confronts us with the four destinies of four men who share a common ancestor. All can trace their lineage back to the great man of the faith, the great patriarch, the great recipient of the covenant, Abraham. And having now turned the page on Abraham's story, the spotlight in our text shifts to his sons and to his sons' sons. And as we see their diverging futures unfold, what we learn very quickly is that a sovereign God was overseeing and administering both the outworking and the application of his covenantal redemptive purposes. He would choose amongst these sons choosing to use some in the administration of the covenant while setting others aside. And all of this would be determined by his sovereign choice and his own goodwill. And since this really is a passage about diverging destinies between sons, we can divide our text into two simple parts. The first is in verses 12 through 18, where we see an account of Ishmael and his sons. And then in verses 19 through 26, when we find an account of Isaac and his sons. Those will be our two headings tonight. First, we come to Ishmael and his sons in verses 12 through 18. We read, beginning in verse 12, these are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Agar the Egyptian servant bore to Abraham. Now, if you've been with us in this series for some time and you have a keen memory, maybe you just took good notes, then that phrase, these are the generations of, ought to jump off the page at you. Because that is a phrase that we've seen on a number of occasions already in the book of Genesis. And as we've said in the past, these are the generations of marks a major section within the book. We find 10 of these in the book of Genesis. And so when we read about the generations of Ishmael, we are actually coming to what I think we can fairly call one of the major subdivisions of the book of Genesis, despite the fact that in Ishmael's case, it's only a few verses. This, however, is not baffling that Ishmael would be dealt with first and only briefly because it follows what is becoming a consistent pattern in the book of Genesis of dealing with the genealogy of the non-elect line prior to dealing with the genealogy of the elect line. Think about the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Think back to their genealogies. Entire chapters are devoted to them. But we get the genealogies of Japheth and Ham first, and then we come to the generations of Shem, and that's where the story's at. That's where the focus is at. So to here, we're going to deal with the generations of Ishmael, and then we're going to Samson. Because we've got to get to something better. but we come first to his sons. And what we receive in this major subsection of the book, which only covers a few verses, is a list of his sons, most of whom will not sound particularly noteworthy to us. Some of these names do occur other places in the Bible, but really none of these names are probably in your top 20 lists of Bible names you can think of. These are fairly, well, fairly hidden lives that are mentioned in short form. But what we do see is that among these names there are 12 And these are called 12 princes according to their tribes that Esau bears. And so though we cannot tonight say much about any of the individual sons, we can note the list and we can make a couple of important observations. What can we observe and even apply in looking at this list? Well, most importantly, we ought to observe as we look at this record of Ishmael's sons, that God was faithful to his word. Because despite the fact that Ishmael was rejected in the covenantal framework of God, the Lord had promised a couple of things to him. When the Lord met with Hagar out in the wilderness when she was fleeing, he promised to multiply Hagar's offspring. despite the fact that she only had Ishmael. That's chapter 16, verse 10. And then the Lord, in chapter 17, the Lord begins to make promises to Abraham, promises of a son, a son named Isaac, and Abraham says to the Lord, well, actually, that's okay. I've already got a son. His name's Ishmael. May he live before you. It was his way of kind of substituting Ishmael. The Lord said, no thanks. I've already got a plan, but I will bless Ishmael, I will make him fruitful, I will multiply him greatly, and I will cause him, very specific, to father 12 princes. That's chapter 17, verse 20. And so God is here, as we read this record, showing us that he kept those promises, even to rejected Ishmael. even to Hagar, who has kind of fallen out of the picture. And not only did the Lord bless Ishmael with these 12 sons, 12 princes of tribes, He blessed him with a long and prosperous life. We're told that he lived 137 years. Again, I keep reminding you that we are at this point in the book in that transitional period after the flood where life expectancies have greatly decreased from pre-flood ages, but they have not whittled down to what we're familiar to today. And so we're kind of in that transitional period. So he lived a nice long life, 137 years. And the Lord gave him a place, he gave him a dwelling, and his sons, he were located there to the southeast of the land of Canaan, over against his kinsmen, verse 18 tells us. And so there in that land, they live a, we're led to believe, fairly prosperous, happy life, though separated from Abraham's seed. 12 sons, long life. It's what God gave Ishmael. And this is, I think, instructive for us because it shows us a few things that are relevant to our own life. First being this, if God kept his word regarding the rejected son of a slave woman, then that ought to comfort us that he will surely be faithful to his children. If God was faithful, if he was trustworthy, if he kept his word in respect to the outcasts, how much more will he keep his word in respect to those whom he has gathered into his own household, to those that he's called adopted children, members and citizens of the church and his kingdom? And yet, even amid that encouragement, we hear a bit of a warning. And it's this, that God's common grace gifts, and that's what Lord showed Ishmael. He showed him grace. He showed him mercy. He gave him many good things, things that he didn't deserve. It was gracious of him. God's common grace gifts, though, do not necessarily entail saving grace. Just because someone has experienced an abundance of common grace in the Lord's kindness, it does not mean that they have experienced saving grace. We find here a very interesting phrase in verse 17. We are told that Ishmael breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people. Now, if you'll recall, a few weeks ago, Or maybe it was even last week. Time flies. Or maybe I go slow. Anyways, whenever we talked about the death of Abraham, we noted that he was gathered to his people. And we interpreted that as a statement about the destination, not of Abraham's body into the familial tomb, but the destination of his soul to heaven. He was gathered to his people prior to the burial of his body. And so we interpret that as a reference to his entrance into glory. Now we are told that Ishmael was gathered to his people. So that raises a very interesting question, which is, did we get it wrong when we interpreted it that way in respect to Abraham? Did we get it wrong when we said that Ishmael was not an inheritor of the spiritual blessings, or did we get it wrong about what this phrase meant altogether? And I think the answer to that question is none of the above. I think the answer to that question is that Ishmael was indeed gathered to his people. But what has the book of Genesis labored for us other than the fact that Ishmael's people was not the covenant people. Ishmael's people was not the covenant people. And so in Ishmael's case, his gathering to his people was not necessarily a good thing. He was gathered to his people in his death. But unlike in Abraham's case, I don't think we have a whole lot of reason to believe that it was a gathering into glory. You see, though outwardly prosperous, Ishmael is, he's really kind of set aside after this point in the biblical narrative in order to consider those who have received more than common grace. We're going to move into the story about God's saving grace as it is applied and administered through Isaac. We're dealing now with the common grace to Ishmael, which the Lord gave to him very faithfully, but it's limits. probably became apparent to Ishmael and his sons, though some of them may have come to know the Lord. Many of them probably died learning that there was a limit to the value of what they had received. And so if you have received the kindness of God in receiving the grace of the gospel, then you should give thanks for that kindness. But don't mistake easy living for eternal life. Don't think that the Lord's favor rests upon you just because life has gone good and things outwardly seem okay. The two don't always go together. Common grace, saving grace, they don't always track together. And so if you have received God's grace in the gospel, you may have far more than those who have received the greater share of God's common grace. Because the saving grace is always more valuable. And the story of Ishmael reminds us of that fact. And just like that, there's a handful of verses, the generations of Ishmael are over. Because when we come to verse 19, the narrative of Genesis switches to the story of Isaac and his sons. You read verse 19, these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. New section in the book of Genesis. This one, much longer than the last. New, much longer section of the book. These are the generation of Isaac, Abraham's son. Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, the Aramean of Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban, the Aramean, to be his wife. That's a quick summary of the story we read at much greater length in Genesis chapter 24. The Lord gave miraculous birth to Isaac, and then Isaac was married off when he was 40 years old to Rebekah, as the servant went to Mesopotamia, brought her back to be his wife. But what we learn here is that while Ishmael had many sons, Rebekah, well, she had a lot more common with her mother-in-law. She was barren. She was barren like Sarah. And Isaac shows himself in that instance to be a man of faith because he prayed, we're told, for his wife. And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren. God, very interestingly, he blessed Ishmael with all these sons, but then with the one who is actually the child of promise, the one upon whom his favor does rest, he allows him to face a trial that was not experienced by Ishmael. He allows Jacob, excuse me, he allows Isaac to walk the more difficult path. And Isaac and Rebecca with him, he could have grown bitter. Why does my half-brother have all these sons? Why does everything good happen to him? Lord, why am I even following you? Why do I even have the covenant? Why do I even have the promises if you're going to make me be the one that suffers? Or maybe we ought to trade places. Ishmael can have these promises. Just give me the children. But that's not what he does. No, Isaac is a man of faith. He has received the covenant. He has received the promises. And so he's going to walk in the light of that covenant, and he is going to please with the Lord. He's going to trust. And he, more than anybody in the whole world, knew that it was never too late to God to open a barren womb. He was living proof that it was so. So we have every reason to believe that he prayed with great confidence. and trust in the Lord. And what did the Lord do? Well, the Lord displayed his power again, just as he had done in the life of Abraham and Sarah, by giving life and children to the barren womb of Rebekah. And the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebekah, his wife, conceived. Happy day. What they'd always wanted. A beautiful moment in their life. And yet, as is so often the case, when we get what we want from the Lord, sometimes it brings greater challenges than we were bargaining for. And such was the case with Rebecca, especially. Because verse 22 explains that, having conceived, the children struggled within her. And she said, if it is us, why is this happening to me? And so she went to inquire of the Lord. The delight of conception quickly gave way to the realities of a difficult pregnancy. The children, it says, were struggling together within her. That language is somewhat vague, but it is a very violent language. It can almost be translated in some cases as things which are ramming into each other, slamming into each other. She doesn't know it immediately, but she has twins inside of her, twin boys, and those boys are struggling together within the womb. The language is that of violence, the language of tumult. And we can imagine that this left her in great pain, in great pain and discomfort. And so she cries out to the Lord. She goes to the Lord looking for clarity. We prayed so long. This is what we always wanted. But if it's going to be like this, why is this even happening to me? Why did you give this if this is what's going to be the result? And we don't know how the Lord did it or even how she went and spoke to the Lord in this way, but we know that the Lord spoke to her back in return. And he clarifies the nature of the discomfort that she was feeling. He instills it with great significance and meaning. We find this meaning explained in verse 23. And the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other. The older shall serve the younger. Now this may have raised more questions than it answered. But it did answer some questions. What's happening? Well, there are not just one child in your womb, there are two. So you're gonna be twins. And these two twins will represent and do represent something much bigger than themselves. These are two nations in your womb. These are two peoples in your womb. And the struggle that they were experiencing in the womb was simply the anticipation of the struggle to come. This would not be their last wrestling match. No, they would be, as the Lord says, divided from one another. They would be divided. Ultimately, the Lord here decrees that the younger child would grow stronger and stronger, though initially seeming weaker. He would go stronger and he would triumph over his older brother. And we know from the rest of Scripture that this would happen when eventually Jacob's descendants, Israel, got the upper hand over the descendants of Esau, Edomites. Two peoples locked in conflict with one another within the womb of Rebecca. And at the end of the day, the winner would be the one unexpected. Now, how Rebecca took this, we don't know. We're not told. I'm not sure if this was comforting or not. But she saw the rest of the pregnancy through. And soon enough, they were born. When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. And we read some very interesting descriptions of these boys, which are, well, indicative of the sort of men that they're going to become. We read the firstborn Esau came out red, hold his body like a hairy cloak. Now, I can't even really picture that. I don't know what sort of medical condition would cause a hairy red baby. But that's what we're told happened in his case. Must have been very peculiar looking child. But they call his name Esau. Related sound to the word red. Very on brand. And then following him, we have a second boy named Jacob. And he gets that name also from something that happens at his birth. Afterward, his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel. Now that's hard to picture too, but it happened. And so his name was called Jacob, which again sounds like a Hebrew phrase for he who grabs the heel on brand. And so we see these two sons that Rebecca has conceived and carried with more difficulty than Ishmael's sons have been born, as far as we know. And we see that these boys are going to be locked in conflict from the day before they're born, then on the day of their birth, and for many years to follow. They will both go on to impact redemptive history, God's outworking of his plan down through the ages. And yet, they are not going to affect that history in the same way. Paul tells us this in the book of Romans, that that distinction between the older and the younger and the younger getting the upper hand over the older, that's not mere coincidence. God here, even before the birth of Esau and Jacob, is going to sovereignly choose to privilege the younger boy over the older. And he's going to grant spiritual blessing as he had done to Isaac before, primarily to Jacob. Only one of these two twins is going to extend the line of promise that marched down through the ages, covenant succession, and the movement towards the offspring of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent. And Paul notes very explicitly that Abraham's offspring were first named through Isaac in contrast to Ishmael. And then God elected only one of Isaac's sons to be the son and heir of promise. And he does this not according to merit, but according to his sovereign good pleasure. He would have mercy on Jacob and he would harden Esau to accomplish his purposes and to glorify himself. He could have done it otherwise. He did not. Only Jacob would father the covenant people of God. Israel, from whom the Messiah, the serpent crusher, would come. The Lord was displaying in this announcement to Rebecca, though she did not know it, the people from whom the Christ would come. The younger triumphing over the older. And this, just like the genealogy of Ishmael, this also teaches us some lessons that we ought to walk away with tonight. First of all, just as the supremacy of Isaac over Ishmael teaches us about the priority of saving grace over common grace, So also the prophesied promotion of Jacob over Esau reveals to us that even within that realm of sovereign grace, God is the one who sovereignly dispenses that grace. We get two different lessons from these two different sets because think about it. The choice of Isaac over Ishmael is Within the context of the story, it's heart-wrenching that Abraham has to send it off, but it has some logic to it. I mean, as the genealogy has noted, Ishmael was the son of the slave woman. He was not the son that God had promised. He is not the son that God had commanded him to bear. This was the result of a maverick move on the part of Sarah and Abraham. And so it is not all that surprising to us that at the end of the day, the Lord says, no, no, no, that was not my plan. I'm going with Isaac. He's the one I've promised, said Ishmael's son. But again, there's a different lesson to be learned in the case of Jacob and Esau because these children are both a promise to the Lord, the generations that the Lord has promised to the descendants of Abraham. These are both born of the same father, the son of promise Isaac, and these are both born of the same mother. And yet the Lord distinguishes between the two. It is not understandable in the same way the choice of Isaac over Ishmael is. The Lord is showing mercy on whomever he wills, and he is hardening whomever he wills. And while this does at times confuse us, does boggle the mind why the Lord would choose any of us at all? It boggles the mind. But it ought to lead us, the fact that he does, to give thanks that he does have a plan. And it's not our job to fully understand it. It's not our job to fully comprehend it. It's not our job to discern what's going to happen with every single individual. No, it's our job to give thanks, knowing that he does have a plan. And it is our job to be humble, knowing that if he chose to redeem you, it is not for anything in you. The choice of Jacob over Esau was not about something inherently better in Jacob than what was better in Esau. No, that's not what it was about. It was about God glorifying himself. Does not the Apostle Paul tell us that very thing, as we have read in Romans chapter nine? He refers to this story between Jacob and Esau. Not only so, he says, 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 have I loved, Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means. He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. And then as he walks through the logic of that and he begins to apply questions to this reality, he finally comes to the question, why would the Lord do this? Why would the Lord make two vessels out of the same lump and use one for noble purposes and destroy one? Verse 22 of Romans chapter 9, what if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. You see, the Lord chose Jacob and not Esau. not because one was more deserving than the other. The Lord endured and bore up with patience the existence of Esau the sinner, of Esau the rebel, whose heart was hard, in order that he might show mercy and thus glorify himself through saving Jacob, who is going to turn out in many cases to be quite a scoundrel. The Lord, in making this decision, glorifies himself both in his justice and in his mercy. And so if he has indeed chosen you, once again, we say it's not for anything in you. Humble yourself and rejoice and trust that just as God brought about his plan for these two sons, It did come to pass. God didn't say this and then something else happened. No, he said it. He meant it. He did it. And if God did that with them, then we can trust that he will also deal with the spiritual offspring of these two boys appropriately. Through Isaac shall Abraham's offspring be named. And we might add, and through Jacob will Abraham's offspring be named. And if you are in that son of Abraham, that son of Isaac, that son of Jacob, the Lord Jesus Christ, if you have trusted in him that came from this very family, then you can trust that you too, though a sinner, shall be made a recipient of his covenant. and a member of his family, one to whom he has purposed to show mercy, bringing glory to himself. And yet there stands the opposite warning that those who do not come to Christ, who do not accept him, receive him and rest upon him faith, those who do not look to his cross and his empty tomb for the source of their life, they will be one day as Esau, hated of God, vessels of destruction, prepared for wrath. God sovereignly administers to whom he will show saving grace, and he does what he wishes. But it is, as I've already said, it's not our responsibility to discern the blueprint. It is not our ability, it is not our responsibility to seek to know the secret mind of the Lord. What our responsibility is, is to obey the revealed will of God. And the revealed will of God is the way, it says to us that the way that you know that you are among God's people and have indeed inherited with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. So flee sin. flee the inheritance and heritage of Esau, Nishmael, and like Isaac, and like Jacob, turn to the Lord that you might be saved. He will do it. He keeps His promises faithfully, even to the undeserving. Thanks be to God. Let's pray.