thank them. Genesis chapter 27, brothers and sisters, this is the word of God, so let us take heed and be careful how we hear, knowing that with the measure we use, it will be measured to us and still more will be graciously added unto us. When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau, his older son, and said to him, my son. And he answered, here I am, He said, Behold, I am old. I do not know the day of my death. Now then take your weapons, your quiver and your bow and go out to the field and hunt game for me and prepare for me delicious food such as I love and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die. Now, Rebecca was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebecca said to her son Jacob, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, bring me game and prepare for me delicious food that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord before I die. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. And you shall bring it to your father to eat so that he may bless you before he dies. But Jacob said to Rebekah, his mother, behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth man. Perhaps my father will feel me and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse upon myself and not a blessing. And his mother said to him, let your curse be on me, my son. Only obey my voice and go bring them to me. So he went and took them and brought them to his mother and his mother prepared delicious food such as his father loved. Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau, her older son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob, her younger son, and the skins of the young goats she put on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. And she put the delicious food and the bread which she had prepared into the hand of her son Jacob. So he went in to his father and said, My father, and he said, Here I am, Who are you, my son? And Jacob said to his father, I am Esau, your firstborn. I've done as you told me. Now sit up and eat of my game that your soul may bless me. But Isaac said to his son, How is it that you found it so quickly, my son? And he answered, Because the Lord your God has granted me success. And then Isaac said to Jacob, Oh, please come near that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you're really my son Esau or not. So Jacob went near to Isaac, his father, who felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. He said, Are you really my son Esau? He answered, I am. And then he said, bring it near to me that I may eat of my son's game and bless you. So he brought it near to him and he ate and he brought him wine and he drank. And then his father Isaac said to him, come near and kiss me my son. So he came near and kissed him and Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, see the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that my Lord is blessed. May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac, his father, Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting. He also prepared delicious food and brought it to his father. And he said to his father, let my father arise and eat of his son's game that you may bless me. And his father Isaac said to him, who are you? And he answered, I'm your son. You're firstborn, Esau. Then Isaac trembled very violently and said, who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me? And I ate it all before you came and I've blessed him. Yes, and he shall be blessed. As soon as Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, bless me, even me also, oh my father. But he said, your brother came deceitfully and he's taken away your blessing. And Esau said, is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me of these two times. He took away my birthright, and behold, now he's taken away my blessing. Then he said, have you not reserved a blessing for me? And Isaac answered and said to Esau, behold, I have made him Lord over you and all his brothers, and I've given him for servants. And with grain and wine I have sustained him. What then can I do for you, my son? And Esau said to his father, Have you but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. And then Isaac, his father, answered and said to him, Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall be your dwelling place, and away from the dew of heaven on high. By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from your neck. Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him. And Esau said to himself, the days of mourning for my father are approaching. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. But the words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob, her younger son, and said to him, behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice, arise, flee to Laban, my brother in Haran, and stay with him a while until your brother's fury turns away, until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day? Then Rebekah said to Isaac, I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me? Here ends the reading of God's holy word, and to his name be praise. Let's pray together. Oh Father, I pray that as we consider this stolen blessing, we would see through it the blessing won by the Lord Jesus Christ and freely given to any and all who look to Him in faith. And give us such faith, O Lord, to look to the Lord Jesus, Your first and only begotten, sinless Son, our Savior. For it's in His name we pray. Amen. Well, maybe some of you remember the report From 1990, it was in the midnight hours of St. Patrick's Day of that same year, a fire alarm went off in Boston's Gardner Museum. When the security guard went to investigate, he found no fire and he found no smoke. So he believed that the security system must be defective and the alarm was false. And so he shut it all down. Well, a few minutes later, the guard heard a buzz at the door. And he looked into the monitor and saw on the security camera two police officers who said that they were responding to the tripped alarm. And so the guard buzzed them in and they began patrolling the building. But moments later, the museum guard was handcuffed in the basement because these two men weren't cops, but crooks in disguise. Their uniforms and hats and badges and belts, even their mustaches were all fake. And after the thieves had their run of the museum, they disappeared into the night with $500 million of stolen art. To this day, you can go to Boston and see the empty frames still hanging on the wall in the Gardner Museum as a memorial to the greatest unsolved art heist in history. It seems to me that at its heart, Genesis 27 is itself a story of a great heist. The hairy heist, I call it. It's all here, isn't it? Conspiracy, deception, a disguise, even fake hair. But unlike the Gardner Museum art heist, we know the identity of the crooks. And sadly, we know that what they stole is infinitely more valuable than anything Rembrandt or Van Gogh could have ever imagined. If you've been with us over the course of our study of the book of Genesis, you remember that back in Genesis 25, the way in which the Lord opened the barren and closed womb of Isaac's wife, Rebecca, and enabled her the power to conceive twins. It's said that some women glow when they're pregnant, But Rebecca was not one of those ladies. She wasn't glowing. The Bible says she was groaning because God had determined to make her twins within enemies. God chose Jacob the younger over Esau the older to don the patriarchal mantle of Isaac and Abraham. But how would this counter-cultural reversal, the younger over the older, take place. Well, God superintended the sins of Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and Esau to bring His good and holy, just and perfect will to bear in their lives and in redemptive history. First, Jacob, stole Esau's birthright, which according to Deuteronomy 25, was a double portion of the inheritance designated for the firstborn. So maybe that's why in chapter 27 verse 1, isn't it interesting that Esau isn't referred to anymore as the firstborn, because he gave up that right. to Jacob, you see. No, now he's referred to as the oldest son. And now in chapter 27, Jacob sets his sights on a bigger score and a higher prize, the patriarchal blessing, which God had promised to him from the womb. What we see in our text and what I hope to show you with the Spirit's help tonight, that the ends never justify the means and that God's people must receive God's blessings God's way. That you can only receive the blessings of God that your soul was created to crave and to seek God's way. Well, Genesis 27 has the three basic parts of a good heist, a plan, a crime, and a getaway, and we'll consider the text under those three headings. First, the plan. You can see it in your own mind's eye as the house lights come down. A single spotlight shines its beam upon an old man in a bed. It's Isaac. And as we zoom in and look closer, we see that the years of his long life have clouded his eyes and made them dim. And it's no surprise to Isaac who, it seems, can hear the approaching footfall of his own imminent death. And so, wishing to leave nothing undone and nothing unsaid, he summoned Esau and then sent him away with a list of commands. Verse 3, take your weapons, your quiver, your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me and prepare for me delicious food such as I love and bring it to me so that I may eat and so that my soul may bless you before I die. What was this blessing? More than southern pleasantries, Bless you, bless your heart, which we know in the South are as much a curse as they are a blessing sometimes. This blessing is also more than a prayer request. It's more than an ask. No, this blessing is a prophetic promise. It is a binding benediction. If the birthright that we considered previously transferred the material inheritance intended for the firstborn Esau to Jacob. This blessing transfers the spiritual inheritance intended for the firstborn Esau to the younger Jacob. Blessings were a unique feature of Old Testament patriarchal Christianity. We'll see them again in Genesis 49 as Jacob blesses each of his sons, but the chief blessing falls to Judah from whom the scepter shall not depart. A promise we know is gloriously realized in the rise of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. But there's a more basic foundational question that we ought to be asking ourselves. Why would Isaac bless Esau? Surely he knew the Lord's oracle, the older will serve the younger. He knew that Esau was also a wicked and a carnal man who sold his birthright for what? A bowl of soup? And at the end of Genesis 26 we read, he took not one pagan wife, but two pagan wives that made the lives of his parents bitter. Then why on earth would Isaac crown Esau with this blessing and the covenant headship that is transferred by it? Because, as we've seen before, Isaac's blindness is not merely physical, is it? Isaac's blindness is also spiritual. Why would Isaac insist on giving this patriarchal blessing to a scoundrel of a man like Esau? Well, because that scoundrel was his favorite son. Esau was Isaac's favorite. And Esau, perhaps the reason Esau was Isaac's favorite, is he knew the direct route to his father's heart through his belly. You remember back in Genesis 25 verse 28, we read Uncomfortably, starkly, Isaac loved Esau. Why? Well, because he ate of his game. Simple as that. And so we can see Esau bounding off into the wilderness, locked and loaded, ready to hunt and kill and cook like Keith Kibler on the first day of deer season. But we see someone else in this scene scurrying away from the shadows of Isaac's tent. Can you see her? It's Isaac's wife, Rebekah, who it seems has been lurking in the backdrop, dropping eaves the whole time. Where's she off to in such a hurry? She's off to inform her favorite son, Jacob. It's interesting to note in verses five and six, Esau is referred to as his son. And Jacob is referred to as her son. Just to drive that point home a little more. In 1882, a widow named Mary Surratt opened a boarding house in Washington, D.C. where, as we all know and history would show, she made some very unsavory friends like one Confederate sympathizing actor named John Wilkes Booth. And so together, They hatched a plot to assassinate the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and Mary Surratt's boarding house became a den of thieves and a cave of conspirators. It served as their unofficial headquarters. There, Mary Surratt passed messages between the conspirators. She stored their weapons and she even held secret clandestine meetings. But after Lincoln's death, she was found guilty. Her crime found her out, conspiring with her murderous co-defendants. And so she was sentenced to hang beside them and share in their fate. She was the first woman executed by the United States federal government. And I dare say Mary Surratt would have loved Rebecca in Genesis 27. Because Rebecca is more than an informant, isn't she? She's doing more than just transmitting information. Rebecca is the chief conspirator. Jacob may have been the muscle, but Rebecca was the brains of the operation. Jacob may have been the trigger man, but Rebecca was driving the car. Though Jacob's name means cheater, it looks like he got it good and honest from his mama. Rebecca turned out to be the Cracker Jack con artist, a real chess master playing eight deep. And if we fast forward to verse 14, we see she's forged Esau's stew. She's also dressed Jacob in an Esau disguise. And since Esau was such a furry fellow, she took the fresh goat skins belonging presumably to the meat in the pot and drape them upon Jacob's silky smooth arms and neck. And since Esau was a musky, odorous woodsman, she dressed Jacob in Esau's pungent clothing. And she's so confident that they're going to be able to fool poor old blind Isaac that she assures Jacob that if they don't get away with this crime, if they get caught, verse 13, let your curse be on me. It's interesting the way in which she totally backs out of that at the end of the text, isn't it? When she tells Jacob that he needs to run away from Esau, verse 45, until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him. You all by yourself. I had nothing to do with it. How tragic. Doesn't it break your heart? Don't you hate the way in which we are emotionally ragdolled between admiration for this family on the one hand and then detestation on the other hand. How tragic. When a Christian home is a house divided. How tragic. When a Christian home becomes a trustless den of secrets and shadows, of locked doors, of passwords, deleted texts, of cleared internet histories, stashed contraband lies, deception, and gaslighting. Brothers and sisters, I am convinced that our homes cannot and will never be free from the shadow of falsehood until they are irradiated with the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And you might be thinking to yourself, well, how can I do that? I want to do that. How can I irradiate my home with the gospel of Jesus Christ? Ask yourself, when my spouse confesses sin, do I forgive them? Or, do I drag them through the broken glass of a guilt trip? Do I broadcast their failures to others and bludgeon them with an endless recital of their record of past wrongs? Do I sting them with a silent treatment? Or, do I irradiate my home and conflict as they arise with the light of the Gospel? forgiveness and love and grace and mercy that I as a sinner so desperately need and have so freely received from the hands of Jesus Christ. We parents can ask ourselves similar questions. How can I irradiate my home with the light of the gospel so my kids can be honest and transparent with me and let me in? And I don't say any of these as someone who's got all the answers figured out, but as someone who hopes these are the right answers with young children in the home, looking to you older mothers and fathers and covenant grandmothers and grandfathers to show us the way, show us biblically what worked and what didn't work. Parents, when your children fall into sin and fail you, do you shame them? Do you make them feel all alone in their filth? Or do you lovingly discipline them and set them on the right course and scoop them up into your arms and remind them of your unconditional love and the cross of Jesus Christ? And how even this sin was paid for in His blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior! And do you pray with them? Do you commiserate with them as a fellow sinner? Do you allow your children? To see you recognize your own fault and weakness and dependence on grace? Do you promise to never bring it up again? No, I believe our homes will never be free from the shadows of secrecy and falsehood until they are irradiated with the glorious light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God help us unto that end. Well, next, we see that Isaac and Rebecca's plan is executed to perfection. in their crime of the century. Can you see Jacob standing in the door of Isaac's tent? He looks ridiculous, doesn't he? He's wearing big brother Esau's clothes like a toddler in daddy's loafers and draping dress shirt. The bloody skins of freshly slaughtered goats are plastered to his arms, hands, and to his neck. And he's holding a forged stew that his mommy made for him. And he's looking upon his dear, old, poor, blind, dying father. And then maybe in the best Esau voice he could muster up, he says in verse 18, my father. It's interesting what Isaac says in response there in verse 18. He says, Who are you, my son? There's only two of them. Who are you, my son? Now the Lord has kindly blessed us all with five senses by which we can experience the wonders of the world He has made. He lets us see it and hear it and feel it and smell it and taste it. How kind of God to bless us with these senses. And since Isaac's eyes are gone, he has four senses left by which to investigate. So far, Jacob has failed the hearing test. He doesn't sound like Esau. Elsewhere, Isaac says the voice is Jacob's. Next, Isaac administers the touch test in verse 21 Please come near that I may feel you my son to know whether you are really my son Esau or not now Esau must have been a real Sasquatch an absolute Teen Wolf of a man because these goatskins do the trick imagine that to rub your hand over an animal's pelt and with your eyes closed and say, Esau? An absolute high tea beast of a man. The kind of guy who gets five o'clock shadow by 10 a.m. So Isaac moves on to the taste test in verse 24. Are you really my son Esau? And he answered, I am. Then he said, bring it near to me the stew that I may eat of my son's game and bless you." And so he brought it near to him and he ate and he brought him wine and he drank. Rebecca's counterfeit crockpot was close enough, wasn't it, to fool the patriarch's palate? And then last but not least comes the smell test. Scientists say that smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. We remember smells, don't we? You husbands could pick out your wife's perfume or shampoo from a lineup of a thousand smells. You children will remember for the rest of your life, or at least recognize it when you smell it, what your father's car smells like. Esau had a smell And Jacob knew it. And Isaac could recognize it anywhere, even if he couldn't see it. Verse 26. Then his father Isaac said to him, come near and kiss me, my son. Wasn't the veneer of affection and intimacy just turn your stomach? It was Rebecca's intimate knowledge of what her husband loves. having learned him over the course of a life she used that knowledge to betray him with this food and now the father dying blind father asks for a hug and a kiss from his son and the mother and the son knowing that he would prepare for such an occasion and put on Esau's pungent clothes so he came nearer verse 27 and he kissed him and Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him. We've heard the elements of this blessing that follows in verses 27, 28, and 29 many times before. This is the same covenantal blessing of prosperity and protection and property and progeny that God had bestowed upon Abraham in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 and Genesis 17 and in Genesis 22. These blessings and promises are the refrain of the book of Genesis. And as God promised and as God predestined that Jacob now has become the new patriarch God's ambassador on the earth, the leader of the church which would be called the house of Jacob, the head of the nation which would bear his name, Israel. Now if Jacob's sin was the appointed means by which God would fulfill his plan, is Jacob still guilty of the long list of offenses he's committed in this chapter? Have you been keeping score? Is Jacob still guilty of taking the Lord's name in vain? of dishonoring his father, of coveting his brother's blessing, of stealing that which belonged to another, and then of lying to cover his tracks? Or maybe another way to ask the question is, do righteous ends justify wretched means. May we do evil that good may come from it. Paul asked a very similar question in the face of this doctrine of election and the sovereignty of God to the Christians in Rome. And his answer was an unequivocal, certainly not. Why, Romans 3.8, And why not do evil that good may come as some people slanderously charge us with saying? Their condemnation is just. Those people who say, let's do evil that good may come from it, Paul says, they ought to be condemned justly. No, God's ability to bring His good and holy will to bear through sin does in no way minimize the sinfulness of sin. but rather it maximizes the sovereign power and heavenly brilliance of a God who is able to superintend not just Rebecca and Jacob's evil, but even your wicked deeds and sins to bring about His holy purposes. Brothers and sisters, this ought to be a source of great comfort to you. Not a license to sin, but a source of great comfort when we do sin And when we wonder if I've finally done it, if I finally out-sinned the love of God for me, if I finally drained the reservoirs of His mercy, if I have finally and irrevocably strayed from God's plan for my life. No, it is very good news to us that God is able to bring His goodwill to bear through Not just despite, but through our sins. And that our own wickedness cannot thwart God's good and holy plan for our lives and eternal destinies. And so I say to you, if you're struggling with that tonight, take heart! His grace is greater than all our sins. Well, I believe that Jacob and Rebekah did what they did, at least in part, because they wanted the blessings which God had promised, but like Abraham and Sarah who looked to Hagar, they were unwilling to wait on the Lord. And you and I face the very same temptation. We believe, I think we do, we believe that in God's presence is fullness of joy and at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore. And we want those pleasures. But when we are unwilling to wait patiently for them and to receive those pleasures, those blessings, in God's good timing, we break out and we sinfully seize them. Reminds me of C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. It's a fictitious collection of correspondence between a senior demon and a junior demon. And the senior demon writes to the junior demon, never forget, that when we're dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the enemy's ground. He's talking about God. I know, writes the senior demon, we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is his invention, not ours. He made pleasures. All our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do, says one demon to another, is encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our enemy, God above, has produced at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. So we return to the major proposition of tonight's sermon. God's people must receive God's blessing God's way. Is it wealth? financial security that you want. There's nothing wrong with wanting money. We know that there is something wrong with loving money, or wanting money too much, or making money your master, for you can only serve one. But the Proverbs say that a good man leaves an inheritance to his children. We know that it was a wealthy centurion that built the synagogue in Capernaum, in which Jesus preached. There's nothing wrong, inherently, with money. Indeed, any money that you have is a gift of God. How are we to go about, in obedience to the Eighth Commandment, seeking the improvement and establishment of our own estates and the estates of our neighbors? Well, God has promised To bless honest, hard work, and fiscal responsibility, and self-denial, and faithful tithing. That's how we're to pursue that promise, that blessing that God offers. What about pleasure? Sexual intimacy? God has invented it. God has attached warning labels and instructions to it, and He's promised to bless our sincere pursuit of chastity, and bless the undefiled marriage bed. That's how He's promised we can pursue that blessing, and with His help find it. Is it honor that you want? Esteem and influence? God has promised to honor the one, not who takes it selfishly, to wield it and lord it, to build His own kingdom and promote His own glory? No, God has promised to honor the one who honors Him. And to exalt the one who is humble. Is it power that you're after? Well, God has promised to bless the meek. Those are those who are strong, yes, but their strength is under control, bound by the fetters of the Holy Spirit. And to the one who's been faithful over a little, God's promised to entrust more, little by little. What about peace? Deep peace within? What about contentment? What about forgiveness and freedom from your sins? What about the power to live a good and holy life and to make changes in your own behaviors and thought patterns? What about purpose? Is it missional clarity you're after? Who am I? Where have I come from? What am I doing? And where am I going? Well, brothers and sisters, if these are the blessings you seek, you can only get God's blessings, God's ways. And He has told you, you will find these only and ever by coming to Jesus Christ in faith. Jesus alone is the one who gives you peace. Jesus alone is the one in whom you can find the forgiveness of your sins. Not more effort, not more deadly works, but by looking to faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who tells you where you come from, and who you are, and whose you are, and the purpose of your life, and where you're going. Well, this brings us at last to the getaway. Every good heist has the plan, the crime and finally the getaway. Jacob got what he came for and so he makes off like the bandit that he is. Soon he'll be on the road headed north to Uncle Laban's house to hide out and wait for the hurricane of Esau's fury to pass. Why? Well because no sooner the blessing does Esau emerge from the wilderness with some slain beast over his shoulder, unaware, utterly oblivious to what's just taken place in Isaac's tent. And after preparing his father's favorite stew, he goes bounding into the tent, and we read there in verse 31, let my father arise and eat of his son's game that you may bless me." Well, friends, I don't think anything in the world could have prepared Esau for what his father says next there in verse 32. Who are you? The blessing is gone. Your brother Jacob deceived me, pretended to be you, and he stole it all away. And when Esau heard these words, I appreciate how honest the text is with us, it always is. In verse 34 we read, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry. Elsewhere we read that he wept. Father, have you nothing left for me? He asks multiple times, surely there's some blessing left for me, surely you won't send me away empty-handed. And Isaac says, essentially, only a curse, my son, only a curse. Oh, beloved, there's something else here, isn't there? Something familiar? There's something dear here. The motions of this story trace the motions of another. I suggest to you, the motions of this story trace the motions of the gospel itself. And you are Jacob, standing before your Father to receive the blessings intended for His firstborn son, your elder brother Jesus Christ. But since Jesus has loved you and given Himself for you, the all-seeing eyes of your Father have been shut to your sin. He cannot, no, He will not look upon your guilt and shame. He is blind to them. And as your Father embraces you in the beloved Lord Jesus, He feels in His everlasting arms, not Jim the liar, not Jim the prideful, Jim the boasting, Jim the lusting, Jim the gossiping, Jim the gluttonous, Jim the covetous, Jim the idolatrous wretch that He is. He feels His very own cherished Christ. Then as the Father breathes in the fragrance of your life, He doesn't smell the melting rubber and the burning sulfur of your sins. He smells the pleasing aroma of the righteous robes of Jesus Christ that have been draped upon you. And instead of a cauldron of bubbling sewage that is your weak attempt at goodness, Jesus has put in your sinful hands His very own savory perfection and delicious righteousness that delights His Father as nothing and no one else can. And then God speaks to you, not words of condemnation that you deserve, but words of commendation which Jesus your elder brother won Well done, he says to you, and you know you have not done well. But in the gospel, he says it to you, well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. But the scene was very different on that hill outside of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, was it not? When he The firstborn, our older brother, the eternally begotten and eternally beloved son of God, came and stood before his father atop that hill, which means the skull. It's as if God said to him what Isaac said to Esau. Who are you? Who are you? For in that moment of agony, Jesus was so disfigured, yes in His body, but in His soul, by your sin and by my sin, His own Father could not and would not recognize Him. He whose eyes were too pure and holy to look upon sin, turned his face away. The Bible doesn't say that explicitly, but we know it happened because of what the Bible does say explicitly, because of what Jesus said and what Jesus felt when the favor of his father's face turned away from him. My God, my God, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, why have you forsaken me? And all that was left for Jesus on the cross was a curse. Cursed as anyone hanged upon a tree. And this is no legal fiction. God's not pretending for the sake of grace that you're somebody who you're not. This is the righteousness and justice of imputation. This is real. That in Jesus Christ we are not only declared righteous, but we are constituted as righteous. That means all of the righteous merit and goodness of Jesus Christ is transferred to your account in heaven's eyes. when you will only find the blessing of God in the cursing of Jesus Christ for you on the cross. Do you believe this? Well, then come in faith to Jesus and receive God's blessing, God's way. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for our elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, And we thank you, O Lord, that in him no blessing was stolen, but rather one was freely given as a gift of love to his people. And I do pray, O Lord, that you would give us such faith tonight that we would reach out and take hold of the gift once more. And that we would fix our eyes upon the Lord Jesus Christ, looking full in His lovely face. And as we do, O Lord, we pray that the things of this earth would go strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. We thank you, O Lord, for the cross and curse of Christ and the blessing of forgiveness and freedom that are found only in Him. May we find them in Him.