Hebrews - Back to the Burning Bush Report #7 The Awful Truth – biblical heroes are satanically flawed…and yet
The account of Moses’s distraction by a bush that appeared to be burning but never consumed is well known. The initial distraction quickly transformed into a holy encounter with God, Moses removed his shoes and walked barefoot on holy ground.
This is as typical as it is unique. Something gets our attention and before we know it, we’re grappling with a depth of thought that carries us towards God…or God comes close to us.
I’m reading through Hebrews in the New Testament (my money is on Paul as the author, but the authorship isn’t known).
This series is like a journalist reporting on scenes he’s been sent to comment on.
Report #7 – The Awful Truth
‘…godless…Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright…afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected…he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.’ 12v16,17
When I was challenged to examine the evidence for the existence of Jesus and the resurrection and to read the New Testament, I was shocked by what I found. Apart from Jesus, none of his followers, especially Peter, were written up favourably. There was no airbrushing. Pride, fear, arrogance, lying, betrayal, cowardice, bitterness…you name it, it’s writ large in the ‘saints’ of the Old and New Testaments.
In Hebrews, we find reference to the sorry tale of Esau.
In the Old testament God is referred to as ‘The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’.
Isaac’s firstborn son was Esau, who, therefore, was in line to inherit the promises and blessings of God to Abraham of the formation of a new nation. But Jacob (later renamed Israel), his twin brother, who had been born moments after Esau, usurped him…twice. First to give up his birthright and then, when Isaac was dying, out of his inheritance and blessings.
The real criminals in this story are Jacob and his mother Rebekah. The bible reveals both as conniving deceivers.
Genesis 25 records that after the twins were born ‘the boys grew. Esau was a skilful hunter. Jacob was mild. Isaac loved Esau but Rebekah loved Jacob’. That love for Jacob, twisted itself into rebellion, deceit, and selfish ambition.
Family life was not harmonious: ‘When Esau was forty…he took wives…and they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah’ 26v34,35
Into that set of circumstances, Rebekah saw an opportunity and struck. ‘Rebekah took the choice clothes of her elder son, Esau, and put them on Jacob’, who wore them into his old father’s presence, deceived his father into thinking he was Esau, and received the blessing that should have been given to Esau.
For a bowl of stew, Esau gave up his birthright
The course of history was changed in those moments. The nation promised to Abraham should have come from Esau not Jacob, but Rebekah actions were as devious and cunning as the serpent had been in the Graden of Eden.
‘Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field’ Gen 3v1
‘So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and would make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate’ v6
If we are shocked to find that our bible heroes, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…and Rebekah, were so deeply – and satanically - flawed, we should not be. They acted out their fallen natures just like the serpent and then Adam and Eve.
Paul, writing to the church in Ephesus, wrote, ‘And you were dead in trespasses and sins…you once walked according to the…prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience…and were children of wrath’ 2v2v1,2
This is the awful truth of spiritual condition of mankind and every man and woman. It is the reason why we cannot effect our own salvation. Every political and philosophical model of utopia has failed to reform human nature; Capitalism and Communism are powerless to control greed. The need to be saved, rescued, delivered, set free…and brought back into a right relationship with God, our neighbours and ourselves is real.
Remarkably, God was able to work out his purposes through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…due to their faith, not their nature, the hints and clues are already there in the story of their failures to suggest that God had something planned that would spring us from that ‘In-Adam-sin-prison’ that Charles Wesley famously wrote:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray—
I woke, the dung.eon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee
Even in Rebekah’s scheming, she couldn’t help but tell the story prophetically of what has been made real for us now if we have believed and been transferred from Adam to Christ.
‘Rebekah took the choice clothes of her elder son, Esau, and put them on Jacob’
In Isaac’s eyes, Jacob had become Esau, the elder son, the inheritor…just we have, in God’s eyes, been clothed with Christ (Gal 3v27) and have become heirs of God, joint-heirs with the Son (Rom 8 v17).
In the new covenant we are given a new heart, a new spirit, and the Holy Spirit (Ez 36v26). We become new creations, the old has gone and the new has come (2Cor5v17).
Learning to operate in this world clothed with Christ is our calling, learning to walk just as Jesus walked (1John 2v6). Learning what it is to ‘only do what we see the Father doing’, learning to ‘walk in the Spirit’. St Peter wrote that we have become ‘participators in the divine nature’ (2Pet 1v4).
We are on holy ground.
Jacob, whose name means supplanter, after years of self-centred living, found himself on holy ground, at the brook of Jabbok, wrestling with the angel of God, leaving that place with a limp, and his name changed to Israel, Prince with God. He had spent years as a satanically flawed individual. From that point on he lived as the Prince of God he was named to be.
His story is our story, if we want it to be.
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A book recommendation: Lance Lambert’s book ‘Jacob I Have Loved’ is excellent and has far more to say about Jacob’s transformation to Israel and its relevance for us.