Blessed
Sit and listen once again to the story of Jacob--Jacob, the deceiver as his name meant. (The full story here.)
Isaac is ill, and about to pass. So he asks his eldest firstborn son, Esau, to go hunting and prepare a rich soup--then he will bless him. While Esau is out hunting, Rebekah and Jacob deceive Isaac, the father. Dressed in Esau’s clothes, with the odor of Esau rich about him, Jacob brings a rich goat soup to his father. Isaac’s blindness and deafness preclude his doubts, and he bestows the blessing. Jacob leaves, blessed.
Jacob knew what he wanted--the blessing.
What is the ache in your heart for a blessing? To really know that favor, that love, that delight and sparkle in someone’s eyes, that affirmation, that rich inheritance, that provision, that lavish gift? When we really step back, how much of activity is driven toward a blessing of some form?
But Jacob, by pure life’s circumstance of being the younger, excluded from the fullness of it. No hope.
How often do we feel that same frustration and futility? The blessing we long for…. will never be.
So Rebekah and Jacob took things into their own hands. Deception. Darkness. While the blessing would ultimately come to fruition, the immediate consequence was division, separation, running, fear. Oh, Lord, what some of us do in pursuit of that blessing that our heart longs for!
Ambrose and John Calvin both saw this as an illustration of Christ: “Jacob, the younger brother, is blessed under the person of the elder; the garments which were borrowed from his brother breathe an odour grateful and pleasant to his father. In the same manner we are blessed, as Ambrose teaches, when, in the name of Christ, we enter the presence of our Heavenly Father: we receive from him the robe of righteousness, which, by its odour, procures his favor; in short, we are thus blessed when we are put in his place” (John Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis 27).
Instead of obtaining this through deception or any hard means of finagling, we have an Elder Brother who freely says, “Take my clothing. Take my fragrance. Take me, myself. I will bring you to the Father and let him pour out the blessing on you.”
Instead of a father who was doubting, “Is this you?”, we have a Father who is eager to bless us with every spiritual blessing (Eph. 1:3). So in love with his Son, he is eager to do all for those that are of his Son and resemble his Son, who bear his clothes, his fragrance, his heart.
Unlike Esau who had to hunt, work, earn, and thus missed the blessing, we are free to come. Grace.
Come. Be blessed.
What does your heart want?
What does Ephesians 1:3 mean to you? Can you list some of the practical implications and touches it has for you?
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." Ephesians 1:3, NIV
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