Genesis 25:1-34

God had promised Abraham many descendants and God always keeps His promises.  God blessed Abraham with children and a long full life just has God had promised to do.  There is much in store for his descendants and especially for his son of promise Isaac who becomes the focus of the next few chapters.

ABRAHAM’S DESCENDANTS AND DEATH: Abraham may not have had children until he was, old, but once he started having them, he had several.  After Sarah’s death Abraham married another woman and fathered another six children by her.  However, they were not considered to be children of promise and were not given a right to Abraham’s inheritance.  While he was alive he gave them gifts and sent them away just as he did to Ishmael.  Isaac was the son of promise and the one who would inherit all that Abraham left.  He died at 175 years of age and both Ishmael and Isaac came to bury him with his wife Sarah.  Abraham had not always been faithful to God, but God had always been faithful to him.  Abraham had some amazing victories in his life along with his share of massive failures.  Through it all, Abraham continues to believe God and hope in the promises that He had been given.  Even though many of the promises were for the generations to come, Abraham’s hope stood firm and is an example for us to be faithful as we anticipate with great hope the promises that the Lord has promised to bestow upon all who believe.

ISMAEL’S DESCENDANTS AND DEATH: Ishmael, quite surprisingly, comes to bury his father with Isaac.  It seems that after Sarah’s death there must have been some sort of reconciliation and it is likely that Abraham sent a great gift to Ishmael as he had to his other children.  There is not mistake that Isaac is the son of promises, but it is at least interesting to note that there was still communication with and regard for Ishmael after he had been sent away.  Ishmael had many children, but he kept them away from Isaac and the rest of the clan.  The text says that he lived in defiance of his relatives.  There is a bitterness that continues to this day owing back to Abraham’s sin with Hagar.  Sin always has consequences and even if there is some sort of restoration made and an attempt to make things better, the scars still run deep.  Some may sat Ishmael had a right to be bitter since he was sent away.  However, bitterness and anger are never our right.  They usually end up punishing the person who guards them as a right far more deeply than they hurt the person to whom the anger and bitterness are directed.  We can never use the sin of someone else as an excuse for our own sin.

ISAAC’S DESCENDANTS AND DISCORD: It is amazing that just as Sarah had been barren, Rebekah, Isaac’s wife was barren as well.  It must have been hard for Abraham to watch his son have the same struggles that he had.  However, unlike Abraham, Isaac does not go try to resolve the problem on his own; rather he goes to God and prays for his wife to be able to have children.  God answers that prayer and Rebekah gives birth to twins.  God reveals to her that the boys in her womb are two different nations, that they will be at discord with one another and that the younger will rule over the older.  Just as God reveled, the two boys had very different looks, personality and character.  Esau was an outdoorsman who liked to hunt and was driven by the desires of his body.  Jacob was a schemer who tended to the affairs of the family, oversaw the herds and the household.  Their parents had their favorites and they were in conflict with one another beginning in the womb.  One fateful day Esau was so hungry that he traded his birthright as the first born to Jacob in exchange for a bowl of food.  He despised the birthright and was determined to make it on his own without the inheritance that was his right.  He had short term priorities and cared more deeply about how he felt at the moment than how things would be in the future.  We may stand amazed that Esau would be so shortsighted with his inheritance, but we do the same thing every time we trade the eternal rewards of heaven for the passing pleasure of sin.