We are bombarded daily with the phrase "family values." It has become the buzzword of the current political campaign. And as candidates parade their wives and children and grandchildren across the platform; as presidential hopefuls debate about which of them is the more family-oriented; as vice-presidents tilt with television shows; we wonder who is going to deal with reality. Who is going to address the problems that plague real families? Who is going to discover solutions to the harsh realities that demoralize parents and victimize children? Who is going to bless the family beyond simply offering rhetoric?
The truth is that family life is under a great deal of stress. The terrible truth is that a large number of children will not grow up in homes where there are two parents to care for them; and of those who do have two parents, many will find the tensions between those parents almost unbearable. The terrible and unhappy truth is that family life is in crisis.
It is in crisis for many reasons. One of these reasons is that we have not been creative in our homes. We have not been creative. We have just let things take their course; we have supposed that all we had to do was put a roof over our heads and food on the table. And when there was trouble, we really did not know what to do with it. We just have not been creative with our family life. We have not used our imaginations. And above all, we have not allowed in the creative Spirit of the living God.
I believe this morning that family life can be redeemed. Family life can be redeemed if we will seek the guidance of the Spirit of God and let Him lead us to be creative and imaginative in our homes.
They had once had a creative prayer life. The father had himself been the product of prayerful parents, who had thought they were too old to have children, but who so trusted God that a son was born even in their older years. He had often heard that family story, so he knew that he himself was the product of a prayerful home.
When he and his wife had been together for a number of years, but without children, he had prayed and the Lord had blessed them, doubly blessed them, with beautiful, healthy, strong twin boys. He knew what creative energies prayer could unleash.
And she knew as well. The mother of those twins had gone to the Lord in prayer while she was carrying them. Her pregnancy had not been an easy one, and she had looked to her God for help and for insight, and it had come. Her mind and heart were put at ease, and she, like her husband, had learned that with prayer you can get your imagination fired up. You can discern things you never knew before.
Both parents had been persons of prayer, experiencing the creative spirit of God, when their babies were on the way.
But now the boys are young men and the parents are old. The record is strangely silent about their prayer life. There is not a word about seeking the Lord’s continuing guidance.
There is nothing at all any longer about asking for the imaginative, creative energy of God’s spirit. No prayer, and no creativity; no creativity, and thus no integrity in their family.
We need to meet the members of this family and trace their mistakes. We need to discover the consequences of just letting family life happen rather than making it happen, intentionally and prayerfully.
I
Will you first of all meet a very weak man, a hapless and helpless father named Isaac? The problem with Isaac is that he has waited so long and has become so weak that it is too late for him to take charge of his family. It is too late in the day for Isaac to change the pattern he has long since set, the pattern of just waiting for things to happen.
Poor Isaac, lying in the bedroom, thinking that the end of his life is not far off, summons his son Esau, technically the older of the twins, in order to bless him. Isaac asks a small favor, that his son prepare a festive meal as a way to celebrate this rite of passage.
But Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, overhearing this conversation, runs for her other son, Jacob, and persuades him to deceive his father. Jacob is to disguise himself and is to substitute goat meat, which is readily available in the barnyard, for game meat, which Esau had to go out and hunt. Thus Jacob could be there first and could thus be the one to whom the blessing would be given instead of his brother Esau.
What a monstrous plan! What a dysfunctional family, as we would say today! But before we say too much about mother Rebekah and mama’s boy Jacob and victim Esau, we need to recognize that the problem began with the weakness of Isaac.
There are several clues in the text about this.
A. Notice that Isaac waits and waits and waits to bless Esau. It is only when he is old that he starts thinking about blessing his son. Somehow he seems to think that it would be unmanly or too mushy to give his son the approval he needs. What is it with us, men, that we cannot find it in our souls to express our emotions openly and warmly? Why is it that we withhold our affections from our children and force them to beg for our love? Why do we deprive them of the one thing they want the most?
I think of my own father’s story. My father spoke often about how his father, my grandfather, would never praise him, would never approve or bless him, no matter how hard he worked for it. And in my father’s heart there was planted a seed of bitterness that never quite went away. I believe it was only by the Spirit of God that he was able to vow that he would never, never deprive his own sons of the affection they needed. My brother and I never for an instant had to doubt that our father loved us.
Men, our children need to know that we love them. They need to hear it and they need to hear it now. We must not be Isaacs, setting our children up for bitterness,
B. And then notice, also, that when the time of blessing does come, Isaac feels uncertainty and suspicion, but he doesn’t act on it. A scam is being run on him, and he thinks he knows it, but he is too weak to assert himself. He is too insecure to name and to blame. "The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." Isn’t something funny going on here?
But Isaac’s eyes are not the only blindness he has. There is none so blind as he who will not see. Isaac will not see what is being done to him, because for years he has refused to look at the problem. For years he has stuck his head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. He has not seen that there is no integrity in his relationship with his wife. He has not admitted that there is no wholeness in his sons.
Isaac is like those parents who today will not see that their children have a drug problem. Isaac is like married people who will not admit that they are not communicating. Isaac is like every one of us who is afraid to confront, lovingly but seriously, the failing members of our household. Because we refuse to see or to confront, we not only set up our children for bitterness, we also set ourselves up for disappointment.
C. More than all that, notice again that when Isaac does get around to b1essing his son, albeit the wrong son, his only method of blessing is to offer material things. Listen to Isaac’s blessing: "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."
Friends, that may look like a blessing, but in reality it is a curse! We think that if we give our children everything from cars to credit cards, all the problems will go away. In truth, what we do is to put off the real issues, we set aside for a little while longer the real concerns, the spiritual concerns, We think we are buying affection, but actually we are only buying a little time until the inevitable happens. Isaac is the parent who is little more than a Santa Claus, finding it easier to give things than to give himself. Isaac thinks that his one last chance to make a mark with his children is to pay them off. But nothing worthwhile happens. He is not being creative. He is not being imaginative. And he is not letting the spirit of the living God, sought through prayer, shape his home.
Isaac’s other son, Esau, says a little later, "Have you only one blessing?" Father, have you only one blessing? Isn’t there something more that you can be for us other than the payer of bills? Without the strength and the creativity of the Spirit of God, Isaac is a failure. Isaac is a weak father
II
But now let me take you into the next room to meet mother Rebekah eavesdropping and plotting something. The wife of weak Isaac is manipulative mother Rebekah; I think it is no accident. I tell you, these two deserve each other. Rebekah’s manipulation plays off of Isaac’s weakness, and in a peculiar sort of way. They use each other, and it works. It works in its own perverse kind of way, But it’s about to come to a head.
Rebekah hatches a plot to deceive her husband. She maneuvers to see to it that her favorite son, Jacob, gets the goodies from his father. It was Rebekah who suggested the goat meat; it was Rebekah who thought of the goatskin on the hands; it was Rebekah who quashed Jacob’s objections with the words of every Supermom, "Let the curse be on me, my son; only obey my word and go." Don’t worry about a thing; I can handle the old man.
If you are looking for a villain in this story, look no further. Look at a woman who will not deal in the truth, but who feels she has to fool her husband into doing what she wants. Look at a woman who, so far from providing an example of integrity for her children, actually leads Jacob into this slimy conspiracy. Look at a woman who will not see just a little way down the road how bitter her other son, Esau, would become because of her.
And finally, look at a woman who is so out of touch, who is so much in denial, that she would promise Jacob that his brother’s anger would all blow over in just a little while: "Flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran, and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away … and he forgets what you have done to him." Stay away a little while? Did you know that Jacob stayed away for twenty years and that she never saw him again?
Do you see what manipulation does? If we try to manipulate, maneuver, and manage our family members instead of respecting them, however old and infirm they may be, however young and rash they may be … if we try to manage the lives of others instead of respecting them … if we attempt to trick our spouses and maneuver our children with something less than the truth, we are going to set ourselves up for tremendous pain.
The only way for family life to survive is that there be respect and integrity, honesty. And when I hear poor, sorry Esau crying out, "Have you only one blessing?" I hear not only a young man who wonders why his father has deprived him, I hear also a mother’s son anguished because she has not trusted him, she has not loved him. And her need to take over, her need to manage both his life and his brother’s life has set everybody up for pain and anguish.
I have mentioned to several of you a book I read this summer. Edgar Friedman in Generation to Generation writes about becoming a non-anxious presence in the home, A non-anxious presence is someone in a place of leadership who is willing and able to set aside anxiety and to live in confidence. The author of Generation to Generation contends that such a non-anxious presence defuses misunderstanding, de-escalates anger, and communicates that God is in charge. It’s not necessary to be anxious. It’s not healthy to be anxious. It is destructive to be anxious.
I’ve been working at putting this into practice; it’s not natural for me. I have too many years of leaping to my own defense whenever I am criticized. It takes work to be a nonanxious presence. But just this week someone called me, very heated about something I did that she did not think should have been done. I started to feel the old anxiety. But with just an instant prayer ... with just a moment with the Lord, I found that I was able to respond to her quietly, calm1v, without being defensive or anxious. Within three minutes the heat was all burned off and we had integrity in our relationship.
Rebekah’s issue is that she is anxious. She is anxious. She wants to manage her family. She cannot trust Isaac, her husband, to make the right decision. She cannot trust Esau, one of her sons, with the responsibility that is rightfully his. She cannot even trust her mama’s boy Jacob to make his own way in the world. And worst of all, she cannot, she will not trust her God to guide each member of her household. Rebekah is anxious, and therefore sets up frustration in her husband, loss for herself, and years of implacable enmity between her sons.
"O what a tangled web we weave, when first we purpose to deceive!"
III
Today you have met helpless father Isaac; too late; too weak, too unimaginative. Because he has not in prayer consu1ted the Spirit of God, and because he has let his own weakness rule his life, he is left to hear ringing in his ears the accusing question of his son, "Have you only one blessing?" Don’t you have anything better to offer than this?
And you have met manipulative mother Rebekah, too controlling, too anxious, too faithless to let her husband or her sons grow up. Because she had not in prayer consulted the spirit of God, and because she needs to manage other people’s lives, she loses both her darling Jacob and her plaintive Esau, asking her too, "Have you only one blessing?" Do you not care for me also?
You have met this father and this mother, and have at least been introduced to these brothers, victims both of them, whose stories we will pursue next week.
Right now I would introduce you to another father. I would introduce you to a father whose imagination knows no bounds, but who will bless you in exactly the ways you need. He has more than one blessing.
I would introduce you to a father who will not wait and wait and wait to love us, but who will love us and bless us right now.
I would introduce you to a father whose love is secure enough that it will confront us. If we are doing wrong, this father’s love will assert itself and strike home to our hearts.
I would introduce you to a father who will go beyond the material gifts that dazzle us, who will also bless us with spiritual gifts that empower us. He has more than one blessing.
And I would introduce you to a loving creator in whose heart there is no destructive anxiety; for He knows that ultimately all things are His.
I would introduce you to a loving, caring creator in whose mind there is no need to manipulate, who made us truly free, whose desire it is to love us into obedience rather than to maneuver us into submission.
I would introduce you to a loving, caring, constant creator who will never set us aside, never send us into a far country, never abandon us, but who will work with us and live with us and keep on struggling with us to the very end.
I would introduce you to a loving Father who so loves each one of us that He will go to a cross and suffer rather than abandon us or deprive us. For he has more than one blessing.
