Well, it's wonderful to be with you again, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to bring you God's word. I can't tell you what your pastor means to me. It's a friendship that we've been developing for 15, 20 years maybe. And I really believe you're blessed being under his ministry here and other elders and deacons. We've been enjoying again being in the home of the Noahs and what a blessing it is to be here.

Thank you so much for ministering to my wife and to me. I bring you also the greetings of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids and beg for your prayers. The seminary has been expanding at a very rapid rate. The world is white, ready to harvest. There's men from all over the world that long to be trained.

And The only thing that stands in the way of accepting many of them is lack of funds, where we could train many more. Right now we have 265 students, half of them are from foreign countries and half are from United States or Canada. But there's a great revival, as you perhaps know, going on in Latin America today. There's nine seminaries that are translating all our courses right now into Spanish and Portuguese and Mandarin and Korean. It's just overwhelming, the doors that God is opening.

So pray for the seminary, pray that we would be able to train hundreds, thousands of men for sacred ministry around this globe and that God would send us a great awakening greater than the original great awakening. He can do it in the midst of dark times and in the midst of problems and needs and crazy, crazy ideas that are penetrating our society. God is almighty. The king sits on the throne. So let us pray that God will do wondrous things.

Also bring you the greetings of our church, the Heritage Reformed Church. We have so much in common with you and your convictions in Grand Rapids, and so we feel really bonded to you here. I want to bring you God's word this morning from Genesis 27, a rather surprising chapter. We've been dealing with marital issues and marital emphases this weekend in this wonderful marital seminar in the Browns' home. So unique, so precious, what good fellowship there was there.

And so, talking with Pastor Brown, we decided that I would continue the theme, but now we're going into family issues, this morning and in the session this afternoon. So this morning I want to look with you more exegetically, or though kind of topically, from Genesis 27 about problems, family problems in the home. And we're using this vignette of Isaac and Rebecca's home as the topic of our examination. This afternoon, I want to move into a positive mode and talk about how fathers should lead their homes as prophets, priests, and kings. So that's where we're going.

So the whole chapter that was read to you, or the 40 verses read to you, in a sense is my is my text, but I want to look simply at this theme, family problems in the home and their remedies. We're going to look at six or seven problems in Isaac and Rebecca's home, and then look at some remedies, and then consider some comforting conclusions. Well, the Bible is not Hagiography. Hagiography is when you tell someone's life and you leave out all the bad things and you say only the good things. And that is one of the problems of so many religious biographies, even autobiographies today.

You know what I mean? You've read them and wow these people are so godly and they're so polished and perfect that you think, Am I even a child of God? Well, the Bible's not like that. In fact, one of the proofs of the inspiration of the Bible is that it tells the warts. It shows the warts, it tells the faults, and that is certainly true here in Genesis 27 of the home of Isaac and Rebecca.

Now at the outset of this sermon, I need to remind you that this was actually a great home. Isaac was a God-fearing man. Rebekah was a God-fearing woman. So we're not talking about Gentile idolaters. We're talking about Godly people.

There was no greater people of God alive than Isaac and Rebecca that we know of. In some ways, they were the paradigms of Christian faith and virtue. Isaac was, of course, the promised seed, the son of Abraham, heir to the covenant blessings of Jehovah's chosen family. God had said, in Isaac shall thy seed be called. And at the birth of their sons, God had declared, the elder shall serve the younger.

Now the relationship of Isaac and Rebecca was brought about through a kind of ideal courtship. As you know from Genesis 24, what a moving chapter that is. God prospered Abraham's servant. He answered his prayer at the well in a singular way. Rebekah appeared, beautiful, God-fearing, single, unspoiled, appointed by God to be Isaac's wife.

What a wonderful beginning. And Rebecca says, I will go, she's never seen Isaac. I will go and become his wife. And Isaac is comforted after his mother died when he receives Rebekah. So, I mean, how idyllic this is.

The father was godly, the mother was godly, their future was bright, the promises of God assured them that from their family, the Messiah would come and in him, all the world, all the nations of the world would be blessed. It seems almost utopian, this marriage of Isaac and Rebecca. And then comes Genesis 27. Oh my. Here it looks like it's a dysfunctional family.

All kinds of problems. Four main characters here. And all of them have problems. Let's just look at the characters a moment before we look at the specific problems of the family to understand the setting. Look at Isaac with me for a moment.

He's an old man now. He's been a believer for most of his life, and yet here he doesn't appear very mature or very serene or godly, but his old age seems a bit pitiable and shameful. He must have known, don't you think, that God had said to Rebekah, the elder shall serve the younger. But Isaac doesn't want to accept this. Esau is his pet son.

He must surely also have known that Esau had sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of potage and that Esau had despised his birthright. He certainly also knew what sort of man Esau was turning out to be. In fact the last verse of Genesis 26, last two verses say this, and Esau was 40 years old when he took to wife Judith, the daughter of Berae the Hittite, and Bashamath the daughter of Elan the Hittite, which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebecca. So what that means is Isaac was burdened about these ungodly marriages of Esau to Gentile women. And yet, yet Isaac treated his son as if he was the one to receive the special blessing.

He's determined to have his own way, to do his own will. It seems like Isaac won't submit to God's purposes and God's plans. He's a self-centered man here. And so he conjures up this rather shoddy underhanded plan. Now in those days when you're about to die you would really call all your children to your bedside and you would give the firstborn a special blessing but you would also give blessings to all the children.

But here you say, I mean think of Jacob, he did that didn't he? Genesis 49. But Isaac dreams up this sneaky little plan for just him and Esau alone. He and Esau would creep off together and he'd give him the blessing of the firstborn because he knew Rebecca would never agree to this. And Jacob, he knew, really was the one that was supposed to get it.

So he leaves Jacob and Rachel out of the picture, a very shameful way for the head of a family to behave. No wonder Rebecca is angry when she overhears the conversation. So, In the story that the hero of Mount Moriah, it is as if he has fallen into backsliding in his old age, into a kind of backsliding, even into gluttony. He's acting like one of those people who Paul describes in Philippians 3, whose God is their belly. And we have proof of that actually in the context.

Genesis 25, verse 28 already tells us that Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his game or his venison. He loved Esau because he ate the food he hunted. What a shallow, shallow way to just love your son. But it was more than that. Verse four of our chapter says, he said to Esau, make me savory meat such as I love.

In verse 9, we read, I will make them savory meat for thy father, Rebecca speaking now, such as he loveth. Verse 14, his mother made savory meat such as his father loved. This whole chapter, this whole chapter, is impregnated with the smell of cooking. Here's four times we read of Isaac loving this savory meat, even to the point he's trying to use it to go against God's will so the lusts of the flesh are overcoming this aged saint. It's a sorry picture.

Here's a man whose self-discipline has collapsed. Isaac is kind of a pitiable, tragic figure here in his old age. How we need God to keep us all the way to the end of our lives. Well, Rebecca's not a lot better here. We have to give her credit, of course, that she wanted the will of God to be done.

She knew that Jacob was to get the blessing. But she's got this serious problem. She's got a pet son too And it's Jacob. Her ultimate motive may be right, but she wants God's will to be done and she wants to take control of getting it done herself. With all her energy, she takes things into her own hands.

She won't trust God to work it out. She won't wait for God and let him bring the blessing. She's going to help God along. What a problem that is in our lives often isn't that the case? We want to help God along.

We want to go before God. We don't want to wait on him for his benediction. So Rebecca is going to take charge. She's going to play the role of God. You ever done that?

She's going to take it on herself. And so we see a family here that's fatally divided. Today We call it dysfunctional. And it's interesting, if you follow this chapter, I don't know if you picked this up when it was read. It was read with good expression, and I'm grateful for that, that The whole chapter is permeated with a series of meetings between two people.

Have you ever noticed that? That is a sign of a fractured alienated family when you have all these little secret meetings. Isaac talks to Esau. Jacob then talks to Rebecca, Isaac then talks to Jacob, Isaac then talks to Esau, Esau talks to Isaac, Jacob talks to Rebecca. This is a family that never can get together and work out their problems.

That's what it seems like, doesn't it? They never sit down and talk things out. They hide things from each other. They're going behind each other's backs. They're divided.

Isaac doesn't tell his wife what he's planning. She has to eavesdrop. Rebecca can't tell Isaac what she's doing. It's interesting, I find it very interesting that three times when she talks to Jacob she doesn't call Isaac my husband, She always calls him your father, your father. Verse six, verse nine, verse 10, your father.

Could that be a little warning that this marriage is not on the rocks, but it's not thriving? It's not a continuation of Genesis 24, 67, quote, Rebecca became his wife and he loved her. Where has the love gone? Where has the communication gone? What has happened to these people?

How have they drifted away? How have they become like two ships passing in the night? It's almost like they're strangers now, hostile, suspicious of each other. And so Isaac hides from Rebecca, and then Rebecca hides from Isaac. And she cooks up, literally cooks up, this devious plant.

She takes the flesh of young goats and she knows exactly how to make them the way Isaac likes them, of course. She knows the spices he likes. She makes his favorite recipe for him. She takes kids' skins, I mean she went a long ways, she even takes the kids' skin to cover Jacob's arms and neck in case Isaac wants to feel him, to make sure he's Esau. And she dresses Jacob in his best clothes.

The whole thing is as shoddy as Isaac's plan. Rebecca teaches us that strong love, even for a child, can be dangerous. Ultimately, she does what many parents still do today. She puts her love for her son above her love for the fear of God. What a danger.

We can love our children so much and it's so good, but just like marital love, also the love for our children must always be under God, in the fear of God. And then there's Esau. Oddly, in this chapter at least, Esau is the person with whom we might have the most natural sympathy for. You almost tend to feel sorry for Esau in this chapter. His final scene with his father is heart-rending.

It's bitter tears. But don't be too quick to take Esau's side. Remember Esau had despised his birthright, sold it for a bowl of stew. He is only himself to blame for what follows. He's crying now over what he had said he didn't want.

He is willing to plot in secret against his brother also. He has no awareness of God or of spiritual blessing and he doesn't accept responsibility. In verse 36 he says of Jacob, he took away my birthright. Well that's only half the story. Jacob didn't take it away.

Esau sold it, sold it for a bowl of soup. Esau is a warning to every young person gathered here, every child. Don't despise your birthright. Don't despise your upbringing under the truth. Don't go your own way.

Don't minimize the wonderful teaching you have from the Word of God. Isaac's blessing of Esau at the end of the passage is what one commentator calls a modified curse. A modified curse. You shall serve your brother, Jacob. And then there's Jacob.

Well, in some ways, he's the most contemptible figure in the whole passage. He's willing to cheat. Cheat his old blind father, take advantage of him. He doesn't hesitate at the deceitfulness and nastiness of what is proposed. He's only afraid in his conversation with his mother in case he gets found out.

See, he doesn't worry about sin itself. He only worries about the consequences of sin. That's a bad sign. When you only worry about the consequences, it's a sign that the fear of God is not in you. It's not saying that a child of God can't backslide into that, But that too is a bad sign.

He's only afraid of being found out. Boys and girls, do you understand that? Can you identify with that, teenagers? Maybe sometimes you don't do something that your mom or dad don't want you to do because you're afraid you're gonna get caught. But you're not thinking about sinning against God.

That's the big thing. That's the big thing. So, Jacob says to his mother, I shall be seen as a deceiver. I'll bring a curse upon me. Now the blessing, all he cared about was himself, you see.

But his mother convinces him that curse will be on her, so he goes ahead, right ahead. He deceives his father with sickening thoroughness and fluency and collective rather wicked skill comes into the tent and he says to his dad, my father, my father. One commentator said those are the only two true words he said in the whole conversation. He was his father. All the rest are lies.

Lie after lie. I am Esau. He's not Esau. I've done according as you obeyed me. He didn't obeyed you.

I am Esau. He doesn't even shrink from blasphemy. He says, the Lord has brought the venison to me. Nonsense. Wicked lies.

He brings God into his lying. He brings God into his cheating. And then in verse 27, we have the very first kiss. Did you know that? The very first kiss in the whole Bible.

And what a terrible kiss it was. It was a Judas Iscariot kind of kiss. The kiss was a cheat. The kiss was a lie. The kiss was shameful.

It was dreadful hypocrisy. And as soon as he gets the blessing, he runs out of the tent just in time before Esau gets there. Despicable. And Esau rightly says, is he not rightly named Jacob? Jacob means deceiver, twister.

Jacob is just living out his name. Well, just a quick look there at the four characters, I trust you see with me that there's a lot of problems in this family. So I want to set some of those problems before you now and some of these problems you won't have in your families. Hopefully you have none of them. But still, hearing about the problems and the remedies can give us wisdom also to contemplate how to handle the problems that we do have in our families.

Every family has problems. And of course, the simple answer to all the problems is Jesus Christ. If Christ is the center of the home, then these problems get cleaned up speedily, at least most of them. But this chapter is more nuanced than that. Yes, the ultimate answer is Christ, but how do you get there in various problems in your family?

How do you end in Christ with various problems and find remedies in him? That's the bigger question. So look at them with me. Number one, I'm just going to give them to you in just a couple words each and then I'll explain them. Number one is unconverted children.

Unconverted children. At this point in time, it appears that both sons are graceless children. Esau and Jacob have grown to manhood by the time we reach Genesis 27, but it doesn't appear that either of them had really embraced faith in the Messiah to come. Esau, of course, never did. He lived and died graceless.

Jacob was converted a bit later. But what a trial this can be in the home of God-fearing couple like Isaac and Rebecca to have no converted children. This is one of the most sensitive problems of our lives as Christian parents. You long to see your children brought in and be saved, But you can't do it. The greatest thing your children need is the one thing that you cannot perform.

You can clothe them, you can feed them, you can talk to them, you can pray with them, but you can't do it. You can't do it. So it's painful. What a problem this can be, especially if the children get older and you see them strain into worldly ways and worldly wisdom, which is foolishness. Despite all the efforts of talking and walking in a godly manner in their presence, despite all the family worship and the catechism training in the home and in the church, despite all the worship services in church, the Christian education either at home or elsewhere, the encouragements, the warnings, the guidance, oh the pain, seeing your children go the wrong way.

It's awful. This is a real experience for Isaac and Rebecca. So what's the remedy for this? How do you deal with this? Well, you keep bringing them the means of grace.

You keep trusting in a covenant keeping God. God's not done with any of your children. Some of your children maybe are adults now and they're out in the world and you burden with them every day. Every day. And they keep you on your knees.

Have you ever thought about what a blessing wayward children are for you spiritually? It's hard, but it keeps you needy. One thing that has always struck me is all these gospel accounts of the parent bringing a really, really needy child to Jesus. Have you ever noticed that Jesus doesn't heal the child right away? He first deals with the parent.

Think of the father of the demoniac in Mark 9. Father says, Lord if you can do anything, please, please, Help me. Help this boy. Save this boy. It's all about the boy.

And Jesus says, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believe it. He deals with the father. And the father just bursts out with tears and says, Lord, I believe, help out my unbelief. Canaanite woman, Syrophoenician woman. She comes to Jesus about a daughter possessed by a demon.

What does Jesus say? Oh, go home and she's healed. No, no, he works with her. He seems to be silent to her first and then he seems to reject her second. He seems to even insult her, calling her a Gentile dog.

But all the way along he's maturing her until she finally says, not Lord, has son David been merciful to us for my daughter is vexed with the devil. But she just says Lord help me, help me. See, God is dealing with her. So may I say pastorally, gently, lovingly, to those of you who have children that are going in the wrong direction, they are meant, they are meant to keep you close to God. Keep on praying.

God's the covenant-keeping God. How many, many parents have experienced Train up a child in the way that he should go. This is a general rule in scripture. And when he's old, he shall not depart from it. And God has often brought these children back in due time, often through hard ways.

He often breaks them. And all of that, all of that knowledge you've trained them with all those years, it's all deep down, deep in the back of their brain. And if the spirit, though God comes and regenerates them, it'll all come, come right out again. They'll remember it all. We have a niece actually that she got converted when she was in her 20s.

She had lived a rather profligate life up to that point. But she said, Uncle Joel, when God stopped me, it was like everything I had ever learned all those years, which I thought I had forgotten. It all came back. You see, God can do it. Don't you run ahead of the Lord.

Don't be a Rebecca. Wait on him. That's your remedy. Trust him. He's a covenant-keeping God.

He can do what you cannot do. So keep on instructing your children rightly if they're still in the home with you. If they're not in the home with you, You have to take a step back sometimes. It can even get to a point where they're so hostile to hear you talk about God if they wander away that you have to learn not to talk so much to them about God, but to talk more to God about them. But God can bring them back.

Don't be discouraged. Don't be discouraged. Cling to God. Cling to his promises. And don't fall into presumptive regeneration on the one hand, thinking they're saved when you get the smallest tiny little sign of faint hope.

Be careful. Be careful. But also, don't dampen God's own work by digging too tenderly near a small plant when you do see signs of life. Leave that in the Lord's hands too. Watch to see how he'll bring it to fruition if they do begin to express interest.

The old divines, the puritans used to say, don't lay hands on them too quickly, but Don't be unbelieving either. God is a God who changes lives. Regeneration is a miracle, but thanks be to God, he's in the business of doing miracles. That's who he is. He loves to save sinners.

So trust him. So that's just a few things about problem number one. Problem number two, unbridled rivalry. Unbridled rivalry. You know, in my book Parenting by God's Promises, I wrote a chapter on rivalry among siblings.

And I looked for books on this subject. I couldn't find hardly anything. And I go, is our family so different than other families? Don't other families have problems with children at each other's throat? I just think it's, much more should be written on this subject.

But boy did Jacob and Esau go at it with each other. They were twins too, there should have been a special bond between them. But they were different from each other in almost every conceivable way. And it caused trouble in the home. Already in birth, Jacob, the second born, even as he was born, he grabbed hold of the heel of Esau.

Esau was a hunter, a man of the fields. Jacob was a plain man who preferred to stay at home. Esau was a hairy man. Jacob had smooth skin. Esau was more attached to his father.

Jacob attached to his mother. They were different in occupation, different in character, different in outlook, different in the promises concerning them. I'd not be surprised if they didn't get along very well. Scripture even tells us that Esau would have killed Jacob if he could have for what happened in Genesis 27. So Jacob had to flee.

What a sad situation. This family's being torn apart even literally over sibling rivalry. Children born in the same household sometimes cannot see eye to eye. Constant quarreling, disagreeing with each other. Oh, what a burden it can be.

What's the remedy for that? Well, first of all, you need to realize that God doesn't make any of our children like each other. I've never met a parent yet who says our children have exactly the same personalities. And I think what happens here is that if God gave them the same personalities and we were raising the first one pretty successfully in our own estimation, we would think we could handle the second one and we could handle the third one because they're all the same. We know how to do it.

But God gives a different personality each one. So we need for each child a unique kind of wisdom and we become dependent upon God for raising each one. But also we need to recognize here that though this rivalry can cause us a considerable amount of parental grief, that this too, this too, can be for our spiritual good, for our comfort, that God knows, We can bring these trials to God, that God knows what is going on underneath our roof and that we can wait on him for patience and wisdom how to deal with this rivalry, how to separate kind of innocent competitive rivalry from nasty rivalry where healthy teasing turns into challenges and bitterness and is actually damaging the personality of the brother or sister being picked on. So we learn to take these problems also to God in prayer and we learn to persevere in disciplining those children that are offensive in injuring through words and actions, their brother or their sister, or brothers or sisters. And so We've got to remember that God will give us what we need if we persevere and walk in His ways, persevere in admonishing children who promote this kind of rivalry, this negative sinful rivalry, God will bless the efforts of persevering and straightening that out.

Sometimes because I suppose we've written, my wife and I have written various books on family issues, I quite often get this question now that our children are all out of the home. What would you do differently if you had to do it all over again? And what I often say is this, I would just trust the Lord more and I would worry less. Children grow through stages. Sometimes one child is picking on another child mercilessly and you think that child's personality is going to be totally destroyed.

And they move through that stage, and it doesn't seem to do any damage, and they become best buddies. So don't overreact either. You do have to correct, you do have to show your children the sinfulness of picking on their brothers and sisters. But at the same time, persevering in instructing them. God can bless that and often does, usually does, so that after a while that becomes a phase that they get through.

And hopefully without too much damage to any personalities. Now, number three, unequally yoked children. I just read to you a little while ago the last two verses of Genesis 26. Esau marries two Gentile women, idolaters, idolaters, and they were a constant grief to Isaac and Rebecca. Esau knew very well, knew very well that he was in the family of Isaac and Rebecca and that he was not to marry outside of the godly circle.

He knew that very well, but he went ahead anyway. His father, Isaac, set a very good example here, because he married only one woman. In those days it was common to marry more than one. Abraham fell into it, Jacob fell into it. But Isaac didn't, Isaac was a one woman man.

And Esau had that example. It must have been a grief for him when he saw Isaac and Rebekah, not only that he married two women, but that they were both ungodly. The Bible says it was a grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebecca. They couldn't put their benediction on these marriages. What a sad problem.

What a sad problem. My wife and I are blessed that our three children are married to godly people that we totally, totally approve of. We just count it one of the greatest blessings of life. What a joy when you can just 100% embrace your in-law children as your very own. What a gift.

What a problem for Isaac and Rebecca. Some of you no doubt are in that problem. It's so hard, so hard. Esau made such a big mistake here in his selfish incarnality, being such a worldly man. He chose to disregard all that his parents were teaching him.

What do you do? How do you handle this? How do you negotiate working with a child whose spouse you have nothing in common with, it's difficult. And it seems so permanent, and it is. What are you going to do?

Well, for one thing, I'm hoping that my words right now will convince in some way what your parents are telling you, children, young people, don't marry anyone outside of the Lord. The Bible says marry only in the Lord. Don't even think about courting someone who's not a Christian. You need to be a Christian, children. You need to have your sins washed away by the Lord Jesus Christ.

And as you grow older and you look for someone to marry one day, you need to only look, that's the number one criteria for someone who's in the Lord. If they're not in the Lord, you just turn the other way no matter how beautiful that young lady is. No matter how handsome and breathtaking that young man is, it's off limits. It will only bring you trouble and sorrow. Now for you mom and dad who are in this situation, There really is a remedy, but it's out of your hands.

It's with the Lord, with the Lord Jesus Christ. He's almighty. He can change the heart of that in-law. I've seen it happen. I've seen some in-laws who were ungodly get converted and actually become an influence on the husband for example who grew up in the church who abandoned everything and then he became converted like Peter says in 1st Peter 3.

God is almighty. Jesus can make a crooked stick straight. So the remedy for you is to pray on. The remedy for you is not to intermeddle in that situation and bring more chaos, but earnestly pray. And if they're open to you speaking some words of them, of counsel, feel free to fill that gap.

But this is a situation where most of the time you need to talk more to God about them than to them about God. And let your own marriage, your own life of fellowship with your spouse be an example before them. Problem number four, unnerving infirmities. Unnerving infirmities. The infirmities of old age, wow, what a problem they are.

Here we've got an elderly man, he's blind, he's got all kinds of problems, He's close to death, or at least he thinks he is. Actually, you know, he lived for another 20 years. But the point here is we see him on the decline. We see him with infirmities, with disablement, and when we get older, it's hard to predict how well we will respond to all of these things. Also to chronic pain, for example.

We're not exempt from deafness or blindness or loneliness. Isaac is largely blind and lame 20 years before his death. He's even unable to discern which son he's blessing. How do you handle these kinds of things? Well, for one thing, we are responsible as Christians to keep ourselves in as good health as possible, not to become overly fastidious about our bodies, but we are to nurture health in our bodies so that we can be as useful and fruitful as long as we can.

Now no doubt Isaac couldn't do anything to stop the blindness, which was one of his biggest problems. So those areas, of course, we have to bow under God's sovereignty. We have to bow under God's sovereignty. And we have to make the very best use of our faculties that we do have while we have them. And so a story like this should make us ask questions like this, what am I doing with my eyes?

Am I using them for the glory of God? What am I doing with my ears? Am I using them for the glory of God? At the same time, we should be asking ourselves questions about maybe you've got parents who are showing the infirmities of senior years. You should ask yourself, am I, or grandparents, Am I showing them respect and love?

Am I making their lives easier by my loving support of them? Or am I being like Jacob and complicating, using their infirmities to complicate their lives and bring them sorrow? What a tragedy that is. Boys and girls, young people, let me say something to you right now. You think you've got your whole life ahead of you, and I hope You do, but your whole life is very short.

Before you know it, you'll be married, you'll have children, before you know it, you'll have grandchildren, you blink a couple more times, you'll be old, if God spares you. And when you get old, you see, you need to remember how you treated older people when you were young. And you want to treat them now, your grandpa and grandma, the way one day you'll want to be treated when you're their age. So love your parents, honor your grandparents, ask them questions, ask them what they've learned in life. They will love it.

Show them your love, Help them with their infirmities the best you can. Problem number five. Unharmonious affections. Unharmonious affections. Genesis 25, 28.

Is just a warning red flag. Isaac loved Esau But Rebecca loved Jacob. Parents, what a disaster when you love one child more than another. That's a disaster. You know, I was the third son in my family born in a row.

And I had one oldest sister, and there was three boys in a row. So you know what I thought, boys and girls? I came to my mom one day, I was 10 years old, And I said, Mom, I have figured out, I bet you wanted me to be a girl. So you could have two and two. She said, no, no, no, no, son.

We're very happy to have you as a boy. But I said, yeah, but now I've got a younger sister and she's like she's boy she gets a lot of attention and she's the youngest one and You know, I think she's loved the most how how can you love? All your children at one time I said to her and she said to me honey, I love all the children equally. I said, really, are you sure? Exactly equally?

She said, yeah. I said, but how can it be exactly equally? She said, someday you'll understand. When you have children, that's the norm. And I think most parents, certainly Christian parents, shouldn't have any trouble loving all their children equally, even those that are not as easy to handle.

You still love them equally. That's a beautiful thing in a Christian family. But it's a disaster when you play favoritism. And when one parent plays favoritism, and the one and another parent plays favoritism, this is a recipe for disaster. So you have to be very careful not to do what Isaac and Rebecca did.

And it's not just Isaac and Rebecca. You know, Jacob messed things up too by too openly showing his favoritism towards Joseph. And that caused a whole ruckus in his family. So this is not just a one-off thing. You and I have to be careful.

You and I have to be careful that we don't show favoritism, for example, to a child that is more readily obedient. We have to love our children equally in the Lord. Divided affections can create deep jealousy, envy, bitterness, even hatred. Problem number six, uncommunicated games, Uncommunicated games. Isaac and Rebecca are moving in opposite directions here.

They really did love each other and they still do love each other, but they made such a mess of things. By all their game playing, by all their deception, by all their hiding of things from each other, by all the lying that went on in Genesis 27, with one parent pitted secretly against another. Now usually in these kinds of complicated dysfunctional families, one parent is more at fault than another, usually. But here it seems there's There's fault on both sides. There's fault on both sides.

In a way, neither Isaac nor Rebecca are really submitting to the will of God. Isaac by rejecting the will altogether, and Rebecca by trying to figure out how to bring the will of God to fruition on her own. And the remedy for this is that we as husbands and wives must learn to live harmoniously together. And we must do that in the fear of God, under God as we've been here all weekend in our marital conference, according to the pattern of marriage that God has sent forward in major passages like Ephesians 5. You, husband, are to love your wife the way Christ loves the church.

And you, dear wife, you are to respect your husband the way the church respects and submits to Jesus Christ. And when you keep those main things as the main things, you see, then you cannot possibly, can you, go in this direction of hiding and being secretive and working against each other? This is a blatant contradiction of Ephesians 5. So don't go that way. Stop your game playing.

Be honest. Be open. Confront these problems. Bring your affections back in line with one another. And finally, number seven.

Uninhabited home. The problem of a child away from home. Jacob had to flee. What a painful thing that was for Rebecca. And even for Isaac.

It's difficult to send a child away from home when things are not right. It's difficult today to send a child away to a university or a college where you know the influences are not going to be godly. You gotta think twice before you send them to a place where poison is just going to fill their mind. And this is a real problem in our mobile society today. How we ought to pray daily that God would keep our students from the evil that surrounds them?

How many young people have been brought up well at home, at school, at church, only to be ruined at higher educational institutions by false philosophy, worldliness, poor mentors and examples, wicked teachers? If our children have to leave the home for one reason or another, we've got to be in constant prayer with them, we've got to be connecting with them as much as possible. And by the way, if they do need to go to further education, try to keep them at home with you as much as possible because you can talk about what they're learning day by day and oh may God pray that God would raise up more truly God-fearing Christian institutions of higher learning. Well let me wrap this up with a couple of conclusions that I think stand behind all these problems. Here's the encouraging part.

Number one, God's promises. God's promises. Plead on those promises. He's a covenant-keeping God. With any set of problems you have, this is your comfort, sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ, that God will have a seed to serve him.

And God is not finished with your children, with your unconverted children also, any more than he was finished with Jacob under his father's roof. There was a day when Jacob came to Bethel, and the God of Bethel is the living God who met him and converted him, and he can still meet with your children and your young people today and convert them to cling to the promises of God in Jesus Christ. Number two, God's patience, God's patience. If God was as impatient as we are, he would have thrown our families overboard long ago. But God is not finished with us.

In families, God is a family keeping, a family loving God. When we make mistakes, God has a way of overruling the schemes of Isaac and Rebecca and of you and me and to bring his own loving, electing purposes to pass in our lives and in the lives of our children, not because of us, but despite us. All the amazing patience of God and the grace of God in that patience. And then thirdly, remember God's prerequisite. To be godly doesn't mean that you will be exempt from problems.

Problems at work, problems at home, problems in your family, problems with your children. But you need to remember that problems are a prerequisite for heaven. These are they. Remember that in Revelation 7? Who are these that are entering into heaven?

These are they who've washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb, right? So you gotta be saved by the blood of Christ. That's the underlying foundation. Can't get into heaven outside of the blood passport of Jesus. But who have also come out of great tribulation.

There's no way to get to heaven outside of afflictions. God knows how to afflict us. He knows how many afflictions to put upon us. If you expect to have children and go through life really easy where they're always obedient, And you know, the only perfect parents I know are the ones who don't have kids yet. It just won't happen.

God wants to use your children to chisel away at you, and your marriage too is for that matter, to make you ripe and ready for glory. So the promise of heaven is true, but the way to heaven is often through afflictions and tribulation. So God's prerequisite, don't Run away from afflictions, but bring those afflictions to God and ask him to sanctify them to you. And don't forget Romans 8.28. All things, also your afflictions with your children.

They all work together for good to them that love God. It's all going to be okay if you just keep trusting in God. Through Christ, it will all turn out well by the grace of God. And then fourth, remember God's peace. God's promises, God's patience, God's prerequisite, God's peace.

If the problems of Isaac and Rebekah's home don't fit your circumstances, just quietly thank the Lord. And if they do, glean comfort from the fact you're not alone. God's peace, God's peace can overshadow all these things. I went through a period of six years of a very great affliction in my life, and I found this wonderful text in Proverbs 23, 18. I wanna give it to you.

There shall surely come an end, and thy expectation shall not be cut off." I brought that promise before God sometimes 20, 30 times a day in those six years, and I didn't see how My affliction could ever, ever, ever come to an end. It seemed impossible. But I stand here today to tell you that God is a God of peace and he can do wonders and your affliction will come to an end and your expectations shall not be cut off. The gracious covenant keeping God brought Isaac and Rebekah through all of these troubles and he made everything well in the end. And then finally, the last comfort, God's promises, God's patience, God's prerequisite, God's peace, God's purposes.

He has not left his great purposes in our frail hands. Christ, Jesus Christ, came from this same family of Isaac and Rebecca. And He will come again at the end of time and His kingdom shall come. And your duty and my duty is to end with all our problems in Jesus Christ, to be faithful in all our callings, also the parental calling to Him. And so be encouraged, let family troubles bring you near to God, to his promises, his patience, his prerequisite, his peace, his purposes, and be of good cheer.

God's covenant will not fail. He's in the business of converting children. He's in the business of converting the rising generation till he comes again on the clouds. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help whose hope is in the Lord his God. Amen.

Let's pray. Great God of heaven, I pray that thou will use this sermon to encourage struggling families to keep looking to thy promises and patience and peace and purposes and to trust that in Jesus Christ all shall be made well. May they lift up the hands that hang down and strengthen the feeble knees and make a straight path for their feet lest that which is lame be turned out of the way. For Lord, no affliction for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous nevertheless afterward, it yields a peaceable fruit of righteousness to them who are exercised thereby. So exercise us in a healthy way through our afflictions that they may drive us to Jesus and that he the captain of our salvation may confirm that all things through his grace will work together for good to them that love God.

Bless these families, bless the parents, bless the children, the teenagers, save their souls, and help them to walk in thy ways all their life long. We ask thy benediction upon this sermon, in Jesus' name, Amen.