MOTIVE MORE THAN EMOTION
Genesis 27:30-45
Weak impulses or bad ones, yielded to. are hard on the tear-ducts. There’s bound to be a bad emotional storm before the thing’s over. Tears are very impressive; they sway a lot of people. But one should look through the tear-mist to see what motive controls. Motive is more than emotion. If Esau had been thoughtfully right in his motives beforehand, his emotions wouldn’t be having such a hard time now.
IMPULSE OR PURPOSE?
Genesis 27:11-17
A man’s character is revealed most by his sober second thought. An impulse may be bad or good; a deliberate purpose is worse or better; it can strengthen or check the impulse. Esau was impulsive, a bundle of impulses, sometimes good, sometimes weak or bad. God couldn’t use him. Jacob was the stronger character, a cool, deliberate thinker. That made his badness worse, and his goodness better, when at last he yielded his life to God.
CHOICE PLUS GRACE
Genesis 27:1-10
Which is more in making character, heredity or training? the influences before birth or those after? Before birth parents should thoughtfully emphasize a planned heredity. Afterward it should be recognized that training can overcome any heredity. Poor Jacob was handicapped both ways on his mother’s side. Bad handicap that! Yet—yet, listen, a determined will and God’s resistless, gracious power can overcome any handicap.
DELAYING GOD
Genesis 27:18-29
Selfishness delays God’s love-plans. There is no more unpromising character in the Old Testament than Jacob. Back of unscrupulous bargaining and unprincipled trickery was intensest selfishness. Why did God use him? As Abraham’s grandson he was one of the only two that could be used in the world-plan being worked out. He was the least unusable of the two. And he had to be changed before the plan could work out. He delayed God. Selfishness always does.
WISE CHASTISEMENT
Hebrews 12:14-17
Chastisement doesn’t mean an actual whip, though with some it may include it, when they haven’t strength enough, or love enough, for the higher, better level. It means instruction, information, training, that a man can see where he is wrong. But it means more, doing it so lovingly, tactfully, patiently, that he not only knows he’s been wrong, but he wants to do right; and, more yet, he makes a start that way.
Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Think about these questions as you meditate on the verse. What does this verse teach me? How does this verse apply to my Life?
