We have been talking about Jacob and Esau’s birth in the year 2007 B. C. It said in Genesis 26:34-35:
And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.
Since we know he was born in 2007 B. C., we can know that when he was 40 it would have been the year 1967 B. C. We have already talked about the time relationships from creation and how that 40-year period mirrors the life of David and his kingship from 1007 B. C. to 967 B. C. It further mirrors the time period of the life of Christ a thousand years later from 7 B. C. to 33 A. D., which was 40 inclusive years. In using the word “red” and calling Esau the name “Edom” because of the “red” pottage, it had to do with “Adam” or “man.” God is using him as a type of mankind. These twins represented all human beings, but Esau represented the unsaved and Jacob represented those that are saved. Therefore, forty years from Esau’s birth is very significant, even though God is not giving us too much time information as He discusses it in just a couple of verses. This is the reason things like this can get overlooked, just like the case with the five verses regarding Tola and Jair.
Here, when Esau was 40, he married two Hittite women of the land of Canaan, and it was a grief of mind to Isaac and his wife Rebekah. Remember that Abraham had sent his servant to his homeland and family in Haran to find a wife for his son Isaac that was compatible in a spiritual sense.
Of course, at that time no one was called “Christian” or even “Jew,” but the picture of Abraham sending his servant to find a wife for Isaac is pointing to the spiritual truth that you must be married to someone like-minded, another elect child of God. You can never know for sure that anyone else is elect (and you may not even be 100% sure you are elect), but insofar as you can know by God’s grace, when you seek a wife you want to make sure the person you want to marry is also someone that loves the Lord and is a child of God. Our modern method of dating is terrible for that purpose. A person has a couple of dates where they go to a movie or out to dinner, and they chit-chat, and after a while they are going steady. They are just trying to have fun, and they just want to make sure that they enjoy one another’s company and laugh a lot together. They are not doing what the time before marriage is best suited for, and that is to talk about their understanding of God, the Bible and spiritual things.
Most people have gotten into big trouble because they consider only physical appearance and whether they have fun together and enjoy the same things. It is very superficial. But what happens to your looks in 15 or 20 years? It changes and, normally, not for the better. [Laughter] So, if you married someone because you were smitten by their beauty, beauty is like the flower of the grass, as God says, and the flower fades. The summer is a good time to look at a flower, but keep your eye on it. You go back another day and it is still beautiful, but in another week the petals are starting to fall off and soon there is not much left to that flower. This is how it is with the glory and beauty of man. You come into the world like a newborn flower. You bloom and show forth tremendous beauty that will fade over the course of time. If you have sought your spouse on an earthly natural level and you have lusted after someone’s outward appearance to the point of wanting to marry that person, remember that one of David’s sons lusted after Tamar his half-sister. She was so beautiful and he wanted her, and he forcefully took her. Then his reaction immediately afterwards was, “Get her out of here,” because it was a very superficial, unsatisfying level of operating. Even the world that lives on that plateau and operates on that level is never satisfied – there is always discontentment.
So, too, when we disobey God’s will and command regarding marriage…you know, it is not a minor thing or a light thing concerning who we marry. It is probably one of the more serious things we can ever do, because when we are married, according to the Bible we are married, and we cannot divorce. Yes – you may do so, but not lawfully or Biblically in God’s sight. If you divorce legally according to the law of the government of the land in which you live, you are still married to that individual in God’s sight and if you marry another, you are committing adultery. It is a bad situation, so the best thing to do is to listen to your believing parents. Esau and Jacob were blessed in their lives because they had two believing parents. Remember what we read in Hebrews 11:20-21:
By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph…
He blessed both Jacob and Esau, and Esau was unsaved. He was hated by God before he was born, as we saw previously in some verses and, yet, God says he was blessed. It was not in a saving way, but it was a blessing “concerning things to come.” If you look up “things to come,” it has to do with the wrath to come. Remember John the Baptist said, “Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” It also refers to the “world to come,” as far as the new heaven and new earth. There are several other usages that identify with various parts of the Gospel. It has to do with judgment or with the new heaven and new earth and the eternal future. Basically, it has to do with what the Bible says, so if Isaac blessed both sons “concerning things to come,” it would mean he raised them equally as far as the Word of God was concerned. He would not have given Jacob more of the Word than he did Esau. He would have given them both the same Word. He would have given them both the truth that He knew of God. And it would have been a fair amount of truth because Isaac was in that line that God communicated directly with, so he would have known some true and faithful things like some of the things we know today.
Remember Enoch was born in 7106 B. C. which was a couple thousand years before the flood, but it says in Jude that he was a preacher that preached about Judgment Day. He was “the seventh from Adam,” and he proclaimed that the Lord would come with ten thousands of His saints to execute judgment. Enoch was the seventh calendar reference patriarch from Adam, and he lived over seven thousand years before Christ and, yet, he knew about the Lord coming with ten thousands of His saints. So, he knew of “things to come,” and these things would have been faithfully passed down along the line of God’s people because they did not have the written Word. There was not a printing press back then, so they did not have Bibles. These things would have been verbally passed down, plus God was continuing to bring divine revelation to His people.
So, Isaac blessed both his children and told them all that he knew. God used that Word to save one of the children, but for the other child, the Word had no effect. Yes – it takes the Word of God, but it also takes the Spirit of God to apply that Word. For God to apply the Word, He would have had to predestinate that person and lay his sins upon Christ before the foundation of the world. Then Christ would have had to die for his sins and rise from the dead to justify him. If that had not happened, then the Word of God can be shared faithfully, but it does not make someone saved. Remember in Ezekiel 14, God speaks of three faithful men: Daniel, Noah and Job. It said, “Though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord JEHOVAH, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters.” You cannot save your own children. All you can do is pray for them, share the Word of God with them faithfully, and leave it in God’s hands. God made the determination before the children were born and placed in your home. Before Esau had done any good or evil, the determination had already been made: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau I have hated.” God did this in their lives, but He did it in the lives of all His people in all their homes. So, we just listen to the Bible and we try to follow God’s guidelines, and He tells us in 2Corinthians 6, which especially relates to marriage, in 2Corinthians 6:14:
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
This can also apply to business. It would not be a good idea to go into a business partnership where one person is saved and the other is unsaved. Do you know what is going to happen? The Sunday issue will come up. The unsaved man will look at the “bottom line” and the money coming in. He will look all around him and say, “Everybody is open seven days a week.” So, it would seem to be a wise thing to stay open on Sundays. But the other partner, the elect child of God, would say, “I am not just going by the bottom line. I know we want to make money, but it is also important that I follow the will of God. God says that Sunday is the Sabbath and it is not the time to be open at work, but it is a time for spiritual activity.” They will go back and forth, but the unsaved partner will not give it up. He will say, “You go home, and I will stay open.” The saved partner responds, “But it is my business, too.” You can see the struggle. It is like the struggle between Jacob and Esau in their mother’s womb. It is the same struggle, but just a different location and a different outworking of it in the world. If a business partnership is harmed in that way, it will not survive if both hold to their position. It is only a matter of time. What about the more serious partnership of marriage where one is an elect child of God and the other is not an elect child of God? There would also be the Sunday issue. The person of the world cares nothing about the Sunday Sabbath, so the TV will be on or Netflix will be on the computer. It is like any other day. If you marry someone that is not a child of God, you will want to spend time in the Bible and to listen to faithful hymns or spend quiet time in prayer. Maybe it can be worked out, but more often it is a struggle.
So, you want to be careful in your dating as you approach the idea of marriage. Some people may realize that they are not to be unequally yoked, so they reason, “I am a Christian and I will marry someone else that says they are Christian, and then I will not be unequally yoked, right?” But look at the church world today – there are all kinds of professed Christians and they believe all kinds of things. Again, that is just superficial, surface things, and they are not really taking the Bible’s warning seriously not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For example, the person says, “You say you are a Christian, and I am a Christian, so everything is fine.” Then the true elect child of God realized that God has ended the church age, and he may have more trouble in a marriage with the professed Christian spouse that stays in the church than he would with an atheist. If you married someone that stayed in the church, every Sunday they would say, “I want to go to church.” Or, maybe for a while the person would try to appease you, but six months, a year or two years later they would say, “I want to go to church.” Or, if there are children involved, the person that wants to go to church would want to take the children there, but the elect person would say, “That is the worse spiritual place possible because God is no longer there and there is no blessing because the church age has ended.” So, there would be a war, a spiritual battle. And it all comes back to two nations struggling together, just as it describes in 1Corinthians 2 where God speaks of the natural man and the spiritual man. Esau would be the natural man and Jacob would be the spiritual man.
God has given this Law for our benefit. You know, when people have experienced something in their own lives, we tend to listen to them: “Oh, you went through something similar, so you are someone who knows.” That is the point. When we listen to that person, we gain knowledge about that situation through their experience. Who has more understanding and knowledge than God? So, He warns us and warns us.
What Esau did at the age of 40 (and the number “40” has to do with testing) is something that Adam did back in the Garden of Eden when he failed the test. It is also something that was in view right before the flood, in Genesis 6:1-3:
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And JEHOVAH said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
When God saw that the sons of God were intermarrying with the daughters of men, He determined to bring the judgment (of the flood), and that has application to this idea of being unequally yoked. It is not a minor thing in God’s sight. Someone might read Genesis 26 where Esau (at age 40) married these Hittite women and they might think, “OK, he married the Hittite women. He should not have done it, but what is the big deal?” To the Lord, it was a big deal. It indicated that Esau failed the test. He did not go through the test faithfully. He did not pass the test. He failed. It is just like in school when you either pass the test or fail it. This was the situation and, in a sense, Esau (who represents the unsaved among mankind) is picturing mankind failing the test of God. I think this is the reason that the year 1967 B. C. stands out; when you follow the time path and project it into the future to 2033 A. D., it equals 4,000 years. The breakdown of the number would be “40 x 10 x 10.” We have Esau’s age of 40 and we also have his name “Edom” and the color “red,” so God is doing everything He can do to say, “Look at man,” and from that point to the year 2033 A. D. (which all the other time paths converge upon) is 4,000 calendar years. This seems to indicate that God has been testing mankind. And there was a period of 40 days in Christ’s testing, and He was the “second Adam.” Then after 40 calendar years (from 7 B. C. to 33 A. D.), Jesus’ test was over. Again, He was called the “second Adam.” Also, God tested Israel over 40 years in the wilderness. And, here, Esau is tested for 40 years (as he represents unsaved man), and then it is as if all mankind is tested for “4,000” years, covering the history of the world, in a sense, going to its furthest extreme. We could also break the number “4,000” down to “4” and multiples of “10,” pointing to universality and to the furthest point. It is as if God is saying, “This is your test and let us see what happens upon the completion of your 4,000th year when we will see if you have been faithful or if you have failed the test.” Of course, for multitudes, they will fail the test because God did not elect them from the foundation of the world; they did not have salvation and their lives would show that, but it would finally come to the point of completion.
There are other things I wanted to get in to, but I will mention one more thing. Back in Genesis 26, we read that Esau married these two women. But not only did he violate the Law of God by being unequally yoked, he also violated the Law of God by taking two wives. From the beginning God made them male and female and a man was to cleave unto his wife, but Esau married two wives. It says in Genesis 26:35:
Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.
It was a grief of mind to them. Why? It was because they loved Esau. They loved Jacob, but they also loved Esau. Both were their children and they cared equally for them. Isaac made sure he blessed both concerning things to come. He was not showing favoritism, but he was trying to bring the blessing of salvation to their children. I am sure they prayed diligently and fervently for both their children. They desired the best for their sons, and the best is always what God says. The best thing to do, or the best way to live, or the best way to think, or the best way to speak is always what God says in His Word, the Bible.
When children are little, it is such an enormous blessing because you can hold them in your arms and love them. Everything is wonderful, it seems, but as they grow up what is in their hearts will come to the surface, more and more, depending on their spiritual condition. Even an elect child of God may follow after the things of the world for a time. You know, the world does not bring happiness. It does not bring peace and joy and goodness and love, that I can notice. I am sure there are people that will say they have experienced these things, but, ultimately, it will not bring lasting benefits. All those things will vanish, even if you enjoyed some of them for a time. The ultimate good for anyone is salvation. It is to be blessed of God as we follow His commandments. If we follow God’s commandments, it would warm the hearts of (elect) parents. Can you imagine seeing your children walking around with their Bibles and seeing them reading and studying the Bible? Or, to see them going off by themselves to pray? What a blessing. I would be overjoyed. [Emotional Pause] I am sorry.
Well, let us get back to time paths. So, 1967 B. C. to 2033 A. D. is 4,000 years. When we look at all these time paths. [Pause] I have not cried in a while and now I guess I cannot hold back. [Pause] For this year 2033, we have the time path from 1967 B. C. of 4,000 years, directly. We have the time path from 967 B. C., which is 3,000 years, directly. We have the time path from 33 A. D., which is 2,000 years, directly. We have the time path from creation to the first coming years, which is 11,045/46 years to the cross. Then we follow the same time path to 2033 A. D., which is 13,045/46 years. These things are coming together, focusing and narrowing in on a specific year.
I do not know if you remember, but last year we did the study on the book of Jonah. We saw that Jonah’s name means “dove.” When the Lord sent him to Nineveh the second time, it signaled the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which began in the year 1994. The message was, “And yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” We can pinpoint a starting date of 1994 and going to 2033, which is 40 years, inclusively. We also talked last year about Ezekiel 4 where the Lord told him to lay on one side for 390 days and on the other side for 40 days. We saw that the starting point for that was 1907 B. C. and going 3,900 years takes us to 1994. Then from 1994, “you turn on the other side” and then there are 40 years taking us to 2033, inclusively. So, it is really consecutive: there are 390 days and then 40 days, and we get 430. But the way God worked it out, it turned into 3,900 years and then 40 years, which will bring us to 2033. And we have the time path from creation to the flood. The flood occurred 6,023 years from creation and then from the flood to 2033 will be 7,023 years.
These are six or seven major time paths, but we have a handout that lists 37 time paths to that date, and there is other supporting Biblical evidence. And, of course, from the cross in 33 A. D. to 2033 A. D. is 2,000 years, which is huge in itself.
All these evidences are pointing to 2033 and it is all coming together in that specific year.