Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #11 of Genesis, chapter 25, and we are continuing to look at Genesis 25:22-23:

And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of JEHOVAH. And JEHOVAH said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

We are halfway through the book of Genesis, which is 50 chapters, so we are just about halfway through with chapter 25, and already we have seen this same theme occurring at two previous times.  We saw with Cain and Abel that there was one brother who was blessed by God (Abel) and made righteous by the righteousness of Christ, and the other brother attempted to do good works, but he could no attain unto that righteousness because he sought it another way, like Israel would later do and the churches would later do.  They sought it by their own works of righteousness, as did Cain.  We know that there was such tension, turmoil and hostility that Cain rose up and slew his brother “at the end of days.”  Remember that it said this in Genesis 4:3.

Then after that, thousands of years had passed when God gave us another historical account of two brothers (half-brothers) with Isaac and Ishmael.  Isaac was the son of promise given to Abraham and Sarah when they were old, and Ishmael was the son of Hagar who identifies with the covenant made at mount Sinai, the Law of God.  So it is a similar theme with Cain and Abel and Isaac and Ishmael.

Now time has moved on and Ishmael has died, and now God is introducing two children that are twins, and God said, “Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels.”  We will see that these two people represent the same two people groups as Cain and Abel or Isaac and Ishmael.  God is reiterating or emphasizing, once more, the particular truth that there are only two types of people in this world, when it comes down to it.  The world clouds that fact by dividing mankind into various races and nations and tongues, and they think there are all kinds of different groups, like male versus female, and so forth. 

But the Bible makes it very clear that there are really only two kinds of people: saved and unsaved.  There are those of the covenant of promise, like Isaac, Abel or Jacob, and there are those of the covenant of works, like Cain, Ishmael and Esau.  They are the saved and the unsaved.  And, once more, God is touching on this subject with these twin boys.  You could not get two boys any closer than that.  They have the same mother.  They are developing at the same time, and they will be born at almost the same time, although one will come out first.  But, here, God will use these two babies to teach us about His program of election, and that is what we do read when we go to Romans 9:7-11:

Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)

Here, God speaks in the earlier verses of the children of the flesh and the children of the promise, and the children of the promises are counted for the seed.  Then He says, “And not only this,” and then He tells us about Rebekah and Isaac and their children.  It is a further emphasis of the same principle and the same Biblical teaching we learned when we looked into the Bible concerning Ishmael and Isaac.  After telling us in verse 11, “(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) ,” it says in Romans 9:12-13:

It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

By the way, when it says, “For the children not being born, neither having done any good or evil,” it means before they were in the womb, because the Bible says we are conceived in sin and it also says we are born speaking lies.  A baby in the womb is contaminated with sin.  It is not that they are pure and without sin because they have already been contaminated through their parents, as you cannot “bring a clean thing out of an unclean.”  In other words, it is not the actual birth that causes sin after they come out of their mother’s womb.  They were sinners in their mother’s womb because they are human beings, and all mankind have fallen.  When we read that children are born speaking lies, God is referring to that which is being said in their hearts.  Remember the Psalm that says that the fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,” and that is a lie.  That is the natural condition of all human beings.  I am pointing this out because since God says they were not yet born and had not yet done good or evil, it had to be before they were conceived that God made this choice.  Actually, the truth is that God had made this choice between Jacob and Esau before the world was or before the world came into existence.

But before we get into that, notice that after it said that neither had done good or evil, it said in Romans 9:11:

… that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)

Obviously, this understanding is that God had saved one of the babies and not the other. That is what it means: Jacob, He loved.  That means God had chosen Jacob and determined to love him.  Remember, the Bible tells us that He loves us with an everlasting love, in Jeremiah 31:3.  The Lord made the statement, “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.”  And He is speaking of His people, spiritual Israel.  And Jacob’s name would be changed to Israel later in his life.  It is “spiritual Jacob,” and Jacob typifies all the elect.  The whole purpose of His letting it be known that before these twin boys had done good or evil, it was “that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works.”   And, immediately, works are “thrown out the window,” if anybody should try to say, “Well, yes, but you have to believe.”  No – you do not.  Jacob did not believe anything, because he did not exist.  If it was true belief, it would have been a good work, and God said that they had not done any good or evil.  They were not yet conceived and formed in their mother’s womb, nor were they born, and, yet, God had made the decision.  And that is really the summation.  It is the beautiful picture of how God saved any sinner.  We were all saved in this identical way.  God looked upon the whole of humanity – all that would ever be born – and He made choice. 

We read in Genesis 25:23:

Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels…

The word “separated” is also used in Deuteronomy 32:7-8:

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

You see, God separated the sons of Adam and, of course, that would include all people.  We are all sons of Adam.  We all came forth from him.  How did He separate?  “I will pick Jacob.”  Why?  All the Bible says is that it was all due to God’s good pleasure.  It was not because He saw “good” in Jacob.  Neither had done any good or evil, so He did not see any good and He did not see any evil.  He was not looking at that aspect.   God knew that both would commit evil.  They would be sinners, like everyone else, so it was useless to try to evaluate them and make a determination regarding their eternal condition based on “good and evil,” because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, so that ruined everyone.  That ruined the whole batch, as it were.  None are good.  “None are righteous, no not one.”  So there is no basis to making a judgment between peoples based on that qualification, as if God made His determination by looking into the future, as some Arminian preachers and freewill teachers claim.  You cannot deny that the word “election” and “God choosing” are in the Bible, but they have to twist it and manipulate the Word of God to try to get it to say what they demand it to say, which would permit man to be involved in God’s salvation program by exercising our free will.  So they say, “God looked ahead down the corridors of time, and He saw that this one would choose Him or that one would choose him, and that is election.”  But they do not know what they are talking about.  They are certainly not talking truth from the Bible.  They are speaking lies.  They are speaking things out of their own minds and out of the vain imagination of men.  There is nothing like that in the Bible.  All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. 

All would be desperately wicked.  None would be righteous.  None would be good.  None would choose God from the heart.  All are dead in sins – dead in heart and soul.  If God had left man to their own effort and will, then He would have had to destroy everyone, and there would have been no people of God.  There would have been no bride of Christ.  There would have been no elect true believers, if God had left man on their own to exercise their dead wills – they would have died in their sins.

Therefore God made choice.  He is telling us about these twin boys to teach us the purpose of God according to election, that it might stand.  It has nothing to do with man’s works, but of Him that calleth.

Interestingly, the word “purpose” is translated as “shewbread” in a couple of places.  It is the word used in Matthew 12:3-4 where it says that David ate the shewbread.  We wonder what that has to do with anything, but if we were to literally translate this, it would be “the setting forth” of bread.  It is in a very prominent position, right there “to show,” so it was set before Israel at that time.  It was set before the priests, so it was right there, and they could see it.  If we take that understanding of it being “set before,” and if we inserted that in the place of the word “purpose,” it would read: “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the ‘setting before’ of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.”

In other words, God had done this “before,” in that it was something God took care of and decided about before the world was (in existence).  We can read about that if we go to Romans 8:28-29:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

God foreknew by predestinating, and that would lead us over to Ephesians 1:3-5:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

Here it is very plainly stated.  It is an incredible and amazing truth that God is revealing to us in showing us that He had accomplished these things and worked these things out before the foundation of the world.  We also know from the Bible that Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.  You know, in years past, I sometimes was not careful when stating that Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and I said that He was slain before (the foundation of the world), and that was wrong.  A couple of people kept pointing this out to me by sending me emails saying, “You are saying ‘before,’ but the Bible says ‘from,’” and at that time I really did not take note of the difference.  But I wanted to be accurate, so I tried to make sure I always said “from,” and now I understand why it is important, because the foundation of this world (and the world to come) was based on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.  In other words, when Christ was slain as the Lamb of God, that was the foundation of the world.  And, yet, it is also true that in Ephesians 1:4 it says that He had chosen us in Him “before” the foundation of the world, not “from.”

And, again, when we think about, we understand (and, of course, God has to open up our understanding) why He chose us before the foundation or before Christ died at the point of the foundation, because God first had to make this choice or decision.  So the first thing God had to do to love His people with an everlasting love – which happened in eternity past – was to decide, “I am going to love Jacob, and I am going to leave Esau in his sins.”  So He did not opt to select Esau.  In not selecting him, God hated him as hatred has to do with separation.  It has to do with “putting away,” like a wife that is put away is said to be hated.  So He loved Jacob, and Esau He hated.

I do not know how we can even think of a “time sequence,” since there is no time in eternity past, but before the foundation of the world, God made the determination who to love and who not to choose.  Then all the sins of those He had decided to save (the whole company of elect, perhaps as many as 200 million people) were laid upon Christ, and then God the Father struck Him dead at the foundation of the world. 

These are incredible Bible verses that reveal incredible truths.  You know, God does not just tell us the history of the world and how long the world has been there, although He does tell us that, does He not?  But He tells us of events that occurred in the counsels of eternity past, and He also tells us of things to come in eternity future.  So the Bible is just an incredible book.  It is an astounding book because we know that everything God tells us is absolutely truth and faithful can be trusted altogether.  So this is how God saved all of those whom He decided to save.

If we go on in Ephesians, it says in Ephesians 1:11:

In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

Here is that word “purpose” again.  It is the “setting before” of Him that worked all things after the counsel of His own will.  The Triune God does not need to take counsel with man or any creature He has created.  He is the infinite, Almighty and all-knowing God, so the counsel of the Godhead is more than sufficient for Him to work out these things.

We will stop here in this study and, Lord willing, we are going to look a little bit more at what God has to say about His election program  because Jacob and Esau – these two nations – are highlighted in many places in the Bible, so it would be good for us to spend a little time looking at them.