Message: Today I saw Genesis 27 and Matthew 27 parallel each other. In Genesis, Rebekah manipulated her son Jacob to deceive her husband and cheat her son out of his blessing. It worked and she got what she wanted out of it, but it caused a lifetime rift between her sons. I felt torn as I read this because on one hand, this was a terrible manipulating situation, but it was prophesied years earlier when she was pregnant with her twin sons and it was spoken that she had two nations in her womb at war with each other and that the older would serve the younger. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was trying to fulfill this prophesy on her own, or whether the prophesy was spoken to reveal what would eventually happen. Regardless, we will always know God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-even though Esau was the rightful older son. In Matthew 27 Judas Iscariot, a disciple of Jesus manipulated when he went to the elders and priests and asked what they would pay him to give up Jesus. He would later hang himself from the guilt of realizing the gravity of what he had done, but once again, this was spoken prophetically and was part of the plan of God for Jesus to sacrifice himself.
Command: Serve God with honesty and trust him to bless in the time and the way that he chooses.
Promise: God’s ways and his promises for us are for our good-even if it appears that people have manipulated situations to cheat or deceive us and have even gotten away with it.
Warning: Trying to manipulate people and situations has a heavier price than we will ever want to pay.
Application: This passage reminds me to be aware of my tendency to want to manipulate situations, and it also reminds me that regardless of the situations where I feel I have been deceived or cheated, God has a bigger plan in mind and his plans for me are good.
