Wendy's Video Summary - Wednesday, January 13, 2010

(For those of you not participating in the Chronological Bible reading with Wendy Pope, please visit my other blog, “Pondering In His Presence”. Thank you.)

Wendy begins by saying that we’re one day closer to solving the problem of the comments. There is a section over to the right side of the home page on her blog that says “Comments RSS”, “Entries RSS”. Many of you are going there where it asks you to subscribe to her blog through that avenue. You can subscribe through those places, but if you comment there, that’s why your comments aren’t appearing with the others. So for today, what she would like all of us to do, no matter how we receive her post, she’d like for us to comment on the home page. Underneath her signature, after the post, there is a link that says “comments”. Click on that link and it will take you to a place where you can read all the comments, as well as leave your own. She is trying to streamline everyone’s comments to one place, so let’s try and do that today. No matter how you receive her post today, come to her home page and comment there. She thinks that’s the issue, so we’ll try this as an experiment today.

Today’s reading was quite interesting. She said that if we’re completely honest, we may have skimmed over the genealogies. She confessed that she did that the first time she read them, because it seemed kind of boring. There’s not a lot of fun, not a lot of joy in genealogies. When she read back through it she found some interesting things and she wants to share those things today.

The first thing we can glean out of our reading today was that prophecy has been fulfilled. Jot down this reference, Genesis 25:23, where the Lord spoke a prophecy over the two babies that were in Rebekah's tummy as they were fighting and struggling. He said to her, “ The sons in your womb will become two nations. From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals. One nation will be stronger than the other; and your older son will serve your younger son.” We see that birthed now through this genealogy. Esau has his own nation the Edomites. Jacob has his own nation, the Israelites. The Edomites will soon be under the authority of the Israelites. That’s what it means that the older will serve the younger. We haven’t really arrived at that place in our reading yet, but we have arrived at the place of hostility. Wendy would say that it’s kind of hostile when your brother wants to kill you. So, that prophecy was fulfilled and we can see it laid out like here. We can see that Esau did have a great nation behind him.

The second thing Wendy pulled out of Scripture today was that blessings were fulfilled. If you can remember the scam that Jacob and Rebekah cooked up, it was to allow Jacob to have the blessing, instead of the firstborn, Esau. Momma Rebekah convinced her son Jacob to carry out this trick to receive Esau’s blessing. Wendy wanted to say, “Hey, Isaac you were tricked. Take it back and give Esau the blessing.” She just didn’t understand this, but she just has to trust that this is the culture. This is the way it was and Esau couldn’t get it back. However, when he came back and realized he had been tricked, he was begging his father for a blessing. Wendy felt really bad for him. He was saying, would you please give me a blessing, just one? He was crying out to his father. So Isaac gave him a blessing, but the blessing was not really of God. That first blessing that comes that the first child receives is a prophetic blessing and is truly blessed by God. This second child, (which was really the first child here), receives a more "pat you on the back", common type blessing that was not ushered by God like that first blessing given to Jacob. However Isaac still wanted to bless his son Esau, so over in Genesis 27:39-40 we see his blessing. It says, “You will live away from the richness of the earth, and away from the dew of the heaven above.” Wendy is taking from our reading today, that the "dew from heaven above", that this means it is not from God, not prophecy fulfilled. Now as far as living away from the “richness of the earth”, that came from today’s reading. “The richness of the earth” was Canaan. That was the place to be. The land of milk and honey. We can see over in today’s reading in Genesis 36:6, “Esau took his wives, his children, and his entire household, along with his livestock and cattle - all the wealth he had acquired in the land of Canaan - and moved away from his brother, Jacob.” He moved away from his brother, from the land and the richness of the land. It says that he will “live by the sword“, and he has lived by the sword. He did not have all that Jacob received. He had to get what he got on his own. He acquired his wealth, cattle and herds and had to fight for his own and he got it.

Then we see, that he will serve his brother. We will see shortly that the Edomites will serve the Israelites. And then it says, (still back in Genesis 27:39-40), “But when you decide to break free, you will shake his yoke from your neck.” That will happen eventually. The Edomites will move out from under the Israelites. So we’ve seen prophecy fulfilled and blessing fulfilled in what appeared to be meaningless genealogy.

Wendy kind of had a little bit of fun today and she wrote this:

“Wendy is the daughter of Bob and Faye, who are the children of Charlie and Neely and Boyd and Mary.” That’s her genealogy, but at the top of the list, Wendy is a daughter of the Most High King….and so are you.

(All thoughts transcribed from Wendy's blog to aid those whose computers are not capatible to view these videos.)