Genesis 26

v1-6: When times are hard, when you go through “difficult providences,” it is good to “review, and repeat to [yourself], the promises,” God has made to you.

v7-11: “The sins of those who profess faith shame them before those who are outside the faith.”

v12-33: Success and riches make people a target of envy and ill will. “The more people have, the more they are envied and exposed to criticism and hurt.”

v34-35: Esau in his marriage to two Canaanite women who were “strangers to the blessing of Abraham and subject to the curse of Noah,” showed that “he neither desired the blessing of God nor feared the curse of God.” You can tell a lot by a person’s actions. What do your actions show?

Genesis 27

v1-5: The promise of the Messiah and the land of Canaan that was passed on from Abraham to Isaac, was to go to Jacob, but Isaac, “not knowing, not understanding, or not duly considering the divine prophecy concerning his two sons,” decided to pass it Esau his eldest son. Don’t make the mistake of making plans according to “our own reason” while ignoring “divine revelation.”

v6-17: Rebekah’s “purpose was good,” but “the means she tried to use were bad and in no way justifiable.” Yet God rules over it according to his will, that “he might have the glory of bringing good out of evil, and of serving his own purposes by human sins and folly.”

v18-29: “Hypocrites are people who pretend to be those they are not.” Here is a picture of one. Jacob’s “voice is Jacob’s… but his hands are Esau’s. He speaks the language of a saint, but does the work of a sinner.”

v30-40: Esau was too late, he did not come in time, and missed out on the blessing. “There is an accepted time, a time when God will be found,” but there is also “a time when he will not answer those who call on him, because they have neglected the appointed time.” Now is the day of salvation.

v41-46: Do you need “to be put out of the way of temptation”? Are you “in danger both of following the bad example” of another “and of being drawn into a trap by it”? Do you need to move yourself “out of harm’s way”?