#10 Birthright blessings; Marriage in the Covenant

Gen. 24-29
When I read this lesson I didn’t feel like going totally in the direction the lesson manual did, as I was reading I got quite a few different things. I tried to ponder the lesson topic, but I just kept getting more and more thoughts on the things I found, so here is what I learned.
*Ask for a volunteer
I would like to make a covenant with you-I want to give you unlimited popcorn forever! However you have to do your part of planting, cultivating and harvesting the kernels. Or you could just take this bag of popcorn and enjoy it through the rest of class what do you choose?
Hopefully he/she chooses the bag of popcorn because to make a covenant with anyone other than the Lord may bring disappointment. Our choices are what determine how we choose. Sometimes we may give up eternal blessings for temporary ones, hopefully though we all keep all the sacred covenants that we make and/or made with the Lord before birth as well as on this earth.
The lessons I learned through this reading is about covenants. When the Lord makes covenants with his people, we know that He keeps them, until and unless we break our part of the covenant. One thing I know for sure is that no matter how bad we mess up things; if we are continually striving to be righteous and doing the best we can to keep our covenants the Lord will always provide a way to keep His part of the covenant.
As we keep our part of the covenant with Him, and when He feels it is time and in the way He feels would be the best for all involved He will send the blessings.

We know that the Lord made covenants with Abraham, in 24:1 it tells us that He indeed kept all promises to Abraham.
The stories we are going to discuss today show how making covenants with the Lord and through His name bring great blessings and miracles, if we do our part.
24:2 Abraham here makes his servant covenant with him through the Lord to find Isaac a wife that he can marry in the covenant.
When Covenants as serious as eternal marriage are involved and it is the Lords will, He will deliver.
We know the servant made the covenant and left to find the covenant woman. He had no idea how to find her or how he could keep this covenant without divine intervention; I’m guessing that this servant living in a prophet’s house has learned a few things about prayer and how to get them answered. So there he is stopped at the well waiting for the women to come draw water for their households and he comes up with a plan to keep his covenant. Listen to his prayer and notice what he says and how he says it. 24:12-14 what does this teach us about making covenants? We need to be prayerful and pray with a specific purpose, come up with a specific plan for keeping those covenants.
*So how seriously does the Lord take those covenants, and how willing is He to help us keep them?
24:15 before the servant had even finished speaking Rebekah is there at the well.
To show his gratitude the servant recognizes the Lord’s hand (24:48) and testifies to Rebekah’s family about the entire incident.

I knew a guy from the ward I grew up in who made a promise to the Lord. It was kind of a weird promise to me, because I didn’t understand it at the time, but I remember that the power with which he told it to me has made his story stick with me. This man and his wife had 4 children and lived a happy good, righteous life. Well the time came to get a new Bishop in our ward and the man told me that he had been having strong impressions that it would be him. He prayed for days and days and asked the Lord that if he would keep him out of that position he would serve anywhere else happily and have a 5th child, which wasn’t necessarily in his life’s plan. Sure enough someone else was called to be Bishop, this man was put into the high council and his wife ended up pregnant a couple months later. Now perhaps this was the Lord’s plan all along, but it taught me about covenant making with the Lord, if you make one you’d better be prepared to follow through, which this man did and was blessed. Although I will say he may have given up this dreaded calling, but he also gave up some tremendous spiritual blessings that come with such a calling. I will testify though that spiritual blessings come with every calling if we serve happily.

So this shows that the Lord does make covenants with us here on earth today, but the next story shows how the Lord also keeps covenants with us made in the preexistence.
We know the next story the one of Rebekah being pregnant with Jacob and Esau Ch.25:21-22 Rebekah conceives and feels like she is having pregnancy problems and decides to ask the Lord about it.
25:23 He tells her that there are 2 people inside of her battling. He tells her of the covenant-that the younger will be stronger than the other and the elder will serve the younger.
Here is where we as mortals make it complicated; both parents end up with their favorite sons. 25:28 Isaac loves Esau and Rebekah loves Jacob. Now tradition dictates that the eldest receives the birthright, because of this Isaac had every intention of giving the blessing to Esau even though Esau’s attitude was that he didn’t want any part of it. (25:32-34)
Here we have a little detour to our story, life happens in their household, normally I would skip it and finish the story but this little detour teaches us more about covenants.
So like I said, “life happens” there was a famine in the land (26:2-3). Isaac was forced to move, he questions the Lord about his move the lord tells him to sojourn in the land he tells them and he will bless him.
26:12 so the Lord does bless them a hundredfold, as always happens, good people prosper and greedy people want what the good people have. Isaacs neighbors wants his success so they ask him to leave the neighborhood, Isaac, not wanting problems decides to leave. He pitches his tent 26:17 and tries to dig a well; the neighbors took it. Then he digs another and another and the same thing kept happening. Can’t you just hear Isaac praying to the Lord saying I thought you would help me out here, well the Lord isn’t done teaching Isaac so his answer is the one we all hate to hear. 26:22 & 24 Be patient I will keep the covenant. Eventually the Lord softens the hearts of the neighbors and they agree to leave him alone.(26:29 &32) He finds water and prospers.
*lesson to learn here, timing of the Lord is very important! The answer of be patient teaches us what? That sometimes the Lord needs us to learn faith, obedience, trust in Him so that we can become the people we need to be to be like Him.

Back to the Jacob Esau story in ch. 27 Here’s part of the story where Rebekah believes she needs to take things into her own hands to make sure the birthright falls on Jacob. She has the right idea as far as she knows how important this covenant between the Lord and Jacob is, but what she forgets here is that the Lord will not allow anything to happen that isn’t supposed to. D&C 121:36-37 teaches us that the powers of heaven control the priesthood and if it is used unrighteously, meaning if Isaac were to pronounce the blessing on Esau when the spirit told him not to he could lose his priesthood. In other words if that blessing were not supposed to go to Jacob it wouldn’t have no matter the trickery. Because the blessing was meant for Jacob the Lord allowed the blessing. Instead of trusting the Lord Rebekah orchestrates this scheme to trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing instead of Esau. By the time Isaac finds out what happened 27:33 he realized that the blessing truly went to the person the Lord wanted it to go to.
The Lord’s covenant is kept with Jacob, yes, Rebekah helped the timeline along, but it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t the Lord’s will all along.
*What can we learn from this? That we can try to force things to happen when we want them to but it is all still in the Lord’s control; it will happen when He says it will happen.

Because of all the deceit Esau is enraged and makes a plan to kill Jacob. Rebekah tells him to escape by using the excuse that he needs to go find a wife. He goes and in ch 28 Jacob has fled. He lies down for the night and has a dream about the 3 degrees of heaven and that in order to get to the highest he needs to make and keep sacred covenants.
*Marion G. Romney said of this dream: “Jacob realized that the covenants he made with the Lord…were the rungs on the ladder that he himself would have to climb in order to obtain the promised blessings-blessings that would entitle him to enter heaven and associate with the Lord” (Temples-the gates to heaven” Ensign Mar. 1971, p16)
During the dream the Lord makes a covenant with him (28:14-15) the same covenant he made with his father. Jacob makes a covenant back (28:20-22) my version of his covenant is this if thou (Lord) will get me out of this situation of being foodless, needing clothes and shelter, then I will always worship and do everything thou asks of me including giving a tenth of all I have.
We know that the Lord helps him but it then takes 40 years of patience, learning, & sacrifice of living with a dishonest Laban before Jacob has experienced all that he needs to become the person and prophet he will be.
*This teaches us that the Lord won’t bless us right away every time, sometimes we have to prove our faithfulness, obedience and trust in Him through times of struggle and trial before the Lord will send the blessings of the covenant that we have made with him. I imagine that we can also learn from Laban what it looks like or what not keeping covenants turns us into.

Through all these stories and more we can see how the Lord works and in what ways he keeps His covenants with us. These stories show that His hand is in everything including the timing of when and how things take place. He knows what we need to learn and how we will best learn it. He answers our prayers-the more specific the better-but only if it is His will and His timing of this I testify in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.