During the ICF Delft service, children leave for their own Bible teaching at Treasure Seekers part-way through the service, after the kids’ song, and rejoin for the final song of the service.  The creche room is also available for 0-2 year olds. For those not attending ICFD in person, we’ll continue to send materials by email.

Before looking at Job, in our previous series (Abraham – Journey of Faith) we saw how God graciously called Abraham out of a life of idolatry and promised to give him land, descendants and blessing. Abraham would also ultimately be the source of blessing for the whole world through one of his descendants (Genesis 12:1-3). He enjoyed God’s blessing and protection throughout his life despite lapses of faith. By the end of his life, not all the promises had been fulfilled.

Far from being a great nation, Abraham only had his son, Ishmael (through his maidservant Hagar), Isaac (through his wife Sarah) and six other sons through his second wife after Sarah died. As far as the land was concerned, he only owned a burial plot which he bought from the Hittites (Genesis 25:9-11). But Abraham died trusting that God would fulfil every promise he had made (Hebrews 11:10-13). The spotlight now shifts to Isaac who not only inherited everything that Abraham owned (Genesis 25:5) but was also the heir of God’s promises (Genesis 25:11). The story of Isaac is concerned mainly with the story of his son, Jacob. You’ll need to go a long way to find a more dysfunctional family and more unlikely person to be the recipient of the greatest promises made to humankind, than Jacob. The majority of his life is spent scheming, deceiving and depending on his own ability to secure what God had promised would be his before he was even born.

The story begins with Isaac on his deathbed looking to pass God’s promises and blessing on to the next generation. He assumes it will be Esau, the older of his twin sons, but he is mistaken – God has other plans. Jacob is chosen instead and will be the father of all the people of Israel. Even his name will change to reflect this and his twelve sons will become the twelve tribes of Israel. The story of Jacob is therefore key to our understanding of God’s dealings with this chosen nation as it describes how it started.

This Sunday the story starts in the kids’ Bible passage, Genesis 25:19-34; 26:34-27:41.  The Big Idea is that God keeps his promises to Abraham through Isaac and his son, Jacob, even though Jacob lies to receive the blessing. Here is a video telling the story. The kids’ song is: “Our God is King Over All the World”.

The memory verse for the Jacob series is simplified from the NIV:

“People make many plans, but only the Lord’s plans work forever.” Proverbs 19:21