Now I have read the account of the birth and then the young adulthood of Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca. And, Lord willing, we will return to consider this history of the birth of twin sons next Lord's Day morning. But, first, there is something else here of great importance. Or, perhaps I should say, there is something missing here and its absence is of great importance.

No book in all the world places such demands on the reader as does the Bible. "There is no book in all the world that demands such a combination of mental gifts and spiritual graces to understand it aright as the Bible." [Whyte, Samuel Rutherford, 21] No book says more in less space, no book's each and every word is fraught with such importance, and no book's omissions carry such weight as does the Bible's. And there is a most important omission here.

In verse 19 we read: "This is the account of Abraham's son Isaac." "Account" is too empty a translation. The Hebrew word is "toledot" which means "generation, genealogy, family history." In all its uses in Genesis it is a superscription, a title for what follows. What follows 25:19 is the "toledot" of Isaac. That is, this is the family history of Isaac or these are the generations of Isaac. "This is the toledot of..." is the section division or chapter heading that Moses used to divide his material in the book of Genesis. We encounter the word, and such a division, for the first time in Genesis 2:4: "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created..." The last one before the "toledot" we have before us this morning is just up the page at 25:12, where we find a division entitled the "toledot" or family history of Ishmael. You will notice, by the way, that throughout Genesis we are given the record of the unfavored sons before that of the elect line. We have Cain's descendants before Abel's, Ishmael's before Isaac's, and, later, we will have Esau's descendants listed before Jacob's.

The "toledot" or family history of Isaac runs from 25:19-35:29. Then we have Esau's toledot in 36:1ff. and Jacob's in 37:2ff. Indeed, all the preceding material concerning Abraham follows the section heading in 11:27, "This is the family history of Terah." Terah was Abraham's father. Now, when you compare these various sections of "family history" you notice that each concerns itself not with the man whose "toledot" it is, but with his descendants. Terah's "toledot" is all about Abraham, his son. Isaac's, as we see already in chapter 25, is about Jacob and Esau. Esau's is simply a list of his descendants. And Jacob's toledot concerns the story of his twelve sons, especially Joseph and Judah. In fact, Jacob's toledot is the entire last section of Genesis.

But, and here is the striking omission, too striking to be unintended and unimportant: there is no "toledot" of Abraham, or, in other words, there is no personal history of Isaac, no account of his life. Just as the toledot of Terah was about Abraham, the toledot of Abraham would be about his son Isaac. But there is no such toledot; it is the one that is missing in all of Genesis. We have to piece together material for Isaac's biography from material found before and after. It is a fact easy enough to pass over. I have to admit that I did not notice this before it was pointed out to me in my study in preparation for this sermon. But, when one takes note of the characteristic presentation of this historical material in Genesis, it becomes a striking omission. An omission the reason for which, or the meaning of which requires explanation.

And, all the more, when you remember what we have already read about Isaac. He was, of course, the child of the promise. He was the child born miraculously to Abraham and Sarah in their old age and he was the fulfillment of the promise that the Lord had made to Abraham many years before. It was through Isaac that all the nations of the world would be blessed through Abraham and it was through Isaac that the descendants of Abraham would finally possess the promised land. His life begins in such happiness and holds such immense promise of wonderful things to come.

We suppose that he was faithfully raised to love and serve his Father's God. We read in Genesis 18:19 that God had chosen Abraham to "direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just" and we have no reason to think that Abraham did not do that in Isaac's case.

Indeed, we have every reason to think that Abraham did just that in Isaac's case, for we find Isaac as a young man, already obedient and faithful to a remarkable degree. We've all wondered about that young man when we read in chapter 22 of his going alone with his father up to the top of Mt. Moriah. He was old enough and strong enough to carry a load of wood sufficient for sacrifice to the top of that mountain. Surely, once he realized what his father intended to do, he had the strength to resist him, to run or to stop him. After all, Abraham was an old man when God told him to sacrifice his son. But Isaac loved and trusted his father and, it seems clear, also his father's God, and he helped his sorrowing father to prepare for his own execution and meekly awaited the knife; the knife that, in the grace and goodness of the Lord, never came.

And then, there was the marriage to Rebecca: a marriage made in heaven if ever there was one. And now we have come to our reading today. And, even here, we begin well. Isaac was forty years of age when he married Rebecca and then they found that they could not conceive a child. And Isaac did what a man of faith should do. He prayed for his wife. And the Lord heard his prayers. But, take note: as we read in v. 26, Isaac was sixty years of age when the twins were born. He prayed twenty years on behalf of his wife and for a child! Have you prayed for anything for twenty years? If you have you know what it takes to do so! How much hope; how much trust in God!

But now we are to the end of good things we may say about Isaac. The rest, alas, is not to his credit. He does not continue to live a genuinely faithful life. I do not say that he wasn't a believing man. Surely he was. Our Savior, in Matthew 8:11, says that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be there in the kingdom of heaven when many from every nation take their places at the feast on the Great Day. But, his faith in God notwithstanding, he finished badly. The great beginning was squandered. We will discover in chapter 26 that Isaac, not to put too fine a point on it, in defiance of all that he had seen God do for him and heard God say to him, showed himself an out and out coward. He put his wife at risk to protect himself. And in a graver failure still, he did not manage his home faithfully. In fact, the impression we will get as we read through chapter 27 is that he scarcely managed his home at all. He showed favoritism toward one son, the wrong one, and that, as we read in v. 28, because he liked "wild game." He liked to eat the game that Esau was so skilled at hunting. Isaac, at this stage in his life, was, as one commentator put it, "a gourmand who loves his food." [Wenham, ii, 177] He had become a sensual man, a man who made major decisions according to his appetites and allowed his pleasures to dictate the management of his home.

He was, in this most important respect, no son of his father. So much so, with such tragic consequences, that one writer goes so far as to say that, on Mt. Moriah, "it would have been better if the angel of the Lord had not stayed Abraham's hand." [Cited by Waltke, Genesis Tapes] That is too strong a judgment, but it illustrates the catastrophe of Isaac's later life, the disintegration of his home, that we are to read about in chapter 27.

And that is why, apparently, there is no "toledot" of Abraham, telling Isaac's story. He was "gapped." That is the term the scholars use [Waltke] to indicate an omission in the narrative that is consequential, for a reason. There is no narrative of Isaac. He was gapped!

Now Isaac isn't the last person in the Bible to have started well and finished badly and to have damaged his family and children by the sinful preoccupations of his older age. In fact, perhaps it is not too much to say that Isaac is the father of all who are saved but whose work is burned up in the fire, as Paul describes such Christians in 1 Corinthians 3. Now Jacob, Isaac's son, does indeed walk with God, but no thanks to his father; indeed, in spite of his father.

But Isaac, as I said, is not the last of whom such things could be said. Eli was a man of God but he was a most unfaithful father and the results were devastating for Israel when his sons became the high priests of the nation. David himself finished much less well than he began; so did his son, Solomon, in imitation of his father. And then, what of King Asa, of whom the Bible itself says categorically, "Asa's heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life." (2 Chronicles 15:17) And, yet, in the very next paragraph the Bible goes on to record some of the abysmal things that Asa did and failed to do. Why later in his life, that believing man, that man whom God had blessed, that man who had trusted God early in his reign and had been given a great victory over his enemies, that king threw one of God's prophets into jail for telling him something he didn't want to hear. He also brutally oppressed some of his people. Asa did that! Just as Isaac, the patriarch, neglected his family and did not raise his sons to love and serve the Lord. And these were faithful men, by and large; that is, they were, really, believing men. Simul justus et peccator: Christians are at one and the same time righteous and sinners. But there is an especially melancholy and especially sad result when a man or woman who begins so well, finishes his or her Christian life with a sigh.

And, beloved, it happens all the time! It happens to ministers, I know, and I worry that it might happen to me. Andrew Bonar, the devout Scottish pastor of the 19th century used to tell what was said to him at his ordination to the ministry by an old friend and minister. "Remember, it is a remark of old and experienced men, that very few men, and very few ministers, keep up to the end the edge that was on their spirit at the first." [Diary and Letters, 349]

And listen to these strong, warning words from P.T. Forsyth in his marvelous little book, The Soul of Prayer [68-69].

"How is it that the experience of life is so often barren of spiritual culture for religious people? they become stoic and stalwart, but not humble; they have keen sight, but no insight. ... Whole sections of our Protestantism have lost the virtue of humility or the understanding of it. It means for them no more than modesty or diffidence. It is the humility of weakness, not of power. To many useful, and even strong, people no experience seems to bring this subtle, spiritual intelligence, this finer discipline of the moral man. No rebukes, no rebuffs, no humiliations, no sorrows, seem to bring it to them. They have no spiritual history. Their spiritual biography not even an angel could right. There is no romance in their soul's story. At sixty they are, spiritually, much where they were at twenty-six.... And they are as juvenile in moral insight, as boyish in spiritual perception, as ever."

Now, in the case of some such people, and churches are full of them in our day, it may be, of course, that they were never Christians at all, not really. They were never born again, never made new creatures in Christ. As Paul describes such people in 2 Timothy 3:5: "They have a form of godliness but deny its power." But, and this is my concern this morning, with Isaac's example before us, all of this can also be true of a real Christian, who simply grows weary of well-doing, indifferent to the high purposes of his life in Christ, altogether too casual about following after the Lord himself and serving the Lord in the various callings of his life. Isaac was such a man, though, apparently, only such a man in the later years of his life. Indeed, perhaps we are meant to think, by the intimations in this chapter, that it was only after he was sixty years of age or so, the age when his twin sons were born to him. A man who walked in faithfulness with God for sixty years! And then relaxed into sensuality and a spiritual half-heartedness that had devastating consequences for his family, and perhaps especially for his son Esau.

How does this happen? We know it does happen for the Bible has shown us examples of it happening. Isaac and others like him. But how? How does a man who began so well, whose faith was tried and tested and shown so sturdy early on, grow so lax and half-hearted years later?

Well the Bible doesn't tell us in Isaac's case. It never really addresses this issue in anything other than a general way. We are taught to watch and pray that we enter not into temptation. We are taught to forget what is behind and to press forward to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of us. We are taught to be alert and awake against the wiles of the Evil One and, in a great many ways, we are taught that we may never relax, never give over fighting for holiness and for the Lord's interests in our own hearts and lives. We are warned against spiritual drowsiness and sleep.

For the foe, well we know, oft his harvest reapeth
while the Christian sleepeth.

And, above all, we are warned not to grieve the Holy Spirit and not to put out the Spirit's fire (1 Thessalonians 5). And we do that whenever we read his Word and do not respond in faith and obedience to it; we do that whenever we are prompted by the Spirit to consider God's commandments, or his mighty love, or our duty to be faithful to God and then do not act upon that prompting; we do that whenever we give ourselves over to what we know is displeasing to God; we do that whenever we feel the reproach of the Lord in our consciences on account of our sins and do not confess them to God and do not repent of them.

This can happen, this does happen, of course, in a thousand individual ways, each peculiar to the circumstances of every Christian's own life. But, here is one example. This is how Spurgeon saw it happen in some Christian lives that he knew. It seems as if this may have been what happened in Isaac's case. It sounds very like his situation.

"Failure at a crucial moment may mar the entire outcome of a life. A man who has enjoyed special light is made bold to follow in the way of the Lord, and is anointed to guide others therein. He rises into a place of love and esteem among the godly, and this promotes his advancement among men. What then? The temptation comes to be careful of the position he has gained, and to do nothing to endanger it. The man, so lately a faithful man of God, compromises with worldlings, and to quiet his own conscience invents a theory by which such compromises are justified and even commended. This is exactly what Isaac will do in the next chapter! He receives the praises of 'the judicious', he has, in truth, gone over to the enemy. The whole force of his former life now tells upon the wrong side.... To avoid such an end it becomes us ever to stand fast." [Cited in I. Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon, 161-162]

I don't know how it happened in Isaac's case. How the great beginning and the great middle of his life was then squandered so terribly when he turned sixty. But it is a warning to us all and a warning the Bible repeats often enough to prevent any from thinking it does not apply to him or to her. If a man of Isaac's spiritual stature can fail so badly, how much more you and I.

And what else is required of us but that we acknowledge the real danger that we always are facing of a creeping spiritual lethargy. The enemy of our souls does not sleep; nor, then, can we! We must acknowledge our constant peril and console ourselves with the fact that, if the price of a faithful Christian life from beginning to end is eternal vigilance, then that is an effort and a commitment altogether worth all the energy that it will require of us.

Let me conclude with this. Years ago, I preached a sermon on this same general theme. We were working our way through Second Chronicles and had come to the account of King Asa who started so well and finished so badly. He finished really badly even though the Bible tells us he was a faithful man, a Christian man, we would say in the language of the NT. And I warned against our doing the same thing. I told the congregation -- it was smaller in those days on a Sunday night -- that far too many Christians started well but finished with a sigh and were much less a credit to Christ and to the Christian faith in their age than they had been in their youth, or, in the case of those who came to Christ later, in the later years of their Christian faith than in the years immediately following their conversion.

Now, I was a younger minister then, and perhaps I should have anticipated the reaction and done more to forestall it in the sermon. Perhaps I should have made a point of saying that I was certainly not singling out anyone for criticism and that I was certainly not intending to suggest that we had among us some such people. The sermon was entirely general and was addressed to everyone as a warning, a caution that was appropriate to everyone, no matter what his or her age.

But, I found out later that there were people in the church who were offended by that sermon. They thought that I was talking about them. They thought that they were being criticized in some indirect way. As the Lord is my witness, in my naivete I never thought about that or considered that. It was the obvious lesson of Asa's life and I was drawing it out. But some were offended.

Now, here is a lesson and an application. Anyone who takes offense at this warning from Isaac's life -- his good beginning and his miserable finish -- is precisely the one who must take this lesson most immediately to heart. If you are worried about what people think of you more than you are worried about what God thinks about your life before him right now, then you are worried about the wrong thing! There is but one proper, faithful response to such history as we have before us this morning, and that is humble and persevering prayer to God that he would keep you under the shadow of his wing, that by his grace you would continue to work out your salvation in fear and trembling, that you would not prove unfaithful to him at any time in your life, and that on the last day of your life in this world you would serve him and love him as faithfully as ever you have in the past, if not more so.

And not that prayer only, but also that before the Lord this moment and in the days and weeks and months and years to come, you would make it your great commitment and solemn promise to Him that you would devote yourself first and foremost to the Lord and his service until your dying day. The great hymnwriter, James Montgomery, -- perhaps his best known hymn is the Christmas hymn, "Angels from the realms of glory"; but we sing his "Stand up, and bless the Lord" and the communion hymn, "Shepherd of Souls, refresh and bless" among others. He had a friend, Thomas Taylor, who was a Methodist Minister. One Sunday night Taylor had said in his sermon that he hoped to die as an old soldier of Jesus Christ, with his sword in his hand. That very night Taylor died. His friend, James Montgomery, wrote the following poem.

Servant of God! well done;
Rest from thy loved employ;
The battle fought, the victory won,
Enter thy Master's joy.
--the voice at midnight came;
He started up to hear:
A mortal arrow pierced his frame.
He fell, -- but felt no fear.

Tranquil amid alarms,
It found him in the field,
A veteran slumbering on his arms,
Beneath his red-cross shield;

His sword was in his hand,
Still warm with recent fight,
Ready that moment at command,
Through rock and steel to smite.

The pains of death are past,
Labour and sorrow cease,
And life's long warfare closed at last,
His soul is found in peace.
Soldier of Christ! well done;
Praise be thy new employ;
And while eternal ages run
Rest in thy Saviour's joy.

Now, brethren, pray and work in order that the same thing may be said of you. Take Isaac to heart. He had to be "gapped" in the sacred record, believing man that he was. Be sure, of all things be sure, that the same will not be necessary for you!