Audio  Important words can get overused and misused, causing them to lose the thrust of their original meaning. A few days ago, I was talking with someone about the word “pious.” At one time, this was the highest compliment that one could hope to receive. A pious person lives a faithful, godly life in the fear of the Lord. But today, if someone said that you are pious, you would probably not receive it as a compliment because it has come to refer to self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and judgmentalism. This is most unfortunate when it happens to important biblical words. I find that one of the most overused and misunderstood words that is tossed about today is the word “blessing,” or its derivatives, like “blessed” (which is customarily prefixed with a hashtag these days, #blessed). When we speak of God’s blessings in our lives, we often apply the term very selectively. We refer to material, physical, and earthly prosperity as being “blessed,” but we tend to overlook the biblical categories of blessedness, found for example in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. There Jesus says things, “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness,” and “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you.” We see bumper stickers and vanity plates on luxury cars that speak of being blessed, but we do not see them on broken down jalopies barely making it down the road. There are 112 New Testament references to being “blessed,” and none of them have anything to do with material prosperity.[1] So this notion that being blessed means having nice things, or having a lot of things, or having the right things, is missing the point of the Bible, and that leads to going to great lengths in the wrong direction in order to obtain that status of “#blessed.” One of the central themes of the Bible is God’s intention and desire to bless humanity. When God blesses, He pronounces favor upon a person – not necessarily because they deserve it, but because He chooses to. In His blessing, He empowers the one He blesses to do whatever it is that the blessing entails. Among the 600 times that the Old Testament refers to blessing, there are cases in which one human “blesses” another, but in these cases, the “blessing” consists of a prayer or promise of God’s blessing being extended. When it comes to the family of Abraham, we have a very special case. Abraham was promised an unusual and unique blessing from God, and that blessing was promised to him and his descendants. So from one generation to the next, the blessing of Abraham would be passed down by a father to his son. That blessing bestowed upon each successive generation a privileged position, the protection of God, and participation in God’s purposes. As we examine how this blessing is transferred from one generation to the next, we come to understand something of how and why God blesses His people. Since we all long to experience the blessing of God, the subject is relevant and of interest to us today. Through the lengthy portion of Scripture we have read, we discover first of all, that … I. God’s blessing is not secured by worldly means. We live in a culture that ingrains in us the idea that if you want something, you just go out and get it by any means necessary. If you want it, you should have it, and have it now, no matter what it takes to get it. While that kind of determination and drive may accumulate much in this world, it will never bring about the blessing of God. We find this throughout the story of the sibling rivalry between Isaac’s sons, Esau and Jacob. Notice that God’s blessing is not granted on the basis of human standards. By most human  considerations, Esau is a far more commendable character in this story than Jacob. He is the firstborn son, and in that day and culture, this carried a lot of weight. One of the most fundamental threads in the fabric of society in the ancient world (and in many cultures still today) was what was known as primogeniture, or the