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Jacob possessed an uncommon amount of a common characteristic, and that is ambition. Hewanted whatever he wanted when he wanted it in the way that he wanted it. So he misledpeople, he deceived people, and then he ran from his problems. He was a deeply flawed man.But then again, so are we. Just look in the mirror. You’ll see Jacob there and all his warts.So because there’s so much we can learn from this man Jacob, we’re going to do a quick fivepartseries in the life of Jacob. Now, we don’t have time to go through all the episodes in his life,so we’re just going to jump in and out in certain points in his life, and we’re going to start in thatthis morning. The question we want to raise this morning is, why did God choose to use aflawed man like Jacob to carry on His line of blessing? Why would He use Jacob? Why wouldHe use an imperfect specimen like that? Then we’ve broadened out to an even bigger question,and that is, why does God use anyone in His kingdom work? Why you, and why me? We’regoing to see why this morning. We’re going to see why, as the story of Jacob begins, not in thecradle but in the womb.If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Genesis 25. The story of Jacob begins in verse 19, soturn in your Bibles to the book of Genesis, chapter 25, and beginning in verse 19. Now, I needto set the context for you here, because we’re diving right into the middle of this book. As youwell know, in chapters 12–50 of this book God gives us the birth and the growth of the covenantpeople. It all begins back in chapter 12 with Abraham. Abraham was just this idol worshiper inUr until God called him unto Himself. God gave him several promises, including the promise thatHe would make him into a great nation. As you know, Abraham fathered two sons. The first wasIshmael, who was born of Hagar, the handmaiden of Sarah. The second was Isaac, the child ofpromise. Now, the descendents of Ishmael are recorded in verses 12–18 of this chapter, and ifyou look through those verses you will see that Ishmael was a very prolific father; he had manysons. But that wasn’t true of Isaac. In fact, for the first twenty years he had no descendants,because his wife Rebekah was barren. So look what it says beginning in verse 19.Now these are the records of the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abrahambecame the father of Isaac; and Isaac was forty years old when he tookRebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister ofLaban the Aramean, to be his wife. Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife,because she was barren.In other words, she suffered from the same thing as did her mother-in-law, Sarah. Sarah, as youknow, was unable to have children until very late in life, when she finally conceived at the age of90. Interestingly enough, this became the same situation as Rebekah’s daughter-in-law, Rachel.She wasn’t able to have children until later in her life, and then she tragically died in the birth ofher second son, Benjamin. So infertility was not an unknown problem to this family, but itperhaps would have raised a nagging question in Isaac’s mind, and that is, “Did I somehow veeroff course here? Did I somehow get off and veer off God’s plan and purposes for my life?”Because, you see, Isaac knew he was carrying a line of blessing. Isaac knew that he had topass that line of blessing on to his descendents. But for twenty years there were nodescendents. For two decades there were no heirs. So the natural reaction was, “Did I get offbase here somewhere? Did my father’s servant choose the wrong woman to be my wife? Imean, how can barrenness possibly be part of God’s plan and purposes for my life?”Have you ever wondered that before? Have you ever pondered that question before? If you’renormal, you have, because that’s the natural reaction we have when we go through a time of