Preparing for Confrontation
With: Our Design According to Genesis • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
Walking Adjacent to the Lord
Walking Adjacent to the Lord
Genesis 32:1–6 (NIV)
Jacob also went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is the camp of God!” So he named that place Mahanaim.
Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom. He instructed them: “This is what you are to say to my lord Esau: ‘Your servant Jacob says, I have been staying with Laban and have remained there till now. I have cattle and donkeys, sheep and goats, male and female servants. Now I am sending this message to my lord, that I may find favor in your eyes.’ ”
When the messengers returned to Jacob, they said, “We went to your brother Esau, and now he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.”
Jacob is sent away from Laban and into facing his humiliation. Especially for men, facing our humiliation is often the toughest of situations. Our humiliation finds its roots in our shortcomings, our self-reliance, our pride. Most often when we find ourselves in humiliating circumstances, when our ability to deceive or deflect has been overtaken, we run and try to escape our humiliation. For 20 years, Jacob has been running from his humiliation. The fear of having to face his humiliation has led him to stand beside Laban, even though Laban deceived, humiliated and stole from Jacob.
Now as the Lord prepares Jacob to have to face his humiliation, the Lord reassures Jacob that He is with Jacob and that He is leading Jacob’s steps. Jacob’s confidence in the Lord is shaken as he receives word that Esau is coming out to meet him with 400 men in tote.
Driven into the Arms of the Lord
Driven into the Arms of the Lord
Genesis 32:7–21 (NIV)
In great fear and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, and the flocks and herds and camels as well. He thought, “If Esau comes and attacks one group, the group that is left may escape.”
Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.’ ”
He spent the night there, and from what he had with him he selected a gift for his brother Esau: two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty female camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, and twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. He put them in the care of his servants, each herd by itself, and said to his servants, “Go ahead of me, and keep some space between the herds.”
He instructed the one in the lead: “When my brother Esau meets you and asks, ‘Who do you belong to, and where are you going, and who owns all these animals in front of you?’ then you are to say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a gift sent to my lord Esau, and he is coming behind us.’ ”
He also instructed the second, the third and all the others who followed the herds: “You are to say the same thing to Esau when you meet him. And be sure to say, ‘Your servant Jacob is coming behind us.’ ” For he thought, “I will pacify him with these gifts I am sending on ahead; later, when I see him, perhaps he will receive me.” So Jacob’s gifts went on ahead of him, but he himself spent the night in the camp.
Jacob responds to the fear of facing his humiliation and the threat of his brother’s wrath by engaging into a multi step dialogue with the Lord. Jacob plans. He divides his party. Jacob prays. He reminds his heart of God’s promises. Jacob plans. He will prepare gifts to soften Esau’s heart. In the rest of the chapter, we will see that Jacob prays once again.
Wrestling with God
Wrestling with God
Genesis 32:22–32 (NIV)
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.
Jacob draws away from his family and the Lord meets him in him solace. Jacob and the Lord wrestle through the night before the Lord touches Jacob’s hip and makes him lame. Jacob accomplished something that is beyond human limitations, but take notice that his struggling was only made possible because the Lord was willing to continue the struggle.
This conflict was the true telling of the lifetime of battling and groping that Jacob had lived through up to this point. Since the womb, Jacob has known nothing but conflict, but in this moment, the Lord reveals very clearly to Jacob that his conflict was never with Esau nor with Laban, but it was always with the Lord. We make ourselves believe that our conflicts are with others, but our conflict truly lies between ourselves and the Lord. In whom would Jacob trust? Who was responsible for each one of Jacob’s breaths? Who is responsible for the promises of God to be fulfilled?
Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary Vision, Foreboding and Wrestling (32:1–32)
The conflict brought to a head the battling and groping of a lifetime, and Jacob’s desperate embrace vividly expressed his ambivalent attitude to God, of love and enmity, defiance and dependence. It was against him, not Esau or Laban, that he had been pitting his strength, as he now discovered; yet the initiative had been God’s, as it was this night, to chasten his pride and challenge his tenacity. ‘With the cunning thou dost wrestle’ (Ps. 18:26; cf. AVmg). The crippling and the naming show that God’s ends were still the same: He would have all of Jacob’s will to win, to attain and obtain, yet purged of self-sufficiency and redirected to the proper object of man’s love, God himself.
It was defeat and victory in one. Hosea again illuminates it: ‘He strove with the angel and prevailed’—this is the language of strength; ‘he wept and sought his favour’—the language of weakness. After the maiming, combativeness had turned to a dogged dependence, and Jacob emerged broken, named and blessed. His limping would be a lasting proof of the reality of the struggle: it had been no dream, and there was sharp judgment in it. The new name would attest his new standing: it was both a mark of grace, wiping out an old reproach (27:36), and an accolade to live up to. The blessing, this time, was untarnished, both in the taking and in the giving: it was his own, uncontrived and unmediated.