Sermon Tone Analysis

Jacob at Jabbok

In 1914 headlines in newspapers in England would be relating to the dramatic turn of events in Europe, events that were altering the course of history.

These were stirring times for Bible students who had been led to anticipate these events for decades.

In terms of time prophecy, this was zero hour.

\\ Another item too was finding mention in the press, one of the greatest witnesses to Truth ever presented in this country.

The Photodrama had reached England, and was being shown in towns to audiences of thousands throughout the land.

Sufficient truth-tracts inviting attendance had been circulated for every adult in England.

The result was a turnout of public so large that the halls were inadequate.

Deacons were sent along the queues pulling out the brethren to leave more room for others.

Two million in England alone saw the Photodrama during those months.

What a witness!

Elsewhere it was the same.

\\ \\ Long, long before this happening the Lord had engaged His own "actors", and provided a strong supporting cast of angelic hosts to enact the original version of the Photodrama.

This consisted of a great scenario of the entire plan of God, and it was enacted through the lifetimes of four generations.

In Abraham's life we glimpse the age of faith leading up to the coming of the seed of promise.

First stage was from Eden to the flood, suggested by the death of Terah, when Abraham passed over the river from the old order and began his walk of faith as a stranger and pilgrim until the seed appeared.

Then the scene of the offering on Moriah of that dear and special child of promise, and his receiving, as it were, from the dead.

Then Isaac's experiences and the depiction of the call of the church in the mission of Eliezer.

Finally, Joseph, again a special and dear son of his father, after his release from the prison-house (of death) and exaltation and his finding of a bride, is seen with his blessings of life for mankind.

What a scenario indeed of the whole plan of the ages!

Yet something would be missing but for Jacob filling that gap.

Jacob was to highlight for us in particular the restoration of Israel and her preparation to fulfil all the Lord has purposed in and through His people.

\\ According to the pattern.

\\ \\ Num 8:4.

And this work of the candlestick was of beaten gold, |

The story has been told of Queen Victoria visiting a paper mill near Windsor castle.

To illustrate the process involved she was led into a rag-sorting shop where men were picking out rags from the city rubbish.

What was to happen to that dirty heap of rags, she asked, and was told that those rags would be processed to make the finest white paper.

Shortly after her visit the queen received a package of the most delicate white paper bearing her own image as water mark, and with it a letter explaining that this was the paper made from those very rags she saw before.

Quite aptly does this sum up the story of the Lord's processing of Jacob from what he was to what the Lord had in mind when first He brought him forth from the womb clutching to the heel of his twin brother Esau.

\\ \\ It is a story of greatest encouragement to us all, for the process is not peculiar to Jacob alone.

It applies equally to the church, and ultimately will apply also to the whole world of mankind.

All one day will confess, in the words of Psalm 146, verse 5, "Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God."

Sooner or later, everyone is to find this out for himself, but remember, he saw it first in the life of Jacob.-->-->

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| *Jacob at Jabbok* |

| *Israel in turmoil.

The time to favour Zion is come.

Israel returns exactly on time and according to the prophetic Word of God.

WHY THEN THE STRUGGLE NOW TAKING PLACE?* |

| Jacob at Jabbok \\ \\ Let us commence this story from the very moment of time in which we find ourselves today... this very special hour of Israel's history.

Look at those headlines of not too long back.

Thousands of Jews transported from Ethiopia... Collapse of an empire, the USSR... Who would have thought it?

Centre of it all.. Israel!

Jacob is at the ford of Jabbok.

\\ Gen 32:22-24 And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.

And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had.

And Jacob was left alone; \\ Yes, even in the Hebrew, rather as it comes over in the English, the name Jabbok is a phonetic word-play on the name, Jacob.

It denotes, we are told, "wrestling," an appropriate setting for the struggle that is here to take place.

\\ \\ The ford of the river Jabbok was the place where there was a conflict between two paths.

It was at the confluence between two streams.

It was also the only place where it is possible to brave and wade through the torrent that crosses the path of the road or trek that passes on further into the land of Israel.

At certain times of year this was quite a struggle, and especially if there were goods to be carried over, and cattle and flocks to be got across, not to mention family and children... a lot of children at that! (Twelve with his daughter, Dinah.)

The very youngest arrival was Joseph, the very precious first-born of Rachel, and it was his coming into the world that seemed to mark the fresh surge in the old urge to return to the land.

Now, after so long a time, that return was taking tangible shape.

It appears to have been shortly after Joseph arrived (prefiguring Jesus,) that the Lord tells Jacob to return to the land of promise.

\\ Gen 31:3 And the LORD said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred; and I will be with thee.

\\ \\ Now Israel, or rather Jacob, is on the march.

He is already in the land.

The very place he now walks on is within the boundaries.

But there is a very important sense in which Jacob has yet to arrive, yet to know and receive the full blessing the Lord intends to bestow.

What Mt Moriah was to Abraham, Jabbok is to Jacob.

It is here that the Lord's work on human trust and faith is to reach its peak.

Jacob is to leave that place a changed man, ready, prepared for the full blessedness of his role in the divine purpose... an instrument of blessing and happiness for all.

\\ But at this moment he sits there at sundown, the effort of getting his family and flocks thus far across those troublous waters has wearied him, and he is glad to now wait behind on the former bank alone with his thoughts, his conflicts, his fears of what awaits both him and his seed.

Doubtless he recalls the experiences of past years, and the memories of former days, and looks for some pattern, some meaning in his life.

Perhaps he remembers how he once laid himself down in loneliness and foreboding that very first night of exile when he fled from his family home for fear of his life.

The cause of his plight.. his estranged brother, Esau.

It does not yet occur to Jacob even now that his twin brother represented part of himself, his own flesh and blood.

\\ \\ Esau seems to represent that within each human mind and character which tends always to resist the ways of the Lord his God.

It is that which despised the birthright given him, and values the promises of God and His declared purpose far below the exigencies of the moment, the appetite that demands immediate though, oh so transitory, a satisfaction.

\\ Gen 25:22 "The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, "Why is this happening to me?"

So she went to inquire of the LORD."

(NIV) Gal 5:17 "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."

(KJV) \\ \\ Jacob was not himself defiant of the divine promises, nor did he undervalue them.

He simply lacked the faith to believe that the Lord could fulfil them without Jacob's human scheming, craftiness, wiles, and cunning.

So he had found himself ready to comply with the idea to deceive in order to obtain.

How many Christian people have still this same lesson to learn who glory in appearance.

Jacob put on a skin with the intent to deceive even his own father with that which was superficial and pretentious.

Oh what a lot that skin tells us about the Jew, and what a lesson to us all!

The promise was his.

The blessing would be his.

The Lord would see to that in His own way regardless of Isaac's intent.

But Jacob trusted his own wiles and craftiness, his own judgment and ability to achieve this, rather than the Lord's.

Thus, for lack of faith in his God to bring about that full blessing, Jacob had found himself running for his life, cast out of the land of promise.

\\ \\ Ladder up to heaven.

\\ Yet even this was overruled, and the very first night of his exile the Lord had granted Jacob that first vision of heavenly involvement in Jacob's life.

In total, seven visions, according to the records, were granted to Jacob.

This was the first.

There in weariness he had fallen asleep, a pile of small stones for a pillow in that rugged stony place.

Then, in his dream, he had seen stone laid against stone, ascending and ascending still upwards till the very topmost step of this great stairway reached, it seemed, into heaven itself.

There, above all, stood the Lord.

Jacob had found himself gazing up at the Lord.

Then, as he watched with great awe this astounding spectacle, angels appeared, first he noticed their ascent up that stairway, then that others came down to replace them here on earth, right next to where he lay... and he heard the voice of God, and received that message from His own lips, a message specially for Jacob, personal and reassuring.

\\ Gen 28:13-15 "And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of."

\\ Next morning early Jacob rose knowing he would never forget that experience or that place where human thought is drawn up that steep ascent to the thoughts of God.

How could he forget that continual ascending and descending of angels, overruling, intervening, a vision so transforming of the daily trial of human life.

Have we seen that stairway?

Can we forget once we have glimpsed that vision of the Lord's concern in our life?

\\ Gen 28:20-22 "And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the LORD be my God: And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee."