Jacob: Deciding to Face Failure

Two great moments of decision in Jacob’s life:

1. Bethel – where he had a dream (Genesis 28)

   1. Jacob was fleeing from Esau; trying to get out of the region before Esau could catch him and kill him – it was a time of great crisis in his life

   2. God appeared in the dream at the top of a great ladder to heaven

      1. God restated to Jacob the promises he had made to his grandfather Abraham:

         1. to give him the land he was now fleeing from

         2. to give him descendants

         3. to bless all people on earth through him

         4. to be with him and watch over him

   3. Jacob believed God – this is where he really became a man of faith; a follower of God

      1. Gen. 28:21 – “the Lord will be my God”

      2. Built an altar and called the place Bethel – the house of God

2. Jabbok – twenty years later (Genesis 32)

Often, at some crisis point in our lives, we turn to God. We say “God if you will get me out of this, I will serve you; I will follow you.” And in that feeble and frightened way, we put our trust in God. But then, when the crisis passes, we go our merry way. Our hearts aren’t changed, our lives aren’t changed, our character isn’t changed.

We go through life with the motto “IADOM” – It All Depends on ME. We are trusting God for salvation and for our eternal destiny, but we are not living each day as people who are completely yielded to him.

It takes another crisis – often a deeper crisis – for God to break us and bring us to the place of total surrender to him. This is what we want to look at today.

Jacob was the second-born of twin boys. His brother’s name was Esau. The Bible tells us that before birth the twins wrestled together in their mother’s womb, and that when Esau was born, Jacob had his hand wrapped around his brother’s foot.

That’s why they named him Jacob. It means “he who grasps the heel”. In a more symbolic way, that name could imply somebody who was always trying to trip other people up. From what we know of Jacob’s character, that was a pretty apt description of him. Jacob spent the rest of his life trying to make sure that Esau, and everybody else, didn’t get an advantage over him. He was a competitor.

Like many other twins I know, these two boys were as different as night and day. Esau was a rugged outdoorsman, like his father. He like nothing better than to go backpacking in the wilderness. He probably subscribed to Field and Stream magazine. He loved to hunt and fish and do those macho kinds of things. And his father thought he was wonderful.

Jacob was his polar opposite. The Bible tells us that Jacob was a quiet man who stayed among the tents. He was probably the kind of guy who enjoyed reading or gourmet cooking or just sitting around having conversation. He was probably a good listener and he learned to tune in to other people’s emotions. Naturally, his mother loved him.

The two boys were not close, in spite of the fact that they were twins. Apart from their personality differences, there were cultural factors that would have driven a wedge between them. As the firstborn son, though only by minutes, Esau would have enjoyed the enormous prestige that that ancient culture placed on the firstborn. Whenever he introduced his sons, Isaac would have said with pride “And this is Esau, my firstborn.”

The firstborn son had special rights of inheritance. He would get a double portion of his father’s estate. Along with that, the firstborn son would have the responsibility of taking care of his widowed mother. This was his birthright. I’m sure that this rankled Jacob no end. Not only did he feel it was so unfair that, as the second twin, he had missed out on that honor by mere minutes, but he probably thought he was actually more deserving of it than Esau.

You see, Jacob thought he was smarter than Esau, and maybe he was. He probably tried to make up for his own sense of inferiority by looking down his nose at Esau, and Esau’s way of life. He probably thought he was more cultured than Esau, more refined, more intelligent.

All Esau cared about was his stupid outdoor life. He liked nothing better than to sit in a duck-blind in the rain with his hunting buddies. He was a simple man who lived for the moment.

This is probably what motivated Jacob to get Esau to sell him his birthright. Esau had been out in the fields one day, and came home famished. The first thing that met him was the smell of a delicious, savory lentil stew that Jacob had whipped up, using a recipe that he had found in a back issue of Gourmet magazine. If you’ve ever walked past a bakery, you know the power that an aroma can have on your better judgment.

To make a long story short, Jacob got Esau to sell him his birthright for a bowl of stew. For Esau, the transaction meant nothing more than a full stomach. But for Jacob, it was a triumph of his own ingenuity. He proved to himself that he was, indeed, smarter than other people, especially his brother.

When you think your brother is a fool, it doesn’t take much to go from conning him to stealing from him. That’s the next thing Jacob pulled on Esau, and it was to have far-reaching consequences for the rest of his life.

In Genesis 27, we read the shabby details. With his mother’s help, Jacob deceived his father and his brother and, in effect, re-wrote his father’s will.

You see, in the Ancient Middle East, a man’s deathbed pronouncements had legal force. That was when a man would declare his last will and testament. That was where he would dispose of his property and give his blessing to his children. As far as Isaac was concerned, the time had come for him to put into effect his last will and testament, which conferred upon Esau the birthright and the blessing as the firstborn.

Jacob took advantage of his father’s blindness and succeeded in getting his father to pronounce those fateful words over himself. He stole the blessing that belonged to Esau.

When Esau found out about it, he was livid. The Bible tells us that Esau said, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me these two times: He took my birthright, and now he’s taken my blessing!” So Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

So Jacob had to flee. His dreams and his schemes had made him a fugitive. By reaching out and taking the blessing for himself, he had earned the hatred of his brother.

He fled five hundred miles to the northern part of Mesopotamia to a place called Haran. It was that part of the country that his mother had come from. In fact, his mother’s brother, a man named Laban, still lived there, and Laban turned out to be as big a con-man as Jacob.

He had two daughters, named Leah and Rachel. Jacob fell in love with Rachel. Laban said “Work for me seven years and I’ll give you my daughter as your wife.” So Jacob did. He worked for Laban for seven years, and on his wedding day, he lifted the veil of his new bride and found, not Rachel, but Leah smiling at him! Laban, the beaming father of the bride, explained “Oh, I forgot to tell you about this rule we have in Haran: the girls have to be married off in order of age.” The deceiver had been deceived! But Jacob was just stubborn enough to hang in there and work another seven years to get Rachel.

In all, Jacob lived in Haran for twenty years. All was not sweetness and light while he was there. His two wives envied each other, and they and their maidservants got involved in a baby-making contest in an effort to win Jacob’s love. It was a pretty sad situation, but it did end up producing a lot of kids!

And Jacob’s relationship with Laban, which was not the best to begin with, got even worse over time. It seemed that Jacob’s flocks kept getting bigger, while Laban’s kept getting smaller. Resentment from Laban’s sons grew until Jacob knew that he couldn’t stay in Haran any longer. He was not welcome there. So he had to go back to the land of Canaan.

But what about Esau? The memory of what he had done to Esau haunted Jacob all these twenty years. Did Esau still want to kill him?

Reluctantly, Jacob started out on the journey back to Canaan. He had his wives and his children and his herds. Remember, twenty years before, he had left Canaan a lonely fugitive; now he was coming back a rich, successful man.

But Jacob was not a happy man; he was a haunted man. There was no peace in his heart. Twenty years of scheming and deceiving and struggling, wrestling for every advantage – of living as though It All Depended on Me – had left him drained and disillusioned. And that is when God met Jacob in a real way and changed his life.

Genesis 32:22-24 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants 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…

• No family

• No possessions

• When we meet God, we meet him all alone

“…and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.”

Who was this man? He is unnamed. He does not reveal his identity by a giving a name. When Jacob asks him his name down in verse 29, he answers “Why do you ask me my name?”

But it is clear from what we read in v. 30 that Jacob knew who he was: he was God. This is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ (there are others in the OT).

It is significant that God reveals himself as a man to Jacob, but doesn’t tell him his name.

• As a man, he is approachable, knowable, he is immanent and real – Jacob even wrestles with this man who is God – you can’t get much closer to a person than that!

• But as a man without a name, he is mysterious, transcendent. A name was understood in OT culture to convey a special relationship.

  • Adam named all the animals.

  • Fathers gave their children a name.

  • God renamed Abram and Sarai

  • Here in this passage he is going rename Jacob.

  • The act of naming and the privilege of knowing someone’s name conveys a sense of ownership and privilege

  • But God doesn’t reveal his name here to Jacob, because he is transcendent; he is above Jacob. He is not a god to be owned or manipulated or kept in one’s pocket, or overly familiarized.

    • How we need to remember this!

Now oddly enough, this man who is God wrestled with Jacob all night long until daybreak. In Hebrew, there is a neat play on words…

• Jacob (yakov) wrestled (yabeq) with God at the Jabbok (yaboq)

Let’s read about this great wrestling match…

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 fact that the match lasted all night meant that it was a real struggle – it wasn’t a one-sided walkover.

• Q. How could Jacob wrestle God to a draw?

• There is a sense in which God allows all of us to wrestle with him.

  • Physically, we are not his match

    • This is proven by what God does to disable Jacob at daybreak – just a touch and Jacob’s hip is dislocated

  • This is a wrestling of wills. We strive with God in the power of the will that he has given us.

    • As creatures created in the image of God, he has given us a will – a volitional center by which we chart the course of our lives

    • Having given us that will, God respects it: God never forces his will upon us.

    • As creatures of sin, our will is both strong and stubborn – we can resist the will of God if we want to. We can wrestle with him.

    • Jacob wrestled with God all night long. Jacob wanted blessing in his life, but he wanted it on his terms. He wanted to be in control.

      • Isn’t that what it is all about with us? We want to be in control. We don’t really trust God.

      • God if I give control of my life to you, you are going to mess things up – make my life miserable.

So this is how the wrestling match went all night long, until God saw that he could not overpower Jacob. By daybreak, God said, in effect “This is getting nowhere. This guy Jacob is really stubborn. He is a tough nut to crack.” So he reached out and touched Jacob’s hip.

• The hip is regarded to be the strongest joint in the body – that’s where all our weight comes to bear

• God touches the socket of Jacob’s hip – he touches Jacob where he is strongest, and poor Jacob is now crippled.

• But he still doesn’t let go! He says: “I will not let go until you bless me.”

But notice now that something radical has happened to Jacob – he isn’t wrestling anymore; he doesn’t have the strength – he is a broken man. All he can do now is to cling to God; to hang on for dear life. And in that posture – in a posture of total dependency and weakness, Jacob says “God I am not going to let go of you. I need you to bless me. In fact, my only hope for blessing now is in you.”

(Isn’t it marvelous that God didn’t take away Jacob’s ability to hold on – he took away his strength to stand tall on his own, but he didn’t take away his ability to reach out and hang on.)

God now asks Jacob a crucial question: What is your name? (v. 27)

Remember that, in the OT, a name embodies all that a person is; it summarizes that person’s character.

Jacob replies my name is Jacob; the deceiver, the schemer. I am the one who has gone through life trying to trip people up so that I can get ahead. Trying to live as though IADOM. I have been using people and making enemies at every turn of the road. I am a rich man, but I am not a man at peace with myself. I truly am a Jacob.

It was only as he was willing to admit the utter failure of his life that God could do anything for him.

And God now says “Your name will no longer be Jacob but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” (v. 28)

• In naming Jacob, God declares his ownership over him

• In calling him Israel, he gives Jacob a part of his own name - Elohim

• In saying that he has struggled, he is saying that Jacob has fought the greatest fight – the battle with his own self-will.

• In saying that he has prevailed, he says that Jacob will henceforth know great blessing from God

At the ford of the river Jabbok – this crisis point in Jacob’s life, we find…

A new man – Israel

A new place – Peniel: the face of God; because it was here he met God face to face

A new day – v. 31 – the sun rose above him

A new walk – v. 31 – he was limping because of his hip

1. He was crippled, but he was consecrated

2. The limp was going to remind him with every step he took until the end of his life that God owned him, that his will was yielded to God’s will

3. You don’t limp unless there is pain – God’s touch on our life can be painful, but it is worth the pain to know him face to face.

Lessons for us:

1. Jacob had to hurt before he could be healed

   1. C.S. Lewis wrote “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain.”

2. Jacob had to be emptied before he could be filled.

   1. He sent his family, his possessions across the Jabbok and he stood before God alone

3. Jacob had to be broken before he could be blessed

   1. His hip was broken and he walked with a limp from that time on

4. Jacob had to acknowledge his old identity before he could receive a new one

   1. Only when he faced his own failure could God do anything for Jacob