MORNING MESSAGE: John Cline
Genesis 32; 33:16-20; 35:1-15
Last week, we looked at the first of Jacob’s three showdowns with those he fled from, the one with Uncle Laban, his father-in-law. Jacob won that showdown via God’s protecting him, a long-range protection preserving Jacob & his family line, his distant relative, and all the way to Jesus, the Messiah, God’s own son, who would come from it. Today, we will focus on showdown #2 between Jacob and God, but first we’ll read through the prelude to showdown #3, the one between Jacob and his brother Esau. Starting where we ended last week, after showdown #1, Laban returned north to his home in Mesopotamia. Meanwhile,
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. (Genesis 32:1,2)
20 years earlier, when Jacob first left Bethel in Canaan, heading north to Mesopotamia, he saw God’s angels “ascending and descending” from heaven to earth. In a sense, those angels were his “send off” committee. Now, they are his “welcome back” committee. Those two occasions are the only ones in the OT where the phrase “angels of God” appear. Jacob names the place he and his family have stopped in, “Mahanaim”, which literally means “Two Camps”, in honour of the two groups who were encamped in that place: God’s angels over there and Jacob, his family, servants, and flocks over there. Knowing God is with him strengthens Jacob as he prepares for showdown #3 with Esau. To soften up Esau, though, Jacob first sends messengers to greet him
When the messengers returned to Jacob, they said, “We went to your brother Esau, & now he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.” In great fear & distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, & the flocks and herds and camels as well. He thought, “If Esau comes & attacks one group, the group that is left may escape.” (32:6-8)
Twenty years earlier, Esau had threatened to kill Jacob in revenge for Jacob’s deceitful actions which had caused Esau much grief in losing his birthright as the firstborn son plus the blessing of their father Isaac. Jacob is fearful of Esau yet he knows God is with him, protecting him.
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. (Gen. 32:6-21)
The gifts are offered to Esau, but he dismisses them. He doesn’t want possessions, but a relationship with his brother. Jacob is finally at the place of humility and desperation needed for God to transform him. Up until this point, Jacob was arrogant. He didn’t need God, in his opinion. He referred to God as merely “the God of my grandfather Abraham and the God of my father Isaac”, not as “My God”. But God remembered that 20 years earlier, after his encounter with God at Bethel, Jacob pledged to, upon his return to Canaan, serve and make God his own.
Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God.” (Genesis 28:20,21)
And so God initiates a showdown with Jacob. The time of making good on that vow has come. For 20 years, Jacob lived in Mesopotamia, not thinking about God, but God was thinking about him and so now God initiates an event that would forever change Jacob’s life. It was as if God is calling to Jacob, “Are you ready to rumble?” Well, not so loud!
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. (Genesis 32:22-24)
Wrestling is one of the oldest sports known to humans. The ancient Olympic games – first held in Greece – featured wrestling as their most prestigious sporting event. Our 6 and 4-year-old grandsons, as do all young boys, love to wrestle! Wrestling is pure exertion where every muscle of one’s body is drained. Here, Jacob wrestles with a “man”, but it is actually an angel. Back then, angels were thought to be manifestations of God, so this encounter came to be known as, “Jacob wrestling with God”, though, really, it was in all likelihood an angel that Jacob wrestled with, not a “man”, nor God Himself. Going further,
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. (Genesis 32:22-27)
20 years earlier, when Jacob had last been in Canaan, he had been asked by his father Isaac, “What is your name?” Jacob lied, “My name is Esau, your firstborn.” But here, he is truthful. “My name is Jacob.”
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.” (G. 32:28-30)
In other Bible passages, we are told no one can see God and survive, but here Jacob states that he saw God face to face and yet survived, reflecting the strong belief back then that angels were manifestations of God Himself. But Jacob wants to know who he is wrestling with and demands his opponent’s name. He doesn’t get an answer. What he does get is a new name for himself: “Israel”, which means, “he struggles with God”. His new name was a play on words for the Hebrew word for “wrestled” is pronounced “ye-aqob” and “Jacob” “ya-aqob”. By the way, in the Book of Revelation, we read that every Christian will also be given a new name by God, but until that day, we are also given a new title by God: “My child”. That reality transforms our relationship with God to one of parental love and care, not fear and distance. The apostle Paul instructs us to be intentional in how we live as God’s children, “working out our salvation with fear and trembling”, while Jesus says that we are to be persistent, determined pray-ers, challenging God, our righteous Father, to answer our prayers. Thus, wrestling, or having showdowns with God, can produce something good. God wants each of us to be transformed in our lives, not simply believing in Him but actually living out our belief in Him as His transformed child. But as Jacob discovers, wrestling with God is both perilous and transformative. Jacob took the chance and came out new.
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. (Genesis 32:31-32)
Jacob would meet Esau limping, no longer a self-sufficient deceiver but a broken-down, weak, humble man. This is a very different Jacob from the one Esau had last seen 20 years earlier and Esau has mercy for him. Perhaps the injuring of the strongest muscle in Jacob’s body, in the thigh area, was God’s way of humbling Jacob. Or, perhaps, it was God’s grace of making Jacob appear so weak to Esau that Esau would have mercy on him. Whatever the reason, Jacob’s feared showdown with Esau was a non-starter. Wrestling God changed Jacob.
So that day Esau started on his way back to Seir. Jacob, however, went to Sukkoth, where he built a place for himself and made shelters for his livestock. That is why the place is called Sukkoth. After Jacob came from Paddan Aram, he arrived safely at the city of Shechem in Canaan and camped within sight of the city. For a hundred pieces of silver, he bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, the plot of ground where he pitched his tent. There he set up an altar and called it El Elohe Israel. (Genesis 33:16-20)
Let’s do a quick map review to see where all this activity took place.
Map of Genesis 32-35 – https://ibiblemaps.com/jacobs-travels-2/
God, no doubt remembering where it was, in Bethel, that Jacob had pledged to serve and follow Him alone, sent him back there.
Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.” So, Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you and purify yourselves and change your clothes. Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.” So, they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem. Then they set out, and the terror of God fell on the towns all around them so that no one pursued them. (Genesis 35:1-5)
Now that Jacob has committed himself to following YHWH God, he does the right thing, instructing his family and household to get rid of their idols, foreign gods, and any clothing or jewellery dedicated to those foreign gods. This was a time of cleansing, a fresh start for them. We need to remember that in Canaan, Mesopotamia, and the Ancient Near East, thousands of gods were worshipped and served. Heck, there were over 1,500 named gods in Egypt alone. So, when YHWH God, centuries later, would tell Moses to go and set His people from the Egyptians, it only made sense for Moses to ask, “Who are you? Which God should I tell them you are?” The polytheistic reality of that world everyone knew. There were thousands of gods in that region. When YHWH’s plagues came upon Egypt, the Bible doesn’t say YHWH had defeated the Egyptians or Pharaoh but that He/YHWH had defeated the Egyptian gods. As Dr. Ray Vander Laan points out, a weakness in our English-version translations of the Bible is that the God, our God, whose name is actually YHWH, is simply called the “LORD”, in all upper case letters, in the English translations of the Old Testament, thus weakening the significance of His name YHWH and minimizing the reality of the polytheism that was common back then. Jesus identifies the greatest commandment as being the Shema stated in Deuteronomy 6 by Moses: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. But it would helpful to our understanding of what is being pledged in the Shema if it were translated, “Love YHWH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. If we did that, we would better understand that the Shema is a pledge of allegiance to YHWH God, not to some nameless, undefined, ethereal, celestial, “Being” way out there somewhere. Just a few verses later in Deuteronomy 6, Moses clarifies this by stating, “Fear YHWH your God, serve him only and take your oaths in His name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the people around you.” So, the Shema is a pledge to follow YHWH God only and a repudiation of other gods. Jacob does something like that when he orders those around him to spiritually cleanse themselves.
After Jacob returned from Paddan Aram, God appeared to him again and blessed him. God said to him, “Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.” So, he named him Israel. And God said to him, “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will be among your descendants. The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.” Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him. Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him, and he poured out a drink offering on it; he also poured oil on it. Jacob called the place where God had talked with him Bethel. (Genesis 35:9-15).
Returning to the land of Canaan was a spiritually serious moment for Jacob. Not only does God rename him “Israel” but He also reiterates for Jacob the covenantal promises He first made to his grandfather Abraham, and then to his father Isaac. What happened in his wrestling showdown with YHWH God changed everything for Jacob/Israel. And there YHWH became His God, the only God for him and his household.
Have you had a similar showdown with God? A profession of faith moment in Christ is a good start but it is not an end in itself. It is the beginning of a spiritual pilgrimage. Discipleship and spiritual growth and maturing need to happen. For the serious Christian, along the way there will be other defining moments and spiritual highlights. For Jacob his defining moment happened with his showdown #2, his wrestling match when YHWH became his God. My friend, God in His mercy is both reaching out to you and is with you. Not only are you His child: you are His beloved child whom He will guide and protect. He wants to be so important to you. If you have not already done so, fully make Him your God, the only One you will follow, today. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
