1/30/2024 0 Comments Audio sermon on genesis 32![]() ![]() We do not pretend to define with undue nicety the mode of this wrestling. Hence, some men, deeply penetrated with the ineffable grandeur of the divine nature, are disposed to resolve the first act at least into an impression on the imagination. Hosea terms him the angel ( Hosea 12:4-5 (3, 4). The reason of this name is assigned in the sentence, “I have seen God face to face.” He is at first called a man. By giving him a permanent limp, God never allowed Jacob to forget that the only way he triumphed was through defeat (30-32). ![]() The old determination was still there, but Jacob the cheat now became Israel, God’s champion (24b-29). Though defeated and humbled, he did not lose his persistence or fighting spirit. Yet in another sense Jacob did win, for he demanded, and received, a special blessing of God’s power that would ensure victory in the future. His proud self-confidence was at last defeated. As in previous conflicts, Jacob was determined to win, but now he had to learn that against God he could never win. ![]() As they wrestled, Jacob realized that this ‘man’ had superhuman strength and the power to bless. That night he met God, who appeared to him in the form of a man wrestling with him. Still moving south, Jacob sent his family across the river Jabbok, while he remained behind by himself (22-24a). At the same time he thought it wise to send Esau a series of gifts, with the aim of winning his favour (13-21). He thanked God for his remarkable blessings in the past, and prayed that God’s promises for the future would guarantee protection for him against his brother (9-12). Jacob had by now learnt a humility before God that was lacking the previous time he met Esau. With much fear and anxiety he sent news to Esau that he was coming to meet him (32:1-8). Jacob knew that if he was to live in peace in Canaan, he would first have to put things right with Esau. It’s a picture of God’s patience, but also of a love so great that God will break us if that is what it takes to bless us. It’s a lesson on the lengths God is willing to go to make us into the kind of people he wants us to be.During the twenty years that Jacob had been in Mesopotamia, Esau had established his household in territory to the south near the Dead Sea. This week we come to the famous scene pictured in the image we have been using for the study series. The treacherous Laban might be behind him and the murderous Esau before him, but in the middle he must wrestle with God – literally. Sadly, she died while he was away and for all Jacob knows, Esau is just as ready to dispatch him like a wounded deer as the day he left.īut what Jacob doesn’t know is this: Laban and Esau are the least of his worries. Now his mother, Rebecca, had said that when Esau cooled off she would send word for him to come back. As a result of his deception he had to run for his life. Twenty years before he had cheated Esau out of his birthright. But ahead of him is a hard place: the territory of his twin brother. The deal was that if either of them crossed the boundary marker left at Gileed, the other would regard that as an enemy invasion.Īs a result, Jacob has his back up against the rock of this binding covenant. If there was ever a man who found himself between the proverbial “devil and the deep blue sea,” it’s Jacob between the day he leaves behind his father-in-law, Laban, and the day he meets up with his brother, Esau.At the end of Genesis 31 Laban is behind him and he can’t go back. ![]()
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