Jacob: The Hot Mess of the Old Testament
I.
Jacob’s biography
A.
Family: Born to Isaac and Rebecca as second of
twins, brother Esau. Mother received prophesy. that he would be the
heir/receive birthright. They believed
the outcome but not the process. Parents
had favorites. Jacob cheated Esau for the birthright; he and Rebecca colluded
to deceive Isaac for the blessing ceremony; because of Esau’s fury, his parents
secretly sent him away to Syria to work for his uncle Laban, Rebecca’s brother.
Jacob never saw deceptive mother again. Father lived over twenty years longer.
Esau is married to local pagan women but decides to marry a third wife from
Ishmael’s family to try to make his parents happy.
B.
Lived with Laban for twenty years. Was deceived
in the wedding ceremony, later found a way to get back at Laban for more
wealth. (Sexes were very segregated at that time and he likely had not spent a
lot of time with Rachel; it was dark, she was veiled, and he may have been
drunk.) Jacob had 13 children with Leah (6 boys, 1 girl), Rachel (2 boys, Joseph
and she dies in childbirth with second, Benjamin), Bilhah (maid to Leah, 2
boys), and Zilpah (Rachel’s maid, 2 boys). His first three sons disqualify themselves by
sin and Judah (“praise the Lord”) becomes the real heir. Jacob does not raise his
children in any real or consistent understanding of his grandfather Abraham’s
faith; family pretty much runs wild (as seen in Reuben’s sleeping with one of
concubines, their selling Joseph into slavery, and their massacre of the
Shechemites because one of them raped their sister). After over 20 years of
living with Laban, the whole family flees back to Canaan (Israel) to the
family. Laban follows him and Rachel shows she’s still worshiping idols. Soon
afterward he encounters Esau, who forgives him and they reconcile.
C.
Jacob’s encounters with God
1.
28:10. Sleeping in wilderness as he travels to
Laban, dream of ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending. At
Bethel.
a.
Meaning: God is working in Jacob but the
products are a long way off. 28:13-17.
b.
Connection to Christ in John 1:43-51. Jesus is
Bethel, the house or dwelling of God.
c.
However, Jacob doesn’t totally “get” it from a
personal, spiritual, and moral point of view. It’s about what he’s going to get
out of the “deal” with God. He’s a pagan at heart on a journey to
understanding. 20-22.
2.
Wrestling with a “Man,” 32:22-32
a.
Night before he meets and reconciles with Esau,
very troubled.
b.
Seems to be that the “Man” is winning; it is a
physical and mental struggle.
c.
Jacob insists on a blessing, and instead gets a
new name meaning “prince of God” because Jacob “struggled with God and
prevailed.” He is maimed for life,
showing the “Man” could have won at any time.
d.
I think the sense of the passage is Jacob’s
stubbornness and unwillingness to submit to another; in this case he knows of
course the “Man” is an angel or otherwise.
e.
I confess that I do not really understand this
account. Jacob said, “I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved,”
so that was his understanding. Old Testament characters had encounters with God
but were not allowed to see His glory (Moses). Some of them are considered
encounters with pre-incarnate Jesus; others are angels. Study is needed to
determine the difference.
3.
Return to Bethel, 35:1-15.
a.
This time he clears away the family idols (v. 4)
b.
There is a reconfirmation of what Jacob was told
before, but now he seems to understand it.
c.
Jacob is promised many descendants, some of whom
will be kings; land promised to his father and grandfather; a new identity
(reminding him to start using the new name that didn’t mean “cheater”).
d.
The story shifts to Joseph in Genesis 37, but
Jacob is not out of the picture. He is still around in Genesis 50, where he
dies after blessing and prophesying about his sons.
e.
The final word on Jacob, who starts out as a hot
mess and slowly, slowly grows to a person of wisdom in old age, is in Hebrews
11:21, that at the very end of his life, by faith, he blessed Joseph’s sons.
Jacob had a big footprint in the Bible by no merit of his own.
II.
Takeaways:
A. The fact that his name was changed. I want to
do an exercise and find your names’ meanings on the Internet, many of which are
spiritual. Then I want us to think about what our names would have been if like
Jacob we had a name that described us before we met Christ.
Dirty to pure
Struggler to at peace
Enemy to child/family
Used up to new
Slave to heir
Outcast to accepted
Barbara stranger to friend
Darkened to enlightened
B. Spiritual growth is a slow
process. I don’t think we have to compare ourselves to Jacob too much because
there are lots of circumstantial differences, but he is definitely a two steps
forward, three steps backward kind of man. Our songs give the impression that
when we profess belief in Christ all of a sudden everything is fixed. That is
so not the case. Paul himself went to the wilderness to study for three years;
he didn’t get zapped and everything was fine and he’d arrived. That is both
comforting and discouraging. We still need forgiveness everyday; I John 1:9.
C. Spiritual growth is not by our
merit and hard work. It is by faith and trusting. Jacob in general is not a
role model.
D. All of these accounts show how
God preserved the Jews to produce the Messiah, and sometimes they seem to be
aware of that and other times more aware of themselves. When Moses comes and
receives the law, the Jewish identity truly becomes real. Jesus was born as a
Jew and into Jewish culture and custom, which was a way of thinking,
understanding, being, worshiping, and living unlike anything else at that
time. To study and understand the Bible
is to understand Judaism and its origins. That’s why we cannot unhitch the New
from Old Testament, despite what Andy Stanley claims.
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