The God of Jacob reveals God's persistent grace and transformative power in the lives of flawed individuals. The sermon traces Jacob's journey from a deceitful schemer to a prince with God, highlighting God's unconditional promises made at Bethel (Genesis 28) despite Jacob's character. It illustrates God's patient education of Jacob through trials, such as his deception by Laban (Genesis 29), and his wrestling match that led to a name change and surrender (Genesis 32). The core lesson is that God's faithfulness and purpose will prevail in our lives, even when we are imperfect, leading to eventual fruitfulness and blessing.
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We're going to be thinking this morning about the God of Jacob as we have been thinking about the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac. Remember, the God of Abraham was the God who wants us, who wants us, who wants our total undivided loyalty, our trust. He wants to be trusted and he will reward our confidence as he did in the life of Abraham. We also have been thinking of the God of Isaac, the giving God who supplies everything and wants us to leave our lives in his hands.
and let him do for us what he wants to do. Now Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. And God revealed himself to Jacob as the God of Jacob in some remarkable way. So turn with me, is to begin with, to the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis. that passage in which Jacob meets God. That must come first, of course.
There has to be a time in everybody's experience if they are going to be blessed in which they meet God. Genesis twenty-eight, verse one. And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Canaan, Aram, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother's father, and take thee a wife from Thence of the daughters of Laban, thy mother's brother. And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people.
And give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee, that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger which God gave unto Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob. And he went to Pagan Aram unto Laban, son of Bethuel, Assyrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's mother. When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Pagan Aram, to take a wife from Thence, and that as he blessed him, He gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan, and that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Peyton Aram.
And Esau, seeing that the daughters of Canaan, pleased not Isaac, his father, then went Esau unto Ishmael and took him to the wives which he had, Mahalas, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebuchadnezzar, to be his wife. And Jacob went out from near Sheba and went toward Heron, and he lighted upon a certain place, and carried there all night, because the sun was set. And he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up upon the earth, and the top of it reached up to heaven.
and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. 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 read 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. Now this man, Jacob, that God met here, who was lying on the ground with rock-shirt pillows, was quite a rascal. He was really running away from home, although his father sent him He was running away from his brother because he had, in his brother's view, he had cheated him out of his birthright.
And then he had deceived his father into thinking that he was his brother, and so had gained the blessing. He didn't seem to have any ethical standards whatever. He didn't mind doing anything to carry forward his own interest. He was a very selfish, self-centered, scheming kind of person. He was not the kind of person that you would ordinarily think that God was going to meet. But he's out now.
He's gone away from home. He's on the way to his uncle's place. He lies down and falls asleep, and God comes to meet him. And what would you have expected God to say? Wouldn't you really have expected God to say, now look here, Jacob, you're going to have to change. You're going to have to do better than you've been doing so far. This business of deceiving people is wrong. And your concentration upon yourself is not good.
You've got to make yourself into a better kind of person like this if you want my blessing. You sort of expect that, wouldn't you? We expect such strange things. Well, I didn't say any such things. And God didn't mention the fact that he deceived his father or that he was self-centered or that he was running away from home. He didn't mention any of these things. All God did was tell him what he was going to do for him. Great and mighty things. The greater things that Jacob could possibly imagine were promised to him.
And he did you notice that God did not say. I am going to do all of these things if you obey me, if you follow me, if you do as I say, if you are careful to look to me, God didn't put them to me. No. God promised them these things whatever. You know, that's real grace, isn't it? Yes. Jacob didn't have to buy these things from God. God is going to give these things to him. See, up to now God is still the God of Isaac.
He is the giving God. He's the God that wants to do exceeding abundantly above all who could ask for even things. And so he pours out these promises to Jacob, and when Jacob wakes up in the morning he shakes himself with them, this is really This is a dreadful sight, Jesus. The Lord is here. And so he had a mountaintop experience with God. But Jacob was like the rest of us. You can have a mountaintop experience with God and tomorrow will be just like yesterday.
You know, you go right back into the old things and you find yourself thinking the same thoughts and doing the same things and scheming the same schemes and planning things out for yourself, and this is Jacob, it's just like this. He does this. He goes back, although his horizons had been greatly changed. He had larger conceptions now of God. He had seen heaven, though he knew of a larger space than just the space in which he lived, the land of Canaan. He had seen God's government in operation. He had seen the servants of God ascending and descending on this ladder.
He had seen God in his government coming down to the level at which men live. He had seen that the will of God is bigger than our will, that God, when he blesses, blesses beyond what we think he might bless up. He learned all these things that night. He had a larger view of life. He saw that the angels were busy, that God had principalities and powers and mights and dominions that are out there doing his will and busy about his business. He didn't anymore think about God as just a little God that...
ran errands for Jacob. No, he had a new concept of God now, a larger view of life, and he had a larger sense of who God was, so his worship was greater. And he had all this in the place where he didn't expect it. He was amazed that this happened out here, a day's walk away from home, out into the wilderness. He said, this is a terrible place. God is here. That's a great discovery for us to make, that in our journey through life, wherever we are, we may meet God.
He is there where we are in some of the most unexpected places. And our lives can be changed just like Jacob's life was changed. Jacob was afraid by this. He was made afraid. And aren't you, you really get a sense of the fact that the Almighty God has got hold of you and is going to do something with your life. This is a shaking experience. This is something to make us afraid. This is something that says, Me, Lord, do you mean you're going to do this?
For me, you are going to use me this way. And as God moves in with His promises and we find in His words things that He says about us, our hearts are struck. Who can read the first few chapters, for instance, of the book of Ephesians without getting shaken up by what we're told there is true of what God is doing for us and what He has provided for us. And the long leap of his blessed will for us. This is the kind of thing that humbles men and it humbles Jacob. Now we're going to go along with this man for a little while and see what God does with him.
And I would like to suggest to you that in view of the fact that there is so much of Jacob in each of us that we don't judge him too strongly. Each of us has to meet with God too. Each of us have to enter into covenant with God. And it's easy to be critical of other people. And I have heard many, many people talk about Jacob in a very critical way. And I do not want to sound critical when we talk about Jacob. Now the end of Jacob's life, and I'm just ducking ahead now for a moment, the last thirty years of Jacob's life for years of great fruitfulness and great blessing.
God was going to work out everything he promised Jacob. You and I might have been very slow to make the kind of promises God made to Jacob, knowing Jacob. the way he twisted and turned and schemed and planned and tried to work things out himself. He might have thought, you better take it easy with this fellow and let's get the little ways along the road before we get too committed. But that's all. God is going to bless this man and he's going to take him in such a way that he will make him a blessing.
And that he will accomplish all his will in Jacob's life. Because God has planned an education for Jacob that beats any college education you ever heard of. He's going to send him to school. And Jacob is no dummy. Jacob is going to learn some very serious and deep lessons. God knows this. And so God makes the commitment. Verse thirteen of chapter twenty-eight, we pick it up there for a couple of verses, and behold, the Lord stood above. I'll read this again, and said, I am the Lord, God of Abraham, thy father, the God of Isaac, the land whereon thou liest to thee, will I give it into thy seed.
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt bred abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in thee and in thy seed all the families of the earth shall 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. Have you heard God say that to you? I will not leave thee until I have done that of which I have spoken to thee.
Great. Do you believe it? Amen. God has a program for each one of us that he is carrying forward And he is going to accomplish that program. I was about to say, come hell or high water. And I guess I might as well say that, because that's the way it is. No matter what comes into our lives, God is going to move forward in the accomplishment of his purpose. Now, God, as I said, did not rebuke him. What is the use of rebuking a man like Jesus? What? Good would it have done for God to scold him for the kind of man he was.
Jacob couldn't help being that kind of man. I can remember an illustration that G. Campbell Morgan used, I forget in what connection it was, and he said that when he was a young minister, he was walking down the street, and he met a man who was drunk all the time. And this man's wife was in Morgan's church, and Morgan had wept with her about this man's drunkenness. And when Morgan met the man on the street, he said to him, When are you going to stop drinking? And the man said, When am I going to stop drinking?
If you knew the agony, if you knew the tears, If you knew how I had tried to stop drinking, you wouldn't say to me, why are you going to stop drinking? Morgan said he learned from that experience, never to say that to a man again. People can't help being sinners. Men are sinners. They can't help what they do. And God doesn't go around rebuking people because they're sinners. God loves sinners. God offers promises to sinners beyond their understanding.
That's his business. Sinners can't change sinners. Jacob couldn't change Jacob. Only God could change Jacob and God would. Amen. Twenty-four years later, when he came back to Bethel, again, as God said he would, he was a different man. God knew he would be. And so God gave him his promise unconditionally. And from this moment on, from Bethel on, Jacob is in God's school.
And God does a perfect job. But he's got some pretty poor material to work on. Haven't you ever felt that way about God? Haven't you ever said to God, I'm sorry, Lord, you got such a lump to work with. Do what you can with it. Because that's true. What in the world has he got to work with with us? But he's working with us. Men and women. He's working with us. He's going to accomplish great things for you and for me. And so having met God on the mountain top, he went down again into the valley, and he went on to his uncle's place.
Now there is only one way that Jacob can be taught the wickedness of deceit. And Jacob needs to learn this because he is a deceiver. And so God takes him into a situation. Turn to chapter twenty-nine. And Jacob went on his journey and came into the land of the people of the east. And he looked and behold a well in the field. And lo, there were there three flocks of sheep lying by it. For out of that well they watered their flocks. And the great stone was on the well's mouth. And thither were all the flock gathered.
And they rolled a stone from the well's mouth, and watered the sheep, and put the stone again upon the well's mouth in his place. And Jacob said unto them, My brethren, whence be ye? And they said, Of Heron are we? And he said unto them, Know ye Laban, the son of Nahar? And they said, We know him. And he said, Is he well? And they said, He is, well, behold, Rachel, his daughter, cometh with the sheep. And he said, Lo, it is yet high day. Neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together. Water ye the sheep, and go and feed them. And they said, We cannot until all the flocks be gathered together, until they roll the stone from the well's mouth.
Then we water the sheep. And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she kept them. And it came to pass, and Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Laban, his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban, his mother's brother. And Jacob went near and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban, his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, he is a fast worker, and lifted up his voice, and wept, and Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother and that he was Rebecca's son. And she ran and told her father, and it came to pass when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob, his sister's son, that he ran to meet him and embrace him and kissed him and brought him to his house.
And he told Laban all these things. And Laban said to him, Surely thou art bone in my flesh. And he abode with him the space of a month. This is fine, isn't it? A visitor has come. And so he comes, and he's welcome. He's a nephew. We're glad to see you. And so he comes, and it says he abode within the space of a month. How would you feel about that? If somebody came to your house and you saw them as a nephew or some relative of some kind and they came to your place and you make them welcome and have money for dinner.
And he sticks around for a month. Well, you know, you begin to wonder. And Laban began to wonder. And so he says, and Laban said to Jacob, He's a discolous artist in public relations. He says, because thou art my brother, should thou therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall I wages be? Now, you know what he's saying when he says that? You know, Jacob's been helping around the place, but he's been eating like any young man eats, and he's probably been eating them out of house and home.
And Laban is beginning to wonder about this. How long are you going to stick around here doing nothing except following Rachel around like a puppy dog? And so he doesn't say to him, when are you going to get the work? No, he doesn't put it that way. He wouldn't be that crude. What he says is, should Stow therefore serve me for nothing? He hasn't been serving me very much. Tell me what shall my wages be? So he's saying, now let's get to work. I'll pay you. And so Jacob takes on a new status in the house of Laban.
And he says to him, you know, I sure like Rachel. She something. She something else. Tell me what I'll do. I'll work for you three for seven years. for Rachel. Oh, Laban can't pass this up. You know, all right, that's great. And so Jacob starts him, and he works like a dog, and it's a pleasure. Everything he does, you're going to get him a Rachel. Oh, all the work is such a joy when you're doing it for something you love like that, you know.
And so he works away for seven years. And to get better and better as the time gets closer, and comes the day that he makes his claim. He says, all right, seven years are up, I get my wife. And Laban says, all right, and they mix all up to the wedding. Now, in the weddings in those days, in the East, they didn't have lights like these around, you know, at night it was dark, and everything was by... candlelight or its equivalent. They had their big party, their wedding party and everything, and all the guests had escorted Jacob and his bride to the wedding tent.
And in they go to the wedding tent. And it blackened the inside of a cat in there, you know. It's real dark. It's nighttime. and the guests all disappear and leave the loving couples together. In the morning, Jacob, can't you just see him getting up on his elbow early in the morning and taking the covers and lifting them off to look at that lovely face and then rising?
right off the bed. What's going on here? Here's Leah. And he came out of that tent and he was shot out of his way, went right over to Raven's tent and what are you doing to me? And Raven, he says, down boy, down boy, in our country, you don't marry the second daughter before you marry the first one. Now don't get excited. You fulfill her week, you go through all this wedding deal, and at the end of it you can have her sister, and then you can work for another seven years for her.
Well, that really must have been some confidence, wouldn't you say? Why did all this happen? This happened so that God could say to Jacob, you see what it is when you deceive people. You deceived your fathers. Now you've met a real deceiver. You've run into the next And Jacob learned what deceit really was. He's in God's school.
And in God's school, the lessons are hard. God is working on him. The only way that Jacob can be taught the wickedness of this to go through an experience like this. Called of God, but he's a swindler. He's a deceiver. We are surprised that God calls him. But we're surprised that God calls us too.
That God saw something in Jacob. And believe it or not, God has seen something in you and he has seen something in me that has made him set his heart upon us and call us to himself and he is working in us you see we don't know the whole story we don't know why God chose us all we know is that he did choose And he has called us into his discipline, the way he has called Jacob into his discipline. Isaac's life, as we said yesterday, was a peaceful night.
There was no strivings, no hard struggle. Jacob's life was one long struggle all the way through. What is the lesson for you and me? I think the lesson for you and me and this is that we are to let God be God. Let him take our lives and make our choices for us. And time went by. Jacob had a lot of children and he continued to work for Laban. All the time it's the case of Laban versus Jacob, one trying to outdo the other, outsmart the other, out scheme the other.
It's a sordid story. The story of Jacob and Laban. And then one day Rachel had a baby. And it was such a nice baby. They called him Joseph. And when Joseph was born, for the first time Jacob said, I'd sure like to take him home and show him to my mother. And so Jacob wanted to go back home. He'd been gone a long time.
He had many sons. But now this great first baby Rachel had, and he wanted to take this baby home and show it to the folks. You all understand that? But by now he is so mixed up with Laban that he can hardly get loose, and Laban doesn't want him to go, and Laban is too wily for him, and so God steps in, and God talks to Laban, and Jacob gets free of Laban, and goes on, and As he starts her home, he meets the angels of God.
It's a great story, this trip that Jacob took home. He meets these angels, and they assure him that in all his way, with all his children, God will be with him and keep him and bless him and take care of him. And then the next thing he hears is that his brother Esau is coming, coming to meet him. His path is come back on him. Oh, what is he? He is frightened to death. Esau has a grudge against him. He has cheated Esau and all his conscience began working on him.
What will I do? And you know that he felt this way even though he had the promise we read that God would be with him. God would bring him back to this place. Although he had met the angels and they had said they would care for him, they would see that he got back, he had all these things, you wouldn't think that Jacob would be afraid of anything, would you? You wouldn't think that you and I would be afraid of anything, would you? With the promises that we have from the Lord, why would we worry? But we do, don't we?
That's why we can relate to Jacob. Oh, Jacob was frightened of death. Although he had God's command, he had God's promise, he had God's protection, he had the vision of angels. But God doesn't deal with us after the flesh. He doesn't deal with us the way we think we should be dealt with. He deals with us in grace. And so just before he is to meet Esau, he meets a man. And in the meantime, he has taken his family and divided it and sent one group this way and one group that way.
He's doing everything he can so that Esau can't get them all at once. Anyway, he may get some of them, but he won't get them all. Then Jacob is left all alone, and he meets a man. Nobody knows who this man is. An angel. He's God manifest in some form. And he picks a fight with Jacob. He starts to wrestle with him. Now, Jacob didn't start this. God did. And he wrestled with Jacob all night. And it says he could not overcome Jacob.
Now that's a strange thing. Isn't that a strange thing? But that's the way it's been, hasn't it, so often in our lives. The flesh is so strong. The flesh is so strong. We resist God so effectively in our lives. God had a hard time getting through to us. He had a hard time with this man, Jacob. I wrestled all night, and he did not prevail against Jacob. Jacob was still determined to go on in the power of the flesh, in his own strength.
He could take care of his own situation. When God saw that Jacob would not get in, touched him at the point of his greatest strength in the groin and Jacob collapsed he was finished. And when we resist God, when we insist on doing things according to the flesh, when we insist on going on our own wisdom, when we insist on our own strength, we continue that way. God will touch us at our strong point.
We'll be wiped out for our blessing. From then on Jacob lived. And Jacob couldn't wrestle anymore. So he hung on to God. And for the first time in his life he admitted he needed help. He said, I will not go except thou bless me. Now he was calling upon God for blessing. Now he was asking God to undertake for him. Now God could do something for him. And so God changed his name at that time. He was no longer the crooked steamer. He was no longer the man who insisted on doing things according to his own strength.
Now he was a prince with God because he called upon God. What a wonderful schooling this man had. What a wonderful course God led him in. And God finally touched him. Jacob said, I will not let thee go except thou blest me. You know, Jacob could no more hold on to God there and keep him there. But there's one thing that could keep God there until Jacob got the blessing.
And that was God's love for Jacob. Because God loved Jacob and could not let him go at that point. God does not move into our lives to destroy us. He comes into our lives the blessing. He wants to do for us more than we will believe. And he did, for Jacob he blessed him. All the fear, all the conniving, all the figuring, all the scheming were unnecessary. The thing that he most feared turned out to be a great blessing in his life.
When he met his brother, his brother blessed him. His brother wanted him to be blessed. We read in the end of the story that when they got home, And they got home to their father Isaac. Soon their father Isaac died. And it says, Jacob and Esau, there is Isaac. They were working together. God had blessed in his life. Now, this is the God of Jacob. The God that wants to bless. The God that will not stop until he has for.
who will continue to work with us in our lives until he accomplishes his purpose with us. So hang in there, brothers, sisters. God isn't through with us. He's going to keep working, and He's going to bring us along until He has accomplished in each one of us in all His gracious But oh, if we could only learn in the meantime, to let him do it. And not try to do everything in the strength of the flesh, according to our own wisdom, according to our own ideas, but to let him do it.
Turn our lives over to him. Then from then on, as was the case with Jacob, we will find... but we have lives of fruitfulness. The next thirty years is Jacob's life for years of great fruitfulness and blessing because he had learned to let go and not try to do it himself. Shall we pray? Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the record of this man's life Thank you for the way you stayed in there with him.
Thank you for the lessons you taught him. Thank you for the lessons you have taught us to help us to learn. We pray in Jesus' name.