The God of Jacob is presented as a disciplining Father who works through our circumstances to accomplish His will. The sermon traces Jacob's life, from his deceptive beginnings and flight from Esau, through his wrestling with God at Peniel where he was renamed Israel, to his eventual transformation into a man who blessed others. This narrative illustrates that God's faithfulness and purpose are realized not by our own cleverness or strength, but through His patient discipline and our surrender to Him. The ultimate lesson is that God chooses us, works in us despite our flaws, and brings us to a fruitful life when we learn to trust and depend on Him.
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We may trust him fully, all for us to do. The God of Abraham, he wants us to trust him fully. He demands our obedience, our trust. The God of Isaac, the giving God, the God who wants to do it all, just to pour himself out for us. and he wants us just to take it. Don't work at it. Just receive it. One of the favorite names of God that the psalmist David had was the God of Jacob.
They love to use that term. In the forty-sixth chapter of the forty-sixth Psalm he uses it again and again. The God of Jacob is our refuge. The God of Jacob. A different God than the God of Abraham. A different God than the God of Isaac. Difference because Jacob was different than these two men. Isaac was very different from Abraham. Jacob was very different from Isaac. So they each had their own dealings with God and found God to meet them in their circumstances. Turn to Genesis chapter twenty-five.
Genesis chapter twenty-five. We begin to read at verse nineteen, and these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. Abraham begat Isaac. And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebecca to wife the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Pagan Aram, the sister to Laban the Syrian. And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord was entreated of him, and Rebecca, his wife, conceived, and the children struggled together within her, and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger.
And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb. And the first came out red all over like a hairy garment, and they called his name Esau. After that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel, and his name was called Jacob, and Isaac was sixty years old when she bare them. The boys grew, and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field. Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents, and Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison, but Rebecca loved Jacob. I guess that's as far as we need to read for right now.
Two manner of people. Esau grew up to be a profane man, a man, that is to say, who didn't bother about God. His concern was the things of the world. He was a good hunter. He was a very nice man. I think I could have liked Esau. He was a man's man, and he... You know, Hale fellow well met. He liked to hunt and he liked to fish and he liked to do these outdoors things and he couldn't carry a grudge across the street, that kind of a person. Jacob, oh, he was rather different type.
He was not profane. That is to say, he had a high sense of the value of things. He put spiritual things first. But I think he liked to play chess. You know, he was this kind of a fella. He was an indoors man. He was a thinker. He was a scheming type. He was not extrovert at all like his brother Esau. And it says here that Isaac loved Esau, but Rebecca loved Jacob. That's rather typical that this should be like this.
But the first mention in the word of God of a divided home, this is where it divided in their love for their children. Well, Esau went out and got married, and they married one of the girls in a place, you know, that he saw around, and, oh, that upset Isaac and Rebecca, something fearsome. They were not happy about this. Now, you notice that in what we read, that the Lord said to Rebecca what was going to happen, that she was going to have two children and that they were going to be different kinds of people, and that the younger would rule over the elder.
It was going to be a reversal of what is normally expected. So Rebecca knew from the beginning that Jacob was the one upon whom the blessing of God was to be. And the boys grew up, and she saw that, you know, Esau was the favorite of her husband. And she'd think about this, and she'd say, you know, I have to watch this thing, because if I'm not careful, Isaac is going to bless Esau, and he's not supposed to do that. The blessing gets on Jacob. And she liked Jacob better anyway, and she wanted Jacob to get the blessing.
And so she'd think about this. And she'd talk about it to Jacob. And so Jacob became, got very sensitive about this. And then one day when Esau came in from hunting, you know that story, he came in, he was tired, and wanted something to eat. And so Jacob said, well, I'll give you some of this too, if you sell me your birthright. And Esau said, whoo, what's a birthright to me? Let's have some stew. And so he sat down and he ate the stew, but he had sold his birthright. And, you know, Jacob was just making progress, he thought. And then later on came the time when it looked, for the moment at least, that maybe Isaac was not long for this world and that he ought to be passing the blessing of God on to his son, actually lived about thirty years after this but he said to Esau you go out and get me some venison you know that kind I like and bring it in and I'll bless you and Rebecca heard this and she said to Jacob now look we've got to move fast
Esau's gone out into the field and going to get some venison for your father and he's going to bless him now let's get the work here and you take in the venice and I'll fix it and you take it in and you get the blessing and Jacob said hold the phone you know I go in there and and my father will know that it is I oh no she said I'll fix it all for you she put this goat's hair on his arms and across the back of his neck and everything so that he feel like he saw told him what to say and he went in and he deceived his father and stole the blessing, because Isaac blessed him.
And a little while later, Esau came in, and he was roaring mad because of what happened. And he said, I'll get that fellow when my father dies, and it won't be long, I'm going to get even with him. And Rebecca heard this, and she said to Jacob, You better get out of here for a while. You better get out of here for a while. Esau is so upset that he's threatened to kill you. And I think perhaps you'd better go to where my brother lives and spend a few days with him. And you know Esau, you'll get over this rage that he's in now and you can come back home and everything will be all right.
But for the time being, you must leave. And Jacob said, Fine. Well, Rebecca put a different face on it with Isaac. She said to him, You know the problem we've had with Esau marrying this girl here and everything. We don't want that to happen to Jacob. We want him to marry one of the family. Now let's send him back to my brother, and he'll meet a nice girl back there. And Isaac said, Well, that sounds like a good idea, all right? We'll send him back. And they proceeded to do this. They sent Jacob back and he started for the old country and to go to be with his uncle.
Now I'm going over this rather fast and quickly because we have a long ways to go and I could be reading you these episodes but it would take too long this morning. So Jacob started out to go back to his mother's brother's home. In the meantime, Rebecca is, quotation marks, helping God. Helping God. She passed this bad habit along to her son, Jacob. This is the characteristic thing about Jacob. He was always helping God.
Sometimes we get involved in helping God. And really what it turns out to be is that we're meddling. You know, God has his program. God is able to carry through what he wants. He would have gotten the blessing to Jacob on a perfectly legitimate basis. They didn't need to be worrying about this. But they thought that because God had said that they had helped him accomplish this. That's why we have the record here, I guess, to remind us that we're not to meddle with God. Rebecca knew what was right. She was offended by Esau, and now she's frightened. She's frightened that everything's going to fall in, that Esau's going to kill Jacob, her favorite.
And she said, why should I lose both my sons? Why should I lose my son? And so she sent him away, and she lost him as the last she ever saw Jacob. Rebecca never saw her favorite son. She said, you go away for a few days. He was gone for over twenty years. We never know what the hidden is, you see. Because he went to school. She thought she was sending him back to her brother and that he'd find a nice girl back there and come home. She didn't realize she was sending him off to the university.
The school of God This is the God of Jacob. Somebody said after our meeting the other day that Abraham was the prototype father. He is the father, and so he knows God as father. And he dealt with Isaac as a father deals with his son. Well, This is the way God deals with all of these people is like a father. In the one case, he wants to be trusted like a father is trusted.
There's nothing a father appreciates more than that his children trust him and obey him. The same with Isaac. God wanted Isaac to know him as a father. That is one who would supply all his needs. This is a function of a father. And so it is with Jacob. God wants Jacob to know him as a father, and one of the functions of a father is to discipline. And so Jacob's going to learn about God the disciplinarian, God the teacher. Because sometimes we put a wrong emphasis on the word discipline, you know, and we think of it as punishment.
But we're thinking of discipline in the sense that it's a teaching. And so as Jacob goes away from home, he is hardly out of sight of the place when he gets started in school. And God met him, chapter twenty-eight. Now, you know, he's going away from home under pretty bad circumstances here. He's been a cheat, a conniver, a schemer, and he's running away from his brother, and he knows he's wrong about the whole thing. Verse five, And Isaac sent away Jacob, and he went to Paden Aram unto Laban, the son of Bethuel, the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's mother.
When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paden Aram to take him away 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 Padon Aram. Esau, seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father, he went into Ishmael and took unto the wives which he had, Mehalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abram's son, the sister of Nebuchadnezzar, to be his wife. And Jacob went up from Beersheba and went to Heron, toward Heron.
And he lighted on a certain place and tarried 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 on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. and behold the angels of God ascending and descending upon 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 lieest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed, and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth.
Thou shalt spread 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 is surprising, isn't it? You would think that God would have had something to say about this deceiving of his father. You'd think that God would have said, Now what's going on here?
I want you to learn something. God doesn't do it that way. I think maybe that's the way some of us fathers might have done it. But God didn't do it that way. God came to him and he gave him the promise of Abraham and Isaac and the addition that wherever he went, God would be with him. God would accomplish his purpose in him, bring him back, provide everything he needed. How could God do that? To a rascal like Jacob. Well, God knew what he was doing.
God knew that he was just entering school, and God knew what he was going to be like when he got out of school. God could look down the twenty years and see the Jacob that came back the vessel. God knew how he was going to bring him back. And so he assured him at the beginning, I've got a program for your life. You're going to go to school now for a few years. But whatever happens to you, I want you to be confident and assured that I am with you, I'm going to stay with you, and I'm going to bring you back.
You know, this is great. All that the young people of our day could get this concept of God, that He is going to stay with them, no matter what it looks like. No matter what the circumstances may be, no matter how difficult the training, that our lives are in the hands of a God who loves us and who will accomplish his purpose. So he gives Jacob this assurance, and Jacob woke up in the morning and he was shook. He says, how terrible a place to be. Oh, God is in this place.
And he built an altar there, and he set up stones and poured oil and worshipped God. This is tremendous. And he had an altogether new concept of his own life from that day on. From now on he realizes, as he never did before, that God is in charge of his life. He saw angels going up and down on the ladder. He had a visual demonstration of what the word says in the book of Hebrews. Are they not all ministers sent forth to minister to us who are the heirs of salvation? He knew that God had plenty of resources by which to direct his way and by which to keep him.
in his way. And he had a new concept, and he realized that God was going to go with him. He saw heaven. He had a new concept of space, as it were. That is, that his life was not just limited to this little sphere in which he had lived before, nor even the little sphere of where he lived plus where his uncle lived. He had a new concept of the fact that his life was related to the God of heaven, and this is one of the things we need, is a concept of the fact that we are related to the God of heaven, that it is not just this little round that we go through day by day down here.
Our lives are far more significant than that. That's one of the things that Jacob learned. on this occasion when God met him. He never was quite the same after this experience, although he didn't change too much. He was afraid, but he was humbled. Now, we can't be too critical, you know, of Jacob. We are inclined to be critical of Jacob. Whenever we think Jacob we remember the name means a schema, and right away we begin to find fault with Jacob. But Jacob is very much like the rest of us.
We too must meet with God, and we too must enter into covenant with God. That's the beginning, entering into a covenant with God. In the end, God will accomplish his purpose. and our lives will be fruitful, as Jacob's life was fruitful, but that fruitfulness will be the result of the discipline of God. Now, first we have Jacob as he was, a schemer and a crook, and we have him tested and disciplined by God, and we have the dislocation of his natural life, and then the years of fruitfulness. He began as a schemer, wily, clever, confident, It wasn't just that what Jacob did was wrong.
He just wasn't suited by nature for God any more than any of us was. My old nature just isn't suited for God. And Jacob was a carnal man. He was very much conscious of his own strength. And he was strong. He desired the will of God, but when it didn't seem to happen, he used every device he could think of to make it happen. He was impatient, because sometimes we are impatient. Well, we've been talking about Jacob in some of his earlier aspects right now, but it does remind us of ourselves, doesn't it?
Don't you sometimes have a feeling of disappointment in the kind of a Christian you are. You should sometimes say to the Lord, Lord, you've got a bad deal when you save me. There's so many nice people who really would have amounted to something for you and what do you do but pick me up, you know. We have a sense of the fact that we're very much like Jacob. Well, I hope that this morning our consideration will help us to accept this and to realize that God is not disappointed with us. He's never disappointed with us. However disappointed we get with ourselves, he isn't disappointed.
He knows what he's doing. And he's going to bring us to the end that he has in mind. David must, I mean, Jacob must contrive. He must do something. And the result is, He has to leave home. Now, isn't this risky for God to do this at the start of his life? Tell him all this blessing that's going to come to him? You know, maybe now that Jacob won't be so careful. He'll just live fast and loose. And this is like people saying, you know, you can't know you're saved.
It's bad to believe that God has got you in his hands permanently, because if you believed that, you'd live like you wanted to live. No such thing as God we're dealing with, the God of Jacob who's able to bring us through. May I remind you that Jacob was God's choice, that God wanted Jacob? Jacob didn't choose God. God chose Jacob. You didn't choose God either. God chose you. The Lord Jesus said, You haven't chosen me.
I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit. Just as was the case with Jacob, God has put his love upon us. And he's going to accomplish something with us in our lives. And he's going to do it in spite of us. And if it's necessary, he's going to keep us in school until he gets us there. This is what he does with Jacob. God shows him God was going to work. In Isaiah forty-three, the Lord says, I will work and who will hinder it? And the Lord makes up his mind to do something.
He does it. Nobody gets in his way, not even us. Well, all Jacob got was discipline, and clever people get a lot of discipline. Clever people get a lot of discipline, because clever people are apt to figure that they can figure things out, and that they can direct their lives very well, and that they can do a good job with their careers. And so they get a lot of discipline. God comes in and works in the lives of men and women like that. And as I pointed out before, God didn't rebuke him because of the past.
Now, you know why God didn't rebuke him? What in the world would it have done? What good would it have done? Jacob would have gotten defensive. He would have explained, you know, how this all came about and what he had to do, and it wouldn't have changed Jacob one bit for God to have rebuked him. He was just like a, the easiest thing we do except maybe breathing is rationalize. We rationalize everything we do. We can explain it away, and we're always right. And God knew this.
He knew if he rebuked Jacob, all he'd get was an argument. Because Jacob could not change Jacob. Jacob could not change Jacob. And you cannot change you. Have you noticed? My wife says, the older we get, the more we get like ourselves. Well, we don't change ourselves. that God could change him. God had a process that was going to change this man. So why bother to rebuke him?
Let's go to work on him, God says. Twenty-one years later, when he came to Bethel, he was a different man altogether, and God knew that he would be. There was nothing in what God said to Jacob about, if you do this, I'll do the other. There's nothing conditional about what God said to Jacob. He said, I'm going to do this with you and for you, period. And he has said that to you and me, too. The book is filled with promises of what God is going to do with us and for us and through us, and they are such wonderful things.
And so from Bethel on, Jacob is in school. God has got some very poor material to work with. When Jacob's starting out, you know, I can just see an angel saying, God has really taken himself on a job with this guy. But, you know, God's work is perfect. The material may not be any good, but the work is perfect, and he knows how to do it. Well, he was on the mountaintop at Bethel, and we have often in our careers reached the place where we're on the mountaintop, and our concepts are enlarged, and we get a sense of God, and our hearts are bowed in worship, and we sort of rededicate our lives and everything.
Then we start out again, come right down the mountain, don't we? Well, that's the way it was with Jacob. And so he got to Bethel. I mean, he got to Bethel. his uncle's place, Laban's place. And when he got there, the first thing he saw was a beautiful girl. And I can understand this. I don't blame him for this, you know. Rachel must have been a beauty. And he fell in love with her. And he stuck around for about a month. Now he'd gone there for a few days. But he stuck around for about a month around Laban's house, just moaning over Rachel.
And this is all right. Laban says, you're welcome here. I'm glad to have you here. But he begins to think, you know, I haven't to feed this fellow all the time. I wish he'd get to work. And so he said to Jacob, you know, Jacob, I ought not to be having you do all this work you're doing around here. and not pay you for it. So let's enter into an agreement that you'll get certain wages. Isn't this a nice, devious way to say get to work?
Well, this is the kind of person Laban was, too. And so Jacob said, he said, what would you like for me to pay you if you work around here? And Jacob said, huh? Well, I'll tell you what. I'll work for you for seven years if I can marry Rachel. Great! No money out of pocket. This is a good deal for Laban. He wanted to marry his daughter off anyway. And here was the opportunity. Man, this is great. So Jacob went to work. And he worked for seven years.
And you know this story. At the end of the seven years, he said to Laban, okay, I've been working for seven years now for Rachel. You know, he's been courtner, and they've been out together, and they'd had dates one after the other. By now, after seven years, they know each other pretty well, and they are very much in love, and so comes the day of the wedding. And I don't know if you've been to this wedding or not, a very fascinating situation. They have all the celebration and everything. And, you know, there they didn't have electric lights like we do.
It wasn't bright at night, like daytime, like it is here. Everything is dark, and they did everything by the light of a candle or an oil lamp. And so after the wedding, Jacob goes to the church with his bride. great, you know. They're absolutely great until morning. And he wakes up in the morning, and here is Rachel's sister. Can you imagine the way Jacob looked that morning? When he came roaring out of the tent, over to his father-in-law, and he said, What's going on here?
Man, he worked seven years and he got the wrong one. You know, if this fellow was a cheater, I mean, Jacob, he was a third-class cheater. His father-in-law was the prize. And the cheater got cheated like he never dreamed he could be cheated. And Laban, you know, smooth as oil. He says, down, boy, just relax. In our country, we can't marry the younger girl before we marry the older girl.
Relax. You can, you know, be with her now for a week, and I'll give you Rachel all right. And you can work for me for another seven years for Rachel. Well, he was so relieved. that he was going to ultimately get Rachel at least, that I guess it didn't occur to him. He had another seven years' work to put in. And he accepted the proposition. And a week later, he was married to Rachel. And then he started his second seven years of work for this father-in-law he had. And the second seven years was pre-rugged. You know, it's different working after you've got it.
And that is when you're working for it. And so he sees the need now. He's got a wife and he's beginning to get a family. And he has to support him. And so old Jacob begins to come out. And he gets ideas, you know, about what he needs to do in order to get rich. And he begins cheating on Laban. And of course he's dealing with an expert. Laban starts cheating on him. And as he says later, Laban changed his wages ten times in the course of this working for his bride. Oh, man, they were a pair, this pair, Jacob and Laban.
Well, this is what went on until the word of the Lord came to Jacob, and he said, I want you to go back home. Now, Joseph had just been born. Joseph was born while they were there in Laban's house. And they'd had several children, of course, but they were all Leah's children. They weren't Rachel. She didn't have any children. But now she did. She had Joseph. And, you know, oh, is he proud of Joseph?
Here is the child by the wife he loved. Oh boy, isn't he great? And he wants to take Joseph home and show him to the folks. So he says to Laban, I want to go home. Give me my stuff and everything. I'm going to move out of here. And Laban says, but then I'll let this happen. So he begins to work out schemes to keep Jacob there. And Jacob finds himself involved in this and then involved in that until finally his impatience overcomes and he says, I'm going to go and I'm going to go and not say anything to Laban.
And so he gathered his things together. He took his family and away he went. And when Laban came home that night, his family was gone. That is his daughter Rachel and Leah and their children and Jacob. And so he called his other sons together and said, let's go after him and bring him back, which they did. They went after him, that is to say, but when they caught up to him, Jacob said to Laban, I'm not going back. And the Lord supported him in this, because the day before Laban caught up to Jacob, the Lord came and talked to Laban.
And he said, when you catch up to Jacob tomorrow, I don't want you to say anything good or bad to him. I want you to let him go. And Laban realized the thing was out of his hands. So he caught up to Jacob and they talked things over and they had a feast together. They parted on good terms because God had undertaken for him to get him loose from Laban, and Jacob went on his way. Then Jacob came very near home, and he heard his brother Esau had come out to meet him with four hundred men.
Well, now in Jacob's place, you'd have been worried, too. Four hundred men. What you've got to come out with four hundred men for in my little family here? And he's come out to get even with me because I stole the blessing. And Jacob is worried sick. Oh, she worried it. And so he divides his family up. He sends part of them over this way and part of them over this way. And he says, now if he saw meets with this group, this group will know it and they can get away. And, you know, all this kind of scheming and so on. And he sent them away and he was there all by himself. And he was the most worried man on earth.
He was worried sick. And in all his concern, he reminded God of what he'd said. You said that you'd take care of me, that you would bring me back. God came and wrestled with Jacob that night. Oh, how they wrestled. God said in effect, yes, I said I would bring you back. And I am bringing you back. But you keep meddling all the time.
And Jacob wrestled with God all night. And it says God did not prevail. You ever have a wrestling match like that with God? You work the problem over all night with God, and in the morning you are still going to do what you want to do. You are still going to run the show. That's exactly the way it was with Jacob. After wrestling with God all night, Jacob was still hanging in there.
He was going to have something to say about it. And just before morning, when God saw that he wasn't getting anywhere with Jacob, isn't that a strange thing to say? Maybe God hasn't been getting anywhere with you. Maybe God hasn't been getting anywhere with me. And when he sees he's not getting anywhere with him, he reached out and he touched his side, the point of his greatest strength in this wrestling match. Jacob is done. He can't put any leverage anymore. He's been ruined.
You know, so far as Jacob is concerned, all his natural strength and ability, which was very great, very great. Jacob was a man who knew the score. Jacob was a man who was able to do things. God touched him and all his natural ability drained out. And then he grabbed hold of the Lord and said, I'm not going to let you go unless you bless me. And God brought him that night to the place where he could bless. It was on that occasion that God said, your name is no longer Jacob.
It's Israel. because you are a prince with God and you have prevailed. Now, how did he prevail against God? By surrendering, by hanging on, by saying, I'm finished, I'm done. And you and I are going to prevail in our life with God when we reach the Brook Jabot, when we come to the place where God touches our lives and all our natural ideas, our strength, all the things we depend on, we let them go.
And we hang on to God. We say, if anything is going to be accomplished, you are going to have to accomplish it. When we do that, we prevail, like Jacob prevailed. And from then on, Jacob's life, boy, it wasn't without its problems, but the problems were not the problems of Jacob's making anymore. Jacob went on trusting God, depending on the Lord, and he entered into the fruitful thirty years of his life. We haven't got time to go into this, or which we did, how fruitful and how wonderful, how Jacob suddenly became conscious of other people, became interested in other people, began to love other people, began to be concerned about other people, how his family followed in his train and got away from all the crookedness.
And he was a great blessing. And he went down into Egypt later on. with his family. And down in Egypt was the greatest king in the earth in those days, the Pharaoh of Egypt. Do you know what it says? It says Jacob blessed Pharaoh. Not Pharaoh blessed Jacob. And the lesser is blessed of the greater. And God is saying in that that the man who has found that he can do nothing in his natural strength but leaves it all with God becomes greater than the greatest that the earth can produce.
That's what Jesus meant when he said that John the Baptist was the greatest man that ever lived. Now we all have that potential, potential to meet them, to know and to walk with the God of Jacob. The God of Jacob is the disciplining Father, who brings us through all the circumstances of our lives into all His gracious will. God give us all to know Him better, shall we pray?
Oh, Lord, we thank You that in wonderful grace You chose us. And you have chosen to work in our lives in such a way as to accomplish all your gracious purpose in having chosen us. And you are taking us on in spite of us, in spite of our meddling, in spite of our obstinacy, in spite of our intransigency, you are taking us on in thy will. Oh, help us, we pray thee, to keep our hands off and to trust thee, that we may know the accomplishment of thy gracious purpose in each of our lives and that our lives may be fruitful and the blessing as Jacob's life was in his later years.