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Review and Introduction
God told Abraham to leave his country, his people, and his father’s household and go to the land God would show him.
God promised to make Abraham into a great nation and would bless him; God would make his name great, and he would be a blessing.
God would bless those who bless Abraham, and whoever curses him, God will curse. All peoples on earth would be blessed through him.
Last week, we saw that Isaac was a bearer of God’s blessing and that those who bear God’s blessing do not always get it right. Isaac and his family didn’t get it right.
Our mistakes do not disqualify God’s promise to bless those who ultimately put their trust in him.
Today, we examine Jacob’s life, how he struggled with people and God, and how God’s blessing continues through him.
We will see glimpses of God’s promises fulfilled in Jacob’s life. Promises make a great nation out of this family and bless others through them.
As a reminder, blessing means what? To receive the benefits of God’s favour.
As recipients of God’s blessing through Jesus, we have the opportunity and responsibility to pass along the benefits of God’s favour to others.
God’s Promise to Jacob at Bethel
Turn to Genesis 28.
We pick up the story with Jacob being sent by his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, to Harran, which is the former home of Abraham and where Rebekah’s family lives.
They sent Jacob to find a wife among the family there and to allow Esau time to cool down after having been deceived by Jacob.
I quickly want to highlight God’s promise to Jacob. It is important to remember these promises as we continue through the Pentateuch.
Genesis 28:10-17
Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”
Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.
Here we find a familiar story about what is often referred to as Jacob’s ladder to heaven.
The image of the ladder, which could also be understood as a stairway, to heaven is an important image, but this part of the dream often overshadows the promise that God confirms to Jacob.
It is the same promise given to his grandfather, Abraham. Jacob wakes from the dream and declares that this place is special and renames it Bethel, which means house of God.
Let’s skip ahead in the story to chapter 35, where we see Jacob and his new family return to the same spot 20 years later.
Genesis 35:1; 11-12
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.” 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.”
This is the promise, first given to Abraham and now passed down to Jacob. This one is a little different, but the substance is the same. This version of the promise includes nations and kings coming from the line of Jacob and the promise of land.
With this in mind, let’s examine how Jacob went from fleeing for his life to becoming the father of a large family with substantial wealth.
Jacob’s Family
Upon entering the area of Haran, Jacob comes to a well and meets some shepherds who worked for Jacob’s uncle, Laban.
Remember Laban from last week. Laban is Rebekah’s brother. It seems the cunning, deceptive characteristics of both Jacob and Rebekah are also found in Laban.
Among the shepherds is Laban’s daughter, Rachel.
For Jacob, it is love at first sight. He came to Haran to find a wife, and he instantly knows that Rachel is the one.
Jacob goes to meet his uncle Laban, and he is there for a month when we come to this text in chapter 29, starting at verse 16.
Genesis 29:16-30
Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful. Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.” Laban said, “It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me.” So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.
It turns out that, on the night of the wedding after Jacob has had much to drink and it is dark out, the cunning Laban gives his older daughter to Jacob as his wife instead of Rachel as a way to marry her off.
Of course, Jacob is furious the next morning, but Laban says Jacob can marry Rachel as well in exchange for another seven years of work.
Over the next 13 years, Jacob stayed and worked for Laban for a total of 20 years.
In that time, his family grows, and it says in 30:27 that Laban was blessed because of Jacob, which is a glimpse of God’s promises being fulfilled.
Genesis 29:31-30:24 tells of how Jacob’s sons are born in a somewhat comical description of how Leah and Rachel competed with one another to have more children than the other.
In the end, Leah has six sons, and Rachel, who is barren for most of the story, has two sons.
In order to increase their odds of gaining Jacob’s favour by producing more sons, both sisters involved their servants, Zilpah and Bilhah, who each had two more sons.
You may have noticed in these stories and throughout the Old Testament that many prominent characters have more than one wife. This practice doesn’t seem to be outright condemned.
The Law given to Moses didn’t prohibit multiple wives but rather regulated it to avoid neglect or poor treatment of less favoured wives. Exodus 21:10 says, If a man marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights.
Based on a close reading of Scripture, we can conclude that polygamy is not God’s ideal, even though God made allowance for it.
This may seem obvious to us now because polygamy isn’t even legal, let alone seen as a wise decision in our culture.
But in the ancient Near East, polygamy was a fairly standard practice. For women, being married provided security and value, even if it meant being one of multiple wives.
Throughout the Bible, we can see how polygamy caused problems for people. It is the same with any practice that is less than ideal.
We may ask, “What is permissible for a Christian?” But, by asking that question we will find ourselves chasing a low standard.
Instead, we should ask, what is God’s ideal purpose for his creation? His ideal purpose, as expressed in Genesis 2:24 is that a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and that they become one flesh.
The point of reading Scripture is not to look at these people’s lives in Scripture and measure our morality against theirs.
When we try to create moral standards for our lives based on their behaviour, we will be confused and way off of God’s holy standard for moral living.
The stories help us see who God is and how he is faithful in keeping his promises regardless of how faithful his people are.
God continues to work through them because he said he would, even though they did not live perfectly.
Alright, back to Leah and Rachel and their competition.
Genesis 30:14-16 During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the fields and found some mandrake plants, which he brought to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” But she said to her, “Wasn’t it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son’s mandrakes too?” “Very well,” Rachel said, “he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.”
What is with these women? It seems strange to us, doesn’t it? Leah, who was the older sister, saw herself as unfavored. Jacob desired Rachel more than Leah.
So, Leah thought she could win Jacob’s favour by having more sons than Rachel. Both women’s identities and values are wrapped up in how much Jacob loves them.
Chasing the wrong source of identity and value will make us do crazy things. For them, it was competing with each other to see how many sons they could have.
This competition bore no fruit for either of them. Leah never won Jacob over, and Rachel only bore two sons, and she died during the birth of her second son.
What do you chase? What do you believe will make you valuable or give you an identity?
Do you seek the approval of others? A job title? Status represented by your house, car, or even the financial means to help others? Maybe it’s the success of your children.
Whatever it is, it will disappoint you. You will either never achieve it, or when you do, you will find emptiness.
You will discover that people do not have the same value system as you and don’t care about your success, or they will despise you for being more successful than them.
We will see a bit later from an interaction between Jesus and his disciples that the way of God is different.
We tend to think about what value we bring to people, how much money we have, our independence, influence and our legacy.
But God’s way is that of a servant. It is backward from how we tend to think about value and identity.
Let’s take a quick look at Genesis 31:1-18 which tells of Jacob and his family leaving Haran.
Not only was Jacob and his family fed up with Laban taking advantage of them, but God spoke to Jacob, telling him it was time to leave.
In verse 3, we read that the LORD said to Jacob, “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you.” God had done what needed to be done in Haran through Jacob.
It was time to move the promised blessing forward to the next stage of God’s plan.
Starting in verse 9, Jacob acknowledges that God has been making him successful, providing abundance even in the midst of Laban’s dishonesty.
It is God’s nature to care for the disadvantaged and oppressed. Jacob was a bearer of God’s blessing, the same blessing given to his father and grandfather.
God was not going to forget that promise, so he provided for Jacob in the midst of oppression.
Jacob’s acknowledgment that God provided the abundance seems to be the beginning of a shift in his heart, which leads to probably one of the most memorable stories of the Old Testament: Jacob wrestling with God.
Jacob’s Struggle
After dealing one final time with Laban, who chased after and caught up with them, Jacob prepared to meet his brother Esau by sending him gifts ahead of the family.
As he awaited the anticipated struggle with his brother, he encounters an entirely different struggle with a strange man.
Genesis 32:24-30
So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 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. 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.”
There are two angles from which we can look at this story.
First, we can see it from the perspective of a critical turning point in Jacob’s life. He goes from being Jacob the deceiver to being Israel the one who wrestled with God and overcame.
From this point on, his identity is not wrapped up in deception but in his dependence on God. We will see a shift in Jacob’s’ attitude toward what it means to be blessed by God.
He no longer is grasping for the blessing, as he had been doing since the day he was born grasping at the heal of his twin brother.
He is blessed by God on God’s terms and in his way.
This story also tells us something about God and what happens when we encounter him.
When our eyes are opened to who we are really wrestling with in life, we will see a God who has everything we need.
He is powerful enough to meet all our needs and he meets us where we are.
In Jacob’s story, in some mysterious way, he took the form of a human.
And, as Jesus, he became fully human in order to suffer and die so that we may be blessed.
But encountering a God who became human comes at a cost.
Participating with him in blessing means we will walk with a limp because being blessed does not mean everything is right, at least not yet. We still encounter struggle, and we will until this life is over.
Encountering a God who became human means we will also receive and pass along God’s blessing with humility, knowing that it is not strength that gives us meaning or gets us through life.
It’s actually weakness. In fact, strength is best known through weakness. Let’s look at what the New Testament says about all of this.
New Testament Connections
In John 1:47-51 we see that Jesus is the stairway to heaven in Jacob’s dream.
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”
Jesus was inviting people to follow him as his disciples. He comes across Nathanael, who apparently is an honest man, unlike Jacob, who was literally named deceit.
As part of Jesus’s call to Nathanael to follow him, he tells Nathanael that he will see Jesus in the same way Jacob saw the stairway to heaven. It is Jesus who bridges the gap between heaven and earth.
Another connection to the New Testament is in Matthew 20:20-28. We read about how in the Kingdom of God the last will be first.
Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. “What is it you want?” he asked. She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.” … Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
The disciples are eager to be prominent in God’s kingdom. They believe that Jesus can give them this position, so they send their mother to ask him.
Jesus warns them that if they want prominence, they will need to suffer.
Even then, prominence may not mean what they think it means. The greatest in God’s kingdom will be the servant of others.
Like Jacob’s wives, the disciples sought approval in the form of status. They believed they would be satisfied if they held a high and important position in the kingdom.
Jesus was trying to tell them they would not be great if they wanted greatness in the way the world offered it. Greatness in God’s kingdom is, first and foremost, humble service to others.
This is what the church is meant to model for the world. We are meant to be organized in such a way that shows God’s intended order.
Leaders are servants. Greatness is demonstrated through generosity and kindness.
Finally, in Mathew 26:36-46 we see how, like Jacob, Jesus wrestled with God.
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” … he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
The struggle Jesus has with God is hard to comprehend. Jesus is God, isn’t he?
Yet, we see here the fullness of his humanity. He is tempted like no one has ever or will ever be tempted.
The temptation is to abandon God’s plan of salvation for all humanity through not only a horrifying death but complete separation from God.
When we look at the story of Jesus and then back at the story of Jacob, we see two men who struggled with God and prevailed.
We see two men blessed by God, but that blessing came through the promises of God, not through human strength or accomplishment.
It was only after God touched Jacob and disabled him that he was able to receive the fullness of God’s blessing.
It is only through the suffering life of Jesus and his death that the blessing of God is fully available to all of us. And so we receive it with humility.
Like Leah and Rachel, we long for identity and purpose and seek it in the wrong things.
Like Jacob, we deceive and grab hold of what we believe is rightfully ours.
And, we struggle with a God who does not require us to be perfect, only that we trust his promises.
Pentateuch Series Bibliography
Alexander, T. Desmond. From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch. Fourth Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022.
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.
Averbeck, Richard E. The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2022.
Brueggemann, Walter. Preaching from the Old Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019.
Glanville, Mark. Freed to Be God’s Family: The Book of Exodus. Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2021.
Longman III, Tremper. Genesis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016.
Lynch, Matthew J. Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.
Provan, Iain, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. A Biblical History of Israel. Second Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015.
Smith, James E. The Torah. 2nd ed. Old Testament Survey Series. Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co., 1993.
Walton, John H and J. Harvey Walton. The Lost World of the Torah: Law as Covenant and Wisdom in Ancient Context. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.