Jacob was a rogue. A bounder. A Cad. I think that is why I like him so much.. The story of his spiritual growth is so encouraging because it doesn’t depend on him as much as upon God. That much is obvious. In Genesis chapters 25-36 we are introduced to the account of Isaac. To read someone’s account in the book of Genesis is to read the story of their progeny. The account of Isaac is the account of his children Jacob and Esau.
The original audience were named after Jacob. They knew that Jacob was chosen by God and had a name change to Israel. However, the people of Israel might have buried the account of their namesake if they had not been an honest folk. Really, Jacob is the kind of son that you whisper about at parties. The kind of son who garners sideways glances and hushed giggles. Although God has made a direct promise to Jacob’s family about how they will be blessed and fill the land, Jacob doesn’t seem to accept any part in it. This could be understood because he is the younger son. His older brother came into the world a full second or two before him, so Jacob would have been raised with the knowledge that in normal circumstances the inheritance would be divided into thirds. One third would go to Jacob and two thirds would go to his very slightly older brother Esau.
We often interpret the Bible as character studies of models whom we emulate. When we are reading about Abraham we are told to be like him because of his unshakable faith. There is some truth to that, but the epithet (?) be like Abraham is unhelpful when you consider how he lied to save his skin and almost took a knife to his son in sacrificial obedience. We are not to lie about who we’re married to (isn’t that right dear?), and we are no longer think it is unjustified if DCFS remove a child from our custody if we seriously threaten to kill them with a knife. The weakness with the common Sunday-School model of interpretation is that in creating human examples from the Bible for us to copy we are being wholly too anthropocentric. Biblical Theology teaches us that the Bible is God’s story and the primary character is God. The absurdity of reading the Bible otherwise is the savage cut and paste we have to do with the text to read it otherwise. To be like Gideon we have to delete his actions after he smashed the pots and gained some self-confidence. Leading Israel astray in ‘ephod’ worship is not something God wants us to emulate – and lost in idolatry is where Gideon leaves the people. Little girls whose mothers want them to be like Esther ought to beware. Their mothers will sell them into an ancient game of the bachelor, where the winner has ensnared a king by her premarital sexual prowess. Mordecai knows better what he is dabbling in than does Queen Esther when he warns her that if she doesn’t do something extraordinary to save God’s people, he will save them by other means. She is not the hero of the book named for her as much as God is the hero of her book, even though he isn’t named.
Jacob is such a character. If my son aspires to be like Jacob, I will lock him up until he’s about 90 yaers old and ready to do something useful. The original audience understood that the account of Isaac, which is the story of Jacob and Esau, is the story of God overcoming various threats to bring his promise to fruition. The story of Jacob’s stubborn, stiff-necked, conniving little life is a story of God transforming a simple, self-important, sly dog into a stepping stone for his story to cross. That’s why I like the story of Jacob. It gives me hope. I look at my heart and I see something of a duplicitous, calculating, weak, self-obsessed simpleton, and I think, “Well, God has used such people in the past. He will use me.”
Although I am not to set my goals on Jacob’s behavior and aim at being like him, I can look at how God dealt with Jacob and feel some solace. Jacob shared humanity’s common condition and God worked on him. God pursued Jacob relentlessly. Even when Jacob thought that he was being clever, God in his grace used those times to move Jacob closer to his calling. Even when Jacob was digging a hole and getting himself in trouble, God was creating an opportunity to speak to Jacob and reveal the reality of relationship with a monotheistic, eternal God.
As we look at God’s gracious pursuit of Jacob, you might want to follow along in your Bibles. The account of Isaac, which is the story of Jacob and Esau, begins in Genesis 25:19 and runs through Genesis 36.
The circumstances of Jacob and Esau’s birth is portentous. Here are two brothers who don’t even leave the womb and they are squabbling with each other. I thought sibling rivalry was quite a common thing. It is one of the most common dysfunctions in a dysfunctional family. However, Rebekah is so disturbed that she consults a medium, an oracle, or some other fortune teller to explain to her what is going on. The text tells us that God revealed the future, but she made inquiries, and was common to make inquiries through the dark arts. God forbade such practices later, but he is gracious to work in circumstances replete with magic and machinations in the life of Jacob.
Jacob’s name reminded people of the word ‘heel’. This was not an accident. When he was born he was grasping at his brother’s heel, if you remember. This was a foreshadowing of how these brothers were to wrestle with each other for supremacy in their lives. Their own struggles were a foreshadowing of larger national struggles that would occur. The irony of the future would be that the older brother was destined to serve the younger.
If you remember, Esau was a true red-head. Red-heads have a reputation for being wild and untamed. Esau was a man’s man. He was a hunter and liked to live rough. Jacob was more of a ‘balanced’ individual. He probably was a good administrator and moved the nomadic family around with their sheep. It is quite possible that Jacob had set up a pastoral camp at some forward location and Esau one day rolled in from the wilderness. We say that because Jacob was cooking the stew and neither of Jacob’s parents interfered with the interchange that revealed so much about who Esau and Jacob truly were. Esau in a famished stupor demanded some red stew of his brother and Jacob, the shrewd businessman saw the opportunity. He agreed to give the red boy some red stew if he payed his birthright for it. Shockingly Esau shows no regard for his birthright and gets the stew. This is shocking because to the original audience there could be little more important than the inheritance that God had handed to these brothers. We should not think that Jacob necessarily left Esau penniless. It is quite possible that the third which would have been added to the older brother’s inheritance was now shifted to Jacob. This is a reversal in fortune that benefits the line of Israel, and why not since Esau held his inheritance in such low regard.
You may remember how the story continues. Both boys are confirmed in their pursuits by doting parents. Mother Rebekah dotes on Jacob and Father Isaac dotes on Esau. However, both of the parents are somewhat repulsed by Esau’s choice in women. He marries some of the Hittite women who have settled in the area. We tend to skip over the –ites with a glazed expression. It just seems like a list of people who are not Israelites to many of us. I remember how a teacher of mine would check if we were awake by throwing in random rhyming words like the termites, and the megabites. However, the Hittites are worthy of note. The Hittites expanded from asia Minor, modern Turkey, with rapidity and power. They were quite influential. It would seem that marrying a Hittite was like marrying an American in today’s world. It was to marry into cultural ascendancy. It was to marry into the current superpower. Unfortunately, it seems that Isaac and Rebekah could see the dangers of assimilation. They could see that the surrounding nations would not learn from God’s people but God’s people would become too much like the polytheistic pagans that surrounded them. We can assume that God was of the same opinion as Jacob’s parents. God is going to make sure that Jacob does not stick around and just blend into the Canaanite people groups.
The opportunity for Jacob to become really hated and in danger of losing his life is just around the corner. It was usual for a father to gather the family and pronounce blessing on the oldest son. This did not compel God to act. No-one can make God do anything. However, God would use this occasion to move Jacob to places he may never have gone to otherwise. It seems that although Isaac lived for many years after this event, many of his senses were dulled. He couldn’t tell venison from mutton, he couldn’t tell goat hair from natural hair and he wasn’t too sure of his hearing. When he asks Esau to prepare him some tasty food, Rebekah sees an opportunity to put the interests of her favourite son. She arranges a masquerade where Jacob will pose as Esau and gain the blessing from his father. Jacob is not an entirely willing participant. He is afraid that he will be found out and that he will bring a curse upon his head. However, he goes along with the plan dresses in hairy goat skin and makes himself smell like his brother.
You may remember that Jacob gets the blessing and that Esau despises Jacob for it. It is in such a dysfunctional household that threats of murder start to generate. Whatever Esau thought about losing his birthright at the time, he now adds it as an offense to the present situation and God orchestrates Jacob’s departure. Rebekah, the matriarch, once again schemes for her favourite son and so she saves his life by sending him off to her family home to find himself a wife. God in this way, is preserving his promise to Abraham and making sure that his plans are fulfilled. All this whilst it seems that the scheming and plotting characters are unaware of him. God will rach into Jacob’s life soon and reveal himself in ways that Jacob will not be able to ignore.
Having removed Jacob from the relative comfort of the tents of his nomadic family, God is able to reveal himself to Jacob in a fresh way. He uses a vision that would have made sense to those who saw it. Many ancients built Ziggurats, or huge terraced stairways to the heavens so that the gods could come down and walk with man. It was thought that if gods used your temple stairways you could manipulate them to do what you wished. As Jacob lays his head on a rock to sleep he sees a vision of a stairway that leads to heaven. God stands beside it, but angels come and go from the presence of God to go throughout the world and do God’s bidding. Jacob is startled to think that he has found a portal to the presence of God and so he takes up his pillow to mark the spot. He designates the spot as holy ground and calls it Bethel, which means the house of God. Before we get too excited though, we need to realize that Jacob believes he has found a personal God who is something like a genie in the story of Aladdin. He makes a conditional promise that IF God looks after him and gives him food and clothing – and IF God brings Jacob home safely – then Jacob will pass on a tenth. God graciously allows Jacob to pass on his way with his life after that presumption. However, God does go with Jacob. It is hard for an omnipresent God not to go with people I would imagine. However, Jacob imagines God to be local and personal. God has promised to go with him and God will fulfil his promises under his own steam, not just because a mere mortal holds a tenth of his future possessions over him.
You may remember how Jacob meets his relatives quite fortuitously tending some flocks by a well in the land of the sons of the east. It is not just good fortune that Rachel comes up to the well as he is talking to people there. If Jacob was looking for a monotheistic paragon of virtue in a wife, he is not going to find one anywhere on earth at that time. However, he does find an incredibly good looking woman. Like Helen of Troy, Rachel inspires some serious heroics on the part of her suitor. He demands no wages but works for seven years just for her. You probably remember that the morning after the first night was a bit of a shock. The man who acted out a masquerade for a blessing has now had a masquerade played out on him. As the text says, “Behold, it was Leah!” The godless swindler is finding that he has met his match in Laban his father-in-law. Jacob and Laban start life amicably enough, but exchanging brides on the wedding night probably put a dampener on their relationship. Laban makes up for it by giving Jacob a second wife and a couple of concubines thrown in. However, there is a fading veneer of pleasantry, and fairness as Laban promises to give Jacob a wage which is less than he is worth and Jacob meddles with the flock’s feeding habits in order to get ahead. Because God in his sovereign will wishes to preserve his covenant and his people he blesses Jacob’s hair-brained schemes of shaving branches to get them to reproduce in his favour. However, whilst all is going well for Jacob and the reader remembers that God is fulfilling his promise, we only see that Jacob is attributing his blessing to his own hard work and ingenuity. God needs to give Jacob a slap upside the head. It seems that it is time for Jacob to go into the wilderness again. Jacob counts it an injustice that Laban looks on him disfavourably. He acknowledges that God has blessed him by giving him a large portion of the flocks he has tended.
It is there in the wilderness that God allows Jacob to fear for his life and the destruction of all his hard work. Jacob tries to placate his brother with gifts, but he still fears his brother especially when he hears that his brother is bringing 400 of his best friends as a welcoming committee. It is when Jacob is truly alone and has sent everything he has before him that God reaches into Jacob’s life with a serious challenge. There is a struggle that has both a physical and a spiritual aspect to it. We know that God can crush his enemies, but God chooses instead to dislocate a thigh, to strain a muscle, to injure his opponent. There is something in this struggle that finally reaches through to the heart of Jacob. Finally stripped of all his clever schemes and aware that God has graciously spared him, Jacob has a heart change. It is not a complete change. However, Jacob has been transformed from one who sees God as his servant to one who serves God. Jacob has moved from a man who manipulates God to a man who is manipulated by God.
It is a humbled Jacob who embraces his brother. I believe that Jacob is truly relieved and thankful when he embraces his brother. Of course, his brother would find it difficult to ambush Jacob whilst Esau has all of Jacob’s gifts bleeting, grunting and slowing him down. Jacob still lies and doesn’t follow through on his promise to visit his brother in Seir, but God’s plan is being completed in giving Jacob the land. Jacob even remembers to go back to Bethel and to settle there. There is a shift towards monotheism as Jacob takes all of he local deities or household gods that he has in his possession and he hides them.
The transformation of Jacob is messy. God graciously pursues Jacob and turns up the heat little by little. For his own honour, God will not give up on the promise he made to Abraham. Jacob’s family is so dysfunctional that you would have thought his generation would see the failing of the covenant but God moves the plan along. God pursues Jacob and Jacob can not escape.
I have felt like this in recent years. I have been a Christian since I was eight years old. At eight I Knelt beside my bed and prayed a prayer. I took a step from being a child of the world to being a child of God. God adopted me into his family and he has not let me go. However, God disciplines those he loves. He pursues them relentlessly. If we are to grow spiritually we are to suffer. The eradication of sin is healthy but it is not comfortable.
Some of our sin comes from dysfunctional, sinful structures in our families. My mother came to know God when I was very young. She tried to rely on God, but by her own admission did not really know what raising a godly child looked like. My father was not a godly man. He was a nice man by most accounts, he was pleasant but chauvinistic and self-centered like most men are. Children model their ideas of manhood and womanhood on the adults who are closest to them. Parents profoundly influence the direction their children take by the words of affirmation and discouragement that they give their children. I found that my father really wasn’t one to reinforce with words of affirmation. I tried to ignore the fact that I was ridiculed for my attempts at elementary mechanics. I tried to forget the fact that the most consistent feedback I received from my father was when he told me I was ‘bloody irresponsible’. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t have tender moments. It doesn’t mean that my father didn’t love me or that I didn’t love him. We loved each other, but from my father there was no verbal encouragement. He really didn’t know how to do it. God allowed the effects of this to stay buried until this last year.
I had known that things were not right when I was both an academic dean and a fifth grade teacher at a small Christian school. It was a job and a half both literally and figuratively. I could tell you now that I had no boundaries. That I didn’t know where my responsibilities finished and the responsibilities of parents and their children began. I did what I could to make everyone happy and I felt it in my body. My skin started to crawl because of stress and my back began to lock up. I just felt that to be Christian was to be selfless. To be selfless, I reasoned, was to make everyone happy. I didn’t realize that this was a weak and untrue attitude. I didn’t think that it was an avenue for sin to damage my health and my home. I just kept giving and giving in ways that I was not meant to give.
When I started working at Moody the physical symptoms lessened slightly, but God wasn’t done with me. He wanted to pursue me and deal with the poor self-image and the warped idea of selflessness that I had developed as a child. My father had brought me in front of my mother when she was sad. It was not his fault she was sad. It was not her responsibility that she was sad. He taught me that it was my responsibility to make people happy or sad. There were ways in which te teaching of my church taught me the same. People were not responsible for their own emotional well-being I was! I lived a life of people-pleasing with evangelistic zeal. When I transitioned into a new job at Moody Kelli was enduring infertility. It wasn’t possible to have good conversations that led to healing. The conversations led to me blaming myself that Kelli wasn’t satisfied with me, but absolutely had to have a child. If Kelli’s emotional well-being depended on me, I was failing horribly. We had both of Kelli’s parents live with us after we moved to a new house in McHenry. We cared for them and cooked for them and bathed them and in the end changed their soiled diapers. It was a strain internally, but I thought the godly thing was just to smile and do whatever everyone thought I should do. We started the waiting process for adoption. In 2006 we submitted paperwork for an adoption in China. The weight of waiting still weighs heavy as in 2011 our paperwork is still being processed for that adoption. We have been involved in the foster-care movement, but some of those situations can prove quite stressful.
Last summer things came to a head a little bit. God pursued me by allowing the stress to build up to levels that I couldn’t handle on my own. My sinful pattern of having no boundaries led to situations I couldn’t handle. Simple tasks, like speaking at camps, started to become stressful. I had spoken at the camps for seven years. Why should the seventh year be much more stressful. I told myself it was because I had become a dull speaker and that God just wanted me to stop. I became nervous about meetings concerning work. I thought that I had nothing to contribute. I had always struggled with thinking that I was any good as a teacher. I was thankful for this because, I thought, the knowledge that I was no good at anything made me more dependent on God. God was good enough to work through a donkey and seeing myself as a donkey allowed me to teach each day in my teaching job. I began to dread being evaluated, though. It would just be crushing to hear all the truth about how worthless I was. All this self-destruction seemed like humility. I confused dying to self with killing myself. Of course, suicide was wrong and therefore not an option. But like Hamlet, I thought darkly that death was a consummation devoutly to be wished. After all, I reasoned, Paul had written ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ That is such a short step from wishing that you were dead. God allowed all this to transpire. He allowed this to happen because he would use it to grow me. He allowed it to happen because he would use it to grow me. Unlike Jacob, I wasn’t overconfident in my own abilities. I had a dual problem of believing I had no abilities and everyone’s failings were my responsibility. It is hard to take care of the world with no skills.
It was in this condition that we almost adopted a newborn last summer. We met a girl who was pregnant and wanting to put her child up for adoption. The problem was that she left the state when the child was due. We were waiting with newborn clothes, a prepared nursery, and an extended support network. When the birth mother finally disappeared without a trace, I was quite overwhelmed. I needed time to regroup. I needed time to rest. But in what seemed no time at all my wife was suggesting we consider another adoption of another newborn. I couldn’t go there, I just couldn’t. I was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and shame. I felt like I had let my wife down. I was too weak. I was irresponsible, as my father had always said. I was selfish, I thought. It was selfish and self-obsessive not to be able to regroup and adopt a child who would be born all alone in the world.
My wife was understanding. She didn’t push it. God didn’t rescue me from the self-doubt at that point. I knew that God was good. I prayed that he would bring me through. But I thought of myself at the bottom of a deep well. It was in this condition that I went limping into a new semester at Moody. Lined up waiting for commencement I had to pray continually for God to give me the strength to get through it. It was after that even that I began to realize God wanted me to deal with myself. I didn’t want to become selfish, but as my self was not being dealt with I couldn’t move on easily in acts of service. God had pursued me into a corner where I had to grow.
What God has taught me has not been easy. I have identified sinful patterns in the way I was raised. I have identified sinful patterns in the roles that my wife and I have played at home. I have learnt that in destroying parts of my self that I didn’t like or have feared, I have destroyed part of myself that God would have been able to use for others. God has been rebuilding me. The trembling feeling of inadequacy has been replaced by a confidence in God. I have seen in myself strong desires to control my environment. However, I have learned to stop trying to control my environment and stop trying to control others with my nice behavior, but to try and acknowledge God’s control. I have struggled with feeling accepted by my father, my spouse, my colleagues, my students and my church. I have learned that, although I have seldom felt accepted by people God has always accepted me. My sense of security is increasing. I have not been as healthy this year as I have been other years. I have seen the doctor and they have tried to help shake me of symptoms. My health has worried me in the past, but I am realizing a calmer approach to the truth that ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ Rather than hoping for death, I realize that I am safe in the eternal arms of the Lord.
My prayer life is improving. I have been meditating on Philippians 4:2-9. I knew that I was struggling with anxiety and I knew that feedom from anxiety is locked in those verses. Rather than hold onto my anxieties and fears I have learned to welcome them in prayer and bring them into the presence of God. It is there that I can release them and walk away from them. I am thankful that God has pursued me to the point where it has improved our conversation. It is not that I am yet in the truly peaceful condition that transcends all understanding. However, because he allowed me to reacdh the end of myself I see more clearly the path forward into more truth. It is painful tearing of years of accumulated sinful patterns, but it is the process of sanctification. I can not avoid God. He has pierced my heart with one horn, but he cradles me with the other.
Plymothian 