Genesis 32:27-32

 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him and said, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And he blessed him there. 30 So Jacobnamed the place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.” 31 Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh. 32 Therefore, to this day the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip.

 

When most of us think of blessing, we think of circumstances and material items that bring joy, pleasure, or satisfaction into our lives, don’t we?  If we are healthy, we consider ourselves blessed.  If the kids stay out of trouble, and in school, we’re blessed.  If we avoid lay-offs, manage to make the mortgage, we’re blessed.  Remember in very 26 when Jacob, in a wrestling match with God, said he would not let go until God blessed him?  Well, here are the blessings he received…

First, he received a new name.  In almost all ancient cultures, a person’s name represented a character quality that either was intended for them, or which they earned through their conduct.  The first blessing that God gave to Jacob, Deceiver, was to give him a new name—Israel, the one who strives with God.  He would now be known not for his schemes and tricks, but for the intimate relationship that he had with God.

Second, he had a profound sense of special identity before God.  He had seen God face to face and yet had been spared.  Somehow he had been given a relationship with God in which he was not judged for his sin, or rejected in any way, but his life was spared—he was even blessed!

Third, he was given a limp.  Great blessing, huh?  But that limp was seen and remembered by all who observed Jacob, and the nation that followed him.  The blessing of the limp is not apparent in the getting of the limp–that’s painful, humiliating, and bewildering.  But to a watching world, how a believer keeps on moving through life, limp and all, becomes an enduring testimony of God-given perseverance.  I don’t think Jacob received the blessing he thought he wanted, but God gave him the blessing he needed: a changed character and identity, a new-found security in his relationship with God, and a legacy before all of God’s people who followed in his footsteps. 

There are all kinds of limps, really.  There are physical ones, that slow us down.  Emotional ones, that plague our thoughts and peace.  Some are from spiritual scars that we carry from past battles, and some are ongoing burdens that we will carry though all of life, until we are finally with Him.  But we shouldn’t hold back from Him, simply to avoid receiving a limp.  He gives us a limp for His own reasons.  Don’t hate your limp.  Instead, love your God, and see Him bless you, His way.  He may just use your limp to encourage someone else to stay in the battle.

Dear Father, please give me the grace to cling to You, expecting blessing, and to embrace the difficulties and hardships that You give to me.  Let me never be ashamed of any limp that You bring to me, and never judge others whom I see walking with a spiritual limp; for it just may be a gift from You.

Psalm 139:13-16

 13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.

 

In this Psalm, David makes many astounding claims about God’s character and attributes, including God’s personal involvement in the formation of the human body-David’s body, to be precise!  Despite its location in the womb, his body was not hidden from God.  As a matter of fact, David states that God had seen David’s unformed substance.  The ramifications of such a truth are startling.

Your eyes have seen:  God Himself, the Creator who exists without beginning and without end, personally looked upon, viewed, took into account and noted, David’s unformed substance.  This unformed substance is the basic, material elements which, with conception and growth, would become a human body, David’s body.  Think of it!  While still in its unformed, or, unassembled, state—God saw and recognized the unique person that existed in them—David, the future king of Israel.  The simple word my tells us that this unformed substance was not simply molecular components without identity to God, but that it was a person, known and seen only by God, but still a person.  I’ve often wondered why, given the truth of Scripture concerning this issue, we Christians have found ourselves debating and arguing and struggling to determine the exact point of the beginning of a human life.  According to David, the human life begins at the instant it is recognized by God, and God recognizes human life before it even exists in a form that humans themselves can discern!  Could it be that we’ve been seduced by arguments and microscopes into thinking that life formally begins at the moment we determine it does, through our limited powers of observation, and not when God says it does?

On January 22, 1974 the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided that the formed substance of the child in the womb was not worth fighting for or protecting, and that the alleged “right to privacy” of a mother trumped the rights to life of that child.  Almost all state and local laws that protected the life of the unborn from elective abortion were overturned.  The supreme lawmakers of the most powerful nation on the planet formally determined that they were unwilling to recognize the dignity and value of a living person, simply because the size, substance and stage of development of the child were beyond their limited powers of observation and comprehension.  God sees the unformed substance—people and judges cannot.  And so, many children today live in one of the riskiest places on earth—the human womb.

Father, forgive them, for they truly know not what they do.

Genesis 32:26

 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

 

Most of the time, when we cry “Uncle” in a fight, it means we are no longer able or willing to fight, and have conceded defeat.  We are asking for the merciful withdrawal of our opponent from combat.  It appears that the Angel of the Lord, here wrestling with Jacob—is calling out “Uncle,” doesn’t it?  But remember, Jacob is fighting with an injured hip (a debilitating injury) against a supernatural being.  Although Jacob persists in the wrestling, he is not really winning—he’s just not backing down.  He won’t let go, at least not before the Lord blesses him.  It is usually considered a blessing to simply be allowed to disengage from combat and not be completely destroyed.  But Jacob wasn’t satisfied with that—he wanted something from the Lord that only the Lord could give him—blessing.  He was at a point in life where he wasn’t sure where his attempts at success ended, and the Lord’s commitment to bless began.  His request for blessing is what made all the difference in the life of Jacob.  He wrestled with the Lord, and did not win in the sense that we think of victory.  The Lord wasn’t defeated, and Jacob didn’t triumph…but he prevailed.  Through a dark night of endless toil and agony Jacob clung to the Lord.  It was the first crisis in his life that he did not run away from.  Perhaps he’d decided he was tired of running away from pain, of avoiding discomfort and hardship—and would simply ask the Lord to bless him in the midst of the struggle.

For Christians, blessing is not found by surrendering and running away, but by surrendering and clinging tightly to their Father.  Many of us have “surrendered our lives to Jesus,” only to find that we still have a choice to make as to whether we will cling to Him or not.  The saying, “God helps those who help themselves” is not found in the Bible, and shouldn’t be a part of any Christian’s thinking.  God does NOT help those who help themselves, but He blesses those who cling ever so tightly to Him—despite pain, struggle, and uncertainty. 

Father, we cannot live without Your continued blessing in our lives—please keep up close to You in all of the circumstances we face in life, and give us the courage and faith to cling to You for blessing—despite the struggles we face in life.

Genesis 32:25

 25 When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.

It is no accident that the Lord wrestled with Jacob.  Wrestling is the most intimate form of combat; the closest two opponents can get to one another, and God has a way of interacting with his children very personally, up close, face to face.  When the Lord saw that Jacob was not going to give up and not going to let go, He reached out and touched Jacob’s hip joint, causing immediate dislocation.  The hip joint is the strongest joint in the human body.  To injure a hip is devastating, and often leads to death through the illnesses and atrophy that accompanies the loss of mobility.  Why would the Lord do such a thing to his chosen man, Jacob?  I can’t provide an exhaustive answer to that question, for it lies in the knowledge of God alone.  We are simply told what God did, and are often left to simply observe its effects.  There is one effect that I see in Jacob’s life, and it corresponds to His dealings with me:  Jacob’s weakness was exposed.  Up to this night, Jacob was a man’s man, a person who could figure out how to out-muscle, out-think, and out-maneuver whatever people or circumstances in life got in the way of him getting what he wanted.  Not tonight, though.  Not this time.  As he squared off with his Creator, Jacob was forced to live with, to suffer because of, his human frailty in the presence of his divine Creator. 

When we wrestle with God, our weaknesses are often exposed, sometimes in some very painful, humiliating ways.  Go to any recovery group meeting, or any prayer meeting worth its salt—you’ll find people just like you, admitting weaknesses and failures that they would never have admitted had not the Lord reached out and touched them—there, where they were weak.  Be thankful He does that; for when He touches us in our weakness He delivers us from the delusions that we carry of our supposed strength.  He does this for His own purposes, and if we are to follow the example of Jacob, the smartest move we can make is to simply resolve to hang onto Him, no matter what comes.

Father, by Your grace make me a person today who clings to you, despite whatever painful circumstances and experiences You may allow.  Expose my weaknesses, yes, but stay close to me that I may cling to you.

Genesis 32:22-24

 22 Now he arose that same night and took his two wives and his two maids and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream. And he sent across whatever he had. 24 Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

 

This is certainly one of the most fascinating accounts of a relationship between a believer and God found in the Bible.  The story of Jacob’s life bears out the appropriateness of his name, which means “Deceiver”.  He’d tricked his brother, his father, and even his employer-uncle, Laban—all to gain his own desires and wealth.  But the personal costs had been weighty; he’d lost whatever relationship he had with parents and his brother, was forced to live for twenty years away from home, was tricked into marrying a woman he didn’t love, had horrible relationships with his wives, was used by his wives to provide them with children and prestige, was caught fleeing in the night from his uncle Laban, and finally, Jacob learned that his estranged brother, Esau, was fast approaching with a force of four hundred men.  Jacob was terrified, and certain of receiving vengeance at the hands of his brother.  He sent gifts to his brother to try and assuage him, and organized his family and savants in such a way so as to result in the least amount of bloodshed possible when the two forces met.  Finally, after a day of desperate scheming, including sending his own wives and children ahead of him over a river canyon—Jacob was left alone, with nothing but his thoughts, his fears, and his failures in life.  And then, a man wrestled with him until daybreak.  God Himself, in human form, had come to personally confront Jacob that night.

As long as there were wives, children, servants, flock and herds, Jacob had the resources and the relationships by which to order his life in such a way so that he could create distance between him and God, for God had called Jacob to be a man who followed Him completely.  But Jacob had been away from the Lord for a long time, it seems, and had learned to use people and things to provide a buffer from God’s call on his life, and to numb himself from feeling the pain of the catastrophe he’d made of his life, and of many of the lives around him.  But now, there were no more things, no more people, no more jealous wives or angry uncles—just Jacob, who had finally run out of gas in his flight from God.  When God wrestles with His children, and I mean really wrestles, He waits until they’re alone and desperate.  

When you’re finally in that place where you have nothing, no one, and no plans, hopes, dreams or schemes to deliver you—stand and face your Father, who calls you to come back to Him from whatever far off places you’ve fled to.  You may have some real issues to deal with, some painful things to see about yourself, but as we’ll see as we observe this night in Jacob’s life over the next few days, the end of a wrestling match with God is when we stop fighting Him, cling to Him, and then receive victory from Him.  But we’ve got to be willing to wrestle.

Dear Father, I’ve failed in every attempt to make life work by my own resources and abilities.  I haven’t a clue of what it means to completely trust and surrender to You.  Please stay close to me in the darkest, loneliest times, and even if You have to wrestle me down, keep me in Your grip.

Genesis 28:10-13

 10 Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. 11 He came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place. 12 He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.

 

Jacob was running away from the mess he’d made of his life.  He’d deceived his aged father Isaac into an irrevocable contract by which Jacob, and not his brother Esau, would receive all of the family fortune upon Isaac’s death.  While his wicked plan and been successful, its consequences had shattered the family, and Jacob now was fleeing to relatives to avoid the death-threat made by his estranged brother, Esau.  In the midst of such failure and crisis, the LORD appeared to Jacob one night in a dream, as Jacob slept out in a field.  The LORD confirmed Jacob as the covenant bearer, as had been his father and his grandfather.  In his attempt to gain this blessing of God on his own terms, and be his own ingenuity, Jacob had destroyed his family—his time away from home would stretch into decades, and he would never see his mother alive again.  But at a time when he needed it the most, when it seemed the most certain that he’d certainly ruined any chance of real blessing in his life; God appeared to him and blessed him.

It’s often after the failure of our most cherished, carefully laid out plans that the LORD appears to us with blessing.  God doesn’t watch this race of life waiting to see who the top dog is, and then shower our “winners” with acclaim, riches, and worship—those are the things we do to the winners in life.  God, on the other hand, chooses out the riffraff, the down and out, the bottom of the barrel, the also-rans, and second-stringers—and appears to them with the news of a great blessing—the blessing of a way to get from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven.  That blessing is His Son, Jesus Christ.  Jesus came to earth from heaven, died for our sins, and has returned to heaven with a crowd of blessed losers, deceivers, and schemers, following behind.  The LORD doesn’t appear to anyone because they’re so bad, or because they’re so good—but because He is a God who has chosen to appear to those He’s chosen, and to extend a Ladder down into their lost lives that leads to a redeemed life.  And the ladder is His Son, Jesus Christ.  Let’s extend that Ladder to those around us who need rescue!

 

Father, we offer praise and worship to You for being a God who cares, who reaches out, who sees us in our failures and ruin, and yet extends the blessing of Your love and presence, and Your precious forgiveness to us—runaway children who have made a mess of things.  Thank you, dear Abba!

Genesis 25:30-34

 …and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a swallow of that red stuff there, for I am famished.” Therefore his name was called Edom. 31 But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” 33 And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; so he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and rose and went on his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

 

Esau’s birthright was the privileges of the first-born son to receive the greatest share of the family’s wealth and holdings upon the death of the father.  It wasn’t that other children wouldn’t be cared for, but they wouldn’t be entrusted with the exclusive responsibility and resources to “carry on the family name.”  As the oldest of twins, Esau possessed this certainty of this future blessing, the birthright.  But there were more important things to Esau than future prestige, wells, herds, and wealth—he was hungry, now, and wanted something to eat!  Mind you, he lived in a wealthy home—there plenty of food around.  Perhaps it wasn’t dinner time yet.  Perhaps he preferred Jacob’s cooking over others.  Perhaps he wanted to treat his brother as a servant, and not an brother.  Perhaps Esau was sick of all the “blessing of God” talk of his father around the fire at night.  Perhaps he was confident his could secure his own blessing by his own methods, and not through his family’s religion.  Perhaps…  You can fill in the blank of what kind of family and personality type breeds resentment and self-neglect in a person.  But whatever the reason for it, Esau was so disdainful of his birthright, so indifferent to the great promise that had been given to his grandfather Abraham, and now (presumably) would be inherited by him—that he entered a binding covenant with his little brother that agreed all the wealth, blessing, and affluence of his future would be given to Jacob. He despised his birthright.  He didn’t live his life with a consuming hatred of it; it just didn’t mean very much to him.  It wasn’t worth considering on a day to day basis.  It was barely worth the value of a bowl of stew.

We follow the example of Esau when we value and invest ourselves in meeting our immediate desires instead of living a life of patient obedience as we await our future blessing, which will be formally received when our bodies are resurrected from the dead and we enter into an eternity of blessed, successful living in the kingdom of God.  According to the writer of Hebrews, a Christian is considered “immoral or godless” simply by following the example of Esau, and not living a life that places the eternal perspectives and commands of our faith over and above whatever immediate desires we may have in life. (Heb 12:16).  It’s a pretty expensive meal that costs a man or woman their entire future, isn’t it?

 

Father, deepen our understanding of the tremendous blessings of our salvation, and give us the desire and ability to obey You in all areas of life today instead of our immediate lusts and wants.  Make us a people who treasure the blessings we have in Christ, and freely give them to others.

 

 

Daniel Trang

Daniel and Grace Trang have played for our worship at Grace Bible Church recently, and their folks have become regular guests at Grace, too. I just learned that Daniel was featured on OPB last month for his musical abilities. Follow the link to hear the report, click “listen” if you have highspeed. 

Great job, Daniel and Grace!
http://news.opb.org/article/portland-youth-combines-talents-math-and-music/

Genesis 24:6-7

 6Then Abraham said to him, “Beware that you do not take my son back there! 7″ The LORD, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my birth, and who spoke to me and who swore to me, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give this land,’ He will send His angel before you, and you will take a wife for my son from there.

The real test of the depth of faith that we have in the Word of God comes not from the things we say about it, but from the day to day decisions we make because of it. In chapter 24 of Genesis, the account of Abraham finding a wife for his son, Isaac. He sends his servant to find a young woman to marry his son, but is adamant, insistent, that Isaac not leave the land of promise–even to find a wife! Also, he shows great concern that the wife not be “from the daughters of the Canaanites” (verse 3). I’ve often wondered why he was so insistent about these two issues, and I believe that his instructions were based solely in the Word of God. First, regarding his refusal to allow Isaac to leave the land, it was paramount to Abraham that he and his son stay in the land, living by faith in God’s promise to one day give it to them. To leave the land, and settle anywhere else would have been a breach of faith in what God has promised in His Word to Abraham and his descendants (see 12:3). Secondly, regarding the ethnicity of the woman that Isaac would marry, it was paramount to Abraham that the marriage be blessed, and the family line of the covenant people of God continue in faith before God. In Genesis 10:25 we learn that the descendants of Canaan were cursed in punishment for the sins of their forefather, Ham. What parent would ever disregard such a curse, and encourage his son or daughter to marry into a people who lived under such conditions? If God’s Word were really true, the Canaanites had a very bleak future.  Abraham believed God’s Word, and so planned his life, and the future of himself and his son, according things that God had said.  He lived according to what the Bible said.   That‘s faith in action!

Christians have not been promised any particular real estate in this world, but are citizens of another world, and there are no longer any Canaanites to be found on earth. But there is an underlying principle here that guided Abraham’s thinking about life, and should guide ours: For believers, even the daily, practical decisions of life are made according to the promises and prohibitions of God’s Word. A long-ago pronouncement of cursing and yet-unrealized promise of blessing were not simply guidelines or suggestions by which to make decisions in life. To Abraham, they were binding declarations of God to which God’s followers should pattern and make all their life decisions. We will be blessed if we hold the same, binding view of the Bible, and evaluate our own life decisions based on the certainty of God’s Word, and not on our own reasoning abilities or immediate desires. And we have been entrusted with the task of going out into a world that lives under a curse, not to seek wealth or anything for ouselves, but to tell others of a Groom who died to deliver the world from its certain doom, and who would love to bring them into Promised Land.

Father, make us people who live, really live, each day, according to what we have been told in Your Word. By Your grace, help us to obey and love You today. Amen.

 

 

 

 

Genesis 22:13-14

 13Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. 14 Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the LORD it will be provided.”

 

Genesis 22 tells what is certainly one of the most bizarre, dramatic stories in the Bible.  Abraham is told by the Lord to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice on a mountain top in ancient Canaan—and he obeys.  Setting out early in the morning with his son, they climbed the mountain, carefully arranging the wood for a fire of burnt sacrifice, and then bound Isaac to be slain by his own father.  Abraham is stopped by the very voice of God from completing the sacrifice.  As dramatic as this story is, it is the underlying truths that have the most to do with us, for Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.  God Himself had provided the lamb for the burnt offering.  Just to hammer home that point, and prepare his nation for the eventual sacrifice of their own King their sins, Moses explains what was to his readers the meaning of their own idiom, “In the mount of the LORD it will be provided.”

 

Isaacs’s life was spared because God provided a substitute.  In the mount of the LORD—at the place and time of His choosing, it will be provided.  Two-thousand years afterward, the right time arrived for this Son to be presented to the LORD as a sacrifice, and place was again chosen where a promised son would die; in the mountain range of Moriah, on a hilltop the locals and Romans called The Skull.  The Son climbed the hill that day, with His Father looking on but not interceding to stop the murder.  No rams caught in the thicket.  No voice from heaven saying, “Stop! I’ve found another way to accomplish this.  He doesn’t have to die!”  The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ for our sin IS the other way.  He is the lamb provided.  But He was not found caught in a thicket, unable to escape—instead He walked up that hill, presenting Himself to the Father as the sacrifice.  He is our Lamb!  We were caught in sin and guilt—and escaped.  He was free—and yet submitted Himself to die on a cross for our sake.

 

 

Father, thank you for the death of Your Son Jesus in my place.  Please lead me today, and for the rest of my life, into a deeper understanding and appreciation of what He did for me on that hill-top, the day you chose to provide the Substitute for my sins, and set me free.  Amen.