SECOND QUARTER 2022
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #10
JUNE 4, 2022
“JACOB-ISRAEL”

 

The twins, Jacob and Esau, were born to Isaac and Rebecca; Esau was the first-born son. From before his birth, Jacob, being a supplanter by nature, took his twin brother by the heal. Hosea 12:3. This was observed as they were birthed. Genesis 25:26. Mother and father felt Jacob was trying to take the place of his older brother, Esau, and so named him the name that means to supplant, to seize, circumvent, or usurp the position or place of another. Later, in his adulthood, through the scheming strategy of his mother, Rebecca, Jacob obtained the blessing of the first born from his father, Isaac, by fraud.

When Esau realized what had been done to him, he was furious and determined to kill his twin brother. His decision was to kill Jacob after their father died. Genesis 27:41. Urged by his mother, Jacob fled for his life. She told him it would be only for a few days and he could come home again. Genesis 27:44. His mother never saw him again. And Esau never forgot what had been done to him. It is evident that forgiveness was not in his thinking nor in his vocabulary. He was ready and anxious to kill his brother after twenty years of mulling the deception over and over again in his mind. He evidently did not consider his own part in the loss of the birthright. He sold it for a mess of Lens culinaris.

During his exile from home Jacob the deceiver was deceived, more than once, by his uncle Laban. What goes around comes around. During the time that he worked for his uncle, Jacob prospered by the goodness of God and that prosperity was reaped by Laban also. Jacob finally had enough of Laban’s underhanded dealings and decided to head back home.

Jacob was still fearful of meeting death by the hands of his brother. On the way home, Jacob decided to split his group into two segments, after which he went alone to pray. He had learned a painful lesson that it didn’t really pay for him to be deceitful in getting his own way, even though it was God’s plan to give him the spiritual blessing of the first born. We are not told how God would have given him the blessing, but He would have done so. God has a thousand ways to provide for us of which we know nothing. Hopefully this is one of the lessons to be learned by us from the experience of Jacob.

While Jacob prayed, he was suddenly attacked by an enemy, or so he thought. Jacob was no spring chicken at this time. He left home when he was close to eighty years of age. And now twenty years later, we find him wrestling with someone who came upon him in the middle of the night while he was praying. Even in his old age he was very strong. However, his strength was no match for the One with whom he wrestled. Genesis 32:24-25.

This mysterious person is called an angel (Hosea 12:4) and God (Genesis 32:28, 30; Hosea 12:5). This was none other than “the angel of the covenant,” or Christ Jesus, who wrestled with Jacob. The Lord touched the socket of Jacob’s hip and he could no longer fight. Jacob then realized with Whom he was in combat. The Lord told him to let Him go, but Jacob in pain grasped the neck of Christ and said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!” verse 26. The Lord asked Him, “What is your name?” He said, “Jacob.” Jacob, the “heel-catcher” was caught. He confessed his true nature before he could be blessed.

Then Christ said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Genesis 32:27-28. God renamed Jacob to Israel. The name Israel has connotations such as “Triumphant with God” and “Who prevails with God” among other like meanings. Though crippled for the rest of his life, Jacob by clinging to God became the conquering Prince of God. The last picture we have of Jacob is of him leaning on his staff, worshipping God. Hebrews 11:21.

Let’s consider a couple of applications of what we have been discussing. Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. The words “deceitful” and Jacob come from the same root word. In other words, we are Jacobites by nature. Only God can change our hearts and make us Israelites indeed.

Going back to Jacob and Esau in the womb when Jacob took his older brother by the heel, we too have taken our older Brother, Jesus, by the heel and have pushed ourselves ahead of Him. But God in His mercy has borne long with us and we sometimes fighting hard have resisted Him, but He has brought us into submission and changed our names to that of an overcomer as He did with Jacob.

Spiritual Israel lays hold of the heel of Jesus, “the First-born of many brethren,” being born again of the Holy Spirit. We have no right in ourselves to any inheritance. But we lay hold of the bruised heel, the humanity of Christ crucified, and we do not let go of our hold on Him Who is not, as Esau was, a curse (Hebrews 12:16, 17), but, Jesus, by becoming “a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13), He is our blessed hope.

Now, back to the morning after with the victorious, blessed, God-wrestler, Israel, limping because of his hip, injured by God during the night, finally meets his older brother Esau. God had previously warned Esau to do no harm to Jacob. So, the crippled one prevailed with God and consequently with his brother. Because God dealt with Esau, Esau forgave Jacob for what he did to him twenty years earlier.

Thus, God teaches us of His irresistible and mighty grace in our conscious weakness. For when weak in ourselves, we are strong in and by His strength which He puts within us. 2 Corinthians 12:9, 10. It was not by fighting, but by clinging that Jacob gained the victory with God and with man. Regardless of where we are put, whether we are out of joint, whether by the nose or any other way we may choose, God will change us by His mighty power of grace. It is when, like Jacob, we are put out of joint by God and can no longer stand, it is then that we prevail, by clinging to Jesus, by faith alone, refusing to let go even in our weakness.

 

As Christ was unchangeable in His favor to Jacob, so will He be to His believing posterity today. He was, is now, and ever will be unchangeable in the future. He is truly trustworthy.

Jacob had 12 sons and 1 daughter. The daughter, Dinah, had been defiled by Shechem, a Canaanite. Her two brothers, Levi and Simeon, in revenge, wreaked havoc on the entire Canaanite village by killing all the men and taking the women and children captive. Genesis 34 gives us the sordid proceedings. In shame Jacob moved from this settlement.

God instructed Jacob to move to Bethel. Before leaving Shechem, Jacob told his families to strip off their jewelry. He called them “foreign gods.” They did so, and Jacob buried them there. Is there an application here for us?

Later God reminded Jacob that his name is Israel, not Jacob. God said to him, “your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name.” Genesis 35:10. So it is with us. We may slip back into our old habits and practices, but God comes to us, tells us to put away our idols reminding us that He has redeemed us and changed us and that we have become Israel corporately by individual faith in Christ alone. “This is the name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Jeremiah 33:16. And then, when we see Him face to face, He will give us a new name. Revelation 3:12.

What a day that will be! And what a name that shall be!

 

~Pastor Jerry Finneman