Sermon manuscript:
In our Old Testament reading we heard about a man named
Jacob—a name with which you are surely familiar. But oftentimes our Bible
reading is not what it should be, so we have a hard time putting together the
things that we have learned over the years. So today I’d like to talk about the
events leading up to what happened with Jacob so we can better understand and
apply to ourselves the way God works.
Where I’d like to begin today is with Jacob’s grandfather.
His name was Abram. Later God gives him the name Abraham. We are introduced to
this man in Genesis chapter 12, and, in a sense, the rest of the Bible and the
rest of world history is all about him and his descendants. God chose Abraham
and told him to move to the land of Canaan. God promised that this land would
be his and his descendants’. God would make a mighty nation of him. In him and
in his seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. (This promise about
Abraham’s seed refers all the way back to the Garden of Eden when God promised
that Eve’s seed would crush the serpent’s head.) God appeared to Abraham
several times, repeating these promises to him, and Abraham believed these
promises. This faith was accredited to him as righteousness.
Abraham’s faith, which is accredited to him as righteousness,
is the way that the rest of the Bible and the rest of world history is about
him and his descendants. God caused his flesh and blood descendants to flourish
outwardly, but the people of God, properly speaking, have always been such
inwardly, by faith. All or almost all of you are Gentiles. You are not related
to Abraham by blood. But you are children of God’s promises, just like he was.
God made a covenant with Abraham. God has made a covenant with you. God gave
Abraham an outward sign of that covenant in circumcision. God has given an
outward sign of his covenant with you in baptism. If you remain faithful unto
death, just like Abraham, you will be given the crown of life. That is an even
greater inheritance than what God promised Abraham.
So Abraham is one of the greatest men of the Bible. It is
important to understand that the rest of the Bible and the rest of world
history is about him, and his descendants, and God’s promises to these
descendants. The Bible is also about tests to people’s faith, and that’s the
case also with Abraham. God said he would make a might nation of Abraham and
his descendants would be as numerous as the sand on the sea shore. But Abraham
didn’t have any children when God said that. And Abraham and Sarah were getting
old. In fact, the Bible says, the way of women had ceased with Sarah. But
Abraham believed God. Eventually, after a great deal of time, probably much
more time than Abraham would have liked, God fulfilled his promise. Isaac was
born to them in their old age.
Isaac was not the same kind of man his father was. There are
not nearly as many adventures in Isaac’s life as there were in Abraham’s life.
Isaac’s sons, also, had much more adventurous lives. Isaac, for his part, seems
to have been a very peaceable man. If someone took his well, he would just dig
another one. He was not feisty like his father or his sons after him.
Just as Abraham and Sarah had a hard time conceiving and
bearing children, so also Isaac and Rebekah had a hard time conceiving and
bearing children. No children came for a long time. Finally, when Rebekah did
become pregnant, it was with twins. She inquired of the Lord what was happening
to her because already in the womb they were fighting with one another. God
told her that two nations were fighting within her, and that the older would
serve the younger. And so it happened that when it came time for the delivery
that Esau was born first, then Jacob. But Jacob was holding Esau’s heel. They
were tremendous rivals.
They also were quite different from one another. Esau was
hairy and an outdoorsman. Jacob had smooth skin and didn’t hunt. Esau was the
favorite of his father, Isaac. Jacob was the favorite of his mother, Rebekah. Eventually
Isaac grew very old and feeble. He became blind in his old age. The time came
for Isaac to give his blessing, and he intended to give it to the firstborn,
Esau. But Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, found out about his intentions. She wanted
Jacob to be blessed. So she worked it out so that her husband would be tricked
into thinking that Jacob was Esau. She made him hairy and fixed a meal just
like Esau would have. Although it seems that Isaac was skeptical when he gave
his blessing, nevertheless, he blessed Jacob instead of Esau. The word of the
Lord to Rebekah was fulfilled. The older will serve the younger.
When Esau figured out what had been done to him he was
furious. He intended to kill his brother once his father was dead. Isaac knew
that it was dangerous to keep them together so he told Jacob to go away. Jacob
was to go back to the homeland where he might find a wife. Isaac and Rebekah
did not like the native, idolatrous women of Canaan. They wanted Jacob to have
a wife from their own people.
This brings us to our reading this morning. Jacob left
Beersheba, where Isaac lived, and was on his way to Haran where his parents’
relatives lived. Night fell at a certain place and Jacob lay down to sleep.
There is this odd detail where he used a stone for a pillow. When he fell
asleep he dreamed. He saw a staircase or a ladder. The Lord was at the top of
it and angels were ascending and descending upon it.
God said to him: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and
the God of Isaac. The land on which you are lying, I give to you and to your
descendants. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will
spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south.
In you and in your seed all the families of the earth will be blessed. Now, I
am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back
again into this land. Indeed, I will not leave you, until I have done what I
have promised to you.”
This had to have been a very welcome and cheerful word to
Jacob. I can’t help but think there had to have been some guilt, or at the very
least, uncertainty over what he had done to his brother Esau. That wasn’t the
most honorable thing he had ever done. Now his brother hated him so much that
he wanted to kill him. He was sent off from home all alone. It seems as though
he had nothing better to lay under his head than a stone he had found at that
place. What was going to come of all this?
Then God spoke to him. God told him many things that he
already knew. Jacob was told of the God of his father and grandfather from the
time that he was a little child. He himself was circumcised, the sign of God’s
covenant. But now God reaffirmed his covenant with Jacob, in the midst of his
turmoil and doubt, just as God had done with Abraham and Isaac before him. At
that moment it certainly didn’t look like Jacob was going to have much for
blessings. He was sad and lonely. But Jacob believed God, and it was accredited
to him as righteousness.
The story of Jacob’s life would go on. He would be blessed
according to the Word of the Lord. He would get married. He would have 12 sons.
Those sons would go on to become the 12 tribes of Israel. His descendants would
eventually settle to the north and south, east and west of Bethel, where Jacob
had this dream. Jacob was blessed according to the Word of the Lord, but all of
these blessings did not come about in the way that a person might expect.
Anybody who is familiar with the details of Jacob’s life
knows that his dealings with his father-in-law were fraught with grievances and
rivalry. When Jacob comes back home with his wives and children he is met at
the ford of the Jabbok by God, who wrestles him all night long until God
finally puts his hip out of joint. Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his
life, but he managed to wrestle a blessing out of God and received the new name
“Israel.” Jacob’s sons would disappoint him in all kinds of ways. They even
went so far as to almost kill their brother Joseph, but instead sold him as a
slave. Finally, Jacob’s descendants would come to inhabit the land of Canaan,
but only after 400 years of slavery in Egypt.
Jacob believed in the Lord his God and was accredited as
righteous, but that did not mean that everything went the way that Jacob
thought things should go. The Bible records the story of faith, but also
records tests of faith. The way that we think things should go is not always
the way that God makes them go. I might even go so far as to say that God
hardly ever lets things go the way that we think they should go—at least not
down to the very details.
I think there is a good reason for this. It is so that we do
not think that we are God, but rather that he is God. God has explicitly said
as much, for example, with the judge Gideon. Gideon was in a war with the
Philistines. God told Gideon to send away practically all his troops. God
wanted to make it clear that he was the one who was giving them the victory.
They did not achieve it for themselves.
We, of course, do not enjoy being humbled. We do not enjoy
being made weak. It seems that we would like it if we just became stronger and
stronger so that we could be our own God. But God, in his mercy, does not allow
us to do that. It is by faith that we are righteous, and if we come to believe
in ourselves we most certainly will not be believing in the Lord our God.
So we cannot look at the circumstances of our life to
determine whether we are ones who are blessed. What would happen if we did that
to Jacob and to Israel? Jacob was a limping man with a broken heart in his old
age. He never got over what he supposed to be the death of his favorite son
Joseph. He even died in a strange land, in Egypt, instead of in the land that
God had given him. Judging by outward appearances it would appear that Jacob
was cursed rather than blessed.
But Jacob was blessed. He had the covenant of the Lord his
God. He had circumcision as an outward sign of that covenant. The Lord was his
God, and he was God’s chosen and beloved. He knew that according to the Word of
the Lord instead of by examining his circumstances in life. He believed in this
promise of God and was accredited as righteous. God prevented him from false
belief and despair. He did not believe in himself or in any other gods. God did
not let him down.
We, as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by
faith, may learn from this. God has caused his promises to come to you. He has
chosen you. He has given you the sign of baptism. He has given you the sign of
the Lord’s Supper. He causes his Word and his promises to be spoken to you week
in and week out. You are in no less of a favorable situation than Abraham,
Isaac, or Jacob, and arguably you are in a better situation because you see the
fullness of God’s love and mercy in Christ the crucified.
But what might be going on in your life? Does it appear that
you are blessed or cursed? What things might happen in the future? Perhaps you
might be afflicted with great sadness or pain or sickness. In the midst of
these things we must remember that God is faithful to his promises. The most
important thing in your life is that you keep your faith in the Lord your God,
because there is no other way to be accredited with righteousness. Is it really
surprising, then, that God might work things in certain ways in order to keep
you in that faith? We are not God. God is.
So we must not attach ultimate importance to the way that we
are feeling, whether good or bad, or the things that God gives us or takes
away. Job, a man who was severely tested, said, “The Lord giveth and the
Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.” The Lord our God is
good. His mercy endures forever. Though your faith in that might be tested from
time to time, do not despair. When the time is right, God will cheer you up
just like he did to Jacob while he lay sleeping on that rock.
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