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Reading: And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (Genesis 32:24-31)
Last November the kids and I were playing in the front yard, and I lost my wedding ring. By the time I realized it was gone it was already dark, so the next day I called a family meeting and offered $20 to whoever found the ring.
Everyone started out strong searching the yard on their hands and knees but pretty soon Marielle and Geneveve and August sort of wandered off.
But Laurel and Graham kept at it. They had never had $20. They weren’t sure that I had ever had $20. They actually weren’t sure that dollars could go as high as 20. They searched and searched. Days passed. Neighbors started to wonder. Social Services started to drive by the house real slow. Then, just as we had given up hope, they found it!
Finding the ring was hard. But imagine how hard it would have been if Laurel and Graham didn’t know what a wedding ring looked like. Or think how hard it would have been if I had told them that I didn’t know where I had lost it. It makes a big difference knowing what you’re looking for. And it makes a big difference knowing how and where to look.
These are, I believe, the very questions that dominate the first decades of Jacob’s life: what is he looking for, and how is going to get it?
These questions hang over our lives as well.
What do we want; how are we going to get it?
Before we dive in, let’s reorient ourselves in the book of Genesis. The primordial age is over - creation, Adam and Eve, Cain, Noah, Babel - all that is covered from chapters 1 through 11. Then from chapters 12 through 36 we are in the lives of the Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then from chapters 37 to 50, we are largely dealing with Joseph.
Jacob is the last of the Patriarchs. His name means “heel grabber” or “deceiver” and he has been promised a blessing. Even before he was born, God had promised Jacob’s mother that he would rule over his older brother, Esau. But what exactly did that mean? What is the promise?
Wealth? Children? Land? Maybe.
But even to identify what the blessing is leads immediately to the next question: how is he supposed to get it?
He had neither a dictionary to define the terms of the promise nor a map to get him to the place where he could lay claim to them.
Like I said, this is Jacob’s great dilemma.
And while Jacob is going to take some criticism this morning, I should state right from the beginning that Jacob is one of the good guys. We should be humble, even a little nervous, when tallying up the sins of the Patriarchs - or the Judges or Kings or Prophets or Disciples, too. Let’s not forget our place. Jacob saw things and touched things and held mysteries in his heart that no man before or since has ever seen or touched or held. He labored fourteen years to marry the woman he loved. He wove a coat of many colors for the son he loved. And as we have already read, one night on the banks of the Jabbok River, he wrestled with God until dawn.
But of all his virtues and feats, I believe his greatest attribute was that he wanted the promise. He wanted the blessing. He treasured it. He valued it. He was willing to do and sell and give anything for it. Whatever that thing was that God had promised him while he wrestled with his twin in his mother’s womb, he wanted it.
It was, I think, the great obsession of his life.
But again: what was it; and how does he get it?
Think of the great obsession of your life?
What is it? How will you get it?
This morning we have three points:
Prayer
Esau’s Birthright
Last week, we met Jacob and Esau as young men. Esau is the hunter. He is a belly-man. He is his father’s favorite. Jacob is a man of the tents. He is a head-man. He is his mother’s favorite. Crucially, and mysteriously, he is God’s favorite, too.
What he thought it was
We get our first hint at what Jacob thought the blessing was in Genesis 25 when Jacob bought Esau’s birthright for a bowl of soup.
Maybe Jacob’s reasoning went something like this: “If the older is to serve the younger, then the younger needs to get what the older is supposed to get. And what do older brothers get? They get the stuff when dad dies.”
In other words, Jacob wants the physical, material, inheritance. That’s what the birthright was. It’s Isaac’s tents and goats and rugs and camels and a bit of gold in a box buried in the sand. In Genesis 25, Jacob thinks that what he was promised was a blessing of camels. That’s it.
How he got it
And of course we know how he got it. He did not wait patiently or pray fervently or believe absolutely that God’s promises would come to pass. Remember that Jacob was born clutching Esau’s heel and that his name meant “heel grabber” or “deceiver.” And here we see it. Jacob took advantage of Esau. He induced him to sign a contract under duress. It’s possible that Esau could have gone into Wake County District Court and argued that, under the circumstances, because he was so hungry, he didn’t even have capacity to agree to the deal. Who knows, Jacob might have won that case. And who knows, maybe, in the strictest since, he had done nothing wrong under the law. But it was a sneaky, heel-grabby, Jacob-y thing to do. He knew it. Esau knew it. But he didn’t care. He wanted the promise. He wanted The Thing.
Isaac’s Blessing
It must not have taken Jacob long to realize that, whatever the birthright was, it wasn’t enough. So, next comes his father Isaac’s blessing in the tent. We heard about this last week, too.
What he thought it was
But what did the blessing give him that that birthright hadn’t? In Isaac’s blessing we see God brought into picture. We have moved beyond the simple, human, question of who gets the camels and on to the much greater question of who it is that is conveying this gift. “May God give you…” is what Isaac prays for Jacob. That’s a big deal. And of course it is a gift that stretches across Jacob’s life into the future. It is not just an inheritance that insures present prosperity; it is a blessing that insures a future one.
How he got it
But let's remember how Jacob obtains this blessing. His grandfather Abraham had believed the promises of God. Abraham had believed the promises so emphatically, so thoroughly, that he had been willing to put his own son under the knife and stand back and watch God raise him from the dead. But Jacob? No. Jacob took matters into his own hands. Was it God’s plan? Yes. Were God’s plans accomplished? Yes. Was it a low-down, sneaky, heel-grabby, Jacob-y thing to do? Yeah.
Esau said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.” (Gen. 27:36)
And here is a prophetic warning from Jeremiah 9.
Let everyone beware his neighbor,
And put no trust in any brother,
For every brother is a deceiver. (Jeremiah 9:4)
Except, in Hebrew it would read more literally like this: Put no trust in any brother, for every brother is a Jacob. Like the mark of Cain, everyone Jacob met would have looked at him a little weird and asked, “your name is what?”
When someone bounces a check at the Goodwill Thrift Store near my house, the store puts their name on a list that the clerk keeps in the drawer. And so if you pay for something with a personal check, the clerk will take out that long list and hunt for your name there before accepting it. At this point in his life, Jacob was becoming the kind of guy where the clerk would read real close to see if his name was on the list before accepting one of his checks.
Bethel
Then Jacob flees. He disappears into the wilderness. He has the birthright of an angry brother and the blessing of a blind father, and all it appears to have gotten him is a rock for a pillow. We’re in Genesis 28 now.
And it is then and there, after decades of apparent silence, that God appears. Let's read this section in full.
Jacob left Beersheba and went to Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it and [spoke]. (Genesis 28:10-13(a))
Here we have the vision of Jacob’s Ladder. What is it?
The ladder reveals this essential truth, both to Jacob and to us: heaven and earth are not as separate as we suppose. There are deeper, truer things than what we see with our natural eyes. The ice is thin where we step. All of heaven and all spiritual reality swarms and teams and courses with its sacred life below our feet, and it's this close. I don’t mean that in some Eastern or New Age sense, I mean it in the coram deo sense, that all of life is lived before the face of God; and I mean it in the sense that Paul did when he preached to the Athenians that we should seek the Lord, feel after him, and find him, for he is not far off. In him we live and move and have our being.
Turn off the radio and let us drive in holy silence, for there is heavy traffic and frequent commerce between heaven and earth. God is no distant clockmaker. The ice is thin where we step. He has not simply set the dominoes falling and walked away. He is near and he hears the great upward ache of our souls. There are moments in the life of a Christian when heaven feels close enough to touch. There are moments of worship or prayer when the ice begins to crack and we feel it breaking through.
This is what God showed Jacob at Bethel. But what did he say?
“I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.” (Gen. 13(b) - 15)
It is of course significant that this is now God, himself, who is expressing the promise to Jacob. Before, he had only known the promise because it had been revealed to his mother. Then he had received the blessing, but it had been mediated through his father. Now there is no mistaking it and no denying it. The promised blessing is loud and clear, right from the mouth of God.
First, God reaffirms the promises made to Abraham and Isaac and extends them now to Jacob: land and offspring. We shouldn’t be more spiritual than God is. Material prosperity - rightly understood, rightly defined, rightly used - is one of the ways in which God blesses his people.
But then God includes an addendum that Jacob’s father Isaac had not. While Isaac had prayed that the people of the earth would serve Jacob’s descendants, God’s blessing, here, declares that through his descendants all the families of the earth would be blessed. And while Isaac’s blessing and God’s blessing were different from each other in that respect, God’s blessing is entirely consistent with how he had blessed Abraham. In Genesis 12, God says to Abraham in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
I wonder if that was the first time Jacob had heard that. He is to be a blessing, not a curse, to the families of the earth. The gap between what the promise actually was and what he thought it was continues to widen.
Finally, God makes a promise that should have been uniquely precious to Jacob in that moment of exile and loneliness: Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.
Whatever Jacob thought the promise was when he was living at home has now been given a radical update: he is to be a blessing to the families of the earth and God has promised to be with him wherever he goes. There is both comfort in that blessing and also a responsibility. That is often the case in our lives.
What he thought it was
I said a minute ago that the blessing was loud and clear and that there was no mistaking it. But for Jacob, I’m actually not so sure. You remember our formula: what is it and how does he get it?
Here we will see that Jacob’s response to the promise indicates his understanding of the promise.
And while Jacob has the content of the promise, now, I believe he still misunderstands a crucial aspect of it. He misunderstands its nature. Is the promise a gift, freely given? Or is it conditional and contractual? Is it just another bit of merchandise to be bargained for?
And what about the parties to the contract? Is the promise made by someone who can never lie or is it made by someone who might? Jacob knows what he himself is like: he’s shrewd, he’s clever. He reads the fine print and keeps a lawyer on retainer. If there’s a way to press his advantage, he will.
Is God like that, too? The manner in which Jacob responds to God’s promise here suggests that he believes he is.
What is given as a free blessing, Jacob treats like a contract. And the one who made it, he treats as fallible and fickle. He thinks God’s like him. He thinks the blessing might not happen. He thinks the blessing comes from a God who might not do it.
How he got it
If that’s how Jacob understands God’s words - not as an unbreakable promise, but as a contract to be negotiated - how might he respond? How would he go about getting this blessing?
Let’s read on:
Then Jacob made a vow, saying, ‘If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go,
and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you. (Gen. 28:20-22)
There is grave theological error in those two words “if” and “then”.
If God will do something then I will do something.
Now it is true that vows to God are not necessarily improper. But two elements must be present. First, the thing which the maker of the vow is asking God to do shouldn’t be something that God has just promised to perform. That is simply unbelief. And second, the thing which the maker of the vow promises to do in return shouldn’t be something that is already commanded of them. That is simply disobedience.
God has already promised to Jacob that he will do this thing. Jacob’s allegiance, loyalty, and worship are already commanded of him.
Yet Jacob attempts to secure the blessing by making his worship of God conditional on God’s performance. Jacob wants collateral. If God doesn’t perform, then Jacob won’t worship. How many of us live this way, too?
This is a long way from Abraham’s belief that was counted to him as righteousness. This is a long way from his grandfather falling on his face and laughing with delight at the promises made. No, this is vintage Jacob. This is the schemer. This is the bargainer. This is Jacob jacob-ing.
So far, the blessing that Jacob has sought to secure is the blessing of having his circumstances improved. Land, offspring, and a God who will never leave him. Up to this point I can find little evidence that the blessings Jacob sought were anything more than skin deep.
We all know the story of Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, right? And if you don’t, that’s ok, I’ll catch you up: there’s a man named Christian who lives in the City of Destruction and he is miserable because of this great weight of sin he carries on his back. Well Jacob is similar to that man Christian, except in one key way: Jacob doesn’t know that he carries a burden. Oh, he has things he wants, of course. And he’s sad when he doesn’t get them.
But a burden? A spiritual weight or angst or sense of his own sin? Shame at his grabbing, deceitful, Jacob nature? No.
He sleeps poorly at night because he has no bed, not because he has a guilty conscience. Yet his shame and sin is evident to everyone around him. Everywhere he goes, there is the hint of the sneak, the cheat, the heel-grabber, and the usurper.
Jacob is aware of every need he has except his greatest need. He feels every burden except his greatest one.
He’s like Christian stumbling through the City of Destruction complaining about a pebble in his shoe when the greatest problem he has is his very name.
Then twenty years go by. In your Bible these years are covered in chapters 29 , 30, and 31.
Year follows year, decade follows decade. A bargain here, a dream there, a job he hates, a woman he loved and lost; a woman he didn’t love but woke up next to anyway.
And children. So. Many. Children. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, Dinah, and Joseph
But the promise remained. The promise was there before he was even born. It was with him when he fled his home. It was with him in exile.
Then, in Genesis 31:3, the LORD says to Jacob: “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.”
That final “I will be with you” promise is a big deal, because at the end of the long journey home, his brother Esau will be waiting for him.
But Jacob obeys and goes home again. And as he gets close, he begins to send gifts ahead of him to Esau. Little by little, Jacob sees the accumulated wealth of twenty years of work slowly dissipate. His final act is to send the women and children away to safety. And then the sun goes down and he is alone and poor and fearful like he has not been since Bethel.
When I read Job chapter 4, I imagine Jacob that night, alone.
Amid thoughts from visions of the night,
When deep sleep falls on men,
Dread came upon me, and trembling,
Which made all my bones shake.
A spirit glided past my face;
The hair of my flesh stood up.
It stood still,
But I could not discern its appearance.
A form was before my eyes;
There was silence, then I heard a voice:
Can mortal man be in the right before God?
Can a man be pure before his Maker?
And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (Gen. 32:24-31)
What it is
Here at last we reach the center of things: the fight in the night; the furnace where life’s dross is burned away; the second womb where Jacob grapples, not with his brother, but with his maker.
And in the middle of all that, Jacob does something unexpected: he asks for a blessing. He asks, I think, not for just a blessing, he asks for the blessing. The thing that has haunted him and eluded him his whole life. He asks in the middle of this struggle the “what is it?” of his life. He asks for it face to face with the only one who can give it to him and the only one who can take it away.
“Bless me,” he says. “There’s more. I know there’s more. Where is it? I’ve been searching my whole life. I’ve given up everything to find it. Give it to me!”
But what is it? And how does he get it? That is the question.
Listen.
“What is your name?” God asks.
“My name?”
“Yes, your name”
“You know my name.”
“Say it anyway.”
“My name is Jacob.”
“Jacob? Heel-grabber? Deceiver? Liar? I did not ask you for your sin. I asked you for your name.”
“They are the same. My name and my sin are the same. I am sin entire. I was a sinner even before I had drawn a breath. It is terrible, this sin. This name.”
Jacob finally sees. He finally understands himself. He feels the weight of his sin on his shoulders. He knows at last, he doesn’t need a new blessing, he needs a new name. He needs a new nature. To get beneath sin’s scaly hide the redeemer’s knife must go very, very, deep.
And You need a new name. You need a new nature. The redeemer’s knife must go very, very deep to get beneath your hide, also.
Jacob at his deepest essence is a heel grabber. He bargained with Esau, he bargained with Isaac, he bargained with Laban, and he bargained with God. To Esau he says, I will starve you unless you give me what I want. To God at Bethel he says, I will withhold my worship unless you give me what I want. To Labon he says, I will impoverish you unless you give me what I want. At Peniel, he says to God, I will not let you go unless you give me what I want.
Then he hears the answer, the glorious answer. And Christian, you have heard this answer, also.
“Yes, you were a sinner before you had ever drawn a breath. But I also loved you before you had ever drawn a breath. Now, receive the promise: You are Jacob no longer. No more sin. You are Israel. You are mine.”
As he lay dying decades later, Jacob would pray a blessing over his grandsons and summarize his life this way:
The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
The God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day
The angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys. (Gen. 48:15(b)-16(a))
His shepherd. His redeemer.
He wouldn’t say the words for fifty more years, but he felt the full reality of those words for the first time, I think, here at Peniel. Here at last he has discovered the promise and he has received the promise. The blessing is this: The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want; he has redeemed my life from the pit that is my sinful soul. He is my protector and my savior. He is my comforter and my rescuer. He fellowships and he forgives. I want nothing else.
How he got it
And Jacob discovers, too, how such a blessing is obtained: (1) it is a gift that (2) leaves you lamed.
First the gift. In his youth it's hard to tell whether Jacob even recognized the promise as a gracious, unmerited gift. We see no evidence of gratitude for the promise that God made to his mother. We see no gratitude for the blessing he received from his father. There was no thanksgiving offered at Bethel. And yet we know that Jacob had done nothing to deserve God’s love and favor.
[T]hough they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— [Rebekah] was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’ (Romans 9:11).
It was God who had initiated every blessing. Until Bethel, we have no record of a single prayer Jacob had uttered in his entire life. We have no acts of devotion, no acts of worship, no sacrifices. And yet God loved him. Why? So that none may boast.
In the twenty years that Jacob is in exile, though, he really does grow and mature and change. So much so, that the day before God meets him at Peniel, he utters this remarkable prayer. It is a prayer that we cannot imagine a cocky young Jacob having offered. Life humbles all of us. Jacob was no exception.
O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’ I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant. (Gen. 32:9-10(a))
Note, at last, the gratitude and the recognition of God’s mercy and undeserved kindness: I am not worthy.
His only act was to receive and to obey.
And yet his encounter with God at Peniel, his receipt of the greatest blessing of all, has resulted in a limp. But it is a glorious wound. He will always physically limp, but he will never again be spiritually lame.
It is a kind of circumcision or baptism. It is a sign not that God has lamed him so much as that God has claimed him. It is a mark of belonging and identity. Just as Abram became Abraham at his circumcision, Jacob becomes Israel at the wounding at Peniel.
Be wary of the Christian who doesn’t limp. A faith without risk, a confession without wounding, a profession without blood is hardly a faith at all. You young people, don’t despise the old saints their spiritual limps. Their bruises are evidence that they have wrestled long with Christ. Be jealous of their scars.
In a broad, poetic, sense - in the way that an earlier century would have called the allegorical sense - we can see a few things going on here. I believe that Jacob stating his name is a kind of confession. I believe the granting of his new name is a kind of rebirth. And as I have just stated, I consider God’s wounding of Jacob to be a kind baptism, a sign and seal of his covenant belonging that nonetheless resembles a kind of death.
We don’t have to tease out every implication that these connections are making. Such connections sometimes lose their effect if one stares too closely at them. It’s enough to tip-toe up to the fire and listen to the ancient, wild story of the God who wrestles, and hear in it something that resembles our own: the search for promise, the loathing of sin, the breath of life, a wound we wouldn’t trade for the world.
Here’s a bit of poetry I’ve found for you:
A dense black - light of touch - illuminates
Unalterable blessings renewed;
From now on he is iron-thewed,
His wound and victory integral traits.
I love two of those lines especially: the second line, “unalterable blessings renewed” and the last one, “his wound and victory integral traits.” That is a good description of much of the Christian life - unalterable blessings in regular need of refreshment; wound and victory braided and interlaced.
Jacob is alive for twenty-six of Genesis’ fifty chapters. With the possible exceptions of Moses and David, his biography may be the most complete portrait presented in scripture. We first meet him, astonishingly, when he is still in the womb and we are there at his death bed, when at last he pulls his old man’s feet up into bed and dies. Reading Jacob’s story, I am struck by how realistically he is portrayed. Adam and Noah and even Abraham are relatively silent men. They represent great things and they do great things. But they are portrayed at some distance from us. They seem to be shot in black and white film, not color. They are like caryatids: more important for the edifice they support than the face they present. But not Jacob. He is as flesh-and-blood-human as anyone in history and is shown to us here in full, living, color. We see him at every stage of life. We see him as both victim and villain; rich and poor; loved and loving; hating and hated.
I hope we don’t miss the simple fact that over the course of his life Jacob changes. The young man he was beside the stewpot with Esau is different from the one who kept his uncle Laban’s flocks in Haran. And that man was different from the one who returned to his homeland and built an altar at Bethel and he, in turn, was different from the one who wept at Joseph’s bloody coat or blessed his twelve sons in Egypt.
This is both obvious and also sometimes overlooked: Jacob changes.
And it is at Peniel, I believe, where we witness his most profound and sudden change. He didn’t simply grow older and wiser - though that is true, too. No, at some point, at this point, in some very real and deep sense, Jacob became, well…new.
And think about your own life.
Have you changed simply because you have grown older and wiser? Have you changed simply because the years have sanded down some youthful edges? Or did you, in some deeper sense, at some point in your life, become, well…new?
Have we prayed as John Donne did in his great poem?
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I recently read Frederick Douglass’ memoir about his escape from slavery. About halfway through the memoir Douglass writes this line: “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
We have seen Jacob a heel grabber, a conniver, a deceiver, a bargainer, and an exile. At Peniel we see how God made such a one as that - a slave to his own desires and ignorance and unbelief - into a man who strove with God himself and, by losing everything, limped away freer and richer than he had ever been before.
If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, the Apostle James writes, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he looks like.
Jacob was one who had not just seen himself in a mirror and walked away, he was one who had seen God face-to-face. How much more, then, must the change he experienced have been? I believe he changed in four significant ways: his relationship with God changed, his contentment and generosity changed, his obedience changed, and his worship changed.
Relationship
I want to go back to Bethel for just a minute. If you were following along in your Bibles when we were considering the vision of the ladder, you might have noticed that we skipped the part where Jacob names the place Bethel and sets up a pillar as a kind of marker to what had happened. Let’s read that now.
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at first. (Gen. 28:16-19)
Jacob responds by celebrating the place, not God. “How awesome is this place!” he shouts. Then he appears to consecrate the stone where he had slept, as if it had some kind of magical property to it. Jacob was right that there was something awesome about what he had seen, but it wasn’t the place and it wasn’t the rock.
It was God who was awesome! Yet Jacob appears more interested in the cultic potential of his campsite than with the revelation of God’s personal presence.
Let’s compare that response to how Jacob, now Israel, responded to God after the encounter at Peniel. As at Bethel, Jacob’s immediate response is to start naming things. But what is different at Peniel is that what he wants to name, first, is not the place of the encounter but the God of the encounter.
Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. (Gen. 32-:29)
Because God does not reveal his name, Jacob must do the next best thing.
So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” (Gen. 32:30)
Jacob’s encounter with God has left him entirely preoccupied, appropriately, with God. He doesn’t start anointing rocks. He cares about God. He cares about the face he has just seen. He cares about the mercy he has just been shown.
Why does that matter to us?
Western culture is often described these days as being post-Christian. And while that is true, I think that the West is increasingly becoming post-Secular, too. The era of pure atheism is over. The days are gone when celebrity intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens dominated the college campuses.
The obsession among non-Christians these days is with microdosing hallucinogens in the desert, and in witchcraft, or in poking around with Artificial Intelligence, or speculating about what the Pentagon knows about UFOs. Even in Christian circles, there is an increasing allure held out by a certain kind of unbridled Pentecostalism at one extreme and Eastern Orthodox mysticism on the other. It is in this environment that Jacob's imperfect response to his spiritual experience at Bethel is instructive.
We must not get caught up in the vision, but in the savior.
Not with the experience, but with truth.
Not with the bit of earth at the foot of the ladder, but the God who stands atop it.
Generosity
After Peniel, we see in Jacob a new contentment and satisfaction with what he has been given too. The day after Jacob wrestles with God, the fateful meeting with Esau occurs. God is merciful to Jacob and Esau welcomes and forgives his brother.
Nevertheless Jacob replies:
“Please accept my blessing that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough.” (Gen. 33:11)
We have heard how Esau’s descendents became the Edomites. Edomites were the bad guys. They were the enemy for a lot of Israel’s history. And yet, in an act that would not have been lost on Moses’ audience, Jacob blesses him. Already the fulfillment of the Bethel blessing is coming true. Through Jacob all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
No longer does Jacob grasp at blessings, he dispenses them.
No longer does Jacob’s unbelief cause him to manufacture these blessings, he waits in faith and receives them all as grace.
Obedience
A few chapters after Peniel, in chapter 35, we see an increase in personal holiness and purity that extends to his entire family.
God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. (Gen. 35:1-2)
This is a radical change from how Jacob’s family responded back in chapter 31 when God commanded them to leave Laban and return to the place of Jacob’s birth. Jacob had obeyed God’s call but failed to instruct his family to put away the idols or purify themselves. Recall that his beloved wife Rachel stole her father’s idols and then, when nearly discovered, lied to protect herself. Interestingly, she lied in such a way that would have made her ceremonially impure and disqualified from worshiping under the Mosaic law.
But those days are gone. Now, when God commands Jacob and his household to return, they purify themselves for worship and destroy the false gods in their midst.
Worship
And lastly Jacob emerges from Peniel a greater worshiper. Let’s keep reading that same section in chapter 35.
“Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem. (Gen. 35:1-4)
I read this passage as indicating that whatever it was that Jacob had done at Bethel when he was a young man needed to be added to. Whatever the pillar was, it wasn’t enough. An altar, like the ones his father and grandfather had built, was required. Pure worship from a new man was needed.
Here we see Jacob, now Israel, come full circle, literally.
He would return to the place where God had covenanted with him and Jacob would worship him in spirit and in truth. The basis of the relationship no longer contract but covenant. What the young man Jacob had intended as payment to God, has now become the new man Israel’s offering to God.
This sermon began by asking two questions: what do you want and how are you going to get it?
Non-Christian
For the non-Christian here, I want you to consider that first question: what do you want?
What are you pursuing? What are you worshiping? What is the great obsession of your life?
If it is wealth, you will be disappointed.
If it is status, you will be disappointed.
If it is a family, you will be disappointed.
You will be disappointed even if the thing you want is vaguely spiritual.
In the end, you will be disappointed.
All desires that are not animated by Christ, all searching that is not fed by Christ, and all labor that does not find its final rest in Christ will leave you empty. And not simply empty in some ultimate sense, but right now, today.
On Palm Sunday, the people in the crowd cheered for a variety of reasons. Some cheered because they thought Jesus was coming to get rid of the Romans, and some cheered because they thought Jesus was going to take care of the Pharisees, and some cheered because they thought Jesus might heal them or make their problems go away. And when Jesus was arrested and crucified the very next week, all of those who cheered for those reasons were disappointed. That generation was faced with the same question that Jacob faced and the same question that you face: what is the promise? What was the blessing?
But there was one group of people who were not disappointed. It was those who had seen in Jesus Christ, not the one who would take away their problems, but the lamb of God who would take away their sins.
Do not be disappointed. Turn to him now. Cast down all other idols and on the seat of your heart enthrone Jesus Christ. Confess your sins and receive the name of one of God’s own children.
Christian
I want the Christians here to consider the second question, not “what do you want?” but “how are you going to get it?”
The college I attended was a small liberal arts college in a small town outside of Charlotte. Because I didn't go to parties, the weekends could sometimes get a little boring. And one week I got the idea that I should take up boxing. So I got some boxing gloves and put an advertisement in the college newspaper that said "165 pound English Major in search of someone to box. Meet me behind Vale Commons at 10:00 Friday night."
On Friday night I showed up with some friends and this guy stepped out of the shadows who I had never seen before. It was a small school and I thought I knew everyone. But I didn't know this guy. He was shorter than me, but thick. And he didn't smile and he didn't come with any friends. And his nose looked like it had been broken at some point in his life.
I shook his hand and said, “Hello Old Sport, Marquis of Queensbury rules ok with you?"
And he said "Who's the Marquis of Queensbury? What rules?"
Then everyone got quiet and all my friends, who were all aspiring poets, got out their notebooks and started scribbling.
And then he put on the gloves and I put on mine and we fought.
Sometimes when I have trouble doing math, I think back to that moment right before I hit the ground. But that's hard because I have trouble remembering it exactly.
Here was the difference between us. I had come because I was bored.
The guy with the busted nose had come because he wanted to fight.
If I’m honest with myself, my approach to the things of God can be like that, still. I can step into the arena of Christian truth because I’m bored. Or I step in casually. Or I step in simply because it’s expected of me or because that’s where my friends are.
But the Christian life is a very dangerous enterprise, indeed. We come to worship and we open God’s Word and we open our hearts and the God we meet in those moments is like a man with broad shoulders who steps out of the shadows. The God we meet in those moments is like a man with a broken nose who has not heard of the Marquis of Queensbury, and he does not care about the rules of polite engagement that I have concocted. He is not there to relieve my boredom or stroke my ego or fulfill my worldly dreams, he's there to conquer me. He is there to leave me with a limp.
I wonder how many of us have forgotten, or have never really known, what it means to wrestle with God. I wonder how many of us have forgotten, or have never really known, what it means to receive from God the gift that lames.
There are many things I pray for our church when I am alone, but perhaps my most frequent one is that we would be wrestlers with God:
That we would contend with the Almighty;
That our homes would be filled with the singing, praying, weeping, dancing work of salvation;
That our tongues would be like the pens of ready writers;
That our hands would bless the nations;
That our knees would be often bent;
And that our hearts would thrum in constant thanks and in constant pleas to the one mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus, who is himself the ladder!
In Luke 18 Jesus tells a parable. And unlike some of them, Luke tells us beforehand the thing we’re supposed to get out of it:
Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
The parable Jesus tells is of the unjust judge who finally gives in and gives a poor widow what she wants, not because he is kind, but because she is persistent.
Jesus concludes like this.
“And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.” (Luke 18:7)
This parable is a New Testament analogue to Jacob’s wrestling. It is proof that we should always pray and not give up. It is proof that God loves a fight in the night. He loves the furnace where life’s dross is burned away. He loves a second womb from which his children emerge newborn, crying into the light of grace.
To you, his chosen ones, will you not cry out to him day and night? I tell you, you will be blessed.
The promised blessing is freely offered: Our shepherd is near. Our redeemer is strong.
Hold fast to him and do not let him go.
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