It’s easy to label someone, even
ourselves, based on bad behavior or choices so that it’s hard to move past this
broken identity and see the mighty hand of God at work. We witness certain
attitudes or words repeating themselves and begin to put people or ourselves in
categories that are void of hope and redemption. In reading about Jacob this
morning in Genesis 28-31, I was reminded of how the beauty and glory of God’s
grace eclipsed the sin in his life bringing heart transformation where only
darkness had been.
I’ve heard many stories and sermons about Jacob the deceiver -- the one who stole his brother’s birthright and got
what he deserved at the hands of his even more deceptive father-in-law. And
while it’s true that he sinned and did evil, God still set his love on him out of pure, covenantal faithfulness and grace. When Jacob
first flees from Esau, God comes and tenderly speaks to him in a dream, saying
that he will fulfill everything he promised to his father and grandfather. Jacob
wakes up and recognizes the very presence of God has been with him, but he
responds with a conditional promise to God saying that “if” he comes through
for him with life’s necessities and brings him safely home, he’ll serve him as
God (Gen 28:18-22). Yet, God remains faithful. He unites Jacob with his uncle and gives him wives
and work to do – though these blessings come with consequences for his previous
sins. As he struggles for 14 years to work for the opportunity to marry Rachel,
God blesses his work and prospers him. Later, as both Leah and Rachel struggle
to have children, God sees their suffering, hears their cries and blesses them
with many children (Gen 29:31, 30:17, 22).
When Jacob is finally fed up with his
father-in-law’s manipulation and deception and leaves, God continues to protect
him by warning Laban in a dream to “be careful not to say anything to Jacob,
either good or bad” (Gen 31:24). At this point, after years of suffering
injustice, Jacob has become so certain of God’s faithful presence, power and protection
that he now testifies to Leah and Rachel it is God who has not allowed their
father to harm him and has even “taken away [their] father’s livestock and
given them to [him]” (31:7-9). The one who 20 years earlier was not certain God
would come through for him is now declaring that everything good in his life
has come from God. When Laban comes after him, Jacob gives glory to God by
saying “if the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had
not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has
seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you” (Gen
31:42). In making a covenant with Laban, he further shows his allegiance to God
by taking his oath in the “name of the Fear of his father Isaac” – the name of
the LORD.
Jacob heard of and witnessed the “Fear
of Isaac” throughout his childhood, but through years of oppression and
hardship he experienced it for himself. He
started his journey in Bethel with the mindset that God might not come through
(20-22) and ended his time in exile with the confidence in God’s faithfulness. He
watched God year after year sustain, provide for and protect him. And in seeing
God’s faithful and lavish love poured out in his life, he came to know him in a
very personal and intimate way – just like his father and grandfather. Jacob is no longer the deceiver or the one who
is gripped by uncertainties about God. He’s becoming the man who trusts in the “Fear
of Isaac” and calls on his name, faithfully testifying to all that he’s done.
“And I am certain that God,
who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally
finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Phil 1:6)
