(We were in this area yesterday. This location has caught my attention as I had not realized how much happened here in the Bible.)
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| Adam Fords of Jordan River, near Nahal Jabbock. |
Hopefully you can get your bearings from the above photo. The arrow pointing to Nahal Jabbok (the Jabbok River) is in the area of where Jacob was when his servants informed him that Esau was on his way with 400 armed men. If you could go far to the right of this picture you would continue down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea, beyond the Dead Sea to the area of Edom. That’s where Esau was coming from. Jacob had a vantage point to be able to see a long ways to the south. It had to be an imposing sight. Now Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and there, Esau was coming, and with him were four hundred men.
Jacob was at
the place he called Peniel, meaning Face of God, “for I have seen God
face to face, and my life is preserved” (32:20). In fact, he had wrestled with the Angel of
the LORD, the Son of God pre-incarnate.
God called Jacob “Israel” “for you have struggled with God and with men,
and have prevailed” (32:28). That may
seem a bit odd. However you understand
it, the point God was making was that Jacob was famous for his ability to struggle,
to wrestle, and to come out the winner.
He was returning from Padan Aram and had outwitted Laban, ending up with
the greater share of his flocks. And now
he had wrestled with God, the Angel of the LORD, a Man (32:24) who was God
visiting earth, and had not been taken down.
But after
wrestling all night, the Man had done something. He crippled Jacob’s hip (32:25). Don’t think that was a minor thing, or
without great significance. For
generations afterwards (Moses is writing this when he says, to this day the
children of Israel do not eat the muscle that shrank, which is on the hip
socket, because He touched the socket of Jacob’s hip in the muscle that shrank,
32:32) Jacob’s descendents would know this was significant. Surely Jacob knew it as well, because as soon
as God did this Jacob cried out to God to bless him (32:26). Jacob could handle his own, all night long,
against God who had temporarily taken on flesh.
When it was over, Jacob had a new weakness. And now, he faced the greatest threat of his
life.
Now I want to
say, this is not the end of Jacob’s struggle with the flesh. That is how I see Jacob in terms of, as Paul
put it, “whatever things were written before were written for our learning,
that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope”
(Rom. 15:4). I still see these struggles
until he learns that Joseph was still alive in Egypt. But I will say, Jacob turned a major corner
in this. In the flesh it was logical to
fear Esau. But in the Spirit, where God
had promised to take care of him, it made no sense at all. And sure enough, Esau turned out to be no
problem at all.
Is that not the
way it is with our fears? We fear our
financial safety will crumble under the high inflation rate. We fear what the criminal syndicate called
the government might do to us and our freedoms.
We fear tomorrow. We fear any
number of things. Even though we have a
Lord who says don’t worry about anything but pray about everything (Phil. 2:6-7). And He says, fear not for I am with you and
will uphold you (Isa. 41:10). For
goodness sake Ron. Quit giving in to
fear. Be strong in the LORD and in
the power of His might (Eph. 6:10).
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