From Deceiver to Prince: Jacob’s Struggle and God’s Unconditional Promise (Genesis 28-32)

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. And again, it's good to have everybody back, and for those of you on television, we want to welcome you to our class, and I realize that according to our mail, we've got new listeners almost week by week, and so you're kind of coming in a little late on our overall study of Genesis, but someday we'll make a good review for your benefit. All right, for now, let's turn back again to Genesis chapter 28, and we'll pick up where we left off in our last program, and that was that the Almighty God, the El Shaddai, is going to make Jacob fruitful. Now I have to point out, remember that Jacob is still an unbeliever, and he is a perfect picture of the nation of Israel as a whole. Now he's going to be sent out into a far country, out of the land of promise. He's going to go up into Syria, and even though he's up there in unbelief, God still has His thumb on him, and this is what so many people today can't comprehend. And I have to remind folk, in fact it was in our class last night, that you take the nation of Israel tonight. Their government is just as secular. They are no more godly than any other government on the face of the earth, and don't expect them to be any differently, but who is watching out for that little nation? Well, the Almighty God is, and I've said over and over through the years, God loves the Arab just as much as He does the Jew, and He loves the Americans just as much as He does the Middle Easterners, because this is the day of grace. But going back to His covenant promises, God has delineated that the nation of Israel is His covenant people, and He is going to bring to fruition all of those promises that He made back here in Genesis. And that's why the little nation is in the news every day, and that's why outnumbered as they are, nobody dare attack them. Now we all know that right now today Syria has been building up their armed forces just like mad, and from all practical purposes you'd have to say, well, Syria could overrun Israel in a day or two. But you see, there's the Almighty God that's holding everything in check, and as we saw back in 1967 in the Six-Day War, again I mentioned the class last night, how would we feel if all of a sudden we'd hear that massive armies are coming up from Mexico, they're landing on both coasts, and they're coming in from Canada? Well, that's what happened to Israel in the Six-Day War. They were invaded from four different directions all at once, and yet in a matter of hours they turned the tide and just literally destroyed those Arab armies. Now what was that? That was the miracle working of a sovereign God, even though they are in unbelief, see? And so here again I want you to realize that as Jacob goes up into a far country, he is under the protection of the Almighty God, he's under the blessing of God, but he himself is still an unbeliever. He is still the supplanter, the deceiver. He is still Jacob. All right, keep that in mind. So Isaac sent him away in verse 5, and he went to Paddan Aram, up to Laban, the son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob, and Esau's mother. Now we come back to Esau in verse 6, and when he saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan Aram, to take him away from thence, and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the Canaanites, which he had already done, of course, and that Jacob obeyed his father, see? Even in his unbelief, he is still a man that is under the, what shall I say, he's under the auspices of faith. He has a little to comprehend the obedience of some of you, but yet he's not a true believer. But it was enough that old Esau could see that Jacob obeyed his father and had gone. Then verse 8, when Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father, he tries to do two wrongs, and as we say, what? Make a right, and it just doesn't work. Now it was bad enough that he married Canaanites, but now he takes it even one step worse, and what does he do? He marries daughters of Esau. And he's taking them out of the same, you might say, out of the same bowl of cloth, but now he goes to the daughters of Esau, of Ishmael, I'm sorry. Esau went unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had, Mehalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife. And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. Now again, I'm not going to go through all this verse by verse, because I think you're all, and I think even everybody on television that watches our program is aware of the story now of Jacob as he goes up to Haran, and he has this night of rest, and he sees the angels ascending and descending, and that would be up in verse 12, and as he dreamed, behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. Verse 13, Behold the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac, the land whereon thou liest, I will give it to thee. Now there it is repeated again, and again, and again. Verse 14, And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, the east, the north, the south, and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Now what's this seed? Well, it's the Christ, the Messiah, that it would be through the promised Messiah that all the nations of the world would one day receive the blessings of God. And then verse 15, God promises him, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land. Canaan, there's that promise over and over. For I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, verse 17, he was afraid, and he said, Surely this is the gate of heaven. And so he called it in verse 19, the place that becomes famous in Scripture, what, Bethel or Bethel. Now, if you'll notice real carefully, you've got the two letters E-L, which is a short or the contraction of Elohim, and Beth simply means house in Hebrew. So this place where he had this tremendous dream, Jacob designates as what? The house of God, see? The house of Elohim. Now, a little later on, a few chapters later, he comes back and now he calls another place El Bethel. In other words, he has now met face to face the God of the house of God, see? And so all these words are so significant. Then in verse 20, he vowed a vowed saying that if God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord, what, be my God. Is he yet? No. No, he's bargaining, I think, and I think this is sort of akin to a lot of battlefield statements where men say, Lord, if you'll just bring me through this alive and get me back home, I'll serve you. But as yet, Jacob is not a true believer. Then verse 22, And this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house, and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee. Now here again we have that which has been in the Scripture since the very beginning of the dealing with Abraham when he gave the tenth of the spoil, you remember, from the kings that had overrun Sodom. Now again, in chapter 29, we're not going to take all this verse by verse, because like I've said for the last two programs, I'm going to hope to be ready for Exodus by the time we get to the end of these four programs. And so in 29, Jacob now comes to the land of his relatives, and immediately he runs into the flocks, of course, of his uncle Laban. And then verse 6, He said unto them, Is he well regarding their uncle? And they said, He is. And behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep. Now we're introduced to the apple of Jacob's eye. And of course, it was love at first sight, and you all know the story, and we're not going to go through all that verse by verse. But what happened? Oh, he got deceived himself this time. And it's kind of interesting as you read this story, and I encourage people to read this when you've got some time, that old Jacob the deceiver meets his match with his uncle Laban. They're two of a kind. I mean, they are constantly hoodwinking one another. And so you know the story of how he has love at first sight with Rachel, but comes his wedding night. And you have to remember, as I read here some time ago, of all the other pollutions that we're experiencing today, you've never thought of it, but do you realize that we're in a light pollution? Do you know you can't hardly find a place anymore where you can go into total darkness? Iris and I were commenting the other night that in the 17 or 18 years we've been in Oklahoma, the vast number of security lights that have come in, and then with all the city light and everything, you can't hardly find a dark spot anymore. But you want to remember that back there when night came, it was dark. And so there was no problem whatsoever for old Laban to convince Leah, now you go in as the bride, because after all I can't let Rachel become his wife, and you're the eldest. And so old Laban pulls one on Jacob before he even gets started, do you remember? And he comes to the daylight morning, and instead of Rachel it's Leah, the oldest sister. And, of course, old Laban had a logical excuse. Well, he said, it's just not right according to the custom of our country that the younger daughter can have a husband until the eldest is married. So he makes a deal with old Jacob that if he will serve him for another seven years beyond the seven that he'd already bargained for, that then he could have Rachel. But now one thing I want you to understand, Jacob did not wait to the end of 14 years to have Rachel. He had them both right from day one, but his contract called for 14 years of work in order to get both the gals. Well, then as you go through those chapters while he's up there those 20 years with Laban, he now has the two wives, Leah and Rachel. Leah will have six sons herself, and then she leaves off childbearing, and as was the custom again to Hammurabi, this was absolutely kosher for their day, for their society, and God seemingly did not disapprove of it. He also had then sons by Leah's handmaid, and then finally Rachel gets into the act by having some sons by her handmaid. That gives us 6, 8, 10, and then finally Rachel has Joseph, and then of course as I mentioned in the last half hour, 10 years after they're back in the land of Canaan, Rachel gives birth to Benjamin, which makes the 12, but she dies in childbirth. So now Jacob has the 11 sons in place up there in Haran, will come back down into Canaan and have the 12th one, which is Benjamin, and that is the setting then for the nation of Israel. Now this is one thing I want everybody to clearly understand. The nation of Israel comes about by Abraham's son Isaac, Isaac's son Jacob, and Jacob's 12 sons from which we get the 12 tribes of Israel, and it's going to be those 12 sons that will end up down in Egypt, as we'll see here in just a little bit, all right? But now as Jacob is coming back from Haran, he spent his 20 years, and as I've said, Laban hoodwinked him just as many times as Jacob got it over on Laban, but Jacob still ends with the upper hand. He's got the best of the flocks, he's got the best of the herds, he's got all of the kids and the grandkids, and he comes back with quite a caravan. And now if you'll come over to chapter 31, as they're fleeing, the word comes back to Laban that indeed Jacob and his daughters and all the kids are fleeing, they're leaving. And so he catches up with Jacob, but the important verse I think that I want you to see in here is verse 30, because you see I've been teaching now ever since the Tower of Babel that everybody on the face of the earth at the then known world were idolaters, until he called Abram out of idolatry, and Abram becomes a man who worships the one true God, as does Isaac, and we're going to see that Jacob will. But other than that they are all idolaters, even the relatives up there in Syria. Now here it is in verse 30, as Laban catches up with that great caravan of Jacob and all of his belongings, he says, And now though thou wouldest needs be gone, because thou sore longest after thy father's house, yet wherefore hast thou stolen what? See, and it's small g-o-d-s, what kind of gods, idols. Now here's another thing I think that most people miss, why was Laban so concerned a bunch of little images, little gods? Well they were the family gods, and you see according to custom, just like the blessing and the birthright so far as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob's concerned, in the pagan family the child who was given the most and was the most favored was the whom the gods were given, and boy I mean that meant something, that if you had the family gods you just had everything. And so Rachel knowing that slips them out without her father knowing about it, and she takes them along, and she has them hidden as you well know the story in verse 34. Now Rachel had taken the images, and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them, and Laban searched all the tent, but found them not. And then she said to her father, Let it not displease my lord, that I cannot rise before thee, for the custom of women is upon me. And he searched, but he found not the images. Oh, he looked. He didn't want to part with them, but anyway he can't find them even though Rachel has them. And then in verse 36, Jacob was angry and showed with Laban, and Jacob answered and said to him, What is my trespass? What is my sin, that thou hast so hotly pursued after me? And then they go through a conversation of accusing and re-accusing, and well this is what you did to me, and I did that to you, and so on and so forth, but they finally get their act together, and they make an agreement. They make a treaty, and they finally, oh down in verse 55 I guess, I'd like to hurry on, and early in the morning Laban rose, kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them. Laban departed, went back up into northern Syria at the head of the Euphrates Valley, and returned unto his place. Now you come right into chapter 32, and Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God's host. Now you see, Jacob is aware of all these things that God is doing, but remember he is still not a heart believer. And so he said, This is God's host. And he called the name of that place Mahaniim, which in the Hebrew means the two hosts. The one of course was God's host, and the other one was his own. And so Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother, and here again you all know the story of how Jacob sends this tremendous gift of livestock and wealth and everything else to appease his brother Esau, but Esau evidently has forgotten his bitterness, and there's no problem. But now I want you to come, if you will, to verse, oh, let's see, 22. In chapter 32, come down to verse 22. Jacob has parted some of his flocks and his family and sent them over the brook as he's heading down now toward Canaan, and he's meeting Esau. So verse 22, he rose up that night and took his two wives and his two women servants and his eleven sons and passed over the ford Jabbok. Now that was a little stream that flowed into the Jordan from the east, up there just, oh, I'm guessing just below the Sea of Galilee. And so as he crosses that ford, or that little creek as we would say, Jabbok, he sent them over, and 24, he was left alone. And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day, and when he saw that he prevailed not against him, in other words, when the stranger saw that he could not overcome old Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of his thigh was out of joint, in other words, he crippled him. And of course, from this point on, Jacob walks with a limp. It's called a halt in Scripture, but he limps from this point on. Verse 26, and he said, that is the stranger, Let me go, for the day breaketh. Now you know, that was quite a wrestling match, wasn't it? That must have gone on the most part of the night. But old Jacob said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. Now, does Jacob know who it is? You bet he does. And who is it? It's the Lord Himself. Now here's what we call a theophany. It's a great big word that simply means the appearance of God in human form. And it's always, when there's a theophany in the Old Testament, it's always God the Son. This is Christ, in other words, in an Old Testament appearance, in human form, and He is literally wrestling flesh and blood, Jacob, on His turf, and He says, I'll not let you go until you bless Me. Now then, there is the statement of Jacob's faith. Simple? Absolutely, it's simple. But he suddenly realizes that he's dealing with the God of his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham, and he says, I'll not let you go until you bless Me. Now read on, verse 27, And the Lord, in this case, is the pronoun he. And so the Lord said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob, the deceiver, the supplanter. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob. But, Israel, for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and you have prevailed. Now there is Jacob's salvation. Now he becomes a child of God. Never again does the Scripture give an account of Jacob the deceiver. Never again will you find Jacob conniving to cheat someone. Oh, he did it with Laban, he did it with Esau, but now you see he's a changed man, and that's why God changes His name. He changes His name from Jacob to Israel, from the supplanter and the deceiver to the prince with God. Now let me show you, I was going to go to Isaiah last time, and that was the wrong reference, and here's the right one, I think, Isaiah chapter 9, because this is a lesson in itself that I think every Bible student should understand are these two terms, Jacob and Israel. Many times they seem to be used synonymously, but in reality they are not synonymous. Oh, it's the same nation, but it's two aspects of that nation. You got Isaiah chapter 9, and drop down to verse 8, Isaiah chapter 9, verse 8, where you'll read, the Lord, or Jehovah, sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. Now you see what that's saying? God sent the Word into the whole nation, into Jacob, but who heard it? The believers. The spiritual part of Jacob heard it, and so you'll see this all through Scripture. Now let's go to Romans, another verse just comes to mind. Romans chapter 11, maybe I want to come back, chapter 10, Romans, well, first I'd like to have you stop at chapter 9, Romans chapter 9, and come down to verse 6, chapter 9, verse 6, where it says, Not as though the word of God hath taken no effect, for they are not all Israel, who are of Israel. Now do you see the distinction? In other words, Israel too has a believing remnant. They're all called the house of Jacob, or the sons of Jacob, and the sons of Abraham, what have you, but Israel was that spiritual element of the true believers, and you'll see this. Now I'm looking for the verse, and I'm just not seeing it, where Paul says that all Israel shall be saved, and it's that same connotation. Of course all Israel will be saved. Every believer in Israel will be saved. That doesn't mean the whole nation, so always keep those two pictures sorted out in your mind that, huh? Okay, chapter 9, verse 27. Not exactly the one I work. It says in plain words, but all Israel shall be saved, and I'm just not seeing it. But anyway, the delineating part of all this is that Jacob is that part of Israel which is still of the old life, the old supplanter, the deceiver, but Israel is the spiritual side, and consequently his name is changed. All right, come back quickly. We've only got a little bit left into chapter 32 once again, where now God makes that point that He is a changed man, always going to halt, He's going to limp the rest of His life, but He will never again be a deceiver. Then, verse 29 in chapter 32 of Genesis, And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he did what? Blessed Him there. Now only God can do that. Only God can do that. Now if you've doubted what I've been saying, look at the next verse. And Jacob called, verse 30, Jacob called the name of the place Phaneel. For he says, I have seen, what's the next word, God, how? Face to face. Now I've had people jump. I mean, they say, well, unless the Bible says no man has seen God at any time and lived. That's true. No man has ever seen the Trinity, the triune spirit part of God, but they have seen God the Son all through the Old Testament over and over again in these theophanies, see? Abraham in chapter 18, what'd he do? He killed the fatted calf and he sat down and he ate. Who was it? It was God the Son. At the burning bush, which we're going to see in a few weeks, who is it? It's God the Son, see? But true, no one has ever seen the invisible God head. So he said, I'll call the place Phaneel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is what? Preserved. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you.