Genesis 28-34 "Growing in Grace" 20 years of Jacob
A mess of notes from Jack Abeelen about a messy guy--Jacob....
After Jacob steals the blessing, Esau seeks revenge and Jacob hits the desert trail.
Looking at 20 year period in Jacob's life--Jacob learning to grow in the grace of God. Oh he'll get it, but not today.
It is a hard work for the Lord to bring us to the end of ourselves because we are so into ourselves. Sometimes it's a long road.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God because you give Him permission to mess with you.
goes out...
Jacob--heel catcher
comes out
God's governed man, ruled by, victorious, in the Lord
We make deals all the time with the Lord.
Grace is God's favor on the most undeserving.
"But, at the other end of the pipe, the water of God still comes out, right? He still has His way. So, you get to stand in one of two places – with the Lord or on your own. Now, God will still have His way. So understand that, in the end, nothing changes. What changes is how you respond and walk and work with the things of God, how you accept them, how you submit to Him, how you let Him work without trying to help Him out – or not. And, we pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” Now, ultimately that’s a prayer for the Lord to come because it won’t be like that until He comes, right? And then it will be the same. But it can be that way in our life if we will submit to Him. So, it is better we seek the Lord and let Him work than try to fall in with the world and work like the world to get what we want – even if we think we’re doing it for the Lord." -Jack Abeelen on Jacob
"If nothing else, learn from them by just the narrative of the story – that there’s a better way to go, and that is to work it out, face up to it, talk it through, get help if needed. You don’t want to leave it festering and ignore it completely. But the issue comes down to, as Christians, we’ve got to submit our life to the Lord, right? He doesn’t need your help. He wants your faithfulness. He doesn’t need your suggestions. He will never, in His life as God, say, “I wonder what Jack’s thinking. I wonder if he’s got any ideas.” Or you can put your own name in there – just don’t laugh at me, you’ll be in the same boat. (Laughing) He doesn’t want your help, 13 either. So, it’s all about submission to His will as opposed to trying to connive my way ahead and then somehow trying to give God credit." -JA
"It is cool to me how often we read of others being blessed because God’s people are among them, and I think that that’s probably one of those lessons that you want to take to heart. You might be the only one at your job that’s saved, and you wonder how come you’re there all by yourself. And, “Lord, bring other Christians!” You’re just the only one. Well, God only needs you there, doesn’t He? So, I suspect that blessing comes to where you’re working just because of you. God watches over you, He takes care of you, He blesses you. And people notice. We should be a blessing to people, shouldn’t we? I’m always fearful when the world looks at Christians and goes, “Those Christians!” They might not like our policies, our politics, or our persuasions about God, or our lifestyles, but they should be blessed for hanging around because God blesses His people. And you put us in the midst of a bunch of people in the world, they should, at some point, realize, “Hey, it’s a good thing them Christians are here! There’s peace when no one has peace. There’s joy when everybody’s upset. They’re faithful, they’re honest, they’re dependable. Man, they’re the best workers, they’re the best friends, they’re honorable, they’ll stay with you.” We oughta be a blessing!" -JA
"So again, let me just say this to you – when you depend upon yourself, you may get what God wants, but you didn’t get there trusting God. Does that make sense? I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s a big lesson in these chapters. You’ll get where God wants you to be, but you may not get there by faith." JA
"So, don’t lose the lesson. The big picture is important. I know parts of the story, you go, “Oh, my goodness, did you read the story?!” But don’t lose the big lesson, right? God’s persistent work in your life will bring you to where He wants you to be. You can either go willfully or sinfully. The choice is yours, and the fruit will be the consequence of your choice because God is going anyway. All right?" JA
Laban lived, like I said, back in Padan Aram. It is today what would be northern Iraq. It was near the place where Abraham had been called by God to leave behind and come to the Land of Promise.
And secondly, he reminds the Lord that he’s in this position because God told him to come home, and then he reminds Him, “You told me when I left You would bless me to no end, so key, all these kids and I die, that’s not really going to work out – is it Lord?” Now, I don’t see this as manipulative. I see this as very wise. The best thing you can do when you’re praying and in need is to begin to remind yourself who you’re talking to and what He’s promised to you so that you might find the rest and the relief in the knowledge of God that you have had all of the time. “Lord, I’m here by Your will. You’ve promised to do great things.” And notice from verse 10 that Jacob is humble. You don’t find that in Jacob’s life. “I don’t deserve what I have. I don’t deserve the least of Your mercies. I came here with nothing. Look at me now!” Twenty years later. “Lord, You’ve been so good to me. I have two companies now.” And so he’s humble, he’s growing, and even in his dilemma, which is a very hard place – tremendous fear – you can see flashes, can’t you, of Jacob’s spiritual development.
We are blessed. As our nation frets over where we’re heading next, you and I go to bed at night, and we rest. It doesn’t mean we’re not concerned, but we know the Lord. So the concern doesn’t overwhelm us because He’s overwhelming us all the time. We can rest in Him. Jacob isn’t there yet.
"But God had come to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said to him, ‘Be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad.’ ” And it literally reads “from good to bad.” In other words, you just can’t escalate in the wrong direction." -Jack
And we’ve learned over the last couple of chapters, through the narrative, that that happens a lot. We want to try to help God out. God doesn’t need our help. You’ll get to the end where God’s will is, and you’ll either have arrived there waiting upon God, trusting in Him, faithful to Him, or you’ll get there like Jacob and these guys – manipulating and sinning and flushing out and causing great grief. You get to 2 the same place. God’s going to have His will. But you’re going to arrive there with great joy or not, and certainly that’s the lesson that we learned from Jacob early on. And we can hurt ourselves in the meantime.
And for twenty years now, Laban and Jacob have both jockeyed for position. They’re both crooked, right? They are swindlers trying to get the upper hand with one another, and for twenty years, they’ve been able to live with the tension. It’s the outwit, outplay, outlast. It’s the “Survivor” edition of the book of Genesis, you know? And they’ve tried to work with each other to take each other to task. But now the tension has become friction, and now there’s no more clear winner. Or I should say, there’s no more possibility for winning. Laban is losing his shirt, so to speak. And so you can see it on their faces – the jealousy at Jacob’s success.
I thought about today Jeremiah was such a young man when the Lord said to him, “I want you to go stand before My people and deliver this hard word of correction. They’re not going to hear you, but they are going to be tough words of judgment. And yet I love the people.” And so Jeremiah said to the Lord, “I’m a really young guy. I don’t know if I can pull this off.” And the Lord said to Jeremiah there in chapter 1:8, “Do not be afraid of their faces.” In other words, “You’re going to see some looks that aren’t going to make you comfortable, but don’t look at their faces. Just deliver My word.”
Jacob saw something was up. And you know that sometimes your face can reflect your heart, right? I mean, the Bible is pretty clear on that. I think even early on in Genesis when Cain was so angry with God and his brother that God had accepted Abel’s offering and not his own, it says in chapter 4:5 that “his countenance fell.” Not only was he mad, you could see it on his face. It just revealed itself. When Manoah’s wife met the Angel of the Lord who was coming for her son and to tell him about his son, she went and told her husband there in Judges 13:6, “You’ve got to see this guy who’s come to me, a man of God. His countenance was like that of the Angel of God.” So she saw something in His face that moved her. And I don’t know – there’s a way that you can’t hide your face. I think Isaiah, when speaking to the children of Israel in chapter 3:9 said, “The look on their countenance witnesses against them.” “I don’t know what they’re saying, but their face is telling the whole story.” And that’s just the way I think it was for Jacob. He does feel that way.
So, learn the principle, and it’s repeated a lot in Scripture – that God will make His will clear to His people, and one of the ways that He does that is He begins to form in you a desire of heart. And never discount the fact that what God works in your heart is something that God oftentimes will use to guide your heart.
Jacob's desire to go home was the starting point.
But, if you’re going to find what God wants you to do now, it has to be a desire added to a favorable or supportive, if you will, condition that confirms what you want. And notice here the conditions or the circumstances that Jacob is facing, which have changed recently, support the desire in his heart to go home.
Thirdly, verse 3, you’re going to need to hear from the Lord about this. God’s going to have to speak to you directly. He’s going to have to get to you so that the first two make us more willing to listen, but the word from God kind of “closes the deal” if you will.
So look, when you have a work of God in your heart, but you find frustrating circumstances that don’t allow you to pursue it, rather than bemoan the circumstance, better that you just wait to see how God’s going to open the door and then wait to hear God speak to you. You have a work in your heart, you have circumstances that God needs to manipulate, and then you have His word that needs to speak to you directly.
Well, those are the four steps, right? Desire of the heart, circumstances that verify, the word of God to speak to you, and the counsel and support of those who love you and see things or view things in your life for your best – agreeing that this is indeed a work that God is doing.
” The great escape. You know Jacob so far – that every time there’s trouble, Jacob runs. He’s a good runner, right? And he takes advantage. Laban is gone somewhere shearing his sheep. Jacob’s and Laban’s camps are separated by many miles for the grazing purposes. So while he’s away, Jacob takes his servants and his children and his wives and his livestock, and he hits the road. He did that years earlier, running from his own house. He does it out of fear, again now. Notice in verse 20 the words “stole away.” “Let’s just go now.” (Whispering) Three in the morning – off he goes.
But God had come to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said to him, ‘Be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad.’ ” And it literally reads “from good to bad.” In other words, you just can’t escalate in the wrong direction. “
But it’s always this same issue, isn’t it? Fear will keep you from walking with God and realizing the full potential you have in Him. It will cause you to make terrible choices. Jacob was certainly a guy, early on, driven by fear. Fear is kind of self-imprisoning, isn’t it? I think the Bible, one hundred different times, says “Don’t be afraid” or “Do not fear” or “Fear not.” And I suspect it’s because we do that a lot, more than we are willing to admit. So Jacob says, “I was just worried about your response,” and I think that’s legitimate – that he might very well have wondered, not having had great faith yet, that this could be a real problem.
*****************************************
Chapter 34
Jacob is the perfect story of the guy who grows up slow. He's 15 miles from where he needs to be. Sad. To be so close to where God wants you to be and yet so far.
If the father goes astray, the whole family suffers.
rape
remuneration
retaliation
Dinah--age 13 to 15, teenager in a new place
All this happens because Jacob has decided this is a good place to stop.
Jacob finds out about it but says he'll do something about it when they all get home from the fields. Young man who raped Dinah is at least credited as trying to do the correct thing (marry).
After Jacob steals the blessing, Esau seeks revenge and Jacob hits the desert trail.
Looking at 20 year period in Jacob's life--Jacob learning to grow in the grace of God. Oh he'll get it, but not today.
It is a hard work for the Lord to bring us to the end of ourselves because we are so into ourselves. Sometimes it's a long road.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God because you give Him permission to mess with you.
goes out...
Jacob--heel catcher
comes out
God's governed man, ruled by, victorious, in the Lord
We make deals all the time with the Lord.
Grace is God's favor on the most undeserving.
"But, at the other end of the pipe, the water of God still comes out, right? He still has His way. So, you get to stand in one of two places – with the Lord or on your own. Now, God will still have His way. So understand that, in the end, nothing changes. What changes is how you respond and walk and work with the things of God, how you accept them, how you submit to Him, how you let Him work without trying to help Him out – or not. And, we pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” Now, ultimately that’s a prayer for the Lord to come because it won’t be like that until He comes, right? And then it will be the same. But it can be that way in our life if we will submit to Him. So, it is better we seek the Lord and let Him work than try to fall in with the world and work like the world to get what we want – even if we think we’re doing it for the Lord." -Jack Abeelen on Jacob
"If nothing else, learn from them by just the narrative of the story – that there’s a better way to go, and that is to work it out, face up to it, talk it through, get help if needed. You don’t want to leave it festering and ignore it completely. But the issue comes down to, as Christians, we’ve got to submit our life to the Lord, right? He doesn’t need your help. He wants your faithfulness. He doesn’t need your suggestions. He will never, in His life as God, say, “I wonder what Jack’s thinking. I wonder if he’s got any ideas.” Or you can put your own name in there – just don’t laugh at me, you’ll be in the same boat. (Laughing) He doesn’t want your help, 13 either. So, it’s all about submission to His will as opposed to trying to connive my way ahead and then somehow trying to give God credit." -JA
"It is cool to me how often we read of others being blessed because God’s people are among them, and I think that that’s probably one of those lessons that you want to take to heart. You might be the only one at your job that’s saved, and you wonder how come you’re there all by yourself. And, “Lord, bring other Christians!” You’re just the only one. Well, God only needs you there, doesn’t He? So, I suspect that blessing comes to where you’re working just because of you. God watches over you, He takes care of you, He blesses you. And people notice. We should be a blessing to people, shouldn’t we? I’m always fearful when the world looks at Christians and goes, “Those Christians!” They might not like our policies, our politics, or our persuasions about God, or our lifestyles, but they should be blessed for hanging around because God blesses His people. And you put us in the midst of a bunch of people in the world, they should, at some point, realize, “Hey, it’s a good thing them Christians are here! There’s peace when no one has peace. There’s joy when everybody’s upset. They’re faithful, they’re honest, they’re dependable. Man, they’re the best workers, they’re the best friends, they’re honorable, they’ll stay with you.” We oughta be a blessing!" -JA
"So again, let me just say this to you – when you depend upon yourself, you may get what God wants, but you didn’t get there trusting God. Does that make sense? I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s a big lesson in these chapters. You’ll get where God wants you to be, but you may not get there by faith." JA
"So, don’t lose the lesson. The big picture is important. I know parts of the story, you go, “Oh, my goodness, did you read the story?!” But don’t lose the big lesson, right? God’s persistent work in your life will bring you to where He wants you to be. You can either go willfully or sinfully. The choice is yours, and the fruit will be the consequence of your choice because God is going anyway. All right?" JA
Laban lived, like I said, back in Padan Aram. It is today what would be northern Iraq. It was near the place where Abraham had been called by God to leave behind and come to the Land of Promise.
And secondly, he reminds the Lord that he’s in this position because God told him to come home, and then he reminds Him, “You told me when I left You would bless me to no end, so key, all these kids and I die, that’s not really going to work out – is it Lord?” Now, I don’t see this as manipulative. I see this as very wise. The best thing you can do when you’re praying and in need is to begin to remind yourself who you’re talking to and what He’s promised to you so that you might find the rest and the relief in the knowledge of God that you have had all of the time. “Lord, I’m here by Your will. You’ve promised to do great things.” And notice from verse 10 that Jacob is humble. You don’t find that in Jacob’s life. “I don’t deserve what I have. I don’t deserve the least of Your mercies. I came here with nothing. Look at me now!” Twenty years later. “Lord, You’ve been so good to me. I have two companies now.” And so he’s humble, he’s growing, and even in his dilemma, which is a very hard place – tremendous fear – you can see flashes, can’t you, of Jacob’s spiritual development.
We are blessed. As our nation frets over where we’re heading next, you and I go to bed at night, and we rest. It doesn’t mean we’re not concerned, but we know the Lord. So the concern doesn’t overwhelm us because He’s overwhelming us all the time. We can rest in Him. Jacob isn’t there yet.
"But God had come to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said to him, ‘Be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad.’ ” And it literally reads “from good to bad.” In other words, you just can’t escalate in the wrong direction." -Jack
And we’ve learned over the last couple of chapters, through the narrative, that that happens a lot. We want to try to help God out. God doesn’t need our help. You’ll get to the end where God’s will is, and you’ll either have arrived there waiting upon God, trusting in Him, faithful to Him, or you’ll get there like Jacob and these guys – manipulating and sinning and flushing out and causing great grief. You get to 2 the same place. God’s going to have His will. But you’re going to arrive there with great joy or not, and certainly that’s the lesson that we learned from Jacob early on. And we can hurt ourselves in the meantime.
And for twenty years now, Laban and Jacob have both jockeyed for position. They’re both crooked, right? They are swindlers trying to get the upper hand with one another, and for twenty years, they’ve been able to live with the tension. It’s the outwit, outplay, outlast. It’s the “Survivor” edition of the book of Genesis, you know? And they’ve tried to work with each other to take each other to task. But now the tension has become friction, and now there’s no more clear winner. Or I should say, there’s no more possibility for winning. Laban is losing his shirt, so to speak. And so you can see it on their faces – the jealousy at Jacob’s success.
I thought about today Jeremiah was such a young man when the Lord said to him, “I want you to go stand before My people and deliver this hard word of correction. They’re not going to hear you, but they are going to be tough words of judgment. And yet I love the people.” And so Jeremiah said to the Lord, “I’m a really young guy. I don’t know if I can pull this off.” And the Lord said to Jeremiah there in chapter 1:8, “Do not be afraid of their faces.” In other words, “You’re going to see some looks that aren’t going to make you comfortable, but don’t look at their faces. Just deliver My word.”
Jacob saw something was up. And you know that sometimes your face can reflect your heart, right? I mean, the Bible is pretty clear on that. I think even early on in Genesis when Cain was so angry with God and his brother that God had accepted Abel’s offering and not his own, it says in chapter 4:5 that “his countenance fell.” Not only was he mad, you could see it on his face. It just revealed itself. When Manoah’s wife met the Angel of the Lord who was coming for her son and to tell him about his son, she went and told her husband there in Judges 13:6, “You’ve got to see this guy who’s come to me, a man of God. His countenance was like that of the Angel of God.” So she saw something in His face that moved her. And I don’t know – there’s a way that you can’t hide your face. I think Isaiah, when speaking to the children of Israel in chapter 3:9 said, “The look on their countenance witnesses against them.” “I don’t know what they’re saying, but their face is telling the whole story.” And that’s just the way I think it was for Jacob. He does feel that way.
So, learn the principle, and it’s repeated a lot in Scripture – that God will make His will clear to His people, and one of the ways that He does that is He begins to form in you a desire of heart. And never discount the fact that what God works in your heart is something that God oftentimes will use to guide your heart.
Jacob's desire to go home was the starting point.
But, if you’re going to find what God wants you to do now, it has to be a desire added to a favorable or supportive, if you will, condition that confirms what you want. And notice here the conditions or the circumstances that Jacob is facing, which have changed recently, support the desire in his heart to go home.
Thirdly, verse 3, you’re going to need to hear from the Lord about this. God’s going to have to speak to you directly. He’s going to have to get to you so that the first two make us more willing to listen, but the word from God kind of “closes the deal” if you will.
So look, when you have a work of God in your heart, but you find frustrating circumstances that don’t allow you to pursue it, rather than bemoan the circumstance, better that you just wait to see how God’s going to open the door and then wait to hear God speak to you. You have a work in your heart, you have circumstances that God needs to manipulate, and then you have His word that needs to speak to you directly.
Well, those are the four steps, right? Desire of the heart, circumstances that verify, the word of God to speak to you, and the counsel and support of those who love you and see things or view things in your life for your best – agreeing that this is indeed a work that God is doing.
” The great escape. You know Jacob so far – that every time there’s trouble, Jacob runs. He’s a good runner, right? And he takes advantage. Laban is gone somewhere shearing his sheep. Jacob’s and Laban’s camps are separated by many miles for the grazing purposes. So while he’s away, Jacob takes his servants and his children and his wives and his livestock, and he hits the road. He did that years earlier, running from his own house. He does it out of fear, again now. Notice in verse 20 the words “stole away.” “Let’s just go now.” (Whispering) Three in the morning – off he goes.
But God had come to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said to him, ‘Be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad.’ ” And it literally reads “from good to bad.” In other words, you just can’t escalate in the wrong direction. “
But it’s always this same issue, isn’t it? Fear will keep you from walking with God and realizing the full potential you have in Him. It will cause you to make terrible choices. Jacob was certainly a guy, early on, driven by fear. Fear is kind of self-imprisoning, isn’t it? I think the Bible, one hundred different times, says “Don’t be afraid” or “Do not fear” or “Fear not.” And I suspect it’s because we do that a lot, more than we are willing to admit. So Jacob says, “I was just worried about your response,” and I think that’s legitimate – that he might very well have wondered, not having had great faith yet, that this could be a real problem.
*****************************************
Jacob is the perfect story of the guy who grows up slow. He's 15 miles from where he needs to be. Sad. To be so close to where God wants you to be and yet so far.
If the father goes astray, the whole family suffers.
rape
remuneration
retaliation
Dinah--age 13 to 15, teenager in a new place
All this happens because Jacob has decided this is a good place to stop.
Jacob finds out about it but says he'll do something about it when they all get home from the fields. Young man who raped Dinah is at least credited as trying to do the correct thing (marry).
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