Now Jacob is reconciled with Leven, so remember those parallels between Jacob and Leven is an echo really of Abraham and Abimalek. He's reconciled with Leven after all of these years, so to speak, you know, establishing this covenant with him and partying on friendly terms, but now Jacob has to reconcile with Esau. And if you remember, 20 years prior, Jacob fled for his life basically because Esau swore as soon as dad dies, I'm gonna take Jacob out and so Jacob has to flee and he goes to the land of Leven, his mother's brother, all this stuff that we talked about. So now let's see here in your Notronianumeral II that Jacob and Esau reconcile here.
And as he leads into parts of Leven, Jacob has a vision of angels. If you look at chapter 32 verse 1, he has a vision of angels, but when God met him and Jacob saw them and said, this is God's army. Now that's beautiful because when Jacob leaves his father's house, he has a vision of angels too with the whole ziggurat, with the whole letter, the staircase story, the angels descending and ascending upon it. Well, now that he turns back home, he sees another vision of angels and says, this is God's army.
And that's important because God is always fighting for Jacob. He always has. He always promised to be with Jacob the entire time. And of course God delivers on his promise.
So keep that in mind for just a second here because Jacob sees God's army protecting him walking with him. By the way, that is also the good foreshadowing of the story with Joshua. Later on when Joshua goes in with the Israelites and the promised land, Joshua has a vision in chapter 5 of angels as well. And he says pretty much the same thing.
This is God's army because God is with his people bringing them into the land in the same way that God is with Jacob bringing him back home here. Okay. All right. So he has this vision of angels here and he then sends gestures of peace to his brother Esau.
He doesn't know how Esau feels. Is Esau still want to kill him or has time healed all wounds, so to speak? He doesn't know. So with a lot of gestures of humility here in the opening verses of chapter 32, Jacob says things like, you know, calls, Esau my lord and Jacob says of himself, I am your servant.
Like he really is positioning himself in a very humble servant, serving kind of way, because he wants to become good terms with his brother. God said come back, but he doesn't know what's going to happen. But then after sending a message to Esau, he finds out that Esau is coming to meet Jacob with 400 men. And Jacob loses translation soils himself.
He gets very, very afraid because it seems like Esau is coming with this small army of men. Contrast that with the vision that he just had though. He needs to have faith and trust that God is protecting Jacob and bringing him into land. Even though Jacob perceives that Esau is coming with 400 men, a small army, he doesn't need to fear because God will protect him.
And so with that in mind, Jacob turns to God in praise. And this is really beautiful. Jacob's really come a long way. If you remember, he had his conditional vow after he has the vision of the latter, the staircase, his conditional vow, if you will protect me, then you will be my God.
So Jacob's like, I want to see you perform, I want to see you deliver on your promises. Well, Jacob's a changed man right now. He's one's haughty and one's uncommitted. Now he's humbled and now he is very, very humbled.
Yeah, just remember humbled man here. You'll see what I mean. Let's read here verses 32. So chapter 32 verses 9 and following.
Jacob says, Oh God of my father, Abraham and God of my father, Isaac. Oh Lord, who said to me return to your country and to your kindred and I will do you good. I am not worthy of the least of all the mercy and the faithfulness which you have shown to your servant. That word is said.
That is steadfast covenant to love. It's a beautiful word there. It's very important in the Old Testament. Jacob says, you have shown me your has said, your covenant to love, your mercy, steadfast mercy.
For only with my staff I crossed the store and now I have to come to companies. Deliver me, I beg you, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esaufore, I fear him. Lest he come and slay us, the mothers with the children. But you said I will do you good and make your descendants as the Santa of the Sea, which cannot be numbered from multitude.
So this is a beautiful prayer of humility. He recognizes God has done everything for him. He just left with a simple little staff and yet now he's quite wealthy. He has all these animals, a large family.
Things have gone really well for him. So he prays humbly to God for deliverance. Then he sends a bunch of gifts to Esau. He sends all kinds of animals, birds, cattle, all kinds of gifts.
Because it's a very interesting and a life interpretation that Jacob took the birthright. Remember the birthright is a double portion of the material inheritance. Jacob has both the birthright and the blessing. But here when he sends all of this wealth to Esau, it's like he's returning his birthright.
It's as if he was saying, hey, I apologize. I took the double portion of the birthright. Now I am returning. I'm restoring it to you.
I really like that. It's just if he's sending this big apology to his brother by sending all of these gifts. In the hopes of, and here's the point, this is what I want you to hold on to. Because Jacob's full conversion is going to take place in certain terms.
And here if you go down to verse 20 with me, he says, I may appease him with the present that goes before me, and afterwards I shall see his face, and perhaps he will accept me. Keep that in mind here, because this expression, I'll see his face and he'll accept me. This is an expression where he desires reconciliation and friendship, okay? In peace with his brother to see someone face to face.
It's a very important biblical expression. No Moses sees God's face to face. We'll talk about that in another time. But this is intimacy.
This is friendship. This is reconciliation. This is what he wants with his brother. So keep that in mind because it's going to have a lot to do with how he comes really full circle in his heart.
Okay, so he sends everybody off here in the next verse of 22 and following, and then let's read here verses 24 and following because the event and the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel at night is really, really important because this is name change. And remember, name means something. And when God changes someone's name, whether it's Abraham, whether it's here Jacob, or whether it is Peter in the New Testament, Simon to Peter, very, very important stuff. So let's read verse 24 and following.
So Jacob was left alone. I like that. He's all by himself. He can't depend on anybody at all.
He needs to just kind of face God, no pun intended there. He's got to face God face to face and deal with some stuff. So anyway, so he was left alone and then wrestled with him to the blessed till breaking of day. When the man saw that he got prevailed against Jacob, he touched the hall above his side and Jacob's thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
And then he said, let me go for the day is breaking. And Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. And he said to him, what is your name? He said Jacob.
Then he said, your name shall no more be called to Jacob, but Israel, Israel, where you have striven with God and with men and you have prevailed. And then Jacob said, tell me I pray your name. But he said, why is the guy's my name? And there he blessed him.
And Jacob called the name of the place, Peniel, saying for I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved. We'll stop right there. Okay. So this is incredible, right?
So he's all alone. And again, there's that vulnerability there. He needs to deal with things on his own way. And the way he deals with it is expressed in the story of him wrestling with this figure, right?
This mysterious figure, this angel really. And he prevails all night long. He's wrestling all night long. And he doesn't give up.
That is a beautiful character trait of Jacob, his resilience, his tenacity. And this has been true for his whole life. Even going back to his mother's womb, he was fighting with his brother Esau. He never gave up.
Even to the point of grasping at his brother's heel. And in the birth process, right? Even the process of him being born, he doesn't let go. But he's wrestling with Laban for 20 years, so to speak figuratively.
Wrestling with Laban, but he never gives up. So this is really beautiful about Jacob, one of his strongest character traits. He's resilient. He's tenacious.
He doesn't give up. And that's expressed here with him wrestling with the angel. Then he won't let go of the angel. He won't give up until he receives what?
The blessing. And that is another aspect of Jacob's character that's really, really important. Him being so tenacious, never giving up. Because he wants the blessing is also a theme of his whole life.
His whole life, Jacob wants the blessing. He wants to be the heir of the promise. He wants to be in the line of Abraham and Isaac, his father, going all the way back to Adam, of course. He doesn't want to give up until he gets that blessing.
So he got the blessing from Esau. You know, by Stell Hooker-Kruch, right? Kind of we talked about before in a previous lesson. This time, he gets the blessing by asking for it, right?
Not by deception. Not by self. He just asks for it and he gets the blessing. So this is Jacob.
It's a great scene of the kind of man that Jacob is. Don't give up. Always desiring the blessing here. Okay?
And in response, God didn't change his name, which is significant. You are no longer the supplanture. You are no longer the trickster. You've kind of graduated.
You've worked through those issues. Now you are Israel, which means who he was drives with God. Because the angel says you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed. And that's a beautiful thing here.
And again, this touches upon who Jacob is, the kind of man that Jacob is. Striving, wrestling with God and with men and yet prevailing, overcoming in order to receive the blessing. So how is he striven with God? Well, he's striven with God his whole life.
Just go back to the conditional about 20 years prior, where he says, if you will bless me and follow through on your promises, then you will be my God. Until then, let's just wait and see how things go. This conditional promise is very indicative of who he was as a younger man. Well, now he's a humble man.
He's changed. Okay? He's no longer hotty. He trusts in God and recognizes that God is the bearer of all good gifts here.
So he has prevailed in his wrestling with God by humbling himself. Okay? Then the angel says you prevailed and you've striven with men. Well, how is this taking place in his life?
Well, he's striven with men his whole life too with Esau. From the moment he was in his mother's womb, right? Striving with Esau, his father, Isaac, that whole story about deceiving his father, his uncle, even for 20 years. He's even been striding with his wives and their concubines as we discussed.
These four women that are passing him back and forth and hiring him in order to use him for children and all those stories. So he's wrestling with all of these people and yet he always prevails. He prevails. He receives the blessing.
God is with him. All right. That's a very beautiful thing as well. So his name change indicates also his character and his spiritual journey.
And that's what's so important. He is a man who never gives up, who strives and wrestles with God and with men and he prevails. Okay? And he receives the blessing.
But it's not, this name change is not just significant for himself. It's also significant for his descendants. His personal name change represents the crisis, the drama that the Israelites as a nation is going to endure as well. Israel is going to strive and wrestle with God as well as with men, all the pagan nations, all around them.
Ultimately, Israel as a nation will prevail. The descendants of Israel, the descendants of Jacob will prevail through Jesus Christ. Okay? That is how Israel will surpass their issues, overcome their issues and have their sin forgiven.
This is because of Jesus Christ. So what happens with Jacob is we've been seeing, what happens with Jacob is a foreshadowing of what's going to happen with the nation of Israel. We'll talk about that in just a little bit more here. Okay?
All right. So beautiful insight into the kind of man Jacob is, and then he wants to know God's name. What is your name? He says, I'm not going to tell you my name.
This is important because God will reveal his name ultimately until the burning bush in Exodus 3, where he reveals to Moses, Yahweh, I am who I am. Right now, the God of the patriarchs is El Shaddai, God Almighty, God of the mountains. Okay? God of the hikes.
So that's kind of who God is for right now. Later on salvation history, God will reveal his name. Okay? But at the end of all of this, God does bless him.
The angel does bless Jacob, which is what he wanted all along. And then Jacob rejoices and says, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved. What does that mean? Well, based on what we just saw with his desire with Esau, Jacob wants peace and reconciliation, right?
He wants the blessing. And that's exactly what's happened. He has seen God face to face and his life is preserved, meaning he has reconciled with God. He has peace and friendship with God.
Ultimately, he will fulfill his vow at Beth El. We'll see that little bit later on in his story. But he's come full circle. He's come a long way in his spiritual journey.
And now he's reconciled with God. Okay? So, and then again, he's going to desire the same thing with Esau as we're going to see to be reconciled with God, is to be reconciled with one's brother with one's neighbor. Okay?
So hang tight. I'm going to wrap all of this up with the pretty bow in just a second. Okay? All right.
Finally, then one other point here, number six in your notes. Jacob's injured. And that is something not too gloss over. He fights all night long.
He doesn't give up, but he's injured, right? In the hall of a side, he's put out of joint. He walks with a limp his entire life. Walking forever now, the rest of his life with an injury is also symbolic because it symbolizes how he has wrestled and he has striven with God with men, but he is not fully intact afterwards.
To wrestle with God and to wrestle with one's neighbor, he is going to injure you. You're going to get hurt, right? You're going to get hurt. And I think a lot of us could testify to this reality here.
So, it's better to trust God, right? Not wrestle with God. Trust him and submit to him and love him and obey him. And we're more likely not going to get hurt in the process.
When we fight against God, right? And the New Testament actually apostles, you know, Paul has this vision if you remember in Acts, God says, why do you kick against the goats, right? You're hurting yourself when you fight against God. That's kind of what's happening here.
He's going to get injured. And that also is typological of his people, right? His donation that descends from him. So it's got two points of typology here.
And we'll just continue on to see how Jacob is going to be reconciled with Esau. Okay, so the first point of typology here is that, as I said a moment ago, this wrestling, Jacob is a person with this story of him wrestling with Angel, is a foreshadowing type of all of Israel here. Okay, so I have this great quote from your study bible. I put it down here, it's footnote number four here for you.
And let me just read it because I think it's a beautiful expression tying all these points together. So it says this quote, Jacob or Israel is the distinct embodiment of the nation that springs from him. And so his narrative cycle is significant for its portrayal of Jacob's character, which is the national character. Jacob's character is most notable for his desire to be the heir of the covenant.
Or in other words, his desire for God's blessings. Jacob is not the first born of a natural choice for this role. And the story of his career is one of the struggle against others, especially his family and even against God himself, in an effort to receive a blessing. That's a great quote that summarizes everything that we've seen here with his name change.
And that of course is the people of Israel as a whole. However, if we look at this typology a little bit more, St. Augustine also points out, you've got the blessing but you've got the injury. So check this out here in your notes, quote, this is from St.
Augustine. The angel is a type of Christ and is defeat points to the Passion of Christ, who allowed his own people to prevail over him. And just as the victorious Jacob was blessed and injured at the same time, so with the people of Israel, some are blessed to believe in Christ, while others are crippled and unpleased. So it's a really beautiful insight from St.
Augustine, taking the typology with Jacob a little bit further. But there's another point of typology that the catechism breaks down for us and that is prayer. Jacob wrestling with the angel all night long and not giving up and receiving the blessing at the end of it is a type of prayer. So the catechism 2573 is a great quote.
I love this. It says this quote, before confronting his elder brother Esau, Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious figure who refuses to reveal his name, who he blesses him before leaving him at dawn. From this account, the spiritual tradition of the church has retained a symbol of prayer as a battle of faith and as the triumph of perseverance. So this is awesome because just as we saw that Isaac was a model of prayer as well in regards to praying for, interceding for his wife, the conveyor of the son.
So is Jacob. Jacob is actually a good model of prayer. Because remember, he wants the blessing. He strives with God and he wrestles all night long.
And that is a great image for prayer, our prayer life. The prayer, on the one hand prayer would be easy because who doesn't want to sit with some peace and quiet and talk to God, right? And work some things out. But it's so difficult.
Prayer should be so easy to get. It's so difficult. And this image of wrestling all night long is a great image of how we need to persevere. We cannot give up.
We need to continue to fight the spiritual battle. And if we persevere, we will receive a blessing at the end of our perseverance. So Jacob is a great model of prayer and ask for his intercession as well to help you to help you persist in your prayer as well. Okay.
All right. So with that, then that typology, let's move a little bit further here down the line here in chapter 33. He's not wrestling with Angel. He has his limp and is cane, I guess you could say, walking along.
And in chapter 33, before he meets, he saw he does something that's kind of, well, it is bad. And it's going to have repercussions as we're going to see in the next lesson with his children. But it says in verse, so chapter 33 verse two, he put the maids with their children in front. So he divides his company, right?
And he puts the maids with their children in the front. Lea with her children next. If then Rachel and Joseph last of all, why did he do this? He did this because of Esau attacks.
He's going to attack from the front. He's going to be attacking the maids with their children first. And then Lea and her children. And then last of all, Rachel and Joseph, but Rachel and Joseph have the greater chance of escape.
If Esau attacks, those at the end of the caravan can run as fast as they can to the hills. So this is another move of his preferential love that's going to have repercussions. He talked about preferential love of parents and children going all the way back to Isaac and Rebecca, and it's going to have consequences now in Jacob's life as well. So this is a move that is guaranteed not lost on his entire family.
So then Jacob goes before them all and he bows seven times to the ground against sevens and number of the covenants. He's looking for restoration and renewal, healing with his brother. So that's a very symbolic there. I wanted to restore kind of the covenantal family bonds with his brother.
And luckily things go well. To summarize this for the sake of time, Esau is not angry. Time has healed all wounds. They weep and they cry and they hug each other and they hug it out, right?
And things are going really well. And then note what Jacob says here. He says, you know, basically, keep the gifts, brother. Keep the gifts Esau.
Then accept my present for my hand for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God. And here we're coming full circle with this beautiful story of reconciliation here. He says to see your face like seeing the face of God. This is a direct echo and it touches directly upon what he was desiring before.
He desired to see Esau's face, which is reconciliation and friendship. Then he wrestles with God all night long and he sees the face of God and his life is preserved. Okay. And that means that he has friendship and reconciliation with God.
Now to see his brother's face is to see the face of God. This is super significant because again, touch upon the kind of man that Jacob is, his spiritual journey and then significance of his name change. So he is driven with God as we've seen. He is prevailed and he's seen the face of God.
He is driven with men his whole life. Of course, his brother Esau here and he is prevailed. And so therefore now he can see the face of his brother. He is reconciled with God and reconciliation with his brother.
What does that mean? It means to be reconciled with God, includes and requires reconciliation with one's neighbor. And vice versa. To be reconciled with one's neighbor is to be reconciled with God.
This right here is the epitome. It's the living out. It's the narrative exemplification of love, God and love of neighbor. To love God and to love neighbor is to see God's face and to see a neighbor's face to have reconciliation and friendship with both.
So I absolutely love. So if you read this, if you read this, if you read this, you can see the narrative carefully. You can see Jacob desires friendship and restoration and reconciliation. And it's expressed in the desire to see God's face and then of course, Esau's face.
And it is achieved. Esau has driven. He has prevailed. He has friendship with God and with his brother.
Okay? Love of God. Love of neighbor being displayed. Here's so beautifully.
Alright, now let's talk about how Jacob's return from exile concludes the whole journey here. His exile is now his return. He walks the path of Abraham. So let's look at this connection between Jacob and Abraham coming full circle here in his call from, from Haran.
Okay? I am Dr. Nick. Thank you so much for watching this clip.
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