welcome back to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is Pastor Mark here, and I'm joined for one last time with none other than than me. Lewis, a student ministry director here at Compass Bible Church. It's been a joy to do this with you, pastor Mark and hopefully we've been a blessing to our church, helped you understand the Bible more, get some takeaways and just also learn patterns that you can continue forward in reading your Bible. Yep. And hopefully we gave Pastor PJ and Pastor Rod a well-deserved break as they were on vacation and getting some rest. So hopefully we're able to do that for them as well. We are in Genesis chapter 31 and 32, what's going on in these chapters? Give us a brief reminder of where we're at and what is happening, Lewis. Yeah, so Genesis 28 to 33 is this Jacob section and, we proposed that the theme might be Jacob's schemes, but God redeems. Right. I didn't come up with that. That was a professor of mine who passed that on to me. But the idea here is that Jacob has been trying all of these things to make the best of his situation. He's looking out for himself. He's really trying to take matters into his own hands, and we've seen that he's met. His Uncle Laben, who is even bigger of a schemer than he is and has out schemed him. But God has been faithful to continue and keep his promises to Jacob, to Isaac, to Abraham, and shown favor to Jacob in spite of all of his scheming and honestly all of his failed scheming. Like we saw at the end of our last chapter with the flocks and how to breed them, and now God is going to instruct Jacob to go back to the land of his fathers. And in 31 verse three, the Lord said to Jacob, return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you. This is a recurring theme that we've seen already with the patriarchs. Mm-hmm. Abraham was called out of Babylon to the Promised Land. He was called by God. And in that's in chapter 12. Isaac, in a similar way, is told by God to settle in the land as the Lord had instructed him in ver in Chapter 26. And now Jacob, likewise, in a similar way, is told by God to return to the land. I think one of the interesting things that we see throughout all three of these patriarchs is that they're told these promises by God and given this instruction to return to the land, and then they almost immediately. Mess up. Mm-hmm. In just a couple verses, they're already completely confused. Abraham, for example, is told to go to the promised Land mm-hmm. And then immediately goes to Egypt. He's like, Hey, oh, this is cool. Oh, nope, I'm outta here. There's a, we're going to Egypt. Yeah. Isaac immediately lies to a bilich, which we talked about a couple days ago. Mm-hmm. And here I think we're gonna see a little bit of a mess that is still on Jacob's hands. In this particular passage, Jacob is fleeing from Laben, and you're gonna see a bunch of different things that are a product of some of the scheming and the deception and the plans and intentions of Jacob. Mm-hmm. In the previous passages kind of play out and even again, you're gonna see problems with Rachel and Leah here in chapter 31. So why is Jacob running away? Why is he running away from his uncle? Well, he's running away because Laben has been caught effectively. God has enriched Jacob through his scheming, despite. The messiness and the sin. Mm-hmm. God has enriched Jacob. But he is now pretty much too big. His wealth is too big and he has to go, but he's also instructed by God to go back to the land. Yeah. So verses one and two right. They say that it looks almost like Jacob has bankrupted laben. He's stolen all of his stuff, not necessarily deceitfully all the time. Right. But Labin is starting to resent Jacob because his nephew who's married his daughters, is now much wealthier than he is. And so Jacob decides to leave. And this paragraph right here from verses four to 16 is really interesting because I think we see Jacob start to turn a corner a little bit and start to, stop relying so much on himself and he's giving a lot of credit to God. It's really important when you read paragraphs in the Bible to look at what's repeated, what's emphasized. And here we see Jacob is saying a lot about God and not much about himself. Verse five, the God of my father has been with me. Continuing on verse seven, God did not permit him to harm me. Verse nine, God has taken away the livestock. 11. The angel of God said to me, and then he says, here I am. And which is throughout the Bible a good posture for the servants of God to adopt. That's right. And this kind of brings us back to a little bit of our debate that you may have caught from a couple chapters back where we were discussing, where does Jacob have the faith of Abraham, right? Mm-hmm. Could say the conversion that's not. Quite a word we would use for the Old Testament, but where does he pick that up? My contention is that it's messy, but like his father Abraham, his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac. Mm-hmm. He has that faith although distorted by sin to some degree. He has that faith of Abraham in chapter 28. And I'm gonna contend that we're gonna see. Growth. We're gonna see him growing in his trust of the Lord. From that point up until, well, really the end of his life, but certainly through today's reading, what do you think about that? I'm more inclined to think that the point where Jacob really finally trusts the Lord is later on in his life, probably the ending of today's reading around the end of chapter 32, I think chapter 33, where he wrestles, or chapter 32, where he wrestles in 33. When he finally gets to meet his brother. I think those are the expressions of faith that I would associate with. Someone who is fully trusting the Lord. I think the evidence that we've read so far in Genesis points to Jacob trusting himself. And I think these two chapters, 31 and 32, we're gonna see Jacob finally submit to God. He's been wrestling with God throughout these chapters. And at the very end of chapter 32, God finally pins him to the mat. Literally. Yeah. And figuratively. And he finally, submits to God and stops relying on himself. And one of the reasons that I believe that is chapter 28, when he first met God at Bethel, he gives a contingent promise to God, right? He says, God, he. If you do these things for me, then you can be my God, basically. Right? Yeah. Yeah. If God, you're good to me, then I'll give you the privilege of being my God. So then what do you make of what's going on in chapter 31? Right? Because there are indications here of some sort of good things happening. Mm-hmm. What do you make of that and how can we apply, at least from your interpretation of this passage, how can we apply that today? Yeah, I think. Both the way Pastor Mark's looking at these passages and the way that I'm looking at these passages I think both of them have good evidence from the text and ultimately it's not really a huge deal when Jacob. The exact moment of his conversion, so to speak. Right. Ultimately that's not the goal of these chapters is not for us to diagnose when Jacob finally fully trusts the Lord. Right. I think what we're seeing here is that God is removing Jacob's trust in himself and getting him to rely on the Lord. That's right. And so, if you were to take my position. You would see something like, okay this is like when someone wants to become a Christian and they're starting to read their Bible and they're going to church and they're asking questions. They're really interested. That's what I would say. Chapter 31 is for Jacob. He's starting to realize, you know what? God's actually been doing all this. I tried really hard to make my own way and to get all this wealth for myself. And really it's been God providing for me the whole time. And he's finally starting to realize that in Chapter 31, whereas your position would be applied a little differently, right? That's right. And again, a similar thing. Let me just preface what I'm gonna say by making sure that you don't hear me saying that a Christian is somebody who has only partially given them, given themself over to God because it is very clear that the faith of Abraham is comprehensive. Mm-hmm. It is a comprehensive faith. At the same time, we can come to faith with. Some lack of clarity and we can still battle the flesh in our faith. And you even see that with Abraham, right? Yes. There's many instances where he doesn't trust God, where he is disobedient. And you see him, I'm gonna contend and we brought this up before, but you see him grow Yeah. In his trust of the Lord throughout his life. My position of what you see happening with Jacob is similar. I think you see him. There's lack of clarity. There's sin that is still present. Mm-hmm. And there's consequences from former sins that is still very much present. But you see him growing in his belief in God and his trust in God. And you see that start to take place here in chapter 31. And then I think it comes into kind of full fruition in chapter 32, where you see some really. Clear evidence of his faith and he doesn't have some of the. Contingent things, right? Yeah. That he mentions in 28 he doesn't have contingencies to the promises of God. So let's go to chapter 32. Mm-hmm. In chapter 32, we are seeing the return of Jacob. Back to the land. And that comes with a particular challenge. That particular challenge is that Esau is still there. Yes. And the last time that he and Esau saw each other, it was not a particularly pleasant no. Get together. And so what's the anticipation in Jacob's mind? It's not gonna be another pleasant get together. It's gonna be a little bit of a touch and go situation. What do you see here in this passage though? Well, I think first of all, you do see some fear. You do see some fear from Jacob. And that actually, that's in verses seven and eight, right? Yeah, that's in verses seven and eight. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Before we get there, would you mind if I pointed out something that I found really helpful from Chapter 31? Sure. Alright, so just, sorry, I know you're doing this, you got my transition, my transition was all done. You're finally, and now you're just going back to transition game and now I'm ruining it. So something that I noticed in chapter 31 that I thought was just really, really cool to see is when Jacob runs away from Laben, Rachel takes Laban's. Household gods. Yeah. Right. And I thought it's just so ironic that Laben is chasing after them to save his gods. Mm-hmm. Right? Laben is chasing after Jacob because he's trying to rescue his gods from this guy. Yeah. And I thought that was such an ironic picture and such a great thing for us to remember. Right? All of the idols that we're tempted by, they can't do anything, right. We don't worship statues. Hopefully you're not worshiping statues, you're not tempted to do that. But even if you are right, but also all the other idols we put right, like our careers or our family or things that we might be tempted to idolize those things can't save us. Yeah, right. That's right. We actually. Put in the work to make them what they are. And I think that's a great observation. That's a good observation about the things that we're tempted to idolize, is ask yourself, is this thing going to love me and take care of me and protect me the way God can? Yeah. No. Right. So that was just something that I really loved from chapter 31 that I wanted to highlight. It's, but sorry for ruining your transition lesson. Let's see if I can make another transition. Okay. Based on what you just said, that is as smooth and clean as the first one. One of the idols that Jacob might have is his possessions. And so one of the things we see that happens sequentially next is he is fearful of his possessions getting lost and as he reenters the land, the land where Esai is mm-hmm. He makes the decision out of fear to split up his possessions pretty much saying if esau attacks, half of them at least. I still have the other half if he gets the other half, although the other half is safe over here. And he responds really in fear there. But then what is the response that follows that? I think he realizes that that's not actually going to save him. That idol of his possessions is not. As valuable as his faith to God. And so you do see some things here, evidence of the faith of Abraham. You see him, I think I mentioned this right? He calls this God's camp. And then really importantly in verse 10 of chapter 32, you see a prayer. You see a prayer where he says this, I'm not worthy. Of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all of the faithfulness that you, God have shown to your servant. Four, with only my staff. I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. And then listen to this, please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him that he may come and attack me. The mothers with the children, man, that is a totally, yeah. New thing from Jacob. Mm-hmm. What an amazing prayer. And we should have that sort of prayer, right? We're not, I hope, fearing our brother attacking us with an army, but man, we should, when we have fear, we need to turn to God and say, look, I have nothing of. What I have is anything that I deserve. Yeah. But you are the one who's provided it for me and I'm turning to you for the protection and for the care and the provision that I need. 'cause there's nowhere else for me to go. What a turn for Jacob. Definitely. And I, what I love so much about seeing this, I think it. Coming off our great weekend with the biblical counseling intensive is, it reminds me of something we talked about this weekend about heart issues. And one of the diagnostic questions to see, what really has hold of your heart mm-hmm. Is what are you afraid of? Mm-hmm. And what do you go to when you're afraid? Right. Verses seven and eight of chapter 32, Jacob's first response when he's afraid he goes to himself. Mm-hmm. He tries to think of a plan, think of an idea, think of something to. Help. And then he says, you know what? Oh, actually I should go to the Lord. Right? And I think a great diagnostic question for yourself to think about is what makes me afraid? Mm-hmm. And where do I go when I'm afraid? That's right. What do I do? What are my first thoughts? What's my initial reaction when I'm scared? That'll tell you so much about who you worship, who your refuge is in. Who your rock is what you're afraid of. 'cause fear is worship because when you're afraid of something, you're showing that that thing's powerful. And when you're afraid of something and you look to something else to rescue you, that's where you, that's another place that you're worshiping, you're going to, to that place because you think, man, that is, that's powerful. That's strong. And I think Jacob even mentions that in verse in chapter 31, verse 42. He calls God the God of Abraham and the fear. Of Isaac. And yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. Yeah. And in verse 52 of that same chapter, 31, by the end of chapter 32, well, I guess I shouldn't say the end, by the middle of chapter 32, he is no longer fearing the loss of his wealth and his possessions. In fact, he is giving generous gifts to his brother, Esau. Yeah. You could read this as a bribe. You could say he's just trying to bribe him, trying to get him on his side. Yeah. I actually think this is a. Act of humility given some of the clues that we have in this passage about precisely what he's doing with these gifts. I, I think you do see him definitively saying at the beginning of chapter 32, I'm trying to hold onto my possessions as best as I can. Yeah. By the end of chapter, sorry, I say, keep saying the end by the middle of chapter 32. Mm-hmm. You see him? Using his possessions to protect his family and to, I think, make a genuine attempt at an apology to his brother Issa. Yeah. I think in some ways Jacob is trying to reconcile with his brother mm-hmm. At great cost to himself. Yeah. He's taking, yeah. This is tens of thousands of dollars. Yes. Maybe a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. We don't quite know, but we're looking at. Huge, huge gift here. This is no basket of popcorn, right? Not that if you ever gave anyone a basket of popcorn, that's a bad thing. I love popcorn. But yeah, he's really showing a sacrificial and humble nature that I don't think was there before. He's. Willing to give away stuff to mend a relationship. He's willing to take the loss for the sake of reconciling with his brother, and that's something that we should wanna do, right? Yep. If you have, a brother or sister in Christ or a brother or sister or anyone who you have. Past sin against we should be willing to take the loss in the relationship. Maybe not materially, but even figuratively. We should not be trying to defend our reputation. We should be trying to reconcile with them. You notice does, Jacob doesn't bring up anything about Esau's mistakes in the past. He's just saying. Hey I want to be reconciled with you. That's right. That's right. Now we get into a super fascinating passage, perhaps one of the most fascinating passages in Genesis, maybe even in the whole testament. Mm-hmm. This is a fascinating account of when Jacob wrestles with a man, as it says. Mm-hmm. Now, there's a number of things that I think are important just to cover. I do think this is a real physical fight. You could read this and think it's some sort of metaphor or some sort of analogy. I do think this is a real physical fight given the way the narrative presents it. I'm going to contend probably from the minority position, but I think a lot of people are gonna say, this is a Christophany. This is a pre-incarnate appearance of the second person of the Trinity. I'm gonna say I don't think that is the case. Hosea 12 is my, mm-hmm. My biggest point to contend against this, this is Hosea the prophet interpreting what is happening in Genesis. Mm-hmm. And in Hosea 12 three, it says, in the womb, he took his brother by the heel, referring to Jacob. And in his manhood, he strove with God. That's gonna sound familiar, right? To what we're reading, Uhhuh and what you read in chapter 32. But then verse four, in Hosea 12, it says he strove with the angel. Mm-hmm. And prevailed. He wept and found. His F and sought his favor. He met God at Bethel and there God spoke with us. Of course, that passage continues on, but I think that's evidence that this is an angelic figure, not a Christophany here. And then also the just description of what's going on here, I think corresponds more with an angel than with a Christoph, with a member of the Trinity, whether it's an angel or a Christoph. Both have to condescend. Mm-hmm. Meaning they both have to step down. This is not really truly a fair fight, whether it's an angel or it's God, they both do. But I think the description here makes more sense that it's an angel. And then also just as an observation when Jacob does declare who he saw, he says Elohim. So he says, yeah, he saw the face of Elohim, which is not. He does not use the term Yahweh and I'm not even sure that we necessarily know that Jacob fully understands himself. Mm-hmm. Who he was wrestling with. Okay. Why does this matter? Why does this wrestling match matter? What's exactly going on here? What do you think, Lewis? Well, I think it's the culmination. Of what we've seen from Jacob's life so far in Genesis, we've seen that Jacob has been trying to do things his way. He's been trying to rely on himself, his own initiative, his own shrewdness, his own wisdom. And I think what we're seeing is that his biggest challenge is not. Other people. It's not his own finances, it's not his own wellbeing. His biggest challenge is are you going to submit to God? Are you going to be faithful to the Lord? He needs to deal with God first. And. Submit to him rather than trying to lean on his own understanding. Yeah. One way of putting it might be that we've seen Jacob wrestle with all these other characters, right? Yeah. We've seen him wrestle with Esau. We've seen him wrestle with his dad. We've seen him wrestle with Laben. We've seen him, in some sense, wrestle even with his wives, right? Mm-hmm. He's been doing all this wrestling with a lot of conflict. Yeah. Conflict. There's in some sense wrestling, although not actual. But then he actually wrestles here with God recognizing that he does, as to your point, he does need to deal with God on God's terms. Right. And God wins. Yeah. That's also important. But Jacob also wins, right. In a sense, because he's blessed. Right. And he insists that this man, he wrestles. That he gets the blessing of God and God does indeed bless him. So in some sense, he wins by losing. Yes. Which perhaps we can make very direct equivalence to that in our own life. Right? We as Christians, we win. Salvation. We attain salvation by giving up everything. Amen. By giving up all of our life, giving up all of our possessions, our family, our jobs, our careers. We win by losing everything of in the world. And I think that's true for Jacob as well. He loses to this angel. But ultimately he is blessed by him. Yeah. I think though, here in this passage, and you tell me what you think. I think we're still seeing Jacob as a man who takes initiative, who's shrewd. Mm-hmm. Who's clever and he's been doing that before. What's different about this particular account as he wrestles with this angel? What do you think? Yeah. Well now I think he's using that initiative. In submission to God. So there's a lot of times that God gives us personality traits or skills that we can use idol for ourselves, or that we can use them for our for his glory, right? Yeah. God may have given you a personality that is like Jacob, you love to take initiative, you love to find solutions, you love to, to make things happen. And the temptation with that is to be like. Jacob earlier in this narrative where he uses that for himself. But instead now we see that Jacob is gonna use that personality of his for the glory of God in submission to God. He's not going to take initiative when he should be trusting the Lord. Yeah, and you could do that with all sorts of things. Maybe you're a great host, maybe you love hosting people at your home but you can turn something like that. A skill that you have from the Lord into something that is idolatrous, right? Mm-hmm. Are you hosting to love people and care for them and to make them feel comfortable and to enjoy the event or whatever's going on, or are you trying to demonstrate your proudness at making cookies or your mm-hmm. Beautiful home or whatever, right? You can use that. Skill for good or for ill, you can use that gift from God, that character trait that you might have for his glory or for sin. Yeah. Now, earlier we talked about winning by losing, and that's something that Jesus is gonna talk about in Matthew 10. So let's head to Matthew 10 and Wow that's good. That's good. That's really good. But yes, let's head to Matthew 10. Let's to Matthew 10 for the next 40 minutes of our podcast. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Alright. Matthew 10. We're picking up in the middle of a section of the at least how the ESV breaks these things up and it is Jesus reminding the disciples that they're gonna be persecuted and why are they gonna be persecuted. They're gonna be persecuted because Jesus is persecuted at the very, the la very last sentence of chapter 10, verse 25. It says, if they have called the master of the House, zebo, wow. That's not what that says, but, but don't call someone that either. Do you wanna give it another try or are you just giving up? I, I'm so embarrassed that I, I don't think I'm gonna give it another try. You're gonna return your diploma after this. It's hanging on the wall right next to me. I'm gonna bring it down. So if they have called the master of the house billable, there we go. How much more will they malign those of his household, right? Yeah. The Pharisees earlier, they attributed Jesus's works to the devil, and so of course they are going to dislike and persecute his disciples, and that's why Jesus talks about who we should be scared of. And we talked about this in Genesis, right? Who we're scared of shows who we think is in control. That's right. Right. And Lewis is referencing chapter nine from a couple days ago, where the Pharisees said specifically about Jesus, that he casts out demons by the Prince of demons. That's an indictment like none other. Yeah. And Jesus is specifically referring to that. Remember from yesterday's episode that we're talking about, this is persecution from the people of Israel. This is persecution directly from Jesus's own people. Which is stunning. Which is stunning. Yeah. And so that next section then he says, don't be scared of them. Right. 26 to 33. Mm-hmm. He says, don't be scared of them. You should instead be. Worshiping be fearing God. And then he talks about in 34 to 39, 1 of the reasons that people will persecute his disciples. And that reason is because of some divided loyalty, right? That's right. The people of Israel at this time wanted a savior, not from their sin, but from. The elector's gone. They wanted salvation from those things. That's not the kind of king that Jesus came to be. That is not the kind of king, at least at this point, that Jesus came to be. Definitely the one one since you went back. On me earlier. I'm gonna go back a little bit on you. Okay. To verse 32 says, so everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my father in heaven. I think it's really important that we read this and we apply this to our own life, and I think this is a great test of your faith. I think you should. Read this and then think about your life. Do you acknowledge God before your coworkers? Do you do that on the sidelines of the soccer team while you watch your kids play? Do you do that online? Do you do that throughout all your life? Yeah. Even I think that's a great test of if is your faith genuine? Yeah. Even the things you talk about. Right. Do you change the expressions you might use? Mm-hmm. Do you change the subjects you might bring up? If someone from church asks you about your weekend, do you answer that question differently than someone at work asked you about your weekend. That's right. Now, remember, Peter denies Jesus and is forgiven. So this is not the ultimate test, but I think it's a really good test. I think it's a really good test. And the final section is about rewards. God rewards those who are faithful to him, who are righteous, and just remember that. God sees every millisecond of your life. God sees every little decision that you make. He sees your heart at every moment, and because of that, he's going to notice when you give a cup of cold water to somebody and he's gonna remember that even if you don't, even if no one else ever does God, who is. All knowing, all powerful and cares about these things will so go out today. Give somebody a cup of cold water. I'm gonna get you one after the podcast. Well, thank you. It better be cold, not just cool. Otherwise it doesn't count. Well, there's another. Episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Thank you Lewis. Let me pray for us and we'll wrap it up there. Lord, thank you that you're a God who is a God of salvation. That you came to save, you came to save your people. Yes, you came to save the people of Israel, but you also came to save the Gentiles through the promise and the blessing of Abraham. All the nations would be blessed. And so we sit here today in the United States. In Texas or wherever you're listening from. Blessed because of God, because of his promises, because of the hope and the salvation that he brings. In Jesus name I pray, amen. Amen. See you.

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