Family Reconciliation

When God calls us to reconcile we should trust God’s promise to protect us through His grace rather than live by fear.

Dealing with your past

I was just watching the Lion King with my kids the other day. And there is a moment where Simba says to Rafiki that he doesn’t want to deal with this past. He says to Rafiki, “it doesn’t matter, it’s in the past”. Then Rafiki hits him in the head and says Simba says “ow! What was that for?!” And Rafiki says, “it doesn’t matter, it’s in the past”, and then Simba says “yeah, but it still hurts”. Then Rafiki says, “Oh, yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it. You can either run from it...or learn from it”.

Sometimes we have this belief that just because something was in the past that it doesn’t matter anymore, than we can just pretend that it never happened. That we can ignore it, and by ignoring it we never actually move on from it, instead we lead it hinder us from growing as people. Simba hadn’t actually grown, he just pretended that the past didn’t matter anymore.

We have seen Jacob who has “wrestled” with God. And now he is going to wrestle with his past. Specifically, his brother Esau.

We don’t deal with challenges on our own

Jacob has a vision where he see’s that God’s angels are with him. We saw “messengers of God” come to Jacob earlier at Bethel when he saw the “stairway to heaven”. Jacob responds by calling it “God’s camp” and giving it the name “two camps”. This name is supposed to be a reminder to Jacob that the force with him is greater than the force that could potentially be against him.

But then when it actually comes to the time of meeting his brother, rather than going with his “two camps” he divides his own camp for safety.

We don’t go into challenges without praying

Jacob is terrified hearing that Esau has over 400 men with him. So Jacob prays to God.

Jacob recognizes in his prayer that God had been more kind to him then he deserved. That God had blessed him, it wasn’t of his own ability he had many animals. And he knew that he was dependent on God to deliver him.

Yet Jacob still has some conflict. He prays, and then he plans, then he prays again, and he plans again.

We don’t resolve issues with offerings

Jacob, in a sense, tried to give away the blessing he had stole from his brother. He does that by giving cattle and other things back to his brother. In this, he also tries to bring an “offering” to Esau as if he was a God to appease. He even says that seeing his brothers face is like “seeing God’s face”. The problem is, even with God, he doesn’t desire sacrifice but he desires our hearts.

Jacob bows to his brother 7 times. He kisses his brother and weeps.

If you have hurt someone and you just try and give them money or a gift that isn’t going to solve your problem with them. Sadly, as hard as we might try to solve our issues with money, it can’t fix a heart problem.

We can’t fully reconcile with others by half-way solutions

Esau invites him back to his home, and Jacob says that he will meet him there but then doesn’t actually travel there. Yet at the same time doesn’t go where God tells him to go. Esau wouldn’t have been upset if Jacob had just gone to his home but he felt the need to lie anyways.

Jacob settled half-way to where God wanted him to, we will see the challenges presented with the place he lands in the next chapter.

It says that Jacob arrived “safely”, the word “Salem” is also the name of a city. Yet we know of Shechem that it was at the center, with at least 11 roads running through it. It was a place of lawlessness.

“In the case of Jacob, we find it appropriate that the man of moral contradictions established himself at Shechem upon arriving in Canaan.”

-Mathews

God can reconcile our half-hearted solutions by faith.

Jacob still builds an altar to God and worships God, even as he is misguided in some ways.

You have friends who may be half-hearted, who are taking steps. Maybe you are as well. God can take us.

2 Corinthians 5:16–21 “From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.” He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”