Genesis 32.26-Jacob Demands A Blessing From the Lord
Thursday September 7, 2006
Genesis: Genesis 32:26-Jacob Demands A Blessing From the Lord
Lesson # 201
Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 32:24.
This evening we will continue with our studies of Jacob’s wrestling match with the Son of God, which is recorded in Genesis 32:24-32.
In the first part of Genesis 32:24 we saw Jacob alone in prayer prior to his encounter with Esau and entrance into the land of Canaan, which was in obedience to the Lord’s command.
Then, in the second half of Genesis 32:24 we saw Jacob wrestling the God-Man, the preincarnate Christ.
This wrestling match between God and Jacob is a “microcosm” or “symbolic” of Jacob’s struggles in life with men, which in reality were with God.
The wrestling match with Jacob did “not” teach any spiritual lessons to Jacob but rather the divine discipline that he underwent in the form of the fourteen years of hard labor for his deceitful uncle Laban taught Jacob many spiritual lessons, which are symbolized in the wrestling match with the Lord.
Also, in Genesis 32:24, we noted the significance of Jacob’s wrestling match with the Lord taking place at night, which is that it is a picture or symbolic of the divine discipline he underwent in the form of his fourteen years of hard labor for his deceitful uncle Laban.
Then, in Genesis 32:24, we noted the significance of the wrestling match ending at daybreak, which is that it symbolized or was a picture of Jacob no longer under divine discipline but rather experiencing fellowship with God.
We have also studied Genesis 32:25a and noted the significance of the Lord not prevailing over Jacob in their wrestling match.
The Lord did not prevail over Jacob in the sense that the Lord could not refuse Jacob’s prayer requests because they were according to His will and because Jacob persevered in prayer.
Last evening we studied Genesis 32:25b and the significance of the Lord dislocating Jacob’s hip.
The dislocation of Jacob’s hip symbolized that by means of the fourteen years of hard labor for Laban, which constituted divine discipline, the Lord had succeeded in getting Jacob to stop trusting in his own power to solve his problems and to depend upon the power of God.
This evening we will note Genesis 32:26 where the crippled Jacob clings to the Lord and will not let Him go until the Lord blesses him.
Genesis 32:24, “Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”
Genesis 32:25, “When he (the Lord) saw that he (the Lord) had not prevailed against him (Jacob), he (the Lord) touched the socket of his (Jacob’s) thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.”
Genesis 32:26, “Then he (the Lord) said, ‘Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.’ But he (Jacob) said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’”
We noted in Genesis 32:24 that daybreak symbolized or was a picture of Jacob no longer under divine discipline but rather experiencing fellowship with God.
The divine discipline in the form of fourteen years of hard labor for his uncle Laban was successful in getting Jacob to stop depending upon his own power to acquire the blessing of God, which is depicted in dislocating Jacob’s hip.
“Bless” is the verb barakh (Er^B*), which means, “to endue with power for success, prosperity, fecundity, longevity” and so therefore, the verb indicates Jacob’s desire that the Lord would endue him with power for success, prosperity, fecundity (offspring in great numbers) and longevity.”
Like his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac, the Lord would bless Jacob in the sense that the Lord would multiply his descendants so that his posterity was great in number both, racially and spiritually and multiply his possessions and livestock and prosper him financially.
The Lord would give Jacob the capacity to be prolific in that he would be the progenitor of a multitude of children in both a biological and spiritual sense.
He learned through the discipline that God is sovereign and that no one can stop God from blessing him, not even Esau.
Jacob also learned that he could not merit the blessing of God, nor could he do anything that could merit the blessing of God.
Proverbs 10:22, “It is the blessing of the LORD that makes rich, and he adds no sorrow to it.”
Therefore, Jacob has learned what God’s grace is all about, namely, that we can not merit the blessing of God because of who we are or what we do, that it is a gift and cannot be earned or deserved.
Jacob exploited his brother Esau’s hunger and got him to exchange his birthright for a bowl of red lintel soup because he thought he had to do something to get God to bless him.
He disguised himself as Esau in order to deceive his father Isaac who was blind into giving him the blessing of the birthright rather than to Esau because he thought he had to do something to get blessed by God.
Jacob’s finally learned that neither Esau or anyone or himself could prevent God from blessing him.
He clung to the Lord demanding to be blessed because he now understands that the blessings of God come directly from God and not by cheating and deceiving people.
Jacob had learned through the twenty years with Laban that Esau could neither provide nor prevent the blessing of God and so it was not Esau that stood in the way of Jacob’s blessing in the land of Canaan.
On the one hand, it was God Who opposed Jacob and on the other it was Jacob himself, who by means of his deceitfulness and treachery, attempted to produce spiritual blessings through carnal means.
Jacob had learned that the blessing of God must be obtained from God himself, and this must be done by clinging to Him in helpless dependence, not by trying to manipulate Him or fighting Esau.
Jacob had learned through the years of divine discipline while living with Laban that he did “not” have to deceive his father Isaac into giving him the blessing of the birthright instead of Esau but that the blessing of the birthright was based upon God’s grace meaning it was a gift that he did “not” earn or deserve.
A comparison of Ephesians 1:3-14 and Ephesians 2:8-10 teaches that we have been not only been saved by grace through faith in Christ but also blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places because of the merits of Christ and His death on the Cross and our eternal union with Him.
Ephesians 1:1-2, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Ephesians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.”
Ephesians 1:5-6, “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”
Ephesians 1:7-8, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”
Ephesians 1:9-10, “In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.”
Ephesians 1:11-12, “In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.”
Ephesians 1:13-14, “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation -- having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory.”
The prepositional phrases “in Christ,” “in Him” and “in the Beloved” indicate that the Ephesian believers were blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places “because of their eternal union and identification with Christ” and not because of anything they had done.
Your “position in Christ” refers to the fact that at the moment you believed in Christ, the omnipotence of the Spirit caused you to become identical and united with Christ in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session, and which ministry of the Spirit is called in Scripture, the “baptism” of the Spirit.
This means that when Christ was crucified, God crucified you with Him and when Christ died and was buried, God considers you to have died and been buried with Christ.
It also means that when Christ was raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father (the session of Christ), God raised and seated you with Him.
Ephesians 2:1, “Although, all of you were spiritually dead in your trespasses and sins.”
Ephesians 2:2, “in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.”
Ephesians 2:3, “Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
Ephesians 2:4, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us.”
Ephesians 2:5, “even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
Ephesians 2:6, “and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Ephesians 2:7, “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
Ephesians 2:9, “not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
“Faith” is the noun pistis (pivsti$), which means to believe to the extent of complete trust and reliance upon the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ for eternal salvation and thus deliverance from eternal condemnation.
When a person believes in Jesus Christ as his Savior he in effect trusts the witness of the Holy Spirit concerning Jesus Christ who is the object of faith for eternal salvation and it is the object of our faith, Jesus Christ, that gives us eternal life and who has merit before God.
We are saved and blessed with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places based upon His merits and His merits alone and so faith is the only system of perception that God will accept because it is non-meritorious and is compatible with His grace policy.
“Grace” is all that God is free to do in imparting unmerited blessings to us based upon the merits of Christ and His death on the Cross-and our eternal union with Him.
Grace is God treating us in a manner that we don’t deserve and excludes any human works in order to acquire eternal salvation.
Grace means that God saved us despite ourselves and not according to anything that we do.
The grace of God is directed towards us in God the Father’s provision for salvation in the impeccable unique Person and finished work of Christ on the Cross and after salvation it is the Word of God and His provision of the Spirit as the believer’s true teacher and mentor.
The grace of God is God’s provision for salvation through the Person and Work of Christ on the Cross and a post-salvation relationship with Him through the Word, the Nature and Spirit of Christ.
Grace excludes any human merit in salvation (Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5) and gives the Creator all the credit and the creature none.
Grace is the result of the function of all the divine attributes, without compromising the divine integrity.
The unique Person of the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work on the Cross-is the source of grace (2 Cor. 8:9) and is a gift from the Father (2 Cor. 9:15).
2 Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”
2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!”
The grace of God is extended to the entire human race through the unlimited atonement and the offer of salvation to all men (1 John 2:2; 1 Tim. 4:10).
Titus 2:11, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men.”
The message of God's saving act in Christ is described as the “gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24), and the “word of His grace” (Acts 20:32; cf. 14:3).
The only thing required of the hearer of the Gospel is to make the non-meritorious decision to believe in Jesus Christ for salvation.
By His grace, God justifies the undeserving and unworthy through faith in His Son Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:24).
Romans 3:23-24, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”
Jesus Christ was full of "grace and truth" (John 1:17).
John 1:17, “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.”
The believer receives the grace of God through Him (John 1:16).
John 1:16, “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.”
It is by the grace of God that Jesus Christ died a substitutionary spiritual death for all mankind (Heb. 2:9); therefore, the throne in which Christ sits is a "throne of grace" (Heb. 4:16).
Hebrews 2:10, “But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.”
Grace is an absolute since it is no longer grace if we are saved on the basis of human works (Rom. 11:6).
Romans 11:6, “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.”
A Christian is someone who is a "partaker" of the grace of God (Phil. 1:7) and grace is the Christian's sphere of existence (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; Col. 1:2) since he is to live by the same principle of grace after salvation (Col. 2:6; Rom. 6:4) and the believer who rejects this principle is said to have "fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:1-5).