Bible Devotion

Meditative Reflection
Israel the Overcomer

The name of Jacob means “heel” because when he was born, he came out after his brother, “with his hand grasping Esau’s heel” (Gen. 25:26). 

Ever since his birth, it seems that he lived up to the meaning of this name.  He always played second fiddle.  His father loved his brother more than him.  When it came to being reckoned as a useful man, people within and without the family would naturally look to Esau and not Jacob who could neither hunt nor cook as well as his brother.  And when he fled to become the son-in-law of Laban, he could not even play second fiddle.  He did not even belong.  He did not count.  He was a quiet person, but he was not a passive individual who would simply turn the other cheek. Far from being a push-over, he was smart and aggressive. He seized the opportunity to deceive his brother of his birthright; he stole his brother’s blessing from his father (though the plan appeared to be pushed by his mother); he patiently waited to seek his revenge on his father-in-law; and even worse, he took advantage of the jealousy of his wives and became the husband of four wives.  Yes, he struggled with men all his life and it appears that he eventually won all the time — that is, until he had to face his brother and his 400 men.

A.B. Simpson was right: In our road to sanctification, especially in learning to consciously and deliberately yield our life to God, we often need a crisis experience.

Jacob never had to learn to trust in God while he was at home.  He saw how Isaac feared God, but at the same time, he saw how Isaac played favorites.  He had no real encounter with the Living God until he had to run for his life and embark on a totally uncertain future.  Even as God appeared to him at Bethel, he continued to depend on himself, his smartness, and his deception to struggle with men.  But now, facing the possible revenge of his brother and sensing that he and his wives and children could all be put to death, he was “in great fear and distress.”  Yet, he still used his wisdom to appease his brother with lavish gifts.  He even divided his family into groups so that some of them might be able to survive in case Esau chose to attack them.  But all this planning did not give him peace.  And in great fear (perhaps more so for his family than for himself), he remained alone at night, and did not cross the river with them.

While the Bible describes what followed next without ever once using the word “prayer”, it was in essence the most vigorous prayer ever described in the Bible, next to the prayer of our Lord Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He met God that night.  How do we know that he knew it was God? Because he asked for blessing and he subsequently said that he met God face-to-face.

Yes, God came to him in the most critical moment of his life.  Once he recognized that it was God, he wrestled with Him with all his might, throughout the night, and he would not let Him go.  God is obviously stronger than him, much stronger, but He did not touch his socket until daybreak.

The longer Jacob struggled with God, the more he was expressing his own inability to face his own crisis.  If he gave up earlier, he would be expressing his desire not to need God any more, but to resort back to depending on his own wisdom.  In a sense, his struggle with God is not unlike that of Jesus in the Garden ― it was a process of submission.   The longer he struggled with God, the more he was letting go of his self-dependence.

The touching of the socket was God’s way to let him know He could stop his struggle.  He has overcome.  From now on, he did not need to grasp and struggle with men, because he had overcome himself.  All he had to do from now on was to continue to grasp a hold of God (the meaning of his new name, Israel) and he would be a true overcomer.

Perhaps, it is fitting to say that to truly overcome is to be totally overcome by God.

Meditative Reflection
The Road to Sanctification

There is no doubt that his experience at Jabbok was a significant turning point in his life, especially in his relationship with God.  Chapter 33 of Genesis ends with him setting up an altar and calling it “El-Elohe-Israel”; it was a public declaration that he and his family would only worship this God, not just any God, but the God of Israel.  In a way, this sealed the worship of Yahweh for the people of Israel for the rest of their history and set monotheism in stone for his people.

However, his learning to truly and totally trust in God in everything was still in process.  Fresh from his dramatic experience in Jabbok, with full assurance from God and a significant blessing anchored by the change of his name, he began the next morning facing the crisis immediately.  As much as he succeeded in his prayer-struggle, the situation had not changed a bit, although his spirit did.  But while the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak.  He immediately went back to depending on his own self.

The sad thing, perhaps, was not that he went back on depending on himself, but how he did it.  The way he divided his family clearly reveals where his heart was.  Should Esau choose to attack, he would die first, then the concubines, then Leah, and hopefully by then Rachel and Joseph could escape, because they were put in the rear of the procession!

If I were Reuben, Simeon or Levi, I knew then exactly how much my father loved me!  No wonder they hated Joseph!

But the warm embrace of Esau must have put Jacob to tears, if not shame!

As much as Esau acted far more righteously than Jacob, Jacob did learn a very important lesson and that was God does answer prayers. He can totally be trusted.  So, fittingly, this part of his story ends with the erection of an altar to God and with him calling God, the God of Israel!  His faith had finally grown!

Meditative Reflection
Guilty Silence

People in the Ancient Near East rightfully took rape very seriously!  Even the Bible prescribes capital punishment under certain conditions (Deut. 22:25-28). However, only the one guilty of the crime was to be punished.

But the sons of Jacob went far beyond this, and murdered the men of the entire city.  In other words, they murdered the innocent.

But, when Jacob knew about their crime, this was how he confronted them: “You have brought trouble on me by making me a stench to the Canaanites and Perizzites…” (Gen. 34:30).  He did not rebuke them because what they did was morally wrong; he only chastised them because of the trouble they had caused him.  And, he certainly did not worry about how God might look upon the sin of his children.

As bad as Eli was, he rebuked his sons with these words, “If a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him?” (1 Sam. 2:25).

How did the sons of Jacob, (in this case, Simeon and Levi) become such violent murderers?  No doubt, they had been greatly influenced by the Canaanite culture in which they lived, because we know both their father and their grandfather were not violent men.  They did not learn at home.  But, they received no moral direction or teaching either from their father.  His silence on such an important crime only served to fan the flame of immorality within his family, culminating with Reuben, his oldest son, who committed adultery with Jacob's concubine.  But Jacob continued his silence (35:22).

Eventually their sin escalated to the attempted murder of their brother, Joseph who ended up being sold as slave by them to Egypt—all because of Jacob’s guilty silence.

Being quiet could be a virtue, and the prophet Ezekiel might also be a quiet person like Jacob, but this is what the Lord reminds him, “When I say to a wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his sin…” (Ezek. 3:18).

Yes, there is such a thing called “guilty silence”.

Meditative Reflection
Remembering Rebekah

When I thought about Rebekah, it reminded me of many of the older Christian women in the Chinese churches, including my mum.  She grew up in a traditional family where her father was both a polygamist and a polytheist.  Who knows for how many generations and for how many thousands of years her family had been engaged in ancestral and idol worship.  For all practical purposes, she would have no chance of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.  But as a telephone operator in those primitive years of hand-plugged cables, she met my father and married him, a nominal Christian.  But she embraced Christianity whole-heartedly and immediately.  If it was not the grace of God, how else can one explain her fate?

Rebekah lived in a land of idol worship and her family also worshipped many of the local gods.  Her knowledge of Yahweh could not be much; at best this God “El” was one of the many gods the people in Mesopotamia worshipped.  But it all changed, when she met the servant of Abraham. She heard his wonderful story of how he was providentially led to her house and how she was chosen as a direct answer to the servant's prayer by the God of Abraham. Then he told the stories of the faith of Abraham, his encounter with God and how he was chosen to be the blessing of all nations. She must have been mesmerized.  So, as much as she would miss her family, she immediately agreed to return with this stranger — the servant of Abraham.  This, in itself, was an act of faith.

Her faith saw its reward immediately, as she was totally loved by her husband, Isaac, who unlike Abraham, stuck to Rebekah as his only wife — a rarity in those ancient times.  As much as Isaac loved Rebekah, their love had to be mutual, because Rebekah became the comfort of Isaac who grieved deeply the loss of his mother.

Well, as with anyone, she was not without flaws.  Although, Isaac probably was one who played favorites and contributed to the feud between the two sons, Rebekah was the master-mind of Jacob’s deception of her husband — the husband who loved her and remained steadfastly loyal to her till the end.  However, how much her faith in the promise of God played in her scheme can never be known. For she knew that “the older will serve the younger.” But I sense that it played an important part in it, although it could not absolve her of her wrong in deceiving Isaac.

Perhaps, it was because of this act of deception that her death is never mentioned in the Bible, except that she was buried alongside her husband together with Abraham and Sarah (Gen. 49:31). It was a fitting tribute to her life of faith.

Meditative Reflection
Old and Full of Years

As we reflect on the life of Isaac, I’ve found the following article very insightful and would like to share it with you:

“Isaac, the gentle and dutiful son, the faithful and constant husband…became the father of a house in which order did not reign. If there were any very prominent points in his character, they were not brought out by the circumstances in which he was placed. He appears less as a man of action than as a man of suffer­ing, from which he is generally delivered without any direct effort of his own. Thus he suffers as the object of Ishmael’s mocking, of the intended sacrifice on Moriah, of the rapacity of the Philistines, and of Jacob's stratagem. But the thought of his sufferings is effaced by the ever-present tokens of God’s favor; and he suf­fers with the calmness and dignity of a conscious heir of heavenly promises, without uttering any complaint, and generally without committing any action by which he would forfeit respect. Free from violent passions, he was a man of constant, deep, and tender affections. Thus he mourned for his mother till her place was filled by his wife. His sons were nurtured at home till a late period of their lives; and neither his grief for Esau's marriage, nor the anxiety in which he was involved in consequence of Jacob’s deceit, estranged either of them from his affectionate care. His life of solitary blamelessness must have been sustained by strong habitual piety, such as showed itself at the time of Rebekah’s barrenness (Gen. xxv, 21), in his special intercourse with God at Gerar and Beersheba (xxvi, 2, 23), in the solemnity with which he bestows his blessing and re­fuses to change it. His life, judged by a worldly stand­ard, might seem inactive, ignoble, and unfruitful; but the ‘guileless years, prayers, gracious acts, and daily thank-offerings of pastoral life’ are not to be so esteem­ed, although they make no show in history. Isaac’s character may not have exercised any commanding in­fluence upon either his own or succeeding generations, but it was sufficiently marked and consistent to win respect and envy from his contemporaries. By his pos­terity his name is always joined in equal honor with those of Abraham and Jacob, and so it was even used as part of the formula which Egyptian magicians in the time of Origen (Contra Celsum, i, 22) employed as efficacious to bind the demons whom they adjured (comp. Gen. xxxi, 42, 53).

"If Abraham’s enterprising, unsettled life foreshadow­ed the early history of his descendants; if Jacob was a type of the careful, commercial, unwarlike character of their later days, Isaac may represent the middle period, in which they lived apart from nations, and enjoyed possession of the fertile land of promise.”

(Excerpt from COBTEL, Vol., IV, p. 669)

Meditative Reflection
Esau: The Fleeting Earthly Glory

As the main characters of the patriarchal families one by one fade into history, Esau, too is being mentioned for one last time in Genesis 36, with an unusually lengthy account of his genealogy.  Honestly, I like his character far more than that of Jacob — what a forgiving person! However, we have to look at his life in its totality and I believe Calvin’s comment on his life is quite fair-minded:

“Though Esau was an alien from the Church in the sight of God; yet since he also, as a son of Isaac, was favored with a temporal blessings. Moses celebrates his race, and inscribes a sufficiently lengthened catalogue of the people born from him. This commemoration, however, resembles an honorable sepulture. For although Esau, with is posterity, took the precedence; yet this dignity was like a bubble, which is comprised under the figure of the world, and which quickly perishes. As, therefore, it has been before said of other profane nations, so now Esau is exalted as on a lofty theater.  But since there is no permanent condition out of the kingdom of God, the splendor attributed to him is evanescent, and the whole of his pomp departs like the passing scene of the stage. The Holy Spirit designed, indeed, to testify that the prophecy which Isaac uttered concerning Esau was not vain; but he has no sooner shown its effect, than he turns away our eyes, as if he had cast a veil over it, that we may confine our attention to the race of Jacob. Now, though Esau had children by three wives, in whom afterwards the blessing of God shone forth, yet polygamy is not, on that account, approved, nor the impure lust of man excused: but in this the goodness of God is rather to be admired, which, contrary to the order of nature, gave a good issue to evil beginnings.”

(Excerpt from Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. 1, p. 252)

Meditative Reflection
O God Our Help in Ages Past

As the name of Esau was mentioned for the last time in the Book of Genesis, I invite you to reflect on the fleeting glory of life through Isaac Watts’ wonderful words about our Eternal God today.  This hymn was also sung at the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill:

O God, Our Help in Ages Past

1
O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home.

2
Under the shadow of thy throne,
still may we dwell secure;
sufficient is thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure.

3
Before the hills in order stood,
or earth received her frame,
from everlasting, thou art God,
to endless years the same.

4
A thousand ages, in thy sight,
are like an evening gone;
short as the watch that ends the night,
before the rising sun.

5
Time, like an ever rolling stream,
bears all who breathe away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.

6
O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come;
be thou our guide while life shall last,
and our eternal home.

(Isaac Watts 1674-1748)