Tuesday, January 26, 2021
And they left Egypt and returned to their father, Jacob, in the land of Canaan. “Joseph is still alive!” they told him. “And he is governor of all the land of Egypt!” Jacob was stunned at the news—he couldn’t believe it. But when they repeated to Jacob everything Joseph had told them, and when he saw the wagons Joseph had sent to carry him, their father’s spirits revived. Then Jacob exclaimed, “It must be true! My son Joseph is alive! I must go and see him before I die.” So Jacob set out for Egypt with all his possessions. And when he came to Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac. During the night God spoke to him in a vision. “Jacob! Jacob!” he called. “Here I am,” Jacob replied. “I am God, the God of your father,” the voice said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make your family into a great nation. I will go with you down to Egypt, and I will bring you back again. You will die in Egypt, but Joseph will be with you to close your eyes.” Genesis 45:25 – 46:4
If you do a pulse-check on most any of the days of Jacob’s life,
you’ll find a calculating, selfish, wheeler-dealer. Stuff like that always comes back to haunt
you. Jacob did not escape that. After his ambitious conniving to steal his
brother’s birthright and his father’s blessing, Jacob had to leave town in the
middle of the night to avoid everyone’s anger.
It cost him twenty years estrangement in the school of hard knocks. He lived with his uncle Laban, a much sharper
knife in the drawer when it came to manipulation. The PhD degree Jacob earned in his time spent
with Laban was the futility of a lack of integrity.
Another inescapable casualty of Jacob’s manipulative lifestyle was how
his children learned at their daddy’s knee how to live that way too. The older sons were jealous of their father’s
attention to the youngest, Joseph, and eventually hatched a plan to throw him
in a pit and watch him die. They
eventually settled for selling him into slavery to a band of nomadic
traders. With Joseph out of sight, they
led Jacob to believe he’d been eaten by wild animals. For the next twenty years the old man lived
in paralyzing grief, mourning for Joseph, the son of his old age.
Finally, a famine gripped the land and Jacob sent his brother-killing sons
to seek food down in Egypt. The sons
wound up right in front of Joseph, their supposedly long-dead little brother,
who had managed to survive and thrive; he was the second most powerful man in
the world under Egypt’s pharaoh.
Now, the whole point of this epic story of family-fail came next, as
Joseph is reunited with his murderous brothers, forgives them, and sends them
home to Jacob. Once Jacob gets over the
shock of Joseph still being alive, he knows he must see this long-lost son
face-to-face before he dies.
As he’s travelling to Egypt God spoke to Jacob in a vision assuring
him that all will be well, and the promises of God would be carried out, and
his son would be there to tenderly close the old man’s eyes in his final
moments of life on this planet. And, for
Jacob, a man once steeped in trickery, thievery, deceit, and conspiracy, which
had all (predictably) turned into a massive pile of internal strife and sorrow,
now humbled by the effect of God’s mercy extended to such a one as Jacob the
manipulator, imposter, despicable excuse for a human being, one word from God
was…ENOUGH!
For You Today
No matter how much you may have made a mess of your opportunities in
this life, or destroyed trust with family, friends, or even your own integrity,
the promise of God is mercy to those who repent, humbling themselves before
God, to seek His face[1].
Jacob did all that in a wrestling match with God one night near the
Jabbok River. He meant to get right with
God, and, in mercy, God forgave Jacob and gave him a new name, Israel, the
special, chosen, friend of God.
His story isn’t about airing the family’s dirty laundry; his story is
all about letting you know this God you’ve been hunting forgives…and He’s only
waiting for you to come calling. And,
when you do, you’ll see…like Jacob, it will be…ENOUGH!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky
Road; have a blessed day!
[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
For other posts on Jacob’s family problems see Dysfunction in the Desert and No Place Before God - Part 2
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