Struggling Under the Blessing (Part 4)



There is one more application I think can be legitimately drawn from Jacob’s life. His life, as recorded in Genesis, teaches us, in part, that God is always pursuing us to bring us to the point where we can experience being delivered and brought into the covenant relationship with him. This process happens in the same way it did for Jacob: Through surrender to the living God when confronted with the Truth about God’s grace and demands upon us.

This work of bringing us to the point of repentance and surrender is absolutely necessary for us to come under God’s covenant blessing of Abraham. Or as the Lord Jesus said, repentance is necessary to enter God’s Kingdom that has now arrived. Repentance is to turn around and change directions to go in the right way; if genuine it is fruit of spiritual surrender to God.       

In the end, when Jacob finally learned the necessity of surrender, he began to change to obey God’s direction for his life. What he found was mercy instead of hatred from his brother. He discovered the bounty of God’s grace upon his arrival home—that he was welcome and that God was faithful to his promise and gave him the inheritance. But now he knew that it was not because he was merely the grandson of Abraham.

He now understood that he must directly and honestly learn to do God’s will first; he cannot take the blessing for granted but must be responsive to God as the heir of the covenant. Indeed, the writer of Hebrews observes, “By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, ‘bowing in worship over the top of his staff’.” (Hebrews 11:21, NRSV) Thus we see the elderly Jacob who has learned to surrender and worship Almighty God; he now feared God himself because God’s mercy had been granted to him.   

Like Jacob, in order for us to live under the covenant blessing, we must learn to listen and obey God according to the knowledge given to us of God’s will. In doing so we will find spiritual blessing that makes us contagious with the divine blessing in Christ. We become one of God’s chosen people and thus take on the responsibility of being God’s representatives on earth to bear witness to the Gospel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discernment

Some writers and some lives are so God-filled that they are granted special insights and abilities by the living God. St. John of the Cross was one of those persons. I share a quote here that has helped me tremendously in different circumstances when I needed to understand what was happening with others--and particularly in different Christian communities.  This is a recalled statement of John of the Cross, something he said in conversation and which was written down and preserved. The citation can be found in T he Complete Works of St. John of the Cross , Vol. 3, p.315) i leave this for the reader to ponder.    “I sometimes heard him say that there is no lie so carefully devised and composed that, if we study it carefully, we cannot tell it in one way or in another to be a lie.   Nor, he would say, is there any devil so completely transfigured as an angel of light as not to be recognizable if he be looked at carefully.    Nor is there a...
Read more

The New Tribalism

The era of human history in which most human beings live now (or have been profoundly influenced by) is known as “modernity” or simply the “modern era.” This period of history can be differentiated from eras prior in at least one primary way: The modern era is dominated by ideology rather than theology. On the one hand, theology is a conviction and perspective about the nature of reality, of the meaning and purpose of human life and the reasons for ethical and moral imperatives; this is explicitly rooted in a particular understanding of God and revelation granted to humans by God. On the other hand, ideology can be described as a comprehensive philosophy which asserts an explanation about the nature of reality, the meaning and purpose of human life, and gives an explanation for the ethical and moral imperatives people recognize and value. What makes an ideology different from a theology is simply that ideology allows no space for the Deity which its philosophical framework and e...
Read more

Struggling Under the Blessing (Part 1)

One of the general lessons from the Genesis narratives regarding Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph is this: Simply that God’s grace supersedes human will, human scheming and human sin. God has a purpose for which he is working—the redemption of a people who will belong to him. He is forming from among those who will respond to God’s call his own people to be a treasured possession from humanity. This purpose has culminated in the coming of the Lord Jesus and his proclamation of the Kingdom of God. The Scriptures give us multiple examples of people’s faith response to God and his revealed word. In this I want to look at Jacob. He was a man who believed in God but who trusted more in himself and his ability to save his own neck when he was in trouble. But God met him and changed him into a man of faith whose life became pivotal for the well-being of his family and millions of his descendants. Let us see what we can learn from the life of Jacob. Some background information...
Read more