This is my second time through studying the book of Genesis, and I've got to admit, this time around I am being blown away by how completely unworthy the heroes of the faith are and in light of that, how completely amazing God's grace is! Jacob is another guy who is an unworthy "hero"...he reminds me a little of Lot...mostly because he is really not a good guy and truthfully, he's really hard to like! He's God's chosen son...chosen to be the carrier of the Promise and the blessing of the covenant. In Romans 9 God tells us "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated," but the story we read in Genesis about the life of Jacob makes it quite clear that his being chosen by God can have absolutely nothing to do with anything in Jacob's character because there is nothing in his character that should draw God to him!
Jacob is a "grasper" from the beginning. Even before he was born he was wrestling with his brother. He is aptly named "grasper/deceiver" as he spent most of his life deceiving all those he dealt with and grasping from them something for himself...birthright...blessing...love of Rachel...wealth. He's a horrible husband and a horrible parent, clearly favoring Rachel and her children over Leah and hers...causing all sorts of family strife, bitterness, and trouble.
For most of his life he had absolutely no interest in God...depending on his own wisdom and his own skill and cunning to navigate through life. The little interest he had in God after God initially revealed Himself to him through a dream at Bethel, was self-serving...if you provide me with food and clothes and wealth and bring me back to my homeland...if you do these things for ME, God...THEN you can be my God. As if God should be honored by this privilege to serve Jacob! He wanted God on his own terms without relinquishing any control of his own life.
And yet God chose him! God chose him and then recorded for us with fairly graphic detail, that this choice by God was rooted solely in God's Sovereign will and nothing else...nothing in Jacob's soul...character...behavior...attitude, etc. caused God to choose him. It was God and God alone. And it was grace and grace alone.
I think the dismal life of Jacob can shows us, like the story of Lot showed us, that we are all Jacob...not we are like Jacob...we ARE Jacob. That if we are going to be brutally honest about ourselves, we are more like Jacob than we care to admit. Like Jacob, we spend most of our lives grasping for identity and worth from careers and relationships, from significant people in our lives. Even those of us whose lives on the outside look nothing like the disaster that was Jacob's life...our motives are still the same. The reasons WHY we do our acts of righteousness are totally and completely for our own personal gain. We do it to make a name for ourselves. To earn the approval and favor of others and God. We try to prove ourselves, save ourselves by our choices and decisions. If we want God, let's be honest, we want Him for what He will do for us. Save us from hell. Give us a good marriage. Bless us with safety, health, and myriads of other good things. We want God but we still want to hang on to control of our own lives.
Down underneath all of the outward fruit of life, we are graspers and deceivers just like Jacob. And that is the point of all of Scripture. That is the point of Jesus and why He came. He came so we would no longer need to grasp. He came to reconcile us (through His perfect life and through absorbing the wrath of God on the cross) to God...the God, that we, without even knowing it, are grasping for.
And just like in the life of Jacob, God initiates His grace on a people who are going their own way, doing their own thing, and living their own life without any thought or care to this God. And just like He did with Jacob, God will be faithful to, in His grace, bring each one of those He has called to the end of their resources, to the end of their grasping, and cripple them in some way, so that they too find themselves clinging to God and God alone.
God's grace...faithfully pursuing unworthy people, faithfully wrestling them, faithfully crippling them so that His grace will bring His called to be able to SEE (and I mean REALLY see) and know (and I mean REALLY know) the God who pursues them. Because when we SEE Him, we will begin to KNOW Him, and John 17 tells us that eternal life is in KNOWING the one true God and the One He sent, Jesus Christ. So God's grace will be faithful to take us to the place of crisis, to place that we are completely "undone"...because it's in that place that we are finally able to see and know WHO we have been grasping for our entire lives. What a gift is the grace of God!
Jacob's story doesn't show me a man worthy of honor; rather, it shows me a God worthy of honor. It highlights a faithful God who relentlessly pursues the one who He has called as a carrier of the Promise. It shows a Sovereign God working all things together for the good of the one He has called according to HIS purpose. And Jacob's story clearly shows us what grace is all about. That it comes from God, that it falls on people by the choice of God who are completely unworthy to receive it. And because of that Jacob's story shows us how completely shocking and electrifying and scandalous, grace really is.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see. Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved...how precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed!
Be amazed by the God of grace!
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