The Book of Genesis
Part 62
Faith and Fear
Chapter 32:1-23
Faith is a settled confidence which is objective; fear is a stirred emotion that is subjective. Faith makes one restful; fear makes him restless. Faith enjoys tranquility; fear experiences torment.
We have considered Jacob’s faith, or more properly, God’s faithfulness to Jacob, a faithfulness that produced confidence in Jacob’s heart. We must now examine his fears, their cause and effect.
Their cause: The cause of Jacob’s trouble here is both historical and immediate. The historical cause may be traced back over a period of twenty years. Beyond those years there lay the time when he took advantage of his brother Esau and purchased the birthright for little or nothing. There lay also the time when by deception he stole the patriarchal blessing of his father from Esau.
Job, who probably lived before Jacob’s day, wrote, “They that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same” (Job 4:8). Jacob now faced the harvest that had gathered over the years.
The immediate cause is quite understandable, Esau believed that the hour of revenge had come. It would seem that Jacob, in advising Esau of his return, intimated to him that there was no need now for him to claim the birthright, that in Padan-Aram he had become very rich, that he had all his heart desired. His instructions to his servants were: “Thus shall ye speak to my lord Esau; Thy servant Jacob saith thus. I have sojourned with Lab-an, and stayed there until now: And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and men servants, and women servants: and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight” (32: 4-5). He adopted a very courteous and conciliatory mood, and hoped that the information sent might placate Esau’s anger.
Esau, obviously enough, did not receive the news as his brother had hoped. Promptly he prepared and sallied forth to meet him with four hundred armed men. Little wonder that we read, “Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.” It would appear that the threat of Esau, “The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob,” was about to be executed.
The effect: The effect of all this upon our Patriarch was both natural and spiritual.
Under any adverse circumstance the most natural thing for Jacob to do was to plot and scheme in order that he free himself from the tangle. Immediately, therefore, he resorted to bribery. If the evidence that he now was very rich and not in need of an inheritance did not appease Esau, then in Jacob’s thinking he must be bought over.
For protective purposes he divided his caravan into two parts so that if Esau fell upon the one, the other would have time to escape; he himself brought up the rear. Having thus prepared for the worst, he put his plans into action, and sent gifts to Esau. “He took of that which came to his hand a present for Esau his brother.” “A gift doth blind the eyes of the wise,” we read, and in this lay much of Jacob’s hope.
Occasionally, the true spiritual character of Jacob becomes manifest, and we see him getting in touch with God. We need not accuse him wrongfully for “as face answereth to face in water so the heart of man to man.” How like Jacob are many Christians! In difficulties they make their own plans to escape, they endeavour to find solutions to the problems which bother them. After their attempts have been unsuccessful, they turn in prayer to God; they appeal to Him when all else has failed.
Let us notice the prayer of Jacob. It is the first actual prayer recorded in the Bible, and might well be a pattern to follow. First, he appeals to God as the God of his fathers, but finally draws nearer and addresses Him as Jehovah who had personally revealed Himself to him at Bethel. He then humbly acknowledges his unworthiness, and follows this with a definite petition for deliverance from Esau. He closes his prayer by reminding God of His covenant and promise. There is an urgency about this prayer that reminds us of some of David’s prayers, “I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: Thou art my help and my deliverer; O Lord, make no tarrying” (Psa. 70:5).
O, for grace to cease from our own strivings and to rest more implicitly upon the word of God and the power of God.
It seems to be necessary for the Lord to deal with His people in solitude, to have them alone with Himself in order to teach them lessons concerning their own weakness and lessons concerning His power. He who in later centuries revealed Himself to Moses in the backside of the desert, and revealed Himself to David when he too was alone out in the fields of Bethlehem, now confronts Jacob as he spends the night alone near the brook Jabbok.
The responsive heart frequently feels the need of being alone with God. Apparently, Jacob yearned to be alone. Torn within by conflict, harassed without by the confusion of travelling; afraid to proceed, and yet knowing that he could not retreat; exhausted in making plans, and yet forced to develop more, Jacob longed for quietness, solitude, and contact with God.
By the brook Jabbok God and Jacob met face to face, and there Jacob learned lessons in human weakness and divine power.
We read, “And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.” Jacob did not initiate this struggle. Without doubt, God in the appearance of a Man, undertook to subdue the proud schemer from Padan-Aram. With all his strength Jacob resisted until finally a touch of divine discipline left him so weak, he could only cling, and so crippled, he could only limp along with his staff.
The man who had a conflict with his brother Esau, and had hoped to overcome him with strategy, was now forced to meet him as a cripple, totally unable to defend himself. God alone was his refuge and strength in the face of enmity and anger. If he were to escape from Esau and the four hundred armed men who were with him, all Jacob’s hopes lay in God, and in God alone.