Jacob-a study in Grace

In my opinion Jacob was the most devious man in the Old Testament. I believe he was more like his mother, Rebekah, than his father, Isaac. Rebekah had been a co-conspirator with Jacob in fooling Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing that was meant for Esau. So mother and son were two of a kind, and Isaac in his old age was no match for them. Isaac had tried to undo what Jacob had done to Esau years earlier when the latter sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of “Campbell’s Soup,” or was it Progresso? My brother Nick and I had a favorite name for Jacob. We called him “Jake the Fake.” Yet the story of Jacob is an intriguing study in Grace that “overcomes our sin and our guilt,” to quote the classic hymn.

I like the fact that Jacob is one of God’s great Patriarchs. God’s chosen people, Israel, were named after him (Jacobs’s name eventually was changed to Israel, after his famous wrestling match with God who let it end in a draw or maybe God won on points since Jacob walked away with a limp that remained with him probably for the rest of his life-Genesis 32:22-32). That “Jake the Fake” could actually become Israel because he had wrestled with God and became an overcomer speaks volumes to me. It means that there is hope for you and me. It tells me that if God could do an “extreme makeover” on Jake, then I can trust God to get the job done in my life. I love what Paul wrote to his young protege Timothy: “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day (II Tim. 1:12).

What did Paul commit to God? It was his well being and his future. In fact Paul placed his trust in God who could complete that good work which he had begun in the Philippians as well as himself (by implication). See Phil. 1:6. I am also encouraged that it is GOD “who works in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Phil. 2:10) That clinches it for me. But, this is a word of encouragement to those who are not playing games with God, and who genuinely try to please him. I do not deny that God is able to even turn around those who are not honest with him, but we should not take God for granted lest we run the risk of committing presumptuous sin. Psalm 19:12, and Galatians 6:8,9.