The Promised One: Advent Day 5

Read & Journal

Read Genesis 28:10-22. Consider the following journal prompts to dig a little deeper into the text.

• Read the passage again or read it aloud. How would you describe what happened in this passage in your own words?

• What does this passage teach you about God the Father? About his character?

• How do these verses point to or symbolize Jesus? Explain.

• Look back at God’s words to Jacob in verses 13-15. How does this promise compare to the one God had previously made to Abraham and Isaac, who was Jacob’s father?

• What do God’s actions in this passage teach you about his faithfulness?

Now read Genesis 32:22-32.

• Why is it important that God changed Jacob’s name?

• After this encounter with God, Jacob limped for the rest of his life. Some scholars see this as God curtailing Jacob’s self-sufficiency. He would now have to rely on God. How have you seen God work in your life to teach you to rely on him more fully?

Ponder

After Isaac’s near sacrifice on Mount Moriah, the boy grows into a man and eventually marries Rebekah. The couple has two sons, twins named Jacob and Esau. Esau is red and hairy, and his name is thought to sound like the Hebrew word that means “hair.” Jacob, who is born grasping his brother’s heel, means “heel” or “deceiver.”

It’s a name Jacob lives up to. He steals Esau’s blessing, deceiving Isaac in the process. Later in Genesis, Jacob’s wily plan allows him to outmaneuver his equally deceptive father-in-law, Laban. He is the deceiver, the usurper, the second son who takes the blessing and birthright of the first born.

When Jacob has to leave town to avoid his brother’s wrath and the boys’ mother cooks up a desperate plan to protect her younger son from the older, Jacob stops to camp for the night and dreams of a stairway reaching from heaven to earth. From the top of the stairway, God reminds Jacob of the promise God had made to Abraham and Isaac—and extends it to Jacob, the liar on the run. “All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants,” God reminds Jacob, and the symbolism is there, in the stairway that connects heaven and humanity. What sin had broken, God would restore. Jesus would bridge the gap sin had created between God and humanity.

Jacob indeed becomes the “father of many nations.” With two wives and two concubines, he eventually becomes the father of 12 sons. During the journey back to Canaan, the land God had promised Abraham and his descendants, Jacob spends an dark night in a wrestling match with an unknown assailant. He emerges with a limp and a new name: Israel, which means “God fights.” The deceiver was no more.

The story of Jacob resounds with us because in many ways, it is our story. Through Jacob, God created a great nation and a lineage that would eventually lead to Jesus, without whom we would have no hope of salvation. We, like Jacob, are deceivers. We are sinful people who think we can figure our own way out of sin. We are people who walk with a limp, who must place our trust in Him, in the salvation He has provided in Jesus, so that He may work in and through us to bring light and hope into the lives of others.

In your brokenness, trust Him today. He is the God who fights for you.