Radio Antioch

Sunset over the Mediterranean Sea, Caesarea, Israel

This teaching is an excerpt from our Radio Antioch Podcast Episode 5.

Genesis 31:1-3
Jacob heard that Laban’s sons were saying, “Jacob has taken everything our father owned and has gained all this wealth from what belonged to our father.” [2] And Jacob noticed that Laban’s attitude toward him was not what it had been. [3] Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you.”

So Jacob finds himself in a difficult and worsening situation in the land where he was living. (How many of us have felt that way lately!) The Lord tells him that it is time to pick up and move his family back to the land of his fathers. It seems that sometimes when the Lord wants to change the situation in our lives, that we begin to feel uncomfortable where we are. A mother bird will begin to remove the soft downy lining of the nest just before it is time for the chicks to leave the nest. In the same way I believe the Lord sometimes will start to loosen the things that tie us to one place, in order to move us into a new season in our lives. This verse marks the beginning of the transformation of this man from Jacob “one who supplants”, one who steals, one who cheats, to Israel the patriarch.
To understand what the Lord was doing here, we have to revisit the life of Jacob. In Genesis chapter 17, when the Lord established the covenant of circumcision with Abraham, he promised that the descendants of Abraham would live in the same covenant as Abraham himself, and that the Lord would give the Land of Canaan to them forever. His descendants were to become Kings, and the fathers of many nations. So Abraham’s children had an inheritance in the Lord as members of the covenant promise of God.
In Genesis when Rebekah, the wife of Isaac, Abraham’s son, was pregnant, it was like the twins in her Womb were always fighting. When she prayed, the Lord told her:

Genesis 25:23
The Lord said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.”

The Lord had spoken blessings and destiny over the children of Abraham. Each was to become a patriarch of a nation. Esau was the first born, but Jacob was holding on to his heel even as he was born. The name Jacob means “one who grasps at the heel” or “one who supplants”.
Have you ever noticed that names, particularly in the Old Testament have a huge spiritual impact. Jacob became a deceiver and one who supplants. And even as their seemed to be strife between the brothers almost from the womb, their household also had some unhealthy things in it when they were growing up. The scripture says that Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob. The parental favoritism certainly did not help the relationships within the family.

Picking up in Genesis 25:

Genesis 25:29-34
Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. [30] He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.)
[31] Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.”
[32] “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?”
[33] But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.
[34] Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left.
So Esau despised his birthright.

Here is where we begin to see the tension on the destiny of these two men. On one hand, God has promised that each of them will become the father of a nation. On the other hand, each one here reveals a serious character flaw: The birthright that Esau despised was far more than the double portion of worldly inheritance given to the eldest son. Esau put no value in the fact that he was the first-born son of the family of the covenant. He in essence said “ I value a bowl of stew more than I value the call of God on my life and my family”. Jacob, on the other hand, greatly valued this, but was willing to cheat his brother to get the birthright.
How did God look upon this? In Malachi Chapter 1, the Lord said:

Malachi 1:2-3
“Yet I have loved Jacob, [3] but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”

Wow. Since Esau despised his inheritance promised by the Lord, the Lord made it a wasteland.  Jacob loved the things of God, and was loved by God, but the Lord had to deal with his character before he could enter into the promise over his life. How could Jacob become the patriarch of a great nation when he was a cheat and had supplanted his own Brother? Obviously he needed some “character building” before he could enter into his destiny.

If you are hungry for the things of God, and earnestly desire to follow in His plan for your life, then God will begin to correct the flaws in your character that hold you back from achieving His best for you. If you look at every prophetic promise in scripture, the Lord spoke to his children as to what they would become, not what they were at that time. When we were yet sinners, Jesus died to redeem us. God called a shepherd boy a king. God called a childless old man the father of a multitude of nations. You get the idea. But in each of these cases there was a journey that helped them become what God wanted them to be. So if you are finding yourself on a journey with God, rejoice and be encouraged, because he sees you now, as you will become, as His grace unfolds in your life.

Next- The Promise and the Contradiction

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