Clough Manhood Series Lesson 12

Jacob: Male Drive without Wisdom – Genesis 30-32

This morning this is a very good question, a very good question, a very good kind of a challenge to what I said and I’d like to respond to this challenge because it shows that I didn’t make myself clear as I often times don’t. Your distinction of psychiatry/psychology and pastorship leaves no room for the gift of exhortation and words of wisdom, which as I see it have every possibility of being distinct from the gift of pastor-teacher. A Christian psychologist with such gifts and using them biblically has every right to offer counsel. The problem, then, is not the domain of the professions but rather the use of human viewpoint or divine viewpoint in these areas.

I beg to differ; we still are back over to the domain of the professions for this reason, that the moment a psychologist offers counsel, my claim would be that he’s no longer acting as a psychologist; he’s acting as a counselor. A barber could give you counsel, if he had the gift of exhortation fine, but don’t pretend he’s barbering you while he’s giving you counsel; let’s just label it for what it is. Counsel from a psychologist is not psychology. Counsel from a psychologist is counsel like it would be from an auto mechanic or a barber. It differs in no way. In other words, my claim is that his training in psychology equips him in no way whatsoever for counseling. It equips him for doing research in learning theory and other areas, but it does not equip him to do counseling. Any Christian is as qualified, without psychological training, as any psychologist is, for this reason: three things are needed in a counseling process and the psychologist doesn’t have any more advantage over these than the average believer. The first thing is that he needs a mandate from God to interfere with people’s lives. Now I see nowhere in Scripture where the field of psychology has a special mandate to intrude in people’s lives. The only command mandate we have is if you have the gift of counsel, then use it, but that isn’t addressed to a psychologist; it’s addressed to any person with the gift. So use that gift.

The second thing is that the psychologist has no theological framework to operate with because of his psychology. Whatever theological framework he has is from areas outside of his psychology. And you cannot work with people who are having problems and not face theological questions; it’s impossible. You can’t do it because the question is ought I to do this or ought I to do that. That’s a theological question. And therefore, my claim is that psychology has nothing to do with that process. That’s a separate and distinct process. It comes to its most professional expression in the pastorship, but it’s also true, anyone with the gift of the word of wisdom ought to use it. But as far as professions are concerned, psychiatry and psychology are out of their pew when they are working in the area of counseling. They have no theological tools, they have no mandate from God, and they have no corner on God’s grace.

My claim is that the profession of the clergy has all three. So therefore, in this situation we argue and insist that the field of psychiatry and psychology are valid fields, but as fields they cannot give counsel. They may, but while they’re doing it they’re no more expression their psychology or their psychiatry than a barber or an auto mechanic would be expressing the field of barbering, telling you what you ought to do tomorrow, or the auto mechanic who might be a Christian giving you advice in Scripture. Give the advice, yes, but don’t label it as that’s part of my profession of being a barber, or that’s part of my profession of being an auto mechanic, or that’s part of my profession as a psychologist; it isn’t.

Okay, let’s go to the book of Genesis and continue our study on the doctrine of the man; tonight we’re starting in Genesis 31 and in Genesis 31 we’re faced with the third man of the patriarchs, Jacob. Abraham, to kind of review where we are, you remember that Abraham, not Sarah, was party to the covenant. The fact that the man is party to the spiritual covenant is manifested in the writ of circumcision. I was interested in reading the last two or three weeks The Jerusalem Post and there was an article in there on the women’s lib movement in Israel. And the women’s lib in Israel is facing a very unusual problem and that is they face the rite of circumcision, and so they’re trying to figure out some sort of equal expression that would fit their role, and it’s a big long thing, about a paragraph about how they’re trying to work this one. God must be laughing at the whole thing because he set up spiritual responsibilities and expressed in a rite pertinent only to the man. And so therefore we have a little contemporary fallout from Abraham’s covenant.

Then we came to Isaac, and we saw that Isaac was one level below his father, Abraham. He declined; Abraham had the two male qualities of toughness and tenderness; toughness which we defined as endurance in the face of adversity to God’s goal and he had that because of his implicit trust in sovereignty. And then he had a tenderness develop because of his years of experience with grace. But then we come to Isaac and in Isaac’s case, though he had a woman selected on divine viewpoint principles as his wife, he apparently was unable to maintain control of his family so that we find in the end Rebekah taking spiritual leadership of the home. Now we can quibble about whether Rebekah and Jacob did right or they did wrong when she put Jacob up to theft and deception. As I said, that’s a debatable point and it’s hard because Genesis is not explicitly giving us any information whether it’s right or wrong, and Genesis is written that way; it’s just the style of the book so it’s hard to come to a conclusion. It just describes what happens and it leaves the reader to draw his own conclusions to what happened and why it happened. And we get information that’s kind of both ways. Probably the best way of summing it up would say no, that wasn’t the ideal situation, but God didn’t appear to hold them unduly responsible given their level of spiritual development at that point in their life.

But the tragedy of Isaac was that he failed to operate on the long-term basics. Abraham saw into the future. That’s why the book of Hebrews says that he looked for a city that had eternal foundations. Abraham was a future-centered male and because he was he was a stable male. But Isaac, his son, didn’t carry this over from his dad. He picked up much more of a present-centered thing and thus it was that he preferred Esau over Jacob. Why? It had nothing to do with the covenant; it would have been different had the covenant been promised to Esau and then Isaac would have sort of gravitated to Esau rather than his other son Jacob, because after all, Esau was going to be the carrier of God’s Word into the future generations. If that had been the case there might be some valid reasons for Isaac’s preference of sons, but that wasn’t the reason. The reason the Scripture gives for his preference of Esau over Jacob is simply the fact that he liked to eat the venison that his son caught, a very shortsighted goal. And it shows the weakness of this male horizon of a present-centered man, operating on present-centered goals, satisfied with present blessings rather than setting aside the pleasant blessings to obtain greater and more enjoyable future blessings.

That is a key and I’ve noticed that now in preparation for Jacob and I think we’re going to see this most drastically in the case of Moses. What made most of these men great was their willingness to defer present pleasure for future pleasure. That was the key to their maturity, and it took them great discipline to do it but all the great men of Scripture had that quality. They were in that sense future centered men; they lived for tomorrow, not for today; not in the “pie in the sky” bad way. So often time people characterize future-centered people that way, that’s not the point. A future-centered man, for example, in business, will look to future investments; he’ll look up to building up his reservoir of wisdom, building up his reservoirs of wealth, saving and accumulating capital for the future. Now that’s precisely the opposite of the present-centered man who spends and he wastes his capital on the immediate present and then has nothing for the future and so therefore becomes a slave to the government. But the future-oriented man wants to be his own man under God’s law and he doesn’t want the government to step in and take over his life and so he saves and he prepares for contingency. Isaac lacked that quality and thus his wife took over in the vacuum.

Now we come to the third man Jacob. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, these are the three patriarchs. Over and over again in the Scriptures God is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. These men put character into the Jew. And the last of the three men, Jacob, this man was the man after whom God makes no distinction; from now on he has his sons and those sons become the tribes and we’re right here at the founding of the nation. Jacob’s character, on the positive side, gives the Jew his character, but Jacob’s character also had a negative side and it was that negative side of his character that God had to purge by a 400 year tour of duty in Egypt for his sons.

Jacob had, positively, a toughness; he was a man who endured in his business; he prevailed and came from being a pauper to a millionaire, wealthy man, and he did it by hard work. He was resilient, he faced all kinds of problems in his life and he finally, toward the end accumulated power and wealth. And he was a strong man. That was Jacob’s strength and it’s that strength of character that has made the Jew what he is down through history, the driving over-achiever. You can see this; you take a statistical survey of Jewish families and look at where the sons of those families go, and then take a similar sampling of Gentile families and watch where the sons of those Gentile families go. You’ll inevitably see that the sons of the Jewish family are always encouraged to go to school, to get educated, to get into business, always drive, drive, drive, goal, accomplishment; the emphasis always on production. Well, that character comes from Jacob and the Jew can no more erase that quality of his character than he can stop breathing. Jacob gave that and God is behind that character. They have to have that character to maintain their role in the world scene. So the resiliency of Jacob’s character is his strong point as a man.

But his weak point is that he picks up the learned behavior pattern of his father, Isaac. Isaac had, as his weakness, the fact that he failed to look into the long-term future; he was a present-centered man. And lo and behold, Jacob inherits that. Now up to this point we have talked about learned behavior patterns and we have talked how these learned behavior patterns are taught in the home and so on. We want to make a little distinction here; maybe it’s a little fine distinction but maybe it’ll help some.

Learned behavior patterns can be picked up in each of the divine institutions. For example, we can have a learned behavior pattern that we pick up just because of our behavior as an adult, things that we’ve learned to do or not to do and we’ve acquired these after we’ve become an adult. Those would be learned behavior patterns which we have [can’t understand word] rising out of our own responsibility or lack thereof. Then we pick up learned behavior patterns because of whom we marry and our relationship with our spouse. We trade off, and usually, unfortunately it’s the worst behavior patterns, we trade these off and we learn these. It doesn’t have to be that way but it often is. But most important is the learned behavior patterns that are picked up in the home and these are taught and carried on into the future. Those are the ones that Jacob carries from his father. We said his father was a short-term man; his father preferred venison to God’s covenant, and therefore Esau preferred venison to the covenant, and therefore gladly sold his meaningless covenant (in thought) for pottage.

Now when Jacob, raised in that kind of a home situation, saw that situation, apparently it rubbed into his soul and so he picked up the –R learned behavior patterns from his father, emphasis on the present, and Jacob then combined that behavior pattern with his drive, his tremendous drive and his ability to gain wealth and to endure. Put the two together and what do you have? You have the self-made man, and Jacob, except toward the end of his life, becomes the self-made man, the hard driver businessman whose home goes to hell in a basket, because while Jacob had great concern that he gather wealth for himself he evidently never raised the serious question, yes Jacob, it’s all very fine but tell me something—Jacob, who’s going to inherit and use your wealth? Well, my sons. Fine. And how are your sons going to use your wealth, Jacob? What have you taught them? Do you know your sons?

Have you trained your sons so they don’t dissipate your wealth. You’ve accumulated wealth and thousands of dollars, maybe millions of dollars throughout your lifetime; what have you taught your sons. When you die, Jacob, will your sons dissipate your wealth and all will be finished and your contribution just kind of like vapor, pass away from history? Will your sons be able to carry on after you’re gone? Will you live through your sons or will you just disappear from history? Jacob never asked the question; obviously he never answered it, so God answered it for him. Jacob, your sons are going to go down in prison in Egypt and in Egypt I am going to teach your sons the character you haven’t taught them, and they’ll learn, and after 400 years of training in Egypt they’ll come forth with the character necessary to go with the drive of your soul and then we’ll have our nation, but as it is, Jacob is only able to give to his sons the drive but he isn’t able to give to his sons the long-term concerns about spiritual goals. It’s like a car with a very powerful motor but with a very weak steering wheel. Jacob has a powerful motor and he has no guidance, and the result is shown in the life of his son. And this is a portrait, then, of a certain kind of man; a certain kind of man that is a strong, active doer, a high, what we’ll call over-achiever, a man whose always concerned about beating out his competition; a man who is concerned about driving in his career, advancing in his career, but then never asking the question, where does that lead?

Where does that lead? I remember when I first came here going out to one of the rock festivals that they had and interestingly most of the hippies that we talked to in that situation were sons and daughters of wealthy upper class Dallas businessmen. And one of the interesting things, not condoning everything that they said but one of the interesting things was that their parents had stressed over and over the ethic of hard work but they never gave the spiritual goals; why work hard. Well, to gain wealth. What are you going to do with the wealth? Well, use it to enjoy ourselves. How are you going to enjoy yourselves? In other words, pressing back to the ultimate goals of your life, and they couldn’t answer them because they never asked them. That’s Jacob. And Jacob can’t be a covenant man and have that kind of character; it’s got to be torn out of his soul, painfully. And so while Jacob has his assets he also has his faults.

In Genesis 31 and 32 we see the business side of Jacob. This is the positive character; here’s where he develops his tremendous drive. And in here he can act as a model for man; not that every man has to be this much of an achiever, a super achiever. But nevertheless, Jacob shows you that a man can be this kind of achiever unto God. In Genesis 30:43, the introduction to this, the set up for these two chapters. The story, of course, is that Jacob has gone north to escape Esau; he finds a wife, we’ll get to that later. He’s in Syria where Isaac got his wife from and while he’s there, verse 43, “And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maidservants, and menservants, and camels, and asses.” These are his economic assets; he is a man of wealth and means, and he got them the hard way. He’s grown and he’s prosperous; he came with nothing and now he goes with everything.

He’s much like many of the families who have come to this country in the early part of the 20^th century, late part of the 19^th century, probably many of your parents if you examine your family tree came to this country, and they came away from the cesspool of Europe, in order that they could come here and earn wealth without the government interfering with at point in their lives, and they made it and they did it without social security and they did it without welfare and they did it without unemployment insurance. They risked but they also gained. Some of them didn’t but a lot of them did. Show me another country where that many people gained.

All right, Jacob gained; he was a man who went to a foreign country, Syria. He was an immigrant and he worked hard and he gained health. Genesis 30:1, “And he heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, Jacob hath taken away all that was our father’s; and of that which was our father’s hath he gotten all this glory.” That’s the cry of the impotent men; that’s always the cry of the weakling, that the strong has taken away my wealth. That’s the cry of the socialist politician who would love to turn the masses against the high achievers; who always want to downgrade those who are the great people, by arguing this way—that there’s only a finite amount of wealth and therefore if the finite amount of wealth is accumulated by the wealthy you’ve taken away from the poor. Only one very bad assumption behind that, and that is that wealth is a constant. Who said it was a constant? Why can’t the weakling generate wealth? Wealth doesn’t have to be a conservative element; it can be increased. So the argument breaks down on its fundamental assumption, the conservation of wealth: there is no conservation of wealth.

God says subdue the earth; that’s not a conservation. It doesn’t say keep the wealth, He says make the wealth, produce it. That’s why the socialist argument breaks down. But nevertheless, the feeling, the mentality, there’s jealousy and that’s all it is; let’s say it for what it is. And that’s the same thing that politicians and the commentators encouraging in the (quote) “down-trodden classes” of America. They’re teaching the masses to envy, to be jealous, to hate; it’s an inculcation of a systematic mental attitude sin and Laban and his family have it.

Genesis 31:2, “And Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, and, behold, it was not toward him as before.
[3] And the LORD said unto Jacob, [Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred; and I will be with thee.”] get out of here. And so now this immigrant to Syria is told to move on and go back to your homeland, you’ve done enough. In verse 3 we have the result of Jacob’s trust. Jacob’s work in the land, he trusted the Lord in the face of business pressure after business pressure, job adversity after job adversity, and he stayed with it until the Lord said get out! He didn’t chicken out, he didn’t quit, he kept at it very patiently until God said now Jacob, that’s enough; now get out. That’s something to learn, when to leave.

Now Genesis 31:4-16 Jacob calls his wives, and we have a model here of a family conference. Verse 4, notice, “And Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field unto his flock,” in other words, to his place of business. He brings his wives in to consult and lets his wives give him advice, even in the area of his business. He, in other words, gives them opportunity of being ‘ezers to him. They have something and he wants to hear it; he may not pass on it but he wants to hear what his wife has to say. He says, [5] “I see your father’s countenance, that it is not toward me as before; but the God of my father hath been with me. [6] And ye know that with all my power I have served your father. [7] And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me.” See that last part; exactly what we said this morning in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “There has no testing taken you but such as is common to man. And this is the attitude that Jacob had, that he was going to trust the Lord with this situation, that God would not permit him to be hurt.

Now what does he mean to be hurt? Well, it doesn’t mean hurt his feelings. Jacob’s feelings could have been hurt time after time after time after time. Well, what does the hurt mean? Well in the context what has been the chapter so far; verse 43 of the previous chapter, what was it? Accumulation of wealth. And what it is saying here is that no matter how many times his employer fiddled with the wages, and sort of twisted and turned the letter of the contract Jacob still prospers, and he prospered some more, and he prospered some more. He prospered in spite of his employer.

But now things have come to a head; the father it says, [8] “If he said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages; then all the cattle bare speckled: and if he said thus, The ringstraked shall be thy hire; then bare all the cattle ringstraked.” The point is that he had certain parts of his heard and Laban would go out in the field and figure out which are the lousiest bearers, which is probably going to bear the least and he’d say okay, Jacob, that’s your portion. And the moment he’d do that they’d start producing like crazy. Sort of like the women in Lubbock Bible Church. And so as this went on he’d change, and Laban would say oh, I’ve changed my mind, it’s this over here, those will be yours. And so they’d start in producing. And so it was obvious that God was in it. [9] Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me. [10] And it came to pass at the time that the cattle conceived, that I lifted up mine eyes, and saw in a dream,” and he goes on with this dream showing how God has told him to get out.

Genesis 31:14-16, his wives respond in this family conference. “And Rachel and Leah answered and said unto him, Is there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house? [15] Are we not counted of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and hath quite devoured also our money. [16] For all the riches which God hath taken from our father, that is ours, and our children’s: now then, whatsoever God hath said unto thee, do.” See, the women were spiritually perceptive women. When Jacob pays for his wives with seven years labor assets were transferred over to Laban and his family. Now Laban thought… this was not necessary, by the way, a man didn’t have to work like that, that was just Laban being kind of snotty about the whole thing, and he realized he had a corner on the market because he knew that the Abraham family would never send their boys up except to marry their daughters, so he sort of had a closed deal. So he just put the screws onto Jacob and Jacob said okay, we’ve given an X amount of resources; I’ve worked seven years for both, there’s fourteen years wages.

What this verse is telling us is that the girls recognized that though their dad had faked out their husband, what had happened in the ensuing business deals, over the long-term I might add, the long-term, that their husbands got back all the money that he had paid to their father. And so they’re recognizing here in verses 14-16 the unity of the family; they’re recognizing Genesis 2:25, therefore shall a person, that’s in the male side but it’s also holds to the girls, separate themselves from their parents and become one flesh with their spouse. And so the separation occurs and they agree to it. He has a family conference and they come to a definite conclusion. Notice they talk over their problems and notice they come to a definite solution. There is not trading of insults, there’s no name-calling, there’s no accusing the other one, there is a planned conference that leads to a definite conclusion. That’s a productive family conference.

And it goes on to describe what happened after that. [17] “Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives upon camels;” and they evacuated the area. It speaks in verse 19, “And Laban went to shear his sheep: and Rachel had stolen the images that were her father’s.” Now for years and years scholars could not figure out what is going on with the stealing of the images; she takes them away and Laban finds out and goes after them with a little bit of a minor private army, and he comes in verse 26 and he says, “What hast you done, that thou hast stolen away unawares to me, and carried away my daughters, as captives taken with the sword? [27] Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly,” but he’s really looking for his stolen images. And you read on down through the interrogation, verse 32, [“With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live: before our brethren discern thou what is thine with me, and take it to thee. For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them.”] Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen these images, [33] And Laban went into Jacob’s tent, and into Leah’s tent, and into the two maidservants’ tents; but he found them not. Then went he out of Leah’s tent, and entered into Rachel’s tent. [34] But “Rachel had taken the images, and put them in the camel’s furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban searched all the tent, but found them not. [35] And she said to her father, Let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise up before thee; for the custom of women is upon me. [And he searched, but found not the images.]” She’s claiming she has a bad period, so sorry daddy, I can’t get down from the camel. Now women have been known to use menstruation for a number of excuses but this is probably original with Rachel.

Now what is the meaning of these images? The images were the seal of the inheritance. Now we know from ancient Near Eastern law that was the custom; that’s why he’s so bugged by these images; it’s like having the family will, that’s what she’s walked off with. So they ripped off their dad, that’s what they did, figured he’s a rip off artist so it comes naturally. So they just walked away with the family will. And it goes on and describes how Jacob finally gets mad, at this treatment of the hands of Laban, and when he does so he gives him a little sermon. Genesis 31:36, And Jacob was very angry, and he said to Laban, “What is my trespass?” now beginning in verse 36 and going to verse 42 you have the business philosophy of Jacob; in a nutshell this is what made Jacob a wealthy man. It capuslizes the mental attitude this man had; watch it carefully, because we have a problem in our own… no matte what is taught it will always be tangled up in its application; I’ve just conceded this, no matter what I say, it’ll always be misapplied. Now I’ve done one thing, I’ve taken the right man/right woman thing out of the marriage service and I’ve done that because I find people taking advantage of that little point and wandering around, is he going to divorce this and divorce that until I find my right woman. That’s not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about right man/right woman. So we’re just kissing that little label off for a while until we calm down in our misapplication of that truth, and therefore the wedding services from now on will reflect that.

But we also have the other thing and that’s the problem that we have taught, the man’s job is to subdue the earth. Fine, so the man has this vision out in the future, magnificent towers, this is a great career out here in the future and I’m going to subdue the earth, that’s my field. And so I’m going to shoot for that field. Now what’ great; only one problem, fatalism comes into this vision. And we forget there is a certain set of means to get to that goal. We don’t sit here and contemplate our navel or infinity and let this kind of just drop down in our lap. That ultimate goal may be forty years in the future; it may be more in the future, there may be lots of other jobs and hard work in between before you get to that; that’s good, you’ve got to have a vision of the future; fine. But there are moves to get there. Now you watch what Jacob does here.

Jacob’s vision, ultimate vision, was to come back; he knew he had to come back into the land and he knew enough of God’s covenant to know that somehow it meant being wealthy in Canaan; but he’s not in Canaan. When he was under Laban he was up in Syria. So he describes his attitude. Genesis 31:38, “These twenty years have I been with you,” so for twenty years Jacob did not achieve his final goal of being Mr. Wealthy Patriarch in the Promised Land. For twenty years he was out of the land doing all sorts of menial work until God promoted him, and when God promoted him, he was right in the right spot. Now why did God finally promote him? Because this whole agonizing, year after year after year of frustration getting to that final goal, from his point of view might have been frustration, from God’s it wasn’t, it was sanctifying. God was teaching Jacob a certain kind of character because God had to have that character in Jacob’s soul that would become the hallmark of Yisrael. Remember Jacob’s name is Israel, it’s going to become Israel. And that drive, that incentive, that resiliency, has to be there to be passed on to his sons, and to characterize the nation. He’s not going to get it if God gave it to him on a platter. In other words, he has to get promoted up through the ranks.

All right, let’s watch for what he does. For twenty years he’s been in this, he didn’t get it instantly. Oh, I’ve got a vision, my field is being a wealthy patriarch in Canaan; come on God, just drop it in here, I’m going to sit here until you drop it. No, twenty years went by, of hard work, until he got to that point. “…thy ewes and thy she goats have not cast their young, and the rams of thy flock have I not eaten.” “Casting the young,” this is natural abortion, this is due to lack of proper diet, proper nutrition. In other words, he’s saying I’ve taken care of your flock. What did he do during those twenty years; what was some of the attitudes that this guy had, so that he finally go to where God wanted him? He did the job at hand well; very simple attitude.

All right, big deal, like David out in the field; you know it’s not very romantic chasing a bunch of dumb goats and sheep all over the rocks. But that was his responsibility then, it wasn’t to be Mr. Wealthy Patriarch then; then it was just to do his job with the goats and the sheep so whatsoever he does, he does it heartily as unto the Lord, not unto men, and he does a good job.

Look further: [39] “That which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee; I bare the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, whether stolen by day, or stolen by night.” He was gracious, he even absorbed unfair losses in his business while this was going on. Now this is not an excuse to be a doormat. It’s just saying in this situation Jacob didn’t get bitter and resentful; if he couldn’t solve the problem he faith-rested the problem. Now you’ll see that he is not a doormat because right here he’s insisting that he break with Laban. So this does not indicate that he’s not a courageous man; it indicates that he knew when to do something and when he couldn’t do anything; he just relaxed and left it in the Lord’s hands. So he got business losses; clearly verse 39 is teaching he absorbed many, many, many losses.

In verse 40, “Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes.” That was just hard work, doing the nitty-gritty very unromantic mundane stuff, but Jacob wasn’t beneath doing that; Jacob worked at the nitty-gritty. He said well, gee, out here in the drought, that’s not my field, my field is being a rich patriarch in Canaan. Well, as far as God was concerned that was his field just then. And then later on he could do his thing. Now this is too bad but every guy has to learn it and it’s very humbling to get some college degree and you’ve been promised this myth by our society the you get some college degree and automatically doors open all over the place and you suddenly find that doors don’t open all over the place and you wind up doing something that seems to be beneath your dignity. Well, that’s great because there we learn to faith-rest and just roll with it and keep on moving and don’t let it get you down. Well, this is the lesson that Jacob had to learn.

[41] “I been twenty years in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle: and thou hast changed my wages ten times. [42] Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely you had sent me away now empty. God hath seen mine affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked thee last night.” This is God protecting him. So notice the resiliency of Jacob. And finally in verse 42 the vision he’s talking about here, Jacob took it, he took it, he took it, and then finally God said okay Jacob, that’s enough. Now I’m sure by the nineteenth year Jacob must have had some questions, about how long, O Lord, is this mess going to go on in my business life? How long is this going to go on? Just one more year because finally when it just got ready to break, God gave it.

Now look at the advantages of Jacob not quitting. First of all, he got character out of all this; you cannot buy character. A college degree does not give character; character is a product of your historical experience. And that’s the only place where character is generated. This is why Jesus Christ has said in Hebrews 5 He learned obedience, even though He was God’s Son. Jesus Christ developed character by adversities and pressure. Jesus Christ became resilient but the character was an accomplishment; a character which Jacob would not have had had he not spent 20 long years getting to (quote) “his field.”

Another thing, a by-product of it, how was Jacob going to get his wealth. Isaac didn’t have that much wealth, not enough wealth to start a nation off with. The wealth is going to be a by-product of doing it God’s way. And so there are a number of other things that we could point to but Jacob was blessed; blessed because he stayed with the program.

In Genesis 32:1-6 we find another aspect of his business life. He comes back to the land and now he’s worried about past due accounts, namely one by the name of Esau. See, he ripped off Esau the last time he saw him. Esau was ready to murder his brother the last time he saw him, and now he’s coming back to the land and this stands in his way. What is he going to do with Esau? Now here is a most eloquent application of faith-resting and faith-doing. God, in the covenant, promises protection to Jacob. The protection is in the long-term. In the long-term God guarantees Jacob protection. So you would say, fatalistically, well, Jacob, there’s no problem with Esau, just go down and relax. Jacob didn’t see it that way because Jacob understood something, that God’s promises don’t come automatically true; they come true by means and by means of applied wisdom.

So Jacob is going to take short-term wisdom to get over from A to B, to get from B to C, to get from C to D, and then he knows that God will protect him overall, all the way down to Z, but he’s not concerned with leaping from point A to point Z; he’s concerned with moving just a little bit from point A to point B, then we’ll get to C, then we’ll get to D. Well, how does he make these little pieces; these mini moves? By applying wisdom and common sense.

Now Jacob had access to God in direct revelation, but isn’t it interesting that when faced with this jam of Esau, even though he has the general assurance of God’s direct revelation, he does not rely on direct revelation for the little steps he has to make. He relies instead upon wisdom. Let’s watch. Genesis 32:3, “Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother…. [4] And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak unto my lord, Esau: Thy servant Jacob says thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed there until now. [5] I have oxen, and asses, flocks…” and so on, “and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight. [6] And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother, Esau, and he comes forth to meet you with four hundred men. [7] Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.” Now at this point it’s not necessarily an act of unbelief. What Jacob is doing is practicing an old tried and true business tactic; diversified investment, planning for contingency, and that’s exactly what you notice.

“Jacob was greatly afraid,” so what did he do? He divided his assets, “he divided the people that were with him, and the flocks, and herds, and the camels, into two bands. [8] And said, If Esau come to the one company, and smite it, then the other company which is left shall escape.” Now that’s shrewdness; there’s wisdom; diversification of investment, not putting all his eggs in one basket. That’s not hedging, that in no way says that he’s not a man of faith here. He is a man of wisdom. God isn’t necessary to tell him that. It’s like Adam naming the animals, probably God wouldn’t have told Adam and he probably wouldn’t have told Jacob. Jacob, I created you with brains between your ears; use them, just once, to go from point A to point B. Don’t use direct revelation, just kind of blind guidance, now I have this business decision, and I’m going to pray about it and then I’m going to spin my Bible and then turn around and the first thing, there, what does it say? “And after him was the son of Dodo.” So what do you do with that kind of guidance. That is using the Bible as a soothsaying device; that’s what that is; that is not only bad Christian theology, it’s magic; it’s a paganization of a use of Scripture and yet people say they make decisions that way. It’s ridiculous. Jacob was a man of dominion and he doesn’t make decisions that way, he uses common sense.

Now he does something else that’s very, very shrewd indeed. In his dealings he goes, Genesis 32:9, “And Jacob said, O God of my father, Abraham,” he prays, verses 9 and 10, “and God of my father, Isaac, the LORD who said unto me, Return unto thy country…. [10] I am not worthy of the lest of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which You have shown unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. [11] Deliver me, I ray thee, from the hand of my brother,” now do you see what he’s doing. In verses 7-8 he’s faith-doing; he’s using wisdom principles to back up for a conclusion that he might face. But then in verses 9-11 there’s no tension with praying about it at the same time. The praying and the doing go together; they’re not separate, it’s not either/or, it’s both and. He doesn’t sit back and just pray. He does pray, but he does more than that. Notice, verses 7-8 aren’t the only thing that he does. He prays for protection, verses 9-12, he divides his flock, verses 7-8.

Now what does he do in Genesis 32:13-14? “He lodged there the same night; and took of that which came to his hand a present for Esau, his brother; [14] Two hundred she-goats, and twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, [15] Thirty milk camels with their colts,” and so on, [16] “And he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every one drove by themselves; and said unto his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space between drove and drove. [17] And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau, my brother, meets thee, and asks thee, saying, whose are you? And where are you going? And whose are these before you? [18] Then you shall say, They are thy servant’s Jacob; it is a present, sent unto my lord, Esau, and, behold, he’s behind us. [19] And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that followed the droves, saying, On this manner shall ye speak unto Esau, when ye find him. [20] And ye shall say Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goes before me, and afterward I will see his face; perhaps he will accept me.”

Jacob knows the men he does business with. He knows their sin natures, he knows their character; Esau is a degenerate, and he treats him like a degenerate. This man accepts nothing but present centered gifts; give him his gifts if that’s what he wants, give it to him. That’s just wisdom, there’s nothing unethical about that at all, it’s just simply wisdom. You deal with some person that likes gifts; he’s like a little boy, he doesn’t like to unwrap his presents all at once; he likes to stretch it out a little bit. And so therefore he sends the first gift of presents, and Esau gets all excited and then he has a space, because he figures it’ll take him, maybe thirty minutes to unwrap that set of presents, we thirty minutes down the road we’ll bring another load in, and now he starts unwrapping this and for a whole day all he’s doing is he’s unwrapping presents. And so this is an emotional man who doesn’t have doctrine, he’s all turned on, fine, turn him on, you have to do business with him that way. That may shock some of you to know this but do you know the Scriptures never say that bribe is wrong; the receiving of a bribe is wrong, not the giving of a bribe. You say that’s nitpicking—huh-uh, not at all, there’s a very big difference between offering a bribe and receiving one. That’s what’s wrong with our Pharisees in the press, that’s against Lockheed and so on for bribing these outfits they do business with. There’s nothing wrong with Lockheed bribing, everybody does it, so Lockheed does it too. That’s the nature of the business world; they’re idiots to accept it on the other end but if he’s an idiot give him his bribe. Christians use bribes, this is what’s happening with the iron curtain, it’s how we get Bibles across the iron curtain, we buy off the guards; the guards like cigarettes so fine, if they like cigarettes give them their cigarettes while they turn their face so I can get my Bible across.

Strange? This strikes you as somehow immoral but nowhere in Scripture in all of the Scripture of the Mosaic Law and the [can’t understand word] have I ever been able to find one attack against bribery. It’s always against receiving bribes, never against giving bribes. In fact, there’s one proverb that can be even interpreted go ahead, give the guy a bribe so they can turn the other way. In this case, our laws in America are stricter than the Scriptures. The Scriptures allow us more latitude here than the State does. Now in a way that shows weakness because you see, why is it wrong to offer a weak person a bribe? Now that itself isn’t wrong; the crime is the weak person accepting it. See, the fact that we have laws against bribing people is because we have such a weak people that they need the protection of that kind of a law. If we had people of character that kind of a law would be unnecessary, wouldn’t it? Why make a law to protect some little imbecile from accepting a bribe. If he’s an imbecile the only way he can be stopped is take away his toys. So that’s the reason we have this overly strict law.

Well, what we have here is systematic bribery. And it’s praised by God, it’s a wise situation. This is the only way Jacob can work with this kind of a business environment; slip him a few bucks under the table, grease his palm. This is the way the business is done. So Jacob is shrewd this way. Now don’t take this as going out here and getting arrested and say Charlie Clough said I could bribe. I’m just saying that at this point in history Jacob is praised by God for doing this. This is just simple wisdom. He is the model of a man who got his stuff together. Now in Genesis 32:24, the end of Jacob’s business career comments; we said that this is the positive side of Jacob; he’s a man who plans for contingencies, he knows when to offer a few presents if that’s necessary along down the line. And he goes on.

Now at the end he learns a very severe lesson, because God knows that though Jacob has this drive within him he also knows that Jacob is a present-centered man and so now the Lord Jesus Christ does the most amazing thing. The person we’re about to meet here is the angel of the Lord; it is Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form. “And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. [25] And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. [26] And he said, Let me go; for the day breaks. And he said, I will not let you go, unless you bless me. [27] And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. [28] And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince has thou has power with God and with men, and you have prevailed. [29] And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. [30] And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel;” Pen is the Hebrew word face, el is God, the face of God, “[for I have seen God face to face], and my life is preserved.”

Now what is this strange episode of Jacob wrestling with Jesus Christ and winding up as a result of this wrestling as a cripple? Jacob’s comment, the wrestling on this, the comment is given in the book of Hosea. So turn to Hosea 12, the prophet remembered this story and he uses it years later in teaching his people. It’s the story of the drive and soul of Jacob, and God gradually sanctifying that drive. Jacob was an achiever, a super achiever, and now the prophet Hosea puts it all together for us, all these strange things that happened in Jacob’s life.

Hosea 12:3-6, “He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and by his strength he had power with God. [4] Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication unto him; he found him in Bethel, and there he spoke with us— [5] Even the LORD God of hosts; the LORD is his memorial. [6] Therefore, turn thou to thy God; keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy God continually.” The prophet goes back to the Jewish character. Jacob grabbed the heel as he was being born; at the point of physical birth he grabbed for his brother’s heel. And now the meaning comes out because as the child was born he began to show his character. He grabbed, he tussled, he is going to get his way in the world; he is a super-doer, and that’s now… put them all together, the episode of his physical birth, he grabbed his brother’s heel. The episode in the kitchen that day with the pottage; he gets the covenant by deceiving his brother. The episode on his father’s death bed, as he and his mother plot to get the covenant and get the birthright. And his wife, he’s going to get those girls if he has to work 7 years to do it. You see the drive, the drive, the drive.

But now God wants to teach Jacob a last lesson, lest he comes to the wrong conclusion. Jacob’s blessings must never be looked upon as the result of natural drive. This is dangerous because it would result then in a very impotent ethic or work, just work hard and you’ll be blessed. God doesn’t want that. And so in the very last of his life Jesus Christ comes down to the earth, apparently in some preincarnate form, materialization, and he has a wrestling match so He forces Jacob to have to face God face to face and in a very concrete way God forces Jacob to deal with God. And here is how God takes Jacob’s character and doesn’t smash his character; that’s part of Jacob, the drive. God doesn’t obliterate him in a duh… zombie kind of a personality and this becomes spirituality. That isn’t the way God works. Jacob’s own natural amoral character is to be a super achiever, and so therefore God’s works in him beautifully so he doesn’t destroy that natural aspect of his personality but he directs it and he directs it to himself; come on Jacob, get me, come after me, come after ME, not after Laban, not after Esau, after ME! And that’s the story of the wrestling. He takes Jacob’s drive and forces it upon himself, and thus Jacob is taught to channel his drive. And this is why, from now on the nation is called Israel and not Jacob, though often the prophets refer to both of them.

Why is the Jewish nation called Israel? The modern state is called Israel. Few people know why. The reason is that that word “Israel” does not refer to the physical side of Jacob; it refers to the spiritual character; it refers to the character of the drive as it is channeled toward God, and that is the meaning of the word “Israel.” And so therefore every time we speak of the nation Israel we’re actually, if we’re historically accurate, thinking about the fact of the Jewish drive that is Theocentric… the Theocentric drive of the Jew, that’s the meaning of Israel. And that’s why Jacob doesn’t lose his other name. You know, when Abraham changed his name it drops, Abram, boom, he’s never known as Abraham again. It’s just a clear cut transfer from Abram to Abraham. But not with Jacob; Jacob see-saws back and forth because the two sides are always there; the natural, Jacob, the man with the drive, and sometimes he uses it right and sometimes he uses it wrong, and then Israel when that drive is used right; a sanctified personality.

That’s the positive side of Jacob. In this he can be a good model for men. Not every man has this kind of super achieving drive; be careful. Some men do, and because some men do doesn’t mean that they are less spiritual; because a man has a drive in the business world doesn’t mean it’s carnal. It’s the value system that motivates him. Some men can maintain their spirituality beautifully. They enjoy driving in business, it gives them great pleasure. Other men it would be too much of a hassle to bother with, they get so distracted with the [can’t understand word] and so therefore that’s not their bag. But there are men with this drive, and if you happen to be one of those men with this kind of drive, don’t feel embarrassed because of it. Just remember, God did not root it out of Jacob’s soul; He only changed it.

Now the other side of Jacob; he was a driver, he was an achiever, but he also inherited a very bad thing from his father; Genesis 29. Jacob was a short-term man; like Isaac he looked only upon his immediate generation, not upon the future. You remember back a few weeks somebody sent in a feedback card about the old problem that every guy has, every married man has, the problem of competition between your job and your wife. Not one Christian man doesn’t have this problem. It’s always a problem, it’s like grace and truth, how do you mix them, how do you keep it together. And we said at that time, we said in a very preliminary way, that the job was to accumulate wealth in this generation and the wife and the family is to carry that into the next generation, so the two go together. The wife is the means and the vehicle for transmitting that and making it historically significant. The job itself isn’t going to transmit itself. That’s why the book of Proverbs and why the book of Ecclesiastes, woe be the man who accumulates riches and turns them over to a foolish son. So the wife and the job compliment the historical importance of the man.

Now in Genesis 29 Jacob omits this; Jacob is the man who gets the wealth all right, he’s got the job down great, but his home life is a basket case. It starts off on a very bad way, he gets his eyes on Rachel, which is all right, a good girl, he even kisses her in verse 11, but the problem is in kissing Rachel, the problem is he winds up at the altar with the wrong girl, faked out by his uncle. God’s sense of humor, by the way, Jacob had kind of a chiseler type quality so God says, Hey Jacob, you want to be really chiseled, I’ve got a guy who will out chisel you and unfortunately the way the wedding service was the girls had such a heavy drape you couldn’t see what was underneath until after you took your oath and it was too late then, and that’s what happened, the poor guy got stuck down at the altar.

Well, the description of these two girls is interesting. In Genesis 29:17 there’s an interesting character description of them both but it’s looked at, the character of the two girls is looked at through the male’s eye, because the Holy Spirit, as he writes the text, is looking at these women, not from the throne down but He’s looking at them the way a man would look at them. And so it says, “Leah was tender-eyed; Rachel was beautiful and well favored.” Now that’s interesting, you can add your fertile imagination as to what he’s talking about but let’s go to the text and see what it really is talking about. With “Leah” the Hebrew word is “eyes,” and the word can be translated as “timid” or it’s sometimes used of children, undeveloped. And the picture is… it’s very hard, I’ve chased it all up and down the gamut and can’t really pinpoint the exact nuance of the Hebrew word here but I think it has something to do with the fact of her hesitant character. It’s not just talking about her physically, it’s talking about the fact that he looks at her eyes and they’re indecisive. There’s not a fire of conviction in them; and so she has an indecisive personality.

It’s not talking, necessarily, about her physical beauty; she probably wasn’t a pinup girl for sure but that’s not the point of the text here. And the reason I suspect that this is the case is because the son, Reuben, later on you’ll see this in Genesis 49:4, is an unstable son. And it may be because his mother was unstable. But anyway, she’s passive and she’s unstable, and she’s the kind of girl that can be easily hurt; probably wore her feelings on her sleeve all the time. And this is a set up for trouble, because along comes Rachel, the age old problem, a beautiful sister, less beautiful sister, and watch the competition in the home. So Rachel, in the Hebrew is like this, “beautiful of figure,” and that’s exactly the Hebrew text, see, I told you it was looking at it from the male point of view, “and beautiful of face.” Now what two things does a guy look at? See how real the Scriptures are; there’s no façade here, the Holy Spirit knows exactly what the guy looks at, he looks at the cover on the book before he opens the pages of course.

So here is Rachel and she’s got all the assets and Leah is kind of sitting in the shadows. Now if that wasn’t bad enough, after he marries Leah, huh, that kind of a… this is a first introduction that he and Leah have; you’ll see that in Genesis 29:21, “And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her. [22] And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. [24] And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah, Zilpah, his maid, for an handmaid. [25] And it came to pass that, in the morning, behold, it was Leah,” marvelous discovery on the wedding night, wrong girl. And so this, of course, must have created a great impression upon Leah, you can imagine with her being a very passive type personality anyway, and the resentment that is developed in her soul comes out later in the text, verse after verse after verse. This hurts her very deeply, in verse 30, “And he went in also unto Rachel,” this is after he married her, “and he loved Rachel more than Leah,” and so the antagonism of these two sisters persists into the home of the second generation. Now if you don’t think that’s a cause of trouble you can trace the text and go through a study, watch how she names her children, watch the little nuances of plotting and planning and so on.

But we’ll just look at a few verses here at the end of Genesis 29 to give you an idea of where it’s leading. Genesis 29:31, “When the LORD saw that Leah was hated,” and here again it’s the use of the relative in the Hebrew, the use of the absolute to indicate the relative, this doesn’t mean that he just kicked her out of the house, it just means the preference is there and as far as Leah was concerned she was hated, as far as Leah was concerned, she’d been insulted; as far as Leah was concerned, she had no purpose left in life except one, and that was she was going to bear a seed to this man and persist in history; she was going to make her wave that was going to persist in history. And “When God saw that Leah was hated, He opened her womb, bur Rachel was barren. [32] And Leah conceived, and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben; for she said, Surely the LORD has looked upon my affliction; now therefore my husband will love me.” And so she still has that hope that she can win her husband.

[33] “And she conceived again, and bore a son; and said, Because the LORD has heard that I was hated, He has given me this son also: and she called his name Simeon. [34] And she conceived again,” and so on. “Now this time” she say says in verse 34, my husband will be joined unto me because I have borne him three sons: [therefore was his name called Levi]. [35] And she conceived again,” and so on, but it never happened; Jacob does not love Leah like he loves Rachel. And so this woman goes through, and you start off the home situation and what is the home situation supposed to do? Breed the next generation.

Now do you see Jacob’s flaw? Do you see Jacob’s weakness? Do you see the Trojan horse he’s got? Remember, he came out of a broken home, didn’t he? Jacob grew up with competition, with a father who could care less, who was preferential in his treatment of his children, and Jacob grew up that way and he was kind of used to it. So if his wives don’t get along too well, that’s not too much of a problem; his sons don’t get along too well, after all, you know when I was a kid we used to have fights all the time, that doesn’t amount to much. In other words, he totally lets his whole family life go to pot.

Watch the results; Genesis 34:25. Here’s how his sons behaved, and now you understand why they had to go to Egypt for training. The father was potent in business but impotent in his family. In Genesis 34:25 one of Jacob’s daughters is raped, and the girl’s two brothers find this out. “…And they took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males. [26] And they slew Hamor and Shechem, his son, with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem’ house, and went out. [27] The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister. [28] They took their sheep, and their oxen, and their asses, and that which was in the city, and that which was in the field. [29] And all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives took they captive, and spoiled even all that was in the house. [30] And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land,” and so they stir up trouble. And so one of the patterns of behavior in Jacob’s son is the pattern of physical violence, the pattern we saw when studied the men before the flood. The Canaanite civilization, with Lamech, the men who were out of it with physical violence.

Genesis 37:20, another incident showing the character of Jacob’s sons. Remember all these boys come out of a home where two women are at odds all the time. It’s no wonder they grow up this way. Genesis 37:20, the famous story of Joseph, and the older boys hate the younger. “Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and throw him into the pit,” and then we’ll lie, “we will say, Some evil beast has devoured him, …[21] And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Don’t kill him, [22] … Shed no blood,” he tries to do something, but the rest of them still manage to put Joseph in the pit. And so now we have the second pattern of behavior among Jacob’s sons; not only the pattern of physical violence but the pattern of fratricide, brother against brother, jealousy, envying, a disruption of the unity of the family.

And now finally, Genesis 38:15, the third pattern we see in Jacob’s sons. Judah goes along and he sees Tamar and he says she’s a whore, “because she had covered her face. [16] And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Come, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee (for he knew not that she was his daughter-in-law). And she said, What will you give me, that you may come in unto me? [17] And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Give me a pledge…” And he gave her the pledge; this pledge is carried around his neck; in the ancient world this is what a man used to sign a check with in the clay, you roll this thing out and it left your imprint, it’s like giving your MasterCard or something as a pledge card. [19] “And she arose, and went away,” and she finally… he finally finds out who she is but in the course of the conversation the key verse is verse 21 because when Judah sends the guy back to find out the girl to give her the check and get back his MasterCard, he asks for the girl in a different word. You see in the King James, in verse 21 it says, “Where is the harlot that sat by the way,” but it’s a different word. The word there is a sacred prostitute and the interesting thing is that by saying that he thought she was a Canaanite prostitute.

Now what’s the significance of this? What had Abraham asked the servants to do when Abraham wanted a wife for Isaac? He said get out of here, I don’t want any of these girls messing with my son; get him a girl up in the place where girls have culture and character, but don’t mess with these girls. And the same with Isaac, he sends Jacob north, because Esau has married into them and there’s no end of grief in the home. And so what do we have here? We have Judah, Jacob’s son, caring less who he has sex with or if he wants to marry or not marry, or go into a Canaanites prostitute.

And so the third pattern emerges among Jacob’s sons, sexual promiscuity. And we might add to that, that’s religious involvement; it’s not just sexual promiscuity. The use of religious prostitute indicates… it’s kind of an ecumenical thing; it’s the complete neglect… now look what’s happened. On the one hand Jacob’s got wealth and power that he could give his sons to become a great nation… a great nation, but they can’t become a nation because daddy didn’t do his other job, and that is train his sons. If God gave Jacob’s wealth to Jacob’s sons his sons would dissipate the wealth in wars against themselves; they don’t have unity, there is no respect for the authority of the Word of God; there is a complete chaos in the home, Jacob has failed to dominate and rule his home.

Jacob, then, has a plus and he has a minus; a tremendous guy, limited vision. And the result is that to become the dominion man that he must become and for his sons to become, four hundred years of sorrow and suffering in Egypt, until God brings forth the character He wants, and then when God gives them God’s inheritance, the sons will hold onto it.