40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 44

Episode Date: April 7, 2016

This episode is all about brothers being reconciled and how it looks like God. Join Chad and Daniel as they unpack this incredible story.

Welcome to episode forty four forty four I think forty four we'll go with at 40 minutes in the old testament i'm daniel rey price and i am joined by chad bird chad how are you this morning i'm great i'm great ready to ready to go glad everybody's with us this morning or this evening or whatever you're listening uh-huh uh let's just let's just jump into this which is our custom uh where where we leave off last time we did this well we left in uh sort of the end of chapter 32 of Genesis, most of that chapter, most of our time in that chapter was with these last 10 verses, which is the story of Jacob wrestling with a stranger on the banks of the Jabbok River. And a lot of good stuff there. A lot of really good insights into the way that

God deals with us, the way that he lets us win. He loses so that we might win, and we connected that to the ultimate loss of God in his willing sacrificial death for us, and in that loss, we gained eternal life. So embedded in the story is the story of Good Friday as well. and there's toward the end of this toward the end of this uh chapter and it's sort of a segue to chapter 33 uh jacob names this place petiel which is uh from the from the hebrew about uh the face of god and he says i have seen god face to face yet my life has been preserved so jacob realizes that here he is on the threshold of his return from exile.

He's about to meet his brother, which is what we're going to get to in just a minute. And he encounters God in this threshold moment of his life. He sees God face to face. He encounters the God who fights with him, who wrestles with him, and over whom Jacob prevails, thanks to the grace of God. And so this moment in Jacob's life is one of those pivotal moments that all of us have in our lives at one time or another.

God arranges this so that it's perfect timing because Jacob is returning with guilt. He's returning with fear. He's returning with anxiety about what's about to happen. And what God gives to Jacob during this time of wrestling is a name change. He's no longer Jacob. he's not Israel. And Israel means he who strives with God, because Jacob has striven with God and with men and has prevailed. So Jacob is going to emerge from this with a new name, a new and a deeper understanding of the God in whom he believes. And as we'll see in chapter 33, he's

going to enter into the promised land into this uh this meeting with his brother also with a with a renewed confidence and hope and even amazingly for for jacob with a new sense in which he's not the center of the universe because as we'll see in just a minute jacob uh perhaps for the first time in his life, actually puts the concerns of himself behind those of others. So this really is a time of change for Jacob, maybe not complete change, but at least it's what God uses in order to prepare him for what's about to happen, which is reconciliation with his brother Esau. and one one interesting note which i don't remember if we got to last time or not is the way that that jacob leaves this encounter with god because he leaves limping because the the angel

god god disguised as a man he touched jacob's hip and so when jacob walks away from this he's he's limping he leaves this encounter with god wounded if you will but it's a blessed wound because it's a wound that reminds him of the encounter that he decided with the God of grace. So that takes us to the end of 32. And here at 33 is when the scene shifts from an encounter that Jacob has with God to an encounter that he's about to have with his brother Esau.

And we have to keep in mind that these chapter divisions we have in our Bibles were added a lot later. So if you were reading in the original, you would go right from this verse that talks about the sons of Israel not eating the sinew on the hip because of this encounter that Jacob had, his wound in his hip. It goes right from that to these words. Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and 400 men with him. So we go right from what has happened between Jacob and God. We know that the sun is just coming up. Dawn has just broken.

And Jacob lifts up his eyes and he sees Esau. Now, it's been a long time since he's seen Esau. 20 years. Two decades have passed since they last parted. And as you remember from earlier in chapter 33, Jacob had received word that his brother was coming with 400 men, which was a militia size back then. So Jacob assumes the worst. He thinks that his brother's on the war path. You know, he's had 20 years for his revenge, his desert revenge to cool, if you will.

And he's ready to serve it. At least that's what Jacob thinks. But what Jacob does is different. Earlier, he had sent all these people ahead of him. He had divided up his family, and he thought, well, if Esau attacks one half of my family, at least the other half will get free. And he had sent everybody ahead of him, and Jacob lingers behind. So it's like he creates this massive human shield between him and his brother.

But when we get to this point in the story, this is what I was talking about earlier, things change he does divide up his family he divides his children among the various mothers between leah and rachel and the and the two uh the two concubines and he puts so he puts each each mother with her children and he lines them up he's got the maidservants first with their with their kids and then he has leah with hers and then at the at the very end he has rachel with joseph benjamin has not been born yet so rachel and joseph are are the very last ones and it's like it's like uh as the story is told we're expecting based upon what we know of jacob we're expecting jacob then to be the last one and here's where the surprise comes because verse 3

says that Jacob himself passed on ahead of them and bowed down to the ground seven times until they came near to his brother. So instead of hanging at the back like he had been, Jacob now moves in front of everybody, in front of his wives, in front of his children, and he puts himself out front. He puts himself in danger because he doesn't know what's about to happen. And he bows down to his brother seven times as, uh, as his brother approaches. So, you know, for, for all of Jacob's, uh, for all of Jacob's faults and the faults that we have, that we see, that we see in him here, he's, uh, he's doing the right thing. He's, uh, he's the one that Esau has the issue with or had the issue with. And so he puts himself in front of everyone else in danger

impossible danger anyway and then he goes out to meet his brother and he meets his brother interestingly and i think uh wisely he meets him humbly uh with deference and uh waiting to see what uh what will take place yeah i think it's i think it's you can get a good visual of of him lining up his family like that and then like him going out in front but not just not just walking out i i think that you can have like this like okay and this is where jacob really comes into his own so he straightens up his back and walks out in front but that's not at all what happened like he limps out he's slipping out yeah yeah yeah he returns he's he's wounded he's just uh he's just fought with god and uh what what better time to be reconciled

to your brother yeah yeah yeah chapter divisions man that's a whole other thing i know you said that like a little while ago now but uh chapter divisions bother me yeah you know they uh i think you're the one that told me about this they do make a bible i think elise fitzpatrick has mentioned this too before that they they printed a bible that has all chapter and verse divisions removed is that right yeah yeah yeah i have one yeah yeah it's got to be a whole different reading experience it is it's a it it's a whole different thing okay i was in a men's i was doing a men's bible study and uh in ecclesiastes man i can't remember the chapter anyway uh right right in the middle of one of the chapters you know uh solomon says you know eat your food drink your wine god

has already approved what you do and then and then there's some more stuff after that and i was like but when we read that i just interrupted everyone and i was like that's the end of the chapter that's the that's the that's the like he just dropped the mic I can't believe that's at the end of the book I like to remind people that by the time you hold a bible in your hand you are already holding an

interpreted document i mean you've got the chapter and verse divisions which uh i think influence our interpretation way more than we realize and you've got in most bibles anyway you've got some kind of description at the head of each chapter you know i'm looking at my bible right now and chapter 34 is called the the defilement of dinah and chapter 33 jacob makes peace with esau chapter 32 jacob fights with the angel well all of these are partly true but they're they're far from the whole truth it's kind of like the parables you know the parables by naming the parables we have uh done a greater disservice than we could ever imagine so yeah idols that they affect our interpretation you're already letting somebody tell you what this is about

yes exactly there's there's interpretation that is built in to the bibles that we that we have and then if you have a study bible of some sort then it's just of course you know compounded after that but and even honestly even the names of the biblical books you know numbers for instance who wants to read a book called numbers and who knows what deuteronomy means yeah yeah yeah yeah so uh anyway uh these uh these chapter divisions can really really throw us off i i start i i'm i'm not i'm i'm i'm debate i i every time i pick up a study bible i'm like disappointed yeah yeah i don't use them i mean i have i have like a bunch of study bibles and i reference them every once in a while just to see like what they say about something

i'm usually like pretty disappointed i'm usually like i usually have to i'm usually like man that's weak sauce yeah i teach a i teach a bible class in my church on sunny mornings and uh and on occasion someone will read a commentary out of their study bible and nine times out of ten i either find it wanting or completely disagree with it just uh just the way it goes alright so back to this thing though that was a nice little bunny trail sorry guys to disparage your bibles for you

but so Jacob bows down seven times gotta be some biblical significance in the seven there I suppose yeah I mean there is this seven is certainly the biblical number for for completeness for wholeness

so it's he is completely utterly placing himself at the mercy of his brother and he's completely and utterly doing so with with humility and deference and you might even say repentance because of what he's done in the past now the great irony here about this is that when jacob stole the birthright the blessing of the firstborn from esau his father isaac gave him this blessing he said your brothers will bow down to you so the blessing that isaac gave is seen completely opposite here because instead of jacob's brothers bowing down to him he is bowing down to his

brothers to his to his brother Esau so there's a there's a some pretty heavy irony going on in in Jacob's actions but he's doing the right thing uh he's the one that deceived his father stole from his brother ran away and has spent 20 years in exile so as he comes home he needs to be the one who's bowing down to Esau now I'm not I'm not saying that Jacob has completely pure and godly motives here, because none of us do. I never do anything from completely pure motives. None of us do, because we carry the old Adam around our neck. But, you know, so maybe Jacob certainly is concerned for his life, and so he wants to present himself to Esau, who has 400 men with him, bear in mind. He wants to present himself in such a way that he is going to

to appear even visually to his brother as one who comes not for a fight, but for a reconciliation. So this is the end of verse 3. And at this point, if we didn't know the story, I mean, if we knew nothing about what was about to happen, then we would be waiting with bated breath to see what Esau does. And that is one of the, I guess it's one of the handicaps of knowing the biblical story is sometimes these surprises in the narrative are missed by us because we're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I remember what happened. And so when we hear it, it no longer has that shock that it would have the very first time that we were hearing or reading this story.

Because for the last 20 years, we know nothing about Esau. You know, we don't know if he sat at home and he daydreamed every day for the last two decades about getting a pound of flesh from his brother. All we know is that he shows up with 400 men. That's all we know. So when Jacob goes out to him and he bows down to the ground seven times as he draws near to his brother, is Esau going to just stare at him and you know give him

this killer look is he going to chastise him is he going to get off his horse and walk over with a sword and chop his head off I mean what's he going to do and so because we have this uncertainty because the last thing we heard about Esau was

he's wanting to kill Jacob then we should be utterly shocked by what happens next it's it's completely completely unexpected because as jacob draws near to his brother here's what esau does then esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept i mean if that's got to be one of the most shocking turn of events that the scriptures have because everything i mean there was there was never in in the relationship between these two brothers prior to this there was never at least

recorded for us any display of affection it was nothing but animosity there was uh there was ill will on the part of jacob like he felt cheated his whole life and so he himself turned into a cheater. I mean, even in the womb, they're fighting. Even in the womb, they're wrestling with each other. And when they're born, Jacob's got his hand on Esau's heel, trying to yank him back into the womb so that he can pull ahead of him. You have the whole incident that involved the lentil soup. Then, of course, you have the huge debacle with the stealing of the blessing of the firstborn. So up until this point, there has been nothing but negativity and hostility between these two brothers. And so for Esau, who is the wronged brother in this story,

for him to do what he does is remarkable. And there's like this heaping up of these verbs and these images. He runs to meet him. He embraces him. He falls on his neck. He kisses him. And then the pronoun changes and they wept so it wasn't just esau but it was both of them who wept together as they're finally reconciled with each other yeah that's a pretty that's a pretty awesome picture yeah it's uh it's really it's amazing what uh what wounds god is able to is able to heal you know no matter this is pretty serious stuff you know these these guys are brothers and it's one thing to be mad at somebody or even to want revenge against somebody it's something else to want to kill him and esau did he wanted to kill him uh so for this this complete change to take

place is i mean it's a remarkable testimony to to the ability of god to take two people who are at serious odds with each other and to bring them together. I think it says something about reconciliation is always in the will of God. It's not like something you got to ask the question about. Yeah, does God want me to be reconciled or not? I'm going to fast and pray

and see if it's God's will that i'd be reconciled to this person like no like no it is like that it is you just take just just go ahead and pray about something else but because reconciliation is always in the heart of god it's always in the will of god he's he's never he never thinks that you and this other person hating each other being at odds with each other fighting with each other being unreconciled is a good thing uh he is a god of reconciliation and so uh that that obviously first and foremost is about us and god but certainly that like horizontally that he wants that to to come to come down and then run out to each other and uh you know and i mean this is why um that's why

saint paul you know says that you know as uh as much as it depends on you be at peace with all people which is a way of saying like as much as it depends on you be like be reconciled with everybody that you can be reconciled now i mean like you can only do so much you know i mean you sometimes it's not up to you you know and and that's that's the way it goes you know uh jacob might have done that made that move come out and maybe esau would have chopped his head off and well you've done all you can do at that point or maybe Esau's coming there to reconcile which obviously he is and uh Jacob would have screamed charge and like just went started fighting him right there or ran away or or who knows what and and then yeah well you their reconciliation

doesn't happen but as much as it depends on you that's that's what God would have is you being willing to reconcile with anybody uh whether you're the wrong person or the person that did the wrong or whatever it is that's how he would have have you be it's not easy i mean there's some people we don't want to reconcile with but uh but nonetheless i'm sure that we probably don't have people in our lives that have uh wronged us more than jacob wronged esau i doubt i doubt there's a whole lot of those people in your life chad yeah yes i doubt that seriously i'm sure they're having a few people who wanted to the thought has crossed their mind i'd like to kill them but hopefully uh hopefully that's part of the past now you know i was thinking when you

were talking uh it doesn't matter who it is that we need to be reconciled with the one thing that is is always certain is that it is two sinners who are coming together to be reconciled you know it's not as if okay i'm the holy one the innocent one and i'm going to be reconciled with the the guilty one because both of us are sinners and so even if maybe the blame is completely is almost completely with someone else well i i still come as one who is is flawed and in need of forgiveness myself and so reconciliation involves forgiveness between brothers

well every time I've seen every time I've seen reconciliation happen between people who you know and usually there's one person who's like more in the wrong than the others than the other or whatever but by that point where like where it's

animosity is going on by that point like there's no way for there not to be sin on both sides it's just not possible it's right you know and so uh yeah one might uh have more blame than the other over you know obviously uh jacob has more blame than esau over the initial events but it certainly seems that esau probably has things that he he feels bad about yeah yeah probably so i mean it was it was wrong for him to desire to kill his brother

and to entertain those ideas for however long he entertained them. So even though he was the wronged brother, he himself was wrong as well. And awareness of that fact is a stimulus toward reconciliation. Because the more that I project complete guilt onto the party with whom I need to be reconciled, the chances of that reconciliation taking place diminish. but the more that i understand that i am a sinner i have i am i am wrong as well the more i realize my need to be reconciled with with the other person right that's it yeah so uh

so that's what that's what happens here you know it's a it's a remarkable scene and i don't know if uh if anybody else caught this or not when they were listening to to what esau did but But I could not help but jump ahead when I heard this description of Esau to the parable of the prodigal son, which we talked about so much at the Christ Old Fast conference. Because the verbs that are used to describe the actions of the father are almost identical to what happens here, too. because uh in luke 15 it says the father ran and fell on his neck and kissed his son so you have esau amazingly assuming almost a a paternal action here he's like the father who is greeting the son who's been been on the run for the last for the last 20 years which you know really it matches a lot of what we've seen with Esau in the past we talked about

that when we uh when we discussed the theft of the the blessing of the firstborn how Esau is really uh in some ways a Christ figure in some of these stories because he is the one who has the blessing taken away from him and given to someone else just like Christ is the one who becomes a curse for us in order that we might be blessed on his account. Dressed in his clothes. Yeah, yeah. We're the ones who are dressed in the clothes of Esau so that we might receive the blessing of the Father.

And so here, and this is really the last we hear of Esau in this chapter until the death of their father. But here we have Esau once more being used by God in a foreshadowing sort of way to point forward to what is going to happen at the reconciliation of the world in Christ when God

reconciles us to himself in the death of his son the son who becomes a curse, the son who becomes sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God Yeah, well what Jacob did was Jacob took all Esau's stuff and went off to a far land

I mean, that's what he did yeah this it really is kind of a old testament variation of the parable of the prodigal son yeah he took all his stuff and he bailed out now he didn't squander at all and you know but uh now now they're they're meeting again and yeah it looks it looks very very similar to to the father figure in that in that parable and you have to wonder you know um i don't know man like i mean I have, I have brothers, so, uh, and I've, I've, I have, we used to, you know, we beat up on each other pretty good, but, um, but yeah, but 20 years would be a long, is a long time. I know that if I was, if it, I don't know what one of my brothers would have to

do for me to have not seen them for 20 years and me not be overjoyed. And so, yeah, I think that there's i don't i don't think it it doesn't read to me and this is all speculation or i don't think he saw had a had any intention at all at this point of i don't think it was like he's going out there to kill him then jacob comes out and shows this display of humility and he saw changes his mind um i think that uh you saw probably for quite some time would have liked to have seen his brother didn't know where he was or uh i mean it kind of sounds like he's out looking for him yeah it does it does and not to kill him by just just looking for him yeah yeah he's uh i i don't see any indication whatsoever in the in the way the story's told in fact uh that the that he's

out for blood and changes his mind in fact it seems like he's uh really confused you know because as the story goes on he says you know what's what's all this what's all this stuff one of these animals that you've been sending ahead of me i don't need this stuff i don't i don't need all these these offerings that you've been giving to me uh so it's not as if yeah he's moved by the sight of his brother's humility and says all right i'll let you live no he's he's genuinely wanting to be reconciled to his brother and that's why he acts the way that he does or this uh just really outlandish display of emotion as they're as they're brought together so yeah uh the brothers are reconciled finally and uh at least to our knowledge unless something happened that's not

recorded they remain so the they're together here we're going to see them part ways in a few verses But the next time they come back together is at the death of their father and they bury their father together, which I think is a is a fitting ending to the story of these two brothers. It was their relationship with their father, which led to the split between the two of them. And then you see them coming back together amicably, lovingly, burying their father years down the road. It's probably good that this event took place, or else when it came time to bury their father, Jacob probably would have been royally freaked out. we're gonna have like a double burial here i know it would not have been a good funeral yeah i know reconciliations happen at funerals but it's a whole lot better for it to happen before the funeral itself yeah this is like esau's digging two graves right now i know it

oh so uh so here's here's kind of the way that here's how the story goes after this uh jake jacob uh you know is embraced by esau and uh esau now lifts up his eyes jacob lifted up his eyes earlier and saw esau now esau lifts up his eyes and he sees the women and the children and he says who are these and jacob says the children whom god has graciously given to your servant and so he basically introduces him to his family you know the maids come near leah comes near rachel comes near and everybody's bowing down they're showing great deference to it to uh to esau they're the brother-in-law and the uncle that they're all just meeting and keep in mind this is a this is a young family too

the oldest could not be more than 13 because they've been gone 20 years he had to labor for seven years for uh for leah uh so you know they're just the oldest is just a teenager so very young family young children and uh they're they're meeting their uncle their uncle esau now then he goes on and he says you know what i was talking about earlier what what do you mean by all this company which i have met you know by all the the flocks and the herds that jacob had sent ahead to pacify his uh his brothers and that's what jacob says he says to find favor in your sight and esau says i have plenty my brother let what you have be your own now that that i think is telling because jacob did take the blessing of the firstborn from his brother but we see that god

bless esau despite that he has plenty evidently he's a very powerful guy by now he has 400 men who were with him, and we'll hear about his family in a couple more chapters. But this verse, I think, is significant. This is verse 10. Jacob says, No, please, if not, I have found favor in your sight, then take my present from my hand. For I see your face as one sees the face of God, and you have received me favorably.

that verse has always struck me for for more reasons than one one is because this i see your face as one sees the face of god one because i i do read this story almost eschatologically if you will that this is this is kind of a picture of the final reconciliation of all god's people as we are as we are brought together as we appear before the face of god and everything is finally as it should be here is christ with his family presenting them before the father and we see the face of the one that we are reconciled with completely and eternally in the sacrifice in the sacrifice of christ but i also think that we can uh read this a little bit differently too i see your face as one sees the face of god that when we are reconciled with

someone else that that is a manifestation of divine mercy at work as well that when we see the face of one with whom we were at odds maybe the one that we have hurt when we've run away with run away from that when we are once again united with that person by the act of forgiveness as we as we humbly approach them and seek to be reconciled to them that we see in that face that forgives us and that welcomes us and that embraces us a manifestation of the face of god and he is veiled if you will in this human face just like esau was a display of the face of god to jacob yeah i mean like it's quite a thing for jacob to say to say that considering that he did just see god yeah yeah especially right especially in this context yeah i mean like so uh he he is a

guy that wrestled with god and uh it says i've and he says i've seen the he says i've seen the face of god and lived you know i've seen god face to face right that's what he says and then he turns around and tells his brother when i see you i i see the face of god which which is yeah which is to say that esau's uh forgiving and gracious reception of him is is a very is a very god-like thing this is how god is it's it's even i mean that's a nice thing if you and i say it like hey you reconcile with someone they forgive you or whatever and uh and you say like hey that was very that's very christ-like move uh it's a whole nother thing if i say like it's like i'm looking at the face of god which by the way i saw last night

literally yeah face to face it is it's a it's a whole it's a whole different thing yeah yeah so it's a pretty powerful statement man pretty powerful powerful uh admission by by jacob there yeah i really think it like i said earlier uh it really is a turning point for jacob this what happened with the name change and his encounter with god and you know isn't it fascinating that here he was worried about fighting esau but instead he ends up fighting god And then when he encounters Esau, he encounters grace and mercy and forgiveness. So it's as if he got the fighting out of the way, and God said, you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.

And then he meets his brother. And sure enough, God has paved the way for everything to be reconciled between him and Esau. Yeah, that's awesome. Fantastic story. It is. So we just have a couple of minutes, a couple of minutes left. I think we can, I think we can wrap up, wrap up this chapter. There's not a whole lot that takes place as, as the narrative goes on.

So Esau does receive the gift from his brother and Esau wants Jacob to come live with him. It sounds to me like, because Esau says more or less, Hey, let's travel together. Let's go home to Seir, which was the home of Esau, and I'll go ahead of you, and you can travel. You and your family can travel behind me, but Jacob says, no, you would move too fast. We have flocks. We have herds. We have women with children. We can only move at a very slow pace because of the size of the company.

so you go on ahead and uh we will uh we will we will join you but ironically he doesn't and at least if he does we're not we're not told that that takes place so esau returns that day back home and then jacob instead of going on to where esau is he journeys to a place called Sukkot which means Booths So Jacob goes to A different spot And

The narrative sort of sets us up For what we're going to encounter in the next chapter Because it says that they came to a place Later that was called Shechem which is in the land of Canaan And he buys a piece Of land there From Hamor

Who is the father of Shechem For a hundred pieces of silver and he builds an altar and he names the altar Elohei Yisrael. Now, the reason this is significant is because what's going to happen in the next chapter that has to do with the city of Shechem and Shechem himself, who falls in love with Jacob's daughter, Dinah, and ends up raping her, which will be the whole subject of chapter 34. which is a negative note to end on

but that kind of sets us up for what's coming in the next 40 minutes yeah that is a negative note go be reconciled one to another there you go go be the face of God to someone how about that that's good that's a way to end it

alright well guys thanks for joining us this week you can go over to ChristHoleFast.org if you want to support this program or any of the other stuff we do You can go over to the site, go to support, and you can make a donation there, a one-time donation or a reoccurring donation. That would really help us out and be able to help us be able to continue doing this stuff. Thank you so much for those of you who have done that, and we will see you next week.

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