LEARNING TO LEAD
by Steve Zeisler
When I was in college, I worked for a local Pepsi Cola bottler one summer.
I performed various odd jobs; everything from cleaning up the plant to driving
delivery trucks. One job I avoided, however, was operating the fork lifts
that were used to load pallets of Pepsi on to delivery trucks. Given the
narrow passageways and my lack of skill, I had recurring visions of thousands
of bottles of Pepsi cascading down in a shower of cola and glass all over
the warehouse floor.
As Christians, God frequently calls upon us to perform tasks for which we
do not have the necessary skills. We are faced with situations in which,
depending on our background and skills, we may find ourselves wondering
how in the world we are going to accomplish what God wants us to do. He
does that, of course, because that is part of his training process to bring
us to maturity as believers. He pushes us into waters that are very often
way beyond our depth, thereby teaching us that self-reliance will not pull
us through.
In our studies in the lives of the patriarchs in Genesis, we have recently
been considering Jacob. As we continue looking at his life this morning,
we will see that he too was called upon to perform tasks for which he did
not have the required skills. Yet, over time, through Jacob's good and bad
choices, God brought him to maturity; and in the process made him a powerful
and effective servant. It is my hope that we will find a word of encouragement
in the drama of Jacob's life. At times, the Christian life is presented
as an immediate cure-all for every weakness and inadequacy. That is not
in accordance with the Scriptures, nor is it the the experience of anyone
I know. When we come to Christ, we do not "proceed directly to Boardwalk."
We will see this very clearly as we continue our study of the life of Jacob.
We have already noted that the critical moment in Jacob's life occurred
on the night by the brook Jabbok when the patriarch wrestled with the pre-incarnate
Christ. Although Jacob himself had received the promise of Abraham, and
had been protected all of his life by God, he could not bring himself to
believe that God had his good in mind. Jacob was a fearful man, a defensive
man and a manipulator. He had difficulty believing the word spoken from
the very heavens that God would protect and bless him. He went through life,
therefore, relying upon himself.
We are familiar with the chart that is sometimes used to describe the Christian
life. It comprises a circle enclosing a throne. The question is obvious:
who sits upon the throne, you or God? Are you yourself in charge of life,
and is God placed at the periphery of all that you do? Or is God sovereign
in your life, and sitting upon the throne? During the twenty years he spent
in Haran, Jacob was seated upon the throne of his life. He had relegated
God to the periphery of all his plans and dreams. Then came the encounter
with God at Peniel. Jacob's hip was dislocated. Crippled in body and spirit,
the patriarch at last allowed God to ascend the throne of his life. From
that point on, Jacob became a different man. He went from being the project
upon whom God was working to being the agent through whom God worked. Up
to then he had focused upon himself. He had been consumed by his fears and
his own interests. Finally, at Peniel, he came to believe that God would
indeed meet his needs. Jacob was given certain responsibilities, and was
ready at last to be used by God to change the world around him.
But, as is true with all Christians, Jacob was quite ill-suited for these
tasks. At last he came to realize that he had certain responsibilities towards
his family. He would henceforth be God's spokesman, thus he had to be a
good example to those who looked to him for leadership. That had never occurred
to him before; he was too busy looking after himself. Secondly, Jacob would
be responsible to influence the world around him. He would have to be faithful,
reliable and honest in his interaction with both believers and unbelievers.
He would be called upon to be a man whose lifestyle would bring honor to
God. Thirdly, he would be responsible to guard a treasure. Paul wrote to
Timothy, "Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in you, the treasure
which has been entrusted to you." Jacob was called to reject compromise,
to reject any alliance which would mix truth with error. He was charged
to guard the treasure of the truth.
These were the responsibilities Jacob was burdened with on the night when
God finally took his rightful place on the throne of his life. But, as we
have already seen, Jacob was not good at doing any of these things. He was
not a natural leader. He was an uninvolved father. In one of his addresses
to his uncle Laban, he gave vent to all of his stored-up bitterness. We
can imagine the negative effect that long period of unexpressed resentment
had upon his children. When at last he faced the prospect of a meeting with
his brother Esau, whom he had cheated, he placed his wives and children
in front of him as a shield to protect himself. So much for his fatherly
influence. His older children, as we will see, were accomplished in arrogance
and high-handed sin. Surely this was caused in part by Jacob's lack of leadership
and parental discipline.
Based on his record, therefore, it is fair to assume that Jacob was not
a natural leader either of his family, or a potential natural leader whose
life would have influence for good in his world. He was, rather, a deceiver
and a manipulator; hardly the ideal candidate for Christian statesmanship.
Before his encounter with God at Peniel, he had no sense of what it meant
to guard the treasure that had been entrusted to him. Although he coveted
the promise made to Abraham, he was without natural ability to pursue it
and guard it. Beginning on that night when he wrestled with God, however,
he would be called upon to grow into a man who would be able to do so.
We pick up the account again in Genesis 33.
Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was
coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among
Leah and Rachel and the two maids. And he put the maids and their children
in front, and Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last. But
he himself passed on ahead of them and bowed down to the ground seven times,
until he came near to his brother. Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced
him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. And he lifted his
eyes and saw the women and the children, and said, "Who are these with
you?" So he said, "The children whom God has graciously given
to your servant. "Then the maids came near with their children, and
they bowed down. And Leah likewise came near with her children, and they
bowed down; and afterward Joseph came near with Rachel, and they bowed down.
And he said, "What do you mean by all this company which I have met?"
And he said, "To find favor in the sight of my lord." But Esau
said, ""I have plenty, my brother; let what you have be your own."
And Jacob said, "No, please, if now 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. Please take my gift which has
been brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because
I have plenty." Thus he urged him and he took it.
Then Esau said, "Let us take our journey and go, and I will go before
you." But he said to him, "My lord knows that the children are
frail and that the flocks and herds which are nursing are a care to me.
And if they are driven hard one day, all the flocks will die. Please let
my lord pass on before his servant; and I will proceed at my leisure, according
to the pace of the cattle that are before me and according to the pace of
the children, until I come to my lord at Seir." And Esau said, "Please
let me leave with you some of the people who are with me." But he said,
"What need is there? Let me find favor in the sight of my lord."
So Esau returned that day on his way to Seir. And Jacob journeyed to Succoth;
and built for himself a house, and made booths for his livestock, therefore
the place is named Succoth. Now Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem,
which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan-aram, and camped
before the city. And he bought the piece of land where he had pitched his
tent from the hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, for one hundred
pieces of money. Then he erected there an altar, and called it El-Elohe-Israel.
Commentators differ in their interpretation of the interaction between the
brothers Jacob and Esau. Some of them say that this is the same old Jacob,
fawning and faking and manipulating. I don't agree with that interpretation.
On the contrary, I see great beauty in this account of their meeting.
Esau, I feel, demonstrates goodwill toward Jacob. God has done a work in
his life, too, and he is sincerely happy to see his brother. Jacob too is
at last beginning to repent for the way he had wronged his brother. His
humility, I believe, is a genuine expression of his sorrow for how he treated
Esau in the past. He owes Esau both a financial and an emotional debt, which
he presses upon him, out of a feeling of genuine remorse for his past behavior.
There is a problem, though, in the fact that Esau appears for this rendezvous
with four hundred men, while Jacob also is accompanied by a considerable
entourage. Jacob knew that even before he and his twin brother were born,
God had decreed that they would be separate from each other. He also knew
that from each of them would spring separate nations, and Jacob's tribe
was the one on which the favor of God would be manifest. Part of Jacob's
problem, therefore, in addition to the obvious one-on-one concerns he had
on meeting his brother, lay in the fact that Esau was also in the process
of becoming a nation in his own right. He too had an entourage, one that
rivaled Jacob's, as is obvious by the company of men who arrived with him
for this meeting.
So while on the one hand, Jacob is delighted by the tone of his meeting
with Esau, he cannot accept his brother's offer that the men of Edom travel
with them. That was not God's plan for Jacob and his progeny. His protests,
therefore, far from being manipulative, are evidence of his earnestness
in light of his new responsibilities as leader of his family. He had driven
them hard in the getaway from Haran; he had endangered their lives by placing
them as a buffer between himself and Esau. His responsibilities with regard
to them have finally come home to him. I believe he traveled on to Seir
at some point to see his brother. At the burial of their father Isaac later,
there is no record of animosity between them. I do not see, therefore, any
evidence of manipulation and lying by Jacob in this interaction with Esau.
Jacob means just what he says. He has become a man of his word. While he
has not yet become a model father and leader, he has begun to make good
choices. He is developing skills for which, as I also discovered in my summer
job long ago, he had no natural bent.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "If therefore you are presenting
your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something
against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go your way.
First be reconciled to your brother, then come and present your offering."
If we want to grow as Christians, we must first make things right with those
whom we have wronged. If we have taken what was someone else's, or lied,
or whatever, we need to make matters right. Here we see Jacob doing a good
job of reestablishing and then cementing his relationship with Esau. He
has righted an old wrong, and paid back what he gained earlier by lying
and cheating. Christians should do no less in any day or age.
But in chapter 34, we find that Jacob again fails miserably as God's man.
The commentators who hold that Jacob was merely hustling Esau at their meeting,
recorded in chapter 33, say that his failures in chapter 34 are the result
of his rejection of God, and his decision to handle things himself. Again,
I disagree. What happens Jacob in chapter 34 would have been my fate if
I had taken the controls of the fork-lift that summer. Jacob had not yet
learned the necessary skills. He did not run away again; he did not slip
back into his old patterns of lying and subterfuge. But he had to face a
new circumstance, and he botched it.
These chapters are quite explicit about Jacob's behavior. When he is deceiving
someone, as he had deceived his father and later his uncle Laban, we are
given that information (e.g. Gen.27:35; 31:20). Jacob was a deceiver, Scripture
says. Even his name, which means "deceiver," declares that. Thus,
in the section where we now find ourselves, where Scripture concludes that
Jacob was a moral failure, what he actually was was what many of us are
on occasion, and that is, struggling believers who don't know how to handle
what we have gotten into. At times we are not particularly skilled to deal
with what life throws at us. Then, God does not judge us for that failure
so much as he takes us through the consequences of our failure and, through
it, teaches us what he wants us to learn.
Having said that, however, Jacob's behavior, as revealed in chapter 34,
is very bad indeed. What a very sad story we have here! Dinah, Jacob's teenage
daughter, was in need of friendship. She traveled to a local village and
befriended the young women of that town. In the course of that trip, she
was either raped or seduced (the Hebrew is not clear) by a young man. He
wanted to marry her, and his father went to negotiate with Jacob. This man,
Hamor the Hittite, seems forthright and above board about the matter, but
Jacob appears to not have a clue as to how he should respond. He did not
take any action, but rather, as the text says, "kept silent,"
until his sons came in from the field. He seems to have been unable to respond
to this situation, uncertain as to what to do.
When the girl's brothers come home, they are filled with the kind of moral
outrage we expect from young people who come to learn of such an indignity.
They determine to "do what is right" by Dinah. Never mind that
they themselves are caught in sexual sin later; at this point they are outraged
at what has befallen their sister. In a fashion that is typically deceptive
for this family, Dinah's brothers respond by making an offer of their own.
Hamor's son may have Dinah for his wife, they suggest, but only if all of
the men in his family submit to circumcision. The unstated part of the brothers'
scheme is that they plan on killing all of them while they are immobilized
following their circumcision. When all of this has been accomplished, we
find Jacob, once more, fearful of his own destruction, and humiliated by
his own sons.
What happened to Jacob is the fate of many fathers in every generation:
he is forced to observe the behavior of his young adult offspring when they
are unsure of what to do in a crisis situation. Jacob was feeling guilty
for his failure during his children's formative years. He found it hard
to act because he knew he bore some responsibility for their inability to
make wise and informed choices in the face of crises. He had not provided
for his daughter's emotional need for friends, and that too made him feel
guilty for what had befallen her. His sons had dreamed up an elaborate,
deceptive trap to assuage their moral outrage by wreaking havoc on the Hittites.
But Jacob well knew that he would have to go on living in Canaan long after
his sons had avenged their sister's misfortune, and that he would have to
deal with the relatives and friends of the slain. He knew that part of his
responsibility was to remain separate from the tribes which surrounded them;
that he had responsibilities towards his daughter and sons; and, of course,
to God himself. Yet he stood there silent in the face of the news that his
daughter had fallen prey to a Hittite. He was unable to act because he had
never before been confronted with such a dilemma.
There are other fathers in the Bible--Manoah, Eli, David, to name a few--who
also had to face the fact that they did not have control over their children
once they became adults; that children are capable of taking independent
action, and that they insist on doing so. Keenly aware of his own responsibility
for what had happened to Dinah, Jacob stood, silent and helpless--frozen,
almost--by the news of his daughter's fate.
I confess I used to be much more critical of the parents of teenagers than
I am now that one of my children is a teenager. I used to wonder why mature
Christian parents tolerated the behavior of their teenagers. I don't have
that problem anymore! As a parent of a teenager, I have discovered that
it isn't always obvious how to respond to any given situation. A parent
must be both loving and honest. You must know when to put your foot down
and when not to, realizing that you are not in charge anymore; that all
you have is influence, not command. All of these factors can produce the
kind of dilemma which Jacob found himself in. As a father, he didn't know
what to do.
As terrible as this account is, however, I appreciate the fact that God
does not condemn Jacob for his failure. On the contrary, he protects him
by preventing the people of the land from doing him harm following his sons'
violent solution. God reiterates (in chapter 35) his promise to Jacob, telling
him that he loves him. He even takes him back to Bethel.
Every head of a family will run into circumstances at one time or another
when he does not know what to do, when he feels paralyzed. That does not
offend God. He will use such circumstances to teach us, and then he will
show us what to do so that we will be wiser for what happened. And the more
we learn in this way, the more we mature in our responses as to how to proceed
when the next situation arises. God will use our very lack of certain skills
to mature us.
In Genesis 35, we discover that Jacob has turned a spiritual corner.
Then God said to Jacob, "Arise, go up to Bethel, and live
there; and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled
from your brother Esau." So Jacob said to his household and to all
who were with him, "Put away the foreign gods which are among you,
and purify yourselves, and change your garments; and let us arise and go
up to Bethel; and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in
the day of ny distress, and has been with me wherever I have gone."
So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods which they had, and the rings
which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was near
Shechem. As they journeyed, there was a great terror upon the cities which
were around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. So Jacob came
to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the
people who were with him. And he built an altar there, and called the place
El Bethel, because there God had revealed Himself to him, when he fled from
his brother. Now Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried below
Bethel under the oak; it was named Allon-bacuth.
Then God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Paddar-aram, and He blessed
him. And God said to him, "Your name is Jacob; you shall no longer
be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name." Thus He called him
Israel. God also said to him, "I am God Almighty; be fruitful and multiply;
a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come
forth from you. And the land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give
it to you, and I will give the land to your descendants after you."
Then God went up from him in the place where He had spoken with him. And
Jacob set up a pillar in the place where He had spoken with him, a pillar
of stone, and poured out a libation on it; he also poured oil on it. So
Jacob named the place where God had spoken with him, Bethel.
Then they journeyed from Bethel; and when there was still some distance
to go to Ephrath, Rachel began to give birth and she suffered severe labor.
And it came about that when she was in severe labor that the midwife said
to her, "Do not fear, for now you have another son." And it came
about as her soul was departing (for she died), that she named him Ben-oni;
but his father called him Benjamin. So Rachel died and was buried on the
way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). And Jacob set up a pillar over her
grave; that is the pillar of Rachel's grave to this day. Then Israel journeyed
on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder. And it came about while
Israel was dwelling in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his
father's concubine; and Israel heard of it. Now there were twelve sons of
Jacob--the sons of Leah: Reuben, Jacob's first-born, then Simeon and Levi
and Judah and Issachar and Zebulun; the sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin;
and the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's maid: Dan and Naphtali; and the sons of
Zilpah, Leah's maid: Gad and Asher. These are the sons of Jacob who were
born to him in Paddan-aram. And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre
of Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned.
Now the days of Isaac were one hundred and eighty years. And Isaac breathed
his last and died, and was gathered to his people, an old man of ripe age;
and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.
Here we can plainly see that Jacob, who for so long seemed ill-suited to
spiritual responsibility, has grown up. That is evident both in the good
choices he made in confronting Esau, and the bad choices he made when he
was camped by the city of Shechem. All of these conspired to make him a
man of much greater spiritual stature, a man with a sense of purpose in
life.
For instance, at the outset of this chapter we read that he took steps to
rid his family of the idols that they had brought with them when they left
Paddan-aram. Jacob himself did not take any idols on his departure from
his uncle's home (it was his wife who did so), but I doubt if it ever occurred
to him that that was a problem during all those years. However, he finally
began to realize that as leader of his family it was up to him to take the
steps to rid his family of the remnants of idol worship. Furthermore, at
Bethel this time around he worships the God of Bethel, unlike the last time
when he seemed to pay more attention to the place itself. Now he has a much
more profound sense of who God is.
Look at the kind of things Jacob is called upon to face on this chapter.
He suffers the loss through death of Rachel's beloved nurse, and the death
in childbirth of his own beloved, the woman he had loved from the first
moment he saw her. He buries both of these well loved women with great honor.
He renames the son who was born to him, whom his mother had named "the
son of sorrow," and calls him "the son of my right hand."
This son would not have to face the prospect of knowing that he had brought
sorrow, but rather would bear an exalted name, given him by his father.
(By the way, it is revealing to see how much better Jacob was as a father
to these younger sons, Joseph and Benjamin, than he was to his older sons.)
Then, in the death of Isaac, we see how the two brothers, Jacob and Esau,
come together to provide an honorable burial for their father. Jacob has
at last learned how to handle emotionally turbulent times. He has learned
how to confront tragedy. He has become a leader, manifesting skills which
he never had before. He has become God's man, a man of character, depth
and wisdom.
The most important choice Jacob made was his decision at Peniel to allow
God to take his place as King of his life. We need to do the same. Let us
quit running, lying, manipulating, and living in our own strength. Jacob
made that critical first choice at Peniel. From that point on he was given
responsibility to serve God in his generation, notwithstanding the fact
that he did not know how to carry out that responsibility. The master Sculptor
went to work on his life, sculpting a new man out of the mistakes of the
past. Through Jacob's choices, good and bad, through his mistakes and failures
in the years to follow, God was hewing something beautiful and worthwhile.
Each one of us who puts Jesus Christ first in our life has been charged
by God to become an influence for good in our generation. Each one of us
is an unfinished, rough-hewn block upon whom God is working. And, thankfully,
he will not quit working on us until he finishes the job. He is a patient
teacher. He will not reject us, but he will correct us and teach us when
we do not know how to proceed in the Christian life. He will even use our
failures to teach us. No matter how discouraging things appear to you now,
no matter how rough are the edges, God is committed to finishing what he
began in your life.
Catalog No. 4042
Genesis 33:1-36:43
Fourth Message
Steve Zeisler
May 24, 1987
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