Element Christian Church of Santa Maria

What do we learn through Jacob’s reorienting his life?

1. We are no one

2. We can change the world

3. This gets done by the power of the God’s Spirit.

Jacob was no one, but God changed the world through him.

Romans 12:19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

God does not count our sins against us, which means we have a message to give to people who are lost in sin. That message is a message of Hope, it is reconciliation with others and God.

We don’t need to second guess what God is doing. We need to trust because we live in dark world and many times we cannot see, so we trust the only one who truly can see.

For those who love Christ, righteousness is the standard. But there are no human means to achieve righteousness. The Church has long specialized in piety and chastity and temperance in the futile effort to attain righteousness apart from God. God called Abraham a friend and declared him righteous, but why? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Once again, in His loving pursuit of sinners, God has set the standard then graciously provided the means to achieve it. What will happen in God’s church when His people stop mimicking righteousness and start living it?

In Genesis 31 we see Christ moving, changing, and growing Jacob and his family, while Laban continues to seek only his own selfishness. The inevitable happens when Jacob and his family move away from the abusive Laban. God uses the last 20 years of suffering to produce great character and faith in Jacob, just like He uses the hardships in our life to mold us into the people He made us to be. It is often through times of suffering that our faith is restored and our hope renewed. Through our tough life experiences the goal of scripture is that we should be drawn to repentance because we understand that God is good. Our goal is not to have our problems disappear, but to be more like Christ. We give thanks to God and repent of sin because Jesus forgives, Jesus restores, and Jesus heals.

God has one plan for this entire creation: He is called Jesus. When Jesus came He did not seek His own comfort, He sought to save us from ourselves and our sin. Yet in saving us, Jesus doesn’t leave us to ourselves, He calls us to become the church; a people who are called out to be His people, His priests, His ambassadors, His blessing.

Jesus came as King and Lord to conquer Satan, sin, and death. This family (Jacob’s family) becomes the family of promise and it is solely due to grace. These people are not our heroes; they are our examples. We don’t put our faith in them; we put our faith in JESUS.

What happens to Jacob is not karma, it is growth that is forced upon him by a God that loves him more than Jacob could imagine. God is growing him up, teaching him the error of his ways, and building him into the man that God needs Jacob to be.

James Dunn “The character of Abraham’s faith is determined by the character of the God in whom he believed.”