The Torah reading וַיִּשְׁלַח Vayishlach (“and he sent,” Genesis 32:4–36:43) gives us an active example of what the apostle Paul calls the “ministry of reconciliation” (2Cor. 5:18). We see Jacob’s offering to Esau. The mission of the ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven is the same. Abraham went, Isaac went and now Jacob went out and returned.

The LORD sends us into the world to be His ambassadors and part of the kingdom of priests. Will we go? Will we face challenges of our own making or ones that are out of our control?

Division is toxic to the Kingdom of God. How are we living this out? The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were separated and they are still separated. But one of the great hopes we read in the TaNaK (Torah, Prophets and Writings, i.e., the Hebrew Scriptures) is that separation will be healed (Ezek. 37:15–22).

“If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.” (Romans 12:18 NASB)

Yeshua tells us in the Beatitudes that those who make peace are happy and blessed. There are those who don’t want peace like we see in the history of the people of Edom, but even though not everyone wants to live in peace, we must strive for it without naiveté.

In other words: Get over it! If somenone offends us, in the name of peace, we need to get over ourselves and think of how to win our brother.

But division must exist between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Edom, between the realm of the eternal and the realm of the temporary.

Struggling with God has been an important part of the people of God from the beginning.

Adam and Chavah (Eve) “wrestled” with the instruction to trust the LORD or the voice of the serpent.

The appearance of an agent of Elohim to wrestle with Ya’akob is a reminder that the spiritual realm can use agents to act or speak for them, such as the serpent in Eden for the Adversary. We need to remember that much of the spiritual realm is beyond our senses yet it is very real.

Money and information are also spiritual. How is money spiritual? When there’s a crisis and we have stockpiled food and someone wants to buy some food from us for some pieces of paper with a dead president or dead monarch on it, would we be willing to engage in that exchange? Probably not, if we don’t know when we will have more food.

The only reason those pieces of paper have any purchasing power is because of the faith we have in the government that issues them. If there’s no more faith in that government, then the money they issue doesn’t have value either.

When we think of information or language as spiritual, we can download hundreds of video and books onto our computer tablets, yet the tablet weighs the same. The increase in information doesn’t increase the weight of the computer tablet but we still engage in something of value.

Abraham had a vivid vision of God as a torch in deep blackness, passing between the sacrifice pieces to seal the deal single-handedly with Abraham.

Though the account doesn’t say what time of day the LORD came after Moshe’s uncircumcised sons during the trip to Mitsraim from Midian, it could have been at night (Ex. 4:24–26). The account says they were “at the lodging place,” presumably after traveling by daylight. Zipporah seems to have “wrestled” with God on Moshe’s behalf.

Israel “wrestled” with God’s destroyer during the night of the first Passover, “prevailing” over the destroyer via the blessing of the blood of the Pesakh (Passover) lamb/goat.

Lesson: Apostle Paul admonished the Ephesian congregation to “put on all of God’s armor” — truth, righteousness, readiness of news about peace from the Kingdom of God, trust in God, God’s salvation and the word of God — because:

“our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.