PEOPLE CONNECTIONS, PART 2: BEING YOU

Genesis 32:22-31 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
3 April, 2005
All Rights Reserved

In the book, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, there is a family with five unmarried daughters. They are not of noble birth nor are they rich but they live comfortably. The entire plot revolves around marrying these daughters off. The two youngest are as silly as the day is long and the youngest, Lydia, is extremely impulsive. When Lydia gets a chance to spend some time living near a battalion of soldiers she cannot contain herself with joy. One has the impression that the combination of her silliness, impulsiveness, and desire for a man will undo her.

It does. She falls under the spell of a certain Major Wickham, who presents himself in social circles in his glorious red uniform with a studied appearance of goodness. Yet he is a selfish, drunken, gambling, womanizing, lying cad all the while. In no time flat Lydia "elopes" with the slimy Wickham yet without benefit of actual marriage. She seems oblivious to her foolishness and the damage she is inflicting on herself and others.

What kind of people connection will such a pairing make? On the one hand, Lydia is virtually a girl, not a woman. She is not a fully-formed person yet, so anyone who marries her would be marrying someone who does not know who she is. Wickham, on the other hand, has deliberately presented himself as something he is not. Were they to marry, they would create a union as fragile as a dried flower: a woman who does not know who she is connected to a man who does not exist.

How can you avoid making people connections which are destined for disaster? A blessed, God-founded people connection cannot be made until you learn to be you. We are all born not knowing who we are and we immediately launch a program to find out. There are two different assumptions upon which that quest can be pursued. We can view ourselves as creatures of God and living in his universe, or we can view ourselves as independent agents responsible to no one. The independent agents will never discover who they are and as a result all their people connections will fall short of God's blessing, often catastrophically. For the others, being themselves means being a child of God who lives by faith and who is shaped by his hand through obedience.

Huge blessings are at stake in our people connections. If we connect God's way according to our true identities the floodgates of blessing open. So long as we run around the surface of earth thinking we are free agents the blessings of connection are dammed up and we will never learn who we are. Our true identities can only be worked out with God.

1. JACOB WRESTLED WITH GOD LIKE WE DO

Jacob was the third patriarch of the nation Israel. There is no doubt that he began his life by viewing himself as an independent agent willing to deceive and harm others to get what he wanted. He lied to his own father. He cheated his brother, Esau, out of his birthright and his blessing as the firstborn. His brother swore to kill him over this so Jacob was forced to flee. He spent twenty years with his unscrupulous uncle Laban, was himself tricked into taking two wives, and built wealth by breeding sheep. He then gathered up his people and possessions to make a run back to the promised land.

With his angry uncle behind him and his murderous brother in front of him, Jacob prepared for the worst. We pick up the story in Genesis 32:22-31: "Now he arose that same night and took his two wives and his two maids and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream. And he sent across whatever he had. Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, 'Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.' But he said, 'I will not let you go unless you bless me.' So he said to him, 'What is your name?" And he said, 'Jacob.' He said, 'Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.' Then Jacob asked him and said, 'Please tell me your name.' But he said, 'Why is it that you ask my name?' And he blessed him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, 'I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.' Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh."

At first Jacob does not seem to know that he is wrestling with the angel of the Lord, a physical appearance of Christ before the incarnation. But eventually he realizes that God himself has come down to roll around with him in the dirt. Why? Because Jacob's whole life had been spent trying to wrest his own way from both people and God. So God said: "You want to wrestle? I'll wrestle with you." And of course, Jacob cannot win. They grappled until dawn when the Lord said, in effect: "Let me show you how foolish it is to wrestle with me." The Lord simply touched Jacob's hip and popped it out of joint.

Jacob thus learned the most important lesson of his life. So he decided to seek God's blessing by hanging on to him and refusing to let go until God blessed him. The Lord did indeed bless him there and signified the change in Jacob's life by changing his name to Israel. It was not until that point in his life that Jacob began to learn his true identity. Only then did he really become himself before the Lord and before people. He had to be dispossessed of the belief that he was on his own in the world, making his own way, and becoming whatever he wanted to be.

So do we. We will never discover our true selves until our wrestling match with God is over and we learn that the path to blessing is to hang on to God and refuse to let go.

2. PARTS OF OUR IDENTITY OVER WHICH WE WRESTLE WITH GOD

A review of Jacob's life reveals major areas of our reality as humans which define us as people. We have all these issues and many more, and the point of definition is how we deal with them.

a. First, you have a selfish and deceiving soul to master. Jacob desperately wanted the wealth, power, and blessing of being the firstborn, but he was second. To him it seemed natural to steal it back from his brother Esau. First he stole back the birthright by holding Esau over a barrel when he was starving. Jacob traded a large pot of stew to Esau in exchange for his birthright.

But that was not enough. He wanted the blessing of the firstborn from his father, Isaac, who was dying and going blind. So Jacob dressed up like his brother, made himself smell and feel like his brother, and impersonated him. The selfishness and deceit in his soul is revealed by these verses: "Then he came to his father and said, 'My father.' And he said, 'Here I am. Who are you, my son?' Jacob said to his father, 'I am Esau your firstborn; I have done as you told me. Get up, please, sit and eat of my game, that you may bless me'" (Genesis 27:18-19). And so Isaac was tricked into giving the blessing, which could not be revoked, to the wrong son. It is easy to criticize Jacob here, but we must all admit that we have a selfish and deceiving soul as well, and one of the great challenges of life is to master it. You cannot do it on your own.

b. Secondly, you have a revelation of God to receive. Jacob had to flee for his life from Esau after this, and on the way out of the country God met him: "He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it" (Genesis 28:12). Jacob was the sort of man who needed to be smacked in the head with the facts, and so God gave him a dream of a ladder revealing God's mastery of the earth and the army of angels.

You have a revelation of God as well, and how you deal with it will determine who you are. First, all of God's creation shouts his reality and attributes. Second, the Bible, the word of God, tells us precisely what we need to know to please God and be saved. Thirdly, if you are dense, the Lord may choose to give you a smack in the head by way of some special dream or vision. Fourthly, God may simply reveal to you his involvement in your life even if you are ignoring him. Have you received your revelation? It has already been given.

c. Thirdly, you have an invitation to enter a covenant with God. Jacob, the third founding patriarch of the nation Israel, had a personal presentation of the covenant God started with his grandfather Abraham: "And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, 'I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you" (Genesis 28:13-15).

This was the Abrahamic Covenant which became the foundation of the New Covenant which was born when Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the dead: "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:40). Those are the terms of the covenant Jesus Christ offers every person. There is nothing else on the table. How you deal with it will determine who you are for eternity.

d. Fourthly, you have a call to worship God reverberating in your inner being. Jacob had a major shift in his life after the dream of the ladder and made his first deliberate recorded decision to worship God: "Then Jacob made a vow, saying, 'If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey that I take, and will give me food to eat and garments to wear, and I return to my father's house in safety, then the LORD will be my God. This stone, which I have set up as a pillar, will be God's house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You'" (Genesis 28:20-22). While it was a decision to worship God, it was flawed. Jacob still thought he could cut deals with the Master of the Universe, the Almighty, the Holy One. Not so.

God calls every person to worship him. Creation itself reveals that there is a God whom it is our duty to worship. But God cuts no deals with his worshipers. He doesn't need us because he is eternally self-existent. So when we try to cut deals with him, we are the losers, because true worship is the most totally freeing thing we will ever know. Have you responded to God's call to worship? You won't know who you are until you do.

e. Fifthly, you have a need for love and family. When Jacob fled the land of promise he immediately began searching for a wife among his uncle Laban's family. He served Laban seven years for beautiful Rachel. Then he was tricked into marrying Leah and serving another seven years. Between them and their handmaids he fathered the twelve fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Would you serve your uncle seven years to marry his daughter? "So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her" (Genesis 29:20). Jacob had an intense need for love and family, and so do we all. It may be expressed through marriage, our connection to our extended families, or solely by connection to the family of God.

Will you follow God's plans for love and family, or will you run off with the first handsome soldier or the first silly girl? Only by honoring God in your relationships will you discover who you are.

f. Sixthly, you have a desire to prosper. Jacob made the unscrupulous Laban the offer of taking as wages only the spotted, speckled, or black goats and sheep from the flocks he had already been tending. There is nothing wrong with seeking to prosper by the work of your hands in an honest way. Jacob also discovered the blessing of God was upon him as he sought to build an income virtually from nothing: "[The Lord] said, 'Lift up now your eyes and see that all the male goats which are mating are striped, speckled, and mottled; for I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you made a vow to Me; now arise, leave this land, and return to the land of your birth'" (Genesis 31:12-13).

There is no genuine prosperity without the blessing of God. Your manner of dealing with this fact will determine who you are. Are you like the selfish Wickham who sought to take all he could get by lies and trickery? It will never satisfy you and you will never discover your true identity.

CONCLUSION

We end where we began. Jacob finally discovered in wrestling the angel of the Lord at the Jabbok River that the only sensible thing to do was to seek the blessing of God by hanging on to him with all his might and never letting go. He finally discovered who he was: a creature of the Almighty God with a duty to worship him in all of life.

Have you made that discovery? Your people connections will never bear to you the blessings God intends until you know who you are. How can anyone connect with you if you do not know who you are?

Powerful, life-changing people connections are not the result of working the human aspect out to perfection, but of living the central realities of our identity under God. These realities define us because God says so! And that is why our people connections cannot bless us when we are staring fixedly only at our humanity.

Fake people, like Major Wickham, and foolish people, like Lydia Bennett, live in denial of these issues. You cannot really get to know them, and if you could you would find that there is nothing of substance to know.

There is blessing, power, and healing in people connections done God's way. The first of these is to connect with your heavenly Father by confessing your sins and receiving atonement for them through the death and resurrection of Christ. That is when, as Jesus said, you become children of God, and you discover your created identity for the first time. That is where the adventure begins. From there, the depth and blessing of your people connections is determined by how well you have come to terms with who you really are.

[A&E, chapter 11, disc 2]