Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, this is God's camp. And so he called the name of that place, Mahanaim. And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother, in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, instructing them, thus you shall say to my lord Esau, Thus says your servant Jacob, I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants and female servants. I have sent to tell my Lord in order that I may find favor in your sight. And the messengers returned to Jacob saying, we came to your brother Esau and he is coming to meet you. And there are 400 men with him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him and the flocks and herds and camels into two camps, thinking if Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the other camp that is left will escape. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, return to your country and to your kindred that I may do you good. I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant. For with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me. the mothers with the children. But you said, I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. So he stayed there that night. And from what he had with him, he took a present for his brother Esau, 200 female goats and 20 male goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams, 30 milking camels with their calves, 40 cows and 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys. These he handed over to his servants, every drove by itself and said to his servants, pass on ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove. He instructed the first, when Esau, my brother, meets you and asks you, to whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are those ahead of you? Then you shall say, they belong to your servant Jacob. They are a present sent to my lord Esau. And moreover, he is behind us. He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed with the droves. You shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him. And you shall say, moreover, your servant Jacob is behind us, for he thought I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me. And so the present passed on ahead of him, and he himself stayed that night in the camp. The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his 11 children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream and everything else that he had. Amen. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we seek your face for we need your help. We ask, Lord, that you remind us of how desperate we are before you for your daily help, but ultimately for the salvation that you can only provide, that you only provide through your son. We rejoice that you have given us knowledge of Christ and pray that you would increase, Lord, our love towards your son, our knowledge of his ways, Lord, and remind us yet again of his grace. Help us now as we consider these words. Build us up, Lord, in the most holy faith we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. When we are very desperate and our states of desperation is often the cause for very rash action, We're like desperately hungry, so we just scour the cabinets for whatever we think is edible in the moment. We very rashly decide we must eat. When we're desperate, I don't know, to find someone that we would share our lives with, we might be rash and choose ungodly, or a spouse who has ungodly traits, who doesn't worship or follow the Lord. In many ways, our desperate moments are our most rash and unthinking and unwise moments. In this chapter, we meet a man who is very desperate, extremely desperate before the Lord, yet he is controlled. He is not rash. He is in a very desperate place, but he is filled with wisdom. He seeks the Lord. He acts godly. He does well before God. He faces a very, very hard, tense, intricate, difficult situation. And he does so with zeal for righteousness. He does so willing to sacrifice his own self. He does so in a godly way. Jacob is nearly home. Remember, he has just recently escaped the cruel treatment of Laban, his father-in-law and uncle. He is heading back to the promised land after God had instructed him to do that. But there's one giant impediment before him. There's one major caution on the road ahead. and it's his brother Esau, the brother that he himself had spurned, had tricked Esau, who was the original reason for Jacob's departure from the Promised Land. Remember, after Jacob swindled his brother of the blessing and his birthright, word came to Rebekah, Jacob's mother, that Esau was comforting himself by planning to murder Jacob when Isaac passed away. It's like Esau, when Jacob last met him, he was seething in anger and lust for revenge. And so the question that arises as Jacob makes his way back to the Promised Land, have things changed? Where is Esau now? Is he now at the point of 20 years of planning for revenge? of unrequited anger? Is he, now that Jacob is returning, going to pounce, going to destroy him, finally going to get his pound of flesh? Is that what is waiting him in the promised land? This is 20 years later? Jacob has very real reason to be afraid. He has very real reason to walk carefully. He has very real reason to approach the promised land with a good bit of wisdom and humility. Indeed, that's exactly what he shows here. He's a man who's very much matured. He's not the same one who left the promised land. He has received the disciplining, hard hand of God and many providences And he's been faithful. He's been trained by it. He shows himself in this chapter, most especially, out of all he's seen thus far, he shows himself to be a man of God. A man who has come to grips with what God is calling him to as the covenant. is the one through whom the Abrahamic covenant is to funnel down, and the one through whom really the people of Israel, who will bear his name, are to be brought up. He is a matured man. He is fueled by humility and repentance. So much so that his approach to the promised land here displays, as I said earlier, one who lives out the words of Jesus in Matthew 5. 23 through 25, he is ready to enter into God's country to take up his ordained role as the covenant head. He is ready to go to offer himself as really to the Lord as a living sacrifice. But before he does that, he seeks reconciliation with the brother he has offended. That's the main posture of Jacob here as a desperate man, and this chapter is one of holy and humble desperation. It's not despair that he's facing, but he's desperate to make things right with his brother, to protect his family, and to honor his God. Let's consider what we see in Jacob here. Indeed, what we can learn from this man as he shows us what a holy, desperate posture of humility and repentance looks like. And the first point, you have these in your bulletin, is that he teaches us, or we learn from this passage, in the guidance of the Lord, that we should not shy away from hard things. We should not turn away from the path that actually is difficult. When there are two paths before us, sometimes there's the easy and broad way, and then there's the hard and narrow way. And the Christian way of life is to take the hard and narrow way. There is a good in facing manfully, courageously hard things, and to face them with dependence upon the Lord's promised protection. and care, that's exactly what Jacob does here. Look at verse one. Jacob is going on his way like Jesus, setting his face like a flint to Jerusalem, where there will be difficulty ahead. Jacob sets himself on the way to the promised land. And as he goes there, returning to the land of God's own country that is promised to him, angels of God meet him. Now that should remind you of something that happened earlier in Jacob's narrative. When he left the promised land, and he laid his head down on a rock as a pillow in a moment of complete loneliness, in a moment of very darkness, actually probably his lowest moment fleeing from Esau, and he gets a vision, and the vision is marvelous. There's a staircase ascending up into the heavens, and God is there beside him, and there are angels going up and down on this staircase. We noted back earlier when we considered that vision that the angels of God show there the Lord's sovereign, good, powerful hand of protection upon Jacob. Because the various lands would have either one or numerous angels assigned to the various lands to offer protection, ultimately for the people of God and for Jacob here. And so these angels return as he's making his way back into the land, not that they were ever absent. God was with him the whole time he was in Paddan-Iram, the whole time he was under the heavy thumb of Laban. God and his ministers sent out to serve those who would inherit salvation, that is his angels, were very much active in the life of Jacob, but here they make an appearance because he needs, Jacob needs to be reassured that God is with him in this hard road ahead. Psalm 34, seven speaks of the angel of the Lord surrounding and camping around God's people to protect them like a fence, to guard them from all evil. And that's exactly what we see in Jacob here as the angels of God surround him, two camps flanking him. that are guarding him and protecting him as he makes his way to Esau. I think this is actually the main thing that spurs Jacob along in his quest to make things right with Esau, in his act of repentance and reconciliation, is that he knows God is with him. And that's not just true for Jacob, it is true for you too. The one thing that can spur you along in the hard path that is set before you in the life as a Christian, which involves oftentimes seeking reconciliation with those whom we have sinned against, a very, very hard thing to do. is to know that God is with us and he will never leave or forsake us. And he encamps around us to protect and defend us. And when we face hard times ahead, whether it's betrayals and pain or suffering of like physical disease or mental distress, all of these things are not outside of God's care. And it's not like they catch God off guard, he continually protects and guards and defends and is with us. I will never leave you or forsake you, he says. Like Jacob, we can remember that as well. And face hard things with the dependence upon the Lord's promised protection and care. Yet, we learn here as well, that not shying away from hard things doesn't just mean just standing there and saying God will protect me. So one of the major theme of this passage is that there is rest in the Lord wedded to like godly action. It's not a passive sort of standby, as you'll see this in the second and third points as well. Jacob prays, but then he acts. And you can't like separate the two. You must pray, absolutely. But you also must act in godly and wise ways. And that's exactly what Jacob does here. He works. the hard things out, he tackles the ball of twine that's all knotted together, he starts to untangle it in godly and good ways, at least he tries to, and this is what he does here, he acts. Now, the reason for his action is tempt, he sent out messengers to Esau, this is his using a godly means to bring reconciliation first, he wants Esau to hear that he's coming. And so he sent out these messengers with a message that betrayer, that shows a humble heart. He says, when you go to the land of Seir, where Esau is, and this is on the outskirts, outside the promised land, which is interesting, it means that Jacob could just have entered the north, just gone straight down, like. from the north to the north of the Promised Land and bypass Esau altogether. But he doesn't. He goes the long way around so that he has to deal with Esau. That's why we see him here seeking out this reconciliation. And so what does he do? He sends these messengers. They say, bring a message to Esau that says, thus says your servant, Jacob. I have sojourn with Laban, I have all this oxen and donkeys, I've got all this wealth, I'm coming back, that I wanna find favor, because I wanna find favor in your sight. There's one word there that should stand out to you that is unexpected. It's the word servant. Now God did prophesy to Rebekah that the older shall serve the younger, that ultimately, in the grand scheme of God's decree, Esau will be the servant of Jacob. This is humility here, where Jacob sets Esau before himself and says, at least as concerns our relationship as brothers here, and what will transpire, consider me your servant. I'm calling you Lord, Esau. Here, as one commentator says, in order to meet with God in the promised land, Jacob first had to be reconciled with his brother. He's seeking this hard thing. Jacob is himself embodying Hebrews 12, 14, which says, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Or Romans 12, which we just read earlier, where the Apostle Paul says, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Here, by virtue of this message, Jacob is seeking wisely to make the approach a little more easy, but he's tackling what is ahead of him. He's not shying away from it. He is running straight towards it, even going the roundabout way to get there. Well, he receives words back from his messengers. They are not particularly encouraging. If you remember earlier in chapter 14, 13 and 14, Sodom and Gomorrah are captured. This is before God destroys them, and Lot is captured. mounts an army and he goes to battle with four kings and with their armies and he defeats them. Abraham only defeated those four kings with 318 men. And so here Esau is heading Jacob's way with 400 men. And so Jacob has good reason to feel a bit of tension in his chest. This is not apart from his trust in the Lord. Actually, as we'll see in verse nine and following, there is a real threat facing him. As far as we know, at this point in the narrative, Esau is coming to destroy. And so what does Jacob do? That brings us to our second point. He cultivates or shows his dependence upon God in prayer, and we should do as well. We should cultivate dependence upon God in prayer. This is one of the longest prayers in Genesis, and it's a master prayer. last week, this past week, a prayer meeting. We looked through this prayer and sort of foreshadowed a bit of what we see here, but we do well to look through it again. It's a very, very good prayer. Look at verse 9. Jacob says, God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, return to your country, to your kindred, that I may do you good. He begins his prayer here really from a desperate foundation, a good desperation. Noted that already. There's prayer that is desperate in the sense that it's the only time you pray. The foxhole prayer is if that's the only time you pray, you should still pray when you're desperate, but prayer is meant to be prayed at all times, even when things are good. Our whole lives ought to be lives of prayer. But this prayer is a prayer that is desperate. It is one in which Jacob is embodying as well Psalm 70, which we sang earlier. He is poor and needy before the Lord. Though he has all this wealth and all these flocks before the Lord, and now in the face of his brother Esau, he is completely naked and exposed. And therefore he must express his dependence upon God in prayer and seek the help that only God can give. He is that desperate. He cannot save himself. he needs the Lord's help here, just as all of our prayers should be an expression of our great need of the Lord, that we are desperate before him, that we cannot save ourselves, that we must have him act on our behalf. Calvin said on this prayer, he says, the Lord willed that the mind of his servant Jacob should be oppressed by this anxiety for a time, although without really any real cause, and we saw it eventually reconcile with him, but in order that in order to excite in Jacob the fervor of his prayer. In other words, as your quote in the back of the bulletin says from Matthew Henry, which expresses the same thing, times of fear should be times of prayer. Whatever frightens us should drive us to our knees and to our God. That's what we see in Jacob here. And this is prayer that we see in verses nine, or verse nine is founded on the strong foundation of the covenant promises of God. It's prayer that flows out of scripture, you could say, out of revelation, for Jacob prays and says first, he addresses God as the God of his father, Abraham and Isaac, remembering and recalling the Lord's past faithfulness to Abraham, to Isaac, and the Lord's past faithfulness to himself, to Jacob, when God said to him, return to your country, that I may do you good. Jacob is reminding God, not that God has forgotten. reminding him of God's own expression of his goodwill towards his servant, Jacob. It's very much like one of my favorite psalms, Psalm 138, which concludes with David saying, the Lord will fulfill all his purposes for me, yet then concludes with this petition, Lord, do not forsake the work of your hands. In other words, God will work everything out for my salvation and for his glory. and then follows up with a prayer. God, work everything out for my salvation and for your glory. It teaches us this is exactly what Jacob is doing here. He doesn't just simply receive the word of God that says, I will do you good, and then go on his way. He prays, he exposes himself in his desperation before the Lord and says, remember your word. Remember what you said, oh Lord. That's There's another part of building His pre-Omnic Covenant promises of God is how He addresses God here in verse nine as capital L-O-R-D, Lord, which is the covenant name of God. The name reserved for God's people, like a special name that God's people use to address their covenant Lord, to remember that He is who He is and He will do what He has said He will do. This is the word, that is most likely pronounced as Yahweh. It's the Lord's special covenant name, and here for the first time, Jacob uses it in his prayer. He invokes the covenant promises of the covenant Lord here. This is the name of God that is never to be used lightly. You should not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. It's a name that is indicative of and connected to the powerful character of God to do what is right and just and good and yet to do also to show mercy to his people. In other words, Jacob here is praying in the name of the Lord. He's put it in our, as we reflect on the fullness of scripture, this is Jacob praying in the name of Christ. The Lord of lords, the king of kings, he's depending upon, he's offering his prayer from the standpoint of God's covenant mercy. And that's what it means to pray in Jesus' name, or in the name of the Lord here. It is to pray from the strong, rock-hard foundation of God's promises. It's to pray and say, Lord, I'm even praying this to you because I'm not worthy to approach you, to speak to you. I don't bring to you anything that would bind you to me and require you to act as if you're in my debt. I come to you in the mercy and merits of Jesus Christ. That's what it is, it's what it is to pray in the name of Christ. It doesn't mean that you have to say in every prayer in Jesus' name, though that's helpful, but it is to mean that every prayer is prayed as an act of confession of trust in the grace that only is ours in Jesus Christ. That's what Jacob is doing here. Granted, before Christ came, before the fullness of scripture is given, when the only real revelation he had was just what was passed down from Abraham and Isaac and what God directly revealed to him in Bethel and various other times. Very, very small Bible. He had a very small Bible. And yet he still faithfully confessed the Lord in this dependent prayer. We have a very large Bible. We have all the more reasons to confess our dependence upon the Lord, our faithful Savior Jesus Christ in our prayers and to pray in his name with our dependence upon what he has done for us. This is prayer that is not filled with any sort of desire to twist God's arm. Jacob comes completely empty handed and exposed before the Lord. And we know that because of what he says next. Verse 10, I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant. I only cross this river with my staff. Now I've become two flourishing camps. This is prayer that is guarded. That's what Jacob is doing here. He's guarding his prayer with gratitude and humility. This is like the anti-Pharisee prayer of Luke 18. Remember Luke 18 is this parable of a Pharisee and a tax collector praying in the temple. Pharisee gets up and prays and says, Lord, I thank you that I'm, I'm this good and that good. I do all these wonderful, good things. And I'm very, very, very good before you, oh Lord, thank you for making me good. Whereas the triskeletor simply beats his chest and says, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. That's Jacob here. He's not coming to the Lord and saying, Lord, I have my great wealth. I've really trusted you a whole lot. I've learned a whole bunch and I've had it around. I'm not like Esau, and I'm not like Laban, and I'm not like these nations around me. So for that reason, hear my prayer. No, he says, I'm nothing, Lord, before you. This is a good prayer for all of us to pray. I am not worthy. Probably the best thing we could say about ourselves in prayer Jacob teaches us this lesson plainly and clearly. He confesses that he is poor and needy. All that he has received, even the least of what he has received, just one of those goats that was born, striped and spotted, therefore belonging to Jacob rather than Laban, Jacob isn't worthy of it, he confesses. The smallest little piece of bread on your table you had for breakfast this morning, for lunch this afternoon, We can confess truthfully, Lord, I am not worthy of this. But God is gracious and. our prayers will recognize God's grace and be filled with, actually guarded by, thankfulness for it. That's what he's expressing here. Paul in Colossians 4 or 2 will say that we should continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it, or guarding it, being careful in our prayers with thanksgiving. Because thanksgiving, thanking God, bringing our gratitude to the Lord, is a very, very, very good way to be on guard against any sort of pride that would well up in prayer. and true thankfulness that recognizes our unworthiness before the Lord, not thankfulness like the Pharisee. Thank you that I am so good, O Lord. No, it's thank you, Lord, for hearing the stammering voice of a wayward sinner. Have mercy on me. This is prayer that captures the words of Paul in Philippians 4 as well. He's in a moment of great anxiety, the Lord has cast, or Jacob is casting his cares upon the Lord. He's praying with thankfulness for all things here. Let our prayers be seasoned with gratitude and humility. That is, be fueled by, driven by repentance before the Lord, because only repentance can bring about such humility in Mark's Jacob's prayer here. But this prayer is also honest and direct. Jacob is not some like stoic here praying for the Lord unmoved unmotivated by sort of his emotions here He he calls out to the Lord I'm not worthy of all that you have done for me all the deeds of your steadfast love and faithfulness Then verse 11 comes please deliver me from the hand of my brother from the hand of Esau for I fear him that he may come and attack me and The mothers of my children are with the children. Jacob is not mincing his words. He doesn't hold back. He says to the Lord, honestly, I am afraid of Esau and I need you. Lord, please deliver me. This is a very good, honest prayer. It reminds me of the prodigal son as he prepares to come to his father and as he gets to his father, he confesses the whole situation. You know, that he was wayward. Make me one of your servants. I'm not worthy to come under your roof, kind of things like that. It's what Jacob is doing here. Or, one of my favorite prayers of the Old Testament, besides Jacob's here, is in 2 Chronicles 20, as Jehoshaphat is the king of Judah, and he is faced about by a great army from Moab and the Ammonites, and they're coming before Jerusalem, and they're about to tear down the city. It's a tremendous horde. Josaphat prays to the Lord and concludes his prayer by saying, we are powerless, O Lord, against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. And that's a faithful prayer. It's an honest prayer. It's a humble prayer. It's a holy prayer. It's filled with boldness, which is not antithetical to true humility here, just as it is here in Jacob. Jacob is bold to say, Lord, deliver me, even as he has said, I am not worthy of this. This is Hebrews 4, 16 in action. This is a faithful and good prayer built on the foundation of God's promises, that is filled with humility and gratitude, and that is nevertheless bold. and confident before the Lord. He concludes his prayer likewise with that, another statement of God's covenant mercy. You said, oh Lord, I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered from multitude. Jacob prays humbly and dependently upon the Lord. But that's not all he does. Even as we've hinted at earlier, he acts. And that brings us to our final point. To act faithfully, and leave the outcome to the Lord. Jacob doesn't just, again, pray and then sit there and wait. He goes to work in a godly, wise way to protect his family and to bring reconciliation as best he can see how it might work out before Esau. Calvin says again in this passage, For although he was certainly persuaded that to have God favorable to him would alone be sufficient, yet Jacob did not omit the use of means which were in his power while leaving success in the hand of God. Prayer, faith, and trust leads to action. This is not Jacob praying and then negating his prayer by an act of distrust, trying to work it out himself. This is him wedding true, godly, appropriate, holy action to his prayer. In other words, we pray, give us our daily bread, oh Lord, and then we go to work and earn the money to pay for the bread. And still pray, thank you, Lord, for giving me my daily bread. We don't just pray, give me my daily bread and wait for it to plop on the plate in front of us. In a way, that's what Jacob is doing here. And he acts faithfully and leaves the outcome to the Lord in a number of ways. He prepares a gift for Esau, a huge gift. I mean, 200 female goats, 20 male goats, 200 female sheep, 20 rams, 30 milking camels, 40 cows. I mean, this would fill the hillside with animals that he is bringing to Esau. This is a wealthy, wealthy gift, but it's more than just a present. It is a return, at least symbolically, but nevertheless truly and repentantly of the blessing that he stole. We'll see this in the next chapter most clearly in verse 11 of chapter 33 when Jacob will speak to Esau and say, please accept my blessing that is brought to you because God has dealt graciously with me and because I have enough. God has given me the fruit of that blessing. Now, please, I'm giving it back to you because I took this. This is Jacob here, again, at least in a symbolic way, making restitution for his theft and his betrayal of Esau. Such is true repentance, by the way. It leads to dependence upon the Lord and to very hard things like this. giving back what you have stolen, what you have taken, or making some form of restitution. Jacob does so here as a way of, Lord willing, appeasing Esau. Sacrificial language is used here in verse 20. This is not a bride, this is not Jacob groveling before him, this is a true heartfelt desire to seek reconciliation and to protect himself. and his family. He protects his family in a number of ways here as well. Even as he's prayed, Lord deliver us, he puts a plan into action. He separates his family into two different camps and he guards them from Esau. And then ultimately he sets them between Esau and his family in two camps, is Jacob and a river that will provide this sort of like a guardrail of protection Jacob is active as he prepares for the outcome of what he can only entrust to the hands of the Lord. One aspect of this that we see here is how this passage concludes. I didn't read the first part of verse 24, but I should have. That Jacob took his family and sent them across the stream together with everything he's had. And then Jacob was left alone. Now this will lead to this great wrestling match between Jacob and God himself through this angel. But before that angel appears in the form of a man, here Jacob is alone, waiting to meet with Esau. And such loneliness is, I can't imagine him sitting there just twiddling his thumbs, just, you know, kind of just shooting the breeze. This is him preparing humbly, quietly, like our Savior does, going to desolate places and seeking the Lord's face right on the cusp of very, very hard encounters. He prepares for the outcome, entrusting it in the hands of the Lord. To use the language of Peter, he entrusts himself into the hand of his faithful God while doing good for his family, for others, for Esau. Here he acts faithfully and leads the outcome to the Lord. Now we'll learn more about this in the weeks ahead, especially in what happens next with the arrival of this man slash angel slash God to come and wrestle with him. But for now, we see a man who is desperate and who is dependent and who is humbled and who is seeking to make things right and walking in repentance. and who shows us really what a Christian should pursue, should live a desperate life before the Lord, should pray honestly, independently, in the name of Jesus who has brought salvation to him and will continue to guard and protect and keep him or her, and who acts faithfully and ultimately leaves everything calmly and perfectly in the hands of the Lord. May this encourage us and the hard things that we face. Let us seek our Lord in humble, dependent prayer and follow and act and use whatever means we can that the Lord would bless them for His glory and our good. Let's pray.