Ron Ferguson considers the lessons to be learned from the life of Jacob.

COMMENT

THE story of Jacob has always intrigued me. By any standards, he was an out and out swine.

Let’s just remind ourselves of his great moral accomplishments. He twice cheats his twin brother Esau out of his inheritance. Aided and abetted by his scheming mum, he even cheats his old, decrepit dad.

Now Esau was not exactly the Brain of Israel - in fact, there was no Israel yet. There was no sign of a brain yet, either. Esau was crying out for betrayal, and his slightly younger brother was just the man to do it. This was a seriously dysfunctional biblical family. After leaving the scene of the crime at top speed, Jacob goes into a deep sleep. He dreams about a ladder reaching from earth to heaven.

Then he hears a voice saying to him: “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham and Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. In you and your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. I will be with you and protect you wherever you go. I will not forsake you.”

Here is a man who would have sold his grannie to get what he wanted, being told that he is going to be a source of blessing for future generations.

This is a totally astonishing sequence of stories. Jacob is a con man and a cheat. You wouldn’t want to buy a used camel from him. (“Only one previous owner, sir, an elderly spinster from Barsheeba.”

Jacob calls to mind Ralph Waldo Emerson’s verdict on an acquaintance of his: “The louder he spoke of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.”

What is all the more remarkable is that the swine we are talking about is the Father of Israel. How are we to understand this? We can’t even reframe it by saying that after he met God, he was converted and lived a blameless life and went on a tour of the Middle East giving his testimony. No. According to the story, he continued to double cross.

The story of Jacob offends us and confuses us. It upsets our notion of a tidy and predictable God who only works through good people. One minister who was preaching on the story really got his theological knickers into a twist. He talked about how fine a man Esau was, and only when he got to the end did he remember that, after all, God’s promise went to Jacob.

“My friends,” roared the preacher, “After so adjudging the character of the worthy Esau, you may be wondering why it was that Providence made his choice of Jacob. But ye must aye remember that in that choice Providence was acting in His official capacity, and may have felt forced to do that which, on personal grounds, he would surely have resisted.”

The story of Jacob o ends us and confuses us. It upsets our notion of a tidy and predictable God who only works through good people.

Providence acting in His official capacity. Isn’t that delicious!

The truth is that God doesn’t love people because of who they are but because of who he is. That is why the Gospel is good news. If our salvation depends on on our track record, we’re all in trouble – the people who wear the white hats as well as those who wear black hats. The story of the swine who was the Father of Israel has much to teach us.