How Did I Get Here?

Genesis 28:11
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, October 02, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

In Genesis 28, we see Jacob in transition.  He is on the way from the Promised Land to Paddam Aram to find a wife from among the Shemite descendants living there.  Now, on its face, there is nothing very remarkable about that.  Isaac did the same thing, more or less.  A servant went there to get a wife for him, sent by Abraham.  But as we look a little closer at this story, something is off.  Something is not quite right.

First, we notice that Jacob himself goes and makes this journey.  Isaac did not do that.  When it was time for Jacob’s father Isaac to be married, Abraham said in Genesis 24, “Make sure that you do not take my son back there.”  And yet we see Jacob going.

Second, Jacob seems to be all alone on this journey—no supplies, no servants, no entourage, no gifts.  When Abraham sent the servant to get a wife for Isaac, he sent all kinds of things.  Genesis 24:10 says there were ten camels with all kinds of good things and there were servants who went along with them.  Yet here we see Jacob with relatively poor security and poor provision, which is uncommon for such a prominent man.  And our verse this morning, Genesis 28:11, says that Jacob laid down for the night, resting his head on a rock for a pillow.

So when we look at it closer, it doesn’t make sense.  Why is he in this condition?  How did this come to be?  It is not as though the family has experienced economic reversal.  Abraham was a wealthy man, and it says that he left Isaac all he had (Gen. 24:35–36).  And on top of that, Isaac seems to have kept up and even expanded the family business.  Genesis 26:12 says he planted crops and reaped a hundredfold in a single year.  Genesis 26:13 describes Isaac as rich and very wealthy.  Genesis 26:14 says he had so many flocks and herds that the Philistines envied him.  He has servants (Gen. 26:19).  Isaac, Jacob’s father, is so powerful that the Philistines first ask him to go away in the beginning of Genesis 26, and then later they come and seek a treaty with him.  Not only that, but Jacob is the one to lead the family into the future.  He is an important man.  Before his birth, God said, “The older will serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23).  And, of course, we know in his youth that Jacob bargained for the birthright (Gen. 25:31–33).  Jacob received Isaac’s blessing or anointing, a sort of family torch-passing.  He received a blessing of richness (Gen. 27:28).  He received a blessing of political and military power (Gen. 27:29).  He was made lord over his older brother and the whole household (Gen. 27:37).

So what is this prominent man, this wealthy man from this wealthy and powerful clan doing all alone, far from home, with a rock for a pillow?  It doesn’t make sense.  We want to examine this morning the “why” behind his condition.

1. Jacob Was a Fraud and a Schemer

The principal reason Jacob finds himself in this predicament is that he was a fraud and a schemer.  Most of his life is characterized by his attempts to “get ahead,” using tricks, improper leverage, sharp practices, deceit, and even outright lies.  It seems to be foreshadowed at the time of his birth.  In Genesis 25:26, we read that he was born grasping his twin brother Esau’s heel.  This would, of course, foreshadow a sort of grasping or striving that would shape Jacob’s entire life.  We see him leveraging his brother’s hunger in Genesis 25 to compel Esau to swear an oath forsaking his birthright.  We see Jacob conspiring with his mother to trick Isaac into giving him the blessing and family dominion in Genesis 27.  We see him conspiring again with his mother later to trick Isaac into sending him away, ostensibly to find a wife, when the true reason was to avoid older brother Esau’s murderous wrath and vengeance.  We find Jacob later bargaining with God (Gen. 28).  That takes some chutzpah.  The entire business relationship between Jacob and Laban is one big back and forth fraud, with one trying to rip the other one off and succeeding, more or less.  Jacob will lie to Esau in Genesis 33, when he comes back.

So what we see is this Jacob always grasping, always maneuvering, and never dealing forthrightly or honorably.  Jacob never seems to deal in a straight way, and his crooked way of doing always results in a mess.  The paradigmatic case is the stealing of the blessing.  This is a total disaster, and a rank display of ungodly behavior by everyone involved, as Dr. Wassermann preached last week.

Jacob is no mere kid when he engages in this scheme to lie and deceive his father.  He may be as old as forty years of age, based on Genesis 26:34.  He may be even older than that.  So he is no mere kid.  Isaac, his father, was 60 when the twins were born, and yet in Genesis 27 he is presented as old and blind.  Genesis 35 says that Isaac died at 180 years of age.  It is likely Isaac was much older than 60 to be blind and feeble, meaning his sons were no longer little kids.  Notice also that Esau goes on the hunt for the game alone.  So these are not little kids.  These are not ten-year-olds.  These are not even teenagers.  These are probably grown men, by this point.  And either way, however old exactly he was, Jacob is old enough to know what he is doing in deceiving his father, and he is old enough to know that it is wrong.

1. Jacob Plans to Deceive

Just look at all the sin going on here.  First, their express purpose is to deceive Isaac.  This is the object of the enterprise.  When his mother presented the plan to him, Jacob raises no moral objection to this point.  His only objection is a practical one.  In Genesis 27:11 he says, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I’m a man with smooth skin.”  In other words, “I am in on the goal here, but I think our plan has some problems and needs some adjustment.”  Jacob does not say, “We must not lie, for we serve God who is the God of truth.  We serve a God who commands us to speak the truth.”  Nor does he say, “No, we must not deceive my aged father and dishonor him by taking advantage of his infirmity.”  Nor does he say, “Mother, I understand that you are worried and so am I, and that what father is planning to do seems to be in conflict with what God has commanded.  But God is sovereign, and He cannot be thwarted by my father’s wrong blessing.  Rather, God has decreed my headship, and we can rest in Him and trust in Him to do it.”  We don’t hear any of that.

2. Jacob Actually Implements the Plan of Deceit

Jacob puts on Esau’s best clothes and goatskins to mimic Esau’s hairy arms and neck (Gen. 27:15–16).  Jacob strolls in with the tasty food and bread for his father (Gen. 27:17).  Now, it is one thing to make a plot, to dream up a scheme.  It is even another thing to take some preparatory steps.  But there is a certain commitment to evil, a line that you cross, when you step forward and begin to actually implement that plan.  Up until that point, you can easily walk away.  Even if you made the plan, even if your mother cooked the fraudulent food, you can say at the last minute, “No, no, it’s wrong to do.  We cannot sin against God and my father Isaac in this way.”  But once you walk in there with your goatskins and your smelly clothes and your tasty food, you are enmeshed in the plot.  Of course, you can still say “No” at that point.  It is never too late even up to the point of sin.  You can still say “No.”  You can still stop.  But it is a lot harder to do when you are committed by action.

3. Jacob Lies

In Genesis 27:19 he says, “I am Esau your firstborn son.  I have done as you told me.  Eat some of my game.”  Lie, lie, lie.  Each one of those is an outright lie.

Now, our God is a God of truth (Deut. 32:4).  He is truth (John 14:6).  He Himself cannot lie (Num. 23; Titus 1:2).  Beyond that, God hates lies, and He hates the liars who lie (Prov. 6:19; 12:22).  It says in Revelation 21:8 that He casts all liars outside into very hell.  The same idea is found in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10.  God hates lies and liars.  The devil, however, is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).  He is the father of lies and he is the father of liars.  When we lie, we not only speak the devil’s language of lies, but we actually declare the devil to be our father and we pledge allegiance to him with our lie.  Not good.

4. Jacob Persists in the Fraudulent Scheme

Throughout the account in Genesis 27, Jacob has many opportunities to confess and to give up the lie, to give up the deceitful scheme under Isaac’s very light cross-examination.   Look at the number of doors God opens for him through Isaac to give up his lies:  Verse 20: “How did you find it so quickly, my son?”   Verse 21: “Come near me so I can touch you and know whether you are really my son Esau or not.”  Verse 22: “The voice is the voice of Jacob.”  So Isaac recognizes that something is wrong here and he is even articulating it, but Jacob keeps on with the lie.  Then Isaac asks in verse 24: “Are  you really my son Esau?”  And Jacob says, “I am.”

Then Jacob sits there while Isaac eats the tasty game.  For us, this all takes place in a few sentences in a book, but this took some time for Isaac to sit there and eat the tasty meal and enjoy some wine.  And yet Jacob seems to have sat there the entire time, merrily enjoying the time with his father.  He does not confess.  He does not seem to be seized with remorse.  He seems, in fact, to be very at ease, very comfortable, and very casual, even though he is lying and even though he is engaged in a scheme to defraud.  This is the picture of a hardened heart, a heart that is comfortable with lying, a heart that is calloused and seared in its conscience.  Not good.

5. Jacob Misuses God’s Name in This Lying Scheme

It is bad enough to lie, of course.  It is a violation of God’s express command.  “Thou shalt not give false testimony” is a general injunction against lying.  So it is bad enough to lie in general, but it is worse to use God’s name as part of your lie.  In Genesis 27:20 the father asks, “How did you find it so quickly, my son?”  And Jacob replies, “The Lord your God gave me success.”  He is invoking the name of God to bolster his lies.  This is a serious evil.  We are not misuse God’s name or to swear falsely.  Exodus 20:7 says, “Do not use the name of the Lord your God in vain.”  This is the third commandment.  So all lying is evil and anti-God, as I pointed out.  But it is an especially aggravating factor to use God’s name to prop up your lie and your deceit.  This is what false pastors who preach a false gospel do all the time.  They use God’s name to prop up their anti-God behavior.

Leviticus 19:2 tells us we are not to swear falsely in God’s name, and it should be evident from the fact that this name-keeping is one of the Ten Commandments that it is very, very important.  The Bible is full of commandments, but the Ten Commandments especially reflect God’s fundamental nature, and this made the top ten.   So there is a serious evil in invoking God’s name to support your lie.  Yet, as we read the scriptural account, it seems to flow quite easily off Jacob’s tongue: “The Lord your God gave me success.”  That is seriously bad.  That is seriously hard.

I am giving a lot of emphasis to this both because it is important and because it is also very practical and applicable to us.  We live in a culture where lies are commonplace.  They are so commonplace that we do not even really expect the truth most of the time.  Politicians: no one expects them to tell the truth.  Advertisers: you just assume that they are lying to you or there is some kind of catch, and you are correct.  Even in law and business deals, where a handshake or someone’s word used to mean something, we get lies, half-truths, and the like all the time.

Notice also, young people, that Jacob is what we would call a church kid, born and raised in the household of God, grandson of Pastor Abraham, son of the patriarch Isaac, promised to Abraham and Isaac.  When God made those promises to Abraham that he would have a son, it was not limited to one generation.  He said, “You will have seed,” “You will have offspring,” “You will have many generations.”  Jacob is part of that promise.  His parents prayed especially for him to be born (Gen. 25:21).  He is the miracle grandson of the barren woman Sarai and the miracle son of a barren woman in Rebekah.  He is a double-miracle in that sense.  Both his mother and grandmother were barren, and yet God miraculously brought him about.  He is the subject of prophecy, as we just mentioned: “The older will serve the younger.”  So, like many of you young people, Jacob had every advantage in Christ.  He had every advantage as a child of God’s promise, raised up by God’s people, hearing about God from an early age.  And yet he sinks so low as to use God’s name to prop up his lie and deceit.  He lies and schemes as many people in the world would be too ashamed to do, and yet he does it, no problem.  He vilely brings God’s name into his lie; a form of blasphemy.  So what is the application to you?  If it could happen to him, it could happen to you.  Keep watch and be very careful to speak the truth.

2. The Reason for All the Scheming and Lying

Jacob’s lying, Jacob’s deceit, Jacob’s scheming  is all bad.  But we are left to ask ourselves why he engaged in this behavior.  After all, he had God’s clear word on the subject.  In Genesis 25:23, before either Jacob or Esau were born, God declared, “The older shall serve the younger.”  And yet all Jacob’s schemes seemed directed at making that word of God come true in his own way.

For reasons known only to God and due to God’s discriminating love, He chose Jacob and not Esau to be the head.  We know that whatever God decrees, He brings to fruition.  Proverbs 19:21 says that His purposes prevail.  The Westminster Shorter Catechism Question 11 reminds us that God powerfully preserves and governs all His creatures and all their actions.  This is God’s providence.  No one can thwart God’s plan (Prov. 21:30; Job 42:2).  So when God says, “The older shall serve the younger,” you can take it to the bank.  It is going to happen.

Of course, we must obey God’s commands to live holy lives, to work six days, to honor the father and mother, to save up for future generations, to speak the truth, to evangelize, and so on.  So I am not advocating that when you have God’s clear word on the subject to just sit there and do nothing.  No, we are to do the next right thing.  Don’t get confused.  Even when God decrees something, there are God-directed methods for bringing about His will.  So He is going to work through your obedience to bring about His good, perfect, and pleasing will.  It is not that you sit there and do nothing, but rather you do what it is right and God will work it out to the correct resolution.

Don’t get confused in another way either.  God commands your obedience, but it does not mean He requires your help.  His will is going to be done one way or the other, so it does not depend on you to help God out and put His plan into action like He needs you.  In Esther 4:14, it says essentially, “If you don’t do your job, God will find someone else to do it, but the outcome is going to be the same.”  In other words, your disobedience will not harm God or interfere with His plan.  It will just harm you.

God does not require our help at all, but He surely does not require our sinful help.  You will never be blessed trying to achieve what you think are godly ends by ungodly means and ungodly methods.  That is the most charitable interpretation of what Rebekah and Jacob were attempting here.  They remember the prophecy: “The older will serve the younger.”  But they become concerned when they hear that Isaac is going to give this blessing to Esau.  So they spring into action.  They heard he was going to bestow the prophesied blessing onto Esau, but that is a violation of what God said.  “God’s plan is about to fail,” they must think.  “We’ve got to act.  We’ve got to implement a plan.  Quick, tell lies! Quick, dress up in the goatskins! Quick, steal back the blessing that he’s about to steal from you.  God needs us to save the day by whatever means necessary.”

Now, this all sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud because it is ridiculous.  We would never say these things expressly, but how often do we act on just these unstated premises.  I want to get married so bad that I begin to drive at that goal instead of what is God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will for me.  I know God says that marriage must be only in the Lord, but I start to expand my definition of what “in the Lord” really means.  I hit age 30, and suddenly “claims to be a Christian” is close enough.  Or I get into sexual immorality or some other sin in an attempt to keep the other party interested.  Or I throw out everything else that God has spoken to me and God has directed me in for the rest of my life.  I throw out the church where God placed me.  I throw out the counsel of reliable and tested elders, ministers, and parents that God has given me.  I’ve got to make it work.  I’ve got to “seize the blessing” that belongs to me.

We could apply this to many areas: our jobs, our financial situations, our business transactions, even the sharing of the gospel, where we are tempted to water it down in order to make it more attractive, in order to “help God” to save more people and build His church.  It will never work.  God will never bless our ungodly methods.  Most often, we will find ourselves jamming that square peg into the round hole, which is a frustrating and messy exercise.  And then, when that round peg that fits in that round hole comes along, when God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will for us becomes available, that slot is already filled with a mangled, splintered, and formerly square peg jammed in there sideways.

Let’s not do that kind of thing in our lives.  Let’s not do that kind of thing in our church.  If something is not working, let us stop and re-evaluate: “Is this really the will of God for me?”  And if it looks like it is not, then do not continue ahead, crushing your foot on the stone wall or beating your donkey like Balaam in a vain attempt to do what God does not want you to do.  (GTB)  And ask yourself: Are you like Balaam, so intent on gaining that goal, gaining that payday, that you cannot even see the angel of the Lord standing in front of you, blocking your path?

So that is the most charitable interpretation of what Jacob and Rebekah were up to.  But there seems to be more than misguided effort or ignorance at work here.  It may be that Jacob simply does not trust God to do what He said He would do.  That is why Jacob must scheme to sell the bowl of soup in exchange for the birthright.  That is why he must dress in the goatskins and deceive his father in the scheme to get this blessing.  God said that Jacob would be the head.  It is a God-guaranteed promise.  He can absolutely trust in that promise.  But he doesn’t.  Instead, he engages in sinful and shameful schemes to achieve that end, refusing to trust God.  He refuses to do the next right thing and let God worry about how to achieve His goals.  He does not leave the outcome to the sovereignty of God, but he thinks, “I’ve got to seize it and I’ve got to drive the outcome.”  Sitting behind this are some bad ideas: (1) Maybe God can’t do what He said; or (2) maybe God won’t do what He said; or (3) maybe even God is not—maybe there is no God.  So I have to take matters into my own hands.

We are guilty of this same distrust.  God makes us some pretty good promises, better than being the head of a family.  He promises us that all things work together for my good as His chosen child (Rom. 8:28).  But then when the trouble comes, what happens?  I doubt and I fear and I wonder, “Maybe all things aren’t going to work together for my good.”  When the expected thing does not happen, I begin to desire and to covet that which God has withheld, thinking that I know better than God what is good for me.  Adam and Eve did it.  God said, “Don’t eat the fruit.  It is not good for you.  You will surely die.”  The devil came along and sowed the doubt into them: “It is good for you.  You will not surely die.  God is not for your good.  He is holding you down.  He is holding you back.  Seize the apple.  Seize the day.”

Our first parents, Adam and Eve, did it.  Jacob did it.  And so it is no surprise that we do it too.  I want to have more money.  God is withholding from me, so I must scheme to get it, through stealing, through working too much for the good of my family, through moving away for two more dollars for a job in another town.  I must scheme to get it, because more money is good for me even though God says it is not.  I am supposed to be married on a pre-set schedule that I thought up when I was ten years old.  I must be married by 22, but now I am 32.  We are way overdue here.  God has fallen down on the job.  God has withheld what is good for me.  So I grow bitter in my heart at what God has not given me.  I sulk and I decide that God is not doing the job; I must go and do it on my own.  It is no fair, it is no good, so I have to act.  Or I live in a perpetual state of mourning and despond, for God has withheld from me the thing that I know is good for me.  Or the same thing with the baby that you can’t conceive, or the boy that you wanted instead of those girls, or the daughter that you wanted instead of those sons.  Or the promotion that didn’t come.  Or whatever it is.  It can be anything.  It is all distrust of God’s promise that all things work together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purposes.  It is all a refusal to believe the promise that God is for my good and that God is sovereign, that God is working it for my eternal good and for the eternal good of all His people.  Whatever I get or whatever I don’t get is all for my best.

There is a great freedom when you come to realize that God is in control of all things and working all things for your good.  You don’t have to scheme.  You don’t have to take shortcuts.  You don’t have to sin.  You can do the next right thing: obey God.  You can do the next right thing and know for sure that God will do what He said: Work it all for your eternal good.

3. The Results of Jacob’s Scheming and Lying

The result, of course, is a total disaster.  I asked at the beginning: why is he sleeping with a rock for pillow?  It didn’t make any sense.  Now, having examined how he got here, it makes sense.  Due to Jacob’s scheming, due to Jacob’s lying, due to Jacob’s sin.  That is why he finds himself using a rock for a pillow in the middle of nowhere.  He thought he was improving his situation with all his unbiblical actions.  But I ask you, did he make his situation better?  No, he made it worse.  Whenever we act outside of God’s will, we make a mess.  The methods that we use might be different.  The amount or scope of the mess might be different.  But the result is always more or less the same: big mess.

Perhaps we scheme and struggle to get that which God has withheld, like Balaam or Gehazi did.  Mess.  Perhaps we are more like Jacob, sinning and plotting to get that which God has promised us, but to do it on our schedule instead of His, or to do it in our way instead of His.  Mess.  Don’t do it.  Don’t make the mess.  It will be bad for you, and it will be bad for everyone else.  I ask you, who profited by these schemes?  Nobody.

Look at Jacob.  He flees home under false pretenses of finding a wife.  He doesn’t go as an honored person.  He doesn’t go with the normal entourage and the normal supplies and gifts.  He goes in shame, in disgrace, in isolation, in apartness, and he spends more than twenty years apart from the land—all the problems brought by his scheming.

Look at the larger family.  They suffered as well.  It would appear that Jacob never saw his mother again in this life.  Jacob lived the rest of his days in fear of his twin brother Esau (Gen. 32).  He was deprived of relationship with his only brother, and his only brother was deprived of relationship with him.  His children were deprived of family relations, growing up without connection to their grandmother Rebekah, their grandfather Isaac, or any experience or knowledge of God’s promised land.  They were also raised in the idolatrous land of Haran and not in the promised land, thus exposed to evil from an early age.  They were marinated in the unbelieving culture and exposed to idolatry in Laban’s household.  Genesis 31:19 and 34 talks about the household gods of Laban.  Jacob himself lived under Laban’s thumb, tricked and defrauded by his father-in-law and basically living at Laban’s mercy the entire time.

And everyone around Jacob seemed to have picked up on his fraudulent ways.  Now, I don’t know who is the chicken and who is the egg in that, but everywhere Jacob goes, it is fraud, fraud, fraud, lies, lies, lies, and deceit, deceit, deceit all the way around.  Look at Laban, who ripped him off for his wages, trading out one daughter for the other in marriage and trying to move away the good goats and leave him with the bad flock.  That is Laban.  That is his father-in-law.  Look at Jacob’s wives.  The mandrake manipulation, the stolen idols—all these things that they engage in.  Look at his children.  Later on, they will murder a bunch of Shechemites in a deceitful scheme.  They will sell their brother Joseph into slavery and lie to Jacob and say that Joseph was killed.  Judah and Tamar—a shameful incident.  This empty way of life was passed on to Jacob’s children.  Jacob’s scheming and actions all meant to get ahead cost him sorrow after sorrow after sorrow.

Brothers and sisters, we know that sin always leads to sorrow and loss.  The methods of sin simply do not work.  God will never bless such methods.  Indeed, He cannot bless such methods.  He disciplines us away from such methods.  He disciplines us to teach us and to purify us.  So don’t do as Jacob did.  Don’t scheme.  Don’t sin to get ahead because you will not reap a hundredfold crop of blessing; you will reap a hundredfold crop of sorrow.  Instead, obey God and do the next right thing, and trust God to work out all things for your very best.  After all, that is what He said He would do.

Perhaps most disappointingly, Jacob seems to have learned nothing from this incident.  At least he learned nothing from it right away.  For he went on to Haran, and what do we see in his life in Haran?  He is continuing on in the same schemes.  Laban is trying to rip him off, but Jacob himself engaged in a bunch of shenanigans in mating the goats in a certain way in an attempt to rip off Laban.  He flees from Laban.  He lies to Esau on his way back.  He refuses to return to Bethel as he promised God that he would (Gen. 34).  He moves on from Bethel when God told him to go there and stay there (Gen. 35).  What did he reap from those schemes?  More suffering, more suffering, and more suffering.  Trouble, trouble, trouble.

He did not learn.  He did not even seem to ask the question we have been addressing this morning: Why am I, God’s chosen person, sleeping alone and far from home with a rock for my pillow?  He never asked the question so he did not learn from his mistake.  He continued to do his own thing, to run his own schemes, and to suffer for it.

Don’t be like Jacob in this regard.  If you find yourself suffering, if you find yourself sleeping with a rock for your pillow, ask yourself: Why is this happening to me?  You can find a lot of answers in that question: Why is this happening to me?  Ask yourself.  Ask God.  Ask those delegated authorities that God has placed over you—your parents, your pastors, and so on—why is this happening to me?  If you are fired from job after job after job, ask yourself: Why is this happening to me?  Could it really be that everyone else is at fault?  Probably not.  But if you never ask that question, you will never discover the answer and then you are powerless to do anything about it.

Now, when  you ask this question, your suffering may be due to your sin.  It may not be due to your sin.  Sometimes God gives us suffering in order to prepare us for other things, in order to cause us to rely on him, and all kinds of reasons.  So just because you are suffering, it does not necessarily mean that it is coming from sin.  But you had better ask the question: Is this suffering a result of my sin?  Why is this happening to me?  You will never know if you do not ask.  And if your problem is due to your sin, then you will never solve it if you are not aware of it because you cannot repent of something you are not aware of.  Like Jacob, you will simply continue doing the same thing in the same pattern and expecting a different result.  And you will find yourself ever surprised at the mess, mess, mess you are making.

4. Turn to the Rock

There is another rock.  Not a rock to be used for a pillow in a mess, but to be your firm foundation.  This Rock that I speak of is Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 10:4; Ps. 118:22).  If you find yourself in a mess like Jacob—your version of someplace you should never have gotten doing some things you should have never found yourself doing—if you find yourself in such a mess, don’t press on in the mess.  Don’t continue the same way, expecting to end up somewhere else.  Don’t lay your head down on the rock for the pillow and go to sleep.

Instead, stop and ask yourself: How did I get here?  Then stop doing the things that got you into the mess and start doing what is right, and the first right thing is to turn to Jesus Christ in faith and repentance.  In other words, don’t rest your head on a rock, but turn to the Rock, and stand on the Rock that is Jesus Christ.  Surrender to Him.  Say, my way has resulted in a mess.  I don’t want to do my way anymore.  I want to do God’s way, which results in a blessing and glorifies God.  I don’t want to depend on myself and my own strength anymore.  I want to depend on God and rely on God.  Surrender to Him, cry out to Him, turn to Him in faith, repent of your sin, and walk in obedience to Him.

Now, you are in a mess at that point, and it may be painful to get out of this mess.  And you may be tempted—in fact, you will be tempted—to take another shortcut, to get out of the short-term pain, to compromise with your sin, to engage in half-measures that make the situation, if not a little bit better, then a little bit less-worse.  Don’t do it.  Trust in God.  Trust in His sovereignty.  Trust in His goodness.  Turn to the Rock and stand on the Rock.  Put everything on the altar before God.  And say to God, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and of doing my own way.  I surrender all to Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.”  And then stand firm on that Rock and let nothing move you.

Stop suffering unnecessarily.  Did you notice all the unnecessary suffering in Jacob’s life?  It is the mark of Jacob’s life: unnecessary suffering, all due to his independent, autonomous, stubborn, scheming, lean–on-your-own-understanding way of doing.

Now, Jacob was a godly man in the end, and we will get there some chapters from now.  He was a godly man in the end, and praise God for that.  But it took him a long, long time, and a lot of blows to get there, to learn the lesson that he could have learned right away.  Separated from home, never seeing his mother again, mistreated and ripped off by Laban, manipulated by bickering wives and concubines, running from Esau, trapped by Laban, living on the run and being in fear of what is behind and what is ahead, hiding from Esau, the Dinah disaster in Shechem that we will come to in a few chapters, deceived by his own sons in the murder of the Shechemites, losing his son Joseph and deceived by his other sons.  Mess, mess, mess; suffering, suffering, suffering.  Saved in the end, praise the Lord, but, it seems, as one escaping through the flames, and surrounded by suffering.

It did not have to be that way for Jacob.  It does not have to be that way for you.  Learn from his mistakes.  Stop today.  Turn to Jesus Christ today.  Repent of your sin today and start obeying God today.  Then you will not experience unnecessary loss and frustration.  You will experience blessing.  You will experience salvation.  You will experience the joy of Jesus Christ.  You will experience the blessing of life with God.  And you don’t have to do any big scheme to get there.  All you have to do is this: Cry out, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” Put your faith in Jesus Christ, His person and work, for all your sins, for all your salvation, and He will do it.  He promises.  It is a merciful promise, but He promises, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13).

Why go through frustration and suffering?  Call on the name of the Lord and be saved, and then walk on His narrow path and have a life of blessing and joy, not a life of frustration and loss.  That is my final counsel this morning: Turn to the Rock, stand on the Rock, and be blessed.  Amen.