Genesis 32:13-34:31, Matthew 11:7-30, Psalms 14:1-7, Proverbs 3:19-20
Today is the 16th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian and, of course, it’s a pleasure to be here with you. I can’t think of anywhere else, and this is the true, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be right now than here, together with you, taking the next step forward through the Scriptures and that next step forward, at least from the Old Testament perspective will take us back into the book of Genesis where we’re learning the story of Jacob and where we left him yesterday was that he had just dealt with his father-in-law, Laban, who had been in pursuit of him because he fled but now he’s got his brother Esau out in front of him. And the last thing he knew of his brother Esau was it his brother Esau want to kill him. So, off we go to find out how the story continues to unfold. Genesis chapter 32 verse 13 through 34 verse 31 today and we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Genesis today, pretty monumental things have happened. We’ve gone through the story of Jacobs father-in-law Laban chasing him down. So, kind of the past following him and then the peace being made there and then Esau is out in front of him. And, so, they meet today, but as we begin our reading Jacob has this wrestling match, that kind of lasts all night and he ends up getting his hip out of the socket and Jacob won’t let go, like he’s trying to find out who it is he’s been wrestling with and he won’t let go. And there has been plenty of scholarly speculation about this particular passage over the millennia with something that Jacobs wrestling with - an angel or with God - something from the divine, while others would say that he’s wrestling with his brother Esau who has tracked him down and they kind of fought it out. And this comes from, as the narrative tells, the story of their actual meeting. Jacob says to Esau, “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God.” Either way, what happens to Jacob is fairly profound. Like his grandfather, Abram, whose name was changed to Abraham and his grandmother whose name was Soraya and that was changed to Sarah, Jacobs name was changed and the name that replaces Jacob is really important. Jacobs name changes to Israel. And we’ve gone through the story of the development of Jacobs family, right, the two sisters that are married and then they give their servant girls to have more children. And, so, all of these children have been born and we’ve seen all of their names and it’s at this point that it should all begin to make sense. Jacobs name being changed to Israel now very literally makes his children, the children of Israel. And that’s exactly who they are. Each of those child’s names we should recognize, and they should be familiar because they go on to become the tribes of Israel. Of course, a daughter was born in amongst all of those sons and her name was Dinah and we read of her story today, of the family coming through Shechem. Shechem is still an actual place. It is now called Annapolis and it’s the biblical Shechem, a place that we’ll visit often in the Bible. Some really, really pivotal things happen in this in this city, Dinah’s rape being one of those things. And, of course, then we see her brothers rise up and defend her honor as we leave our reading from Genesis today.
And then we get into the book of Matthew and Jesus has a conversation about John the Baptist and He questions what the people are actually looking for, like what is it that they came to see when they came to see John the Baptist. What Jesus is beginning to do in this particular dialogue that we read today is to reveal that we won’t be able to figure out our entire spiritual journey intellectually, it will have to be a collaboration between our heart and our mind, which is how we were created to be in order to walk with God. So, just trying to sorted out by reason will come up short. And listen, we’re at the beginning of the year, we’re getting to know each other, but my natural state is an introvert and as a student. I need to know why things work the way that they do. And, so, I turned to theology thinking that that would have all the answers and just, you know, like, you know, at some point in your faith you’re like, how, just tell me exactly how this works, like, exactly how does this work and exactly what am I supposed to do so that I have some sort of gauge to know whether I’m doing this right or not? Unfortunately, that can’t be achieved through a theological formula that makes a declarative and dogmatic statement about God because we don’t know what we’re talking about when we’re talking about God. We know what we’ve observed, and we know what we’ve experienced, but we also acknowledge that He is vastly beyond our comprehension, right, so vastly beyond our ability to reason out and make a statement about that is definitive and covers everything. And then we have to ask ourselves where, how, how it is we know, where is God? Like, how is it that we’re relating to God? Is that all in our mind or is it in our heart. I mean, like, do we accept Jesus and begin to believe? I mean, does he come into our mind, or does he come into our heart or is it both? Like, we don’t…it starts to break down, our semantics, but we would say, we accept Christ into our heart. We would say that our heart, this is the source of our love, this is this is the core, the truth, the real person, or however you want to say it. We would agree that in terms of spirituality in our believes, that our heart is involved in the process, so can’t be done just with the mind. And, so, Jesus begins to discuss things like this by praying. “Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes father, it pleased you to do it this way.” So, we begin to realize that the message Jesus is unfolding, the way that He is being in the world as a human being and the invitation that he is beginning to offer humanity is a different way of looking at how you are being in the world. And one of those first lessons is you’re not going to be able to figure it all out with your knowledge, which we’ve already talked about. It takes us back to the beginning of Genesis where the forbidden fruit was eaten and the exchange that was made was an exchange for the knowledge of good and evil and that’s what we’ve been using to try to make ourselves sovereign all this time. And then here comes Jesus, a perfect…a perfectly human person saying, “you’ve separated yourself from your own heart and that these are repercussions of the fall, but I am announcing the good news of the kingdom, a new thing is going on here and I’m looking for those eyes to see and ears to hear”. So, I don’t think I’ve just said anything that we don’t all already believe as Christians, but we may not have thought about it in this way, but since we’re going to go through the entire Bible it’s important for us to examine and try to till into our lives what is actually being said here so that we can actually live into it. And what we’re learning today is we’re not gonna figure it all out in our mind any more than we can figure love out in our mind, right? We have to engage ourselves in something that’s mysterious to us, but that we know is true and that we believe is true like when we talk about love. How do you know you love somebody? I mean, you can give all kinds of reasons, but when you’re trying to describe what love is you have to move into the territory of art and poetry, you have to move into the ways that we speak about realities that are mysteries and that are beyond us and Jesus is beginning to unpack this as he announces the kingdom. And then Jesus instructs us or invites us, “come to me all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” So, I’m signing up for that. I hope you are too. And then Jesus invites us to take His yoke upon us and allow Him to teach us because He is humble and gentle at heart and we will find rest for our souls. And then Jesus tells us. “For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” And that’s a famous passage of Scripture, so we all know that. But let me let me just invite you to think about something today. As believers in Jesus we are supposed to be like Christ our Savior. That’s really the point of our faith, right, to become like our Savior. And we can look at a passage like this, “My yoke is easy, My burden is light” and just simply think, “well what Jesus is supposed to do is make my life easy. I’m supposed to accept Jesus and then He will make my life easy”, but all throughout Jesus teachings, we will find that He’s not inviting us to anything that’s easy, He’s inviting us to something that’s hard, that will become easy if we are living integrated with our hearts and our minds intertwined with the mind of Christ and with the Holy Spirit’s guidance. And yet bringing light into the darkness is a struggle, it is a burden. And, so, maybe another way to consider this Scripture is that His yoke is easy to bear, and the burden that He is inviting us to share in is light not on heavy, but light into the darkness. And, so, we can consider today how much we’re willing to carry the burden of bringing light into the darkness as we move into this year. Is this going to be another year where we live defensively, right, all huddled up in this in kind of a fetal position just hoping that Jesus is surrounding us and will make things easy and will make all the difficult things go away or are we beginning to understand that Jesus is inviting us to collaborate with Him in bringing His kingdom and revealing it in this world. To bring light into dark places, that’s not going to be an easy thing. It wasn’t an easy thing for our Savior; however, it is noble to be a part of changing the world and isn’t that the kind of purposeful, meaningful thing we spend our whole lives trying to find? And yet here it is, all in front of us. We are invited into the great dance of collaboration and relationship with God. We are invited to reflect His glory upon the earth as image bearers. We are invited to do the same kinds of things and even greater things, according to Jesus then He did. We are invited to bring light into the darkness, that’s purpose but it’s nothing that we can achieve on our own. We have to go back to square one, have the faith of a child, and understand that our reason isn’t going to get us there alone. We’re not going to figure God out all by ourselves intellectually, we have to re-integrate our spirit and our heart and walk with God as we bring light into the darkness. What that looks like for each of us will be different because each of us has our own story and we’re all over the world, but it looks like something. What does it look like for you?
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, we invite You into that question because all kinds of simple questions become very complicated questions when we begin to actually ponder them and when we begin to realize how much is actually being touched inside of us. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit into the questions that the Scriptures bring up. We invite Your Holy Spirit into this as we contemplate it today. Come Jesus. We ask in Your mighty name and lead us into all truth, which is what You promised to do and we trust You to do. Come Holy Spirit we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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