Breaking Comes Before Blessing

As I’m getting older, I find that my parts don’t work as well as they used to.  While I’m blessed to be able to go walk five miles if I wish, just getting my joints working again after sitting for a bit can be a challenge.  I suppose it’s like trying to drive your car when your engine is cold.  My warm-up seems to take longer than it used to. 

Jacob, the patriarch of the Old Testament, wasn't quite so lucky.  It seems Jacob had an encounter with God that forever changed his walk, both literally and spiritually.  As Jacob waited for a face-to-face with his brother, Esau, not knowing whether he would live or die, Jacob came face to face with God Himself:

Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. ²⁵ Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. ²⁶ And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.”  But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”  ²⁷ So He said to him, “What is your name?”  He said, “Jacob.”  ²⁸ And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.”  Genesis 32:24-28

Jacob was touched by God, and even after being physically broken by Him, Jacob wouldn’t quit until he also received God’s blessing.  The Creator made something new that morning – He fashioned a nation from the broken remains of an unscrupulous liar.  Jacob became Israel; his fit body forever sentenced to limp as a reminder of his makeover; his spirit eternally grateful for the change.

Over the years, Jacob became the father of twelve sons whose descendants included David and Solomon; the apostle, Paul; the priests of Israel; and even the Messiah, Jesus.  Jacob’s final legacy was much different from his beginning.  Isn’t that what we all hope and strive for?  In Jacob’s final days, he even had the opportunity to pay forward the blessing of God.  Imagine the old-man version of Jacob, limping through the great hall of Pharaoh after being summoned into the regent’s presence by his son, Joseph.  Can’t you just hear the clop-clop-tap, clop-clop-tap as Jacob hobbled along with his staff so that he might come face-to-face with still another king?

Then Pharaoh spoke to Joseph, saying, “Your father and your brothers have come to you. ⁶ …Have your father and brothers dwell in the best of the land; let them dwell in the land of Goshen….”  ⁷ Then Joseph brought in his father Jacob and set him before Pharaoh; and Jacob blessed Pharaoh.  Genesis 47:5-7

Don’t miss that last phrase!  “Jacob blessed Pharaoh.”  It is ALWAYS true that the greater blesses the lesser.  God had blessed Jacob, and now we see Jacob blessing the emperor of Egypt.  This is the man who held the power of life and death in his hand, as far as the descendants of Jacob were concerned.  They were in Egypt because they didn’t have food to eat in their own land.  And soon, after God poured out His blessing so richly on the Israelites (we can call them that now), the Egyptians became jealous and the reigning pharaoh enslaved them until Moses could become their champion.  But today, it was the broken old man who brought a blessing.  That’s a legacy I hope to live up to, don’t you?

Broken and blessed,

Jacob