Jacob is not an easy man to like at the start of his story. He is a schemer. A manipulator. A man who waits in the kitchen with stew while his brother is out working, who dresses in his brother’s clothes and stands in front of his blind father and says: I am Esau. He gets what he came for. And then everything falls apart.
But here is what the story of Jacob teaches us before anything else: God’s choice is not based on the chosenness of the person. He chose Jacob before Jacob had done anything good or anything bad. His grace precedes the biography.
God does not choose you because of who you are. He chooses you, and then spends the rest of your life making you into who He saw when He chose you. Jacob’s story is the long work of a God who does not give up on difficult people.
Chapter 27 is uncomfortable from beginning to end. Isaac is old and blind and wants to bless Esau before he dies. Rebekah overhears. She has not forgotten what God told her before the twins were born the older will serve the younger. And so she engineers a deception, dresses Jacob in Esau’s clothes, puts goatskin on his hands and neck so he feels rough like Esau, and sends him in.
Isaac is suspicious. He asks three times: are you really my son Esau? And three times Jacob lies to his blind father’s face. The blessing is given. Esau returns from the field. The deception is discovered. And Esau weeps with a loud and bitter cry: bless me me also, O my father.
The blessing Isaac gave cannot be taken back. Words spoken in covenant carry weight that even mistakes cannot cancel. Which is why what you declare over people matters more than you think.
Esau wants to kill Jacob. Rebekah sends Jacob away to her brother Laban in Haran. And Jacob alone for the first time in his life, a fugitive from the only home he has ever known, with nothing but what he can carry stops at a certain place when the sun goes down and lies down to sleep with a stone for a pillow.
And he dreams.
“He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth,
with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God
were ascending and descending on it.”
— Genesis 28:12
A stairway. A ladder. A connection between earth and heaven, right there, at the place where a homeless fugitive has put a rock under his head and closed his eyes. And at the top of it, God speaks. I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth. In you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.
Jacob was a liar sleeping on a rock in a field, running from the wreckage of his own choices. And God chose that moment that specific moment, that specific mess to introduce Himself and make a promise. God does not wait for you to clean yourself up before He shows up. He shows up in the middle.
Jacob wakes up and says: surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. He was afraid and said: how awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And he takes the stone he slept on and sets it up as a pillar and pours oil on it. The stone that was his pillow becomes an altar.
— The hard thing under your head may be the very thing God will use as a monument. The place of your worst night may become the place where you remember that God was there.
Jesus will later tell Nathanael: you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Jesus is the ladder. He is the connection between earth and heaven. He is the stairway Jacob saw in a dream and the whole world has been climbing toward since.
The ladder is still standing. The gate of heaven is still open. And wherever you are sleeping tonight whatever stone is under your head this place is the house of God. You just may not know it yet.
Chapter 29 brings Jacob to Laban’s household, where he falls in love with Rachel at a well. He works seven years for her hand. Seven years, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her. It is one of the most romantic lines in the Bible.
And then Laban gives him Leah instead on the wedding night. Jacob wakes up in the morning and it is the wrong woman. He who deceived his blind father with a disguise is now deceived himself in the dark. He who put on his brother’s identity to steal a blessing is now handed the wrong identity in a marriage bed.
— The Bible never lets its characters sin without consequence. But it also never lets consequence be the final word.
Jacob works another seven years for Rachel. Fourteen years total. The man who grabbed his brother’s heel at birth, who grabbed the birthright with a bowl of stew, who grabbed the blessing with a goatskin disguise is now learning what it feels like to be on the receiving end of someone else’s manipulation. God is not punishing Jacob. He is teaching him. The school is painful and the curriculum is specific to the student.
God’s discipline is not revenge. It is preparation. Every difficult season you are in is teaching you something you will need for where He is taking you. The lesson may hurt. The lesson is not optional. And the lesson will not last longer than it needs to.
Speak this over yourself today:
God shows up in the middle of my mess,
not after I have cleaned it up.
The ladder is still standing.
Heaven is open over the very place I am lying down tonight.
TOMORROW – Day 22 • Genesis 30–31
Jacob is about to outsmart Laban and God is about to tell him it is time to go home. Fourteen years away from everything he knows, and the God of Bethel has not forgotten him. Come back tomorrow.
