Genesis 32:1-33:20
After Laban goes Jacob starts moving again.
From nowhere two angels appear and Jacob sees them. He shouts out “This is where God lives!”
Later on Jacob gathers some servants together because he remembers what he had done to Esau and how Esau wants to kill him. He says to them: “Go to Esau and say – I am your servant. I have been living with Laban, our uncle. I have sheep, goats, cattle, donkeys and servants. I send this message because I want to be friends and brothers again.”
The servants go and come back. They say, “Esau has got four hundred men together and he is coming out to meet you.”
Jacob is like: “Argh no!! He’s still angry with me and he’s going to kill me!” and he gets extremely afraid. So he splits all his flocks and family into two groups so that should Esau catch one and attack it the second half would be able to run and get away.
Then Jacob prays to God and says, “God you are the God of my grandfather Abraham and the God of my father Isaac. You told me to come back here so I did. You also told me that if I came back you would make me extremely rich. You’ve been so kind to me I really don’t deserve it. When I left this place I had only a staff now I come back with a family and lots of money. But please save me from Esau because he wants to kill me. He’ll kill my wives and my children as well! Yet you have told me that you would make my descendants like the grains of sand on a beach, because there will be so many that no one will be able to count them! How can this be true if you let Esau come and kill us all now?”
Jacob spends the night in the area and in the morning sends lots of gifts to Esau. He sends his servants with many animals (which were basically their equivalent of money) and tells them to run on ahead and meet Esau and give him the gifts before Esau and the four hundred men who are with him see Jacob and his family. He explained to his servants that when Esau met them they were to be extremely polite and to tell him that the animals were a gift from Jacob. Jacob thinks that if he can give Esau gifts Esau will be less angry and won’t kill him. So the gifts go on ahead of Jacob but the rest of the people with Jacob camp the night in that place.
In the night Jacob wakes everyone up and moves them across a river that is nearby so that they don’t have to do it in the morning. He sends everyone over but doesn’t cross the river himself. He is on his own. He is probably extremely anxious about what the morning is going to bring.
A man comes up to him and they start to fight. And they wrestle and fight until morning comes. Then the man sees that he cannot overpower Jacob and so he reaches out and touches lightly the socket of Jacob’s hip. Jacob’s hip is hurt badly. Then the man says, “It is day now, so let me go. I don’t want to wrestle any more.” But Jacob, knowing that he really needs a blessing and also that, because his hip is hurt, if he lets the man go now the man might turn on him when he is free and hurt him more, says, “I’m not letting you go until you bless me, then I know that you do not mean me any more harm.”
The man says, “What is your name?” And Jacob presumes that this is because he wants his name to bless him.
“Jacob,” says Jacob.
Surprise! “Well you won’t be called Jacob any more,” says the man. “you will be called Israel, because you have had a struggle with god and with men. You’ve really struggled but you have overcome.”
Jacob must be like, “Wow, who is this guy that he knows that?” so he says, “What is YOUR name?”
“Why do you ask my name?” says the man, meaning: “You know who I am!” And the man blesses him as Jacob had asked, and leaves.
But Jacob is wowed. He says, “Woah! I’ve just seen God face to face. I mean – I’ve seen GOD!!! I’ve seen him! Wow! I should be dead… I should be dead! But he kept me alive! I’m actually alive though I’ve just fought with God!” It is morning and the sun is rising as Jacob makes his way across the river to the rest of his family. Where the man had touched his hip he was limping, a reminder always that he was now Israel and that he’d wrestled with God.
That day there comes a time where Jacob looks up and sees Esau and the four hundred men who are with him. So he makes sure that his kids are with their mums and he puts the maidservants (who he’d slept with and had kids with) at the front. Then he put Leah and her kids next. And at the back, because he loved her most, he put Rachel and her baby Joseph. Then he went in front of them all and bowed low to Esau.
Esau ignores all of this and runs up to Jacob – and hugs him!
Then he kisses his forehead as a greeting and they hug again and they begin to cry into each other’s shoulders because they are together again.
After a while Esau notices the owmen and children and asks, “who are all these?” Jacob replies, “They’re all my kids – yep, all of them. God has been extremely good to me to give me so many kids.” And all the mums and their kids come and bow to Esau.
Esau turns back to Jacob and asks, ”Why did you send me all those animals?”
“So that you would welcome me back,” says Jacob.
2But I have LOADS!” says Esau. “Keep them, keep them!”
“NO!” says Jacob. “Please. If you are going to welcome me then accept this gift I give to you. Because to see your face again is like seeing God himself, it is so amazing! Especially now I know you are going to welcome me back. I have more then enough, please, I insist – you have them.” So Esau accepts.
Then Esau says, “Right, lets get back to my camp quickly. I’ll come with you!”
“Not a good idea,” says Jacob. “The kids and women I have with me cannot travel as fast as you can and it takes time to move all these animals. So you go ahead and I’ll come to your house at the speed that the kids walk at.”
“At least let me leave some guys with you to protect you,” says Esau.
“But why bother?” asks Jacob. “Just be kind to me and like me and that will be enough.”
So Esau goes back to his camp and Jacob follows. But before he goes to Esau he sets up his own camp and made places to keep all his sheep and other animals.
And that’s how Jacob travelled safely from the house of Laban to where he built his own house. He paid the owners of the land good money for it and bought it fairly. Then he built and altar to God there.
They brought Jesus a man who had a demon in him. The man could not speak or see. But Jesus healed the man and the man could speak and see! And the crowds who were watching began to mutter: “Could this actually be the messiah, the one that we’ve been waiting for al these years.”
But Jesus had already angered the law-priests and so when they begin to hear people saying, “this could well be the King that we’re all to follow,” they start saying to the people. “We know that you’re simple men and not very clever. And you know that we are very clever men and that God speaks to us. And we say that this isn’t the messiah who is going to save us, but this man Jesus gets the power to cast out demons from Satan!”
Jesus knows that they are telling the people this, however, and he says, “If a country has a civil war so that it fights itself then it is split in two and it crumbles into chaos. Every will be chaotic if it fights itself. So why would Satan drive out demons? That would mean he is fighting against himself and he would soon no longer exist, and all his kingdom of evil would be in such chaos that there would be no demons in people. but there are still demons in people so it is clear that he is not fighting himself. Therefore I am using God’s power to drive out these demons and I am the messiah.”
“Look at it another way if you want. If you go into the house with a burglar alarm you cannot rob it. You have to disarm or break the burglar alarm before you can rob anything from the house.”
“If you do not believe me and help me and work for me then you are my enemy and against me. If you do not bring people together as I do then you will be scattering them. You can say all the bad things you want about me and you will still be forgiven, but if you speak bad things about God’s spirit then you will NEVER be forgiven.”
“If a tree is a good tree it will have good fruit. If the tree is a bad tree it will have bad fruit. You know how good a tree is by how good its fruit is. So if you are an evil man how can you say anything good. It’s like you’re a bad tree. You know why this is? Because what we say is actually a bit like a mirror on what our heart is like. If our heart is full of evil then what we say will be evil, but if your heart is good then what you say will be good. I warn you now though that when God comes to judge the world everyone will have to tell God their reasons for every single carless word that they have spoken in their lives. You will be your words that send you to hell (because they reflect your heart).
The some law-priests came and said, “Jesus, give us a sign to show us if you really are the messiah and saviour we’ve been waiting for. Jesus said, “Only evil people ask for a miracle as a sign for something. You’re getting no such sign other than what you’ve already seen, except for the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah was in the fish for three days so I will be in the earth for three days. But the people that Jonah preached to will be sending you to hell because they turned to God when Jonah preached to them but you don’t turn to God even when there is someone who is greater than Jonah here: me.”
Then Jesus said, “If you kick an evil spirit out of someone. It will travel around a bit and then go back to the original person and finds that it is completely empty and clean. So it brings seven friends and they move right back in and the person is in a worse state than before the demon was kicked out. That is what it will belike with this generation.
Proverbs 2:1-11
Listen to what these proverbs say.
Remember them in your mind
Tune your ears in to only hear wisdom
And make sure your heart works really hard at understanding what the proverbs mean
If you call out and ask to see the meaning of something
And cry out to ask for understanding
And if you look for it like you look for a stash of twenty pound notes
And if you search for it like you would search if you knew that somewhere in your garden was a massive pile of buried treasure
Then you will understand how to respect God
And find out more about God.
God gives wisdom
Out of his mouth come knowledge and understanding
If you try your best God will make sure you win
If you are blameless then God will be like a shield around you
If you are just and do what is right then God will guard you
If you keep believing in him he will protect your life.
Then you will really know what is the right way to live
You will know how to be fair and always do the right thing.
Because wisdom will come into your heart
And you will love knowledge
You will be discrete and that will protect you (from people accusing you)
When you understand that will guard you (from Satan)
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