Tag: Israel

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Genesis Devotions

God fights

Genesis

Your name will no longer be Jacob,” he said.

“It will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:28)

When blessing Jacob, God gave him a new name: Israel.

The name “Israel” can mean either “He struggles with God” or “God fights.”

I could always understand the first meaning. All his life, Jacob had struggled with God trying to gain his blessing and favor.

Instead of waiting for God’s timing, he stole Esau’s birthright and blessing.

Instead of trusting God and simply telling Laban he was leaving, he ran away secretly with his family.

But today, I finally came to understand the second meaning of that name.

The thing that Jacob had to learn was he didn’t have to fight to obtain God’s blessing and favor.

God was already on his side. God was fighting for him.

God was fighting for Jacob in his struggles with Laban (Genesis 31:6-13, 24, 42).

And God would fight for him in reconciling him with Esau. (Genesis 33)

So many times, we feel like we have to struggle to gain God’s favor and blessing. But in doing so, we end up fighting God and others.

Sometimes, just like Jacob was trying to buy Esau’s favor and forgiveness, we try to do the same with God.

But God tells us, “I am already on your side. I am already fighting for you.”

And Jesus showed us that most vividly on the cross. (Colossians 2:13-15)

So remember the words of Paul.

What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything?

Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies.

Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.

Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? …

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-35, 37-39)

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Jeremiah Devotionals

The faithfulness of our Shepherd

Jeremiah

As I look at this passage, I can’t help but see the faithfulness of our Shepherd.

You see it in his faithfulness to Israel. He told them,

The people who survived the sword
found favor in the wilderness.

When Israel went to find rest,
the Lord appeared to him from far away.

I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you. (Jeremiah 31:2-3)

Jeremiah seems to be referring to all the people returning from Babylon, but you could also point to Jacob (whom God named “Israel”) and the nation of Israel as they came out of Egypt.

Jacob survived the sword of his brother Esau and was forced to flee his home. But in a time when Jacob was fearful and broken, the Lord appeared to him showing him faithful love.

Why? Because Jacob deserved it?

No, he was a con man who was constantly deceiving people and taking advantage of them.

Rather, God was faithful to him because out of His everlasting love, He had chosen Jacob before he was even born.

The same can be said of the Israelites when they escaped from the sword of Egypt.

God didn’t save them from the Egyptian army because of their faithfulness to him, but because of his faithfulness to them and the promises he had made to their ancestor Abraham hundreds of years earlier.

And now, though God was disciplining his people because of their sin, because of his everlasting love toward them, he promised to show them grace once again and bring them back to their own land.

I almost think that Jeremiah remembered Psalm 23 as he wrote this passage. You can see many of the themes in that Psalm in this passage.

God brings his sheep back to himself. (One meaning of “he restores my soul” is “he brings me back.”) (Jeremiah 31:8-13)

He gives his sheep rest, refreshing their weary souls. (25)

He leads them to water and down paths of righteousness, not because they deserve it, but for his name’s sake. (9)

His rod of protection delivers them from the enemy. (11)

He prepares a table filled with abundance for his sheep, and God’s goodness follows them (12-14).

And though they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he walks with them and gives them hope. (15-17)

Jeremiah then essentially finishes this chapter the same way he started it: by talking about the faithfulness of God.

He promised a day when God would make a new covenant with us, a covenant not based on our ability to keep the law in our own strength, but on God’s grace.

A covenant in which he puts his law into our hearts, forgiving our sins and remembering them no more. And once again God says of us,

I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the LORD’s declaration. (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

So in times of trouble like we’re going through now, let us remember the faithfulness of our Shepherd, and rejoice! 

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Genesis

The god of Me. The God of me.

Genesis

Jacob had come a long way in his relationship with God during his journey from Canaan to Haran and back to Canaan again. 

He started out having only heard stories about God from his grandfather and father, but never really having had his own personal experience with the living God. 

Then he met God for the first time in Bethel but still didn’t really surrender himself to God completely. 

The night he wrestled with God, he was still calling him, “The God of my father Abraham, the God of my father Isaac,” but did not really acknowledge him as his own God.  (Genesis 32:9)

But now, after God had proven himself to Jacob, bringing him safely back to Canaan, Jacob built an altar to God, calling it, “El Elohe Israel,” which meant, “God, the God of Israel.” 

It’s easy for me to forget at times that the nation of Israel still didn’t exist at that time, and that God had actually renamed Jacob, “Israel.” 

So what Jacob was saying was not, “God, the God of the nation of Israel.”  He was saying, “God, the God of me.”

For so long, Jacob had lived with the attitude of “the god of Me.” 

He lived, not to serve God, but to serve himself.  He didn’t trust God or wait on God’s timing for things.  Instead, he tried to make things happen on his own no matter who he hurt.

But now, he was saying, “God, you are the God of me.”  And his life was never the same. 

This is not to say he would never fail again.  Or struggle with doubt or fear. 

But now, at last, God was on the throne of his heart, where he had belonged all along.

How about you?  Are you living with the attitude of, “The god of Me?” 

Are you still trying to live your own way?  Are you still living a life, not trusting in God, but in yourself alone?  Are you still living to please yourself, no matter who it hurts?

Or are you living with the attitude of, “God, you’re the God of me?”

As the old hymn says,

All to Jesus I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;

I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;

Let me feel the Holy Spirit,
Truly know that Thou art mine.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Lord, I give myself to Thee;

Fill me with Thy love and power;
Let Thy blessing fall on me.