Alright. Well, welcome again on this cold, wet... Winter night, start of Thanksgiving week. We're gonna do Jacob, we're gonna go back to Jacob, a series in Genesis. And I thought that this message goes well with this morning's message, which was about coming to understand God's giving and his grace towards us, his continual giving to us and then growing because of that. So you'll have to see if you think it's a match. To me, it was kind of an illustration of it.

Let's bow in prayer. Father, we thank you for this evening. We thank you for your Word, and we thank you that your Word shows us, tells us, commands us, promises us in all kinds of different ways to cause us to fix our eyes on you, to trust in you, to obey you, to love you, to worship you. And we just pray that Your Word would be a mighty two-edged sword, which would convict us, would pierce us, and then would build us up as well. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, well, turn in your Bibles to Genesis 33. I'll read 33, 1 through 11. And in this series, I try to take half a chapter at a time. I regret it when I don't, when I deviate from that. So I'm gonna stick with that and we'll tackle half of this chapter.

So Genesis chapter 33, one through 11. Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked and behold Esau was coming and 400 men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. He put the maids and their children in front and Leah and her children next and Rachel and Joseph last. But he himself passed on ahead of them and bowed down to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother. Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept. He lifted his eyes and saw the women and the children and said, who are these with you? So he said, the children whom God has graciously given your servant. Then the maids came near with their children and they bowed down. Leah likewise came near with her children and they bowed down. And afterward Joseph came near with Rachel and they bowed down. And he said, what do you mean by all this company which I have met? And he said, to find favor in the sight of my Lord. But Esau said, I have plenty, my brother. Let what you have be your own. Jacob said, no, please, if now I have found favor in your sight, then take my present from my hand, for I see your faces as one sees the face of God, and you have received me favorably. Please take my gift, which has been brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have plenty. Thus he urged him, and he took it.

So this is the big encounter with Esau as it plays out. And in a way, all of Jacob's life has been leading up to this moment of danger, this moment of truth. This is the central moment. He's right on the doorstep of the promised land of coming back into the promised land, and he has to pass this one obstacle, and it's the big one. It's his brother Esau. This has been a long time coming in Jacob's life. His whole battle with Laban, as difficult as that was, kind of pales in comparison to this one. This is even the more serious one and he's been kind of scrapping and fighting with with Laban for 20 years but the whole point of it was to get away from Esau because Esau wanted to kill him and so now he's coming back to face him. It's a struggle that took place from the womb or it was foreshadowed in the womb and then the last he heard from Esau was 20 years earlier when Esau said he would kill him and had basically good reason to be angry. Jacob stole Esau's blessing, the blessing his father very much intended for Esau and stole his birthright, and of course, mysteriously, God intended it for Jacob. But he stole it from Esau in kind of the most outlandish and ridiculous and humiliating way possible. You know, he dressed up as his brother to his blind father and put Esau into a murderous rage.

So it's been, he's been on the run. For 20 years, that's why he's had to leave the promised land, and now he comes face to face with his worst enemy, and he's trapped, he's trapped. Esau has him right where he wants him. There's nowhere he can run, and there's nowhere that he can hide. But God has Jacob right where he wants him to. And why is that? Why is that? What does Jacob have on his side at this point? Nothing, except for the promise of God, except for the promise of God. And that's why God has put him in this place.

So this is the big showdown, all the actions leading to this moment, but it's anticlimactic. almost to the point of being a bit comical. It's kind of a, I'm sure it was a tense scene at some point, but it didn't need to be. And so this is kind of, it doesn't live up to the billing, so to speak, of all the attention. He's not really in any danger. Why? Why? Why is this anticlimactic? Well, it's because of what happened the night before.

If you remember that in the series, the battle's already won. when he took the promise to God in prayer. And I would say part one of that battle was him actually praying a wonderful prayer, a humble prayer, relying on the promise of God and saying, I don't deserve any of this, but I'm trusting in you, Lord, in this desperate situation. And then what kind of personified that prayer was his actual wrestling, physical wrestling with a man who wrestled with him until daybreak, and that man was a manifestation of God himself. And so he prevailed alone with God. He prevailed by faith. He prevailed by faith in the promise of God.

And so this struggle, the struggle now with his brother, is nothing compared to that one. The storm is over. This encounter is a breeze. sticks his head in the lion's mouth, so to speak, and the lion has been defanged already. And so Jacob can hardly believe himself as this is unfolding. His reconciliation with Esau shows that his wrestling with God the night before was not just a crazy dream or a vision. He has his limp to remind him of that, but now he has the reality of Esau's acceptance to confirm that the Lord is with him, that the Lord fights his battles for him.

So instead of the main event, this big showdown with Esau is presented a little bit like an afterthought. And for once in Jacob's life, the real struggle is not Jacob outwitting his brother. That's how he's used to prevailing, is figuring out a way to outsmart Esau. But for once, that's not the real struggle, but it's Jacob prevailing with God by faith to receive what was promised.

Let me say this too, because of all that, Jacob perceives in this meeting, and he talks about this, he perceives Esau, in kind of a funny way, to be kind of a weird stand-in for God, in this sense, not in any blasphemous sense or anything like that, but in the sense that Esau's acceptance mirrors and shows to him, in another tangible way, God's acceptance. And I'm talking, of course, about what he says. It's in verse 10 where he says to Esau, I see your face as one sees the face of God because you have received me favorably. And for whatever reason, we're not really told Esau's motive, but Esau's face in this encounter is He wears a big smile. He's happy to see his brother. Or tears of tenderness. His anger, and it's been real anger, has been turned into kindness. And Jacob sees in his brother's face God's kindness and his grace to him, just as he's promised to him. And he sees it in Esau. 

Now, and I'm getting to it. I'm gonna go verse by verse. I'm almost done with this introduction, but the events in Jacob's life, and this is true for all of the patriarchs, are not just to be understood by us as unique one-off events in Jacob's life. We're interested in biography or history, and so we're gonna read about what happened to Jacob, and it's never gonna happen again, and it's interesting history. No, that's not the way we're to look at it. We're to look at this as a pattern for your life as well. God has all kinds of ways of teaching us and one is according to patterns that are played out in the life of Jacob and Isaac and Joseph and Abraham as well. So it's different from teaching where you're taught what you're supposed to learn. Here you just, you sort of see it, you live it. with these characters of the Bible, and a lot of the Old Testament is about that, and it's to teach us the patterns of God's ways, it's to teach us to know God. 

So Jacob is not the father of faith like Abraham, but he is the grandson of the father of faith. He's the most difficult man in this family, the faith family, as I've called it, and it's a pattern for us. And so the difficulties in your life, the complications in your life, Maybe even complications that have been compounded by sin, compounded by ways in which you haven't reacted in the way that you should have. Maybe less dramatic than Jacob, you know, his brother wants to kill him and now he's got to meet him. Maybe a little less dramatic than that, but we certainly all have difficulties and trials in our life. 

God allows those difficulties, or like James you were saying in Sunday school, not just allows, but desires even, a stronger word, and that's reflected in many passages of scripture where it talks about evil and where it comes from, and it's governed by the intention of God, it's desired by God, but not in a way that makes him the author of sin. But God allows desires, even difficulties in the lives of his children, in the lives of those that he's made his child. Frightening ones, like this one. Unnerving ones, like this one. Why? So that you have only the promise of God to rely on. And he does this in a million different ways with his children. So you have only the promise of God, only the grace of God to drive you to your knees in prayer, to wrestle with God and to know him that way, as you can know him no other way, and to prevail by faith. And then to show you when the time comes, you have nothing to be afraid of from that trial. And not because of the skill of your own maneuvering, but purely by grace, and that's what Esau's gonna, I'm sorry, Jacob is gonna end up talking about as he talks through it to Esau as God's grace towards him. So I hope you see yourself in Jacob here and elsewhere in this series, not only in Jacob's faults, it's easy to put ourselves there with Jacob, but also in his faith, and also in the pattern of the way that God dealt with him.

Okay, we'll go through verse by verse, and then pretty much be done. I've kind of put my conclusion into the introduction, so... but we'll go through, and it falls very easily into three parts. First, Esau accepts Jacob's person, that's one through four, then Esau accepts Jacob's family, that's verse five to eight, and then Esau accepts Jacob's gifts, that's verses nine through 11.

So Esau's doing a lot of accepting, and in the background, as Esau's doing that, kind of be thinking the same thing that Jacob's thinking, and that is that Esau, in some ways, kind of functioning as a stand-in for God. And, History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and the night before, what he experienced rhymes with this in some way, where he sees in Esau's kind acceptance of him also in a much bigger way that's greater and covers more of his life than what Esau's looking at, God's kind acceptance of him as well. And so he sees the one in the other.

So Esau's doing a lot of accepting in this outline, but Jacob sees it in a very profound way.

Okay, Esau accepts Jacob's person one through four.

Okay, verse one. Then Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, And behold, Esau was coming and 400 men with him. In Hebrew, and especially in Genesis and a number of places, like the flood story, I won't show you, but there's a way that it has of kind of bringing an action into the present and making it especially vivid and putting yourself there. in Jacob's shoes, so you can kind of experience this with him and be right in the moment.

And one of them you can see is just the word behold. The word behold tends to do that. Hope that's in your translation. But another way is this is put into a participle to be Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau coming, is literally what it says. And Hebrew doesn't really have a present tense, and that's kind of the way of bringing it into the present.

So anyway, you're supposed to, you can see this even in English, where it talks about this whole process of him lifting up his eyes. It didn't have to say all that. Lifting up his eyes and looking, and behold, Esau coming, and 400 men with him. So it's really kind of telling you to put yourself, experience this with Jacob as he's seeing this.

And I think he's probably from a distance, And he's seeing this group of men closing in on him and he has nowhere to go. And he's coming face to face with his worst nightmare. This is what he dreaded, is meeting Esau like this. He's been trying to get away from Esau. The last he heard, Esau wants to kill him. Now Esau's got him at his mercy and he has 400 men with him.

You don't need 400 men with you to reconcile with your twin. I should know. No, I'm just kidding. You don't need 400 men with you to reconcile with your brother. And so these turn out to be sort of useless extras. They sort of make a stage. They make an audience for everything that happens here. They turn out to be 400 observers.

You need 400 men for a military operation. And this size group, I looked this up because I didn't know it, is a battalion. That's what it's called. It's kind of on the smaller end of a battalion, but that's what it is. 400 men. That's a military unit that's especially capable of accomplishing all kinds of things. 400 men, so capable of doing it. And remember chapter 32, verse 6, when he first heard, Esau's coming to meet you, he knows you're here, he knows you're coming back into the promised land, you know, he's gotten information about that. And furthermore, this is what Jacob's scouts are telling him, furthermore, he's coming to meet you and 400 men are with him. 

Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed, not a little bit worried, but terrified of this from his brother, because this is like his worst nightmare unfolding before him. So, and this is what he sees. Now he sees it with his own eyes. He's heard about it from his scouts. Now he's seeing it. But this is a place where the appearance is opposite to the reality. It's opposite to reality, and that should ring some bells from scripture. We walk by faith. and not by sight, or the hymn that we sing, God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. Now it's all failing me, but there's one about you scan in vain. with your eyes, but behind a frowning providence, the Lord hides a smiling face, and that's true of God's ways, it's true of His law that comes to condemn us, and actually in being condemned by His law, that's how we're saved. And it's true of the difficulties in our life as well, that they're not to destroy us, they're not to harm us, but they're actually to drive us to prayer, to drive us to faith, to drive us to know the Lord and to know Him in a personal 

And so this is what these 400 men are doing. It's gonna turn out not at all the way it appears to Jacob, but it really does appear threatening. And so you're supposed to sort of experience that with Jacob. 

By the way, what was Esau's purpose in having these 400 men with him? And we're never told, we're never really told what the purpose is. I don't know if they're doing something else. One commentary I read that I thought might be right is it may be to provide an armed guard to Jacob. That's what he says. We're not gonna get that part yet in this chapter, but it may have been as a favor. to his brother, he wanted to go with him to protect him as he's sort of strung out in this long column. So it may have been really for his good. 

Esau's motives in this whole chapter, this whole way it's presented are opaque. We're not giving a window into what he's thinking. We could have been, but we're not. And I think that's to drive home that the battle was really won with God. not with Esau, and so we're not really told what Esau was thinking. Jacob didn't really need to know. He didn't need to figure it out as usual and figure out how to get the right maneuver in. He needed to pray, and then Esau, what Esau did, even if Jacob never really understood it or we don't understand it, would be because God was at work in him. 

That being said, Esau's motives don't, you know, in reconciling, which is what he's gonna do here, they don't seem very forced. Or recent, like a change of heart, even like Laban, who whatever he was gonna do to Jacob, the Lord appeared to him the night before and said, don't speak either good or evil to Jacob. Esau seems very genuine and he doesn't seem like this is a new thing for him to want to be reconciled to his brother. And my guess, Unfortunately for Esau, this doesn't speak all that well of Esau, is I think Esau ceased to care about the promise. And that's one thing you can always say for Jacob, is he cares very much about God's promise and about God's word. And Esau cared about it when it was stolen from him. But I'm not sure he really cares about God's promise as well, and so he's not able to sustain the effort of keeping this rage, this murderous rage against Jacob for 20 years. And so in his case, the saying is true that time heals these wounds. It's good that he reconciled. We're just not told. I'm speculating even in saying that as well.

So he looks, he sees these 400 men, so what does he do? Verse one, so he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. He put the maids and their children in front, and Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last.

Jacob's faith is small. He's still doing a bit of maneuvering. Still doing a little bit of planning, but it's not much, and it's kind of a desperate planning. So he does what he did last time, and he lines up his family in these ranks. And the cruel reality in Jacob's family was favoritism, kind of a rigid favoritism and a pecking order among his wives, which he had four of, or two wives and two concubines. and then his children, and he adds sort of a pecking order, and it shows itself in a time of danger. It's gonna be important later as well, and so he puts the maidservants and their children in front, the most exposed position. If this is gonna turn out to be a massacre, his worst fear is Leah and her children after them. They'll get to them next, and then Rachel and Joseph. They're the last, because they're the favorites. His favorite is Rachel, and she has one son, at this point, which is Joseph.

So his faith is small, his faith is small, but his faith is real. as well, and that's something you often say about Jacob. A mustard seed of faith can move a mountain, and he certainly had that. He had a mustard seed of faith, and he ends up doing what, to him, appeared to be moving a mountain here, which is changing this circumstance, and it's simply because of the promise of God.

So he kind of arranges them like he did before, with the most favorite away, furthest away from danger, furthest away from Esau. But he himself passed on ahead of them, and bowed down to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother. He went ahead, and some have talked about how this is a change, because the last time, when he sent them across the river at night, he sent everybody in that order ahead of him, and then he remained last. that's sort of thought to be sort of like a cowardly thing to do and now he's at least passing on ahead of them and protecting them. I don't know if that's a sign of growth or just a sign of what he intended to do all along. The other was at night when Esau wasn't nearby and this is when Esau is close by.

But this is the moment of truth. This is the moment of truth. He's going to face it ahead of his family. And he bows down to the ground seven times. It's pretty obsequious. And that's how he's going to be throughout this whole thing. And, wow, seven times bowing down to the earth. That would take a long time, actually, if you actually did that, to bow down seven times. He's kind of using the utmost caution, and probably as this is happening and as Esau's drawing near, he kind of can't believe he's not being slaughtered or captured or fought against by Esau. And so this entire time, he's just super cautious, sort of on pins and needles. Like it's too good to be true. Where's the catch? Where's the trap going to spring? And so what ends up happening is sort of this show of, scraping humility, like calling Esau my lord, and calling himself your servant. So Jacob's gonna be sort of stiff and uncomfortable. can't fully accept, he sort of ruins this reunion with the smallness of his faith. If he truly believed God, he could have just walked up to Esau and greeted him with his family with him. But his faith is small. He kind of probably ruins the moment because of that and the reconciliation from his end. He just wants to get out of there as fast as he can. 

Esau, on the other hand, is sort of comfortable in his own skin. I guess he's got all the men on his side. But he seems genuinely glad and kind of able to take in the moment with him. So as he's doing all this, bowing to the ground seven times instead of attacking him, Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept. So they did have somewhat of a reunion there. So Esau accepts his person. 

Second, Esau accepts his family, and that's verse five to eight, and here we have kind of this family parade. Okay, the two brothers have been reconciled, and now the family's coming in waves behind him. So first up is the maidservants here, verse five. He lifted his eyes, now it's Esau lifting up his eyes, and saw the women and the children and said, who are these with you? So he said, the children whom God has graciously given your servant. So here comes the family. The family was kind of the focus of Jacob's concern. He was concerned that Esau would come and would harm the family and that there would be a massacre. That's what he said in the previous chapter, and that's why he's still protecting them. But instead, it's sort of an introduction. They're strangers, of course. They're all strangers to Esau, and so he asks who they are. And Jacob says this, the children whom God has graciously given your servant. 

I don't know what your translation says, maybe something about gracious and grace. The word that's used there is a word that means favor. It's a great word in Hebrew, you get the name Hannah from this word. Favor and a bunch of other Hebrew names, it's part of those as well. And it means favor and it's kind of the equivalent to grace in the New Testament. It doesn't quite mean the same, it means favor. And so it doesn't necessarily mean grace. unearned favor, but it just means favor here. And that's the way in which he describes the way in which his family was given to him. And I think that, and he's going to use that word three times. in the rest of the passage, which is not that long of a space, so it's kind of a big emphasis of this passage, and that's becoming the way that Jacob's speaking of himself. That's the way in which Jacob is speaking of the things that he has, the things that the Lord has given him, and I think it's learning through all of this. I think Jacob is learning about God's grace and the favor that's been given to him. 

He asks about part of his family. He says, these are the children whom God has graciously given to your servant. And so Jacob is learning the blessing of God comes to him by grace. He doesn't say, well, I matched wits with Laban. And here's my reward, as I ended up with, with a lot of his daughters and their servants, and that's where my family comes from. No, it comes because God graciously gave it to him. So this is, his family, of course, is a blessing to him, and then it's gonna, it's through his family that he's gonna be a blessing to all the earth, through these sons, they're gonna carry the blessing. to them, and Jacob understands that comes not by his wits, not by what he's done, but by grace of the Lord. 

Then the maids came near with their children, and they bowed down. Okay, now the next wave. Leah likewise came near with her children, and they bowed down. And afterward, Joseph came near with Rachel, and they bowed down. So we get all the way to Joseph, the favorite, the youngest, and the favorite, and they're all bowing down. So now we have four mothers. We've got 11 sons, maybe a sister here as well, and they're all bowing down to Esau after Jacob has bowed down as well. 

Okay. Esau accepts Jacob's person. Esau accepts Jacob's family. And then the last part, Esau accepts Jacob's gifts. And that's verses eight through 11. And he said, what do you mean by all this company, which I have met? And he said, to find favor in the sight of my Lord. 

Okay, now he's not asking about the family at this point. Remember one of Jacob's desperate strategies was he sent kind of this parade of animals as gifts and their wealth was. measured in animals, and so he wanted to kind of pacify Esau by sending, and it was a lot, I can't remember, it was wave upon wave of valuable gifts of livestock to Esau, and Esau's already encountered them by the time he gets to within sight of Jacob, and so that's what he's asking about. What do you mean by all this company? which I have met." And then he says to find favor, there's that word grace, to find favor with the Lord. 

One commentator said that, Esau's using a pun, or at least a play on words, which is pretty common in the Old Testament, and I think that might be right. Esau's in a pretty good mood, you know, at this point, and so he's asking this. The word for company is machne, something like that, and the word for a gift or a present is mincha. Okay, so maybe you hear the middle letters are flipped there. And the, Men that were bringing each of these gifts were supposed to say, this is a present, a min ha, from Jacob, your brother. And so he's heard that a whole bunch of times. And so it may be that he uses a little bit of a play on words. He knows they're gifts, he's been told that they're gifts, but he uses a sound-alike word to say, what's this camp? What's this camp that you've, this is a whole camp that's come by me. 

And if so, it rings a bell with Jacob because one of the things that the Lord did to show that he was with him is he gave him a glimpse of a camp, a military camp of angels that are around him. That's in chapter 32 and verse one. And he had named it, this is God's camp. And he called the name of that place Machanaim, two camps as well. So it's perhaps just another, way in which Esau's acceptance is showing Jacob the Lord's acceptance of this as well. 

So he says it was to find favor, to find favor, there's our word again, in the sight of my Lord. Verse nine, but Esau said, I have plenty, my brother. Let what you have be your own. So they were unnecessary. The gifts were unnecessary. That's not what bargained Esau into being in a good mood, is the gifts. It was a ploy that was redundant. It was unnecessary because God brought it about without the gifts. And so Esau says, he's actually richer than Jacob at this point. He doesn't want the gifts. I have plenty, my brother. Let what you have be your own. In a way, it's kind of, in a way, what God would say when we give him gifts. And I'm thinking again of Esau being kind of this strange stand-in for the Lord, but the Lord doesn't need our gifts. He doesn't need it, he has plenty as well for this.

But here's what Jacob says. Jacob said, no, please, if now I have found favor in your sight, then take my present from my hand, for I see your face as one sees the face of God. and you have received me favorably. Please take my gift which has been brought to you because God has dealt graciously with me and because I have plenty. Thus he urged him and he took it.

And what's given here is quite a well thought out and kind of structured argument for him to take it. Not because it's gonna change anything. He already recognizes that Esau has already received him favorably, but he wants him to take it, and in the middle of this, it's quite a structured thing that he does here, and right in the middle of it is this comparison of Esau's face as kind of an emblem. of God's face towards Jacob.

And of course, that was part of the wrestling match with the Lord is I've seen God face to face and now he sees his face and it's kind towards him. It's it's turned towards him. And so he makes that statement.

Another commentator, in fact, this was Morris. He's mostly known for creationism, kind of being a pioneer in creationists. Is it Henry Morris? Yeah. Anyway, he's written a very good commentary on Genesis as well. And he made this point, and I thought it was a good one. And it's sort of a... cultural backgrounds point, an ancient Near East backgrounds point. But he said the custom was that when those people are reconciled, that the reconciliation is real when a tangible gift is offered and it's accepted by the offended party. And that's sort of a sign. That kind of made sense to me. I haven't lived back in the ancient Near East, of course, but that made quite a bit of sense.

And he wants, he still wants Esau. to take this gift towards him. And I think the way that Jacob's kind of thought out what he wants to say, it's maybe not just the smallness of his faith or his nervousness to just get away from Jacob, but something more profound. And he's not introducing, again, bargaining. But I think something that if this custom is correct, or if it is, or even if it isn't, it seems to correspond at least with the way God receives our gifts.

God doesn't receive our gifts as a bargain, as a bargaining chip for Him. It's not the way He becomes gracious to us, but He does receive our gifts to Him. In fact, they're very important to Him. And to me, the way I explain it is it's grace upon grace that He receives, that He stoops down and doesn't despise. but he actually takes our gifts when we do things like obey him, like Romans chapter 12, and verse one says that our whole life is to be offered as a gift.

So Romans labors to talk about God's grace and his mercy towards us, and then it says this, therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. pleasing to God, he takes it, he accepts it from us. And it pleases him, which is your spiritual service of worship.

So... Maybe I'm belaboring the point there, but I think there is a way in which it kind of corresponds, and this is the part where he's most making the connection between Esau, the way Esau has received him favorably and graciously, and the way God does as well, and it includes Esau receiving his gifts. And at the end of this passage, when he gets back to the land of Israel, he's going to erect an altar. at the end, where he's offering up something that's pleasing to God. God is pleased with Jacob, and that's a sign of, again, grace upon grace, that God would not only give to Jacob, but also allow Jacob to give to him in a significant way, and to be pleased by that, and the whole life of Christian obedience fits into that as well. 

Okay, just one other thing to point out about their dialogue with one another. They almost say the same thing. In verse nine, Esau, where he's... where he's telling his brother, I don't really need your gifts. He says in verse nine, I have plenty, or I have much is the word that he used. My brother, let what you have be your own. And then the last thing that Jacob says to Esau, take my gift because God has dwelt graciously with me and because I have plenty. And you might almost think they said the same thing. In fact, it's the same words, I have plenty in my translation, but it's a different word. Esau says, I have much, I have much. That's the word that's given for him. Jacob says, I have all, I have everything. And then Jacob ends up prevailing. And so it is different and perhaps significant as well. 

Esau had enough. to satisfy him enough to make him to where he wasn't angry with his brother anymore. He had what he wanted. He had enough. He didn't even need his gifts anymore. Jacob says something maybe a little more significant. I have all, I have all. He had the blessings of God, actually quite fewer blessings than Esau had if you're just gonna line them up and look at them. But he has along with him the promise of God. the favor of God as well. And so he can look at his brother and say, I have all. So I hope you can say that as well, because you have the word of promise. I have all, I have the blessings that I'm gonna be thankful for this Thanksgiving week. And then because I have the word of God, because I have the promise of God, that he forgives my sins, that he goes with me, that he sets me free from sin and death. I have all, and I can even perceive my trials, they're blessings that are pushing me to know God better and to have a closer relationship with Him, and they're all gonna turn out to be toothless in the end, like this trial with Esau as well. So I hope you can say that along with Jacob. I hope Jacob's story is your own or matches your own in significant ways. 

Next time, the trial has been passed, this great trial, and Jacob is going to return to the promised land again and worship the Lord there. 

Okay, let's pray. Dear Father, we thank you for your dealings with your people. We thank you that you work not by sight, but by faith in your word. And you have all kinds of ways of reminding us of this. And because of this, you draw nearer to us than you ever could in any other way, by teaching us to walk by faith. We pray that we might walk by faith, pray that we might grow by faith, trust you, even in our trials, and come to know you. as you really are. Thankful for your grace towards us, knowing that our blessings are only because of your grace towards us, not because of our own ingenuity or maneuvering. And then knowing that you even stoop down low enough to accept and not to despise, but to treasure the gifts that we are enabled to give to you as well, and to give even a great reward for those things. So we pray that you encourage us by Jacob's life, And by this account, and we pray these things in Jesus name, amen.