This week’s Parashah is from Genesis 32:4 – 36:43. After having done his best, in the name of self-preservation, to ensure that his brother Esau would be appeased, by sending his “gifts” off in droves over the Jabok River, with his more dispensable servant-wives and their offspring in the forefront, his somewhat more indispensable wife Leah and her offspring following suite and his most loved wife Rachel and her son his favourite Joseph at the back, Jacob is left alone watching the sun set, where he meets with a “man”. We can assume that this “man” is none other than the pre-existent Jesus, because who other would be referred to by Jacob as “God” and about whom other would Jacob be referring to when he says that he has “seen God face to face and yet his soul has been spared” (Genesis 32:31). Jacob wrestles with this man (God/Jesus) until the break of day. It’s an activity that Jacob engages in naturally, out of his own in-built fighter DNA without ever having been “instructed” or “pre-warned” to do so, yet this persistent wrestling, unbeknown to him until the announcement of a promise by God Himself (the “man”/ Jesus) would earn Jacob a brand new name that would endure till the end of time: “Israel”, actually “Yisra-El”, where “Yisra” means “He will fight” and “El” means “God”. Jacob had fought or struggled with both God and man and had prevailed. Now the people of God had just passed over the Jabok River in seed form, 12 children in all, one of which was a daughter and the youngest son Benjamin had not yet been born. It is said of Jesus that “he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever” (Luke 1:33). So if you are the body of Christ, you are Jacob’s descendants, because you have been adopted into God’s household, the original, much-cultivated, more-beautiful-than-any-other and good and blessed-of-God olive tree, which is “Israel’s (Jacob’s – same person new name) “own olive tree” (Romans 11:24). Therefore this same fighter-DNA that was in Jacob, YOUR house-leader, operates inside of YOU. If the “man” (God/Jesus) was speaking to Jacob, he was speaking to you too, because you are Jacob’s descendants, adopted and grafted into his household/ olive tree by your faith and by your heavenly Father’s divine pre-destiny. Let us therefore continue to fight our battles with God and with man, in the name of and for the glory of that “man” (God) Jesus, knowing that the dawn WILL break, whereby we will have earned our eternal and heavenly name and title. May the God of YOUR adoptive household-father Jacob (“Israel”) bless you. https://goodolivetree.com/blog/category/author/parashat-hashavua/
