job, kids, retirement? There are probably any number of ways we mark transitions and it
was the same in Jacob’s life ­ except a little more dramatic. His life is marked by four
encounters with God at different times in his life. But, they share one thing in common.
They all come at a time when he is running from someone or about to be on the move.
God never says to him, “Stay where you are and keep doing what you are doing.”

The first time in Chapter 28 he is on the run from Esau. The second time in Chapter 32
he is on the run from Laban. The third time in Chapter 35 he is told to uproot, put the
wheels back on the mobile home and move to Bethlehem. In Chapter 46 he is told to
move to Egypt to be with Joseph and to end his life there.

But between those four visions there is a great deal of space and time. One of the
unfortunate effects of compressing the story is we get the sense that something is always
happening in the life of Jacob. One chapter ends and the next one begins with another
story and we begin to think that Jacob’s life was just one story after another with hardly a
pause in between. Hardly a chapter goes by when Jacob is not hearing from God and
moving. Nothing could be further from the truth, I suspect.

Shepherds don’t typically live exciting lives. They take care of sheep and my guess is
that is mostly routine work built around the predictable lives of sheep. In Jacob’s life there
is a great deal of time ­ decades ­ between visions with nothing exciting happening. Yes,
there are stories of problems with his family, his unruly children and the neighbors but it
was not the exciting life of non­stop action we sometimes imagine. It was in many
respects nothing but the day to day unremarkable life. But when we read the account of
his life carefully we realize the writer compresses those times and highlights the moments
when something unusual happens. We can make it sound like “and then…and then…and
then…” but it wasn’t that way. It was years of routine punctuated by momentary flashes.
Our modern notion of God showing up every week is not the way Jacob lived his life. He
went for years at a time doing very mundane and uninspiring things.

You might think that someone carrying that extraordinary promise would live his life
differently and with more care. He might think about something other than tending sheep
­something more spiritual. He doesn’t. He lives a fairly unremarkable life of routine with
moments of revelation that, for us, might make us want more.

And there were years of great joy ­the birth of a child ­and great sadness the loss of a
favorite child. And that’s where we are starting this morning. We leave the best part of
his life in Chapter 35 and two chapters and twenty years later his life falls apart. It is not
only the loss of Joseph but the beginning of the family cover­up of what happened.
Those twenty years changed Jacob from someone for whom things came naturally to an
old man fearful of losing what he had left in Benjamin. It was twenty years of living with a
promise that now seems impossible. It was twenty years of no comfort and changed
circumstances. “In mourning I will go down to the grave to my son” is the end of Chapter
37. What kind of promise is this?

It’s not just true of saints and Bible characters but of us as well. We cannot control the
circumstances of our lives ­ the losses, the griefs, the famines, the unpredictable. Life
goes overnight from being as planned to one day at a time. Sometimes those changes
enrich our lives. I am thinking about two friends, Ray and Joan Conn, who put their yacht
into Port­Au­Prince for supplies ten years ago. They went ashore for what should have
been a short errand and life changed for them with no preparation. They came face to
face with the dire situation of domestic slaves or “restaveks” and thought they might be
able to help do something about that when they got home. They ended up moving to
Haiti a decade ago and have been working there ever since. They set up the Restavek
Freedom Foundation and it looks like they will be there for the balance of their lives.

Sometimes it goes the other way.

Steve Hayner was one of the brightest stars in the evangelical world. As a very young
man he was the senior pastor of a large congregation in Washington. He moved from
there to be the leader of Inter­Varsity Christian Fellowship and served on numerous
boards. At the pinnacle of his career he became the president of a seminary in Georgia
and everyone expected him to rise even further. And then he received the diagnosis that
the had inoperable pancreatic cancer. His life went from thinking about the years ahead
to living each day. He died last week.

“It felt like, we’re going to do what we have always done, which is to be faithful day to day.
To realize that whatever you face in life, there are no guarantees. And that, even though I
felt like the least likely person to get a terminal cancer, it still was our situation. We are all
living into eternal life. Every day in the middle of our circumstances, we have the
opportunity and the challenge to figure out what our calling that day is in relationship to
the circumstances. In some ways I have to be swifter on my feet now. I have to be more
flexible. I need to look at my life in shorter pieces. Most of the time these days. I can’t look
at it in pieces much more than a day long. The question is not, What are my plans? The
question is, How am I going to be faithful whatever the circumstances?”

The beginning of Jacob’s final years of life begin with mourning, starving after years of
prosperity, and a forced move from home to Egypt. These don’t promise to be the golden
years. These are years of unexpected change. When he is 130 years old God tells him
to pick up everything and move.

The move to Egypt is a good one. His son, Joseph, is alive after all. “Now I am ready to
die, since I have seen for myself that you are still alive.” That is not the hopeless
mourning he had been living with for the last twenty years, is it? He is ready to die but not
in resignation. He is ready to die because he has hope. It’s ironic, isn’t it? I was sitting at
dinner this week with a man who said the same thing. He was ready to die but not in a
morbid way. He was ready to die because he had lived a full life and his affairs were in
order. There were no loose ends or unresolved issues. Death was not his fate and he
was certainly not thinking about leaving the world soon ­ but he was ready in the best
possible way. I think that is how Jacob felt. He was not resigned to death but he did not
need anything else to make life have meaning. I want to be that way and I suspect you
do as well. It doesn’t mean we stop living. In fact, Jacob lived 17 more years. They were
some of his best. His family is not only given a place to live but work that guarantees
their prosperity. They have food in the midst of a global famine and nothing but the best
provided by Joseph.

But those twenty years of difficulty had changed Jacob. He doesn’t just bounce back. He
is changed permanently at a very deep level. He is not depressed but he has become
dependent in the best possible way. I think I understand it when I read Psalm 31. “Into
your hands I commit my spirit…I trust in the Lord…I will be glad and rejoice in your love,
for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul…my eyes grow weak with
sorrow, my soul and body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years of
groaning…I am forgotten as though I were dead…I have become like broken pottery…but I
trust in you, O Lord…I say, “You are my God”…My times are in your hands.”

I love the conversation with Pharaoh because in some ways it summarizes the changes in
his life.

“Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh. After Jacob
blessed Pharaoh, Pharaoh asked him, “How old are you?”

And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My
years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my
fathers.” Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence.”

Have you ever been in a similar situation where you ask a very simple question and the
person needs to say more than answer what you asked? Dr. John Townsend says it is
the downside of being a therapist and author. A polite question at a party like “How are
you doing?” becomes a much larger question because there are times when people need
to talk about their lives. When that happens we need to listen. Of course, there are
people who take every opportunity to talk about themselves and their trials with health,
work, spouse, children and the world going to hell around them but there are moments
when people want to sum up their life. This is one of those moments for Jacob.

He doesn’t try to impress him. He could have told him about the exploits and adventures
of his life ­ dreams, visions, wrestling with angels, success, promises of greatness ­but
he didn’t. He could have said we had a little rough patch these past few years but things
are definitely looking up but he didn’t. His life has become a backdrop for Joseph’s
success.

“My years have been few and difficult and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of
my fathers.” I don’t think he was talking about the fact that Abraham lived to 175 and
Isaac to 180. I think he was comparing the value of his life to theirs. “I really didn’t
accomplish much.” We do the same, don’t we? It may not be with our fathers but it is with
other people. We want a life that means something. We want an obituary that is more
than a sentence or one descriptive phrase. If you look at Scripture you’ll see that many,
many people are only mentioned as part of a list ­ and we skip over those to get to the
lives that really matter. We don’t want to be part of a list that lived and died with no
further comment. We want our life in the here and now to have meaning.

I’m not sure that is the way it works. What is God’s promise to Jacob and his fathers? I
will make you into something greater than what you are ­but not in your lifetime.
Generations from now your descendants will be more numerous than the stars in the sky
and the sand on the shores but you will die before it happens. The meaning God has for
his life is a long way away and, for now, Jacob is part of a chain.

I don’t think we find “meaning” in this life because this life is part of a far greater picture. I
think when Scripture says we are like grass that lasts but a moment compared to eternity
it means exactly that and to spend our brief lives looking for some well­defined and
ultimate meaning is pointless. That doesn’t say our lives are without purpose. Our
purpose is clear. To glorify God. But that does not mean we are to spend our lives on a
search for significance and greatness. We are part of a story God is working out and that
will more often than not mean we are part of a list of people ­ good people with full lives ­
that the world will skip over.

But, finally, it doesn’t matter what others say about our life or what we say. What really
matters is what God says.

Jacob’s life was flawed ­greatly flawed ­but God still sees him as Israel. His life
compared to others was less in his own eyes but God still sees him as Israel.

His family is a mess but God still sees him as Israel.

God’s love for Israel is greater than all of Jacob’s failures and shortcomings.

Jacob is “inside” Israel in the same way we are “in Christ.” We are covered by God’s love
for Christ. We see ourselves as Jacob with a life that has not always measured up but
God sees us “in Christ.”

His promise to Israel goes far beyond the failings of Jacob. His love for Israel and for us
is eternal.

Isaiah 44:21­23 says,

“Remember these things, Jacob,
for you, Israel, are my servant.
I have made you, you are my servant;
Israel, I will not forget you.
I have swept away your offenses like a cloud,
your sins like the morning mist.
Return to me,
for I have redeemed you.”
Sing for joy, you heavens, for the Lord has done this;
shout aloud, you earth beneath.
Burst into song, you mountains,
you forests and all your trees,
for the Lord has redeemed Jacob,
he displays his glory in Israel.

Our lives are part of a greater whole that we cannot imagine. Our stories ­while
sometimes seeming routine, unimportant and unremarkable ­are all part of an even
greater story. Our failures and flaws are covered. Our sins are forgiven.

Psalm 103:8­22

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.
The Lord has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Praise the Lord, you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his bidding,
who obey his word.
Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts,
you his servants who do his will.
Praise the Lord, all his works
everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, my soul.