Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #12 of Genesis 32, and we will read Genesis 32:28-32:

And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank.

I will stop reading there.  In our last study, we were spending some time looking at the word “power” in verse 28.  It is Strong’s #8280, and we saw it is used only twice, once here, and once in Hosea 12:3-4:

He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and by his strength he had power with God: Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us;

He prevailed.  We were discussing the word “power” in verse 3.  There is also an English word “power” in verse 4, where it says, “Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed,” and that is a different word.  It is Strong’s #7786, but in verse 3 it is #8280, the word that is related to “princess” and “queen,” so the translators translated it, “as a prince he had power,” back in our verse in Genesis 32.

We also spent some time looking into how God relates Jacob taking his brother by the heel at the time of their birth as they are coming out of the womb with what is happening in Genesis 32.  So it is an overall view of the triumph of the salvation plan of the Lord Jesus Christ which started at the foundation of the world when God predestinated certain ones to become saved, and He laid their sins upon the Lord, and He died for them.  The payment in full for their sins was accomplished, and that enabled God to activate His Word to go forth to save Jacob and all those he typified, the elect that were loved by God with an everlasting love, but not Esau.  Esau was the firstborn.  Again, Esau’s name is also Edom, which identifies with Adam, and Adam is “man.”  Mankind was created by God from the dust of the ground.  Adam, the son of God, was in line to receive the right of the firstborn.  He had the birthright and the blessing of life, along with all his descendants.

You know, people are born into the world, and it is not until they sin that they lose this birthright and blessing, but God tells us that man is conceived in sin and born speaking lies.  So right from the very moment of man’s beginnings in this world, he is a sinner in his soul, and he is rebelling against God, and he loses the right of the firstborn under that “first covenant,” we could say, which had to do with the Law because God conditioned Adam’s “life” with the keeping of the Law.  Regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” implying that if he did not eat of the fruit of that particular tree, and if he kept that Law without transgression, he would have lived.  That is why Adam and all his descendants are born under the Law, and born obligated to faithfully keep the Law of God.  And yet, none are able to keep it, and that is why no man is justified by the works of the Law in the sight of God.

Only those that are under grace are justified.  They are the chosen people, the few out of the many, and they are the ones that prevail.  They are the ones that have “power,” as it says in Genesis 32:28:

…for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

It dates back to God choosing Jacob before either twins were born, and before either had done good or evil, which points to His predestination plan.  And this continued all through the history of the world as the elect of God were found, recovered, and restored in their souls as their sins are forgiven.  And, finally, at the time of the end, God saved everyone whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  So Jacob is a type of Christ and of the body of Christ, wrestling with God up until “the day breaketh,” or up until Judgment Day came.  And what was Jacob’s insistence when God said, “Let me go, for the day breaketh,”?  Jacob said, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” 

And remember Psalm 133 where we read of what it means to be blessed, ultimately.  It say sin Psalm 133:3:

As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there JEHOVAH commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

This is the blessing of God.  It is the blessing that the meek receive as they inherit the earth, and they obtain eternal life.  They have this tremendous blessing, rich and abundant spiritual blessings for evermore showered upon them.  So Jacob, a type of Christ, is wrestling with God, as is the body of Christ also, as we are commanded to make our calling and election sure and steadfast.  So as the people of God came to the Bible or heard the Bible, they were encouraged to seek Him and beseech Him for salvation, crying out for mercy like blind Bartimaeus, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me;” or like the man beating upon his breast, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” or as the Lord moved King David to write in Psalm 51, “Have mercy upon me, O, God, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.”  This was the manner in which the people of God wrestled with Him.  They were not sure if they had become saved, so they “grabbed hold of God” by grabbing hold of His Word, and they cleaved unto Him, and they would not let go. 

And yet, God was saying, “Let me go.”  And is it not curious how God did that?  Seemingly, He discouraged the ones that were seeking after Him.  Of course this goes back to the day of salvation before the decree came and before the day of wrath .  It was as though God was saying, “Let me go,” because He had not yet blessed.  And that happened in the lives of the people of God in various ways – through troubles, difficulties, affliction, and tribulation – and it was as though God was saying, “Let me go.  Release your grip upon me.  Go back to the world like Orpah.  Go back to the churches like the Israelites in the wilderness wanted to return to Egypt.  Let go of me!”  And yet, the true elect children of God would respond in the spirit, “But, Lord, we have nowhere to go, for thou hast the words of eternal life!”  And they would hold on all the more, like blind Bartimaeus, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me,” while others told him to hold his peace.  And then we read that he cried all the more, and the Lord’s people held onto that hope.  

And, you know, it is not possible for Jacob or any of us to hold onto God if He actually wanted us to let Him go, or if He actually wanted the wrestling match to end.  He could use His mighty hour and put all of us a million miles away from Him.  Of course He did not, and He was actually the One who was moving in us to will and to do of His good pleasure, and by His Spirit, He was holding onto us so that we would not let go, and we would abide and continue steadfastly holding onto the truths and faithful doctrines that the Lord graciously opened up, especially at the time of the end, to the understanding of His people.  And we held on, but we cannot take any credit.  It is not by our strength.  We are weak, tiny, finite creatures, and we are as nothing, like an insect before God.  But God moved within us and drew us to Himself, and He caused us to walk in His commandments and to follow Him. 

So that is the beautify of this passage as it has to do with the ultimate final blessing of life evermore for the people of God, the whole company of the elect, everyone God had obligated Himself to save.  Time was getting short as we got closer and closer to May 21, 2011.  “Let me go, for the day breaketh.  Judgment Day is about to come, and the door is about to shut, and the ‘sun’ of the light of the Gospel is about to be darkened, and the ‘moon’ will not give her light.”   There were so many things, and the pressure was mounting.  But while God was, on one hand, discouraging, on the other hand, He was declaring, as we read in Zephaniah 2:1-3:

Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired; Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of JEHOVAH come upon you, before the day of the JEHOVAH'S anger come upon you. Seek ye JEHOVAH, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the JEHOVAH'S anger.

As that day did dawn, and Judgment Day did begin, all those the Lord saved would be hidden.  Our salvation and our eternal life were safe and secure in Christ Jesus, as it tells us in Colossians 3:3: “…and your life is hid with Christ in God.” That is where we are hidden.  That is our great safety net.  That is our perfect protection against the storm that assails the whole world at this time.  We have eternal life guaranteed, and God will finally bring to pass on the last day the completion with the salvation of our bodies.

Let us go back to Genesis 32:29:

And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.

God has asked Jacob his name, knowing full well what Jacob’s name was, but the Lord had His reasons for asking.  And Jacob was responding in kind, we could say: “What is your name?”  And the response was, “Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?”  I do not know exactly what to make of this.  We know God has many names, and in one place it says His name is secret. (Judges 13:18)  And here, God does not reveal a name.   If anything should be opened up to us, I will come back to this, but right now I do not know what more to say about that, except that Jacob was seeking a name, and God (for His own purposes) did not give him His name. 

But it does tell us at the end of the verse: “And he blessed him there.”  So Jacob did receive the blessing, and the body of Christ – all that are counted for the seed in Him – receive the blessing.  They have the salvation of God.  They have the down payment of the salvation of the soul, with the promise of more to come.  And that is just wonderful, and God does tell us that it is in Judgment Day that Christ comes, and He makes known the blessing.  We read that in Matthew 25:31-34:

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

And I think we should not overlook the word “come.”  It is a call, as we have been learning as we study this delay in the drawing of the elect, the great multitude, that is laid out in John 21.  To be drawn has to do with coming to Christ, as Jesus said, “No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.”  So if anyone is coming to Christ in a right and true way, they are coming as a result of the Father drawing them.  Again, there is no doubt that when the Son of man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, that is Christ and “ten thousands of his saints,” then He sits upon the throne of His glory as He takes His seat to rule the earth in the Day of Judgment.  He is now King of kings and Lord of Lords, and His “throne” is the judgment seat or judgment throne.  Then everyone is gathered together, as it were, and He does separate the sheep from the goats, and the sheep are blessed, and the goats are cursed.  So it says, “Come, ye blessed of my Father,” and that is the activation of the command to draw the elect.  We read in John 21 that the Lord said to Peter, “Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.”  Then it says that Simon Peter “drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three.”  So the command was to bring them or have them come to Christ, and then they are “drawn.”  That is the same word “draw” used in John 6:44.   He drew the net to land full of great fishes. 

And it is the same here in Matthew 25:34: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”   It is time to receive the inheritance of the birthright and the blessing of the firstborn son that has been obtained for us through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus.  And, again, Esau was the firstborn, but Jacob latched onto his heel, and he supplanted him, and he received the blessing of the firstborn son, the birthright and the blessing that accompanies it, so that means a “double portion” of inheritance.

And now it is time for God to give the inheritance, and He is giving it to them that are blessed.  So, too, back in Genesis 32, this was the situation as the day was “breaking.”  It is time for Judgment Day, and now the blessing is given, which we can tie together (and it coincides with) the completing of the Latter Rain because the Latter Rain fell over the course of the Great Tribulation, and was completed by the date of May 21, 2011.  The Latter Rain was the Word of God falling from above as the doctrine descended like dew upon the earth, and the Latter Rain did its job as God saved all those He intended to save.  So all were blessed.  There is no more that will receive blessing. 

What is left in the Day of Judgment for those that identify with Esau is to put forth the bitter cry, “O, Father, hath thou no more blessing?  What about me?  Bless me, Father.”  Yet they will not receive the blessing of the firstborn.  They received an earthly, temporal blessing, and that is the case for all the descendants of Adam that are natural men, dead in their souls.  Their sins have never been forgiven, and those sins have been their ruin.  It has caused them to lose their original birthright.  It has caused them to lose the eternal life they would have enjoyed had they obeyed the Law of God.  But they did not, and they are lost.

But here is this usurper, the Supplanter, Jacob, and all the elect people that are as Jacob, chosen by God before they were born and before they had done either good or evil.  They obtained the blessing of the firstborn.

Let us look at Genesis 32:30:

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

This is something to think about before we get together in our next Bible study, Lord willing.  We will pick it up here, and close out these studies with one more study, or possibly two.  Think about “seeing God face to face.”  What have we learned about that phrase in the Bible?  You can read 2John, 3John, 1Corinthians 13, and Numbers 12, where it speaks of “face to face” or “mouth to mouth,” and see how it has to do with clarification of communication.  It is basically God coming to speak “plainly” and no more in parables, as He is letting His people know the hidden things, the mysteries of the kingdom of God that had been sealed throughout the history of the world.  What are we understanding now?  Remember, the Lord said to Daniel to seal up the Word until the time of the end, and then knowledge would be increased.