Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #3 of Genesis 33, and we will read Genesis 33:3-10:

And he passed over before them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God hath graciously given thy servant. Then the handmaidens came near, they and their children, and they bowed themselves. And Leah also with her children came near, and bowed themselves: and after came Joseph near and Rachel, and they bowed themselves. And he said, What meanest thou by all this drove which I met? And he said, These are to find grace in the sight of my lord. And Esau said, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself. And Jacob said, Nay, I pray thee, if now I have found grace in thy sight, then receive my present at my hand: for therefore I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me.

I will stop reading there.  We have been spending time looking at the encounter between Jacob and Esau after 40 years, and we have come to see on the spiritual level that it identifies with Judgment Day.  It identifies with the people of God who come face to face with God, the Judge, the Law of God, because the real judge in Judgment Day is the Law of God, the Bible.  Jesus said, “The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.”  (John 12:48)  The Word is the Law of God.  The Bible is a Law book, and its words are statutes, commandments, and judgments.

And now Esau is coming, and he represents the Law of God.  We spent some time discussing how he identifies with mount Seir, which the Lord uses in relationship to Sinai and mount Horeb where the Law was given.  How else can we explain the mannerisms and actions of Jacob toward his brother Esau?  First, he sent him presents, and the word “present” is the word for “offering.”  He sent several presents to him, and he said that this was done in the hope of appeasing his brother.  Remember we saw that in Genesis 32:20, and the word “appease” is the Hebrew word for “atonement.”  It is the usual word for “atonement.”  It is the same word used as in the Day of Atonement.  So the present or offering was designed to make atonement to Esau. 

It would make no sense until we see the spiritual level and what Esau represents, and in Genesis 32, he represents the Law of God, and it is the Law of God that comes to judge in Judgment day.  The Law is coming to Jacob and to the family of Jacob.  Jacob had done something, historically, to deceive his brother, and his brother wanted to smite him for it.  And yet, after 40 years, this is the first opportunity Esau had to smite his brother.  And he had the power to do so, did he not?  He had 400 men, and he had the opportunity to kill Jacob and take his wives and children and kill them, or do whatever he wanted.  So out of fear, Jacob sent the offering.

And now we find he has broken his wives and children into three groups, with Leah and her children, Rachel and her children, and the two handmaids with their children.  Then he positioned the two handmaids foremost, followed by Leah and her children, and last was Rachel and her son Joseph.  But before all of them went Jacob, as it says in Genesis 33:3:

And he passed over before them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.

Jacob was going on before his wives and before his sons.  He was going by himself to his brother Esau, and he was going very humbly, was he not?  He was extremely humble, and he was bowing himself down seven times as Esau was getting closer and closer with all the men with him.  Jacob was being subservient, bowing down.  And Esau asked, “What meanest thou by all this drove which I met?”  Then Jacob said, “These are to find grace in the sight of my lord.” And then he said, “For therefore I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God.” 

You know, this is pretty plain.  It is a pretty obvious spiritual picture that Esau is identified with God here, because it is God we bow down to, and it is God who grants grace, and it is God who offerings are made to, and not Esau.  Historically, Esau was an unsaved man.  God says he was hated.  But in this instance, the portrait being painted by God is one wherein Esau represents the Law, and the Law has full identification with God Himself.  So that explains the very humble approach by Jacob.

And I think that we can see in Jacob going before them the intercessory work of the Lord Jesus Christ, as Jacob would be a type of the Lord Jesus, going on to meet the Law of God before His wives, children or flocks do.  He is going on ahead by himself to intercede on behalf of the elect.  That would be the spiritual picture, and we know from Isaiah 53 that Christ’s intercessory work was the atonement, as it says in Isaiah 53:12:

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

He made intercession for specific sinners, the elect, so this tells us that this was at the foundation of the world because that was the only point at which Christ bore the sins of many people, His elect.  Christ bore the sins of His elect people at the foundation of the world when He took the sins of all those that were predestinated and elected to salvation.  Then God struck Him dead, and He died in payment for those sins, and that was the work of intercession.  Of course we know that.  He stood before God bearing our sins, so the atonement itself was an intercessory work performed on behalf of His people.  Otherwise, we would have to stand before God bearing our own sins, as all the unsaved people of the world are currently doing.  They are bearing their own individual sins, and God is pouring out His wrath, and the end result will be eternal destruction through annihilation.  They will be destroyed out of existence because there was no Intercessor for them and, therefore, they have to pay the price themselves: “For the wages of sin is death.”  They have to die, and it is the second death that will be the ultimate penalty.  They are “creatures of the day,” and finite, little beings that thought they were high and mighty in their rebellion against the King of the universe, and yet, they are not high and mighty.  They are tiny, finite, insect-sized beings that dared to offend the great and Almighty God.  Therefore God will strike them dead because of their sins, and they will be gone.  They will be gone to be remembered no more.  Nothing they did or said or experienced or felt remains.  It is wiped out of existence forever, and never to be brought to mind. 

That will be it.  They cannot come back.  They cannot rise from the dead as Christ rose from the dead because they are not God.  But He is God and has the power of God.  Incredibly, He could suffer the eternal death the Law required, and pay it in full, and then rise from the dead.  And that is what happened.  That is the Gospel.  That is our hope.  Our sins have been paid for, so the penalty the Law demanded has been satisfied, and He has risen again for our justification.  We now have His righteousness, and we are justified by His work of faith, so we have this wonderful salvation granted to us without us having done a thing.  We did everything contrary to it, and it was done without us doing any good work to contribute to it in any way.  God has mercifully and graciously given us the gift of eternal life, and it is all a result of that work of intercession, the atonement.

But the atonement of Christ performed at the foundation of the world did not end there.  If we go to Romans 8, we read in Romans 8:33-34:

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.

The Lord Jesus being at the right hand of God means He had already died and risen, and when He rose, He rose to be seated in heavenly places at the right hand of God.  So we wonder, “Why this intercession?  Was not the intercessory work done before the creation of this world all-sufficient and all that was necessary?  Why does this Scripture give the idea that there is continuing intercession?”  It is because although God did the work at the foundation of the world, Christ was there to continually remind the Father.  The world was created, and whenever one of those individuals whose sins were paid for was born into the world, it was as though Christ would go to the Father and say, “Do not forget that this soul (who is a child of wrath even as others) is a soul whose sins I paid for, and although this person is currently offending against your Law and has an unsaved heart and an unsaved body, we have guaranteed that this one must become saved because the work of intercession in the atonement must be applied.”  That is, the shed blood of Christ when He gave his life can be pictured as blood in a basin, and it must be applied through the hearing of the Word.  So in His capacity as Intercessor, the Lord Jesus would intercede for John, for Mary, and for each of the elect at a particular point in time, and He would apply that blood, and they would become saved in their souls.

But being saved in the soul does not complete God’s salvation program.  It is not finished at this point because the person still has an unsaved body.  And as a result, the Lord must make intercession even after salvation when this child of God who has been born in the spirit is still sinning in his body or member.  And Christ comes before the Father, saying in effect, “We must keep in mind that these sins in the body are also paid for, and we must finish the work on the last day, and we must look at these sins that are being committed in light of the payment that was made at the foundation of the world.”  So the intercessory work of the Lord Jesus continues on, and we read in Hebrews 7:23-25:

And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death: But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

He “ever liveth.”  It is the eternal priesthood of Melchisedec.  Christ is Melchisedec.  He is eternal.  He does not change.  He is the same today, yesterday, and forever.  He is an eternal Intercessor for those He has saved.  The work of Christ is eternally being brought to the Father and into the counsel of the Godhead by Christ as an everlasting reminder, bringing us to remembrance before the eyes of God, so He will always see us as people who have had their sins forgiven and upon whom the Law has nothing to say against.  There can be no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.  There is all kinds of biblical language, like God remembering our sins no more, and our iniquities being put away from us as far as the east is from the west, being cast into the depths of the sea.  God looks upon us as spotless – pure and white – saints that are made holy.  He sees no sin of any kind.

So we read here that Jacob went before his wives, just like the Lord Jesus went before His wife, the spiritual bride made up of all those He had saved, as well as His children, the spiritual children of God consisting of all the elect.  And he passed over before them, as it says in Genesis 33:3, to the approaching Esau, the brother who represents the Law and the “face of God,” as Jacob said, “I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God,”

The it says in Genesis 33:3:

…and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.

The number “7” identifies with perfection.  It is the perfecting of humility and submission.  We could say it was perfect obedience to the Law that only the Lord Jesus accomplished, as He accomplished it while faithfully paying for the sins of His people.  Now Jacob is approaching his twin brother Esau, and remember we talked about how Christ is the Word, and Esau is a type of the Law, and they are brothers.  Jacob is representing the Lord Jesus, the Messiah or Saviour or Intercessor.  He is the Word, and the Word carries out all these things in the lives of His people.  And Esau represents the Law, and the Law is the Word, is it not?  They are one and the same.  The Word is a twoedged sword, as the Bible likens it to a twoedged sword.  One edge is able to bring grace through forgiveness of sins through the mercy and love of God, and the other edge “cuts to death.”  It is to destroy and punish the wicked rebels, and so forth.  But it is the same Word that accomplishes both purposes.

And here, we have the two sides of the same sword meeting and coming together, as Jacob finally meets his brother Esau.