Jacob’s life is fertile ground for understanding faith and living by faith. When Jacob stopped at Bethel, he had nothing —perhaps a pack of food and a change or two of clothes, maybe a water bottle— literally what he could carry on his back. He has his father’s blessing, but he can’t eat or drink his father’s blessing. He has an inheritance, but his angry brother blocks his access to that inheritance, and there is no apparent hope of him ever gaining this inheritance. Jacob, then, is cast into the world on his own. Technically rich, but literally poor, a wanderer in the desert with just the hope of staying with family he’s never met for some time while he waits in hope of receiving an inheritance.
And here one of three events that change Jacob’s attitude towards God occurs. God appears to Jacob, and makes a promise to him about his future.
I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Genesis 28:13-15
This promise, in the final analysis, is the only thing Jacob can move forward on. And how does Jacob move forward on this promise? He lifts his feet, and moves forward into the future joyfully. Here is someone who was promised everything at his birth, then “helped” God by ensuring the promised blessing came his way, but had those blessings taken away by all human standards.
Jacob doesn’t learn to trust fully in God all at once, of course. He does accept a wife as his wages at first. But he has several moments before learning to trust God in all things comes when he is negotiating with Laban over his wages after he has fulfilled the years he worked for his two wives.
Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the LORD has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?” He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. Genesis 30:29-31
“You will not give me anything…” Here we hear the echo of Abraham’s refusal to take anything from the King of Sodom, “I refuse to allow anyone to say you enriched me.” Here Jacob is trusting in God’s promise to be with him and to bless him.
This, in the end, is the point of the Christian life; to trust in God, and God’s promises, no matter what our external circumstances might be. We are much like Jacob, promised an inheritance, but separated from that inheritance by Satan, who is angry, and wants to separate us from our Father. The key to living as strangers in a strange land is to know the promises of God, and to live as if they are true in the hear and now.
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