Peniel: “for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Genesis 32:30).

(…continues from part two…)

3)            Genesis 35:2-4 2) “Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments: 3) And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. 4) And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.” He was thoroughly probed and successfully passed. Genesis 32:28-30 28) “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. 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. 30) And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” Angels do not bless people directly as this Personage did. He could not change his name from Jacob to Israel if He is not the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The statement, “for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved;” Jacob, did not, under guilt, see God, the Creator as Cain did. That he did not die means he had overcome the vicissitudes of probationary experiences.

Isaac, like Jesus, opened not his mouth and in endurance passed his probation.

                Isaac, the next in the triune patriarchal line after Abraham, received his first probationary baptism when his father obeyed the instructions of God to sacrifice him. He was Christ-like in obedience to the purpose of the Creator. His acquiescence paved the legality for the ultimate Golgotha soteriological sanguinolency. God was not done with Isaac, who, at a young age, went through the distressing pangs experienced at the loss of the great woman of faith, Sarah, his dear mother. His marriage to a pulchritudinous and virtuous Rebekah though an exhilarating succour, he had to wade through another probational decades of infecundity of matrix fruitlessness. Holding courageously to the patriarchal baton after the demise of Abraham, his father even the friend of God, he lived to a very old age, a trustworthy saint in his walk with the Most High God.

                Job? It is written of him, “His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east” (Job 1:3). Job, from this verse, was the richest in the Eastern sphere of the globe. The Hebraic gâdôl (gaw-dole’) is the English word ‘greatest’, which speaks of ‘immensity in riches; outstanding nobility of a leading chieftain; a revered man of great wisdom; above all a reputable individual of piety. When tried he goofed a number of times by making unnecessary theological pronouncements. Yet, the truth concerning Job is, 9) “Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. 10) But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips” (Job 2:9-10). The word ‘integrity’ is tûmmâh (toom-maw’): ‘innocence’.

“So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12).

                Down, he was found, but not out of alienation of God’s favour. Torturously bruised he felt, but courageously believed in the LORD his God. One of the ultraheavy apophthegm of all times from the philosophical heart of this great man of God is found in Job 23:10 “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” After all said and done, Job, who did lose all to the machinations of Satanism, did strike gold, after God’s rebuke of his unnecessary excessiveness of painful outpour. Job 42:12 “So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.” His was doubled, probably making him the wealthiest in his days; portraying the veridicality of Proverbs 10:22 “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.” Amen.

                Getting born again is a conscious effort on the part of an individual. Get born again. You were born in sin. Say this sinner’s prayer.

“Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I receive Him now as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen!” 

(…to be continued…)

Read part two here

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