But First, Prayer

​Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash
We have so much to cover here, we are going to skip fancy introductions and jump right in! We find ourselves at a brand new chapter in Jacob’s life with a fresh challenge for him, the dreaded encounter with Esau. It has been twenty years since, from Esau’s perspective, he tricked him out of the blessing of Isaac. It is important to remember that even though Jacob went about it badly, the blessing was always supposed to be Jacob’s. Nevertheless, Esau took it badly and purposed to kill Jacob when he got the chance. 
Jacob, at the direction of God, heads back away from Laban to the promised land of Canaan, and back to his kinsmen, meaning Esau. This is going to be one of the hardest things he will ever face, and like the rest of us, there is a mixed bag in how he approaches this test. We will start with what Jacob does well and then make some critique on how this could be better, with the expectation that we learn from his mistakes AND his faithfulness. The main point I want you to draw from this is that we are to Prayerfully prepare for life with God’s promises in mind. 
Prayerfully Prepare for Life with God’s Promises in Mind

We are going to skip over the first two verses for the moment, as they will be more relevant for our critique portion of our lesson, so let’s just jump straight to the terror of this passage: Esau is on the way! 
Jacob knows that he is going to have to face Esau eventually, so he is going to try to figure out the best way to approach this. Do you remember when you need to tell your parents some bad news so you try to wait until they are in a good mood before you tell them you broke the lamp? You’re guilty, you know it, but you want to try to reduce the consequences as much as possible by waiting until their team won the game on Saturday. That’s Jacob’s strategy here. 
Jacob sends out an advance of messengers to get a sense of where Esau is emotionally on all this and gets a fairly vague response: Esau is coming with 400 men. Now, maybe this is a welcoming party, but given the last thing he heard from Esau was a murder threat, the most likely answer is that Esau is coming to do some damage. 
The text itself reminds us of why Esau could be upset. As one scholar points out, the words “Seir” and “Edom” (two names for the same country) mean “hairy” and “red” respectively, which are meant to remind us of how Jacob tricked Isaac (wearing goat hair to match Esau) and the color of the soup that Jacob made Esau buy with his birthright (Matthews). Not exactly pleasant memories of brotherly affection. 
Jacob jumps into planning mode, and starts arranging the camp in such a way as to minimize the damage that Esau may cause. He is greatly terrified and distressed. Blood pressure is through the roof! 
But what does Jacob do well here? 
Jacob begins to pray. This is at the center of the passage, and is the thing that I think we pay the most attention to. 
He opens with worship. Jacob begins with the introduction to whom He is talking, the God of his fathers, and ultimately the Lord of his life. This is the same God that guided Abraham to the land in the first place and has been faithful to Isaac in seeing wealth and blessing increase. This is not some god that has just popped up. This God has been faithful to his family for now three generations. 
Next, he moves into thanksgiving and confession. Jacob then moves into who is praying, namely, himself. He acknowledges that God has been faithful to him personally despite the fact that he is utterly unworthy of such covenant love. He hasn’t just been preserved but has been prospered. He went over the river with a stick and has come back with two camps worth of family and farm. 
How do you start your prayers? Do you, as someone once said, complain with folded hands? Are your prayers just slightly sanctified squalling? I don’t mean that you can’t tell God what is bothering you, as Jacob is about to here in a second, but if all you ever say to God is what you need and never thank Him for what He has done, you are leaving much of the blessing of prayer on the table. 
When we begin our prayers, we do well to remind ourselves who we are talking to and what He is able to do. You are talking to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the God of Hudson Taylor, George Muller, and Corrie Ten Boom. He is a God who is in the faithfully providing business. He is the faithful Father! This is why the Lord’s Prayer starts with “Our Father” and not “Give us this day…” You need reminding that we have a Father in heaven in the first place that canprovide daily bread. Praying isn’t just to make you feel better, it is actually doing something! As trivial as it sounds, literally anytime I am looking for something I’ve misplaced, I pray about it if for nothing else to remind myself how God cares for me. Also, it’s uncanny how many times immediately after I pray I find the thing I’m looking for. 
So only after reminding himself that He is talking with God does Jacob lay out the request, and then closes the prayer with a recital of the promises made to him. This is a textbook prayer. Opens with worship, continues with a confession of sorts (I am unworthy), states the cause of fear, closes with the specific promise to address this fear. Perfect! We would do well to pray similarly. 
Might it change our prayers for healing in our bodies if we started with a reminder that we are talking to the one who made our bodies in his image (Gen. 1:26-27)? It might sound something like this, “Our Creator God, who has formed our bodies of the dust and stamped them with his image, we are unworthy of such blessing due to the way we sin with our bodies (Romans 6:12-13). We pray for healing of this pain in my neck. We know that Your grace is sufficient for us, as it was for Paul (2 Cor. 12:7-9) and one day every trace of grief or pain will be wiped away (Rev. 21:4).” Now, can you pray, “Lord, my neck hurts!” Sure, but how much more comforting is what Jacob prays here? What if we follow the outline that Jesus laid out for us? 
How might that change your prayer life? It will certainly be an effective reminder to you that you aren’t just talking to the ceiling about your problems, as it were. You are going to precisely the one who can, the only one who can, deal with your issue. 
To be clear, I’m not giving some sort of formula that instantly solves all problems or even makes all negative emotions go away. I was reading in a book recently that prayer is not an ibuprofen that takes away pain immediately, but is rather like drinking water everyday. As time goes on, you see the benefit of the practice, but it isn’t a “fix-all” in the moment (Martin and Croft, The Unhurried Pastor). 
As an illustration of that, as I had said at the beginning, Jacob takes a misstep here, I think, but I’ll admit here that it is slight. Let’s go back to the first two verses we skipped over. 
When Jacob first arrives in the land, he is greeted by a host of angels, specifically, the angels of God. This is significant because the only other time we see that phrase in the rest of the Old Testament is when Jacob saw that heavenly staircase. God is providing for him a vision meant to remind him of God’s care for his family. I don’t think this is a random event that this vision is being provided for him right before he is to meet with Esau. Jacob even remembers the promise that God is going to provide for the children, but he is still making all of these preparations out of fear. 
If we can draw any sort of negative example to this it is the motivation of fear. I don’t think it is wrong that Jacob sends his brother a generous gift, but I think doing so with the motivation of fear and counting on the gift in addition to God is where Jacob is going sideways here. If God is really going to protect the children as promised, then this sort of thing is unnecessary. He doesn’t need to appease Esau for protection. He has that already in God. 
Now, perhaps you are saying, “Well, how do you know that he is counting on the gift in addition to God?” I think I can sus that out by how things are arranged in the next chapter when he finally meets Esau. Notice the order he places his children in. Who is at the very back? Rachel and Joseph, the favorites. He is counting on, if all else fails, their ability to escape because they would be the last to encounter Esau. He’s playing favorites again (Ross, 543). Tragically, while Esau was never really coming to attack Jacob, it is precisely Rachel and Joseph who will be the ones Jacob loses. Rachel will die in childbirth a few chapters hence, and Joseph will be sold into slavery for the majority of his life. All the tactics in the world cannot protect the way we want to. 
So how do we avoid this approach? Should we simply abandon all planning and wise protection trusting ourselves to God’s plan as fated? Some try to live that way, but God isn’t opposed to planning. God wants you to use the brakes on your car! God wants you to wisely spend your money to provide for your family. The difference I’m calling for here is your motivation and heart posture as you do. I’m saying we live in light of God’s promises through our obedience to His commands. 
Contrast Jacob to Abraham. Jacob is being obedient to God in going home and facing Esau, despite the dangers. Yet, here, he is trying to ensure his wishes (that at the very least Jospeh and Rachel are safe) are guaranteed. Abraham was also obedient to what God said, even though this meant direct danger to Isaac. The difference between the two is that Abraham was obedient to the point that he trusted God to raise Isaac from the dead. He carried up the knife because of what God said, not despite it. Jacob is trying to obey God without trusting Him. And since He doesn’t trust, he ends up sending way more animals than he needed to for Esau, AND reveals his favoritistic heart to the rest of the family. Imagine being Leah and her children placed in harm’s way before Rachel and Joseph. That’s gotta sting. 
In the same way, you act differently when you are acting out of distrust for God. You say that you want to provide for your family, so you set aside money for the future, but you don’t have a moment’s peace until you see the monthly statement. That’s obeying without trusting. It’s the money you’re really trusting. You study well for your test because you say that you want to work hard for God, and then feel completely crushed by a “C” on the test despite doing your best. That is obeying without trusting. It’s the identity of “Good Student” that you are trusting. 
Obey AND trust. So how do you get there? You have to remind yourself, like in our example prayer we did a moment ago, that your life is going somewhere, namely, a redeemed creation. And that is only coming because of Christ. 
You know, the word that is translated “appease” here is the same word used for “atonement.” Jacob is sending all these things for something (as we will see) he already has, the good graces of Esau. In the same way, we can think that we are constantly behind the eight ball with God and try to do things for Him in the hopes that he will be pleased with us enough to let us into heaven. What we are about to celebrate here with the Lord’s Supper shows us that we already have all the grace we need. We will go to heaven based on what Jesus does for us. 
That doesn’t mean that we don’t do things for God anymore, but we can do them motivated by the joy of what we already possess, rather than doing them out of fear and guilt. 
What’s the takeaway today? When you find yourself in fear, obey and trust. Bring your prayers to God, assuring yourself of His promises and love for you, and in light of that reality, obey Him without fear.