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Discipleship Focus: Character
- Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person. It is hearing from God and obeying. It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.
I can’t help but read Genesis 30 and know what’s coming. I can’t help but realize that Isaac imitates
Abraham’s faithfulness and his unfaithfulness.
In Jacob and Esau, the unfaithfulness increased. Now that Jacob is away from his family and
living on his own, we see that the unfaithful behavior increases even
more. I know the rest of the stories of
what’s to come in Genesis and how many of those stories deal with issues of
character. I think we’ll be talking
quite a bit about how God develops character as we conclude Genesis.
For today, though, let’s look at Jacob. His wives compete for his attention, even
going to the point of involving their slaves so they can one-up each other in
the children department. That’s not
something we would expect to see in Jacob’s family if he had a strongly
developed character. Jacob then abuses
Laban’s trust and divides the sheep so that he can take the majority of Laban’s
wealth. That’s not something we would
expect to see in a person with strongly developed character, either.
At this point in the story, Jacob is not a man of character. Jacob does not have the interior life with
God to support God’s work. He does not
have the character to make the right decisions when nobody is looking. The name Jacob means deceiver, and up until
now we have seen that he is aptly named.
However, there is grace. We
have seen a glimmer of hope in Jacob in the past. We will see God develop character in Jacob in
the future. Just because Jacob doesn’t
have the interior life with God now doesn’t mean that he never will. But for now, it is important for us to
realize that much of the rest of the book of Genesis will deal with Jacob’s
character and how his current lack of character influences the family around
him.
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