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Afraid and Alone
The Gospel According to Jacob, Part 6
Genesis 32:1-24a
November 5, 2006
Pastor Bob Sanders 
Genesis 32:1-24a (The Message)
And Jacob went his way. Angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them he said, "Oh! God's Camp!" And he named the place Mahanaim (Campground).
Then Jacob sent messengers on ahead to his brother Esau in the land of Seir in Edom. He instructed them: "Tell my master Esau this, 'A message from your servant Jacob: I've been staying with Laban and couldn't get away until now. I've acquired cattle and donkeys and sheep; also men and women servants. I'm telling you all this, my master, hoping for your approval.'"
The messengers came back to Jacob and said, "We talked to your brother Esau and he's on his way to meet you. But he has four hundred men with him."
Jacob was scared. Very scared. Panicked, he divided his people, sheep, cattle, and camels into two camps. He thought, "If Esau comes on the first camp and attacks it, the other camp has a chance to get away."
And then Jacob prayed, "God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, God who told me, 'Go back to your parents' homeland and I'll treat you well.' I don't deserve all the love and loyalty you've shown me. When I left here and crossed the Jordan I only had the clothes on my back, and now look at me—two camps! Save me, please, from the violence of my brother, my angry brother! I'm afraid he'll come and attack us all, me, the mothers and the children. You yourself said, 'I will treat you well; I'll make your descendants like the sands of the sea, far too many to count.'"
He slept the night there. Then he prepared a present for his brother Esau from his possessions: two hundred female goats, twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty camels with their nursing young, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. He put a servant in charge of each herd and said, "Go ahead of me and keep a healthy space between each herd."
Then he instructed the first one out: "When my brother Esau comes close and asks, 'Who is your master? Where are you going? Who owns these?' — answer him like this, 'Your servant Jacob. They are a gift to my master Esau. He's on his way.'"
He gave the same instructions to the second servant and to the third—to each in turn as they set out with their herds: "Say 'Your servant Jacob is on his way behind us.'" He thought, "I will soften him up with the succession of gifts. Then when he sees me face-to-face, maybe he'll be glad to welcome me."
So his gifts went before him while he settled down for the night in the camp.
But during the night he got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He got them safely across the brook along with all his possessions.
But Jacob stayed behind by himself.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Animals have powerful homing instincts. Salmon make 2,000-mile journeys from the depths of the ocean to the rivers and streams of their birth. Certain birds migrate each year back and forth across the span of entire continents. For humans, returning home is less biological and more of a spiritual journey. It may be a child returning home from school, or a soldier coming back from war, or an estranged family member returning to the nest. Something keeps drawing us homeward. Perhaps it’s what Robert Frost says in one of his poems: “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.”
Jacob is on his way home, but he can’t be sure whether he’ll be taken in or taken out. Returning to the land of his birth means facing his worst nightmare, and the closer he gets the more fearful he becomes. He is now a middle-aged man surrounded by wives, children, servants, and herds. But inside him there’s this frightened boy trying to find the courage to face his nemesis – his brother, Esau. And time is running out. If ever there was a person caught between a rock and a hard place, it was Jacob. Behind him was his father-in-law, Laban, for whom he’d been working these past twenty years. In the previous chapter, Genesis 31, God told Jacob it was finally time to break free, to leave Laban and go home: “Return to the land of your ancestors and to your kindred,” God said, “and I will be with you.” True to form, Jacob the hustler pulled a fast one on Laban. Instead of telling him he was leaving, he snuck off when Laban wasn’t looking, and took with him pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down. When Laban caught up with him the two of them had some harsh words, and in the end decided to go their separate ways. So now, Jacob can’t go back. He can’t return to Laban’s territory. He can only go forward. And that leads him straight into Esau’s territory.
Very Scared
And that means facing his worst fear. If you’ve been with us for the earlier parts of this series, you remember what happened, how Jacob cheated Esau out of the family birthright. And how when that happened, Esau went ballistic. Out of his mind with rage, Esau swore he’d kill his brother, which is why Jacob had to flee for his life. With nothing but the shirt on his back Jacob took off for Haran, where his mother had come from. Two decades had gone by without any word from home, and Jacob had no idea what was going on with Esau. Had the ensuing years cooled his rage or enflamed it? Would his older brother be waiting for him with open arms or a drawn sword?
To be on the safe side, Jacob sent some messengers ahead, and told them to say something deferential, something like, “To my master, Esau.” Nice touch. A bit of humility should help. Then try to impress him: “I’ve been with Laban, in case you wondered. Couldn’t get away till now, but I’m coming home – along with my cattle and donkeys, my sheep and servants.” Then close with, “Looking forward to seeing you soon, dear brother. Hoping you feel the same way.” And I’ll sign it, “Your most humble servant, etc., Jacob.”
There, that should do it. But when the messengers came back they said, “We talked to Esau, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is – he’s on his way to meet you. The bad news is – he’s bringing four hundred guys with him. And they don’t look like they’re from the Welcome Wagon.”
And the text says, “Jacob was scared. Very scared.”
And no wonder. It’s his worst nightmare. It’s the fear he’s carried in his heart for the past twenty years. Only now it’s about to come true. Esau is coming to kill him.
What kind of fear do you carry in your heart? Comic author Dave Barry says, “All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears: of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, of speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words: ‘some assembly required.’”
In one form or another, we all struggle with powerful fears – fears that can paralyze us, fears that can throw us into depression, fears that can prompt us to act in panic. Do you know what it is that makes you afraid? I’m not sure you’ll get anything out of this message unless you put yourself into Jacob’s place. Unless you know what you’re afraid of. Unless you dare to name it.
Some of us know exactly what it is. Some of us are dealing with fears because we face a serious illness in ourselves or in a loved one. Cancer or leukemia, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. Chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant. A difficult surgery or confinement in a care facility. Some of us struggle with fears of loss – with losing our loved one to illness, or losing our job due to downsizing, or losing control of our lives due to aging. Some of us are afraid of what’s happening to our marriage. Some of us are afraid of what’s happening to our kids. Some of us are afraid of what’s happening to our world.
What makes you afraid? Can you name it? How do you deal with it – that terror that attacks you in the middle of the night? Sometimes we try to deal with fear by asking ourselves, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” The theory is that the “worst thing” probably isn’t all that bad, and once you name it and look at it you’ll say, “Well, if that’s the worst that happens, I’ll be OK.” But that wouldn’t be much help in Jacob’s case. Because for Jacob the “worst thing that could happen” really is all that bad. Esau is coming with four hundred heavily armed goons to mop up the floor with him and take away everything he’d worked for and slaved for and cheated for. And there wasn’t a thing Jacob could do to prevent it.
Plans and Prayers
Or was there? In his panic, Jacob comes up with a plan. Which is what Jacob is good at – planning. As we’ve seen, he’s the kind of guy who’s always scheming, always maneuvering to get the upper hand. Some of us can identify with Jacob at this point. What’s the first thing we do when we’re frightened? Come up with a plan. We figure God helps those who help themselves, right? So when problems arise, we start acting like it all depends on us. We come up with a new plan.
For Jacob the plan was to divide all his assets into two parts and separate them. That way if Esau swoops down and destroys what he sees, he’ll only get half the loot. Brilliant! Then, once the plan is in place, Jacob decides he’d better pray about it.
Like most of us, prayer is not the first thing he does. It’s the last thing. Most of us turn to God as a last resort. We pray after all other options have been tried, after we’ve covered our bases and cut our losses. Only after Jacob has divvied up everything does he cast himself on the mercy of God. He says, “You’re the One who told me to go back home, Lord. You’re the One who said, ‘I’ll treat you well.’ Save me and my family. Save us from Esau.”
Actually, that isn’t exactly what God said. God did tell Jacob to go home, but what he promised was not, “I’ll treat you well.” It was, “I will be with you.” Jacob is still bargaining with God, trying to get a better deal. What Jacob wants is a promise of divine protection from danger, a free pass from Esau. God never makes a promise like that. God never promises anyone a pain-free existence. Instead, what God says is, “I will be with you, Jacob, no matter what happens. I will bless you and keep you even through the worst that can happen. I will never let you go.”
But Jacob isn’t thinking about that. He’s still scheming. And when he’s done praying, before he can wipe the sand off his knees, Jacob comes up with another plan. An even more impressive plan. Rather than wait for Esau to come and destroy everything, Jacob decides to make the first move. He separates all his livestock into groups and launches a great parade toward Esau. First came 220 goats, followed by 200 sheep. Then came twenty rams, thirty camels, forty cows, ten bulls and thirty donkeys. Each herd came separately to Esau, with a servant leading them and announcing all these gifts were from “your servant Jacob.” Then after the livestock, Jacob does the hardest thing of all. He sends out his family – Leah and Rachel with all the children and servants. His hope was that by the time Esau waded through all these gifts that he would no longer be angry at Jacob.
It was quite a plan. But the text tells us that after he had sent away everything he had, Jacob was left “by himself.” All alone, and still very much afraid.
That’s the problem with most of our plans for dealing with whatever scares us. They leave us alone – forsaken by the very things we were most worried about losing. Those who get married just because they are afraid of being alone are surprised when they find out that their marriage has made them even lonelier. Those who work so hard because they are afraid their family might not have it all are surprised to find their family that has everything – everything but love – is falling apart. Those who were afraid their lives were going to be insignificant if they didn’t grab some power and prestige are surprised to find how lonely life is at the top. Those who were afraid of the bully at school or at work or even at home and figured they had to get vicious themselves to survive are surprised that their anger has made them so lonely.
But that’s what fear does to us. Fear drives us away from God and the things that really matter. In the end, we’re just like Jacob. All by ourselves. Afraid and alone.
The Promise of Presence
But there’s another way. Listen again to Jacob’s prayer, to the words from his own lips that he couldn’t quite believe: “O Lord, remember Your promise to me.” It was a promise God had made before Jacob was born. It was a promise that God had repeated to him when he ran away from home. It was a promise God gave him when he was in exile, and it’s the promise God wants Jacob to claim and cling to right now. Not a promise of guaranteed success or immunity from suffering. But a promise of presence. Again and again, God says to Jacob, “I will be with you. Tough and terrifying things will come. But no matter what happens, you can count on this. I will stay right beside you. I will never let you go until I bless you.”
Last week Debbie and I saw the new movie called “The Queen.” It takes place in Britain during the summer of 1997. Princess Diana had just been killed, and millions of British people were grieving and hurting. Where was their queen? Far away at Balmoral, her castle up in Scotland, remote and removed, aloof and absent. The new prime minister, Tony Blair, convinces her she needs to come down to London and be with her people. She finally does so (albeit reluctantly), and for the first time since the war years she actually moves among her people, listening to them and sharing some of their pain.
Unlike the queen, our God does not remain distant and detached. Our God comes down to stand beside us. Remember Jacob’s dream about the grand stairway to heaven? Where was God in that dream? Up in some heavenly castle, far away? No, God came all the way down and stood over Jacob as he slept, and said, “I am with you, today and always.” That’s the God we know in Jesus Christ, the God who comes all the way down, takes on human flesh, feels every fear, every temptation, every pain we’ll ever know. The God who takes on himself all our sins and sufferings. There is nothing we’ll ever go through that can keep us from his care. There is no fear, no matter how terrifying, that can separate us from his love. He is the God who promises us, again and again, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”
Are you facing fear this morning? Can you name the thing that scares you, the nightmare that leaves you feeling afraid and alone? It may be an illness or an uncertainty. It may be a current crisis or a possible future failure. It may be what’s happening in another person, but more likely it’s something that’s happening inside you.
Whatever it is, this morning God wants you to hear his promise. He repeats it every Sunday as we gather for worship. He has written in on every page of the Bible. He reaffirms it every time we come to this Communion table and take the bread and the cup. Don’t let the noises that make you afraid drown out the still, small voice of his Spirit. Come to him today. Here, at this table, hand over your fear, whatever it is, and receive what the Lord wants to give to you: the promise of his unfailing presence.
“Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”
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