Jacob — Art Katz

There's joy. And I would have you be joyful in my presence. Because I'm the victor. Nothing that you face is too difficult for me. I'm the victor. And my victory. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord.

So many of you still hanging on and hanging in. That you haven't been terrified out of your socks.

Well, are we cozy enough? Close enough? I'll tell you how foolish I am. Can we move this couch just a little closer? Right to the edge of the rug. And then correspondingly move all the chairs this way.

Come as close as you can. There's a nice chair over here. Somebody around my age bracket who needs special cushioning.

I was going to die for it but I don't qualify. I said I was going to die for it but I don't qualify.

Is there a Samuel here who has come from out of town? A Jewish brother that we had hoped we would make it this morning. Well Lord, privileged to again stand before your people. And I love my God the way in which it pleases you to bring forth through me what you will.

Govern this mouth again so that your own soul will be gratified Lord. That's our first concern. That you yourself will be delighted. Be gratified in your own soul for what you hear my God coming forth because it's ordained.

And that your saints will be delighted also. If you're pleased, we're pleased. And we love your word my God and it's important to us. It's critical, crucial. So may we hear from your heart. We thank and give you praise again for the privileged occasion with your saints and under this roof.

The happy assembly of your people in Jesus name. Amen. I think I can do this sitting. How does that feel? Is there anything lost for that? No. Well, somewhere between shower or wherever the thought of Jacob came to my spirit and it seems to be remaining.

Jacob and Israel: A Spiritual Transformation

I think that the Lord wants us to take a peek at our patriarchal father. Notice that I said Allah. Paul in Corinthians addressing Greeks who have come to the faith of the God of his fathers says something about as our ancestors also.

He includes them in the Allah that includes also Hebrews in the same faith. So you just need to let that come into your consciousness that you who are once far off and without God and without hope in the world have been brought nigh by the blood of Israel's Messiah into the covenants and hopes and promises of that nation and into the Commonwealth of the nation itself.

Peter speaks to the Gentile believers and says now conduct yourself in a way before the Gentiles as if they themselves are not that anymore. They have taken on a new designation. They've come into the family of God, the Commonwealth of God's people.

It's not you've become Jewish. There's no big deal about that. You've come into the Hebraic faith and been grafted in actually into that route. Their promises, their hopes are yours and their faith is yours.

And so your identification with them as being one with yourself is different from seeing the church seeing itself as an entity separate from and other than Israel. That does not displace them. We are not the Israel of God at their expense.

We are the Israel of God with them more properly and more truly spiritually than they presently are but will become because of the jealousy to which they will be moved. When they see you exhibiting the kind of fruit that should have been their product have they been grafted into their own root and not be broken off.

Got the picture. Okay, class dismissed. Okay, Genesis. Just two episodes critical in the consideration of Jacob becoming Israel. Chapter 28. I don't think it's probably too great an exaggeration to say that all of us are either the one or the other.

Jacob or Israel. It's not an exaggeration to say that the present state of Israel is more probably Jacob than it is Israel. It's en route to becoming Israel but it's not going to become it any more easily than its patriarchal father before it.

Israel is not an automatic designation. It's an ultimate statement of a spiritual designation. That's not yours by virtue of birth but by acquisition by relationship with the God of Israel. So it's a very precious term.

We mustn't bandy that about as if it is speaking only genealogically to a certain nation. The Israel of God, the people of God who have come into a very particular relationship with God and take on his own identification.

Well, Jacob was not that. Everybody knows what the name Jacob means, right? Schema, supplanta, wise Alec, conniver. He had the right intentions. He desired the right thing but he didn't know how to obtain it.

He schemed to get it and therefore offended his brother Esau and had to flee for his very life for having rubbed his brother the wrong way. Does that bear any correspondence with today's particular political situation in the Middle East?

They have the right intention but they're not going to acquire it by scheming, wheeling or dealing. If they seek that, they're going to chafe and bring their brother to a boil that will threaten their own existence and that's exactly what we're seeing now.

Jacob had to flee then and Jacob will have to flee now. That was something of last night's subject. So it's a remarkable parallel. I can't say enough for this and this is beyond symbolism. This is a paradigm.

You know that word? Like a pattern of an ultimate and unfailing kind. So not only is this true about present Israel who is really Jacob but it's unhappily so much the statement of ourselves. As I tried to say last night, our hopes for Israel as a state that they should somehow make it and succeed is very much the projection of our own desire for ourselves.

It has the consideration of success rather than the consideration of glory. That by the way is part of the definition of Jacob. Jacob is not concerned with the glory of God. He may acknowledge God and he may be respectful but he's not yet come to that state where the central thing of his being is the jealousy and the desire for the glory of God.

That's what makes Jacob into an Israel. That is what defines Israel as Israel. That the foremost purpose for being is the glory of God. Can you see why the church is itself so much more Jacob than it is Israel?

Something has to happen and God sets the thing in motion and brings Jacob to crisis. And so he had to flee and in his flight, in verse 10 of chapter 28, Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night because the sun had set.

I can't run over this. The sun had set on Jacob. That's more than just a chronological, you know, adjust your watches. It's a statement of a man who is in crisis and decline that issues out of his Jacob life and his mistaken notion of how to obtain desirable ends.

The sun has set on that. Well, praise God that happened to me 35 years ago. The sun set on Jacob. I had attained professional status. My Jewish mother could probably be proud of her son. She couldn't say my son the doctor.

Neither could she say that my son the evangelist. So, but the sun set on that. It's interesting how the Lord will allow a certain measure of success and the attainment of what you desire. And then having obtained it, it turns to ashes in your mouth.

And even sets the thing by which the shade of night falls on it. You don't enjoy it. And you don't know what you are pursuing. So, taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and laid down in that place.

And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven. And the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac.

The land on which you lie, I will give it to you and your offspring. And your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth. And you shall spread abroad to the west, to the east, and to the north, and to the south.

And all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that 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.

And Jacob woke from his sleep and said, surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God. And this is again a mighty dream of great portent.

And even Jacob's response is prophetic. The Lord is in this place and I knew it not. That may be a statement of the church to a great degree. He's in the place but we don't know it to the sense that we have an awe and a fear and a reverence for the God who is in this place.

Because this place is the gate of heaven. And in fact, there is no other gate. Unless men find the route to heaven through the house of God, they'll not find it at all. So all of this deserves uttermost attention.

And it wouldn't be too much to take a week and go over every aspect of this enormous dream God given. And the Lord was beside him. What a remarkable thing. Now being the students of scripture that you are.

What is significant about the way in which the Lord addressed Jacob from the very beginning? God being candid and utterly truthful. I'm the God of your father Abraham and of Isaac and the land upon which you lie.

I will give it to you. What is being said there that is omitted? You Bible students, you exegetes who draw out the meaning from the scriptures. You're getting a zero for the day.

What's being omitted? What's being omitted? Read that again. The personality of Jacob himself. No. Reprimand. Huh? Reprimand.

Reprimand. Reprimand? Well, it constitutes a kind of reprimand. It's a most significant omission. I'm the God of your father Abraham and of Isaac. And the land where on the lies. What is it? What did he leave out?

He said, I'm not your God yet. He's got all the right pedigree. He's got all the genealogy. He couldn't have a descent more honorable than coming from Abraham and Isaac. But the God of his father's is not yet his God.

It's not automatic. Something has got to happen to establish that relationship. And I praise God that he doesn't gloss over this or just give a kind of religious, anxious statement to pacify Jacob. The omission is enormously significant.

And I think that Jacob was so much Jacob that he missed it. I don't think he was aware of how significant that omission was. But by the time we finish this morning, we'll see how Jacob becomes Israel and how the God of his father's becomes his God.

In fact, what it takes to come to that. But before we see that conclusion, we need further to ponder what Jacob does. Having received this dream, his statements is precious. Sure, the Lord is in this place.

And I didn't know it. How awesome is this place full of one. This is none other than the house of God. And what is it? There's no building. It's only a stone upon which he laid his head. But this place where the revelation and the dream comes in God's presence and statement is the house of God.

So maybe that's something that we need to reconsider. The house is not an issue of architecture. It's an issue of presence. It's an issue of revelation. And so he was right in what he said. Jacob is a prophet.

And we responded very impressively in saying those things. That this is the gate of heaven. Why? Because the ladder is rooted in the earth and ascends to heaven. Oh, I'm so happy for that. I wouldn't like a gate that is ethereal and removed from the earth.

I like it where the rungs go right into the earth that it might ascend to heaven and that God is willing to come down into that terra firma and the reality of it so that men may have a way up. So everything about this is very precious, very revealing.

So Jacob in verse 18 rose early in the morning and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called that place Bethel, which means the house of God.

But the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then Jacob made a vow saying if God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat and clothing to put on so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God.

And this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house. And of all that you give me, I will surely give one tenth to you. Amen. How do you like that? How do you like a Jacob prayer? Can there be anything more revealing than his own prayer?

And how much is it revealing of us? Of the one tenth that I will give you if you give me. This is a transaction. This has Jacob as its center. It's a commercial contract, which maybe is more generous than what many are willing to do, but it reveals Jacob as Jacob.

As long as Jacob remains Jacob and this is his mentality and he has himself as his centerpiece in the new relationship with God who has been revealed to him, there will be no glory in that house and no fulfillment of the purposes of God through that house.

Clearly, Jacob has got to become Israel. The people of the Middle East have got to become Israel. The church of Jesus needs to become Israel because it is so much a reflection of this Jacob mentality of so much given for so much received, playing it close to the vest, self-interest, if God will be with me in the way that I will go.

Brother. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever prayed, and more than once, Lord, if you will do this for me, I will do that for you? Have you ever prayed, if you give me an ability or courage or words, then I will speak them or do them?

That's a commonplace. That's still the place of Jacob and not yet Israel. Why do you say that, Art? Because it still visualizes the relationship of two distinct, separate entities, one apart from the other, and that what we think is the relationship to which we're being called is a nice kind of cooperative partnership by which we retain our identity separate from God and want only His help.

It's not the mean thing, we want to do well, but we want to do it with His help. Do you like that? What do you mean, do I like it? Is there another way? Yes, there is. And until you find it, you're still in the Jacob place.

The other way is, is not you asking God for help in which you will then give Him a dividend, but that you can't anymore distinguish or desire where Jacob ends and where God begins. That the life of Jacob is the life of God and the purpose of God is the purpose of Jacob.

So much so that Jacob is no longer Jacob and he requires a new name. So this is remarkably revealing of a religious mentality that I believe pervades the Church today. Not just the most commonplace expressions, but its best expression is still Jacob transacting with God because the Church and its members are unwilling to forsake their own identity and want only to succeed for God on the basis of what He will give them that will enable them to succeed and for which they will give Him this return.

Amen. Is that right? Amen. Are you embarrassed? No. I love this. If God will be with me, that's still the center of the Jacob life. He was a man who desired spiritual things and the inheritance of God and found a way through deceit to obtain it from his brethren.

But it was still me, still operating, still scheming for me. And Peter, on the Mount of Transfiguration, when Jesus is revealed in His glory with Moses and Elijah, it is for us to be here. Let us build you three booths.

He's still a Jacob. So, so long as there's an us, so long as there's a me as the foremost consideration that is respectful toward God, wants benefit from God, and intends to give God some return, we're still not in the ultimate place of the designation of Israel that glorifies God and is radically different and other than this kind of Jacob thing.

Now, saints, this is not my thought this morning that I should be speaking this. It came to me in the bathroom. And in lieu of no other inspiration, I'm speaking it. So it must be that there are some Jacobs in our midst who need to hear this and keep me in this way that I go, the way that I will choose, the way that gratifies me.

It's not going to be grossly sinful. It will be respectful and honorable and ethical and moral, but it's still the way that I go, the way that I will choose to go. You know what I love about Jacob and about Jews in general?

They're very forthright. They don't mince words. They don't pretty it up. What they are is what they are, and what you see is what you get. And I love that. This is absolutely candid. There couldn't have been a better portrait of the statement of the condition of a man who, though he had the most distinguished ancestry, was yet in himself not in any way in a place with God as were his fathers.

And I will surely give one tenth to you with sport. Well, Jacob continued on his journey, and you know all the rest of what happened. But I want to just focus in now on the turning point where Jacob has his name changed.

Something radical happens to the man that he can become the father of a nation of sons, sons of Israel, and that's in Chapter 32. Jacob is returning to his homeland. He's acquired two wives and handmaidens and flocks and herds and all kinds of possessions and servants, and he learns that Esau is coming to meet him.

Whatsoever man sows, that too shall he reap, and it's a day of comeuppance, and how to avoid this. And so Jacob is still Jacob scheming, breaking up his possessions into bands and sending a servant with every portion.

So if you meet my brother Esau, tell him that his brother Jacob is coming behind, but this is a gift for him that will placate him. Maybe the Oslo Agreement and the concessions that are being made to the PLO today are exactly in this spirit and this mentality.

It's not a calling on the God who had already revealed himself some years before at Bethel, but still crying out to God, Lord help me, but at the same time making provision himself out of his own human cunning.

That's still Jacob. You're not Israel until you've pulled out all the stops, and God is your total and utter dependency. And if you perish, you perish, but you are not going to condescend to your own wit.

You're not going to scheme and wheel and deal. You're not going to push him. You're not going to have a safety provision. What do you call it? An escape hatch, an extra bank account that if God does not come through, you're still not left to pauper.

That's still Jacob. God is wanting this utter and total being thrust upon him, and he's created the crisis by which that can come. But it's interesting to observe how deep the Jacob thing is, even in crisis.

There's this inveterate and unconscious continuation of scheming, wheeling, dealing out of oneself to engineer yourself through the situation. He's not yet come to the place. It raises the question, how far will God go to get Jacob to become Israel?

Very far. So, verse 22 of chapter 32,. The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the river Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.

Jacob was left alone. The King James says that much better. He sent over all that he had, and Jacob was all alone. Are you getting that? Are you pondering that? He sent over all that he had. There is no reserve.

Every last thing required, and he was left alone. Because we're wanting to ask, what are the conditions for which God waits, that he will wrestle with a man, a nation, or a church, to bring that one into such a relationship with him that transforms everything.

And the condition is, you have to send over all that you have. So, if you can picture me 35 years ago, I traveled for 14 months with a backpack, a small one, and lived out of it for 14 months. Everything was reduced to what I could carry on my back.

I had one wash and wear shirt, and I don't know, a few pair of socks, whatever it was. But that's symbolic of the kind of reduction that's required and for which God waits. That we don't hedge ourselves around the kinds of things that will insert themselves between God and ourselves.

There's got to be an abandon. Whatever it is that we're holding onto as reserve has got to be sent ahead. It's got to be parted from us, and we have to come to a place where we are all alone. I don't know that Jacob knew that he was fulfilling the kind of requirement for which God waits, but he did it.

He was left all alone. Sounds like as thorough a stripping as a man can experience, but so precious is what is going to take place now that it's worth it all. And that God will allow success. To give the man herds, and cattle, and maids, and servants, and wives, and all of that prosperity, only to bring them to a place where he's required to send it over.

It's not unlike the present Israel. That he gives it a 50-year history, allows it to become a substantial state in a high-tech society. Army, nuclear facility, all that kind of stuff. Only that it's to be passed over.

They're not to employ it. Jacob was not to employ it. However he wanted to use it, to placate, it will not serve. He's got to be parted from it, and come to a place of utter desolation and aloneness. That's the condition for God.

And maybe that's why many of us remain in the Jacob state, where our lives are hedged about by dependencies, and loyalties, and identifications, and things in which we have investment. And God is a God who's total.

I don't know why that should astonish us. He's waiting for man totally. Moses had to come up to God in that condition. He was a prince in Egypt, and a prince of Israel. He came from the priestly line.

He was a Levite. He was erudite, learned, trained. He was a man of remarkable ability. And God called him up to the mount. Come up unto me, and be there. And I will give you the tablets of the Lord that you may take still.

Forty days ascent to the mount, and seven days at the crest in the mountain, wreathed with smoke, before on the fortieth day, God could call to him to come up unto me and be there. Don't come up for the tablets.

Don't come up for your ministry and what advantage you're going to obtain by receiving this from me. Come up unto me and be there. Really be there. And if you have anything that will in any way interfuse itself and serve as a barrier, whether it's your ideology, your theology, your denominational identification and loyalty, you stay in the smoke for six days.

On the seventh day I'll call you up. This is another message, a precious one. And I wouldn't be able to speak it except that I had actually been in the smoke, not on the mount, but in a building on fire at Ben Israel.

With three o 'clock in the morning, we could hear the crackling of the smoke, and we had a run out, and that building went up like a whew. And on the marble top of the kitchen, I had laid my box of master tapes, all these gorgeous, exquisite messages.

And my wife had her pocketbook on the countertop. We had come up from Kansas City where we had lived for some months, and we came out of the building, and she said, Why don't you go in and get my pocketbook?

I said, Sure, no sweat. I know that house like the palm of my hand. I went down on my hands and knees, pushed open the front door. The distance from here to that top was about just like it is now. And I went into the building and was lost.

Completely lost. Completely disoriented. I didn't know where I was. Not only could I not find the counter, I couldn't find the door through which I had just entered. Dear saints, I can't say enough. I praise God for the experience, but I want to tell you that smoke is the most disorienting phenomenon that there is.

And God put Moses in it for six days before he allowed him to come into his presence on the seventh. He smoked him out of any last vestige of Moses' ability, whether Jewish or Egyptian. Even the correct knowledge of God had to be smoked out.

Because now he was going to come into contact and into union with very God himself. Isn't it remarkable that even the correct knowledge can be a barrier to God? That we can hide behind our correct doctrines, our denominational statements.

The smoke moved every six days. That number is the number of man on the seventh day. The number of completion. He came into the presence of God. Come up unto me, Moses, and be there. Then I will give you.

But until you are there, in all that you are stripped, and the utter essence of what you are as a man, without distinction and the raw grit of your humanity facing me in the totality of my divinity, I'll not give you the tablets.

You're not fit to bear them or teach them or to employ them. I'm not just an intermediary along the way to provide you with the enablement for your ministry. I am your ministry. The tablets of the law are the statement of what I am in myself as God.

And how can you be a purveyor and communicate them and don't know the one who is the lawgiver himself? Come up unto me and be there. Jacob had to be there with the same God, only the encounter was structured differently but has the same very essence for Moses, for Jacob, for us, and for the Israel that has yet to become Israel, or it will not bless all the families of the earth.

This statement to Jacob that your people will be like a proliferation of sand of east and west and north and south and they will bless all the families of the earth yet waits its fulfillment and it cannot be fulfilled as a Jacob people.

They've got to know God and communicate him as he in fact is and not as one supposes him to be. And if that's the requirement of the Israel that is yet Jacob there, what of ourselves? What has our witness constituted if we ourselves have not come in to the radical communion with God and we ourselves still separate entities if God will help me in the way that I will go my ministry and give me what I need for it I'll give him back a good return.

Whether we have never actually audibly articulated that or not that is the unspoken statement of the great majority of God's people and the church itself at large. It's Jacob, it's not yet Israel. That's why crisis is coming saints.

Wrestling With God at Jabbok

So he sent them across the stream and likewise everything he had Jacob was left alone and the man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob he struck him on the hip socket and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

Then he said, let me go for the day is breaking. This is the man, capital N. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. You know, whatever we can say about Jacob to denigrate him and his character and his scheming and wheeling and dealing and all these kinds of things the one virtue that maybe is a key to ultimate salvation and redemption is I will not let you go.

Now that you're this near and I sense who and what you are I'll not let you go. This tenacity, this demand for ultimate blessing from God that will not be content with just a cheapy passing thing is maybe the most significant thing that is instinctive in Jacob and is the key to the becoming of the Israel of God.

I will not let you go unless you bless me. And so he said to him, what is your name? He said, Jacob. What did he ask him that? Doesn't a man know his own name? But of course, unlike our present generation names then were fraught with meaning.

Jacob is exactly the statement of the man and his character. What God was calling him to review before he changes that name is one last review of what your name means and what your conduct has been what your character, what your mode of living and being has been till this moment.

Rub it in, rub your face into the grit of that. What is your name? How have you proceeded till now? Then the man said, you shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel, for you have striven with God and with man and have prevailed.

That's what the name Israel itself means. An overcomer, one who has striven with God and with man, a prince with God and with men. Then Jacob asked him, please tell me your name. He said, why is that you ask my name?

And there he blessed him. I've never thought about this before. Whether Jacob's asking was a condition for the blessing that there's something significant in wanting to know the name of the one with whom he's wrestling was wanting to know the essence of the one with whom he's wrestling.

He was not just looking for a tag. Is your name Jack Bill? What's the convenient thing that I have to speak to identically? He wants to know what is in your name. You've had me to reflect what's in my name.

What's in your name? I want to know you as you are. I will not let you go. That's the blessing that I want. I don't want just prosperity. I want an appropriation, an acquisition of yourself as God. Then there he blessed him.

Then he blessed him. And what a strange blessing. He touched the socket of his thigh. And he crippled the man. He was permanently disabled for the rest of his life. Call that a blessing? How many do we have in this room this morning who limp?

And I'm not talking about a physical disablement. I mean something much more deep than that. I mean that God has touched you in the nexus of your own authority, power, and ability. I remember I visited a Jewish millionaire in New Jersey.

I took my son David because he had a stable of horses, racehorses. And he had become a believer. And we had met, he invited me to spend the night. And we had an intensive evening about the lordship of Jesus and how far this Jewish new convert would go.

He said, Artie said, if the Lord wanted the stable of horses, he has it. He wants my business, my corporations, he has it. But he said, so long as I can retain the ability again to obtain through my wit.

I've never forgotten that. Whoo! He's still Jacob. He's not yet been touched in the place of his own resourcefulness, his own ability, his own strength. The hip in the human anatomy, especially with a male, is a significant place.

I'm still remembering my trip to the Philippines and a hot shot young pastor on his way up the ladder of ministerial success on the platform full of swagger. You know what my message was? Jesus on the back of an ass upon which never man sat, coming down the precipitous mount of olives in a caricature and joke of this man on this little thing who had the option of its mother and did not employ it.

He said, you'll find an ass and its cult. Bring them to me. If anyone stops you, say that the Lord has need of them. Well, they found it and they brought them. But instead of using the adult animal practiced in the bearing of the weight of a man, he chose that upon which never man sat and coming down.

Have you ever walked down the mount of olives? You cannot walk down and maintain your dignity. It's just that's precipitous. That's the imagine coming on on this little animal, a jerking faulting and people crying Hosanna.

Salvation is of God. They laid their their wraps, their cloaks in the way. Hosanna, your king shall come to you lowly and make your king. Coming to you is salvation. But that's your king. That's his character.

That's his name. And he's showing it in the absurd, ridiculous way in which he enters his glorious capital city. No motor motorcycle cavalcade. Man's pride. The hip is where we pack our six year. Not so much to employ it, but just to have it hang there.

We like the heft of it. And we like to stick our thumbs in our belt around there. And by the way, that's also our sexual prowess. The area of our potency. Our masculinity. And this man was wearing on the Philippines that night.

A cell phone. So they called him. Why everybody that communication is so vital that he was expecting a call in the middle of the service. But he had it in a holster right on his hip. And I could see this.

This is prophetic seeing what that meant to him. His self-esteem is much. A man who is on the way up the ladder of religious success. People look up to him with awe and adoration. That thing was a statement.

That's where God touched Jacob. Right there. That's where we need to be touched. Not just for the moment, but permanently. And enduring affliction. Permanently crippled. Which is to say, you can never again base your life and your dependency on your macho ability.

But on the God who has crippled you. He did cripple me. Huh? He crippled me. Yeah? Praise the Lord. You're a blessed woman. Hallelujah. This is a talk about paradigm. This is more than just historical description.

This is everlasting description. This is everlasting validity for the issue of Jacob versus Israel through every generation. And especially in the last days. Unless he has touched us at the nexus of where we have our life.

Our success. Our ability. Our confidence. Our trust. We're not yet his. We're yet Jacob. We're willing to make a deal with him. And we'll give him a portion back. But we're still in the saddle. We're still calling the shots in the way that we want to go.