In this passage, Jacob wrestles with God and is confronted with his need to fully trust in God alone. In the same way, we too must let go of our self-sufficiency and cling to Jesus who took the blow of justice we deserved, so that we might receive the blessing of grace.
In this passage, Jacob experiences the prosperity and protection of God. Jacob's experience, however, is not unlike that of the believer in Christ. We see that Jacob's Mesopotamian exodus points forward to the Person of Jesus Christ who plundered the power of evil, and who leads His people out of bondage to Satan and into the true and better Promised Land, the new heaven and the new earth.
In this passage, there are multiple wives, multiple births, sister hatred, and the use of surrogacy to celebrate and gloat. But it would be the beginning of God making Jacob's descendants as numerous as "the dust of the earth" (Genesis 28:14). Though the world around us hurts, we can be confident that God is ransoming a people "from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9).
In this passage, we see that the Lord can fulfill His promises even through human deception. Though we are surrounded by all kinds of deceptions, we can be assured that God is not absent or unaware, but that He is transforming us into the image of Christ, who “committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22).
In this passage, Jacob the exile meets the God of his grandather Abraham and his father Isaac. But rather than cursing Jacob for his deception, God blesses Jacob with His very presence. We may sometimes feel forsaken by God, but we who trust in Jesus Christ can be assured that God will be with His people wherever they go.
In this passage, we see that Jacob deceitfully takes the blessing from his old and blind father Jacob, while his brother Esau receives a kind of anti-blessing. Yet it was God's good plan that "the older shall serve the younger." This doesn't mean that God approves of this deception, but that God can use even human deception to accomplish His redemptive plan, ultimately culminating in the Person of Jesus Christ, who was betrayed and condemned to death, bearing the curse on our behalf, so that we might receive His blessing.
In this passage, we don't encounter anything new. Everything that happens in this chapter to Isaac has already happened in the previous chapters to Abraham. Thus, Isaac's life is a parallel to the life of his father Abraham. Each of us is passing on a legacy to the next generation, are we passing on a legacy of faith?
In this passage, we see the providential hand of the Lord in providing Rebekah as His appointed bride for Isaac in order to continue the line of the seed of the woman. In His covenant faithfulness the Lord has provided the church as a Bride for His Son, Jesus Christ. Though it may seem like the church is losing, we can confidently entrust our existence to the Lord's providential care.
In this passage, we see the beginning of the fulfillment of God's promise to give Abraham and his offspring the Promised Land. Even when it looks like evil and injustice are at home on this earth, we can have confidence that God will fulfill His promise to provide His people with a homeland, "a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13).