This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host Brent Billings. Today we continue our look at the life of Jacob covering Genesis chapter 32 through 35 in this episode 14 of the Baymont podcast.

If somehow you're listening to this and you haven't listened to episode 13 yet, you're definitely going to want to go back and pick that up as we continue our talk about Jacob.

Yeah, so we had we started our conversation all the way back when we got started about Genesis. We talked about the preface.

What we talked about in discussion groups in these last few weeks is we think back to the preface Genesis 1 through 11, houses affirmation of God's good story and these constant invitations, these consistent invitations to trust.

That in fact God is in love with creation. He does find it to be good. It is acceptable.

And people failing to trust that which leads to tragedy. But then we're we're brought into what we call the introduction to God's narrative. We had a preface. Then we have an introduction. It's really Genesis 12 through 50.

It's going to be where we meet the family of God. And so we've met this guy named Avram. And this guy who's willing to trust the story and the midst of the struggle and the midst of the mistakes he's going to figure out what it means to trust and to walk and faithfulness. We've met a son.

We saw a couple episodes ago. His the story of Avram kind of finding its realization and the life of Isaac.

But then Isaac has these two sons Jacob and Esa. And so last week we jumped into that discussion in the last podcast and and talked about just the life of of Jacob and these two sons. And so we met Jacob right off the bat, fulfilling this role. He's called heal holder.

Heal holder. Heal grasper. It kind of gives the idea of usurping or supplanting. Doesn't directly give us the idea of deceiving or liar like people like to say. But he is somebody who is grasping and grappling for more.

He wants more and we find that in the first story when he steals the birthright from his older brother who happens to be the before the first born. He steals the birthright from Jacob.

There's a little break in the story and in the next chapter. We meet him again as he with the help of his mother Rivka. He steals the blessing from Meetsak.

And because of this life of of of deception, this life of usurping and having his methods all wrong. I think we would all agree. Has his methods wrong and how he's going about doing this. He has to flee. He has to run.

So he runs to Levan, Leban, the descendant of Nakhor. And needs to find a new family. Can't dwell with the family that wants to kill him. Can't dwell with Issa.

So he finds himself with Leban. Finds these two daughters, one of who he is just deeply madly in love with.

And ends up marrying them both. Having some children, they have to leave. There's a big disagreement over some stolen idols. And really his whole time with Leban was this big competition of deception.

Like who could outsmart, who could outuse her, who could out supplant the other and it just culminates in this really large disagreement as he runs. And that was where we we left off in Genesis 31 last time.

We're going to pick up in the verenix story. Genesis 32. Now that Levan has been satiated and has gone back home. Jacob now has to turn his attention to what's next. And that is he's going to have to deal with Issa.

He's going to have to start facing down some demons here because his options are basically he's burned every bridge that he's got and he's got to rebuild one of them.

So he's going to turn his attention to Issa here and that's where Genesis 32 picks up. Jacob prepares to meet Issa and what we find here is Jacob being Jacob.

He's going to take his family as everything he owns, all the wealth that he has managed to acquire through his time with Leban.

And he's going to split him up into two groups there in verse seven. And the flocks and the herds and camels as well. He thought if Issa comes and attacks one group, the group that is left might escape and so you know who he's going to start with.

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