(Feb 28-Mar6) Gen 28-33, To Know Him: Come Follow Me, "Jacob and Esau- Miracles"

hello and welcome everyone this is the to know him podcast and i'm your host emily crapo and for those of you new to this channel the to know him project focuses on finding christ center takeaways from our come follow me study our goal is to come to know christ on a deeper and more meaningful level we want to really come to know him and not just know about him and i say we because this podcast is part of a bigger project called the to know him project and our if you visit our website at to know him cfm.com you'll find that there are other contributors to this project who writes blog articles and who create children's activities and decorative printables that follow the come follow me rotation so if you're interested you can check that out but for me for sure as always i just want to say thank you to all of those who comment who share the podcast who've subscribed to it i want to shout out a few people who've particularly sent me messages in the last couple of weeks that have lifted my spirits and encouraged me in the podcast i want to send a special thanks to dorothy pitts brent gerard and annie eisenhower i never believed as a podcast listener that comments of listeners matter a lot but they really do and so i'm i'm grateful for hearing your comments and and thank you for sharing your light with me so let's get into our takeaways this week so the theme for this week's takeaway is the word miracles now this week we're covering genesis 28 through 33 and we're going to see evidence of god miracles in big and dramatic ways we're going to see evidence of his miracles with jacob and his vision of the latter at bethel we're going to see his miracles with his wrestle with god at peniel and we're going to see god's miracles in his de in his family's ultimate deliverance from esau and so we're going to talk about that first in our first takeaway but we're also going to talk about an even greater miracle and this is the miracle of the mighty change of heart and we're going to see that in esau as he's able to come to forgive jacob elder oaks has said that the change of heart is the greatest miracle of all he said changing bodies or protecting temples are miracles but an even greater miracle is the mighty change of heart by a son or daughter of god so the word of the day and our takeaways is miracle and our first takeaway is called jacob's temple blessings so let's establish some context here so jacob has just received the birthright and he's been sent by his parents to laban's house so that he can find a wife and marry her within the covenant and before he leaves his father gives him a blessing and his father says in genesis 28 34 he says and god almighty bless thee and make thee fruitful and multiply thee that thou mayest be a multitude of people and give thee the blessings of abraham to thee and to thy seed that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger which god gave unto abraham so with this blessing fresh in his mind jacob begins his journey to laban's house and one night he settles down to sleep and he has this marvelous or some might say miraculous experience where he has a dream and in this dream he sees a ladder and byu scholars agree that this dream is a temple endowment experience for jacob and when we read about temple experiences in the scriptures when we can stop and take a deeper look at the text and what the characters are seeing and what it meant anciently then we can really start to understand our own temple experiences so we're gonna break down a few of these verses into smaller pieces in hopes that we can pull out some symbolic takeaways that we can then take into our temple experiences that can enrich our own experience in the temple so let's start with verse 12 of genesis 28 and verse 12 says and he dreamed and behold a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven and behold the angels of god ascending and descending on it so jacob sees this ladder on the earth which reaches heaven and so he's at the foot of the ladder and you can imagine him looking up and as he's looking up at the ladder he sees angels ascending and descending on the ladder and at the top of the ladder he sees the lord himself now we can find various interpretations of what this ladder could symbolize and just like with any symbol we talked about this with noah and the ark and the prism just like with any symbol when you can consider each of these interpretations each adds to the richness of the fullness of what this teaching could be for us so we're going to just take a look at a few of these different interpretations of what this ladder could mean so the first one we can find in the institute manual and we read we read it in a quote from marion g rami where he equates this ladder with covenants and that each rung on the ladder are covenants that we make and this idea should seem really familiar to us in in our if you've been following our episodes of this podcast is is that the covenant pathway is an upward pathway right it's progressive and the covenants build on each other just like the rungs of a ladder build on each other professor skinner from byu religion calls these angels the sentinels to the portals of heaven so we have this covenant pathway and we have sentinels in this pathway toward heaven so here's another interpretation we have of the latter and it could be that the latter is the lord himself in moses 7 53 christ says i am the messiah the king of zion the rock of heaven which is broad as eternity and whoso cometh in at the gate and climbeth up by me shall never fall so he says whosoever climeth up by me shall never fall well we climb ladders and in this verse christ also called himself the rock of heaven so he's comparing himself to a ladder so we have these three elements right and oh he also compares himself in this verse to coming in at the gate so we have these three elements in this burst we have the element of rock gate and ladder and it's instructive to know what jacob does after this vision he builds a stone pillar which is representative of christ being the rock scholars also believe that the stone pillar could have been a figurative ladder right whosoever climbeth up by me shall never fall and then if we think about this idea of a gate so stone pillars uh anciently in ancient temples symbolized the gateway of heaven anciently the entrance of a temple was always framed by two stone pillars and in second nephi 9 41 it says behold the way for man is narrow but but it lieth in a straight course before him and the keeper of the gate is the holy one of israel and he employeth no servant there and there is none other way save it be by the gate for he cannot be deceived for the lord god is his name so christ is at the gate and it's only by him and through him that we can enter heaven and it's only through the temple gate that we can enter our temples which are our heaven on earth and we see this symbolism on the outside of our temples there and some of our temples on the outside we still see pillars uh framing the doors and then we see these symbols on the inside of our temples um where there are pillars framing for example in front of the veil of the saint george temple there are pillars in front of that veil as a door before entering into the celestial room so christ is throughout the temple experience for jacob and he is throughout the temple experience for us and just in this one verse we see three symbols of him so we want to look for symbols of christ in the temple typically we think of symbols of christ as symbols relating to the cross but in the temple we can find christ in the architecture in the the gateways we can find him in the material the temple has built and like for example in the stone and then one final symbol here that may be less obvious but it's fun to share is around that time in the time of jacob it was common practice to erect stone pillars to symbolize trees and so it's been suggested in some articles that there's a possibility of that stone pillar representing like being a figurative tree of life which also fits the idea of christ being at the gateway or the entrance of heaven because when we read in moses 4 verses 28 through 31 about the tree of life we remember that adam and eve were cast out of the garden of eden and after they were cast out cherubim was placed around that tree right remember how professor skinner called the angels ascending and descending the latter sentinels sentinels cherubim it's the same idea right that cherubim was was placed on this tree to protect adam and eve from coming coming to the tree from entering into god's presence preemptively before they were ready they still needed time they still needed time to learn to repent to make covenants they still needed to walk their covenant path but that the tree of life was that portal or that entrance into entering god's presence and as we learn about that it calls into our minds this idea of the new and everlasting covenant that those teachings haven't changed since adam from enoch from noah to abraham to isaac jacob saw it and it those ideas and those symbols don't change for us either christ has always been the gateway christ has always been the latter he's always been the rock he's always stood at the gate and he's always been the symbolic tree of life that enables the re-entry into god's presence and what's fun is a little aside is that later on in the old testament we're going to see in the tabernacles that the menorahs within the tabernacles are also seen as stylized trees of life and so we see those symbols anciently in the ancient temples and we see those symbols today in our temples and it just it makes it all make greater sense and it brings like a profoundness and a depth into our experience in the temple experience so let's move on we've just done one verse let's go to verses 13 through 14 of genesis 28 and in those verses the lord says i am the lord god of abraham my father and the god of isaac the land whereon thou liest to thee will i give it and to thy seed and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth and thou shalt spread about broad to the west and to the east to the north and to the south and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed so in verse 13 the lord here introduces himself as i am the lord god well in hebrew a possible translation of this could be i am he who causes gods to be which is hugely symbolic of what we do in the temple in the church's gospel topic essays we can read that the doctrine of humans eternal potential to become like their heavenly father is central to the gospel of jesus christ it further states that all human beings are children of loving heavenly parents and possesses the seeds of divinity within them in his infinite love god invites his children to cultivate their eternal potential by the grace of god through the atonement of the lord jesus christ so christ our gateway our entrance our ladder our tree is also our enabler he is the one who enables our potential to become like heavenly father he causes god's to be within the temple let's move on to verse 15 and behold i am with thee and i will keep thee in all places whether thou goest and i will bring thee again unto this land for i will not leave thee until i have done that which i have spoken of so in this verse he says that i will keep thee in all the places that thou goest and i will bring thee again unto this land and as we read this we see that he's alluding to future scatterings and gatherings of israel and jacob sees this in his own life he sees that in his seed we see that later on with with the ten tribes and the gathering from the assyrians and then the gathering from later on with the babylonians but we also see this promise of a gathering we see it done we see micro gatherings right after the king of assyria and the king of babylon scattered israel we see that with the king of persia with king cyrus he allowed the hebrews to come back in and rebuild the temple so they gathered but in today's time we see this macro gathering this worldwide gathering that ancient prophets like isaiah saw of this massive gathering occurring all over the world you probably remember this message because it was very memorable it was president nelson's conference message in april 2018 and in it he says our message to the world is simple and sincere we invite all of god's children on both sides of the veil to come unto their savior receive the blessings of the holy temple have enduring joy and qualify for eternal life and he later said that any time you do anything to help anyone come closer to christ you are gathering israel in verse 15 the lord says i will not leave thee he said that to enoch when he said walk with me he said that to abraham when he said i am my shield he said that to isaac he said the words i am with thee and he's saying that to jacob he's saying i will not leave thee so as we enter into these covenants with god we are promised greater protection in power we see that with abraham and and adam and enoch and jacob but we see that in our day as well that each covenant we make is a vehicle to greater power and greater protection in the october 2021 visiting teaching message it says as we make and keep sacred covenants we are blessed with power to withstand adversity resist temptation and enjoy a fullness of gospel blessings and christ enables that protection remember he says to abraham i am thy shield and as we think about christ and how he protects us we can also think about helaman where helaman equates christ with being the rock the rock upon which we should build that when the winds and the shafts in the whirlwinds come that we cannot fall how firm the foundation is the hymn that we seeing in our church and in that hymn it says fear not i am with thee o be not dismayed for i am thy god and will still give the aid god promises us as we make covenants with him that greater protection and that of surety and jacob's gonna need that later on throughout his covenant path as he's experiencing those 20 years in laban's home and then when he comes to this crisis of life with with esau later at the river and we'll get to that in just a minute but let's finish up with these last two verses verses 16 and 17 says and jacob awakened out of his sleep and he said surely the lord is in this place and i knew it not and he was afraid and when we think of afraid we can think of he was reverenced or he felt ah and he said how dreadful and another way to interpret that is how holy or how awe-inspiring is this place this is none other but the house of god this is the gate of heaven we talked about christ being at that gate earlier and tame temples anciently and today are described as where heaven and earth meet and in front of our temples we read the words holiness to the lord house of the lord jacob called that place bethel which means house of god and he erected a pillar which symbolized christ and he anointed the stones of that pillar setting it apart as a holy place and on the church website under a page titled what is the purpose of the temple we read a temple is literally a house of the lord a holy place set apart from the rest of the world bethel was jacob's temple that was his house of the lord and our temples today are our houses of the lord and they're set apart as holy places and everything done in the temple points to christ and the power of the covenants we enter into we are enabled through those covenants because of christ so jacob then leaves bethel and then we see him in the next 20 years of his life we see him much like abraham and isaac and ourselves we see him walking this covenant path and in this covenant path he experiences both blessing and trial and then so we're going to fast forward those 20 years and we're going to come to this crisis in jacob's life that he has this is his abrahamic test in his life when everything he loves when everything he's built gets he like is put in this precarious place where he feels like he's going to lose it and this happens after the lord tells him to go back to canaan and he's informed that esau is coming with 400 soldiers and he fears that his family is going to be annihilated and here he is in the desert completely exposed right there they're traveling they're caravanning right and and they're on esau's turf and esau has the advantage here remember he was always the more cunning hunter and jacob is feeling this great anxiety right i mean everything he loves is at risk here and so after he does all that he can do so he he's remember he sends forth the the peace offering of the his flocks his great flocks he sends those forth first and he separates his family in two he has this wrestle with god and from the text of the scripture that we read it appears that this could be a literal wrestle with god andrew skinner who's the dean of religion from byu wrote this article that in this article he says the likely possibility regarding the identity of jacob's visitor is that it was god himself not jehovah for he did not possess a physical body rather it would have been god the father or elohim and as we read this it's unlikely that any of us can relate to a physical wrestling with god but we can all relate to the spiritual wrestlings and when we think of the word wrestling you know it's it's it's hard it takes all of our energy it's exhausting right it is no walk in the park and we know that jacob didn't want to wrestle i mean he's he's feeling the weight of the world on him right he's he's at this life crisis moment and john bloom wrote this beautiful description of why god wants us to wrestle with him when god makes us wrestle him for some blessings it's not because god is reluctant to bless us even if that's how it first feels it's because he has more blessings for us in the wrestling then without it remember god pursued jacob for this match god was the initiator jacob was stewing in his own anxiety over esau and his approaching slaughter squad when god showed up and the wrestling drew jacob out of his fearful preoccupation and forced him to focus on god i doubt that jacob wanted this forced focus or even believed he needed it at first it wouldn't surprise me if at the beginning jacob prayed god would you get rid of this guy this is the last thing i need right now but what he discovered was that the wrestling was a means of god's grace a channel for god's blessing on him the same is true for us when god calls you to wrestle with him in prayer it is an invitation to receive his blessing stay with him don't give up don't let him go until he blesses you he loves to bless that kind of tenacious faith and you will come out transformed i love that i love the idea of the blessing being through the wrestling and that in the wrestling it forced jacob's focus on god and that the wrestling was a channel through which jacob could receive god's grace it's interesting to mention that wrestling can also be translated as embrace and we know that embrace is another way to translate atonement so there's this idea there's this combining of ideas here where we see wrestle embrace a atonement and it begs the question could the wrestles of our lives be sent to teach us deeper lessons about the atonement and about christ's saving power and didn't abraham learn deeper lessons about the atonement through his wrestles in life through his life crisises and doesn't jacob learn deeper lessons about god his focus was fixed on god in this wrestle and he came out with a deeper understanding and perhaps that is the reason for our wrestles in life is to deepen our understanding and to transform us and at the end of that experience we know that jacob who's now called israel did have a deeper commitment and understanding and knowledge of god and christ because we see that he set up a tent and he erected an altar to god and in verse 20 it says and he called it el alohe israel which means god the god of israel now remember his name just got changed to israel so he's saying god is my god personally i personally have experienced his power i have personally wrestled with god and he is my god and after our wrestles we personally know god so jacob saw miraculous moments along his covenant path some of which were big and dramatic and these are miracles that that can strengthen our faith and embolden us and give us courage and now i want to shift to an even greater miracle and it's typically a miracle that we don't remember much and it's the miracle of the mighty change of heart now remember elder oak said that the mighty change of heart is the greatest of all miracles which takes us to our second takeaway which i would like to call forgiveness and leopard spots and this takeaway centers around esau he's the hero of this takeaway now if we flash back 20 years before we leave esau very mad now matt is probably a safe understatement right we read in genesis 27 verses 34 through 36 we read for he has supplanted me these two times he took away my birthright and behold now he hath taken away my blessing and he said hast thou not reserved a blessing for me so at this time isa is very emotional we can feel his emotion in these words that we read it he realizes that he didn't obtain his birthright and like so often happens in our lives it wasn't until he lost it that he realized its value and there's a lot of accusation here right he has taken it away from me he has supplanted me there's it says that he he cried out with great bitterness and we talked about this last week about how it was his pride that made him unfit for receiving the birthright and that moses is teaching us as he taught us with so many of these instances with these firstborns with with cain and terah and ruben that the lord values worthiness and for ordination over birth position but we see at this time that he's very angry about it and we see that he's casting a lot of blame on jacob remember he says he's taken it away from me he has supplanted me and he's so angry to the point where he's planning on murdering his brother and rebecca overhears this as we know and she informs jacob about esau's plans and she says flee until laven so now that we have stepped back and remembered last week's lesson let's pull back and apply this to modern times now while most of us aren't hoping for a birthright to be bestowed on us we can all relate to experiencing um anger or bitterness or envy it's just we can't escape it it's just part of life and it it could happen within family relationships work relationships between parent and child or between spouses we can all relate to these feelings that are coming up within esau and talking about these feelings of anger and resentment president uchtdorf has said strained and broken relationships are as old as humankind itself ancient cain was the first who allowed the cancer of bitterness and malice to canker his heart since those first days the spirit of envy and hatred has led to some of the most tragic stories in history it turned saul against david the sons of jacob against their brother joseph layman and lemuel against nephi and a malachia against moroni i imagine that every person on earth has been afflicted in some way by the destructive spirit of contention resentment and revenge perhaps there are even times when we recognize the spirit in ourselves when we feel hurt angry or envious it is quite easy to judge other people often assigning dark motives to their actions in order to justify our own feelings of resentment in this quote president uchtdorf says that bitterness and malice and resentment and envy that they canker our souls and i love the word kinker and it's not a word that we commonly use today but canker is like it infects our souls if you think about it as an infection and when you think about an infection if we don't treat the infection then it spreads into disease and could ultimately be the means of our death and we see tragic evidence of this of of unhealed cankers of unhealed infections in our own lives in relationships in our own lives and throughout the world in the news that we hear there's in one conference addressed by david e sorensen called forgiveness will change bitterness to love he shares a story of these two farmers in his hometown and he calls them walt and chet and they were boyhood friends and they had neighboring farms and they shared water and water was really scarce and really precious and as these men grew up and the strains of life began pressing on them it brought out the worst of them and they started accusing each other of stealing more water than they could and this this bitterness this resentment that we we saw in esau the same bitterness and resentment right begin to grow within these two farmers and um one day they mo they both meet at the head gate and they both have shovels in their hands and heated words are exchanged and chet loses an eye due to walt's shovel and chet becomes so enraged at being blinded in one eye by walt that he plans his murder and he goes to the head gate and he damns the water and he waits for well to come and he kills him and then he goes home and calls the police and turns himself in and chet ends up dying um broken and sick and elder sorensen's point of this story is that neither one of these men wanted that to be how their life turned out right they they had different dreams for themselves they had different hopes for themselves but they couldn't let go of this bitterness that they felt with each other and this this canker this infection it grew and grew and ultimately led to the demise of of both of these men they they couldn't forgive each other they couldn't let go and as i was thinking about the story i asked myself why is it so hard to forgive and there may be a couple of reasons i think it all boils down to the natural men in each of us and with the natural man within each of us we have this unruly mind and our unruly mind does does three things that make it hard for us to forgive the first thing it does is that it wants to replay and relive and replay and relive past memories that hurt and neurologically what happens when our minds replay and relive these memories is that those neural pathways actually become stronger and so we are are physically literally actually making those memories stronger and more concrete in our minds and it's it's harder to let them go as our brains want to replay them and relive them another thing that our unruly minds do is that as we relive these memories we we stay in the past which we can't change but then we project that same occurrence happening in the future and c.s lewis says that that's a trick of satan that christ wants us to live in the present that it's in the present where our freedom is but satan wants us to live in the past and he wants us to worry about the future through these interactions that we have with our fellow men and then the last thing that our minds do that's just part of our natural man is that we tend to assume that we have all of the facts and the information and and that because we have all the facts and the information we can make a correct judgment on what happened and we can make a correct judgment on the motives of the other person but here's what president uchtdorf says he says when it comes down to our own prejudices and grievances we too often justify our anger as righteous or our judgment as reliable and only appropriate though we cannot look into another's heart we assume that we know a bad motive or even a bad person when we see one we make expect we make exceptions when it comes to our own bitterness because we feel that in our case we have all the information we need to hold someone else in contempt our savior has spoken so clearly on this subject that there is little room for private interpretation i the lord will forgive whom i will forgive but then he said of you it is required to forgive all men so the fact is in any occurrence of our lives we only have one side of the story and that's our own side of the story that we can only interpret life through our lens or our paradigm and our lenses aren't neutral we interpret life through lenses of insecurity we interpret life through lenses of selfishness and we're often blind like esau was or like chet was of what our involvement was and that the part we played in that interaction and and i'm speaking universally here i realize that what i'm sharing doesn't apply to everyone in every situation so i hope um the spirit is is guiding your heart and mind as i'm saying this so that if you're in a particular situation where you have an abuser or you're in an abusive relationship i i hope you know that uh forgiveness does not mean keeping yourself in that dangerous place um and allowing the abuse to continue i hope you can get out of that so i'm not speaking to the exception i'm speaking to just in general general feelings of bitter men bitterness and malice and envy um that we we tend to just demonize the other side and excuse our part that we've played in that that whole experience and as we do that we feel like we are in a powerful place but where we actually are is in captivity if you remember that really scary vision of enoch back in moses where he saw satan wrapping the earth in a chain and laughing it says and he beheld satan and he had a great chain in his hand and it veiled the whole earth with darkness and he looked up and laughed and his angels rejoiced so satan wants to bind us with chains and these chains can be chains of anger and resentment in second ephi 28 19 nephi iterates the same idea of chains being chains of anger when he says the devil will grasp them with everlasting chains and they will be stirred up in anger so esau is chained with these chains and we don't know what happened in those 20 years where jacob was with laban the story moves with jacob and it leaves esau but we know that somewhere through that time isak came to be able to forgive jacob and that that forgiveness broke those chains that were holding him captive elder sorensen said forgiveness means that the problems of the past no longer dictate our destinies right it's that same idea of satan wanting us to live in the past and then having that predict our future forgiveness means that that no longer has to be where we live elder marian d hank said none of us can afford to pay the price of resenting or hating because of what it does to us forgiveness makes us whole spiritually and physically in fact there are physical studies there's a harvard health study that i cite below that says that practicing forgiveness has powerful physical health benefits that observational studies and some randomized trials suggest that forgiveness is associated with lower levels of depression anxiety and hostility reduced substance abuse higher self-esteem and greater life satisfaction and satan sometimes tries to deaden us making us feel like our resentment keeps us powerful but it's a burden and we would be better off letting it go and it's not an easy thing to do depending on the severity of the mistreatment it could take years which is where christ comes in because sometimes there are hurts that we cannot let go of by ourselves and we have to call upon god's power to remove those that bitterness and that envy from us to to heal that canker within ourselves president uchtdorf says forgiving ourselves and others isn't easy in fact for most of us it requires a major change in our attitude and way of thinking even a change of heart but there is good news this mighty change of heart is exactly what the gospel of jesus christ is designed to bring into our lives how is it done through the love of god when our hearts are filled with the love of god something good and pure happens to us the more we allow the love of god to govern our minds and emotions the more we allow the love for our heavenly father to swell within our hearts the easier it is to love others with the pure love of christ as we open our hearts to the glowing dawn of the love of god the darkness and cold of animosity and envy will eventually fade i want to share a story and it's not mine so i'm gonna i'm gonna name this person as martha so i know a woman named martha who grew up with a father who was very verbally abusive to her and her mother and her siblings and martha left home and married and had a family of her own and and swore she would never be that way with her family and she wasn't but she came to this realization at the temple actually that she after years later was still holding deep-seated resentment for her father and that she needed to start using the atonement of christ to heal that and she said she couldn't do it on her own that she had to pray for christ to to heal that canker within her and she said that the day it happened it was just taken from her she had to work on it right but when when the healing happened she felt that physical difference within her and it just lifted off of her and she said from that day on she didn't feel those feelings towards her father and it was the love of god that did that it was the atonement of christ that lifted that from her are we harboring feelings of resentment against a neighbor or a spouse or a parent or a sibling we like martha can be released from those chains in the very last chapter of the book of mormon in fact in the last three verses moroni's final parting to us remember he's just experienced a life full of war where he's seen all of his loved ones get cut down and he's all alone in the world and he could have easily had a heart filled with anger and resentment towards the lamanites moroni says come to christ be perfected in him deny yourselves of all ungodliness and if you shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness and love god with all your might mind and strength then his grace is sufficient for you that by his grace you may be made perfect in christ and again if he by the grace of god are perfect in christ and deny not his power then ye are sanctified in christ by the grace of god through the shedding of the blood of christ which is in the covenant of the father unto the remission of your sins that ye become holy without spot makes me think of the song amazing grace and that line that says amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me i once was lost but now i'm found was blind but now i see as we come to christ we receive his grace which is his enabling power and it is through christ's grace that we can forgive and we can let go and it is through christ's grace that we can become holy without spot and speaking of spots do you remember that story that president nelson once shared about a prison warden who was trying to rehabilitate his inmates and that one reporter skeptic said don't you know that leopards can't change their spots the warden replied you should know that i don't work with leopards i work with men and men change every day we aren't leopards our spots of bitterness resentment and envy can change and they can change through christ's grace his power removes those spots his power heals those cankers through christ's spots remember he dripped blood in gethsemane through his spots of blood our spots of bitterness and resentment can be made clean and like the leper we too can say after being touched by his hand i am clean okay so let's circle back to esau when we left esau's story he was filled with hate and jacob is bracing himself for the worst in this interaction he's going to have with his brother i mean he sends forth his large herds of animals as a peace offering he splits his family into saying if one of you if half of you are killed at least half of you can survive and he has this huge wrestle with god in fear of him being annihilated by esau and he approaches esau and he sees him on the road and he bows down seven times and again you just feel that jacob is just bracing himself for the anger but we don't read that we see esau's mighty change of heart in genesis 33 4. it says and esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept and doesn't that reunion make you think of the prodigal son the son who timidly approached his father not even daring to think he could be a son again but just hoping beyond hope that maybe he could be a lowly servant in his home and what does the father do in luke 15 20-23 we read and when the sun was yet a great way off his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him and the son said unto him father i have sinned against heaven and in thy sight and am no more worthy to be called thy son but the father said to his servants bring forth the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry whether we're the perpetrator or the victim or maybe sometimes a little bit of both we can all come before god broken and spotted and then be healed like the story of jacob and esau so beautifully teach us it is in the embrace of god that we want to be it is in the embrace of forgiveness and the embrace of love and the embrace of reconciliation that we want to be and remember that atonement in hebrew means embrace so as we use the atonement we can let go of resentment and we can be again in that place where we want to be which is in that embrace in the arms of the love of god we can experience that change of heart which is the greatest miracle of all and that is the end of this week's old testament come follow me takeaways i hope that you and i can see the evidence of god's miracles in our own covenant paths so let's use the atonement in our lives to experience the greatest of all miracles that christ can perform for us which is that mighty change of heart and as always it's been a pleasure preparing this episode thank you for joining me today what are your takeaways until next time take care

Channel: To Know Him: Come Follow Me

Views: 1,338

Keywords: To, know, him, come, follow, me, jacob, esau, miracles, leopard, spots, temples, LDS, lds, mormon, old, testament

Id: PVmU7PvMoeo

Length: 48min 49sec (2929 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022