Our passage today is very appropriate as after the service we will be baptizing three young ladies who grew up in the church, and are being baptized today as a big public step that the faith of their parents is their own. It’s an appropriate passage, because I really believe that this is the moment in Jacob’s life in which God truly becomes his own.
Now we know on the one hand that Jacob was marked for God, elect, from before he was born, as God set him apart for his promise before he had done any good or evil. Yet God’s election took some time to work itself out in Jacob’s life, in fact for a lot of Jacob’s life, he seems like one of the more unlikely people to be a follower of God. And when God does reveal himself to him, at a low point when he was fleeing from his brother, God’s words to him make it clear that Jacob does not yet know God for himself.
