I gotta have my orange juice.

James Jordan has a complex of very helpful things to say about wisdom, patience, faith, maturity, and a long time sense. These play into the repetitive progression he identifies of priest, king, and prophet. I want to extract out of this one particular insight he has on Jacob’s limp, which he associates primarily with the kingly phase of life.

From Studies in Genesis # 29, on Genesis 32,

Now, why is this done to Jacob? Well, it’s a point that we’ve made before, and that is that in union with Christ, all of God’s people limp. In union with Christ, all of God’s people limp. The crushing of the heel is passed to all of us. The Church always limps, and yet is victorious for the simple reason that the other side has its head crushed. But the bruising of the thigh signifies a wound delivered to the seed and it’s a picture then that the seed will suffer.

From The Life of Jacob # 40,

The sign that you’re going to function in the land as a king and that you have the brother’s blessing, that’s going to be this thigh wound, the limp. Now, where is this headed? I mean, this is kind of off the top of my head, except that after 25 years of studying biblical theology, I think that we can do this without any difficulty. If God’s ultimate goal is for us to be full witnesses in the world and have the Spirit, and we start with circumcision, which is painful for a couple of days, then we get this thigh wound that means that we can’t even walk very well and really cripples us. What is going to happen here that is the ultimate form of this to make us ready for witnesses in the world and make the Spirit come? Yeah, death. The cross is a good way of putting it, see? We’re moving here. . . .

Jacob is mighty enough to wrestle with God. So the sun coming up is a sign of Jacob’s strength, but, you see, paradoxically, his strength consists of his limp. Our strength consists of humility. This image associates the godlike power of the sun with the seeming weakness of the limping man. And not just the power of the sun, but what in Genesis 1, what does it say the sun, moon, and stars were set up to do? What do they represent? They are rulers and governors. The greater light for ruling the day, the smaller light for ruling the night. He set them in the firmament to rule the day and night. So, the shining forth of light and ruling are parallel. And Jacob is now like the sun. He comes in as a ruler. Not anymore a servant priest, but now a ruler. But, one who limps, one who’s weak. The limp is a sign of true power, and true power lies in humility and sacrifice.

From The Life of Jacob # 42,

So to be a king means to limp. It doesn’t mean you never do anything. It just means you have this quality of life. And changing Jacob’s name to Israel, which then becomes the name usually used for the nation, means the entire nation has that name, God-wrestlers. The entire nation bears the meaning of God-wrestlers whose seed is consecrated and sacrificed. So Israel becomes God-wrestlers. Israel becomes the circumcised priestly nation that also limps and has humility.

From The Life of Jacob # 43,

We had made the point last time that Esau, the Edomites, are also circumcised, but they don’t get the foot wound, they don’t get the thigh wound; that the limp has to do with humility. Circumcision has to do with being made a priest. If you are limping, you’re going to have to be careful. You can’t go up and fight like you used to. The whole bunch of guys are coming at you, and you can’t hardly stand without a staff. You’re in trouble, and you need some subtlety and wisdom. Direct action that you had maybe when you were younger isn’t going to work.

The Edomites and Esau in the Bible have this meaning of being a counterfeit priestly nation. A nation that’s priestly, or claims to be, and has circumcision, but that does not have humility. And so who hold their priesthood in pride and arrogance. And we were talking about how the book of Obadiah pictures them as dwelling in the rocks, in the cleft of the rock, like Moses and Elijah were in the cleft of the rock, and having a counterfeit kind of wisdom and claiming to be God’s people.

Well, the true church doesn’t look all that powerful. This frustrates people because our enemies don’t limp, but their head is crushed. So they can’t endure. If you want to compare it, go back to Genesis 3. One side gets a foot wound, which is very troublesome. Your foot hurts every day. You never know when you’re going to slip and hurt it again. It means you can’t walk very fast. You go through the wilderness. You make three steps forward and two steps back. And the adversary are all standing out there on two feet, and they look like they’re just real strong, shoulder to shoulder, marching at you. And we look like we’re all over the place in different denominations, fighting over this, that, and the other. But their head is crushed. Despite appearances, they don’t have any overall organization; whereas, despite appearances, we do have complete organization because our head is alive. Jesus is alive.

And by the Holy Spirit, all of this chaos that we see in the church is actually perfectly organized and synchronized development towards something in the future. It’s just that we can’t see it. It’s like if you made a mosaic, and we’re going to take this entire floor here and put a mosaic on it using little tiles an eighth of an inch square, all different colors. And I had a map up here, and I go over here, and I put a little red one-eighth of an inch by one-eighth by an inch square tile here, and a little blue one over here, and a green one over here, and another red one next to it. And you would have no idea what the pattern is. I would, because I’ve got a diagram that tells me I’m painting by numbers or I’m making a mosaic by numbers. I’m putting a little bit here and a little bit there. But I’m not starting in one corner and developing. I’m doing a little bit over here in China, a little bit over here in the Presbyterian Church, a little bit over here in the Catholic Church, a little bit over here in this Pentecostal group, and a little bit over here raising up some Mormons in order to challenge us to think new about other things we hadn’t thought about before, and over here raising up communism to force us to think about things that we wouldn’t normally think about. I’m doing this and I’m doing that.

And those of us who are near to it in this world, we don’t see the pattern. But there is a pattern. But from our perspective, it looks like chaos. That’s the part of the limpingness of the church. And it means that we don’t appear powerful. But we have a head for whom all this is organized. It’s being done in exactly the right order. Meanwhile they look like they’re powerful but their head has been crushed and they’re not actually organized; and you see this in that anytime you get wicked people together they wind up fighting each other. That never happens in the church; well it happens to us because we still have the flesh, but it happens to them preeminently. It’s always the Tower of Babel over and over again. It’s Deja Babel all over again every time they try to do anything.

That’s why the conspiracy view of history isn’t really true. Because it really is true that the Russian communists and the Chinese communists couldn’t get along because Mao Zedong had ambitions and so did Stalin. They might close ranks occasionally against us, but they’re not going to get along. And Ho Chi Minh had ambitions and that’s why he wouldn’t get along with Mao Zedong. The wicked don’t get along with each other except very briefly because each one has his own ambitions to play God.

So while it can look as if Esau is coming out with 400 men all in a rank and you’ve got this little group of women and kids and servants who are used to being farmers and you’re limping along, the fact is Esau is not well organized and they won’t endure. And we are organized and we will endure. We limp, but our head is resurrected, and our limp is a large dance from the viewpoint of eternity.