Jacob, Peter, and the Secret Fortresses of the Heart
Friday Members’ Meeting
Heritage Ministries, Waco, Texas
January 25, 2013
“All these things are against me.”
— Jacob (Genesis 42:36)
There are certain moments in the life of God’s people when excitement almost hums in the air. You can feel the sense of threshold—of some new land, some new work of God just before us. I’ve been thinking about times like that in our own history: when my dad and the brothers were about to take the step toward community land in Massachusetts, or when we were preparing for that early festival, a prototype of the fair. There was anticipation. There was energy. And right in the middle of it, the Lord spoke:
“Get your relationships right.”
“Don’t be deceived by what your eyes behold.”
In other words: Don’t mistake excitement for fulfillment. Don’t confuse visible success with spiritual substance.
Lately, I’ve been reading the story of Jacob again. You cannot follow that man’s life very far without seeing that whenever he truly moved into the purposes of God, he did so through the wreckage of his illusions.
The back of my old study Bible had a graph charting Jacob’s life: up, down, up, down, up, down. Every high was a fresh encounter with God. Every low was the collapse of some cunning scheme, some human cleverness, some self-made security. It was as if the Lord were steadily dismantling the scaffolding of Jacob’s confidence until only a limp and a blessing remained.
It is easy, even after the Lord has profoundly visited us, to become blind to what He has already given and what He is presently doing. The prophet cries, “Who is so blind as my servant, and so deaf as my messenger?” The people with the most revelation can become strangely dulled to it. We start chasing the “new” and the “now,” grasping for some fresh thing, while quietly despising or neglecting the very promises God is presently fulfilling—often through serious trials that shake us to the core.
You can see that in Jacob. Joseph, the child of promise, is ripped from him. The famine comes. Simeon is seized and held in Egypt. The ruler demands Benjamin. Jacob is living in Canaan, in the Promised Land, and yet on that day he tears his clothes, throws dust on his head, and cries out:
“All these things are against me.”
It is one of the most tragic sentences in Scripture. Standing in the land God promised, in the very season when God is arranging the salvation of his whole house and the preservation of nations, Jacob’s testimony is: Everything is against me.Joseph is dead. Simeon is gone. They want Benjamin. The world is unraveling. The famine worsens. His grip tightens on the few threads he can still hold—his last favored son, his last illusion of control.
And yet in those very events, the Lord is not opposing him. He is circumcising him. He is stripping away, one by one, every vestige of the belief that this is Jacob’s story, Jacob’s family, Jacob’s kingdom, Jacob’s inheritance. God is pressing him toward the only footing that will stand in eternity: This is God’s story. These are God’s sons. This is God’s kingdom. This is God’s inheritance.
The most tragic thing we can do is begin to seek God’s will and move toward His promises while still standing on the false footing that it is all about us. If we insist on that footing, then indeed “all these things” will seem to be against us—because God must resist and dismantle every kingdom built in His name but for our sake.
David struggled with that same tension: Why do the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer? The wicked may flourish, but their flourishing has no meaning. The righteous may suffer, but their suffering can be unto overcoming. The wicked can enjoy a pain-free path to nothing; the righteous can walk a painful path into glory.
That is why the cross scandalized Peter.
Peter was as close to Jesus as a man could be. He loved Him. His hopes were invested in Him. But Peter carried in his heart a picture of glory that Jesus would never inhabit. Had faithfulness to Christ meant swinging a sword—charging at soldiers, dying in a heroic blaze—Peter could have been faithful to the end. But he had not anticipated the humiliationJesus would embrace, the weakness He would display, the exposure He would accept as He hung stripped and mocked before the world.
So when the soldiers came, Peter did what made sense to his flesh: he pulled out his sword. And Jesus rebuked him—slapped his assumptions in the face. Suddenly Peter was left with nothing: a Christ who would not fight by his methods, a kingdom that did not rise on his terms, a Messiah walking deliberately into dishonor. His expectations shattered, he had no way of coping. The same man who would have died for Christ in battle could not follow Him into public weakness.
Peter’s failure did not come from lack of affection for Jesus; it came from trying to pour the promises of God into the vessel of the flesh and its desires. He loved Jesus, but he loved a Jesus draped in an imaginary glory, not the glory of the cross.
Jesus had warned him:
“Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered… Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.”
There is something about the afflictions of Christ that scatters people. It exposes the true bonds between us. It reveals whether our fellowship was rooted in convenience, excitement, and visible success—or in the crucified Christ Himself. When the shepherd is struck, the sheep who were only attached to the outward trappings of the flock are sifted away.
I believe we are living in times when God wants to glorify Himself in His people, and yet there are weaknesses in the body, things that can be seen. People have insights—about problems, about decisions, about other brothers and sisters. You and I may have insights. The question is not whether insights exist. The question is: What will we do with them?
Will we let the weakness of Christ become the breaking point of our faith? Will we say, “This isn’t what I thought it would be like. Things shouldn’t be this way,” and quietly step back? Or will we say, “Jesus needs me. This isn’t about me. This is about a kingdom You are trying to birth on the earth. I will pour myself into Your purpose even when I don’t understand and even when it costs me”?
Because there is a world of difference between an insightful betrayer and an insightful prophet.
Both may see problems. Both may discern real needs. But one empties himself. He falls to his knees in the garden with God, wrestles against his flesh, and brings his words into the light. He prophesies and allows others to judge. He wears his heart on his sleeve: “This is what I’m feeling. This is what I believe God is speaking. Please speak back to me. Correct me. Help me.” He risks misunderstanding and failure for the sake of truth and love.
The other man sees the same things and says, “No. I can’t do that. I can’t make myself that vulnerable. I’ve seen people get hurt doing that. I’ll just keep these judgments sealed in my heart. I’ll carry this privately.” And so his very insights begin to separate him from the body. He is being sifted by what he refuses to share.
I thought of Judas.
Judas’s hand only ever reached for coins. Not sins that we would call scandalous—just coins. A little here, a little there. Just as we hoard little judgments: “I see this need, but I won’t say anything. What if they misunderstand? What if it goes badly? I’ll just keep it to myself.” Clink. Another thought in the bag. Another un-submitted opinion, another secret grievance.
We build up a private treasury of judgment and call it “wisdom.” But in the day of trouble, that hoard will not save us. It will drown us.
Paul writes:
“The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”
Why do our thoughts need fortresses? Because they cannot stand in the open.
A thought that is truly from God can bear the light. It can come into the midst of the brethren, be searched and weighed, and whatever is of the Lord will endure; whatever is not will fall away. But thoughts that cannot remain upright when exposed must hide behind secrecy and pretense. The smile, the warm handshake, the “brother, we’re all in this together”—and behind that façade, a pile of speculations grows taller.
The Word of God is divinely powerful to destroy those fortresses. It is like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. But we often try to keep our fortresses and still feel obedient. We comfort ourselves: “I took the thought captive.”
We imagine our thoughts as prisoners. We bind their hands: “I didn’t act on it.” We bind their feet: “I didn’t go anywhere with it.” We gag their mouths: “I didn’t say anything.” And behind us trails a long chain of bound prisoners: judgments, hurts, suspicions, never resolved.
“I didn’t do anything with them,” we protest. But we also never brought them to nothing. We never submitted them. We never sought reconciliation or clarification. We never allowed those thoughts to be destroyed or corrected. And as the days and weeks pass, that chain grows longer. The devil is patient. He is waiting for the moment when discouragement and weariness press in, and at that hour the accumulated weight of unresolved thoughts will crash over us and bury our faith. We will be sifted.
It is not enough to say, “I didn’t act on it.” Our thoughts must be brought to resolution in the light of the body and the cross. We have to say: “This is my church. These are my brothers. This is my family. This is my Jesus. This is my kingdom.” Not in a self-glorifying sense—my kingdom—but in the sense of ownership and loyalty. “I will stand with Him here, not with my glory sword, but with my heart. I will pour out what is in me, even if it costs my pride.”
Nothing in the kingdom of God “just happens.” Families don’t just happen. Fathers don’t just happen. Communities don’t just happen. Elijah’s mantle did not “just happen” on Elisha’s shoulders. Elisha had to pursue, persist, and cling. At every stop, Elijah seemed to discourage him: “Stay here.” But Elisha would not. He had his hands, for once, on the promise of God, and he would not let go. He was like Jacob gripping the angel: “I will not let You go unless You bless me.”
That is the spirit God is after in us.
“If I can only get my hands on the angel,” Jacob might say, “if I can only get my hands on the real promise of God, then I will never let go—even if it breaks me and renames me.” And if, in the end, we spend the rest of our lives trying to live up to that new name, let it at least be said of us: He persevered with God.
We are on the threshold of things God has promised. There is excitement; there is anticipation. But the real question is not, “How big will it be? How impressive will it look?” The real question is:
- On what footing are we standing?
- What are we doing with our secret thoughts?
- Are our insights becoming fortresses or offerings?
- Are we building private bags of judgment or bringing our hearts into the open for the common good?
May God strip from us every illusion that this is about our greatness, our safety, our image. May He break every fortress of secrecy and pretense. May He give us the courage to turn our insights into vulnerable offerings instead of hoarded coins.
And when the day comes that we stand before Him—and the story of our pilgrimage is told—may it not be said only, “The years of his sojourning were painful and few,” but also, “He wrestled with God and prevailed. He was sifted, and he remained.”
God help us.