Though Jacob has neglected God, God is still working, even behind the scenes. He is about to allow pain into the lives of Jacob and his family. The megaphone is coming. Though sin tries to derail the people of God from the best purposes God had for them, God is still sovereignly working all things together for His good purpose and pleasure. 

The Pain of their own choices is about to become the ice water splashed upon their spiritually sleepy faces. God will use these circumstances to wake them up from their slumbering state. The fear of God has left them, but its about to return. They have taken things, dramatically into their own hands and yet God is about to bring them back. God is bringing Jacob to the end of himself. Jacob will be brought to pathetic and disgraceful lows… We must all get there, sometimes time and time again in order to look back up to God from our knees and acknowledge Him once again as Lord and master.

One more quote, and listen carefully, and then we will dive into our text.

 From Lewis, once again:

“Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.

If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and [(emphasis mine) then, in our broken state, we will finally] come to Him because there is ‘nothing better’ now to be had.”

Jacob is getting there. The Brokenness is coming and Potter is standing ready to make him right once more.