Genesis 35

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and today is no different because we’re going to study through Chapter 35. And we have plenty of hardback bibles to go around, pew Bibles. We have a bazillion of them. So if you need a hard copy, just raise your hand, someone will get you one. And if you want to follow along on your device, you can hop on the TVC guest Wi-Fi and I believe…

There it is, yeah. Password: TVCguest. So a couple of things. Welcome to our online congregation. Whether you’re looking at us from here or here or here, I’m not sure, but we’re so glad you’re with us and just pray that you have a beautiful Lord’s day, wherever you are. And I was going to add that the Langham Partnership, we support them as part of one of our mission partners. It was started in 1969 by John Stott, who is obviously one of our favorite guys that we like to quote around here. And it’s an organization that globally seeks to encourage and equip pastors all around the globe. So it is a lovely, beautiful organization. Really glad that Jim and
Kim could be at that convention this weekend.

So Chapter 35, our title is “Turning Towards Home”. And boy, this passage, this chapter could not be more different than Chapter 34 that Jim led us through last week, which was just awful. All about the violation and humiliation of Dinah, the sister of the sons of Jacob, and how her brothers took revenge and deceived and murdered all of the men of the town. There was not a single mention of God in that whole chapter. And we just saw the consequences of a life lived without God. And in contrast, today’s chapter, it mentions God at least 10 times. God is all over and all through this chapter. He appears to Jacob several times. He calls him from Shechem
back to Bethel where He appears to him again.

He renames him from Jacob to Israel and He restates his covenant that He’s made with Abraham and Isaac. He restates His covenant again with Jacob and his descendants. I originally considered calling this chapter “What’s in a Name?” partially because of how God renames Jacob, and also just the sheer number of names of people, places, and things that are in this chapter. It’s kind of a nerd moment. We’ve got a slide here of the names of all these things. Just look at this. That’s the people. And it wouldn’t actually fit on one slide, I don’t think. Yep. And there’s the places and then there’s some things coming up.

So look at all of these names. There’s such an emphasis in this chapter on identity. We’re not nameless, we’re not faceless to God. And I hope this reminds us as we’re going through the chapter, just who we are is extremely important to God. He knows us and He calls us by name. So I was thinking, like I said, What’s in a Name? But then as I was studying the trajectory of Jacob’s life and I thought how God was calling to him, I thought perhaps this idea of turning towards home might be more appropriate. And think of the arc of the life of Jacob that we’ve looked at over the last seven chapters or so while the camera lens has been focused on him. We’ve walked through at least 30 years of his life and a lot has happened, from tricking Esau out of his birthright and his blessing, running away in fear from his parents and his brother, meeting God on the way to Bethel, working for Laban for 20 years, marrying Leah and then Rachel and having all those kids, the episode of him running into his brother Esau and their reconciliation. And then finally last week how he settled in Shechem But then that miserable business with Dinah and the murder of all the men of Shechem. But then today we’re going to see Jacob turning home. And his trajectory kind of made me think of a boomerang. He just shot off when he was trying to save his skin.

And then over the years we saw this trajectory and now God’s calling him and bringing him back home. I grew up in a little tiny town that I guarantee you you’ve never heard of in Southern New Mexico. And if you have, Hurley, New Mexico, come see me afterwards because I really want to know about it. But it’s this little tiny town. And back then, kids, we’d be out playing and exploring all day. And today, you want your kids to come home, you text them, right? Well, back then, my mom had the whistle. Anybody here have a mom with a whistle? I never could do it. You guys, it was crazy loud. I could be blocks away riding my bike, playing with some buddies. I’d hear her whistle and I would know that she was calling me home. And same way, Jacob’s journey has stretched out a long, long way, but God has had Jacob in his grasp the entire time. Never has Jacob been abandoned. All along the journey, we’ve seen how God has spoken, He’s promised, He’s protected and provided for Jacob. There’s such faithfulness from God towards Jacob. And then at the same time we’ve seen Jacob responding and how his faith is growing over these 30 years. And it reaches its pinnacle today.

And this is the last chapter where we’re going to see the camera lens pointed or focused right in on Jacob. We’ve had a time of focus on Abraham and Isaac and now Jacob. And next week Pastor Tommy’s going to lead us through a transition chapter of the generations of Esau and then the camera’s going to start focusing on Joseph, the next generation. So we’ve seen that focus of God’s blessing get handed down from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, and then next week we’ll move on to the next generation. So I thought of four points. I know sometimes we save this till the end, but there’s four things that I’d really like for us to be keeping in mind while we’re reading through this passage.

And one of them, the first, is returning to the Lord comes by God’s initiative. That’s who God is, He’s the initiator, always calling to us. Returning to the Lord comes with promises. Returning to the Lord comes with a new name, a new identity. And lastly, returning to the Lord is a way of life. This is how we’re supposed to live. So would you pray with me, church? God, we ask that you open our hearts to hear your heart as we read through our passage this morning. We are grateful for the reach of your grace. We can never outrun, never outlast and never outlive. Pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Okay, let’s dive into our text. So Genesis 35 verses 1 through, what is it, 29, I think? So verse 1, God said to Jacob,”And rise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” Right away, God is reminding Jacob of how He had spoken to Jacob in the past and how He had met him. And He’s also, I think, indirectly reminding Jacob of a vow that Jacob had made back when he met God along the road back in Chapter 28. And his vow said this: “If God will be with me and keep me in this way that I go so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God.
And this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me, I will give a full 10th to you.”

You got to notice that God did not say… The one thing God didn’t say here, He didn’t say, “Hey Jacob, time to pay up that tithe you owe me, bro.” No, He didn’t say that at all. All He asked Jacob, He beckons him and calls him home and says, “Come back to this place and build me an altar so we can have fellowship.” That’s the intent of God’s heart with all of us is fellowship, relationship. So verse two, “Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves and change your garments.

“Then let us arise and go up to Bethel so that I may make there an altar to the God who
answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone. So they
gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid
them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem.”

Man, what faith has been growing in Jacob over these last 30 years. I really love his immediate obedience to God here. Just like Abraham in Chapter 22, when God asked him to take Isaac up the mountain, Abraham immediately saddled his donkeys and headed out.

That’s what Jacob does here. And I love his awareness of things that have been growing. He’s aware of the foreign idols that are in his household and he’s aware of the difference between those foreign gods and the one true living God. And he’s aware that they need to make a change in order to come before God and present them to a holy God. And then lastly, I just love his awareness of the faithfulness of God when he says, “I want to make an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I’ve gone.” Gosh, what faithfulness on God’s part and what faith its grown in Jacob to where he’s testifying in front of his household.

I love that. Oh, and I’ve got to ask, because I’ve been thinking about this this week, and it’s something I’ll talk about later too. What foreign gods have we been picking up along the way? Sometimes your computer will pick up a virus. We’ll pick up a virus, obviously, we’ve talked about that’s been part of our space for the last year and a half. What foreign gods are we accumulating along the way? What false idols might be God asking us to lay aside? Keep that in mind. So verse 5, “And as they journeyed a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.” You see how Jacob’s fears are met with God’s protection? We saw this earlier when he meets Esau along the way.

He’s so fearful for the safety of his life and his family’s life. And yet God brings about this amazing reconciliation. Same thing here. He’s so fearful of the retribution from all of these cities around Shechem, and with good reason. And yet God protected them on their journey, this divine and undeserved protection. Verse 6, “And Jacob came to Luz, (that is Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. And there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel.” Bethel means house of God, and so El-bethel, you could say it kind of means the God in the house of God.

“Because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother.” Verse 8. “And Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and she was buried under an oak below Bethel so he called its name Alon Bachot, which means oak of sorrow.” Deborah, if you think about it, she has served this family for something like 140 years. She was Rebekah’s nurse back in Padanaram. And when Abraham’s servant came to find a wife for Isaac and brought Rebekah back with him, Deborah came along with her. Now, we’re not really told why she’s with Jacob. This is speculation, but here’s what I’m wondering. We don’t know when Jacob’s mother Rebekah died, but I’m wondering if maybe when Rebekah died, Deborah made that long journey back to Padanaram where Jacob lived to give him the news and maybe she’s been with him ever since.

But any case, what a faithful servant. She’s lived with this family and served them for 140 years. Verse 9, “God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Padanaram and blessed him. And God said to him, ‘Your name is Jacob. No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.’ So he called his name Israel. And God said to him, ‘I am God almighty, be fruitful and multiply.'” This is the same way God revealed Himself to Abraham. “I am God almighty, I am El Shaddai.” And aren’t we glad that we love and serve a God who chooses to reveal Himself to us?

Back to 11. “A nation and a company of nations shall come from you and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you. Then God went up from him in the place where He had spoken with him and Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with Him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it. So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him Bethel.” So these blessings have put Jacob now on a par with Abraham and Isaac, and the divine promise is now renewed to include Jacob and all of his descendants.

Verse 16. “Then they journeyed from Bethel. When they were still some distance from Ephrath (which is Bethlehem), Rachel went into labor and she had hard labor.” You guys think about, this is a several hundred mile journey. Rachel had to have been near term. Boy, there’s no hospital, there’s no urgent care, there’s no maternity ward, there’s no epidural. This had to have been really hard. No, no C-section. “And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, ‘Do not fear for you have another son.'” So if you remember, when Jacob and Rachel were first married and she was barren, she lamented to Jacob and said, ‘If I don’t have children, I will die.’ And then when God blessed them with Joseph, she named him Joseph saying that ‘May God give us another son.’ So here the midwife is reassuring her in this hard labor, ‘You have another son.’ “And as her soul was departing, for she was dying, she called his name Ben-oni, but his father called him Benjamin, Benjamin.” So if you think about it, Ben-oni means child of my sorrow, son of my sorrow.

And in his great heartache, I think Jacob does Benjamin just an extreme act of kindness. He changes his name from Ben-oni to Benjamin, which means son of my right hand. He’s still honoring the name that Rachel wanted to give Ben. But also he’s removing that heartache, that reminder of every time somebody said Ben-oni’s name, he’d be reminded of the heartache and sorrow of his mom dying in childbirth. And I just think it’s a lovely kind gesture for Jacob to name him Benjamin.

So Rachel died, verse 19, “and she was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is Bethlehem). And Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel’s tomb, which is there to this day. Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Edar.” Verse 22. “While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, and Israel heard of it.” What a terrible thing Reuben has done. And a lot of the commentaries that I were reading suggested that part of the reason that Reuben might have done this was he’s kind of staking his claim as the firstborn, kind of telling his dad, ‘Hey Pops, you’re getting old. I’m going to start
taking control of this family and everything that you have, I’m staking my claim.’

And it seems interesting that Israel/Jacob didn’t say anything about it right here. But then fast forward to Chapter 49 on his deathbed, when he’s giving this blessing to all 12 of his sons, even though Reuben is his firstborn, he passes over the blessing of the firstborn and tells Reuben it’s because of what he did. Well, son number two and son number three are Simeon and Levi. Those were the guys that committed the atrocities in Shechem last chapter. So Jacob passes over them and the blessing of the firstborn lands with son number four, who’s Judah, which is the line of King David and the line of King Jesus. I just thought that was really interesting.

“Now the sons of Jacob were 12. The sons of Leah: Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun. The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. The sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s servant: Dan and Naphtali. The sons of Zilpah, Leah’s servant: Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Padanaram. And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre or Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Now the days of Isaac were 180 years and Isaac breathed his last and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.” So fade to black as the brothers are burying old Isaac. And we see that camera lens changing, right?

Focused on Abraham, focused on Isaac, been focused on Jacob now Israel. And now we’re going to see it slowly pan out from them and shift towards the next generation. So let’s talk about what this passage might be telling us, those four points that we talked about earlier. The first, returning to the Lord comes at God’s initiative. Since the fall in the garden, God has been pursuing us with relentless grace. He is always the initiator. This is who He is. The call to return to God, it comes at God’s initiative.

Here’s how John Stott says it. “The point is that we can never take God by surprise. We can never anticipate Him. He always makes the first move. He is always there ‘in the beginning.’ Before we existed, God took action. Before we decided to look for God, God had already been looking for us.” Don’t you love that? Before we ever look for God, He is already out searching for us. That is what is so different and distinct about the Christian faith. In all other faiths you have to go searching to find whatever little ‘g’ god you’re looking for. But the God of heaven came to us to seek and save that which is lost, which is you and it’s me.

And think of the parable of the prodigal son, which is such a beautiful picture of the Father. Before the wayward son ever returned home, the father has been waiting and watching from a long way off. He sees his son coming and he runs to him. Pastor Jim has said many times, and I love this illustration, “If you’re a thousand steps from God, boy, He’s calling to you. You take that one step and, man, He’s going to run 999 steps to meet you when He calls you home.”

This quote isn’t on a slide, but A.W. Tozer says, “Our pursuit of God is successful just because he is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us.” Don’t you love that?Friends, we can lean heavily into this truth, trust that a loving and faithful God is always in pursuit of us. He will never let us go. So the second point, the second thing that Genesis 35 reminds us, it’s that returning to the Lord comes with a promise. Okay, a bazillion promises, really. But this is what He promises us. We’re promised new life in Christ. We are promised the presence of the Lord. Look at what God told Jacob in Genesis 28 when he was on the run and God met him on the way.

He said, “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.” You guys, this is literally the gospel, written down in the first book of the Bible some 4,000 years ago. Through Jesus, God has promised that He is with us, Emmanuel, literally God with us. And through Christ, God will bring us back to Him. And He has promised never, never, never to leave us or forsake us till He’s done what He has promised us, which is to resurrect us into new life in Jesus Christ.

Peter preached in Acts Chapter 3, “Therefore repent and return so that your sins may be wiped away in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” This is the invitation of the gospel, repent and return to God, so that our sins might be wiped away in order that times of refreshing might come from the presence of the Lord. And I John 1:9 reminds us that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Those are some mighty hefty promises.

So the third thing that Genesis 35 reminds us of is that returning to the Lord comes with a new name. This is who we are, we are beloved. In spite of our feelings, in spite of our failings, in spite of our frailty. When we return to the Lord, He loves us, He calls us His beloved, His delight. He calls us by name. We are His. And it’s almost more than we can grasp, more than we can understand. And Henri Nouwen, and I’ve got a quote here, he has a good handle on this struggle. He says, “Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about His love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, grace is always greater.” And friends, his grace is always greater than our sin. Always. Jesus for the win. We say, “Yeah, but you don’t know me. I’m a liar.” And Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. I’m that for you. I will take your lies and exchange them from my truth.”

We say, “Yeah, but I’m a cheat.” And Jesus says, “I am faithful and true. I’m that for you. I’ll take your cheating and exchange it for my faithfulness.” And we say, “Yeah, but I’m such a failure.” And Jesus says, “I’m a victor. I beat death. I did that for you. I’ll take your failures and exchange it for my victory over all enemies, especially death.” Brennan Manning says this about how we define ourselves. “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self.” This is the true self. “Every other identity is illusion.” Man, you guys, our culture is trying so hard right now to get us to identify ourselves in such small ways, by small markers. And they’re all illusion, fake, smoke.

Our true self, our true identity is beloved by God, whether that is a teacher beloved by God, a pilot beloved by God, or a builder beloved by God. We are first beloved by God. And lastly, Genesis 35 reminds us that returning to the Lord is a way of life. This is how we’re meant to live, returning to the Lord. I love how Jacob’s arc of faith is so different than that of the Apostle Paul. Here we’ve seen that Jacob, man, he took over 30 years of seeing God promise, protect, provide, before his faith really came full circle. 30 years.

And think about the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. He’s literally blinded by a light from heaven with an instantaneous conversion. Talk about a different arc of faith than Jacob. And you guys, God is faithful and trustworthy. We can trust Him with the arc of faith in our own lives. You can trust Him with your faith no matter how small or large, how weak or how strong your faith is, how quickly your faith grows or how agonizingly slowly it grows. Because it’s not the size or the quality of your faith that matters, it’s the object of your faith, which is Jesus.

And you can trust the faith of your loved ones, your friends and your neighbors to Jesus too because Jesus loves them way more than you or I do and He’s working this very moment to reveal Himself to them. Returning to the Lord is how we live, how we’re meant to live. Our culture is catechizing us every day. We say our creeds. We’re not today because we’ve got a baby dedication at the later service. But we’re saying these creeds together every week, which we love because it’s helping catechize us in the essentials of the faith, which is really vital because our culture is also catechizing us every day.

It seeps in under the doors and around the windows like dust in a West Texas sandstorm. We need to make a practice of returning to the Lord daily and weekly. Daily in silence and solitude alone in order to quiet the external noise of the world around us and actually to quiet the internal noise of our heart. But we also need to return to the Lord weekly together like we are today with our church body and worship in fellowship so that we’re not alone.

And especially when our own faith is shaky we need to be in and around and among the body. Returning to the Lord, this is how we live. This is how we live in Christ. J.I. Packer says, “Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us His way that we may tread it. He wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and straying there will be no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us. We shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise. This is how good He is.”

So loved ones, for some of us today, man, it might be the first time that you’ve ever had a sense of God calling to you to return home. And man, if that’s you, I encourage you to respond to that. Come talk to me after the service. I’d love to talk and pray with you. You might be sensing that, man, you’ve stretched that tether out pretty far in your arc and that God is gently beckoning to you to come home. And you might be realizing today, I kind of hope so because I’ve been realizing this too this week, just how many little foreign gods you’ve picked up along the way.

And God might be calling you or me to bury those distractions and return to Him. And you might be realizing more fully, like Jacob did at the beginning of our chapter, that the God who answers me in the day of my distress has been with me wherever I have gone. In all of this, Jesus is calling to us. And I want to close with this Eugene Peterson… It’s not a quote, it’s his Message translation of the Bible. Revelation 3:19 and 20. “The people I love, I call to account, prod and correct and guide so that they’ll live at their best. Up on your feet then, about face, run after God. And look at me. I stand at the door, I knock. If you hear me call and open the door I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you.” Amen.

And let’s pray. Lord, we are grateful for You. We are grateful for Your relentless pursuit of grace, for a love that will not let us go. Grateful that You hear us in our day of distress and that You are with us wherever we have gone. Grateful that You call us to return to You. Grateful for Your beloved Son who’s provided for us a way to return to You. Thank you for this hope in Christ that stands the test of time and leads us well and truly home. In Jesus’ name, amen.