How would you react to a portal to heaven? What if it was located in a particular room of your house or out in a certain field. Would you visit it often? Would you feel worthy of it? Would you be scared of it? I don’t ask these questions to be coy or hypothetical. Even though this is probably the first time you’ve had that kind of question posed to you, you already have the answer to all these questions. Believe it or not, you have encountered such a reality. No, it doesn’t look like a literal window into paradise, but when it, or I guess I should say “He,” is encountered, you will find the answer to all those questions I’ve just posed. It’ll be clearer what I mean as we go on.
In this passage we get a small glimpse into this portal that Jacob seems to stumble into, and what it does to a man like Jacob. There is some mystery surrounding this passage, but what is shown here is beautiful and ties in with our taking of the Lord’s Supper here today. Our two points here are: God condescends to His people, and our only response is worship. God condescends to His People Let us remind ourselves of where we are. Jacob is fleeing from the wrath of Esau, having seemingly stolen the his blessing. Of course, this blessing was always meant for Jacob, but the circumstances in obtaining it are suspect at best. He has been sent 400 miles away to Padan-aram in order to marry within the covenant and steward the Abrahamic blessing of seed as God intended. We join Jacob about 60 miles into his journey when we begin in verse 10. Note the circumstances. He isn’t traveling with a great caravan of people or seemingly even has a tent. He is sleeping out in a field on a rock! He is on his way out of the land that has been promised him leaving behind a brother who wants to see him dead. At this point, as one scholar points out, “Although Jacob had received the blessing, he straightway abandoned the land and inheritance to his brother Esau. It was Esau, not Jacob, who appeared to have gained the possessions of their father despite the stolen blessing.” (Matthews) He comes to a place that we will later come to know as Bethel, when he has this amazing dream. Notice the number of times we see the word “behold.” (Ross, 488). The text wants us to be aware of how startling this would be to witness and draw a reaction out of us. It is like a real estate agent who points out the good features of a house because they want you to love it. Here, the text wants us to be amazed along with Jacob, so let’s look at this together. The dream opens with a staircase leading up into heaven with angels running up and down it, with the Lord Himself looking down from the top step. What an image! What are we supposed to think about it? The word translated “ladder” here is the only time this word shows up in the Old Testament (Ross, 488), so it is a little difficult to know precisely what it means. “Ladder” is definitely one way to translate it, but Ancient thought probably would see it as a stone staircase, perhaps even “reminiscent of [the Tower of] Babel” (Matthews). Back in Genesis 11, the people of the earth thought it would be a great idea to build a tower to reach into the heavens where God was, in an act of disobedience and pride. He “came down” to see the tower they were building, and in an act of judgement, confused all their languages. Now, we have a staircase from God to Earth, and it is right at Jacob’s head! Can you imagine being Jacob in this moment? Before you can barely wrap your mind around what you are even seeing, God Himself begins talking to you. He reiterates all the promises that were given to Abraham and now applies them to Jacob. This passage is a combination of sorts of every promise that had ever been given to Abraham (Bible Talk Podcast). Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Well, I can’t imagine anything like this because this hasn’t happened to me.” Or maybe something odd has happened to you, but you are unsure if it is real or what it means. To the Presbyterian and Pentecostal, the New Testament has something to tell you. Jesus references this moment in John 1. Jesus is choosing His disciples, and he picks Nathaniel to join the ranks. Nathaniel is a little skeptical of this Messiah, because, after all, He is from Nazareth, the wrong end of town, and can someone so grand as the Messiah come from a backwater, nothing town like Nazareth? Jesus is quick to show that kind of thinking is wrong, and Nathaniel is probably the fastest to come to an understanding of who Jesus is. Jesus responds with a “you ain’t seen nothing yet” response and includes that one of the greater things that Nathaniel will see is the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. This reference to this passage in Genesis gives us clarity in how we are supposed to think about it. What Jesus is saying there is that He is the stairway to heaven. The path to God is found in Jesus. He is the Way. He is the narrow gate. He is the stairway to heaven, and unlike Led Zeppelin’s lady, you can’t buy Him with gold. He’s already bought you with His blood. This reality is greater than what Jacob experienced. Jacob knows about this staircase, but now the staircase, as it were, knows us! We have a relationship with the way to God, a saving, glorious relationship with the Only Way to God. What a condescension on God’s part. God came down the stairs to become the stairs. He didn’t just provide steps, He is the steps. He didn’t give you a philosophy to follow but forgiveness to embrace. So when I opened a few minutes ago with those questions about what would you do if you were to encounter a portal to heaven, the answer to those questions is found in your relationship with Jesus. Do you shy away from prayer with Him and Bible reading because you are ashamed of your sin? Are you afraid of Him because you fear that, perhaps, in the end, you’ll find you weren’t on the staircase at all? Or maybe you have gotten so used to hearing His name and handling holy things you barely feel a thing. Maybe you remember a time in which you were awed and worshipfully fearful, but now that is gone. “How can that be possible,” you may wonder, “to encounter a portal to heaven and then lose your excitement?” There can be a number of reasons. They can be as heartbreaking and self-inflicted as hidden sin. Hidden sin is cherished sin. And a heart in love with sin, doesn’t see Jesus for Who He is. If that’s you, let that sin go. It doesn’t keep its promises to you (Phillips). Get it out in the open, let it shrivel, so that you might see Jesus. It can be as simple and ordinary as a season of physical pain or sleeplessness. You aren’t just a soul, and your body has a big impact on how your soul feels. It can also be just as subtle as where you are directing your thoughts. Have you so numbed yourself with scrolling you can barely see how your spouse sitting next to you is doing much less the glories of our God? So how do we get out of that mire? Our Only Response is Worship. Jacob, having seen all this, gets up and sets up a rock as a physical marker of where he had this happen. He pours oil on it, as an act of worship, and makes a vow to God that He will come back to this place, and worship with tithe in hand. Contrary to what I said last time, I have been convinced from my studies that Jacob isn’t actually making a bargain with God here. His actions show that he believes in God now, and he is acting in accordance to what He has just seen. We must do the same. Jesus has condescended to us sinners, dying on the cross, and rising again to open the way to heaven if we will repent of our sins and turn to Him for mercy. We need to be reminded of that. And for us, that doesn’t come from a stone that we found and make our own sign of God’s faithfulness. We have that sign right here in the Lord’s Supper. This visual picture is a reminder that the staircase to heaven, once came to Earth. He lived as one of us, died as one of us, and rose again, as we shall one day in Him. But in this moment, we have more than a memorial. Here we have fellowship. We aren’t taking this supper just to remind us to get back in fellowship with God. We don’t go on a date to remind ourselves to connect with our spouse. The act of dinner with them is part of that process. This isn’t a reminder meal, a memorial feast to a fallen hero long since gone. This is a family dinner where we are simultaneously reminded of our fellowship and actually fellowship. It is, in a true sense, a glimpse into heaven.
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It has been wisely said that when at first you don’t succeed, just do it the way mom told you to do it the first time. We have the tendency as humans to think that we know best about life, especially our lives, and God, while usually having some good ideas, can be ignored without consequences. We saw last week the absolute disaster zone of Isaac passing on the blessing to Jacob. This week, we are going to see the beginning of God’s grace moving in Jacob’s life. What we are going to cover today is seeing how Genesis is going to move to Jacob being the main character going forward, yes, that Jacob. The rest of Genesis, more or less, is going to be following Jacob finishing with his death at the end. Therefore, it will suit us to get our bearings about where we are going. We will do a little more than that as we will have the somewhat unexpected opportunity to talk about marriage. Our main point today: God continues His blessings and God’s blessings in marriage come from His commands for marriage God Continues His Blessings As you may remember, most “episodes” of Genesis begin with a list of names, the genealogies, a favorite of mine. We don’t get that here at the start of this chapter, but we do get a similar structure in that we get Esau’s story wrapped up before moving onto narrating Jacob’s life. This episode begins in the previous chapter in verse 46 where Rebekah, still hanging onto a little scheming, prompts Isaac to send Jacob away by saying she would just die if Jacob takes on a Hittite wife. If you remember, that was Esau did, and they caused a lot of problems. Isaac steps in and the rest of the story kicks off from here. First, we should note that he speaks the blessing over Jacob intentionally here (about time). Over the next few verses here Jacob is either referenced or commanded about thirty times. Notice how many times the word “you” is said in this text. It is very clear that Jacob, the cheat, is going to be the bearer of the blessing. He invokes God’s name, the Almighty, which one commentator reminds us is the same name that God gave to Abraham in chapter 17 (Rick Phillips, 177). This should cause us to find the many parallels here of Jacob and his grandfather, Abraham. The promise of a land, seed, and blessing are presented here (although we will see them much more comprehensively delineated in the next section). He blesses him with the benediction of being fruitful and multiplying (a call back to the very beginning of the book). He is going to have many people, and he is going to possess the land of his sojournings. The NIV translates the sense of this well by writing, “the land where you now reside as a foreigner.” If we could put this in our understanding today, it might read, “the land in which you hold a green card.” Now, let’s look at what Isaac has so far to accomplish all these things, and we can get a sense as to what God is promising him. Right now, Jacob is in his seventies, unmarried, without citizenship in the very land that he is supposed to occupy. Can you imagine your family two generations ago moving to another country on a work visa, and now here you are in middle age, still on the work visa, and unmarried being told that yes, indeed, the plan is still to possess the entire country such that the current people’s fate is tied to how they treat you. Yes, this has been the plan for the last, oh, 150 plus years, but now the plan is for you to continue it. This is quite a promise. Almost too much to believe. Jacob’s faith isn’t one of believing something new, like Abraham’s, but trusting God in waiting a long time for the old, a bit more familiar to us, perhaps. Yes, he has absolutely seen God work in the life of his family in terms of wealth and favor amongst the nations (for the most part), but the full fulfillment of these promises still seem a long way away. “a company of peoples” plural? We’ve got a family of four here. The “chosen one” is in his seventies! God, you should have moved a little sooner! I could have done a bit more to prepare! Do you feel like that sometimes? God has promised to change you to be more like Christ, but you feel like you are only “getting it” now so late in life, too late in life to make a difference. You know that God has promised heaven, but it seems so far away and only after a long path of emotional and physical suffering. You’ve been parenting for so long, but the child still seems so far from God. Your struggle with that sin just keeps going, your fears of not having enough to provide for your family just keep being present, and it seems like God just keep saying the same things, and frankly, not delivering. What are we supposed to do with that feeling? Well, we have one HUGE advantage over Jacob, here. We get to see how God sets things up and gets the payoff. Jacob only had two generations to look back on, but we have thousands! We have the benefit to see that God plays the long game and loves a good twist payoff. He didn’t forget about Jacob, He was getting Jacob ready. He’s doing the same thing in your situation. You are dealing with the same God. If we could counsel Jacob, we would say, “Oh, just wait. You wouldn’t believe it even if I told you. Your second youngest son (you’re going to have 12 of them, you see), is going to save the whole known world from starvation. Hang in there.” What could someone from a hundred years from now say to you today? One day we’ll find out, and I think you’ll be amazed. But what to do from there once we’ve reminded ourselves of God’s care for us? Well, the next step obedience to His commands. That’s where His blessings are. God’s blessings in marriage come from His commands for marriage In Jacob’s case, obedience began with marriage. In order for Jacob to have the rest of these blessings, he needs to secure a wife! Obedience begins in earnest as very careful directions are laid out for his choice of marriage partner. God is very clear that he is not to marry a Canaanite woman. The language here is the same as that of the commandments. The KJV has “thou shalt not.” This is a very strong command, but why? It is because Jacob cannot marry outside the covenant. Marriage for him had to be in the family of Abraham, in this case, Jacob’s uncle’s daughter. The Canaanites were an especially unsavory option because they bore the curse of God from Genesis 9. They were the cursed line from Ham who looked at his father’s nakedness. That is the only reason. They are outside the covenant. This isn’t a racism thing, as if God opposes interracial marriage. As R.C. Sproul points out, the writer of Genesis, Moses, was interracially married, and when that was opposed, the opposers were judged by God (Numbers 12). (https://learn.ligonier.org/qas/does-god-frown-upon-interracial-marriages). The same applies today. Galatians 3:28 tells us, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” External differences don’t matter in Christian marriage. Might there be challenges? Sure, but there are unique challenges in every marriage. There are only two requirements for a Christian to get married. The person you are marrying has to be the opposite sex, and they have to be a believer in Christ (2 Cor. 6:14). That’s what God requires. You can have preferences on the rest, but that is the bedrock. That is the same requirement that Jacob has here, and the same requirement that Esau didn’t understand. He thought it was only about the Canaanites, so he went to his uncle Ishmael, a son of Abraham after all, and married one of his daughters. Sadly, Ishmael isn’t in the main covenant, either, so this is just making the same mistake a different way. Jacob’s journey towards obedience begins with a trip to Paddan Aram. This land is 400 miles away from here he stands right now. That would be like walking to Louisville! I’m sure that there would have been the temptation to say, “Really? You’re sure the Canaanites won’t do?” But as we saw last week, trying to take a shortcut through sin just doesn’t work. One pastor said it this way, “sin does not keep its promises” (Phillips, 175). “It’ll be easier to do it this way,” “Oh, it is just this one time, it’ll be fine.” “No one is going to be hurt.” Never keeps its promises. That pastor continued, “While God gives grace in such situations, his sanctifying purpose will often teach you through sorrow that his ways are better.” (176). In other words, God will sometimes give you grace even though you went about things the wrong way, as we’ve seen in Jacob’s life, but don’t be surprised that there will be suffering around the corner to teach, as we have also seen in the life of Jacob. Jesus forgives all our sins, taking away both the guilt and eternal punishment for them, but that doesn’t mean that our sins won’t have natural consequences. So what is our takeaway? We find blessing in obedience to God. Thankfully Jacob is going to follow after God here (for the most part), and he will find the blessings for having done so. This does not mean that his life will be pain free or even easy. The same is true for us. Obedience can be hard. It will almost always mean saying “no” to your heart. Single people, I see you. Loneliness can be hard. The fear of not being able to find someone can be paralyzing. So much so that the temptation can be to grab hold of the first person who looks your way. Trust God. Don’t stray from what God tells you to do. Our minds will contort our sins to seem even like they are the right thing to do. “We’ll get married and that’ll be the means of him getting to know the Lord.” That is a bad idea because disobeying God is always a bad idea. You have no idea how life might go, and you simply can’t account for the future. Sin won’t keep its promises to you (Phillips, 175), but God will. If you are already married to a great Christian, have you spent some time thanking God for such a great gift? Or have you gotten distracted by all the optional preferences that might not be as refined as they were at the start of the relationship? If there is serious sin going on like abuse or unfaithfulness it absolutely needs to be dealt with (and Biblical grounds for divorce). I’m not saying turn a blind eye to that, but I am saying that non-essential things are just that, non-essential. Instead, rejoice in the solid foundation that God has given you in a spouse that follows Jesus. Finally, remember where you are going. I know it can seem like the fulfillment of the promises of everything being restored seems so far away. It could be tomorrow for you. It might be a hundred years from now, but it is coming. Jesus has staked His blood on it.
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Do you have a perfect family? Everyone gets along, there’s no conflict, no hidden sin, no masks to have to wear this morning? Well of course not! We are all sinners and that includes even as a collection of people called a family. We all realize that and know that we are all in the same boat. Yet there are some of us that think our family is especially dysfunctional, or to use Biblical language, extra sinful. We wonder how God is able to do anything with or through in our family. If that’s you this morning, you may be thinking, “Oh, if you only knew.” Thus far in Genesis, families in such a condition may be feeling even more inadequate. Yes, Noah and Abraham have had their stumbles, but it isn’t like there’s a horror show at every turn. Well, let’s meet Isaac’s family. Before we begin, we must keep something in mind. We are not here to look at this example and walk away like the Pharisees and say, “Whew, glad my family isn’t as messed up as Isaac’s!” Maybe you don’t have sons plotting to kill each other, but we all have the seeds of the sins that we are going to look at here. We are meant to walk away saying, “Now what areas in my family need repentance?” As we will see, God is going to work redemption even through the very sins we see here committed. Yet we will also see that to sin makes everything harder on oneself. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our two points are Fighting God beats yourself and God will use even sin to bring about His purposes. Fighting God Beats Yourself Let’s meet the family while keeping in mind the context of where we are. The most important fact to remember is what was said about the twins when they were born back in Genesis 25:23 “And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.”” This is the clear message that Jacob is going to be the promised son to have the blessing. All the way back to Genesis 9:26, the blessed line of Shem is going to be the one served, so it should be clear to us what the next step should be. Our story starts in the last verse of the previous chapter that tells us that Esau hasn’t married very well. He has married not one, but two Hittites, the people of Canaan, and they (Feminine plural in the Hebrew) have made life bitter for his parents. This will be important to remember later. Ok, that is the necessary background information. From here, we are going to see an absolute disaster zone of sin. Usually when we look at this passage, we focus on all the lying that Jacob does here. We will look at that, too, but there are a bunch of somewhat more subtle sins at work here. Each of these sins promise to deliver to the sinner what they want, and what we will find is that it will backfire on them. Favoritism Never Brings Favor The first sin to see is the sin of favoritism, or to use the Biblical word for it, partiality. To be partial to someone means to have a bias against or for someone that makes you treat them in a way that the Bible wouldn’t want. We see this commanded in many places in Scripture but probably the most comprehensive is in Leviticus 19:15 ““You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” We saw back in Genesis 25:28 that Isaac loved Esau (because he liked the meat he brought in) and Rebekah liked Jacob. This partiality on both ends is going to drive the rest of this nightmare. Our story begins with a blind Isaac telling Esau that he wants to give the divine blessing to him, a covenantal disaster! The line of the woman is supposed to be separate from the line of the snake! Marriages are not supposed to be with the people of the land, and he has married two people of the Canaanites already! As one scholar notes, “These marriages indicate that Esau is not concerned about the promises of God made to his forefathers; rather, he shows disdain for the heritage of the covenant.” (Belcher, 178-179). He continues later: “Esau is the son who wants the blessing but is not willing to live a life that honors God so that he could be trusted with the blessing.” (Belcher, 182) But, you know, he’s a good hunter! What can we say? The boy knows his way around a deer steak. Isaac cares more about his son’s food than his faith. Sadly, you will actually notice that Jacob is never referred to as “my son” by Isaac. Favoritism is ugly. And it isn’t just Isaac that does it. Rebekah hears the plot and springs into action. She quickly hatches the plan to make sure “her son” is the one who gets the blessing. Some argue that she is doing this for honorable reasons, but as one scholar notes, “Some would say that she strove to realize the oracle that predicted the rise of the younger, but the narrative does not attribute this directly to her motivation. Rather, it simply observes that she favors Jacob, perhaps for the sake of the oracle, but the text suggests that it is more likely his temperament and vocation she values.” (Matthews, 417) She certainly isn’t going about this the right way. Favoritism is actually selfishness in disguise. You are partial to one child over another (or partial to anyone, for that matter) likely because of what they do for you. Favoritism actually puts you as the favorite, not them. If you are the center of your life, then everyone else, including your kids, is judged worthy or unworthy based on how they make you feel. My kids were watching Bluey the other day, and there is one episode where one kid, Bingo, is much more compliant, quiet, and organized than Bluey, the older sister. The girls pick this up and pretend to be each other, both pretending to be Bluey (the loud one) and later on both pretending to be Bingo (the compliant one). The parents let slip that they are more excited by the prospect of two Bingos, and this obviously hurts Bluey’s feelings deeply. The show resolves this by pointing out that even Bingo has her flaws, and ultimately, the parents want to have both daughters as they are individually. Now, the show doesn’t have the Bible to point to on how to avoid this in parenting or other realms like politics where one’s own side is excused their bad behavior. We shouldn’t say, “You should be more like your brother” or “our side of politics should be more like the other side” No, we should be saying to everyone, “Be like Christ.” If God is at the center of your life, then you are going to be most concerned about how everyone relates to Him, not you. And if God is at the center of your life, you will know that any good that comes in their lives is credit to Him, not you! The kids who follow Christ cause you to be grateful to God, and the one who don’t (yet) follow Him cause you to be in prayer to God for them. It is scary to see where favoritism can take you, as we look at the next sin it lead to in this passage, lying. Deception is degrading. Rebekah “leaves nothing to chance or to providence when she prepares the player for his part.” (Matthews, 430). We’ve got the food to taste like Esau’s, the goat hair to feel like Esau’s, and the garments to smell like Esau. Imagine how silly Jacob looked in all that! But beyond that, every sense is accounted for to trick an old blind man. What degradation. Can you imagine if this had been done to you? But it goes on. Jacob lies through his teeth over and over to keep up the ruse, even blaspheming God’s name by bringing Him into it in verse 20. Even the kiss in verse 26 is that of Judas (Matthews, 431). And we didn’t pick Esau, because why? But the lies work (sort of), and the blessing is given to Jacob. Isaac trusted every sense he had except the common sense to follow God’s will. God always intended that the blessing would go to him, but this was not the approved way. God will work even through sin, so there is no thwarting His plan. But this path will lead to pain, as verses 31 through the end of the chapter detail. Everyone’s favoritism and lying affects everyone else. Rebekah’s favoritism of Jacob affects Isaac. When he realizes that he has been duped, the reaction is visceral. The Hebrew literally describes it this way: “Isaac trembled a great trembling exceedingly” (Matthews, 434). It affects Esau, as this mighty hunter is reduced to sobbing on the floor begging for scraps of blessing. Jacob’s life is now at risk such that he has to be sent away never to be seen by Rebekah again. And the whole thing started with Isaac’s favoritism of Esau. He tried to bless Esau against God’s wishes and ended up giving him what scholars call an “antiblessing.” Great job, everyone! This is what happens when we turn to sin. Jacob was rightly called but called in the wrong way. God’s purposes will never be foiled, and those that try to stray from the path will always feel the pain. God will use even sin to bring about His purposes. We’re left sitting back going, “What a mess! How is God supposed to work this out?” And at this point in the book of Genesis, it isn’t clear. We have a family all broken apart over favoritism, lies, rebellion, and even threats of murder! Our only hope for the continuation of the blessing is placed in the hands of the guy literally named “cheater.” But that’s not quite right, is it? Our hope isn’t in Jacob. It is in God. As we work our way through the rest of Genesis, and really on our way through the rest of the Bible, we will discover that God is going to continue to turn bad things into vehicles for His grace. From Jacob will come the 12 sons of Israel. One of those sons, Joseph, is going to save the world from starvation! This will only happen when an even bigger lie and worse deception will be pulled on Jacob. Jacob tricked Isaac with a goat and garment, and the same thing will happen to him because he played favorites with Joseph (Bible Talk Podcast). Ultimately, from this disaster zone of a family is going to come a Savior. You see, we are all Jacob. We are the cheaters, the liars, the favorite-havers. And, in one sense, as one podcast I listened to this week pointed out, Jesus is Esau (Bible Talk). How does this play out? Esau was rejected, sent away from the goodness of the land, in a word, cursed. Esau was sent away so that Jacob could have the blessing. Jesus was forsaken by His Father on the cross so that we might get the blessing. The key difference, of course, is that Jesus actually deserves the blessing of the favor of the Father, but He stood aside and now gives it to those who repent and put their trust in Him. So what is our takeaway today? One, God will accomplish His will, even through our sin. That doesn’t make Him a sinner, and we are completely responsible for our sin, and we should not do it. That’s what God says and this story demonstrates. Two, any sin, even the common ones that everyone does, can have devastating consequences. Resist the temptation of partiality and bias whether it is with your kids or total strangers. It is known by many names: racism, sexism, whatever else “-ism” that doesn’t see people in the light of God’s Word. Is there behavior that needs to be pointed out and corrected? Yes. Are sometimes those criticism found more in some groups rather than others? Also yes, but corrections are always to be made in light of God’s Word and the love of the person, not the dislike of them. Finally, never give up hope. Do you know that these brothers are going to experience a reconciliation of a kind? Don’t look at your broken family and conclude there’s no hope. There may be no hope of you fixing it, but there is never an end to what God can do with it. Works Cited K. A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, vol. 1B, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 417. Richard P. Belcher Jr., Genesis: The Beginning of God’s Plan of Salvation, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2012), 178–179.
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Putting away Christmas decorations can be a hazard. I saw a photo recently of a ladder leading up into a person's attic. Just to the left of the ladder, sticking through the ceiling's drywall, was a foot. The caption read that the person was warned not to step on the drywall, but they didn't admit to not knowing what drywall was until after stepping through it. If you, too, don't know what drywall is, it is a plaster that is held together between two sheets of paper. It is usually fastened to planks of wood to hold it up. When you are in the attic, you are to place your weight on the wood holding up the drywall, not the drywall itself. Now, maybe you are bit handier and wouldn't make such a mistake. You wouldn't place your trust in things that can't hold your physical weight. But are you as careful with your soul? The thing about the Lord is He gives wonderful gifts of financial resources, family, and even your local church, but the gifts are meant to be the pointer to Himself, the actual object of your trust. We don't trust the gifts; we trust the giver. Today, we jump back into Genesis to continue the story of redemption as it relates to Abraham so far. It began with the creation account showing us that God is very powerful. Once we got to Abraham's story, we see that God is faithful. He made promises to Abraham that He fulfilled and was faithful to Abraham even when Abraham wasn't always faithful to God. Today, we pick up with Abraham's son Isaac. What may be so surprising in this story is how little time we spend with him. Isaac's story only lasts about a chapter before moving quickly on to Jacob who will be the focus more or less through the end of the book. This doesn't mean that he is unimportant or that there isn't so much that we can learn from this chapter. Our main point today is that we are to Trust in the Giver, not the Gifts. Chapter 26 opens by reminding us very much of Abraham. There is famine in the land yet again. This is the land granted by God, but that doesn't mean that things will always be going well. Isaac heads off to Gerar and is approach the land of Egypt. His father before him went the same way for the same reason, but this time, God tells him not to go down there but remain in the land. The opportunities to trust God immediately begin. Famine means that there is no food, so to stay in such an area would seem very non-sensical, but this is exactly what he does. It helps that this is a path that his father has walked before, but more importantly, the promise are following, too. God isn't asking for a blind leap of faith, for He lays out the promises. Here we see the same land, seed, and blessing promise that we saw in Genesis 12, but there is one important addition: God promises to be with him. God's presence is such a precious promise. It is moving back towards Eden as God is committing to be personally involved and present. This is something that we will see grow in greater degree as the Bible unfolds. Later on in the Old Testament, God will be present in the Tabernacle and Temple, but one can only get so close. When the New Testament comes, Jesus will arrive, physically present! How do these promises arrive? At first glance, it looks like Abraham earned it for Isaac. Abraham did what he was supposed to do, and now Isaac gets the benefit of it. As always, we need to keep all of Scripture in mind. The reason why Abraham is blessed is not because Abraham so impressed God that He had to respond with reward. It is, as one scholar put it, “God will fulfill His purposes because He has taken the oath, but we pray that He will be able to use the faithfulness and obedience of His people to help accomplish His plan for the blessing of Abraham to come to the nations" (Belcher, 175). In other words, God uses means. God always planned to use Abraham to bring blessing to the nations, but He decided to use Abraham's obedience to accomplish His will. Abraham's obedience was real and useful, and Isaac does get the benefit of it, but all the credit goes ultimately to God for fueling that obedience. May we be so blessed as to be used in the same way. Now, while the famine is a real problem, at the very least Isaac is heading back into what should be friendly territory. This is the same place that Abraham journeyed in, and when he was there, the local king made a covenant with him. Amazingly, this promise was made despite the fact that Abraham's deception nearly killed the king when he said Sarah was his sister. We might think that Isaac should be comforted by the previous history of covenant making, and should have been unafraid of the people of Gerar. In addition, he had a personal visit from God, not only confirming the promises, but additionally promising to be with him! If there was ever a moment in which fear would be banished it would be this one, right? Instead, Isaac pulls the old "she's just my sister" scheme again. What happened? Isaac forgot about the promises. He wasn't trusting God. You play by the rules of the one you trust. If Isaac was trusting in God in that moment, he wouldn't be lying. However, he did trust the Philistines that they wouldn't kill him as long as they didn't think they needed to. Those rules demanded he lie. We are quick to make the same error. We trust that we need our jobs more than be faithful to the truth, so we will sin in order to keep our jobs. We believe that it is more important to be thought well of in the community, so we will keep our Christian faith to ourselves. We feel the pressure to make sure our kids have every advantage they need, even if that means putting them in sports over and against Sunday worship. Whomever we trust is the one we obey. Isaac decides to lie, but just like all other lies, the truth comes out eventually. The king happens to see Isaac being a little closer with Rebekah than would be expected of siblings. Interestingly, the word that the Bible uses euphemistically is "laughing." My old Hebrew professor points out that Isaac's name means "laughter," so named because Sarah dismissed the idea of being able to have a child in her nineties. She wasn't showing faith. And here, in this moment, neither is Isaac. He is making a mockery of God's promises by lying. He's laughing at them, and laughing at the people of the country as he does so. Thankfully, just like last time, the Lord is faithful and the people are more honorable than given credit for, and the king makes sure that Rebekah is protected. And that isn't all. Isaac proves to be quite the farmer as the seed that he sows reap a hundred times more than planted! Truly a miracle! We might stop here and ask, "Why does God bless Isaac like that and not me?" Why don't my crops or paycheck increase a hundredfold? Well, for one thing, as moderns, we are living in a world in which Isaac could have barely imagined in how good it is, but secondly, it isn't always good for Isaac either. In fact, even the increasing riches themselves prove that ancient wisdom: mo money; mo problems. He gets so rich and powerful, the locals are afraid of him and want him gone! So they keep him moving, and the way they do this is by sealing up the wells, the wells that his father dug. He reopens them, and they claim them back. Instead of fighting over it, he renames them "Esek" which means "contention" and "Sitnah" which means "enmity." Usually, in the Old Testament, to name something is to own it, so I don't wonder if this is the Bible's way of saying, "Yes, Isaac gave the wells away, but he was just going to let them use them." Despite these troubles, things end well for Isaac. For those of us who have hoses attached to our houses, the idea of losing a well sounds more like the loss of something nice rather than something necessary. Remember, he's got flocks and servants in a desert climate, but he trusts that God is with him and eventually ends up in Beersheba, the place where Abraham settled. Once there, God appears to Him and restates the promises made to him, which he responds to in worship. Finally, just like with his father, the next generation of Abimelech comes out to make a treaty with him, because the blessings of God are undeniable, which he does. What can we draw from a story like this? One of the main things we miss in our Christian life is that the peace we desire for our souls is not found in new information but a reminder of that which is old. In this story, yes, Isaac is told that God is with him, but we have been blessed to know that this whole time. This is the only anchor that we have in our lives. It isn't the presence or absence of gifts. Isaac should have been, from a human perspective, been set for life. He was heading back into a land which he has a divine right to, the people who live there made a treaty with his father century ago, and he is the rightful heir to that promise. He is going towards wells that belong to him, and the seed that he plants turns out to grow more than any farmer's wildest expectations. He knows how to interact with the locals to protect his wife. All's good! Yet it can all change. One look out the window at the right time shatters that seemingly protective lie. The very riches that brought comfort, caused him to need to be moved. And well after well that was rightfully his gets stopped up and claimed. This wasn't a bad week for Isaac, for according to one source, this chapter plays out over the course of one hundred years (Phillips, 157)! Isaac has to deal with things over and over just like you and I need to. The difference is, with a misstep or two along the way, he trusts God to provide more water (which he does) and hold up His promises. We must do the same. A key thing for what this looks like practically is our prayer life. This will mean that when problems inevitably surface our first response is prayer. After that, the next course of action is guided by Scripture and good old common sense. Don Whitney: if you only have 15 minutes, read for five and pray for ten! You have a Savior who has also promised that He will be with you to the end of time, so trust in that, and not what you can see. All that we can see is drywall. Don't lean your weight on it.
Photo by eduard on Unsplash
We find ourselves at the threshold of another year, and this is typically the time where we begin to review and renew. Reviewing what happened and renewing resolve for yet another year. If you’ve been listening to the radio this Christmas, I’m sure you’ve heard the guilt inducing lyrics from John Lennon, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun.” Can you feel your chest tighten? Time’s running out! I can think of all the pounds I’ve added, the money I’ve overspent, and the time I’ve wasted! But, ooooh, not this year, this year is going to be different, because I am going to do xyz and prosperity will sure to follow!” Sound familiar? Have you noticed that this happens a lot? Or maybe you are thinking differently about the future because things look brighter. Perhaps you see the early indications of the market pointing to a better year. We can think that our country has finally been reclaimed and only prosperity awaits! Deuteronomy 8points us to think differently about the new year and the best way to live in it. Both of these attitudes point back to ourselves as the masters of our fate, and what our passage is here to tell us is this is a very dangerous way to think about the New Year. Let’s find a better way to think and live in the new year. The Cure for Prosperity is Remembrance Right at the beginning, we are told to obey God’s commandments and remember God’s care. This book is Moses’ final words to the people of Israel as they are about to enter the Promised Land after wandering in the desert for 40 years. This hasn’t been an easy journey, but it is about to be over. Before we even talk about what good is coming, they are told upfront that it is critical that they are to obey every commandment God has for them, as it is emphatic in the original language (Woods, Deuteronomy, Tyndale). We often forget that there are two words to emphasize there in verse 3. It isn’t just that we live by every Word that God speaks, but EVERY WORD, that God speaks. Don’t discount the blessedness of simple obedience to God’s commands. Believe it or not, those commands there are for your good, and you have no idea how much you need them. One scholar put it this way: “To eat and drink is merely to exist; only as men and women receive and obey God’s truth can they really ‘live’ as God intended—lives which bring them lasting satisfaction and eternal security.” (Brown, 120) Too many of us live like we don’t have souls. Yes, physical nourishment and proper sleep is important, but you can have those things and just exist. If you want to live as you were meant to, you need this Word. God will do whatever it takes to teach you this. God isn’t leading you to a hard life for its own sake. He is leading you through a hard time in order to know God’s good commands. That’s exactly what verse three says. One scholar put it this way: “The Lord may be using such events to ‘discipline’ us, to show us how much we have been relying on our own resources, or how prayerless we have become, or how we have allowed our lives to be determined by materialistic values, and a host of other things. Testing times are learning times. Writing from his prison cell in 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, ‘Much as I long to be out of here, I don’t believe a single day has been wasted … something is bound to come out of it … We shall come out of it all much strengthened.’” (Brown, 121) Some of you have had an extremely difficult year. But it isn’t a waste. Some of you have lost a loved one (and death isn’t the only way to lose a person) only to find that God will never leave you. Some of you are losing your ability to see, and that could be to show you that all of life is lived by faith and not by sight. None of that is meant to minimize what you are going through; it’s hard! But “Some lessons can only be learnt in trouble.” (Brown, 120). This is going somewhere. “The Puritan preacher, Stephen Charnock, reminded his friends who were suffering fierce persecution in the late seventeenth century that ‘if we did remember his former goodness we should not be so ready to doubt … his future care’.” (quoted in Brown, 119). God will take care of you because He has. Jesus knows how hard this is. This passage contains one of the verses that Jesus quotes to Satan. Satan tries to get Jesus to doubt what had just been said to Him. The Father had said, “You are my Beloved Son,” and what does Satan say? “IF you are the Son of God, make these stones bread.” The subtle lie here is that if Jesus was really God’s Son, then where is the provision? The Father is either forgetful or a liar. Either way, bread isn’t here, so just make some. You don’t have to wait for the Father. I love what one scholar said about that passage: “When he was hungry, Jesus trusted his Father to supply the food, but, if not, he would not adopt the devil’s suggestions.” (Brown, 121). This is the example for us. We will be told all kinds of things that aren’t true, that God explicitly said aren’t true, that deep down we know aren’t true, but unless we are careful, we will still believe them. Remember and obey. But what happens when He blesses? The Danger of Prosperity is Pride As we move into the second half of the chapter, we are told of all the wonderful things that God has in store for the Israelites. Food beyond comprehension, natural resources, and the hope of a future. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But there is a new challenge. There is the challenge to remember to never forget. This is the danger of comfort. What makes comfort dangerous is you begin to forget God. When you were a toddler, how many times do you think you asked your parents for something per day? The answer is billions. You saw your need, so there was no forgetting about your parents or the ability to call them when there is a problem. Once you get older, though, you begin to have a few things figured out (or at least you think you do), and what happens? You start to forget. You stop calling. You really don’t even notice until something blows up in your life. This happens even more so with God. Once you begin to think about how much you’ve grown this year, how much you’ve gotten done, the things you’ve finally got straightened out, oh, watch out. Beware! You’ve begun to lift up your heart. What does it mean to lift up your heart? It means to put it in the place where God should be. A lifted up heart, a prideful heart believes that everything that it has was created by its own work. Who needs God when the money is doing well? Who needs God when you’ve finally “figured out who you are”? Who needs God when the country is stable again? We all do. In order to fight this, we have to recognize that we are all susceptible to it. And it isn’t prosperity’s fault! After all, God is the one who grants these things! The proper purpose of prosperity is praise! That is what we see in verse 10. God gives all of these gifts so that we might praise Him! And when He withholds something, it means that He is giving us something else. If you’ve got a particular sin that you are struggling with, might I suggest interrogating it? What I mean is, see if you can figure out what you are forgetting about God that is leading you to this sin. Sure, we can say that we spend too much money because we are selfish or greedy, but that doesn’t go far enough. You are also forgetting that your joy and fulfillment comes from Christ not stuff. Instead of trying to scroll past that “buy now” button by saying, “Don’t be greedy,” instead say, “Look at how much God has given to me. Look at what God Himself is to me.” Tie your sin to what you are forgetting about God and what He commands you to do. But how do we remember to even do that? How do we keep our minds focused where they need to be? How can we remember to remember? Well, God has given to us a sacrament to do just that. We are going to approach the Lord’s Table here in a few moments, and one of the things that you will hear many times in the liturgy is “do this in remembrance.” Now, there is more than just remembering, but it isn’t any less. When we come to this table we are reminded of what Jesus has done for us in the past and proclaim that work until—what?—He comes again. Our sin is forgiven, and there is a land coming, a future coming. Yet we can be so weighed down from troubles AND triumphs that unless we regularly remind ourselves, regularly come face to face with Christ by faith we will forget. And once we forget, disobedience is never far away. (Brown, 123). Maybe you are here today looking back over this year with regret. Perhaps you think that it hasn’t necessarily been wasted with troubles but has been wasted with sin. Listen to these words of comfort, “Moses tells the Hebrew people that those forty years in the desert had been difficult years, but not wasted ones. Disobedience had kept a whole generation out of a land they might have enjoyed, but God had been with them just the same. When people grieve him, he does not utterly forsake them. If rebels run away from him, he lovingly pursues them, as Bunyan reminded us, ‘with a pardon in his hand’. (Brown, 119) That pardon is carried by a nail-pierced hand, family. So if you realize you’ve got to get back with it, simply remember and obey. I don’t mean earn your way to heaven. I simply mean remember the way God uses the word “remember.” It isn’t just calling it to mind. It means living like this is true. Pardon is here for the asking. Turn from your sin, repent, and put your faith in Christ. It will never be perfect repentance or perfect faith, but it is towards and in the Perfect Savior. Live like that is true. Live like the Father loves you, like the Son has died for you, like the Spirit lives within you. Remember and in that knowledge, obey with joy. Work Cited Raymond Brown, The Message of Deuteronomy: Not by Bread Alone, ed. J. A. Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today (England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993). |
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