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What we have in front of us today is a painful story. We have an unloved woman yearning for the affections of her husband. We have a loved woman who has everything in her life except that which she most desires, a child. We have a passive husband, tossed around by every twist of emotion in the household. We have two other women seen only as objects and means to an end. The sad news is this is all done entirely to themselves. None of this was necessary. All of it was an attempt to control things that cannot be controlled. The glad news is that God is going to turn petty competition and profound longing into the nation of Israel that will one day bring the Messiah. Our two points today: Coveting kills joy through false promises, yet God blesses whether we see it or not. Coveting Kills Joy Through False Promises We hear the word “covet” thrown around pretty casually as just another way to say “want.” I hear people say, “I covet your prayers.” While that’s not a sin to say that, it just isn’t the proper understanding of that word. Coveting is wanting something to the point of being willing to sin to get it. That doesn’t mean that this sin is hard to commit. I can so want time to myself that I ignore prayer. That’s coveting. I can so want well-behaved children, that I’ll try to short-cut the process by being harsh. That’s coveting. I can so want acceptance by friends that I’ll compromise what I believe. Or so want good grades that I’ll cheat on a test. Or so want that toy that I’ll be mean to a sibling. It’s all coveting. At the end of the day it is what I want no matter how I get it. So how does this play out at first? This passage in front of us is neatly divided into four sections. The first and last sections start with an action of the Lord. The Lord sees in verse 31, and the Lord remembers in verse 22. The middle two are the sisters “seeing.” These middle sections display the craziness that results when we covet something and attempt to get it our own way. In this first paragraph, Leah is clearly in pain but isn’t as yet doing anything sinful to alleviate it. To be honest, she participated in the deception of Jacob. She decides to go along with her father’s plan to trick Jacob. Jacob already didn’t love her prior to marriage, and tricking him into marrying her certainly doesn’t help matters. Despite how she got into this position, and at this time in history she was in a rough spot (compassion where it is due), the Lord saw that Leah was hated. God was watching Leah, and acts for the hated one. God sees you, too. There are seasons of life where it feels like everyone is ignoring you, even the ones who shouldn’t be ignoring you. Parents, friends, even spouses can seem distant and distracted. That loneliness feels crushing. But God seems especially attuned to that. He has even experienced it in the person of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when all His disciples fled from Him after one of them directly betrayed Him to death. God knows what it feels like to be alone, to be hated. And He has compassion. He shows this to Leah by causing her to have children, sons even! A son means that the family name will continue, and for this family, the blessing to pass on! You can see Leah’s state of mind in how she names her children. All of these names are puns, play on words. They sound like other Hebrew words for the emotions she feels. She names her first son Reuben which sounds like the Hebrew word for “see.” She feels that now that she has given Jacob a son, a future, a descendant to pass on the blessing, the guarantee of land for future descendants, that she will finally get the love from Jacob that she desires. However, even with one son born, and even with three more to come in these verses, her status doesn’t change from “unloved.” She names her second son Simeon which sounds like shema or “heard.” She understands that the Lord “heard” she was still hated and thus sent a second son. The first son wasn’t enough, but she will find that the second son doesn’t help either. Son number three’s name sounds like the word “join,” Levi. She hopes that her husband will be attached, but even this doesn’t help. Finally, the fourth son is named Judah, sounding like the word “praise.” She is stopping the pursuit of her husband’s love and decides to simply praise God for what He is doing. If she could only see what these sons will do, though. Each of these sons, and all the ones to follow in the rest of our passage, will form the nation of Israel, all twelve tribes. The tribe of Judah is ultimately going to be the kingly tribe, the tribe of David, the tribe of Jesus. Levi is going to produce the priestly tribe, the tribe that will offer sacrifices for the sins of the people, the tribe that will point most clearly to Jesus’ sacrifice. All from the unloved one! You never know what is hidden in your pain. Some of your deepest pains will be the greatest offerings you give to the world. Those pains form you into a person able to serve, understand, and pray for others. Here, Leah channels that pain into praise. She is an example of what to do in this situation. She recognized the the Lord sees, and she worships Him. However, we are about to see what happens when Rachel and Leah see in a different way. God saw Leah with the eyes of compassion, but Rachel sees her with the eyes of competition and envy. Here’s where the “all natural remedies” kick in. Rachel’s seeing causes her to envy her sister and covet her position. This begins by yelling at Jacob for something he can’t control, a fact he angrily reminds her of. AS one scholar notes, “Jacob does not handle the exasperation of Rachel very well. He does not pray to God for his wife nor does he give her any comfort…Neither Jacob nor Rachel are trusting in the LORD to give them children” (Belcher). Yelling comes natural, but it isn’t the solution. The other “all natural” solution is to give Jacob her maidservant to have children with, since that went so well with Sarah and Abraham. Having a concubine was a very normal part of the ancient world, but the Bible never approves of this practice. Here these real women are just being used as baby machines, a practice we moderns do as well with surrogacy. In this practice, the child born to the servant (in this case Bilhah) was fully the child of the mistress (in this case Rachel). This isn’t even fully about having children, as such, but it seems that this is all about competing with Leah. She names her first child “Dan” which sounds like “judged.” The implication here is that God has finally done right by her in giving her a son, sort of (Ross, 511). The second son of Bilhah is called “Naphtali” which sounds like the word for “wrestle.” She feels in this moment that she is winning! Not to get left behind, Leah “sees” the situation, and suddenly the woman of worship enters the wrestling match. She has her own all natural remedies to this spiritual problem of jealousy by deploying her own servant, Zilpah, bearing her two more sons whose names sound like “good fortune” and “happy.” You think we’d be done at this point, right? Everyone has, as far as society is concerned, children. Competition done, right? Can’t be jealous if everything is equal, right? All natural remedies have worked? Nope. Leah’s son finds some mandrakes and gives them to his mother. Mandrakes were a plant considered to enhance the bedroom experience and increase fertility (Matthews). However, ingesting too much of the plant would be poisonous resulting in hallucinations, blurry vision, and even death. The plant has the same compounds we use in anti-nausea pills and those eye drops they put in to dilate your eyes. The fight begins for the mandrakes and reveals that the sisters still are in the same painful spot. Rachel wants them because, really, she still hasn’t had a child. Leah doesn’t want to give them because she still feels unloved by Jacob. All the competition, all that scheming, all those “all natural” remedies resulted in nothing. But we will continue down this path as the wheeling and dealing begin. Rachel sells Jacob to Leah for the night in order to get mandrakes, which Leah takes. Even without the mandrakes, she gets pregnant again, and names her son after a word that sounds like “wages,” a sort of double pun on the sale of mandrakes and on the mistaken idea that God was rewarding her efforts with the servant. She then has another son, and finally a daughter. That just had to be crushing for Rachel. Despite having the mandrakes, yet another all natural remedy it is another two years of no children. Finally, only when the Lord moves, He causes Rachel to have a son. “Joseph” sounds like the Hebrew word for “taken away” meaning this birth has removed the stigma of childlessness, and it sounds like the word for “let there be another son.” What a mess! God blesses whether we see it or not. Now, despite their sinful motives, the Lord blesses. No one ultimately needed concubine children or mandrakes. In fact, pursuing these things never gave them an appreciation for the sons they had. It was never enough. So what do we take away from this? God is blessing you whether you see it or not. Coveting things that God hasn’t given you yet isn’t going to help you see the blessings He has given you already. Modern science is actually waking up to the practice of gratitude. Apparently, scientists can actually see the change in people’s brains when they spend time being grateful for what they have. By all means do that, but as a Christian, you have something even more powerful than that. Again, by all means, be grateful for the things that He has given you. Write them down. But don’t forget to be grateful for the Giver of those gifts. You don’t just have gifts from God, you have the gift OF God. You have a good Father who knows and loves to give good gifts to His children far better than we can (Matthew 7:11; Psalm 84:11; James 1:17)! The climax of those gifts is spelled out in Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” You, as a sinner who offends God daily, has been given forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And as it says in Luke 12:32 ““Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” This world is too hard for you to intentionally forget that you are going to heaven. There are too many things to want in this world for you to not start every day saying, “I’m going to heaven to be with God.” That is the only way to combat your coveting. It’s the only way to combat anxiety, which is just coveting the things that you currently have and are afraid of losing. Stare at the ultimate blessing that you do already have. This doesn’t mean that the shimmer of things in this world goes away completely. God made a good world. There are great things in it. But over time as you practice turning your eyes on Jesus, the things of this world fall into their appropriate place, underneath the glory of Christ.
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One of the great blessings in modern life is the GPS. I don’t listen to directions very well, mostly because they are entirely absent of street names. When my family moved to Jasper, Alabama, at a time before smartphones were widespread, I would tell people that I had just moved there and needed directions to such and such. Their directions would begin with, “Well, do you know where the old Sonic used to be?” I would reiterate that I had just moved here and thus didn’t know where anything used to be! One time someone used an old fallen tree that wasn’t even there anymore as a landmark! Enter the GPS! Finally, no more hazy directions! Everything is laid out clearly on a map to take you right where you want to go. Or so I thought. Abby and I on one trip had to drive through Atlanta. The GPS, ever helpful, suggested that we take a detour off the highways in order to avoid traffic. I pushed “yes” and it took me through some very scary sections of Atlanta. This was a very different path than what brought me into the city! I did get home, but it wasn’t the way I expected. The GPS often makes us think that because a journey starts out one way that it will absolutely continue as it should. We often bring the same attitude to God’s plan for us. We think that because it operated one way for our parents that it will definitely work that way for us. Or even expecting the patterns of our own lives to repeat. When that pattern is disrupted, we can often feel like God is abandoning us. Or if this pattern is interrupted by our own sin, we can feel as though there is simply nothing good that can come from this situation now. Jacob is about to find out how God works. The path of God’s providence is often bumpy, but we will see God work it out to his good. Today, our main focus will be Trust God with the twists. Trust God with the Twists We begin this chapter fresh off his dream at Bethel where God has promised to be with him and produce the same blessings as promised to Abraham. Scholars note that the Hebrew here points to Jacob’s outlook on his future. Where it says “went on his journey” the Hebrew is delightfully phrased that Jacob “picked up his feet,” which is a lovely way of saying that he had a “spring in his step” of sorts (Ross, 501). Life is good! But there is trouble on the horizon. It notes that he came to the “people of the east.” We’ve mentioned this before, the direction “east” is a symbol of sorts of moving away from God. We first see this all the way back in Genesis 3:24 where Adam and Eve are banished “east” out of the Garden. We will see this direction reverse in the New Testament when wise men come “from the east” to meet and worship Jesus. for the moment, Jacob is heading east, heading into hard times. But that trouble looks pretty far away for now, as things begin to fall into a familiar pattern. Jacob approaches a well where he is about to meet (one of) his future wives, Rachel. Right away, we should start thinking about how Isaac’s wife, Jacob’s mother, was discovered. Rebekah, too, was found by a well which Abraham’s servant just so happened to be at right at the time that he was supposed to be there. It looks like a repeat of Genesis 24! But there is one component of this story that is conspicuous in its absence: prayer. The servant before anyone came to the well, he was covering everything in prayer. This is something that is clearly missing in this narrative. Does this mean this is why everything goes wrong for him? Not necessarily. On the one hand, we have examples, particularly in the book of Joshua, where a lack of prayer is a big part of the reason for a lack of success (Joshua 9 and possibly chapter 7). However, we don’t look at our prayer lives as a formula to follow to get what you want. God does many things despite our prayerlessness, as I believe J.C. Ryle once said, but I think we rob ourselves of a lot of joy by not praying specifically to the Lord and see Him answer. In any event, Rachel comes up and Jacob is ecstatic. He rolls away this huge stone all by himself, kiss her and starts crying! Lot of feelings happening right now! She runs off to tell her father Laban, who, as we shall see, is always looking for a deal. After a month long stay, Laban opens the negotiations for the future. Jacob wants to get married, and in that culture, you needed to have something to give the family for a bride price. I know that sounds like a property exchange to our modern ears, but the loss of a daughter in that time was, in fact, a measurable economic loss. She is a shepherdess here, so to give her to Jacob did, indeed, mean that Laban would need someone else to help with the sheep. However, Laban is milking this for everything it is worth. At least one scholar points out that this was beyond even what could be required of a Jewish slave. Six years of labor was the max for that, and he is proposing seven years (Rick Philips). Jacob doesn’t have a whole lot of choice, though, as he has nothing at the moment being homeless and broke (Matthews). Fortunately, he loves Rachel so much, that those seven years fly by as if they were a few days. Rachel isn’t the only character entering this mix. We get a little narrative aside introducing us to the oldest daughter, Leah. There is some discussion as to what is meant by Leah’s eyes being “weak.” Some translations put it “delicate” to try to give a positive spin on it, but I think that the text is trying to be comparative here (Matthews). We are trying to draw a contrast between Leah and Rachel. Beautiful eyes were a sought after beauty standard in the ancient near East, and unfortunately, Leah struggles here. Rachel, however, is given top marks for physical beauty. This passage gives us many points of comparison not just between Leah and Rachel, but also between these sisters and Jacob and Esau. Rachel works out in the fields, similar to Esau, but Leah’s contribution to the family isn’t mentioned. Perhaps she is a woman of the tent, like Jacob (Matthews). There is also the way that they are differentiated. Most other places in the Old Testament refer to daughters by “first” and “second” daughters rather than “older/younger” (Matthews) which, I think, draws further comparison between Esau and Jacob. All of this sets up Laban’s big deception of Jacob, giving Jacob a taste of his own medicine. The question could be reasonably asked, “How on earth does Jacob not notice a different woman on his wedding day, and in particular on his wedding night?” Well, unlike our marriage conventions, the bride would have likely remained veiled the whole ceremony and into the wedding night (Matthews). Wine also would have been freely flowing during the feast after the wedding, so Jacob’s senses were not at their best, especially at night. Here, everything that Jacob used to deceive his father is used to deceive him. Lack of sight, good food, different clothing, and dulled senses are all used to trick Jacob into consummating the marriage with Leah, thus making the marriage irrevocable (Matthews). There is no annulment option, Leah is his wife now, full stop. Jacob is obviously upset, yet Laban says that this is cultural convention! It is just not how things are done around here. The oldest goes first. Ouch. However, Jacob is told that Rachel can be his wife at the end of the week if he serves anotherseven years afterwards. Once again, Jacob is in no real position to argue, so he agrees to these terms and marries Rachel after the week is complete. All of these twists and turns are things that God works through. Was Laban wrong to deceive Jacob like this? Yes it was, and Laban is going to get his own just desserts later for this. Was Jacob wrong to marry multiple wives? Yes, as God always intended to have a marriage be one man and one woman. While it hadn’t been set down in official law yet, Scripture never approves of polygamy and in fact goes out of its way to show how these marriages always lead to conflict. We will see how this works in that last part of the chapter when we get there next Sunday. Despite all of the sin, God is going to work through even this polygamous marriage built on lies to bring about the twelve tribes of Israel. Ultimately, all of this will produce the Savior of the world, Jesus Himself. While Jacob is getting something of a poetic justice here, Jesus would bear the ultimate occasion of being sinned against. He would be murdered on the cross for crimes He didn’t commit, and endure our just punishment for sin. He didn’t betray, yet was betrayed. He didn’t lie, but was treated as one. He didn’t murder but endured its punishment for you and me. He endured the consequences due to us Jacobs so that we might go free. Unlike Jacob, Jesus wasn’t stuck in that situation forever. But He paid for all our sins with His death, and having done so was raised from sin’s penalty to eternal life again. So what is our takeaway from this here? We need to trust the providence of God even when there are twists in the road. But what does that really look like? We can tend to think that this means that we are simply to become passive people resigned to our fate. “Well, God is in control, so whatever happens, happens. Nothing I can do.” No. This doesn’t mean passive resignation but prayerful participation. Look how Abraham’s servant went about finding a wife for Isaac. He brought the camels, brought the gifts, traveled the miles, talked to the families, but every single step was covered in prayer. Nothing was assumed to be “I got this. I don’t need to bother praying about it.” Bother praying about it! Yes, God will work despite your prayerlessness, but whey wouldn’t you want to participate in His work? We don’t pray to change God’s mind, but to change ours to reflect His! If nothing else, a prayerful approach to life reminds you that there is more to consider in your decisions than how much time or money it costs. I want you to try something this week. Pick two or three things that you just normally do without thinking. Maybe it is safety on your commute, productivity at work, creativity in a home project, your use of social media, how you play basketball, how you go to sleep, your interactions with your children, the things you worry about when you have a rare moment of quiet, and pray very specifically for those things this week. Jesus does tell us to pray for our daily bread, doesn’t He? Just see how differently you view those things after praying for them for a week. If you want extra points, write them down and see how God answers them. I’m not promising you’ll have an answer within a week or that it’ll be the answer you want. But I am promising that if you will take the time to notice, God’s bumpy providence is leading you towards Himself. How to do this practically? I like a system that John Piper has used and one that I use every time I preach. It is called APTAT. Admit. You admit that you are not able to do the thing that Jesus has called you to. Pray for help. Take Hold of a Promise (find a promise in Scripture relevant to your situation). Act. Do what you know you need to do! Thank. Thank God for how He worked in that situation. It is a very simple thing, but I have found great comfort in it.
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.
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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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It has been said that the best way to sum up the book of Revelation is to say, “Jesus wins.” Now, that is true as far as it goes, but this doesn’t go far enough. The book tells us more than just Jesus wins, because it tells us how Jesus wins. Details are important, because details give us a clearer picture of who Jesus is and always was. This scene is an important detail in our Portrait of Jesus series because it helps form the final word of the subtitle I stole from Beth McGrew for this series: Jesus, Meek and Wild. This is the wild part. Jesus isn’t a general leading from the rear. His garments have blood on them. He is getting personally involved. His eyes are described as flames, and His mouth wields a sword! This is a very different picture of a Lamb being led to slaughter, but I think a careful study of this passage will enhance your view of Jesus. For one, this picture will help us appreciate how patient Jesus was. At any moment, He would have been justified to slaughter everyone there, especially at the cross. But He doesn’t. I think that this also shows us where Christmas is ultimately going. We rightly talk about that Christmas begins in the manger and goes to the cross, but that isn’t all there is. The cross is the redemptive moment for us, but the ultimately victorious moment is here. It begins in the manger, and it ends on the Throne, all enemies and threats to it being decisively defeated. Our King Will Return While the book of the Revelation is complex, what comes here in this chapter is not overly difficult to understand. While we simply don’t have time to unravel all of the arguments as to when or precisely how this takes place, let’s simply look at what it is showing us about Who is doing all this work. We begin in verse 11 with an introduction to a figure sitting on a white horse riding into battle. As this passage unfolds, it becomes blindingly obvious that this is Jesus riding this horse. There are many names and titles that are given to Jesus that when they are all stacked together, you paint this picture of a really imposing figure! He is called Faithful and True. This title is given to Jesus earlier in the letters that are sent to the churches (3:7, 14). He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and our faithful High priest, but there is something that is not often talked about: Jesus brings war. His eyes are described as a flame of fire, crowns stacked on top of each other on His head, and most graphically, is wearing a robe that is dipped in blood! Let’s take a look at that robe for a moment. Some might think that the blood on the robe is actually His own blood. After all, His is known for shedding His blood for our redemption, isn’t He? Obviously, yes, that is still true, but as always, we have to look at the context of the rest of the passage to see what is going on. Verse 15 gives us a pretty good hint as to what exactly this blood is. The last line of that verse mentions Him treading the winepress of God’s wrath, and this image isn’t something that John is coming up with on His own. One key thing to understand about Revelation is that there is a reference to the Old Testament practically every three verses. This is just loaded with call backs and allusions to the Old Testament, and this is one of them. Specifically, this is pointing back to Isaiah 63:1-3. God is speaking in this chapter, and He arrives, as it were, with stained garments, stained with blood. They are splattered like one who’s garments are stained from a wine press. A winepress would have looked like a small pool dug into the ground and lined with stone. You would pour the grapes into the pool and then stomp around with your bare feet to press all the grapes down to squash the juice out of it. This would not be the time to wear your best garment. Can you imagine the mess you would make on a tunic stomping around a wading pool of wine? Can you also imagine what this would be like from the perspective of a grape? This is utter destruction. This is absolutely apocalyptic! This is the image that is ascribed to Jesus. He has dominated His enemies like a winepress of grapes, and His robe tells the tale. He has stomped them, and now He rules with a rod of iron. This is a rule that is not going to expire. This is a definitive victory that was prophesied all the way back in Psalm 2 . This judgment has been a slow burn, and absolutely no one can be said to be surprised by it. God has been announcing that it is coming for the last 3,000 years. When Jesus comes to reign, He takes that title of King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The battle that ensues here is quite definitive. And quick. We are going to skip down to verse 20 showing that the beast and false prophet (without getting into all the ways that we can look at the specific identity of this beast and prophet, let’s suffice it to say that these are Satanic agents bent on harming the Church). The heads of this resistance (with Satan himself bound up in the next chapter) are cast into hell, and “the rest” are slain by the sword. Who are “the rest”? Well, these are the kings of the earth and their armies. This would be absolutely terrifying to witness on the horizon, yet Christ defeats them all with His Word. This isn’t even a contest or challenge. What happens to all the bodies? Well, the birds are commanded to come to a feast. Here is God still taking care of the birds. What you’ll notice is that no one gets special treatment, either. Kings, captains, mighty men, animals, free men, and even slaves. There are no social categories that excuse from the wrath of God. There is no one above the law and no one too lowly to be noticed. Everyone is equal before the judgment of God. If this chapter were to be fulfilled today everyone opposed to God from the halls of power to the projects lie slain. The only thing that delivers anyone from a fate like that is a relationship with the King. We can try to soften this, but there is no way to do so. Some might say that this is just symbolic, and in a way, they are correct. After all, Jesus isn’t literally going to produce a sword from between His teeth. “But” as one scholar asks, “if that is a mere symbol, what will be the reality?” (Wilcock, 187). That’s a good question. This wedding ring that I have on is meant to symbolize everlasting love for my wife. But this circular piece of metal in and of itself pales in comparison to wedded love. The same is true of God’s wrath. It is put here in terms that we can understand, but this isn’t even the half of what God’s wrath really looks like when it is spilled in judgement on the last day. This is a very different picture from a wriggling infant from Luke 2, isn’t it? So why bring all this up now? After all, this is Christmas, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be ending things on a little bit more of an encouraging note? Well, for one, this is who Jesus is. As one scholar puts it, “Apart from the reference to Psalm 2 (‘he will rule them’), there is not even a verb in the future tense anywhere in these verses. They describe not what Christ is going to do but what he is: conquering King, righteous Judge, Captain of the armies of heaven.” (Wilcock, 183) If we are going to do a portrait of Christ, we have to include the meek and the wild. So why are we often uncomfortable with this picture? I think there are a couple of possibilities. 1) We might have forgotten how awful sin is, and that this is actually the right response. This is actually what justice looks like. Jesus isn’t overdoing here. He isn’t flying off the handle and doing things that He will later regret. Sin really is that bad, and it is a passage like this that reminds us of that. 2) We might shudder to bring this kind of Jesus to the world who expects Jesus to be “Nice.” Of course, we have defined “nice” by the world’s standards of non-judgement. But Jesus is gong to judge, and no amount of pretending is going to change that, so it is, in fact, not nice to hide that fact from people! There is a warning as well as an invitation around Christmas time. But why should we want to have this perspective on Jesus? One, we need a proper fear of the Lord. There is a place to be reminded that our Lord is a lion. Not safe, but He is good. Let us not be found on the other end of that sword. Two, this should comfort us in that no one is going to get away with anything forever. When we ask, “Is there no justice in this world?” We can point to this passage and say, “It is on its way.” Three, we need a proper compassion for the lost. This is their fate if they step out of this world without Christ. Remembering these things is what helps us pray for the most despicable people in our world. Those who oppose Christ will one day be slain and fed to the birds. Then it gets worse. So pray for them. Tell them about the gospel, because the same person who could be covered in their blood shed His. Finally, we need to be reminded that this same King is our King. He bled for us so that we don’t have to be the slain in the final battle. We have been delivered from this fate, if you are a believer in Christ. He spared us. He calls us to go and spread the good news that more of the world can be spared, too! Seeing this kind of picture shows how merciful God is. Jesus isn’t some kind of pushover that felt guilted into saving us. He isn’t some sort of overly permissive parent that just couldn’t stand the idea of punishing. No, He is a King radically committed to His own glory and justice but is yet a gracious and merciful God who delights to show mercy. He loves to, despite His obvious hatred of sin, despite His obvious disgust and wrath against rebellion, show mercy to the undeserving. The same one who comes riding in with bloody robes is the same who rescued you. That is your Champion on that horse. So, y’all, don’t fret this Christmas. There is so much evil in this world. That fact is undeniable. Satan doesn’t take Christmas week off. There will be more sin and tragedy during this time just like the rest of the year. But its time is coming to an end. Unrepentant evildoers find their end here. Evil finds its end here, the birth of Christ hails the destruction of the wicked. You are not being abandoned in this world. This fact is why Christians can sing in the ICU. It is why we should sing loudly and heartily here. We sing as people who have been redeemed from this fate. We sing as those who love our enemies and are praying for them to the same loving and gracious God Who saved us. We sing as those who have been waiting in a dark night yet know that the sun will rise soon. Jesus isn’t done yet. Redemption has only begun. So sing, Christian. Rest today. The fate of the world does not rest on your shoulders. Mom and Dad, making Christmas magic for your family is retelling this story to your children. Give them this foundation of hope. Enchant their world with the true story of the Hero Who beats the Beast. Grandma and Grandpa, I know you often worry about the world that is being left to your kids and grandkids. I can’t promise anything in the short term, and even if I could, it wouldn’t be better than what is here. The world is in good hands. Everything is going to be set right. Kids, you have a real Hero looking after you. You don’t have to be afraid of anything. Really. Get used to that. The world tries to scare you, but we have a God who doesn’t want you to be scared. He told you what the end of the movie is so you can enjoy it. Rest today, everyone. Celebrate this week. I know, there is so much going on. Please, try to take a moment. Everything is going to be ok. Rest, and then, in the New Year, let’s get back to it. Let’s go and win the world. It is already won in Christ, so let’s be involved in showing the world that victory. Work Cited Michael Wilcock, The Message of Revelation: I Saw Heaven Opened, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 187.
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We are going to take a look at one of the most complicated and comforting mysteries in the Bible. How is Jesus in one Person able to have a fully divine nature and a fully human nature? There is one sense in which that mystery is simply left at that: a mystery. As one theologian put it: “We are simply told what Jesus is, without any attempt to show how He became what He is…It has always recognized the incarnation as a mystery which defies explanation. And so it will remain, because it is the miracle of miracles” (Berkhof, 321). But just because we can’t explain how this mystery works, doesn’t mean we can’t be awed by viewing it. I can’t possibly explain how a star manages for most of its life not to be crushed by its own gravity or how a hunk of rock and gases emit light, but I can still be captured by its beauty in the night sky. Now, unlike a star, Jesus is more than someone to admire and ultimately worship and obey. He’s not less than that, but the angle that I want to take a look at today is the comforting aspect of knowing who our God is. The last couple of weeks, we have been examining the Person of Jesus. The first week of Advent, we look at Jesus’ divinity, as clearly seen in John 1:1-14. Next, we saw the humanity of Jesus out of Luke 2:52. Now, we are going to look at those two elements together and see what it means for Jesus to be the Godman. Again, how this works is a mystery beyond human mental capability, but what this means for us is well within our grasp to understand and worship. We will consider this chapter under a couple of broad headings. The first is Jesus is the King of all Kings. Second, Jesus is the reconciler of all things, and Third, Therefore, Jesus is your sole Hope Jesus is the King of all Kings This letter was written to the church because the church at Colosse was beset by a culture that was very afraid of spiritual powers. The people in the area were concerned that angels, demons, other gods might have an impact on things like their crops, so keeping them happy was very important. It is difficult for us to imagine the level of concern that this would bring because for most of us, having food is a given. The thought that all your crops might die because you didn’t offer a little sacrifice to the gods would be very powerful. Here, Paul is reminding everyone who is really in charge. Speaking of Christ, Paul says that He is the revealer of God, which is just another way of saying that He is God Himself. To look at the face of Christ is to look at the face of God. He is called the firstborn of all creation not because He was created Himself, but because “he existed before creation.” (McLaurin, Lexham Theological Wordbook). This is made explicit in the next verse (16) by saying that all things, including any and all authority figures on Earth or in the spiritual realm were created through Him and for Him. This means that not only was everything created by Christ, but everything was created to serve Christ as well! However, I want us to look at verse 17 closely. Not only did He create all things, but He is the one who holds all things together. All things, rulers spiritual and earthly included, not only started to exist because of Jesus, but they also continue to exist because of Jesus! The word translated “hold together” or “endure” is in the perfect tense, meaning this is something that happened in the past that has enduring effect to the present. In other words He has held things all together and continues to do so. So if Jesus ever wanted to remove someone from power, all He has to do is relax. He just has to stop sustaining that person’s life and they immediately stop. He doesn’t have to figure out how to stop this person, come up with a plan to defeat them, He just has to stop holding them together. This comprehensive control should bring us a lot of comfort and direct us on how to deal with problems in our world. Nothing that a ruler of any sphere does is outside the realm of God’s control, so this means that we do not have to go outside the moral limits that God has placed on us. He does not need us to “do something—anything” to protect ourselves. He’s got it under control. In a recently relevant example, we do not murder insurance company CEOs even if we think their business model is bad. Without getting into the weeds about when is a killing justified, we should be able to agree at least to that distinction. To a more specific application to our group here, we don’t have to spend inordinate time worrying about the future government or corporations do. They cannot oppose God’s plans. They can only advance them. That doesn’t mean our lives will be easier for it or that we resign our responsibilities to be good and lawful citizens. It takes the sting of concern and sleeplessness out of the equation. We serve a powerful God. Not only do we serve a powerful God, but that same God is head over our Church. What does it mean to be head? It can be thought of in two ways: God directly orders the church what to do or God takes care of the church like a brain cares for its body. As scholars point out, “The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and some commentators argue in favor of a combination of the two (see Bruce 1984, 66–71).” (Brown, Colossians). In other words, God (the same one who makes and sustains the entire universe, including our enemies) pays particular attention to the Church. How is Jesus able to do that? Because, as we see in verse 19, all the fullness of God dwells in Him. Jesus has a completely divine nature. Jesus is not some limp-wristed hippy. Jesus is the Reconciler of All Things However, even more powerfully, we see in verse 20 the idea that Jesus brings reconciliation between God and all things. This is only possible by the blood of His cross. Have you ever been kinda weirded out by how often Christians sing about blood? This isn’t because we want to be gross, but this is because that is the most important part of our doctrine. In order to have reconciliation, as we have covered before, there has to be blood spilled. And it can’t be just any old human blood. First of all humans are sinners now, and a tainted sacrifice isn’t going to do anything. You can’t substitute one criminal for another. Each criminal has to pay their own fine. Second, even if you could find a perfect human being, that person in their human nature is finite. God’s wrath against sin is infinite. At most, the perfect human being could suffer for all eternity to spring one other human being from hell. One human being only couldn’t save anyone else. However, Jesus isn’t just human. He is also God. The Person of Jesus has the attributes of BOTH humanity and divinity. He possesses the ability to bleed and die in His human nature, but His person is infinite because He also has all the divine attributes. He can reconcile all things because He is infinite! Jesus is the only person in the universe who could do this! He is the only person to have divine and human attributes. This is why He must be both. His sacrifice is sufficient for all things, but there will be those who reject their own mercy and refuse to surrender their lives to Jesus. Even this, for reasons beyond our ability to cover here, is part of God’s plan as well. Therefore, Jesus is Your Sole Hope As we settle into our final verses here, Paul turns to emphatically address the recipients of this letter. The “you” there is plural and emphatic. Translated correctly, and Southern English is the best to translate this word, Paul is saying, “and Y’ALL…” Paul is directly addressing this specific church, and we who are also united in Christ are included here. We, here at Knollwood Presbyterian Church today, were once alienated and hostile and evil towards God, but we have been reconciled, brought back into a good relationship with God, through Christ’s body of flesh. Our sin had to be dealt with. Notice also that this reconciliation happens with Jesus. Note that He reconciles all things to Himself! Christ is the offended one, along with the rest of the Godhead! Yet, He is the one who suffers, bleeds, and dies to make it right. It doesn’t get more gracious and merciful than that. So what’s a person to do? How on earth do we respond to that? Well, the emphatic “y’all’s” continue in the following verses. He has done all of this so that we might be blameless and holy before Him. This doesn’t mean that Jesus started the process with us finishing it. No, no! Jesus has made us perfectly holy before God on the cross. Period. And from that new status of holy, we begin to shape our lives to live up to this new name. The life that God intends for us is a holy one. God isn’t calling us to a lower life to serve Him. He is simply redefining for our sinful minds what the good life is. The good life is a holy life, which is why He is calling us to it. We are called to continue in the faith, being stable and steadfast, and not shifting from the hope of the gospel. Now, as one commentator points out, the “if” isn’t Paul saying that Christians can lose their salvation. He is just saying, “Don’t fall away”! (Wilson, 227). He quotes J.I. Packer as summing it up this way, “The only proof of past conversion is present covertedness.” (ibid, 227). In closing, what does a stable and steadfast life that looks to the hope of the gospel look like? Well, it begins by realizing, like we said last week, that everything here said is in fact true. It is an actual reality that the God whom you serve is capable of all these things and has actually purchased your redemption. You actually need to remind yourself of this every day. I heard a Piper sermon this week where he talked about when he forgets about the forgiveness he has in Christ. He said something to the effect of, we have people in here who feel the guilt of their sin as they are going to bed, and some feel totally insecure of their place in Christ in the morning when they first wake up. He said he was a “morning guilt” person! He feels totally secure as he is going to bed. I’m actually the same way. In that fog of the morning, all the regrets and sins of the past rush to accuse. It is at that very moment that you have to remind yourself of the gospel. Once you are re-stabilized, run the rest of your life through that truth. You are reconciled to God, the Creator of all the world, the one who can destroy enemies just by relaxing, through His pouring out His lifeblood on the cross in utter humiliation. There was actual pain involved to remove that sin. Will you now, keeping that in mind, contribute more sin by yelling at your kids? By arguing with your spouse? By gossiping (a form of immodesty)? What sin do you commit that is worth that? Do you really need another hour of scrolling when your Bible hasn’t been touched in a week? Is there really something more glorious to spend your time thinking about? And then, once that truth of the glorious Christ has caused you to sin less and enjoy Him more, you will not be able to help yourself from sharing Him with others. You evangelize things and people you love all the time. Look at grandparents! How long can you even go in conversation with them without them bringing the little tykes up, especially if they are proud of them? If you even mention my kids, I am already reaching for my phone to show you a picture! I don’t even have to scroll far to show you one! Let us be that way with Christ. Let us adore Him. We can’t do that if we don’t know Him. And we can’t do that if we don’t remind ourselves regularly about Him. We don’t forget because He is forgettable. We forget because we are sinful. Fight to learn; fight to remember. Then enjoy Him. Announce to the world, “Joy! The Lord has come.” Works Cited Alisair Wilson, Colossians, ESV Expository Commentary, Crossway. L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 321. Dougald McLaurin III, “Ancestry and Posterity,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014). Derek R. Brown, Colossians, ed. Douglas Mangum, Lexham Research Commentaries (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013), Col 1:15–23 .
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Interestingly, one of the harder things for the ancient peoples to believe about Jesus was that He was truly human. When a person rises from the dead, it isn’t too difficult to believe that they are truly divine, but the idea that Jesus was also truly human was a little much. Many at that time thought that Jesus only “appeared” to be human, walking around the earth like some sort of phantom. It was just too hard to imagine. It is hard for us to conceive as well. It is hard for us to express that God experienced limits in the person of Jesus. It is hard for us to believe that Jesus actually does understand where we are coming from. He doesn’t know our weaknesses in just an academic sense. He has actually experienced our troubles physically AND emotionally. All those things that we would say makes us human from a theological understanding to a popular understanding were true of Jesus. There are practical reasons for exploring this doctrine. I think the area that this improves the most immediately is patience in the hard things of life. Military training is a really hard thing to get through, particularly if you want to join the best of the best. For example, I heard one sort of training exercise where a recruit had to run across the beach, fill his mouth with salt water, run back to a bucket way too far away, spit the water into the bucket, and then go back for another mouthful, continuing this exercise until the bucket was full. Once full, the instructor kicked the bucket over and flatly said, “Do it again.” Now, you might think that the instructor is just trying to torture the recruit until you hear that the instructor was once a recruit. The instructor has seen combat. He actually knows what is coming, and sees the ability to follow orders even through great disappointment and fatigue as important to build in the coming generation. If the instructor were just a civilian, a non-combatant, the temptation would be to stuff him in the bucket, but because the recruit knows that this instructor has not only done this exercise himself and has survived in part because of it, he will continue with the training. Jesus doesn’t ask you to suffer without having done so Himself. Jesus will never ask you to go somewhere He hasn’t gone, suffer something that He hasn’t suffered, because at the end of the day, no matter what we suffer, Jesus endured the very wrath of God on the cross. So let’s examine this doctrine that we especially celebrate at Christmas time, the incarnation, God taking on human nature, on Jesus being fully human. Jesus is truly human What does it mean to be human? This is a question that we are increasingly wrestling with today, but the Bible answers that in Genesis 1 as a creature made in God’s image. They come in two flavors, male and female, but both are equally made in God’s image, both equally human. At the core, that is what it means to be human. There are many other attributes that are found with that identity that are physical (arms, legs, eyes, that sort of thing) and some that are less easily seen (the ability to think, the possession of a soul). As humans, we are creatures of God’s creation. This means that we are not God and are different from Him. God is eternal, having neither beginning nor end, nor having any real boundaries whatever. He is outside of space and time and has nothing on which He depends (like air, blood, or food). We are very different. We can only be in one place at one time and are wholly dependent on all kinds of things. One of the very first people we depend on is a mother. Jesus had one, too! One scholar noted that we often talk about the “virgin birth” of Jesus, but the birth itself really was quite ordinary. What was remarkable, though, was the conception (John Frame). Mary never knew a man, yet she carried the embryonic Christ in her womb. Just like us, half of Jesus’ genetic material came from Mary. The other half from the Holy Spirit. Jesus would have had physical characteristics that would have made Him recognizable as Mary’s son. Perhaps He got her nose or her smile. Ok, you may say, Jesus had to enter the world in some way, but what about once He was here? Did Jesus really need to be nursed or go to school? Yes and yes. Just like any other child, Jesus had to learn things. This is why our passage says that He grew (or progressed) in wisdom and stature. At one point in His life, He was two feet tall and had to grow. The Gospel of Luke records in chapter 1:80 that the baby John the Baptist grew and the exact same word is used to describe Jesus in Luke 2:40. By the same token, he had to learn, which is why it is said that He progressed in wisdom. He had a fully human mind that needed to learn and memorize. It may sound surprising to phrase it this way, but from the outside, there would be nothing special about Jesus. I know “Away in a Manger” says that “the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes” but that’s ridiculous. All babies cry, especially when they are woken up by a cow. Jesus would have been no different. So can we say that Jesus was dependent as an adult? In His humanity, yes he was. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, in Matthew 4 it had been 40 days since He had anything to eat, and the text says that He was hungry. Jesus wasn’t pretending to be hungry. He really was hungry, and not in a “oops, I forgot to eat lunch today” sort of hungry but a “I haven’t eaten in nearly a month and a half” sort of hungry. Jesus’s body is basically breaking down muscle at this point. Jesus knows what it means to be starving. He knows what it means to be emotional “weeping (Luke 19:41; John 11:35), being moved (John 12:27), feeling grief (Matt. 26:38), being furious (John 2:17)” (As Bavinck points out in his dogmatics). Now, why are we going over this is such exhaustive detail? Well, believe it or not, it is critically important for our salvation. It was said by the ancient theologian, John of Damascus, “that which is unassumed is unredeemed.” What that means is Jesus has to be like us in every way because if Jesus was, say, missing a human mind, then it wouldn’t be changed in our salvation. We sin with our minds as much as we sin with our hands, and every sin needs to be paid for. Not only that, but every act of goodness has to be done as well. We need to not only avoid sin but accomplish righteousness in all our members. Jesus has to be righteous in every respect in every member we have. This is why He must be like us in ALMOST every way. Jesus is sinless in every way Now, why do I say “almost” every way? Well, there is one crucially important difference between Jesus and us: sinlessness. Hebrews 4:15 tells us very clearly, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, [and here is the key phrase] yet without sin.” Jesus not only never sinned, but didn’t have a sinful nature. Now, why do we stress all these things? Why is it so important for Jesus to be fully human yet without sin? Well, there are a few reasons, with the help of Augustine, why this is important to us. Jesus needs to be our perfect sacrifice. Jesus being without sin is an absolutely critical difference between us and Jesus. Without this being true, Jesus could do nothing for us. If Jesus was a sinner, then He would have to pay for His own sins, and there would be no way for Him to pay for ours. That is what the priests of the Old Testament had to do as the writer of Hebrews points out in Hebrews 7:27 “He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.” (Letham, 531). Jesus needs to be our re-creation. Now, you may say, “Wait a minute! I thought he was like us in every respect. To be human is to be a sinner, so what’s the deal?” Well, being a sinner wasn’t the original design of humanity. Adam and Eve were originally sinless. Humans being sinners is only a given after Genesis 3. Taking the original design for human beings means that being righteous is what it means to be truly human. We’ve had a number of food recalls lately because certain diseases have gotten into spinach or ice cream, or something of that nature. If someone’s only experience with these foods is with the contaminated ones, that person may assume that sickness simply comes with ice cream. But we would not say, not that original ice cream was this way. So if we wanted to show what true ice cream was supposed to be, it would need to be remade. It would need to be re-created. That is what Jesus is doing here. Jesus’s perfection is the picture of what it means to be human, and His work is restoring us to true humanity. The ancient theologian Augustine sees sin as not just corruption, but a corruption that is sliding us into non-existence. After all, sin is moving away from God, and God is “being” itself. For Jesus to save us, we need to be re-created, and that is just what He is doing. And what better person to recreate us than the person who made us in the first place? (Augustine, 93). When we are united to Christ by faith, our souls are restored (Psalm 23:3). We are given a new nature, the nature we were originally created to have. To be a Christian is to be human. Now, of course, we still are living in our corrupted flesh here on earth warring with the Spirit as Galatians 5:17 points out, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” But one day that is going to be remade as well! Jesus needs to be our example. We need to be shown how to be human, and Jesus does that in His life. John Frame, one of my favorite theologians, points to 1 Peter 2:21 to make this point: “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” And it isn’t just the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” part of Jesus’ ethic (as revolutionary and difficult as that is on its own), Frame points out that following Jesus’s footsteps necessarily involves self-sacrifice, even to the point of death (Frame, 885). He points to Philippians 2:5–8 “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” If we want to describe ourselves as loving, that’s what we need to do according to 1 John 3:16 “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” We have a Savior who laid down His life for us. I mean, it was humiliating enough just to become human, but to become human in this sinful world, AND die for it is simply staggering (Frame, 883, quoting John Murray). Think back to the worst sin you’ve committed, the one that haunts you in the silence of the dark. Know that Jesus knew about that sin and all the other ones. He died for you anyway. And He could only do that by taking on human nature. So what does this mean for us today? We have a God Who understands us intimately and calls us to a sacrificial life of righteousness. He has already gone before us, so let us follow after Him. |
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