God’s presence & promise

Introduction

A couple of years ago, I did a course on Christian mentoring or mentoring Christian leaders. I found the course quite helpful in many ways, but one of the strategies that it encouraged, especially in entering into mentoring relationships, was to share life stories. Have you ever had the opportunity to share your life story? It’s a great experience. It’s a great experience to hear someone’s life experience. It’s a great way to get to know somebody. I was reflecting just after being at Dennis’s funeral a week or so back, how sad it was that I had to wait for someone to die to actually hear something of their life story. It would have been much better if we’d had the opportunity to get to know each other earlier.

Sharing life stories is not only great for learning about somebody else’s life, but sharing your own story is a great way to learn about yourself and to reflect on the experiences and the people and the events that have made you the person you are. If you’ve never had that opportunity, even if you’re not preparing to share it with somebody, I’d encourage you to take some time. It’ll take you a couple of hours or maybe a few shorter sessions to write down, to tell your own story and to reflect on all those events and people and places that have made you the person you are today.

Perhaps to start off, can you remember the time when you first realized, really realized, that God loved you? You might have heard it from when you were a child in church or Sunday school, whatever, but the time when it really sunk in that God loved you and accepted you as you are can be a very significant moment. Or do you remember the time when you chose to follow Jesus, to give your life to him? Now, some people have really dramatic conversion stories and they make a great story. For many of us, it’s a much more slow, gradual growth in understanding, but it’s significant how it happens. God works with us different ways.

In today’s passage that we’re going to read in a moment, we’re going to read about a very significant event in the life of Jacob. It’s part of our series from Genesis on the stories of the patriarchs. We’re going to hear about a very significant event in the life of Jacob, the third of the patriarchs. And this event for him was so significant that it not only changed him, but it entered into the consciousness of the whole nation that bore his name and was remembered and influenced them for the rest of their history really. So, we’re going to listen as we read the story together as Grant reads the story. We’re going to pick up the story from where we finished last week, and just in case you weren’t here last week, we’ll do a bit of a recap as we go along.

In last week’s passage, we saw how Jacob and his mother Rebecca conspired to trick Jacob’s father Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing that according to custom should have gone to Esau. Isaac was now old and blind, couldn’t see who he was dealing with, thought he recognized the voice but was confused. Anyway, Jacob and Rebecca tricked Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing that belonged to Esau. Esau was understandably not very happy, and we pick up the story hearing about his response.

God works through the messiness of human existence

Dysfunctional Families

Whenever I hear these stories of the patriarchs and the stories about Jacob in particular, it never ceases to amaze me how God works out his purposes and his plans and how he keeps his promises through the messiness of human existence. And I find that not only amazing but encouraging also because if God could do it then, he can still do it now. He can still work through the messy and broken world that is our world. If God could work through flawed and dysfunctional families like Abraham’s, Isaac’s, and Jacob’s, then he can still do it, maybe even through families like yours or mine. When it comes to the stories of the patriarchs, words like flawed and dysfunctional, if anything, are an understatement. These are crazy stories. They’re really messy families, and it’s helpful for us to realize that because it helps us to realize we don’t have to be perfect for God to work through us.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have seen how conniving, devious Jacob first stole his brother, Esau’s birthright, the rights of the firstborn. Of course, Jacob wouldn’t have said he stole them. He would have said he bought them or he traded them. Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of stew. The scriptures comment that he showed contempt for his birthright in treating it so lightly. So, they both got problems. Jacob swindled his brother out of the birthright, and then he goes on to trick his own father into giving him the blessing that should have been Esau’s, blatant lying as he stood there in front of Isaac and said, “I am your son, Esau,” when it was Jacob. Jacob is devious and plotting and scheming. Esau seems to be ruled by his stomach to give away his birthright just for a meal when he was feeling a bit hungry.

Holding up a mirror to ourselves

Where did they learn such behavior? Could it be that Jacob learned such behavior from his mother Rebecca, who was actually the driving force behind the plan to trick Isaac? Did Esau learn to be ruled by his stomach from his father Isaac, who it seems, insisted on a good meal before he was prepared to give the parental blessing? It’s long been said that the way to a man’s heart is through stomach, but are men really so easily ruled by their stomach and by their passions? Don’t answer that, not out loud, anyway, because neither men or women come up very well in this story. In fact, these stories have a horrible habit of holding up a mirror to ourselves and exposing the frailty and the fallenness of our own characters at times, and this story is certainly no example.

Isaac himself can be quite capable of being devious and underhand. It’s not immediately obvious, but he’s planning to do in secret what should be done before witnesses. Normally, when you bless the firstborn son, the practice was to have witnesses there to be a part of that process. Isaac is deliberately trying to do this in secret. He’s saying to Esau, “Go and get me a meal and I’ll bless you.” Doesn’t tell anybody else. Rebecca overhears the conversation, but it would suggest that he actually knew about the prophecy given to Rebecca before Esau and Jacob were born that the older would serve the younger contrary to normal practice, but he doesn’t like it and he’s deliberately trying to arrange things so that his favorite son, Esau, would get the blessing. Dangerous practice.

Dysfunctional behavior

In this family, we see all kinds of dysfunctional behavior. We see parents playing favorites with children. We see the husband deceiving the wife, the wife deceiving the husband. We see the siblings fighting with each other and deceiving each other. Not a recipe for a happy family, maybe a really good script for a soap opera and all too common in our world, but it doesn’t make for good families. Indeed, this family will be torn apart by these devices. As we’ll see in a moment, Jacob has to leave, and Rebecca, for whom Jacob is her favorite son, will never see him again. She dies before he ever comes back to the family. They pay a price for their dysfunction. Esau is very angry with Jacob and he consoles himself by planning to kill Jacob as soon as Isaac dies. Rebecca hears about it, tells him to run away to her family back in Haran, and then very cleverly, she finds a way to manipulate Isaac to make him think it’s his idea to send Jacob away. She goes to Isaac and says, “Can’t stand these local Hittite women. I’d die if Jacob married one of them.” So Isaac thinks, “Yeah, he’s probably right.” So he calls Isaac in and blesses him and sends him back to their ancestral family to find a wife there. He’s got no idea that he’s being manipulated. It’s just the way the dynamics work in this family.

God’s presence and promise

Isaac Blesses Jacob

This is where chapter 28 starts. Isaac, quite oblivious of Rebecca’s scheming, blesses Jacob and sends him off to Haran to find a wife from their ancestral family. Notice the words of Isaac’s blessing. Particularly, verse four is the prayer that God would pass on to Jacob and his descendants the blessings he promised originally to Abraham. It would seem that Isaac has at least begun to come to terms with the fact that Jacob would be the boss, that the older Esau would serve the younger. So, he’s giving this blessing, the blessings that were given originally to Abraham, passed on to Isaac, he’s now passing them on to Jacob. We will see as we go through this story and through the rest of the Old Testament that God will keep his promise to Abraham and all the scheming, all the plotting, all the planning will not change God’s ability to carry out his purposes and plans. In fact, there’s nothing that can be done to frustrate God’s purposes.

I’m going to skip over verses 6 to 9 in this passage. It’s about Esau and his decision to not marry a Hittite wife. Maybe he’s making some progress, learning a few lessons there. The main focus is on Jacob, so we’re going to jump through to verse 10. We find Jacob fleeing from Beersheba in the south, heading north to Haran. At the end of the first day, he comes to a place. He says, “Oh, this good place to camp.” So, he finds a nice comfortable rock to put his head on. I don’t know how he managed to sleep, but maybe we can understand how he managed to sleep if we actually think about his situation for a moment. I want to see if you can put yourself into Jacob’s situation for a moment, not so much sleeping on the rock, but what’s going on for him? Jacob is scared. He’s running scared from Esau. He’s really got up Esau’s nose this time, and Esau is out to kill him. Esau is twice the man that Jacob was. He’s an outdoors man. He’s tough. He could outrun, he could outfight Jacob any day, and Jacob is going for his life.

Jacob’s Dream

I can imagine as Jacob runs that day, steals glance over his shoulder, fearful of seeing Esau on his tail. He’s afraid. He’s alone. So far as we can tell, he’s on his own, absolutely defenseless. In those days, your defense, your security was in your family, in your environment. He’s left it. Everything he owns, he’s carrying on his shoulder. He’s leaving everything he’s known, the security of home where he’s never needed for anything, wealthy. Isaac was a wealthy man. They had no need of anything, and he’s leaving the love and care of his mother. He’s alone. He’s facing a very uncertain future. What’s going to happen? Will Esau catch up with him? Even if he doesn’t, will the family that he’s running to accept him, how will they treat him? Will he ever come home? He is physically and emotionally spent. He may have managed to get the blessing, but it probably doesn’t feel like it just now. He’s probably never been as low as he is at that moment, so exhausted that he can even sleep with his head on a rock. At his lowest point, God comes to him.

Let me read this bit to you again. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth up to heaven, and he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway. At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father Isaac. The ground you’re lying on belongs to you. I’m giving it to you and your descendants. Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth. They will spread out in all directions to the west and the east, to the north and the south, and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants.” This is really a confirmation of the promise that God gave to Abraham in almost the same words, and God is making these promises directly to Jacob, but he goes on from there. What’s more, I am with you, and I’ll protect you wherever you go. One day, I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.

God is with you

God says, “You are not alone. You might feel alone, but you’re not alone because I am with you. I’m not just the God of your father Isaac and your grandfather Abraham. I am your God. I will be your God also and I will not leave you. You may be running away from home but you’re not homeless because this land belongs to you and to your descendants. I’ve given it to you. That’s part of my plan. You may be scared but you’re not defenseless. I’m right here and indeed all the angels of heaven going up and down the ladder. We’re right here. You’re well protected and your future is not uncertain because I keep my promises. You have a part in my plan and I’ll bring my plans to completion.” Jacob encountered God in a way that he had never done so before, not just as the God of his fathers, God of his ancestors, but as his own God. He encountered God personally, and it changed him, not all at once, not completely. Change takes time, but a change began in Jacob and he encountered God that time. He’s on a new trajectory. He has new hope for the future.

When he wakes up, he’s blown away. He comments how awesome this place is. He says, “Surely God has been in this place.” But he’s feeling a bit afraid as well. The first thing he does is he sets up the stone he’s been lying on as a bit of a shrine, anoints it with oil. That was a common thing to do there to make it a shrine, a place of worship to the God who had revealed himself to him there, and he renames the place Bethel, the house of God. He makes a vow, a promise. Let’s look at that vow. If God will indeed be with me and protect me on this journey, and if he will provide me with food and clothing, and if I return safely to my father’s home, then the Lord will certainly be my God. This memorial pillar I have set up will become a place of worshiping God, and I’ll present to God a tenth of everything he gives me.

God’s remarkable grace

Jacob’s Vow

There’s a couple of things to notice from this vow. From our point of view, we know the end of the story. We can read the end of the story. We know that God did protect him on his journey. We know that God provided him with all he needed and God brought him back ultimately to his father’s house. He even reconciled with Esau, and we know that that place Bethel did become a place of worship for Yahweh for a long, long time in the history of Israel. Jacob could not have known that at that time, but he was in no doubt that he had encountered the same God who had called his grandfather Abraham out of Haran and promised him land and descendants and blessings. He’d encountered the same God who had rescued his father Isaac from being sacrificed and providing a lamb for that sacrifice. He was worshiping the same God who had provided for his family and blessed the family, made them wealthy, and protected them from the enemies and the strangers that they lived amongst.

Jacob responds, I think, in the best way he can. He’s still struggling. His vow is somewhat conditional. He says, “If God will indeed do this, if God will do that, then I will.” Some would read this as Jacob bargaining with God, and I guess that would be true to character, but I think something has happened to Jacob. He’s changed. He’s encountered God in a new way, and he’s not the same. We don’t quite see the strong faith of Abraham yet, but it maybe is the best he can do. He does promise to worship in a tangible way by promising to give God a tenth of all that God gives him, and this is quite a change from the man who would rob his brother and deceive his father in order to get what he wanted. Just as a bit of an aside, it’s a good guideline for us also, because when we realize who God really is, when we understand what he’s really done for us, when we can grasp what he has promised us and what he will do for us, then we realize that all we have, all we are comes from him, and giving back to him becomes a natural, almost an automatic expression of our worship and love.

The remarkable grace of God

There’s something else we need to see in this story, and that is the remarkable grace of God. Did Jacob deserve God’s mercy and blessing? Rhetorical question. I think it’s pretty obvious he didn’t, and neither do we. The Bible makes it very clear that all of us fall short of God’s standards. None of us deserve his kindness or grace. You may think you’re as good as the next man or the next woman. Let me tell you, the next man or the next woman is not good enough either. We all stand short of God’s standards, but it was God’s plan from the very beginning to open a way for this flawed, fallen, broken race of human beings to be rescued, restored, and reunited with our creator. God planned to do this through the descendants of Abraham. That was his promise, and he carried out his plan through those descendants and ultimately through Jesus, the descendant of Jacob’s son Judah. It’s through Jesus that these blessings find their fulfillment, the blessings of salvation, of restoration, of hope, and the mending of our broken and messed up lives.

When we trust Jesus, we find that like Jacob, we’re not alone. Even when we feel alone or when we feel abandoned by others, we’re not alone because God is with us. He keeps his promises. We are not homeless, even when it seems we have nowhere to call home. Perhaps it’s a bit of a trap sometimes in our world now when we can build a nice home around us. We begin to think, well, this is where I’m at home. This is my home, and it’s an illusion because the only true home we can find is our home in Christ. God’s promise to Abraham of land and rest come true for us in Christ, not in any dwelling place. We’re not defenseless. We do not need to be afraid even when there are challenges around us because God, the God of heaven’s armies and his angels, he’s right there with us like he was for Jacob, and our future is not uncertain, though we may not know what it holds because he cares for us and because we have a place in his plan. These are not blessings that we can earn or deserve. We can’t pay for them, but they’re there to be received by choosing to trust God and believe in Jesus.

Trust God

Paul wrote to the church in Rome that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. That’s a great promise of scripture. You don’t have to be special. You don’t have to have made the standard. You just have to call on the name of the Lord and you can be saved. You can trust God because his plans don’t fail, and he keeps his promises. God kept his promises to Abraham and his promises to Jacob, not because they deserved it, but because they believed God and trusted him, and he keeps his promises to us also. Jacob’s response was a little tentative, but God met him where he was and blessed him. Sometimes our own steps of faith are a little bit halting and tentative, bit unsure, and that’s okay, but we just need to keep on taking those steps and our confidence will grow.

You might find it a particular struggle to trust God. Actually, we have a lot more grounds to trust him than Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham did. We can look at how God has acted through history. We can look at how God did fulfill his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and we can look at what he has done through Jesus and how we can receive those blessings through him. We don’t need to see a ladder going up to heaven to remind us that God is close. We can see the cross where Jesus bridged that gap for us. Jesus is our gateway to heaven. He is our Bethel. It’s where we meet God. If today it happens that you have not put your trust in God, then maybe today would be a good time to do that. If you want to or think you want to, then it’s good idea to talk to somebody, talk to one of the pastoral team, someone that you know can help you. It doesn’t matter how messy your life is or has been. It doesn’t matter what poor choices you might have made. Like Jacob, God offers a new start, a new life, a new hope. It also doesn’t mean you’ll never make another mistake. I wish it did, or that everything will always work out well, but you’ll have an anchor for your soul and peace to face the future. God’s grace is an amazing thing. You can’t be good enough for it, but you can receive it.

God’s presence does not fail us

God still loves you

For many of us here, this will be a decision, a choice that we’ve already made to trust God, and there’s a message here for us, too. Two messages really that I want to finish with. The first is just that message of encouragement. God still loves you and is still at work in you even when you mess up, and you will. We always do. We mess up from time to time. That doesn’t change God’s love and his faithfulness or his grace. If you’re his child, the scriptures promise that nothing can take us out of his hands. Nothing can separate us from his love.

Be a blessing to others

The second thing to notice is this, that when God promised to bless Abraham, he didn’t just promise to bless him for his sake. He promised to bless him for the sake of those who would come later for the nations. Same for Jacob. God blessed Jacob, and Jacob was blessed, but he became the cause or the means of blessing coming to his descendants also. It’s the same for us in Jesus. We receive huge blessings. We receive peace with God, forgiveness for our sins, hope for the future, freedom from fear, and God blesses us and we are blessed, but he blesses us also so that we’ll continue to be a blessing to others. Just by living godly lives, we can be a blessing to those around us, but even more importantly, we can be the means whereby they come to know of Jesus and receive blessings through him also. Just as God promised Abraham and Jacob that he would be with them, so he promises to be with us to the end of the age and beyond. God’s plans and his promises do not fail. Neither does his presence fail us. We can trust him and face the future, however uncertain it may appear, however alone or vulnerable we may feel, however much we may have messed up, God is with us. He will not fail us.