Genesis 28
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So here we are with Genesis 28 which is a transition chapter for us in this story. We have finished 27 and when we left there, it had so much deception and lying going on that, that I thought we might have a domestic situation going. Like I am ready to call the cops on them just for precaution because somebody is about to get beat up or killed. That is not a house that I would have wanted to be in. Just saying.
If you remember specifically Rebekah is going to be blaming someone do you remember who she blames? Yeah the wives of Esau. I do not want Jacob to make the first mistake. So let’s get in. And let me go ahead and say with this chapter I’m kind of regressing. We will take some pauses mid verse etc.
1 Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him, “You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women.
Jacob finally gives in. He decides that I better get on board with the whole Jacob being blessed thing and let me coach him into not doing the same things his brother made. Mainly because his mom is on my tail about it and I am just tired of hearing her nag me. So, he says you cannot go get one of those women over there.
2 Arise, go to Paddan-aram to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother.
Now I love this direction from Isaac. This is one of those moments for us to underline and get the meat from. It is easy to tell people what not to do but true discipleship doesn’t just call you from something, it calls you to something. Don’t get me wrong we should tell people to stop doing wrong things. However, if you don’t give people practical things to do as a replacement, they keep repeating the same thing over and over. I know what I shouldn’t do, I just don’t really know what the opposite of that is to do. It’s like a lie. You cannot replace a lie with nothing. You have to replace it with something. The something is the truth. So you leave the lie and go to the truth. Here is Isaac telling Jacob you are not going to go to those women, you are going to go to Laban house and find you a wife. Yes I know it is weird to marry your cousin now but back then it was common practice. So we just gonna let that go. lol
3 God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples.
4 May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham!”
So he uses the name El Shaddai which is the name that was revealed to Abraham. Which seems to be a revert actually back to what was important in the first place the blessing of Abraham being passed down and he goes back to repeat the blessing that God gave Abraham. He also focuses on the land aspect because that was part of the promise. He is about to leave where God called him, but Jacob says may you even possess the land you travel on. Your sojournings may produce more land for you. Because the promise went from one land to lands remember. God will bring you back to this. You will possess this land.
5 Thus Isaac sent Jacob away. And he went to Paddan-aram, to Laban, the son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother.
So Jacob obeys immediately and goes. He doesn’t wait and that is good. We also see that Rebekah is mentioned because Moses doesn’t want us to forget that she was promised to be the mother of the blessing. Now let’s look at the next couple of verses
6 Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram to take a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he directed him, “You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women,”
7 and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan-aram.
8 So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac his father,
9 Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth.
Now who is ear hustling or sneaking around to find out things? Esau. When he finds out he doesn’t think to himself, well maybe I should not have done that since they bother my father so much. He thinks since I already have two maybe I can get into this covenant another way. Still no repentance just him trying to work the deal.
16 that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.
17 For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.
So we figure that the curse of attempting to work your own plan is still alive and well in this family. He marries another woman though he has 2 wives already. This is not going to go well for him but he doesn’t really care. He is doing whatever he can. To attempt to get back into the family will.
10 Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran.
11 And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep.
You know there are certain things that i love when the bible tells us the details and then there are things like this that we don’t get all the details on and I wonder why not? Just like I wonder why when we get certain details. The bible makes his trip seem like it was no big deal but the distance between his home and this city is 500 miles. And he is now becoming not Jacob the home body, but a body without a home. And he is now completely walking by faith because there are a lot of things against him right here. He doesn’t know really where he is going. He has never been there. He doesn’t know if they will accept him. He doesn’t know if he has enough food and he doesn’t know if Esau is going to come after him or not. His entire life has shifted and he forced to walk by faith. Any body been there. There is no other way you make this unless it is with God. We have to get to that point. That even the test is good. He loves you that much.
You may not like the plan but you cannot argue with His results.
God is going to show up right here and Jacob is not expecting. i am sure many of you have been there too. We sing of God’s omnipotence. We sing of his mercy. We sing of his presence but are we expecting it. Do you really believe that He can do all things. Do you really expect all things to work for your good. Or is that just something you say. Is that just something that sounds good to your christian friends.
I mean honestly we do this stuff all the time. God is going to take care of you. Yeah Yeah I know. I have said it myself. There is either a no heart or a half hearted response so much so that we don’t get the fullness of God because we don’t believe we can obtain it so we don’t pursue it. Then we wanna get onto God as though it were his fault and He is there in the place just waiting on our arrival, we just don’t know it. Be careful that you are not committed to a Jesus that isn’t real. He has told us.
12 Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
13 And behold, the Lord stood above it and said: “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.
14 Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
15 Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.”
Now that is a visual. We right. But let me just say this. The Hebrew word right there that is translated ladder is only used this one time in the bible. We don’t really have an understanding of what that looks like. Some translate stair case while others have hills or platforms. It comes from the root meaning to ramp or cast upward. It doesn’t really matter what it looks like but just know that God wanted Jacob to know that he was not alone.
Let’s dive into this a bit. First the visual tells Jacob and us that he has a good guide and good guard. The angels are in constant communication with Jesus about us. Not that He needs it but it goes to show that God does not leave us alone nor unprotected. Who is Jacob running from. Esau. Then why in the world is he sleeping out in the open unprotected. He isn’t. This dream says, I have you.
14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.
15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,
12 For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
5 You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.
Now we see Jesus at the top of the “ladder”. It is his communication. We will hear Jesus say later
51 He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”
He is the ladder in which they are ascending and descending.
20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
This tells us that He is the one that brings heaven and earth together. He is the reason the angels can ascend and descend. It is all about Jesus.
Now some of yall ain’t gonna like this part because you are church folk and we are typically so judgmental and always wanting someone else to get what they deserve while we expect grace. Let me just say this. My own sins and mistakes truly cause me to be more graceful. Because I see how easy it is to lose everything. I see what it is to be hurt and caused it yourself and to see people turn away from you. Just leave you in your own filth. You know the story of the good Samaritan. I think that story is more about the church folk that didn’t help then the one that did. I mean we see all these religious people walking past this man and you can hear their words almost. He knew better than to go down there. He shouldn’t have been on that side of town. I mean it is crazy how the church will do you and if that is you I pray right now you feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit to remember how far you have fallen so that you don’t walk around with your religious nose in the air and say well I never. Yes you did. Before christ you was right there with them. Quit with your spiritual amnesia. Enough is enough. So here is jesus showing up on the scene and what we want him to say is Jacob you idiot. You already had the blessing. Why did you trick your father, steal from your brother, lie and deceive and all these things. But he doesn’t. He comes with mercy and reassurance to Jacob.
No matter what Jacob did, God was still with him. Jacob has nothing to fear because God’s will is going to be accomplished. That was not a permission to sin conversation but rather a, you can’t mess this up too much. IT was yes I know what you did and I still love you. I see you for you. I am still going to be with you. This si how Jesus talks. It is the devil that say you are unloved now. It is the flesh that says you can’t be used. You are tainted no good worthless yet those are the voices that scream the loudest. You know why.
Lies scream the most and the loudest because they attempt to drown out the truth. But truth has a name and his name is Jesus and the lies will never win because they have already been defeated.
Remember the promises of the Lord.
16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
17 And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
How does Jacob know that that Lord is in this place? Because in the vision Jesus identified himself. Look at me everyone right here. Let me go ahead and apologize to you right now. Ok Because what I am about to say may hurt some of your feelings but I want you to hear me. If God needs to speak to you, he doesn’t use mamaw and papaw. If in the middle of the night you see a being at the end of your bed and that being does not say I am Lord God almighty or I am Gabriel a messenger from God, it is not of God and you better do one of two things. Grab the oil and the gun, or run. Never in scripture does God appear or an angel appear and not identify themselves. Not because they are big scary beings. And one more time for the record, not every time in scripture does an angel say fear not. Sometimes they do say it because they startled the person or because they break forth in the middle of the night or they say it because the person is afraid that God is not listening to them. When Jacob says here I am afraid it is because he realizes what a sinful person he is. When people encounter God they realize how sinful they are and they see the glory of God and become afraid.
So he wakes up and says God is here. How awesome is this place. Do you leave here going wow this is an awesome place.
18 So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.
19 He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.
Bethel mean House of God. When God reveals himself it is a blessing. When you do it, it is a curse.
Here it is that who Jacob is becoming once again shows up and he consecrates the place. He anoints it. In chapt 35 Jacob will come back and build an altar here on the command of God.
20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear,
21 so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God,
22 and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.”
The word if at the beginning of this vow is the Hebrew word im-eem. Which can also be read as the word since. Jacob is making a vow in response to the vow already given by God.