Genesis 35:1-15

It is in returning that we find renewal.

Some years ago we were back in my hometown with my family, out for dinner at a place called “Spaghetti Works” - and upon the wall was a portrait of John Bunyan (strange place for it). I asked my brothers if they knew who he was, one of them answered, “a lumberjack with an Ox named Babe!” No!

Bunyan was a 17th century English writer and preacher best remembered for his allegory of the Christian faith - The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Some of you may be familiar with the story…

The main character “Christian” determines to make a pilgrimage to the Celestial City in hopes of a better life, relief from hardship and the weight of the life he is leading.

He heads out with a bundle on his back. He thought the burden came from reading his Bible. But the burden was to symbolize his sin and the guilt he feels as a result.

The burden significantly hinders Christian’s journey, making it difficult for him to move forward and causing him to sink in the Slough of Despond.

His desire to be rid of this burden is the driving force behind the pilgrimage; serves as a powerful symbol of the weight of sin and idolatry and the need for spiritual deliverance through faith and repentance.

As Christian progresses on his journey and approaches the cross, the burden miraculously falls from his back and rolls into a grave symbolizing the release from sin and guilt and shame that comes with faith in Jesus.

It is a Christian classic that has held up through the ages because it so closely articulates our burden, our hope, our freedom in Jesus and new life and identity found in him.

In our Genesis text today we travel with another pilgrim, making good on a promise, answering a call to make a journey, not to the Celestial City, but to the House of God. He goes back to where it began with God and he finds grace in abundance.

It is in returning that we find renewal.

Here we are walking with Jacob, our patriarch hero. Son of Isaac, blessed by his father, husband to two wives, soon to be father of twelve sons. He is returning to the land of promise, to the land of his father Isaac.

But it hasn’t been a straightforward journey. He has wrestled with God, he has encountered his brother who at one time wanted to kill him. Eventually he buys some land near a place called Shechem in the land of Canaan and erected an altar for God there.

It was there however that tragedy struck. His only daughter, Dinah was raped and kept in the house of a Hivite who shared the name of the city. His father, the prince of the land, attempted to negotiate with Jacob for Dinah to be his son’s bride, “Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves.” We can dwell together. LArge bride price is also offered.

Jacob and his sons respond that they can only do it if all of their men are circumcised. (this was the scheduled text for our family service… can you imagine the activity…)

The locals were pleased and did not delay to do the thing. Every male in the city was circumcised.

On the third day, when they were sore, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, killed every male and took her home. They looted the city.

Genesis 34:28–29 “They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys, and whatever was in the city and in the field. [29] All their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered.” (ESV)

As cool as it sounds (retribution), it wasn’t a great thing. Leaves them vulnerable.

Genesis 34:30 “Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.” (ESV)

So Jacob is fearful. He exists in weakness, vulnerability.

What comes next is our text. Invitation, purification, promise to Jacob. He gains a new identity, there is a transition of generations, significant restatement of what has been given before.

Also models our walk of faith in Jesus, where the promise to Jacob is ultimately headed! Call, Cast, Covenant.

It is in returning that we find renewal.

Call

Genesis 35:1 “God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” (ESV)

What a relief this must have been to Jacob, in his fear and vulnerability, to be reminded of maybe the most brilliant moment of his life, and be called to return to the place it happened, to Bethel, to dwell, to remain there.

Thirty years before; remember the stone pillow and his dream of the stairway between heaven and earth. Angels traverse between the two. God standing before Jacob, including him in the covenant promise, through his offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Genesis 28:15 “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 promised you.” (ESV)

This was his encounter moment. You don’t forget these. Jacob called the place Bethel and he used his pillow as a pillar to mark the place and anointed it with oil. And he made a covenantal commitment.

Genesis 28:20–22 “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.” (ESV)

As I was writing this sermon I caught myself reflecting on “Bethel-like” moments in my own life. Some 30 years, some 20, or 11 years ago. Encounters with God, his word, peace, marking a place or moment.

Maybe you can do the same, and the commitments we made in those moments…

“Arise, go up to…” Pilgrimage language. Return to the place of promise.

To stay anchored in what is true, in what matters.

Jacob goes back to Bethel. We go back to the word, to the gospel.

Returning is looking to Jesus. Who some descendants of Jacob will miss.

In one encounter, after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, Peter and John are going to the temple to pray but on the way they saw a man disabled from birth begging from those entering the temple. Peter said to him, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”

The man started leaping about praising God. The people were amazed.

Acts 3:12–21 “And when Peter saw it he addressed the people: “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? [13] The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. [14] But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, [15] and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. [16] And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

[17] “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. [18] But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. [19] Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, [20] that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, [21] whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.” (ESV)

The call of Jesus is this, to come to him in belief for the forgiveness of sin, to repent, to turn back that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord…

And we get a picture of what this looks like as the story continues.

Cast

From the Old Norse word “Kasta” meaning to cast or throw.

Answering the call, Jacob rounds up his now larger household and all with him. And he leads them in a purification for restoration.

“Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments.”

Casting away idols. We don’t know how prevalent the worship of local gods was in his household, we do know that Rachel took one of her father’s idols when they left him. And having just looted a whole city in Canaan, surely there was an abundance of trinket gods. Putting them away, leaving them buried gives a readiness and alignment with God’s will. Prepares them to meet Yahweh.

They don’t know it yet, but Yahweh is exclusive when it comes to worship.

Exodus 20:3–6 “You shall have no other gods before me. [4] “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. [5] You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, [6] but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (ESV)

Foreign gods are a distraction from faith in the One true God. This will always be a problem for Israel before exile. They live in a tempting world worshiping a pantheon of various gods with lots of allure. But you shall have no other gods before Yahweh.

No different for us, Jesus is exclusive, he is the only way to the Father. To what our souls long for.

I remember during our time in D.C. a young man had signed up to lead a summer small group but on his Facebook profile (this is back when you put your faith), he had listed himself rather proudly as a “Buddhist-Christian.” The team had to make clear that Jesus doesn’t do hyphens…

We don’t have a lot of talismans our so called household gods in our day, but we do have all sorts of things people look to for what only God can give.

Crystals, tarots cards, psychedelics, ancestor worship… or the less strange, money, material, relationships, sensuality, obsession of self. We could go on.

And this is not only for those that come to Christ for the first time, Christians are repeatedly reminded to put away the false for what is true, what is clean.

Paul to the church in Ephesus made it clear we don’t walk as we used to.

Ephesians 4:21–24 “assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, [22] to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, [23] and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, [24] and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (ESV)

For us in Christ, our experience becomes, as Luther said, “all of life is repentance.” Dropping the foreign gods, turning from them back to Jesus.

Author of Hebrews taps into these stories of Patriarchs to inspire faith in Christ.

Hebrews 12:1–4 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, [2] looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. [3] Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. [4] In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” (ESV)

We stand before God, from first to last, justified in Christ alone. We never get past faith, and our righteousness is never properly ours, it’s always in Christ.

So we don’t cast off idols to earn salvation. We don’t drop the weights and sins that cling so tight so that Jesus will accept us.

We are able to do these things because he has made us clean, because we have been given grace and forgiveness.

John 15:3 “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” (ESV)

This is the fuel we need for the pilgrimage of life, to run the race, and its why we look to Jesus because like Yawheh for Jacob, “he is the God who answers us in the day of our distress and has been with us wherever we have gone.”

And as we look to him, as we arise and go up, turn back to him, we are met with promise, with covenant.

Covenant

They clean themselves from the brutality of what was before, Jacob buried the foreign gods and rings under the tree in Shechem. God honors them with safe passage through the land.

And they come to Bethel, where Jacob builds a new altar. Where God appeared.

Genesis 35:10–12 “And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.” So he called his name Israel. [11] And God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. [12] The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.” (ESV)

The promise is reaffirmed. His new identity is confirmed. He is no longer the deceiver, he is now the one who strives with God.

“We also hear a striking reiteration of the mandate of 1:28 to “be fruitful and multiply” (35:11). Through Jacob and his family, then, God is continuing to restore the world and carry out his original mandate for his people to spread throughout the earth and rule over it.”

Something the Lord continues to work in his people in Christ as citizens of his kingdom are made a creative minority bringing a redemptive presence, a fruitful multiplying, wherever he calls us to be.

“In reiterating the name change from Jacob to Israel (v. 10; cf. 32:28), God underscores the radical change in Jacob’s identity that has taken place as he limps along—dependent upon God’s strength—to Bethel.”

A God of strength indeed. God Almighty - El Shaddai signifies God’s power and sovereignty. It describes the God who makes things happen by means of his majestic power and might. He is the one who fulfills every promise. And it is El Shaddai , “God Almighty,” who now blessed Jacob! The one who overrides his fear and speaks a better word.

And oh the better word of covenant we have in Christ.

Hebrews 12:22–24 “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, [23] and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, [24] and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” (ESV)

Jacob lives out his identity, fulfills his vows. The place of encounter can provide clarity and strength, and can give purpose.

He places a new pillar, pours a drink offering, oil and worships.

“Jacob worshiped at the altar, offering joyful sacrifices to God. And as he fulfilled his thirty-year- old vow, he gratefully gave a tenth of all he had to God (cf. 28:22). At last Jacob was in the place where he was supposed to be — worshiping with a heart that was right with God .” Hughes

He models the right response to the covenant promise for us.

Hebrews 12:28–29 “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, [29] for our God is a consuming fire.” (ESV)

Consuming fire, that is for us in Christ.

Changes Jacobs and generations to follow. Jesus changes us by his grace, renewed for what lays ahead.

We seek this renewal and restoration in our lives by returning to our spiritual foundations and relying on God’s promises.

It is in returning that we find renewal.

Receive this as a call - To return, to cast off the weight that drags, that make you miss what you are meant for.

Or, to come for the first time. To believe in Jesus for salvation and forsake all the lesser gods that try to dominate your life but leave you wanting.

Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (ESV)

Covenant - Go all in with the God who gave all of Himself for you. Embrace your God-given identity with confidence and to draw strength from His unchanging promises come what may.

The journey is long, at times the weight may feel heavy, and as we learn to let go of those burdens on our backs we have a Savior who promised to never leaves us nor forsake us. What grace!

So we sing as we make our pilgrimage.

“Come, thou fount of every blessing;

Tune my heart to sing thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

Call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,

Sung by flaming tongues above,

Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,

Mount of God’s unchanging love!

Here I raise my Ebenezer;

Hither by thy help I’m come;

And I hope, by the good pleasure,

Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

Wandering from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger,

Interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor,

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let that grace now, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart; O take and seal it;

Seal it for thy courts above.