Get Up and Move

Moving Jacob’s Family

Growing up, I always felt I was a little different from the other kids in school. Now, there were probably a number of reasons for that feeling, but one big reason was certainly that my family moved around a lot. It often felt like we moved to a different house every year, and a different town every four or five years. I actually had to consult my parents to get a good count, and together we figured that during my 18 years growing up we lived in 17 different houses. 17 houses, and 7 different towns. During that time, I attended four different districts.

Some of the moving was good. We’d move to a nicer home, or one with a bigger yard. One house we moved to actually had a spare room that I was allowed to turn into a music studio of sorts. Some moves were not so good. I left friends behind or else we were really being forced to move because we couldn’t pay rent or the neighborhood was not good.

When I got to college, the moving didn’t stop either. I lived in a different house, dorm, or apartment each year that I was at Mississippi State. In fact, during my senior year, the house I was living in burned down. So I had to move again (the good news, though, was I didn’t have to pack anything that time!). After college, I moved two more times, until Allison and I got married.

After we were married, we lived in a tiny farm house for two years. And then, just as we were getting settled down, we felt God tugging at our hearts, telling us it was time to move once again, this time to Kentucky.

So, in total, I’ve lived in 26 houses during my life, I’ve lived in 10 different towns, and three different states. I really do hope God allows me to stay put for a while. Maybe, because I believe God has a sense of humor, he was just training me to be a Methodist pastor before I was ever a Methodist.

Jacob, too, had a good understanding of what it means to move constantly. He was a nomad, and lived in a tent for starters. But even more than that, Jacob had been pushed out of his home at an early age, forced to run away in order to escape the wrath of his brother Esau. He moved from the promised land, up to Abraham’s home country, then back down to the promised land again. And now, in our story today, God calls Jacob to move once again.

It is not insignificant that Jacob encounters God in this way in precisely the same spot where they’d met years before. It was at Beer-Sheba where Jacob had had a vision of God descending the ladder of heaven. Even while he was fleeing for his life, God met Jacob at Beer-Sheba and made this promise to him,

“I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. 15 Know that 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.”

Now, in his old age, Jacob receives a very similar promise from the Lord:

“I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. 4 I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again; and Joseph’s own hand shall close your eyes.”

The New Revised Standard Version Jacob Brings His Whole Family to Egypt

“I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. 4 I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again; and Joseph’s own hand shall close your eyes.”

There’s a pattern here that’s important to pick up on:

First, God introduces himself, “I am God, the God of your father...” God wants Jacob to know who he is, and to remind him that they have a history together. This isn’t just any god, it’s the God of your father, so you can trust him. Trust and faith, after all, is essential to our relationship with God.

Second, in both instances, God reminds Jacob of the promise, the promise that started this whole crazy adventure with Abraham’s family, “I will make a great nation of you...” Importantly, we should note that it doesn’t really seem to matter where Jacob happens to be. Whether it’s “the land on which you’re now standing,” or the land you’re about to go to. Either way, God has the power and the desire to keep his promise, and to bless the faithful ones who follow him, whether here or there.

Lastly, and this is the really big one, God says to Jacob, “I will be with you. I will go down with you, and I will bring you back up.” Whether Jacob is in Padam-Haran, Canaan, or Egypt, his God goes with him. His God does not abandon him, and is always working to bless him, and to fulfill his promises.

So God has really given Jacob the exact same promise two different times in his life. It is interesting, however, that we see two rather different responses to God’s call to move. When he was young, Jacob was a little apprehensive about this moving business. After he wakes up from the dream, he doesn’t rush off to pack his things and move to Padam-Haran. Instead, he tarries around a bit, and then makes a kind of wishy-washy half-promise with God. “If you really do what you’ve said,” says Jacob, “then I’ll call you my God, and I’ll worship you.”

But old man Jacob has been here and done that. He has learned from his own experience that what God has said, he will do. And so, after hearing this message from God later in life, he does not hesitate. The very next line in Genesis after the dream is, “Then Jacob set out”.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), .

Moving in the OT

We’ve seen many times so far where God has called on a particular person or family to move. God blessed humanity to “be fruitful and multiply,” but when humans tired to congregate and clump together at the tower of Babel, God forced them to spread out and move across the earth. Then, he asked Abraham and Sarah to move 500 miles across the desert to a strange land. Joseph believes that it was God who orchestrated his own move from Canaan to Egypt, and now Jacob’s whole family is being asked to move.

Because Jacob and his family moved to Egypt, they will eventually have to move back to Canaan. So hundreds of years later, God calls Moses to lead the Israelites back through the desert.

Then we see something similar happen in Israel as it happened at Babel: God’s people get content, and they want to clump together and do their own thing in Jerusalem. So God forces them to move, and he sends the Israelites into exile in Babylon.

After 70 years in Babylon, God returned his people again to Jerusalem.

Moving in the NT

And God’s moving doesn’t stop in the Old Testament. In , we see Jesus explaining how God plans to move his people again. Before he ascended, Christ’s followers asked him:

“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

See, at that time most of Jesus’s followers were Jews. They were still thinking that Jesus had come to destroy Rome and set Israel up as a new powerful kingdom. Even after his death and resurrection, they still couldn’t wrap their minds around what Jesus was really all about. “Lord, did you come here for Israel?” they asked. But Jesus says, “Your thinking is too small. Not just Jerusalem, but all of Judea. And not just Judea, but even Samaria! And we won’t even stop in Samaria, but we’re taking my rule and my kingship to the ends of the earth!”

That’s a lot of moving! But, of course, the early Church didn’t want to move. They too, tried to stay hunkered down in one place. The early church didn’t want to go out to the ends of the earth, they wanted to stay safe inside the walls of Jerusalem. But, once again, God made them get up and move!

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), .

It took the stoning of Stephen and severe persecution to finally get the Church up and moving like Jesus wanted. And so, in , we read:

That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria. 2 Devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him. 3 But Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.

That, no doubt, sounds pretty bad. And it was a bad time for the church, yet it took that to get the church moving. Just one verse later, we see how God was at work in this moving:

4 Now those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the word

Like so many people in the Old Testament, the early Church didn’t want to move. God had push them out of their comfort zones, but when they finally got on the move with God, great things started happening:

The gentiles flooded the church, the Church grew exponentially, and the good news about Jesus really did begin to spread to the ends of the earth.

Moving Today

And the gospel continues to spread. God continues to urge his people to be on the move. Many in America, Europe, and the Western world at large bemoan the decline of Christianity. What we, perhaps, have failed to realize, is that Christianity is not at all in a decline. It has simply moved. Just 100 years ago, the average Christian was a white man in Europe. Today, however, the average Christian is a woman in Africa.

While many studies project a decline among Christians in the West, those same studies show that Christianity is set to explode in other parts of the world, such as Africa, India, China, and Korea. Africa alone is set to double the number of Christians per capita in just 30 years.

While many Americans see empty pews, the largest church in South Korea, Yoido Full Gospel Church, boasts more than 800,000 members.

God’s people across the world are not staying still, either. For a very long time, places like America were largely responsible for the spread of the gospel globally. Now, many of the places we were sending missionaries to have begun to realize that we need missionaries here! One African missionary remarks:

“It was so depressing when I first arrived [in England] to find churches empty, and being sold, when in Uganda there is not enough room in our churches for the people. There is a great need for revival in Britain— it has become so secular and the people are so inward looking and individualistic. The country needs reconverting.”

Indeed, many Christians from Africa, India, and Asia are moving to places like Europe and America as missionaries, seeking to reconvert the land that first converted them. By 2020, we are set to have more missionaries coming from Africa to America than we have missionaries from America to Africa!

God is calling his people to move, even today, and the gospel continues to flourish and thrive because of the people who hear and respond to that call.

Moving Toward What?

But what is all this moving about? As we look at not only scripture, but our own modern history as well, we see the patterns of Jacob’s story ring true. God calls his people to pick up and move. He calls us to move out of our comfort zones, he calls us to move in to far away lands, into the unknown. And, sometimes, when we hunker down and don’t want to move, God shoves us out the door anyways!

What is all of this moving about? Our text today gives us insight into the movements of God.

Firstly, we must move into the unknown to know God. We have to be coaxed outside the walls of our comfort zone in order to really understand who the Lord is. Notice that, the first time Jacob was called to move, he wasn’t sure about trusting God. But the second time Jacob was called to move, he did not hesitate! This is because Jacob had already experienced what it was like to move with the Lord. He knew from his own experience that when God says, “I will be with you”, he means it! Genesis reports that 70 people moved with Jacob from Canaan to Egypt. In reality, however, there 71 people coming from Canaan to Egypt, because God was with Jacob every step of the way.

Secondly, we are called to move so that the promise of God might be fulfilled. We are not just moving about at random, but God has us moving towards something. We are moving towards salvation, towards the redemption of the whole world. As Jacob came to Egypt, he was called before Pharaoh, and Genesis tells us,

Then Joseph brought in his father Jacob, and presented him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh.

Who would have imagined that an aging shepherd from the desert would ever be in a position to bless Pharaoh? Only by stepping out the door with God can we ever hope to witness such a thing! And this is not the only time such a thing has happened. Paul himself answered God’s call to move, and ended up before the throne of the Roman Emperor himself. Paul, a tent maker, speaking the gospel before Ceasar himself!

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), .

When God calls us to move, we can be assured that he is about to do incredible things. God called Jacob to move, and his family was saved from famine, and he even blessed the King of Egypt. God called Moses to move, and Moses witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, and saw Israel become God’s own people. Jesus Christ called his disciples to move, and the good news has spread ever since, not just in Jerusalem, but in all of Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

I believe the Church today is in a very unique position. We are witnessing the decline of Christianity in our Country. As part of the UMC, we have access to some great dataset tools that help pastors and congregations examine the demographics of our mission areas. Here are a few statistics about our own community, within 10 miles of Centerville:

From 2012 to 2017, there was a 7% drop in Church attendance, going from 44% Church involvement down to just 37%.

Between 2012 and 2017, people who said “God is loving and wants to be in a relationship with you” went from 77% to 66%, and 11% decrease

Between 2012 and 2017, people who said “I don’t believe God exists” in our community went from 9% up to 15.5%, a 6.5% increase.

Following these same statistics, people who said “Jesus is the only way for human salvation from sin.” went from 63.5% to 52%, an11.5% decrease.

People who said “Jesus actually rose from the dead as the Bible teaches.” went from 69.5% to 58%, an 11.5% decrease.

These statistics go on for pages and pages, and here’s the worst part: Our community is doing a lot better than the national average. The Church in America is in decline. And alongside all of these statistics, there is a clear trend in Christian moral values in decline as well. These statistics are just over five years!!! And they’re already two years old! How much more have things declined since then?

Meanwhile, many Christians seem content to simply sit in the pews and watch it happen. We’ll go to church and sing songs and hear an uplifting sermon, and close our ears and shut our eyes to what’s happening in the world around us. We have become very much like the people at Babel, or the Jewish people just before the Babylonian exile. We want to sit safely inside our church walls, and refuse to move.

The good news is that God will move whether we do or not. In fact, I think he’s already moving. I believe he’s at work as missionaries from other parts of the world rush to re-convert America. I believe God is at work even now, setting in motion a great revival. But if we remain shut in our churches, blocking out the noise of God’s call to move with our personal comforts, we’ll never witness it. It will happen, and we’ll miss it.

I’m by no means suggesting that God will bully us into moving where he wants to move. I don’t think scripture portrays it in that way either. But what I am suggesting is that God will move whether we do or not. And when the people of God try to make their way without him, it tends to end poorly.

Our nation is in dire need of direction. The young generation being raised up now, studies have shown, is the most anxious generation of the past century. Young teenagers are worried about the future, they’re concerned about the direction of our nation, and they’re confused about the moral mess our country is in where anything goes. People are looking for truth in the midst of all the falsehoods of our day, who are we to keep that truth locked behind the church doors? In a time when politicians on all sides lie through their teeth for personal gain, and where the overriding social philosophy follows a relativistic truth where “you have your truth and I have my truth”, the church has something to offer: we know the Way, the Truth, and the Life personally. So get up and move! Go out into the streets and proclaim the truth of the gospel!

In a time where our country yearns for beauty, when our buildings are cold and gray, when our cars and machines smog up the cities, and our adults and children have their faces glued to screens, the Church has something to offer. We know a God who is beautiful, who’s glory and grace are far more captivating than a smart phone, and who created a world full of beauty that can never be seen in the concrete of the city. What right do we have to contain such beauty in the box of a church building? Get up and move, and carry the good news of God’s beauty into a world that needs it.

We live in a time when goodness itself is in question. Our nation is confused about good and evil, about right and wrong, and not only the goodness of morality, but the goodness of life. Our nation doesn’t value life, we witness mass shootings every other week, and sit down to watch movies about mass shootings, we have one of the highest suicide rates in the world, ranking 34th out of 183 countries. But we know a God who is infinitely good, and who created a world infused with his own goodness. Why would we not share that good God with the world?

There is only one reason: We have become comfortable! The church in America is too comfortable with the way things have always been. That’s the number one objection to getting anything done in a church: “We’ve always done it that way”. One African Church leader remarked, “Since you declare the faith of the Africans to be young, I quite agree with you; for the faith of Christ is always young… Where faith is not accompanied by works, then faith is not young but old, and people make fun of it for its age, like an old worn-out garment.”

We’ve become happy and content with the way things are, and we want to stop and sit, and stay inside our church. But God is on the move! God is at work, why should we stop and rest? And God has gifted us with the Holy Spirit, so why would we act as if we have no power to fight the forces of Spiritual evil so clearly gripping our nation? God is Almighty and powerful, why are our faces downcast, as if the battle for the Church in the West is already lost?

“Oh you of little faith! Truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to a mountain “Move” and it will get up and move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

You of little faith! When God says “move”, get up, go out of your churches, go into the streets and feed the hungry, clothe the poor, minister to the addicts, and the prostitutes, and preach good news to the poor, if you take just one step out of the door, you will see God at work.

B- Movement in the OT

C- Movement in the NT

D- Movement Now

E- What are we moving toward?