Returning to the Presence of God

Introduction

When Adam and Eve fell, they lost much more than immortality, or a beautiful garden to live in, or a world without pain. They lost the greatest thing about being human, their place in the presence of God. Sin cuts us off from that source of true life and joy by making us enemies of God and destroying our desires for God by luring us with much cheaper prizes. But as image bearers of God, we belong in his presence reflecting his character and magnifying his glory. When we fall away from that glorious purpose, we commit a cosmic injustice worthy of eternal wrath. But God, in showing his great glory to the world, has chosen to redeem a people for himself through the blood of Christ so that all those who believe in him should be part of this people. God had chosen Jacob for such a role, and it shows us just how much this election relies on the sovereign grace of God and not our failures or successes. God is working to make Christ glorious in all creation, and he lovingly pulls us into that righteous agenda by tearing us away from a sinful lifestyle and changing us into worshippers of God and Christ-like image bearers. At this point in Jacob’s story, he had messed up countless times and been faithless to God in most of this story. Even after his memourable encounter with God in chapter 32, he still abandoned his faith in God for a faith in a Canaanite city and, as we see in our text, Canaanite gods. But God is not willing to let even his most wayward elect go, and today we see the power God has to always brings his chosen people back to him.

Jacob’s fall from Grace

Last week, we looked at chapter 24 and the disturbing story of the violation of Dinah and the slaughter of the city of Succoth at the hands of Simeon and Levi. We saw that there really is no positive takeaway from that chapter; everything that happens is bad and no one does the right thing. But interestingly, it is not the violence done to Dinah that is the central point of the story, nor is it the violence of Jacob’s sons, but rather it is Jacob himself. Instead of trusting God, he was driven by fear to a Canaanite city to buy a plot of land near by. Jacob failed to be the godly leader he has been called to be. Instead of acting like Israel, one who has struggled with God and prevailed through repentance and childlike faith, and instead acted like Jacob, a trickster who relies on himself rather than God to provide. Ironically, Jacob becomes very afraid of his new neighbours, afraid enough to say and do absolutely nothing at hearing of the abuse of his daughter and apparently not stand in the way of an unlawful marriage. Jacob’s sons saw the big problem here, but because they were not led by their father into a righteous response, their response became wicked and bloody.

At the end of that episode, Jacob is more fearful than ever, Levi and Simeon will be removed from their place in line as potential covenant leaders, Dinah never sees justice and likely remained unmarried for the rest of her life, and the whole family has made a lot of new enemies among the Canaanites. And all this comes just after Jacob’s great moment of spiritual victory, his wrestling match with God where he finally admitted his own weakness and desperately relied on God’s grace to save him. What we see here is a story of a fall from grace, a grace barely grasped. A similar fall from grace can be seen in Abraham’s life, where right after God had declared him righteous by faith in Genesis 15 he falls into a faithless plot to have a child with his wife’s servant Hagar. In fact, such falls from grace are a common sight throughout the Old Testament. Noah fell into drunkeness and his son into unspeakable corruption just after God had cleansed the earth of such wickedness, Moses would fall into disobedience that stopped him from seeing the promised land, Joshua and the Israelites whom he led failed to completely drive out the Canaanites from their promised land, David commited adultery and murder, Solomon engaged in excessive polygamy and marriages with pagan women, and Hezekiah fell into pride and indifference at the future of the people of God he was called to lead. All these cases point us back to the garden of Eden, where we witness mankind deceived by the devil and by their own desires to fall from the graces of the garden. In a sense, Genesis 3 should make the rest of the Bible rather predictable. If two people living in a perfect world in the presence of God without need or suffering or the threat of death will fall from God’s grace, what chance do their descendants have? Now that human nature is tainted by sin, people are constantly pulled down by a brutal desire to dethrone God and act in faith only in themselves. What hope does humanity have?

Even in our own day, this problem remains. The most beloved celebrities get caught up in scandal, Christian speakers and leaders get found out for sexual perversions practiced behind the curtain of the public eye, friends we once through were strong, steadfast examples of Christian lifestyle are exposed or leave all that they once stood for. Whether it is a case of backsliding, apostacy, or false teaching. Whether it is your favourite preacher sounding more and more like the world and less like the Bible, or a personal hero’s secrets devastating their reputation, this is something we have all experienced. It is easy to point the finger and condemn those who fail with a self-righteous attitude of superiority, but as we saw last week every sin we see around us is a witness of the very same nature that we are all born with. In each human heart is the potential to be a a Jeffry Dahmer, an Adolf Hitler, a sexual predator, an uncaring abuser, a drug dealer, and any number of other things. The only thing holding you back is not your free will, it’s not your sense of morality, and it’s not your education or upbringing,; its the enduring grace of God. To saw we are fallen human beings is to say we are falling human beings in that our nature is to keep falling over and over again and our only hope is that God would pull us up again and keep us from going past the point of no return.

The Call to Bethel

And that is the grace that God shows Jacob in the first verse of our text. God was not in the picture of the last chapter at all, not because we wasn’t available but because we wasn’t sought in faith. Now God enters the picture after the mess made in the last chapter and he speaks to Jacob. This is the turning point for Jacob in this situation, since Jacob’s mistakes and the mistakes of his sons have not only destroyed the city that Jacob had planted himself by for security against his brother, but now all the other Canaanite towns and cities that had any kind of union with Succoth will be angry with Jacob. There’s no where for him to go and trust his own abilities to save him. Once again, God has providentially stripped him of every worldly source of security so that he has no hope but to cling to God for mercy. At that point, God speaks and corrects Jacob’s wayward path. God’s here command is in three parts. First he is to rise and go to Bethel. Second, he is to make that his home and dwell there for the time being, and third he is to build an alter there, it is to be his temple to God, for it is the place God appeared to him and made himself known to him. It is where God had made the promises and given him the blessings and so it is right that he should return there to worship and praise God for the fulfilment of his promises.

What happens next is troubling and should give us some insight into just how bad Jacob’s spiritual leadership had gotten at this point. He tells his household to put away their foreign gods. This confirms that, not only had Jacob’s family come to the Canaanites for safety, they were beginning to embrace Canaanite deities as well. The reason Abraham and his descendants were never to marry Canaanite women was because they would be led astray by their gods, and this has already happened to Israel. If this marriage had gone through, it certainly would have been the death toll of the people of God. Like the Israelites who would come from him, Jacob had embraced the worship of false gods alongside the worship of the one true God. This sin awakens a righteous jealousy in God, who calls his people to be holy and fully devoted to him in their worship. God does not share a pantheon with idols. Idolatry and the worldliness that leads to idolatry is considered spiritual adultery to God, and he does not tolerate it among his people. But God shows himself to be patient and merciful and his intervention terns Jacob away from his backsliding. Jacob renounces his idolatry and the idolatry of his household and announces in verse 3

Genesis 35:3 ESV

Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”

Jacob’s attitude has turned from a trust in himself, the false gods of Canaan, and the Canaanites themselves to God. He acknowledges that it is only him who answers in the day of trouble and that, despite his many wanderings and his disobedience, God has remained with him wherever he has God. The promises have remained steadfast because they are based in sovereign grace. As a loving Father, God does not let Jacob rest in his sin. He makes him uncomfortable in it so that he will look back to him. Hebrews 12 tells us that anyone who is able to live with the sin in their lives with receiving the loving discipline of God to purge it away is not a true child of God. God’s discipline forces us to see the futility and damage of sin and to embrace the grace of God. This is what Jacob experiences here. He buries their false God’s under a tree and they set off for Bethel.

As they pass through, God shows his protection for the family of promise by putting fear the in hearts of all the Canaanite cities that would otherwise be hostile to Jacob because of what happened at Succoth. This is similar to the description of the Canaanites when Joshua would lead the people of Israel into the promise land hundreds of years later. Their hearts melted within them as they saw the salvation of God’s people, and in turn the destruction of God’s enemies. The presence of God with his people is a presence of conquest and power that magnifies the universal reign of God as king of all. Obvious for us, it has been revealed in the New Covenant that this universal reign will not come through military conquest, as we see Israel fail at that, but rather through the power of the Holy Spirit in the preaching of the Gospel. Still, the success of the Kingdom gives the world and the forces of the devil cause to fear, hate and be in dread, for the message of the Gospel is life to those who believe but judgement to those who do not. But it is not the wrath of Jacob’s sons that causes these Canaanite towns to shrink back in fear, since they were far fewer in number, it is the fear of God and his mighty hand that drives the wicked away and leaves God’s people safe.

In verses 6-7 we see Jacob finally arrive at the spot near the city of Luz and he builds an alter there and calls it ElBethel, which means the God of the House of God, because it was there that God had shown himself to him all those years ago. This journey is symbolic of a return to the presence of God. Although God’s presence is everywhere since God is everywhere, it was here that God had chosen to make that presence known and felt and experienced. Here was the appointed ‘house of God’ for Jacob, it was God’s chosen temple where he would make his presence tangible. This purpose was also given to the Tabernacle in the book of Exodus. God does not dwell in a tent, nor does he dwell in a temple of gold. But in the OT covenants, God revealed himself in these specific places to relate to people who were used to the idea of holy places, and to tangibly demonstrate the need to be near him and yet the impossibility of bringing sin into his holy presence. They represented the presence of God in heaven, where the fullness of his presence is revealed, where he is worshiped by angels, and according to Hebrews 9 it is where the blood of Christ satisfies his wrath by covering the sins of his people. In John 4:21 Jesus told the woman at the well that in the coming New Covenant people would not need to be in a temple or on a specific mountain to worship God (which happened to be on the property that Jacob bought near Succoth). In the New Covenant, Jesus said that worship would happen by the Spirit working in our hearts. The Temple of God is not a building, it is the people of God gathered together in love and worship to God in the person of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:4-5).

The presence of God is where God desires his people to be. It is where we are safe, it is where we are truly happy, and it is where we glorify God. Jacob realized that only in the presence of God would he be safe from his fears because only God had been with him protecting him wherever he had gone. What does it take for you to seek the presence of God? Do you need to be driven by disaster like Jacob was? Is the presence of God the last place you look for fulfilment, pleasure, and joy? Or is his presence a place you dwell? Do you see worship as the purpose and substance of your life? What did it mean for Jacob to be in the presence of God? It meant to hear the Word of God, to be changed by it, and to experience the reality that God was with him. For the Christian, to be in the presence of God means to worship him in Spirit. This means to be reading his Word with the witness of the Spirit working it into our spiritual DNA. It means to love God’s people and worship with them. It means to embrace the kind of living that shows that Christ is on the throne of your life. In short, to be in the presence of God means to receive by faith his gift of reconciliation and so have your mind, your heart, and your entire life pointed in a direction of worship for him.

The Covenant Ratified

It is here, in the presence of God, that God ratifies, or re-establishes, the promises he has made before. This passage is identical in many ways to God’s covenant ratification with Abraham in Genesis 17. In both texts, God appears as the covenant lord, in both texts God is called the “Lord Almighty”, both have similar promises and of course both have their names changed. Abram to Abraham, and Jacob to Israel. This name change is a symbol of redemption from who they were to who God is calling them to be. What’s interesting is that Jacob’s name had already been changed. God repeats this change probably because of Jacob’s fall into idolatry. He’s reminding him of who he is by faith and how he must live as a result. When God gave the law to his people, the people who recieved it all died in the wilderness because of their sin. God led their children to the promised land 40 years later and gave them the law again as a re-establishment of God’s promises as well as the warnings that came with the covenant. This would remove any doubt that maybe the terms of the covenant had changed or expired. Despite Jacob’s sin and idolatry, it hasn’t changed who he is in God’s eyes. He is Israel, and the re-establishment of the covenant is meant to remind him that all of God’s promises are still available for him, and with that his responsibility to be a righteous image bearer and to teach his descendants to do the same.

God continues to work through flawed, failing people because in the end it brings glory to him. This glory would find its fullest manifestation in the coming of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, God’s plan for Jacob was to bring about the coming of a better covenant head, one who would not fall into sin and idolatry. One who would make the people of God truly holy, truly righteous, and fill them with his Holy Spirit to keep them from the bondage of self-reliance. God’s promise to Jacob exists because it is ultimately part of the Father’s covenant with the Son. He would become the Israel that Jacob could never be and fulfil the role of an image-bearer of God most clearly being God as a man, and he would teach his disciples righteousness along with giving them the power to walk in that righteousness through faith in the Spirit. This is all ultimately for his glory, and we are meant to behold that glory, adore it, treasure it, and pursue it in covenant with God.

The story ends with Jacob setting up a stone pillar, just as he had set up a stone back in chapter 28. He once again devotes himself to the worship of God alone, trusting in his promises and abiding in his ways. This is the end of Jacob’s story arch; after all the difficulties and sin God has finally secured his heart in the worship of his God. Jacob’s waywardness made that road much harder than it needed to be, and God was at times very firm in his discipline of Jacob, but it was all worth it, for now Israel has come into the presence of God in faith, clinging on to the promises of God for a country, a people, and the blessings they would be to the world.

Conclusion

God’s will for your life is that you would leave behind your security in the world, to stop putting stock in the temporary joys of this life, to turn away from any idol that is taking your attention away from the glories of Christ and come to Bethel, to the house of God. To come to his presence by faith, washed clean in the blood of Christ, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, and captivated by this eternal glory as the only thing worth all of our hopes and dreams and desires. All of life is a journey to the presence of God, where there is both protection from harm and provision for the true needs of our soul. Have you found yourself to be in a time of spiritual drifting? Have you found your prayer life diminishing? Have you found the Word of God dry an dull? Have you found your attention more and more taken by the cares, distractions, and worries of this world and less taken by the glory of Christ? The application of this text is an urge to seek the presence of God. It means to leave all that is worldly in your heart, to cast aside and bury the idols that have taken your heart away from the things of God, and seek his presence. Come into his temple, the community of God’s people, and lovingly worship and serve with your brothers and sisters. If you are staying at home during lockdown, make it a priority to call up your brothers and sisters to pray with and encourage them. And in all of life, whether your reading the bible in secret, praying with brother or sister over zoom or in person, or washing the dishes, seek the face of God in the glory of Jesus Christ. That vision is only seen by a faith that puts all stock in him. We will end with the promise of Jeremiah 29:13 is, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”