Main idea: Worship the All-Sufficient God, putting away idols, being purified, and putting on Christ.
Altar and the All-Sufficient God – it is a place of:
Idols: What are you looking to instead of the All-Sufficient God for your hope, help, and happiness?
New identity: Israel – He who strives with God, persists, perseveres, contends for God’s blessing.
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Good morning. Good to see all of you. My Dan said, my name is Nathan. I'm one of the pastors here, and such a joy to get to come together with other people who are following Jesus and worship him together. And we talk about the word worship, we throw that around a lot, and what does it mean to worship? Right? Like, how is giving money or singing or praying like it's coming to God? Worship is like coming before a God who's great and mighty and bowing before him and saying, You are worthy. You are the one that I trust, you're the one that I love. And it's really giving ourselves to Him, saying he is great and we love him. So all the different things we do, whether it's your job, whether it's your loving each other in relationships, all those are ways that we worship Him, that we give ourselves to Him. So another way we want to worship Him right now is reading the Bible together. So we love to read God's word. If you want to just check out and go to sleep as soon as I finish reading the Bible, that's okay. I'd love for you to listen, but really the most important thing is for you to hear what God says right now, which is why, at the end, when I finish reading Genesis 35 I'm going to say this is the word of the Lord, and we'll say together, thanks be to God. Because we want to thank God that he talks to us through the Bible. So if you want to stand with me? Grab your copy of God's word? We're going to read Genesis 35 and I encourage you to see the movements in this chapter here, of God calling Jacob to worship Him, the cost of Jacob worshiping Him, giving up his idols, and then the continuation of worship as Jacob goes through his life and trusts God's promises and God's providence. So Genesis 35 verse one, 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. So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. 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. So they gave to Jacob all the foreign Gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem, and as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. And Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. And there he built an altar and called the place el Bethel, because there God had revealed Himself to him when he fled from his brother and Deborah Rebecca's nurse died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name alone bakuth. God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Padan Aram and blessed him. And God said to him, your name is Jacob. No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but your name, but Israel shall be your name. So he called his name Israel, 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. 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. Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him, and Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it. So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him, Bethel. Then they journeyed from Bethel, when they were still some distance from ephrath, Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor, and when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, Do not fear for you have another son. And as her soul was departing, for she was dying, she called his name Ben oni, but his father called him Benjamin. So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to ephrath, that is Bethlehem, and Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel's Tomb, which is there to this day. Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder while Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine, and Israel heard of it. Now, the sons of Jacob were 12, the sons of Leah Reuben, Jacob's first born Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun, the sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin, the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant, Dan and Naphtali, the sons of Zilpah Leah's servant, Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in pat on jarm. And Jacob came to his father, Isaac at Mamre, or Kiriath Arba, that is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Now the days of Isaac were 180 years, and Isaac breathed his last, and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days, and his sons, Esau and Jacob, buried him. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together our God. We thank you that we can come to you and worship You. We draw near to you, trusting in Jesus, thanking you that you are a God who invites us. Into your family. You bring us into your family. Indeed, through Christ's perfect life, death and resurrection, we thank You that we can draw near to you. You don't get tired of us coming to you. You don't put us out. You think you want us to be here, seeking your blessing, seeking your help. And so we do. We come before you, and we thank you for giving us this access to you through Christ, by your Spirit. We worship You. You are worthy. You're worthy of all the praise, all the trust we ask you to help us today, to put off idols, to put off other things that we put our trust in. Help us to trust in you alone. Help us to look to you throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout our years, trusting in you that you are the All sufficient God. We pray for our brothers and sisters around the city who are also worshiping you Jesus. We pray for those on the south of the city. Think of churches on the South Hill, like South Hill Bible Church or Southside Christian Fellowship. Think of Summit. We pray that You would help them to trust in You. Help them to be faithful, to preach your word. Help them to be faithful, to proclaim Christ, to shepherd each other. We pray that you would be exalted in those churches. God. We thank you for what you're doing in our world. We pray for our leaders that you would give them wisdom and courage, help them to do what is best for the flourishing of our country. We pray that you would use them to promote life, that there would not be murder, that there not be abuse, that you would protect the lives of those not yet born, protect the lives of those living help people to be treated with with equity and justice. And we pray that You would help our leaders to to where to rule well. We pray for the world around us and all the chaos and the turmoil we think of situation in Israel with Palestine and Gaza and the West Bank. We pray for the Jews and Arabs there that you would work for peace, that you would bring about a situation where people can dwell together in peace. God, we pray for Ukraine and Russia, for peace there. God, we pray for an end to the hostilities and the fighting. We pray for the turmoil happening around the African continent. Think of Sudan and Nigeria and many other places. God that you would bring peace. Ultimately, we cry out, come Lord Jesus, come back and reign. Bring peace and righteousness on the earth. We ask for your children in all those places that you would help them, to trust you and to know you, to know your help. Help us this morning, to know your help. Pray for those who are suffering, those who are grieving, those who are feeling anxious. God help us to look to you and to trust in you. We pray in Your name. Amen. May be seated.
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Where do we go for help? Where do we turn when we need help? A lot of times, if I'm working on a car, I go to Google. The Google AI feature has been kind of helpful. I can say, hey, how many quarts of oil does this car need? How many foot pounds do I need to torque this bolt to, you know, your kid's sick, like, when should I be worried? And go to the ER, we go to our phones for a lot of help, right? When you wake up, maybe you go to your phone to think, what's my purpose today? What's on my calendar, who sent me a text message? Do I have any emails? Do I have any money? Do I have anything I need to be worried about in the weather, what's happening in the news? Like we oftentimes can go to our phones, Facebook, marketplace, Amazon, we look to our phones for help. And it's not all bad, right? We can get good things, helpful things, from our phones, but it's not the ultimate help we need. Sometimes we go to our friends. My wife is better at going to her friends and her family for help than I am. I'm more likely to try to figure it out myself, but she's good at asking other people for help, and that's a good thing. We should look to our spouses, our parents, our siblings, our friends, our fellow members of our church for help. But ultimately, there is one, and only one who can give us the help that we need most, and that's God, He is the all sufficient one, and he wants us to go to him. Isn't that amazing? Like, if you're a parent and you have a bunch of kids, or even one kid, you probably, at times are like, Okay, I'm tapped out. Like, I've been helping you all day. You need to figure this out yourself, because I'm getting tired kids, if your parents ever gotten tired before, they love you so much, but they get tired sometimes, right? Teachers get tired of helping their students, although they love them and they want to help them, but they get tired. You might have a friend who's very needy, and they always want your help, and you're like, Okay, I love you, but you need to figure this out, right? We get we get tired, but God doesn't. He doesn't get tired of helping us. He wants us to go to him for blessing, to go to Him for wisdom, for help. He is the all sufficient one. His energy never runs out, His love, His affection, his strength never is exhausted. God wants us to go to him. And so my question to you today is, are you going to God? Are you drawing near to Him, to worship him? That's the kind of relationship he wants. One of worship because he's worthy. God is amazing, right? Like, you don't, you don't look at something amazing and think, whatever. You don't come to God and think, Oh, whatever. It's not that great. Like, no, you just created everything. You're just all powerful. You've existed for all of eternity. You're willing to adopt all these people into your family. No, God is amazing, and he wants us to come to Him and worship him and say, Wow, look at you God. You are God. You're amazing. He wants us to draw near to Him. So I encourage you today to hear from the story of Jacob. God. God wants us to worship Him, to draw near to Him. We all need that we go to other things that ultimately cannot provide us with the hope, the help, the happiness that we need. How do you know if something is becoming an idol, like your phone could be a good thing. How do you know if it's an idol your friend could be a good thing. But how do you know if they're becoming an idol in your life? If we're looking to something and we don't look to God ever, we're always going to that thing instead of God, then that thing might be an idol in your life. God wants us to trust in Him, to worship him. Where are we looking for our identity? Where do we look for hope, help and happiness? Where do we look for forgiveness, for standing with God? Where do we look for our future purpose? Our hearts are idol factories. As one theologian said, we create idols. Little kids, that toy I got to have, that toy that control, that cookie, that doll, that friend, the attention of mom or dad. As we get older, the Popularity The girlfriend, the boyfriend, the car, the job, the money, the marriage, the career, the kids, the house, the vacation, the retirement, the peace. It's easy for us to go from one thing to the next thing, putting our hope. I hope that Christmas will make me happy. Oh, and now I hope that the new year will make me happy like we those aren't bad things, but it's easy to put our hope in the wrong place. God wants us like he wants Jacob, to trust in Him, to put our hope in Him, to worship Him, because He is all sufficient. If we look at Genesis 35 what's been happening in Genesis 34 a terrible thing happened. Jacob's daughter, Dinah, had a horrible thing happen to her from Shechem, and then his son, Simeon and Levi responded by killing all the men in that city. And now Jacob is worried. He's got a mess in his home. He's got a, I'm sure, a very sad daughter, he's got very angry sons, and then he's worried that all the cities around him are going to gather together and destroy him and his household, because they're going to not like what his sons did to the city of Shechem. Jacob is anxious. He's fearful. He might be confused. He's thinking, What do I do? You might find yourself in those kind of situations where you feel anxious, confused, fearful, confused, fearful. What can we do? We can go to God, the all sufficient God, and worship him. That's what God wants us to do. So I want to encourage you from Genesis 35 God is calling us to worship Him and Him alone. We need to remember that he is all sufficient and go to him. So our main idea worship the all sufficient God, putting away idols, being purified, and putting on Christ, trusting in Christ, worship the all sufficient God. He is Able to do all things that he wants to do. There's one place we can go to truly get help. It's not our phones, it's not our friends or family. Although those things might be wonderful, those people might be wonderful. It's Christ. He wants to be our Savior, and he's the only one who can save us. So first we see from Genesis, 35 verse one, we should worship the all sufficient God, remembering Christ, renewing our trust in Christ and our devotion to Him. It's really a call to worship God initiates this relationship with Jacob. You might think after chapter 34 that God's like, okay, Jacob, you're a disaster. You're all done. But no, what does God do in Genesis, 35 verse one, God said to Jacob. God goes to him in the midst of his sin and his sorrow and his and his stress, and he calls out to him. He says, Jacob, get up, go to Bethel and make an altar to me. There to me, the God who appeared to you. God wants Jacob to go to him. He initiates that relationship. He calls out to him. And if we're honest, think back on your life. Who is it between you and God who has initiated the relationship, right? Who knew you before the foundation of the world and decided that he wanted to have a relationship with you? Who is it that sent His only Son to earth to live a perfect life and die in your place? Who is it that sent his spirit and has given us His Word through his prophets and the apostles. Who is it that opened your eyes to see how great Jesus is to trust in Him if you trusted in him? Who is it that day by day, reminds you, touches your on the shoulder, touches your heart and your mind, and says, Hey, I'm here. God initiates. He's the one who keeps pursuing, keep seeking a relationship with us, no matter what a mess we've been, no matter how much sin we've committed. God wants us. He seeks us out by His grace because of who he is, not because of what we've done. So God seeks out Jacob, and what does he say to Jacob? He speaks to him and says, arise, get up. Go up to Bethel. Bethel was a higher elevation, like 1000 feet, higher than where Jacob was in Shechem, so God tells him to go up to Bethel. Get up. Don't sit there in your fear and your anxiety and your stress. Get up. Go to Bethel. God gives him a command to get up. And oftentimes we need to do that. We need to get up from where we're sitting in our laziness and our desires and our confusion and our idolatry, we need to get up and go to worship God, you need to go worship as Jacob needed to go worship. Where does God tell Jacob to go? Tells him to go to Bethel. This is a place. Bethel is a name of a city that was called Luz, or Luz, if we're talking in Spanish, but they didn't speak Spanish. So I'm not sure why I said that, other than that, I speak Spanish. But the point is, the city was loose, and then they called it Bethel. Because Beth El means house of God, right? So why did Jacob call it Bethel? Beth? I think in Hebrew means house. So if your name is Beth, that's what your name originated from, maybe, unless your parents were coming from a different language, maybe. But anyway, house and then el is Hebrew for God. So house of God. Does God need a house? Does he get cold on a winter morning like today? Does he need a shelter from rain? Like God doesn't need a house, right? Like when God makes a house, when he dwells with people, it's for their sake, so they can have a place where they can see God, where God can reveal himself, and they can know Him and draw near to Him and worship him. It's for their own benefit. Like in the Garden of Eden, God made the Garden of Eden basically like a house for Adam and Eve to live with God and walk with God. And Bethel was the place where God revealed Himself to Jacob and showed Jacob that he was there with him. If you turn back to Genesis 28 we can read about this place, Bethel, or Bethel, as some people might call it, but I'm like, I like calling
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it Bethel. Jacob sees God in Genesis 28 verse 10, turn back there a couple chapters Genesis, 28 verse 10, Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran, 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, and he dreamed. And behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, 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 your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, to the north and the south. And in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place. And I did not know it. He was afraid. And said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. See God revealed Himself to Jacob at Bethel. He showed Jacob, then all of the things he was doing. God was keeping his promises to Abraham Isaac, and Jacob, God was his God. And so that picture, that vision of a ladder with angels going up and down, that was God opening Jacob's eyes to see, I am sovereignly acting on your behalf, protecting you, providing for you, doing things on your behalf. Imagine a busy board room with a CEO of a company, and the CEO is telling all the different people to do all the different stuff, and they're all carrying out their mission. Or maybe a sergeant with a bunch of police officers, or a coach with a team
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they're organizing, doing all these things, and God, the Lord Jesus, is at the top of this ladder, and they're doing all this stuff to care for Jacob, to provide for him, to protect him. Is this true for all of God's people? Yes, we see all throughout Scripture what happened with Joseph. Joseph's brothers got jealous, throw him in a pit, sell him into slavery. In Egypt, he gets thrown into prison for something he didn't do, and then when his brothers are worried that he's going to be mad at them, what does he say? You meant all this for evil, but God intended it for good. Genesis, 50. Verse 20. God that ladder of angels. They were superintending everything happening to Joseph. God was with Joseph even when he was falsely accused, even when he was thrown in prison, even when he was sold into slavery. God was with Him, doing what he wanted to do, and all throughout the life of God's people Israel, God is always superintending, ordaining, sovereignly working, carrying out his plan for his people. And God wants Jacob to remember that. He wants him to go back to Bethel and remember, I am your God, even though these people around you might get mad at you and want to kill you. I'm with you. I'm going to take care of this, and for you, if you're in Christ, if you've trusted in Christ, I want you to know the same is true. God is sovereignly ordaining all things. What does Romans 828, say to those who love God and are called according to His purpose, all those who are in Christ, God is working all things together for good. What is the good from verse 29 of Romans eight to be like Christ. God is working all things in your life to make you like Christ, to bless you with more knowledge of Him. If you're in Jesus, he is working, and he wants you to remember that when things are stressful, when everything is on fire, when it feels like everything is going wrong, God is still the God of Bethel, the God who is sovereignly orchestrating all things according to His purpose and His plan. He wants Jacob to go there to Bethel and to live with Him. God has always wanted His people to live with him in his house, right? He wanted Adam and to live with him in the garden. He wants Jacob to go to Bethel and live with him there. What does God tell Moses in the last half of Exodus? He says, Build a tabernacle, and then God dwells with his people through the tabernacle, making himself known to them through the altar and the sacrifices and all the furniture in the tabernacle. And then later, what does David want to do? He builds a temple so that God can dwell with His people through the temple, right? So Solomon, David's son, builds the temple, and God dwelt with him and made himself known, made his glory and. Known and they worshiped him. They made sacrifices to him through that temple. But then, when Jesus came to earth, what did Dan say last week from John 114, who is it that became flesh? The word Jesus became flesh. He tabernacled among us. God become became man. He made his house Jesus. Jesus is where God came and dwelled and made himself known perfectly, got himself in flesh, making himself known to us. And then when Jesus died and rose again and went up to heaven, who did he send? Sent the Holy Spirit. Now, where is God's house? It's us. If you have put your faith in Jesus and Jesus alone, you've trusted in him, you are His temple. First, Corinthians, 619, says, and we collectively, corporately as the church, not this building, but us as His people. We are His temple. We're his house. This is where God is making himself known in our relationships, in the preaching of His word and the following of His Word, and the loving of each other, individually and corporately. Bethel, we don't really talk about anymore, because now it's it's God's people, the church, us, individually and corporately. We are his temple, his house. So God wants Jacob to go live with him there and remember Him and trust Him and worship Him at Bethel. And God wants us to do the same thing, not in Bethel. You don't have to travel to Israel. You can do that right here and wherever you live all throughout the week. You can worship God. How does God tell Jacob to worship him? At the end of verse one, he says, Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you and you fled from your brother, Esau. He tells him to make an altar. Why do Why does Jacob need an altar? When we worship God, there's a problem between us, right? There's our sin. God is worthy of all of our love and affection. We don't give him all of our love and affection. He's worthy of all of our obedience. We don't obey him perfectly. He's worthy of us giving him everything, and we don't give him everything. And so we need an altar. What is the purpose of an altar? It's a place for sacrifice, for something to die. So time and time again, God's people throughout the Old Testament had to go to the altar to worship God, because they had to make a sacrifice. They had to come and acknowledge God, you're king. I confess my sin. I repent of my sin. And this, this lamb, this goat, this bull, whatever it is they were killing, it was pointing forward to a greater sacrifice that that goat, that bull, that lamb, couldn't actually take away their sin, but God, God temporarily atoned, covered over their sin, passed over their sin because of that sacrifice that was being made. What did the altar that Jacob had to make point to? It points to the altar where Jesus gave himself. What does Hebrews nine say? Jesus entered the heavenly, holy of holies before God the Father. He offered Himself, His body, His life, His blood. He died in our place, taking the full wrath of God for our sins. That was the altar where our sins are forgiven. And everybody, Jacob Abraham Isaac, as they made the sacrifices on those altars, they were looking forward, always looking forward, to a greater sacrifice that would come. But that sacrifice has come. We just sang about it in all sufficient merit, right, Jesus died his merit, his perfect righteousness, always obeying God, dying in our place, taking all over the wrath of God is enough that we don't ever have to make a sacrifice again. Like that. We don't our altar now is Jesus. We just go to Jesus. He perfectly covers our sins, so we come to Him and we confess our sin, we thank him for what he did for us. We trust in the forgiveness we have through Jesus. The altar is a place of repentance. It's a place of forgiveness. It's a place of thanking God. It's a place of dedicating yourself to Him. Jacob is dedicating himself to God through the altar, and he's asking for God's help. So I encourage you now, day by day, moment by moment, go to Christ. As you go to Christ, you remember what he did on the cross. You trust in Him. You repent of your sin. You say, God, I'm yours. I belong to you. Help me. Thank you for giving me your spirit. Help me now to walk in obedience to you. Help me to live for you. It's a place of trust and dedicating, consecrating ourselves to Him through Christ. And so that's what God wanted Jacob to do. He wanted him to go and live at Bethel, make an altar to the God who appeared to him when he fled from his brother, Esau. And so Jacob does that. He goes, God initiates. God calls him to go worship Him. And I encourage you, if you're a believer in Jesus, day by day, this is your privilege. This is your great joy. You can go to Christ. You just had a bad attitude and sinned against somebody. Go to Christ. You just thought a thought. You shouldn't have thought, go to Christ. You're feeling anxious. Go to Christ. You're feeling hurt and sad. That's how someone sinned against. You go to Christ. He understands. You're not sure how things are going to work out. Go to Christ. You can go to him freely. You have a way to God, the Father, that's always open. Through Jesus, by His Spirit. You don't have to make an altar, you don't have to kill a goat or lamb unless you want to eat some mutton. But it's not to get any favor with God. It's just for eating it, right? We don't need to do anything. We can just go to Christ and who can trust him? And if you're sitting here today and you haven't trusted in Jesus, I encourage you, God wants a relationship. You. How do you have that relationship? It's through Jesus, through trusting that he died for you in your place. He loves you. He get wants to give you his spirit and forgive you, if you'll trust in Him, go to Jesus. He's the only one that can save us. He is worthy of our trust, which is why Jacob does what we see in the second part here. Point two, put away your idols. Purify yourself and put on Christ. There's a cost of worship. Jesus paid all the cost, right? But as we go to worship God, it's exclusive. We need to worship Him alone. Look what Jacob says to his household in verse two. So Jacob said to his household and all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves, change your garments. 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've gone. He's telling them to put away all their foreign gods. So we know that Rachel had the household gods of her dad, Laban. Maybe some of the other people from the household had taken other gods from Laban. People, I don't know. They just looted Shechem. I'm sure there are little bronze and gold and silver statues all over in people's houses in Shechem, and they took them, and maybe they had other gods. They collected other places. And Jacob is saying we can't go worship God and ask God for help and trust Him and also have these other things too that we're trusting in. It's exclusive. God wants all of our trusts. He wants us to love him with all of our heart. He doesn't want us to be hanging on to these other things and hanging on to him like my daughter plays basketball, and she's in fifth grade, and so sometimes the kids on her team, not her, but some other kids, will be confused about which goal they're shooting on. Somebody gets a rebound. They're supposed to run down to this side of the court, but they start shooting over here, and all the parents are like, no, no, no, it's that way, like she's playing for the wrong team, right? You can only play for one team. You're either on one team or the other team. You're not going to be setting a block for the 40 Niners and then running out to try to catch the ball for the you know, you're either for the 40 Niners or the Seahawks or Weber playing. I don't even know they're playing somebody today. I think they already played, or maybe they're playing right now. You should probably check your phone and see the score. Maybe not. Anyway, it's fun to put your hope in Seahawks winning when they're having a good season, but ultimately, we know we need to hope in Jesus, right? So go see Hawks. But more than that, go Jesus. So the point is, God wants us to exclusively worship Him, to trust him. We can't trust in Jesus and trust in being a good person. It's not, yeah, Jesus died for my sins, but I'm also gonna try to be good enough so that if what Jesus did wasn't enough, God will look at how good I am, and maybe that'll be enough. Or I'm gonna trust him that I was religious. I gave that money, or I did that religious thing. I got baptized. I'm going to trust in that, but you're trusting in Jesus. He's the one who saves you everything we do after that, being baptized, after you've trusted in Jesus, giving your obedience to Him, giving it's all a response to him. It doesn't add anything to what Jesus did. It's exclusive. Worship of Jesus, worship of God is exclusive. It's only him. We go to him alone. So Jacob tells him, put away all the foreign gods. And he says, cleanse yourselves, so they would wash themselves, literally, purify yourselves and put on new clothes. You and I put on new clothes all the time, right? Like Us guys wear the same jeans a couple days in a row, maybe, but most of us change most of our clothes every day. We're wealthy Americans, it's easy for us to change our clothes, right? They didn't have all the kinds of clothes that could change. They couldn't go to their camel bag and get new clothes every time they felt like it. They probably had to make new clothes or fine. I don't know what they did, but they had to put on new clothes. Why? The point is, it was representing, we're leaving these foreign gods. We're cleansing ourselves. It's a whole change of life. They were physically demonstrating that they were leaving other gods and trusting in the one true God, only in Yahweh and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he alone is their God. So as they traveled to Bethel to worship God, to make an altar trusting in God, Jacob is saying, Put it all away. Don't trust in anything else. Just trust in God, the One True God. And so they did that. They took all their household gods probably a lot of value from that, gold and silver and bronze. They took out their earrings, not saying earrings are bad, but they probably had talismans or amulets that were expressing faith in other gods. That's why they were getting rid of those. And then so Jacob's teaching us, God wants us to put it all away and trust in Him alone. So that's what they did. And the same is true for us as we go to worship God, as we draw near to God, what does he desire from us? He desires that we would love Him with our whole heart, that we would trust in Him alone. We don't hang on to this other thing and go to him, whatever it is that we look to instead of him, whatever it is that I'm willing to sin to get, whether it be power or pleasure or possessions or popularity or pride or most of all, myself, right? It's easy to make ourselves idols. We put that away. Say, God, I am yours, and then we ask them to purify our hearts. Because it's not just the idols, whether it be pornography or stealing or alcohol abuse or being unkind in your words to other people, or being prideful and taking your bed of other people, it's not just the external actions, right? It's It's the heart. Our hearts need to be purified. So just like Jacob told his people, purify your hearts, we need to have our hearts purified, and then we need to put on new clothes, right? Not necessarily, literally new clothes, although I'll do that anyway all the time, we need to put on the clothing that Christ wants us to put on. Put on Christ. What is it that that song we just sang says about our clothing we are clothed in? Righteousness of Christ, if you've trusted in Jesus, Revelation 19, Verse eight says it was granted to the bride, to the church, to God's people, to clothe their self with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. It's really, it's really Christ's righteousness that he gives us. He clothes us with His righteousness, and that becomes our righteousness. We practically live out who we are in Christ. When you look at Ephesians, four very common passage that this is, I think this situation with Jacob is what we see in the New Testament. With Paul and other authors, they talk about putting on and putting off. They're really talking about clothing. It's clothing language. Ephesians, four, verse 22 Paul says we need to put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. We put off that idolatry, we put off that sinfulness, we put off that trust in ourselves and other things, and then we need to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. Remember the gospel. Remember Christ. Remember God's word. Then it says, Put on like a coat, put on the new self, created in the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness. Day by day, as we draw near to God and worship Him, we're putting on Christ. Put on that attitude of Christ. Put on those languages that Christ would speak, the kind of way of treating other people that Christ would have. We put on Christ. Imagine if you went outside to clean up after the long winter, all of your dog's business in the backyard. Some of you have dogs, you know I'm talking about, if you don't go out all the time in the time the winter, because it's cold, and then springtime comes and you got all that out there, you got to clean up, and you get some on your shoes, and then you trip, and you fall, and get some on your clothes, and then you're just dirty, right? And then after that, you go change your oil, and the oil filter spills all over your face because you didn't came out where you didn't think it was going to come out that didn't happen yesterday, actually did. But anyway, you're all, you're really dirty. You're not going to go take a shower, get clean, scrub everything off, and then put on that, those dirty clothes again, right? Like those go in the hamper. They go in the washer. You put on new clothes, and that's true for us, right? Like Jesus has cleansed us, he's forgiven our sins. So don't go pick up that selfish, idol worshiping, self focused. Put that on, no, that's gross. Leave that over there. That's what Jesus died for, right? Leave that over there. Put on, Christ, be like Christ, because he's given that to us, right? As we draw near to God and worship Him, He gives us what we need. He gives us Christ's righteousness. He gives us the power to obey Him. He gives us a true view of what is valuable and worthy, which is him. So going back to our story with Jacob, our passage with Jacob, so he and the people of his household put away their idols. They bury them under this tree. And then we see our third point, that Jacob trusts God's providence and God's promises. He trusts the Providence and promises of the all sufficient God. He continues worshiping. How does God provide for him? As he's trusting in Him, as he's drawn here to worship God at the altar and giving up his idols, this terror from God falls in all the cities around them. So the people are scared of them, all these Canaanite cities. Instead of attacking Jacob, they're afraid. However God does it. He protects Jacob. He does what Jacob says in verse three, he says, God answers me. In the day of my distress, God's been with me, God answers Jacob, just like God protected Jacob from Laban. Remember, Laban wanted to maybe rough up Jacob because he took away his daughters and all their kids without telling him he was leaving. And then God appeared to Laban and said, Don't mess with them. So God protected Jacob from Laban. Then Esau is coming with 400 men to come and maybe try to kill Jacob. And then God gives Esau a soft heart where he's willing to reconcile with Jacob. God is protecting Jacob here, and it seems that God that protection continues. We don't have any record in the rest of genesis of other people's coming and attacking Jacob and his people. God keeps protecting them. He gives them the protection they need. Does this mean that God will always protect his people and will never have problems? Well, when God disciplines them and judges, he takes away that protection, right? When God disciplines them through Assyria and Babylon with the exiles, God takes away that protection when they need it. The point is, God is a good father, and he protects. He disciplines His providence is exactly what his people need. He gives them what they need. So they journey along, and they get to Bethel. And what does he do? In Bethel, in verse six and seven, it says he built an altar and called the place el Bethel because their God had revealed Himself to him when he fled from his brother. So remember, Bethel means house of God. So now he's calling it God of the house of God, so God of Bethel. So he's naming the place after God, because God's revealed himself there. God is making himself known to him. He makes an altar. He probably kills some animals. He's remembering that his sins required death, and God is providing a way for him to be forgiven. Remember when Abraham took Isaac up on the mountain, and God told Abraham to kill Isaac, and then God said, Now I'm going to provide someone instead of Isaac. God provided a ram, so Abraham didn't have to kill Isaac, right? That's you and me. We all deserved like Isaac, like Abraham, like Jacob, to die. But the altar keeps reminding us someone died in my place. Someone died in my place. Now someone is Jesus, and so he. Calls the place the God of Bethel. We don't see that reference anymore in the New Testament. We do see people talking about the God of Jesus, the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus. Because now, instead of God making himself known to Bethel, He's making himself known through Jesus. Right? He's the God of Jesus. So that's how God is revealing himself. We keep worshiping Him because He's the God of Jesus. He makes himself known to us through Christ. I always see something sad happens in verse eight. Remember, Rebecca was Jacob's mom, and she sent him away because she was afraid he saw her other son was going to try to kill him. So he left, and he was gone for like, over 20 years, and we don't have any record of him getting to see his mom again, and now he's back, and it seems like maybe Rebecca's already died. So that's really sad. Jacob and his mom were really close, even though she named him he cheats. But they were really close. Maybe Isaac named him he cheats. I don't know. Jacob and Rebecca were really close, and it seems like she's dead and now Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, who probably was like a mom to Jacob, she dies. So there's sadness, there's sorrow. So they call the place alone bakuth, which means the oak of weeping, the oak of mourning. They're sad, but Jacob keeps trusting God, keeps worshiping God, and that's the call for us, too. As you go through life, it's not all going to be roses and flowers and wonderful things, right? There's going to be challenges. You're going to lose people, sometimes people are going to die. But we have hope. We can keep worshiping the God who resurrects those who die. Right? We know that God resurrected Jesus from the dead, and all of us who trusted in Jesus, we resurrected to live with Christ forever on the New Earth as he reigns forever. So we have hope. Jacob has hope as Deborah dies and he's sad. We worship God in the midst of sadness, and then God speaks to him again. God reveals Himself to him, and it's really encouraging and amazing to see what God says to him. Look at verse nine. God appeared to Jacob again when he came from pat on Aram and blessed him. 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. So remember, his name was Jacob, which means he cheats. I'm saying at that voice, because Dan said in that voice, like a couple months ago, and I thought it was hilarious. I'm gonna keep saying he cheats, right? It's like, that's not a great name. Like everybody's like, That guy cheats, but God renames him Israel. Why does he name him Israel? Look back a couple pages at Genesis, 32 in Genesis 32 Esau is coming to meet Jacob, and Jacob is worried, and so he wrestles with God. God appears to him. The Angel of the Lord appears to Jacob, it seems like, and he's wrestling with him, asking him to bless him. And then look at Genesis, 32 verse 28 Then the angel said, Your Name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with man, and have prevailed. Israel means he strives with God. He persists, he perseveres in seeking God's blessing. God names Jacob, Israel forever changes his name. Gives him a new identity, because he wants to celebrate that Jacob sought God's blessing. And God wants that from all of his people, not just Jacob, but all of his sons and daughters, all the people of God. He wants us to be people who seek God's blessing. What does Jesus say in Matthew seven, seek, and you'll find, Ask, and it will be open to you, right? Knock, and it will be open to you, ask, and you'll find He wants us to seek. What does Luke 18 say? You can go read Luke 18 later, Jesus is telling a parable that they should pray and not give up. He says, there's this widow who's persisting with a wicked judge. And finally he answers, and he's saying, the point is, God wants you to persist in asking him seeking His blessing. He's not going to give you a snake instead of bread, right? God is a good father, and he wants us to seek His blessing. He wants us to strive with him now, like we talked about earlier with our kids, sometimes we get tired. We're like, Okay, can you go get someone else to help you? God never gets tired. He wants us to strive with him, to seek His blessing. He wants that to define Jacob, to define all of his people after that, to define us as the church. We will be a people who call on the name of the Lord, who seek Him, who seek His blessing. Do you do that? Do you go to God and say, God, bless me. I need you. Do you recognize that he is greater, that he is the one who can give what you need? Forgiveness, hope, strength, purpose, love, compassion for others, wisdom, seek him. Don't stop seeking blessing for him. Strive with him. Persist. He wants that. He likes that. God wants us to be persistent in going to him. That's what Israel means. Every time you hear the name Israel, think about God wants us to seek His blessing. It's one of the sad things now about many nations, including many people in Israel is not seeking His blessing. Seek Him. He's the giver of good gifts. He's the Creator. He's the Savior. And then God says in the next verse, who he is. He gives Jacob a new name. Then he talks about who he is, he says. And God said to him, I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. God Almighty. In Hebrew. That word is El Shaddai. He is the all sufficient one. God is all sufficient. Does God ever run out of strength? He's like, Oh, I can't do that. That's too hard. No, I can't lift that rock. Has that ever happened? No, God is all powerful. Is God ever encounter a situation where he doesn't know the answer how to solve it? Can mathematicians inside. Just give him a problem that's too difficult, too much calculus for God. No, God is all sufficient. Does he ever run out of love and grace and forgiveness and mercy? No, God is all sufficient whatever Jacob needs. God is able
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whatever you need. God is able, through Christ, to provide you with what you need. God is all sufficient. So he tells Jacob, Be fruitful and multiply. Jacob's already been doing that, but he's talking about not just Jacob, but all of his generations. He wants him to become a great nation. But remember what God told Abraham? I'm going to bless you, and then through your offspring, I'm going to bless all the families of the earth. This being fruitful, multiplying thing, it definitely is aimed at Israel becoming a great nation, which they did. They became millions of people. But it's aimed at all the nations as well. Through the king of Israel, through the savior of Israel, Jesus, God wants to bring in people from every tongue and tribe and nation. What does he tell us now? Make disciples of all the nations. Spread the image of God through making followers of Jesus. That's what God wants. When he gives us a command, he's able to do it. He's telling Jacob Be fruitful and multiply. That implies that he's not gonna let Jacob get destroyed, right? Then, when he gives us a command, he's gonna give us the grace to do it. He's not like the Pharaoh in Egypt when they got mad at the Israelites and they said, Make lots of bricks, but we're not gonna give you straw. God doesn't do that. God will give you what you need. He calls you to be patient. He gives you patience. He calls you to persevere. He gives you perseverance. He calls you to be holy. He gives you holiness. He calls you to love. He gives you love. He's all sufficient. He gives us what we need to be, what he wants us to be. So what promises does he give Jacob that Jacob can hold on to, and how do those promises apply to us? Now, he says a nation and a company of nations shall come from you. So Jacob became a nation, right? The nation of Israel and even a company of nations. It's almost like each of those 12 sons became their own nation within the bigger nation. So he's talking about lots of nations. He's talking about kings coming from your body, right? Kings came from Jacob, the ultimate first Saul was a king from the tribe of Benjamin, and then Jesus was a king, or, sorry, David and Solomon and all the rest of those kings came from the light of Judah. But then the ultimate King that he's talking about is Jesus, right? Jesus is the King who ultimately fulfills this and that company of nations. Yes, it includes Israel, but it also includes people from every tongue and tribe and nation. God's aim is that people from every people group would be part of His family. How, like Dan said last week, through trusting in Jesus, through receiving Him, we have the right to become children of God. He wants to make a great family, a great people more than we can number. If you look at Revelation five or Revelation seven, a massive number of people worshiping him around his throne, because the lamb Christ, who was slain, is worthy, and he's purchased us to worship him. That's the promise God's making. Jacob, I'm going to make you great and I'm going to make a blessing for all the all the world through your offspring. It's not just about Jacob and Israel. It's about all the nations that God wants to save through them. And then God promises him that he'll give him the land that he gave to Abraham and the land to his offspring. So God's promised them land. And then it says in verse 13, God went up from him in the place where he had spoken to him. So God appeared to him, he spoke to him, he promised him this land. What does that land mean? Now, like we have lots of debate among American Christians about Israel and what's what's going on with Israel? If we see Romans 11, one side would say God is done with Israel. They rejected Jesus. He's done, right? He's now. Now we're on to the church. And yes, we are in the church age, where God is saving people through Christ. But Romans 11 says that one day, many in Israel will put away those false gods, that idolatry, that trust in humanism, trust in secularism, or trust in being religious, they'll purify themselves and put on the robes of righteousness of Christ. Many will come to Christ and join the church, not going to replace the church, but they'll become part of the church, part of the assembly of all the nations that worship God. And so the land that they have right now is them having some of that land that God promised. Jacob here is that fulfillment. It might be a partial thing that God's holding on to for them for now, but that doesn't mean that we give them a free pass to commit atrocities or to be unkind to people around them. The same way, we would call our leaders to operate with justice, with compassion, with with with love, with respect for other people made in God's image, we would ask the people of Israel do the same thing. Treat the people around you, be they Arab or Jewish, with respect. Give them the same respect that everyone made in God's image is due. And so we need to trust that the all sufficient God has enough abundance for Israelis, for Jews and for Arabs and Palestinians to live together. There's enough land, there's enough provision, there's enough for us, citizens and refugees, to live together, for all the peoples, to walk in God's ways and trust him. And ultimately, we need a good king who can administer all that, and he's coming back. Jesus is coming right, and he's gonna perfectly rule. It doesn't give rulers now a free pass. We should pray for them. We should encourage them. We should help justice and right. Consciousness to flourish, but we wait for a good King, Jesus, who will come back and reign over all the nations from his throne and we will worship him, the all sufficient one who will perfectly rule over all of his people, the company of nations, including Israel. So what does Jacob do? He responds with more worship. You see in verse 1415, he sets up a pillar, he pours out a drink offering. He says, Thank you God, and that's what we should do. As we see God speaking to us through the Bible, as we remember that Christ died for our sins. We worship God, we thank him, we thank him. You could pour out your Coca Cola on the ground if you wanted to, but that's not really what we need to do anymore, right? We trust him. We give Him thanks. A song Jacob was pouring out his oil, so I was talking about Coca Cola. But anyway, the point is, it's about is, it's about worshiping the Lord, giving to him what he deserves, giving him thanks. We give him of our resources. We give back our offerings and tithes. We give to him because he is worthy. Then we see in verse 16 through 21 that more tragedy happens. Not only did Jacob lose Deborah, now, as the story continues, we see that he loses his wife, Rachel. Remember when she had Joseph? The name Joseph means, may he add? Rachel wanted more kids, and God gives her another pregnancy. She's pregnant with a boy, and as she's giving birth, she's dying, which is a terrible tragedy for her, for her son, and she names her son, Ben, una son of my weeping, my morning, whereas Jacob gives him a different name, Benjamin, son of my right hand, and she dies. Where does she die? In Bethlehem. What happened in Bethlehem a couple 1000 years later, one of Jacob's sons, Judah, had a great, great, great great great great great great great grandson through Mary, named Jesus. He was born in Bethlehem in a manger, humble and what happened? King Herod killed many baby boys that day, that time, and the mourning of Rachel continued. Her mourning continued. But that wasn't the end Jacob mourning, Rachel's death, the mourning of all those mothers who lost their babies in Bethlehem that day, was not the end, because Jesus, that son escaped, he went to Egypt and came back. He lived a perfect life. He died in our place and rose again and now he offers resurrection. Right? He offers new life and resurrection to Rachel, to those baby boys that died in Bethlehem that day, to all of us who trust in Him. He offers salvation and life. The story did not end with Rachel's death. It continues through the offspring of Jacob Jesus. Then we see another so we see Jacob has to continue trusting God, God's providence, amazing things like God speaking to him really hard, things like losing his wife, who he loved. And it's gonna be the same for you, right? Like you're gonna have these non top experiences where you see that God's word is true, and Jesus is your Savior, and he's doing amazing things for you. And then there's going to be times when it's like, whoa, that's hard. Are you still there? God? But He wants you to know I'm with you always. He is with us, always. He does not stop keeping his promises, even when hard things happen. In fact, through those hard things, he's always working keeping his promises. And then we see another hard thing happens in verse 22 Reuben goes and lays with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel hears about it. We don't see a response from Jacob here, but we see in Genesis 49 that when Jacob is giving out the blessings to his sons, he doesn't give Reuben the blessing of being the first born who is going to kind of lead the family. He doesn't give to Simeon and Levi either. We see from Genesis 34 why they didn't get it. So Genesis 34 and 35 give us kind of the context of why Judah, the fourth son, gets that blessing of the firstborn, and he's the one who's promised to rule. And it's through Judah that the king of Israel comes. We'll find out later that Judah wasn't always a stellar character, either, but in God's providence, he provides through the tribe of Judah, not through Reuben or Simeon or Levi. And then we see wrapping up this chapter here, in this kind of whole section of Genesis, that there's a list of the 12 sons of Jacob. 12 sons. He's been fruitful. God's given him all these sons. And this is kind of a transition in the story where it's going from Jacob being the focus to now these 12 sons are kind of taking over the focus. They're coming. Jacob's going, exiting stage left. The 12 sons are coming into the spotlight, and God's going to keep his promises that he made to Jacob through these 12 sons, he's going to work through them, through their sin, through their imperfection. God's going to keep shepherding them and teaching them, keeping his promises. And then finally, in the last scene here in this chapter, we see more of God's providence. Isaac, who thought he was going to die when he was way younger. What happened to Isaac? He lived a long time after that, and he lived to be 180 full of years. He was gathered to his people, old and full of days. So God was gracious to Abraham and to Isaac, giving them a long life, giving them much time to worship Him. And then who buries him? Esau and Jacob come together, showing that reconciliation that they had, and they bury Isaac together. So again, we see God's providence, keeping caring for his people. So what should we do with all this? We need to remember God is calling us to worship him. He wants us to draw it near to him. Why he is all sufficient. He's full of grace and mercy and patience. He wants to give us exactly what we need, to worship Him, to love Him, to serve Him, to bow before him and say, I love you, God. I want to live for you. It to reflect Him with our lives. What do we need to do as we do that, we need to put away idols. What are you tempted to look at instead of Christ? Put that away. Look to Christ instead. If your phone is keeping you from looking at Christ, set your phone aside. You might still need it for some things, but look at Jesus. If your love for this other thing is keeping you from looking at Christ, put that away. Let Christ be the one you trust in and you love. He wants to purify your heart. Put on Christ's let Christ give you His righteousness as you draw near to Him and worship him and then keep coming to that altar of Jesus, confessing, trusting his forgiveness, giving thanks, devoting yourself to God and seeking His help. Let's be like Israel. Let's strive with God for His blessing, not so we can have a nicer car or a bigger house, but so we can know Him better and make him known through our lives, so we can be people who reflect the glory of God to the world through our faith in Christ, trust that God is indeed all sufficient, Be fruitful and multiply, make disciples of all the nations through Christ. Let's pray God, thank You for Your mercy and kindness. Thank you that you invite us to worship, you to strive with you, to go to you for blessing, not only for ourselves, but for those around us, that we would know you, that others would know you, help us to be a people who purify ourselves by your grace, trusting in Christ, putting away idols, putting on the clothes of Christ and loving each other like you love us. Thank you so much for Jesus being our Savior.
Nathan Thiry is the Growth Groups & Outreach Pastor at Faith Bible Church. He enjoys biking and outdoor activities, and has a passion to see the gospel spread throughout our community and the whole world!
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