"Where is God? (Genesis 28:10-22)” | 5/16/2021
Genesis 28:10-22 | 5/16/21 | Will DuVal
I heard a funny story recently about 2 young, mischievous brothers who were always causing trouble, so their parents, finally at their wit’s end, asked the PASTOR if he would come over and ‘put the fear of GOD in ‘em’. So the pastor sat the younger brother down first, and he wanted to remind the boy that “God is always watching him”, so the pastor asked, “Where is God?” The boy was silent. So the pastor repeated, “WHERE… is GOD?” The boy was still too frightened to answer. So the pastor, now getting frustrated, clamored “WHERE IS GOD?”
The boy ran upstairs to his room, slammed the door, and hid under his bed. His older brother peaked underneath and asked, “What happened?” The boy replied, “Now we’re REALLY in trouble; God is missing and they think WE did it!”
Where is God? That’s our big question for this morning. That was JACOB’S big question in our passage for this morning in Genesis ch28; if you have your Bibles and want to head there. (If you don’t have a Bible, we’d love to give you one if you visit the Info Bar!) But while you’re finding it, let me remind you of where we are in our study of the book of Genesis, and in the life of the patriarch JACOB. Ya-cob, literally, means “heel-grabber”, or figuratively, “supplanter” or “deceiver”; he was the grandson of the deceitful Abraham, the SON of the deceitful Isaac... and Jacob didn’t fall far from the tree. Except Jacob lied not to some pagan king, but to his own father Isaac, and he deceived his own brother Esau (speaking of a pair of misbehaving brothers…). And now ESAU, having been tricked out of both his birthright (for a bowl of lentil stew), and out of his blessing as well, Esau HATES Jacob and is determined to KILL him in revenge. But Jacob’s MOTHER Rebekah, the biggest liar in the whole FAMILY, catches wind of Esau’s plan, and she tricks her husband Isaac into sending Jacob east to her family in Haran.
And last Sunday, we saw Isaac finally capitulate, and send Jacob out with God’s threefold blessing once promised to Abraham, then conferred onto Isaac, and now passed on to Jacob - the promise of a people, a place, and a pledge of blessing.
But as the story picks back up here in v10, we find NOT a confidently blessed Jacob, but a frightened, unsure man. Here is soft, domestic Jacob, the homebody, the “momma’s boy”, now exiled out into the wilderness, running for his life. Little does Jacob know that despite Rebekah’s plan for him to “stay just a little while”(27:44-45) until Esau cools down, it will actually be 20 years before Jacob will return to Beersheba; he will never see his mother again. Despite having just been blessed by his father with the promise of becoming “a company of many peoples” (28:3), Jacob is TOTALLY alone. Instead of the security of the promised land (28:4), Jacob finds himself in the middle of the God-forsaken desert. And far from enjoying the “the blessing of Abraham”, Jacob feels CURSED to endure the consequences of his own sin. Jacob now LIES in the proverbial bed that he has made for himself. (Actually, as we’ll see, he doesn’t even HAVE a bed to lay in; that is the extent of the mess that Jacob has gotten himself into!)
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But here’s the big message for you and me this morning: when we are at our absolute lowest - when you’re down and out, flat on your back, all alone, running for your life, in the middle of the desert with nothing but a ROCK for a pillow - THAT low… where is God? Do you know that God is right there WITH you. Because God is ALWAYS with you. And God is ESPECIALLY with us, God draws CLOSEST to us, in our times of greatest need. In our hardships and pain. So we praise God this morning, for His presence.
Would you stand with me... Genesis 28:10-22
“Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. 11 And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. 12 And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder[b] 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! 13 And behold, the Lord stood above it[c] 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 to your offspring. 14 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 in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 17 And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
18 So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19 He called the name of that place Bethel,[d] but the name of the city was Luz at the first. 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, 21 so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, 22 and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.”” This is the word of the Lord... let’s pray…
OUTLINE: Here’s your outline for this passage: Genesis 28 answers our big question for the morning - “Where is God?” - in four contrasting, paradoxical ways. A paradox is “a statement that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a deep truth.” FOUR paradoxes here regarding God’s whereabouts, that we see corroborated throughout the rest of Scripture. And the REASON for these paradoxes, the classical Christian answer to the question - “Where is God?” - is that God is omnipresent. Literally, “all present”. God is everywhere. We can boldly declare this morning that “God is here in our midst”... and yet… our brothers and sisters across the highway meeting RIGHT NOW at West County Assembly of GOD can make the exact same declaration at the exact same TIME… as could EVERY church meeting right this very moment, all across the world, not to mention every non-church part of our entire UNIVERSE - God is all present at all times in all places. God is here… and there. That’s a paradox. And BASED on each of these 4 paradoxes, we’re gonna conclude with 3 RESPONSES that God’s omnipresence ought to inspire within us. Okay?
#1 - Where is God? God is both OVER (vv10-11) and AMONGST (vv12-13a) us. He is simultaneously OVER us, even as He is AMONGST us.
Look back with me at vv10-11: “Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran.”
Place names are important in the Bible. Beersheba, we learned back in Genesis 21, means “Well of the Oath”. Wells were symbols and sources of LIFE. Haran, by contrast, means “parched”, thirsty, or even idiomatically: “to get angry”. So here is Jacob, running as fast as he can AWAY from the land of life-giving PROMISE... fleeing the promised land, and headed instead for an “angry”, “parched” land. It’s a 500-mile journey through treacherous terrain, a multiple-week trip by foot, but somewhere in between, Jacob stops for the night. V11 just calls it “a certain place”; why? If place names were so important in the Bible? I think it’s to highlight God’s omnipresence. That it doesn’t matter WHERE it was - the middle of NOWHERE, in the most remote, GPS STILL can’t locate it on a map, even in 2021 desert - guess what: in THAT place, God is still THERE.
But picture the scene: You’re Jacob, running from everything and everyone you’ve ever known and loved. The sun has set - it’s DARK. The desert comes alive with noises you’ve never heard before, that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Or maybe you’re just COLD - You realize in your haste to leave home, you forgot a coat. But you collapse in exhaustion. You look up at the stars. As a boy, your father and grandfather used to tell you stories about the same God who MADE those stars appearing to them personally. But right now, God seems about as far away AS the stars; God has never felt more DISTANT to you in your life. Where is God NOW? When YOU, Jacob, need him most? You’re too tired to even wipe away the tears now streaming down your face... but then you feel something ELSE start to crawl up your face - you BOLT up, flick it off - was it a spider? a scorpion? It’s too dark to even tell - but it reminds you that you forgot a TENT as well. You are totally exposed to the elements. You feel around in the darkness for something to use as a pillow - to at least get your head up off the ground - a stone? Guess that will have to do.
God: where ARE you? That’s what WE want to know, isn’t it, when we endure our own dark nights of the soul - where is God in this? This diagnosis. This cancer. This divorce. This wrongful termination. Sometimes it feels like God is as distant as the stars, doesn’t it? And as SILENT too - like you’re crying out to Him, and if He’s saying anything back at ALL, his only reply seems to be:
“My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways” (Isa 55:8-9)
And that’s because God really is OVER us, friends. His ways really are higher than ours. His plans really are better than ours, the ones that we would have made for ourselves, if we were in charge. But we’re not. God is sovereign. And God is GOOD, all the time. But He is NOT distant…
God is OVER us, but he’s also AMONGST us. Vv12-13: “And Jacob dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder[b] 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! 13 And behold, the Lord stood above it”.
This is the CLIMAX of the entire story, right here in point #1!
God gives Jacob a dream, a vision, of a LADDER - some translations of the Hebrew call it a staircase; this is the original “stairway to heaven”! It’s set up on the earth, with its TOP reaching all the way up to heaven. And there are ANGELS - hundreds of them? Thousands? More? - traveling UP and down, back and forth, between the earth and heaven.
Zechariah 1:10 describes angels as those “whom the Lord has sent to patrol the earth.’”
Psalm 91:11 “he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”
In the NT, Hebrews 1:14 calls angels: “ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” - that’s where we get the concept of “guardian angels”. In Acts 12:15, after Peter escapes from prison, with the help of - you guessed it - an angel, the other apostles can’t believe it’s him; they thought he was dead - they think it must be “his angel”.
Did you know that you’ve got an ANGEL, sent by God to personally “minister” to YOU, to “guard YOU in all your ways”? Did you know that according to the Bible, there’s this whole OTHER realm of existence - a SPIRITUAL world - coterminous with our physical world that you and I work and play and live in every day - that there are MILLIONS of angels (and demons, by the way) all around us, roaming this earth, at any given time… in this very room… that are every bit as REAL as you and me, they’re just not as PHYSICAL. They are spiritual beings, and we could even SEE them, if God would give us the spiritual EYES to see them; read 2 Kings 6, the story of Elisha’s servant and the angel chariots of fire.
But the most MIND-blowing part of ALL that, friends, is that God actually CARES… DEEPLY… about what happens here on earth. “Who are we that God is mindful of us”?! Not just MINDFUL of us; that God is willing to sacrifice millions of his angels, created, like us, for His glory - created to sit around His throne singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” for all of eternity - that God would say, “No, we’re gonna have to set up some SHIFTS in the choir, because I need SOME of y’all down there, to watch over THEM, because I CARE about them too much to leave MY people down there all on their own…” - the significance of the ladder is that God is NOT distant, friends - the God of the Bible is ACTIVE! He is INVOLVED! He CARES!
And not just enough to send his angels; God himself is here AMONGST us. Where is God, in v13? My ESV Bible says, “the Lord stood above” the ladder. But then it’s got a footnote and the footnote says, “or stood BESIDE Jacob”. Because the Hebrew preposition “al” just means “on”; so the text actually reads: “God is ON the ladder.” Does that mean “ON” like “above”... up in Heaven, with one foot on the ladder, or at the BOTTOM, with a foot on the earth? I think Jacob gives us a clue when he wakes up in v16 and exclaims: “Surely the Lord is in this place”. He doesn’t say “God is ABOVE this place”; He’s IN it!
Friends: you and I don’t have to climb the ladder to try and get access to God. See, in the ancient world, people thought the gods lived in the sky, so they would build their temples atop these artificial mounds they constructed called ziggurats, with staircases ascending as HIGH as they could possibly build. We got a picture of that in Genesis ch.11, you remember - the Tower of Babel. The world’s first ziggurat. “We’re gonna build a tower all the way up to HEAVEN!”
And that’s what every single religion that humans have ever thought up has tried to do as well, isn’t it?
The 5 pillars of Islam…
The 8-fold Noble Path of Buddhism…
The 613 mitzvot of Judaism…
Baptism and Confirmation in Roman Catholicism…
What are they? They’re ALL staircases we’ve tried to build in order to climb our way UP to God!
Friend: do you realize this morning how absolutely RIDICULOUS that is? The idea that I could somehow reach the perfect, almighty, utterly HOLY God of the universe who inhabits the highest heaven by simply trying my hardest - by attending church most Sundays and paying my taxes. That is INSANE! I don’t have a SHOT! And you don’t either.
Unless... GOD COMES DOWN.
Religion says “build a ladder up”; Revelation says GOD CAME DOWN.
When you didn’t have a PRAYER of reaching God on your own - your best deeds barely get you off the GROUND; it is no less ridiculous SPIRITUALLY to think that you could reach God with your good deeds, than it is to think you could PHYSICALLY reach him by building a tower tall enough up into the sky - those ideas are equally laughable. And yet, while you were laying there in a pile of your own rubble, after all your bricks inevitably came crashing down on top of you, GOD CAME DOWN.
While we were yet sinners, with NO hope of making it UP to Him, Christ came DOWN and he DIED for us! That’s the gospel.
Genesis 28 is a beautiful picture of GRACE. Jacob did nothing to earn God’s presence in his life - in fact, he had done EVERYTHING to earn God’s abandonment. A God who judged us on the basis of OUR OWN merit would have taken one look at Jacob and said, “NEXT!” But in the midst of Jacob’s brokenness, God came down and said, “I’m going to bless you IN SPITE OF you, Jacob. I’m going to stay WITH you, no matter HOW bad you screw up.” That is GRACE, friends! Praise God.
#2 - God is both BEFORE and AFTER us. (v13b)
In addition to the geographical answers to the question “Where is God?”, v13b also suggests a CHRONOLOGICAL answer - namely, that God is both BEFORE and AFTER us. He declares:
““I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac.” And God could have of course gone back even farther: “I’m the God of NOAH… the God of Enoch… the God of Seth… Adam…” before there was ANYTHING, “Yahweh” - I am what I am. I am the ALPHA, the Beginning. The Source of everything.
AND... v13b: “The land on which you lie I will give (one day)… to your offspring.” → Jacob, long after you are but a distant memory, I will STILL BE. And I will STILL be blessing your descendants, millennia from now. Because I’m the Omega. The End. The Final Word.
So let’s bear that in mind this morning too, if you’re going through a “rock for a pillow” kind of season of life right now. Just remember: God’s got the big picture in mind. He doesn’t promise to bring nothing but good your way; He promises to work all things TOGETHER for good, if you trust Him. But along the way, your life might feel at times like one of those paintings that looks like ugly gobbly-gook, until it’s completely finished. Megan Clayton has painted those for us, during special worship services in the past. A couple Easters ago, she painted during the opening worship set. And I warned her ahead of time - you’ve only got like 20 minutes. And like 15 minutes in, I’m worried. Because she TOLD me she was gonna paint the women at Jesus’ empty tomb, but at the moment, it’s looking more like the aerial view of a dirty toilet bowl. But sure enough, in the last 5 minutes, the image starts to become clearer, and then right as the worship team is wrapping up their last song, she puts the finishing touches on it, and then flips the painting upside down - the really good artists paint the whole thing upside down so you REALLY can’t figure it out until the last second - and it all comes into focus. THAT’S what our lives are like sometimes. You might not realize why God’s got your life looking like a toilet bowl until the last five minutes… until the very last second - you might not understand until you get to HEAVEN! And it finally all becomes clear. But friends, God is before and after us, and He’s got the big picture in mind. And we can TRUST His promise, that He is working ALL of it together for good.
#3 - God is both BEYOND (v14) and WITH (v15) us. Both beyond and with us.
Similar to point #1, but look at v14: God says, “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 in you and your offspring shall ALL the families of the earth be blessed.”
God essentially says, “Jacob, my plan is so much BIGGER than you. It’s not smaller than you; I care for you too. And in my grace, I’ve sovereignly written you INTO my plan - my redemptive project spanning all of human history, to make a people for myself of EVERY nation, tribe and tongue, all declaring MY glory throughout all of eternity. Jacob: THAT plan includes you, but it is so much bigger than you!”
Jesus said, “I’ve got other sheep that are not of this fold.” (John 10:16) Did you know there are gonna be non-West Hillians in heaven? Non-evangelical Reformed BAPTISTS in heaven?! God’s plan is so much bigger than you and me, friends. I know we like to emphasize our “personal relationship with Jesus” in American Christianity, and read our own names into John 3:16 - “For God so loved KEVIN that he gave his only son…”; but we need to be REALLY careful that we’re not making the gospel all about US, because it’s NOT. The GOSPEL is good news precisely because it’s all about JESUS! And praise God that His plan includes us, but it goes SO far beyond us!
AND, at the same TIME, God really is WITH us. “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go… I will not leave you… ”
God has just reiterated to Jacob in vv13-14 his 3-fold promise of a people - “Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth” - a place - “The land on which you lie I will give to you” - and a pledge - “ in you... all the families of the earth shall be blessed”. But NOW, in v15, Jacob receives a NEW promise. Not just a people, a place, a pledge; now, Jacob is promised God’s very own PRESENCE WITH him!
And notice: God’s presence is always accompanied by both his PROTECTION (“I will keep you wherever you go”) and His PROVISION (“I will bring you back to this land.”)
And when does God SHOW UP most palpably, for His people? It’s when we need Him the most:
Psalm 34:18 “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.”
Isaiah 61: “God has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted… to comfort all who mourn”
Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
2 Cor 1:4 “God comforts us in all our affliction”
Isaiah 66:13 “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you”
So if you are brokenhearted, crushed in spirit, mourning, afflicted today… if YOU came in here wondering “WHERE IS GOD?” - listen to His answer, the good news for you this morning:
God is WITH you. In your suffering.
And He bled to death on a cross... for you, to PROVE it.
From the splinters of the manger… to the splinters of the cross - Jesus was, and IS, Emmanuel, “God WITH us”, in our suffering.
#4 - God is both HERE (vv16-17) and EVERYWHERE we go (John 1:51).
First, there is a sense in which God is uniquely HERE.
Jacob wakes up in v16 and declares: ““Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.””
There’s something to this idea, biblically, of God’s localized, special, immanent presence. The idea of sacred space. We see it later in the Ark of Covenant housed in the Tabernacle; in the Holy of Holies housed within the Temple.
And today, because of JESUS, God now calls US, all those who have been born again through faith in Christ, we are God’s MODERN-DAY “Temple”; 1 Cor 3:16 - “you[c] are God's temple… God's Spirit dwells in you”. And by the way, those are PLURAL pronouns in the Greek: “Y’ALL are God’s temple; God’s Spirit dwells in Y’ALL”. 1 Peter 2:5 “Y’ALL are like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house” for God.
Jesus said, “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”” (Mt 18:20) Jesus is really here AMONG us in a unique way on Sunday mornings, that’s He’s NOT Monday through Saturday. That’s why some people call church, not the building, but the people, this gathering; we can say, “We’re in the house of God,” this morning; WE are Bethel! That’s just ONE of the reasons why church is so important!
And YET… at the same time, God is EVERYWHERE.
“Where shall I go from your Spirit? [King David asked]
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” (Ps 139:7-8)
God himself asks, in Jeremiah 23:24 “Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth?” I’m EVERYWHERE!
Isaiah 66:1 “Thus says the Lord:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me?”
God warns Solomon: “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you could ever possibly ‘box me in’... contain all of my glory in a single building, no matter HOW big you build the Temple!” So Solomon admits in 2 Chronicles 2:6: “Who is able to build God a house, since heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him? Who am I to build a house for him? ”
A.W. Tozer described God’s omnipresence this way: “God fills heaven and earth just as the ocean fills a bucket which has been submerged in it a mile down. The bucket is full of the ocean, but the ocean surrounds the bucket in all directions… God is above all things, beneath all things, outside of all things, and inside of all things. He is above, but He’s not pushed up. He’s beneath, but He’s not pressed down. He’s outside, but He’s not excluded. He’s inside, but He’s not confined. God is above all things presiding, beneath all things sustaining, outside of all things embracing, and inside all things filling.” THAT is your God, Christian!
But you noticed I didn’t just say God is “everywhere” in your bulletins; I said “God is everywhere WE GO.” In John ch.1, there’s a fascinating little interaction between Jesus and one of his soon-to-be-disciples, Nathaniel. Nathaniel’s friend Philip told him, “Dude, we’ve found the Messiah - come and see!” But Nathaniel was skeptical. So when Nathaniel walks up to meet Jesus for the first time, and Jesus remarks, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” (first allusion to Jacob...) Nathaniel replied, ““How do you know me?”” To which JESUS replied: ““Before Philip even called you, when you were under the fig tree, I SAW you.””
Now, we don’t know what happened under the fig tree. Only Nathaniel, and GOD know. And that’s the point. But I believe, just like Jacob, it was probably Nathaniel’s own “dark night of the soul”. His rock bottom. But in any case, Nathaniel knew instantly that Jesus was special.
So he exclaimed, ““Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!””
And Jesus calmly replied: “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than this… “Truly, truly, I say to you,[m] you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.””
Did you catch that? Jesus just claimed that HE is Jacob’s ladder! The angels of God, and every human being who has ever lived, must ascend or DESCEND on the Son of Man. On JESUS. HE is the stairway, the ONLY stairway to Heaven; ““I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” JESUS is the “gate of Heaven”. The narrow gate, through which FEW will enter. You need to repent and believe in Him TODAY, and you will be saved.
But that means for all of us who are “in Christ”, and who Christ is IN - if His Holy Spirit is in US, and we really are His “Temple”, then we now take God wherever WE go! YOU are “Bethel”; YOU are the “house of God”. God REALLY MEANS it in Hebrews 13:5 when he promises “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Cuz now I’m IN you.
So in light of ALL that, how are we now to respond? To God’s presence, his OMNI-presense, everywhere, and his immanent presence, to and WITH us, specifically? 3 quick takeaways the passage leaves us with:
#1 - We COMMEMORATE God’s presence. Because we are a forgetful people, and we want to REMEMBER the times that God has shown up in the deserts of our lives, under our fig trees. At our rock bottoms.
Did you notice in v18 that Jacob took the stone that he had used as a pillow - the very symbol of his pain and his hopelessness - and now he consecrates it, and he makes THAT into an ALTAR on which to worship the Lord?
Some of you may be familiar with Joni Eareckson Tada; she’s a popular Christian evangelist, and advocate for people with disabilities. She’s been a quadripalegic for over 50 years now. But I want to read you an excerpt from her reflection on her disability; she says: “I sure hope I can bring this wheelchair to heaven… I hope to bring it and put it in a little corner of heaven, and then in my new, perfect, glorified body, standing on grateful glorified legs, I’ll stand next to my Savior, holding his nail-pierced hands. I’ll say, “Thank you, Jesus,” ...You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that [wheelchair] was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising and the blessing of that wheelchair… That wheelchair was a gift... I never would’ve chosen this gift, but since YOU chose it for me, I’ll take it as a gift, hard as it may be at times… It’s the gift that causes you to be weak— and the weaker you are, the stronger you will discover your Lord and Savior to be.”
What’s YOUR wheelchair? YOUR stone? Never forget those times and those places in YOUR OWN life that God has shown up and RESCUED you in his mercy.
#2 - COMMIT yourself to the Lord (vv20-21)
Vv20-21: “Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, 21 so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God”
Some scholars make a big fuss over the word “IF” there, because the Hebrew can also be translated “SINCE”; “SINCE God will be with me and keep me”… makes Jacob sound more like the new and improved man of FAITH we want to BELIEVE he now is, instead of the same old, bargaining trickster he used to be. But frankly, and maybe this is just the sinner in me, who wants to believe that Jacob’s no better than me, I prefer the “if” translation. Because as much as I’d like to believe that I have the faith to stand on God’s promises, even if I haven’t seen them yet, I’m still a lot like doubting bargaining Jacob: “God, IF you’ll be with me… IF you’ll protect me… IF you’ll provide for me… THEN I’ll worship you.” And the reality is, friends, our worship is ALWAYS a response to what God has already done for us. God has ALWAYS got to make the first move; “we love because He first loved us”; we commit ourselves to him because He FIRST committed himself to us, on the cross.
And we ALL need to RE-commit, to RE-dedicate ourselves to the Lord this morning.
And lastly, #3 - we CONTRIBUTE. (v22) Jacob pledges to give a “full tenth” of all God gives him; a tithe. And really, that is like the bare MINIMUM we can give… we talk about “time, talent and treasure” in the church:
Do you give a tenth of your TREASURE - your income back to the Lord?
Do you give a tenth of your TIME to him?
Do you spend a tenth of your TALENT, serving him?
This is our proper response of worship, brothers and sisters: commemorate God’s presence in our past, commit ourselves to God’s plan for our future, and contribute to His purposes all along the way.
I leave you with this benediction blessing of God’s omnipresence: “May God Be... Above you to Bless You; Below you to Support You; Before you to Guide You; Behind you to Protect you; Beside you to Comfort You, and Inside you to Give You His Love, Joy, and Peace.” Amen.