Revival

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 35:1-15

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Well, this morning we begin chapter 35, which we'll, Lord willing, finish next week.
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And really, we're getting closer to another major transition. It'll be about time for some of the brethren here to read through the next section of Genesis, the last cycle, which is the
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Joseph cycle. So we're coming up to the genealogy of Jacob, as well as Esau in chapter 36, and then we'll enter right into the
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Joseph cycle. We've left chapter 34, and we've left with it this scene of carnage, the massacre at the city of Shechem.
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And despite the tragedy there, the Lord is calling Jacob, calling Israel back to Bethel, the place that 30 years before this, the
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Lord had revealed Himself to him, where, as Tony just recited, Jacob vowed that the
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Lord would be his God. It's where God gave him the promise of Abraham and the promise of Isaac.
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In other words, He gave him the promise of the covenant. And of course, as 10 years have been spent in the tent pitched before the city of Shechem, those 10 years have shown obvious decline in ways that we'll see this morning.
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And so God calling Jacob to Bethel is God calling Jacob to revival, and that's what we really have in the first 15 verses, is the revival of Jacob.
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And so we want to consider three actions in terms of the revival of Jacob as he enters
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Bethel. And these three actions we'll work through in five parts as we work through these verses together.
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But the first three actions we'll see in the first three parts. And the first action begins with receiving
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God's Word. So that's point number one, receiving God's Word, which is verse one.
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Then God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there. Make there an altar to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau, your brother.
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Now, we remember that Bethel had really been, since Eden, the place of God's revelation.
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Of course, God appeared to Abraham, but the description of Bethel is so enigmatic that we could say, up to this point in time, it is one of the most sacred places on the earth.
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We don't know exactly where it was. I don't even know if Jacob could return and find the exact spot, but surely he could have found maybe that stone he set up as a pillar.
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Maybe that's what he repairs in verse 15. But for the most part, Bethel is this
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Edenic place of God's self -revelation. And that's what God is calling
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Jacob to return to. The place where I revealed myself to you, Jacob, that's where I want you to return.
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And Jacob, you can almost sense the exhilaration of this call. Jacob, in all the actions that follow, is going to respond to this invitation, this command of God, rise up and go to Bethel, dwell there and make an altar to me.
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Thirty years before, Jacob would have thought of this time he had spent in exile and on the run from his father's household when that glorious ladder opened with angels descending and ascending to God.
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And all these years that had passed since then, not just the years of discipline and sanctification under Laban, but also these past ten years, where perhaps he's realizing after the massacre at Shechem just how far him and his family have declined.
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Even though he had prevailed with God at Peniel, the tragedy of Shechem likely made
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Jacob aware that he was in a place of very real spiritual danger, that his family was quickly departing from the way of God.
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His life before Shechem seemed to be on the straight and narrow. He seemed to be going from strength to strength.
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And when he pitched his tent before Shechem, he seemed to have everything going in the right direction.
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But this decade has been a decade of decline. And what we see in verse 1 is that God will not let
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Jacob decline. God will not let Jacob decline. God has given promises to Jacob, God has shed
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His grace upon Jacob, and therefore God will not ultimately let Jacob decline.
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And that ought to be an encouragement to us, brothers and sisters. Though we may be in Shechem for a decade, if we belong to the
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Lord, if we are heirs of His promises, He will not let us decline. It may be a long season of stale worship, of stuttered growth, maybe even of backsliding in certain key areas in our lives and in our homes, but God will not ultimately let us stay in Shechem.
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He will call us to Bethel. In other words, He will revive us. He will call us back to the place where His presence can be found.
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Arise, He says, to His people even this morning. Come to My presence.
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Come to the place where I reveal Myself to you. Worship Me. Make an altar to Me at this place.
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And He does so with a call to remembrance. Remember who
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I was, who you thought I was, when I revealed Myself to you at Bethel and consider how much more you know of Me now.
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Have I failed to be anything that I promised to be to you? Have I let you down in any of the ways
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I said that I would protect your way and provide for you? You come to Me with gratitude, in other words, and we'll see
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Jacob and all of his actions demonstrating this gratitude and humility before God.
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All of this rich meaning is pregnant in verse 1. All in this command, rise and go to Bethel, dwell there, make an altar to God.
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So Jacob is now preparing. He's exhilarated, we'll see. He's being brought to remembrance of the patience and grace of God.
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And if God could have been patient and gracious with him 30 years ago when he deceived his brother and twisted his way and showed hatred and animosity toward Isaac in the dishonor and deception he showed toward his father, if God could be gracious then, then even after the bloodshed at Shechem, could it be that God will be gracious still?
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Could it be that God will show mercy to me even now, even after my family has done something unthinkable?
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In this call in verse 1, arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there,
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God is almost suggesting, Jacob, do you remember when things seemed to be completely a mess?
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When you were filled with terror because your brother was threatening to kill you? And right now you're feeling the same terror because you think all the inhabitants of the land are about to kill you.
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And do you remember how you found refuge in Me at Bethel? Rise and go to Bethel.
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God's almost suggesting if you want to experience my presence in that way again, rise and go to Bethel.
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That seems to be the suggestion. And so God, we notice, takes the initiative.
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God takes the initiative. Jacob doesn't say, you know what, this is it, we've had it, this isn't working out anymore,
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I'm terrified, let's run and get out of here and go hide out in Bethel. We'll change our names, we'll pretend that we're
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Canaanites, but in our tents we'll worship. He doesn't take any of these maneuvers. He's in terror, just like he was 30 years ago, and God calls him.
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God calls him to go back to the place where he had found him 30 years ago. So really, first application here,
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God takes the initiative of grace. God takes the initiative of grace. Sometimes, when we're brought out of a place of decline, when
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God pulls us up out of the pit, it feels like we're taking the initiative. Well, you know,
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I said to myself, I've had enough, and I knew it was time for a change. And so I started working all these things into my life, and now
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I'm doing really good. And we wisely would say, well, actually, God was prompting you,
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God was preparing you, God was helping you, God was the one that wouldn't allow you to stay in that place of decline.
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You may have been there for 10 years, but ultimately it was God's initiative that brought you to this place of grace in your life.
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So again, we see here, the only possible means of revival, and by revival we don't mean the big tent with the sawdust, by revival we mean renewal, restoration, redemption.
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The only possible means of revival after a season of spiritual decline is the old paths of repentance and faith.
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That might be old hand. There's nothing more profound that I can add to that.
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There's no further equation that the Scriptures give to us. Revival follows the old paths of repentance and faith.
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But in saying that revival follows the old paths of repentance and faith, we also recognize that the initiation is of God's grace.
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God is the one who prompts us, who calls us, who moves us along these paths of repentance and belief.
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I love what Jeff Thomas says, in every command of God there is an offer of grace to obey.
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It's kind of a riff on Augustine's prayer, right? Command what you will, but give me grace for what you command.
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In every command of God there is an offer of grace to obey, and God is assuring
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Jacob that the angels who came down to him at Bethel will not come down to him now bearing vials of wrath, but that God will meet him in mercy, and that he will not be destroyed there.
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He's saying, your sins are forgiven, Jacob. Come back to my presence. I think that's so well said.
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Jacob understood that. We'll see it in verse 2. He understood that God was giving him another opportunity to receive grace and mercy and refuge.
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When I was looking at this passage, I could only help but think of what James says, because this is what
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God is essentially saying in verse 1. Cleanse your hands and purify your heart, you sinner.
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Draw near to me at Bethel, and I will draw near to you. Make an altar there to me.
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Now as soon as we read that, we remember Jacob had already built an altar at Shechem.
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He's like, sorry God, I already actually have an altar here. Isn't that altar good enough?
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Well apparently that altar at Shechem that is now ten years old, apparently that altar had been somewhat stale.
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It didn't have spiritual power and influence in the life of Jacob's family. That altar may have been present, but God is essentially calling
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Jacob to church hop. Not that I'm condoning church hopping, but I'm saying, he's saying, this clearly isn't working out in Shechem.
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The altar of your worship here is stale, ineffective, formal, hollow, empty. You need to go make a new altar and offer genuine worship where I will meet you at Bethel.
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So we see already this altar at Shechem, but we recognize the worldliness of Shechem had a bigger influence on the life of Jacob and his family than the altar of God did.
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And that's always a dangerous place when the world around us, the culture around us, has a bigger influence on our lives and on our families than the altar of worship.
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And God calls us to be revived and restored so that it's the other way around. So that we're being formed and shaped by our worship at God's altar rather than formed and shaped by the influence of the culture surrounding us.
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As one said, F .B. Meyer, that altar had long lost all power for Jacob and his family.
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Since their daily living was, for the most part, a direct contradiction of their testimony.
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Ouch! And I wonder if some of us need to feel that sting. Their daily living was a direct contradiction to their testimony.
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Coming to the altar of God, the God who said, I will make you a blessing to the nations, and then following after the gods of those nations, and then even slaughtering the subjects of those nations.
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It is scarcely too much, Meyer again, to say that children, now speaking of Jacob's sons, that children brought up in an atmosphere of worldliness are the very hardest to impress with the realities of spiritual faith, even though they attend an altar week after week.
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And you see the point here. Six days spent in Shechem will always outweigh one day spent at the altar.
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There is no way around that. So if the altar of God is not central to the life of the family, not central to the household,
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Shechem wins. Shechem is discipling the family rather than the altar of Yahweh.
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And that's what we saw in chapter 34. Over a 10 -year period. And so what is
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God calling Jacob to do in going to Bethel? He's saying, get rid of this empty, formal, ineffective, useless, unspiritual worship.
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Rid yourself of the influence of Shechem. Come back to the old paths. Remember how
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I revealed myself to you and find my grace as you return to me. That's essentially what he offers every believer when he calls us to revival.
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When he calls us out of that stale decline and we meet with him again to be renewed in our strength and in our holiness.
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Now Jacob's response shows that he understood exactly what this call meant. And so the second action, the first action, right, receiving
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God's word, and the second action, putting away idols. Putting away idols, verses 2 through 4.
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Look at verse 2. Jacob doesn't reply to God in the text. He replies to his household.
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Remember where we left off in chapter 34. Simeon and Levi showed no respect for Jacob whatsoever, right?
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They have the last word. You know, Jacob is saying, you've made us a stench in this land and now we're going to be slaughtered.
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Me, my whole household, you know, you are going to be slaughtered as a result of this. And they don't even care about that.
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They see their father now cowering in fear and their response is one of just disrespect to him.
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Should they have treated our sister like a harlot? It just shows that they don't really care about his warnings, his threats, his fears, his concerns, his convictions.
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They don't have a respect for him. Things have changed as a result of God's call in chapter 35.
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Notice that Simeon and Levi don't say, well, we actually like it here at Shechem and we're not afraid. And no, actually, now
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Jacob is actually standing up into his role as the covenant head, as the patriarch, as the man over his household.
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And so he directs God's word to his family members because he's head over them. He has responsibilities toward them.
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Verse 2, Jacob said to his household and to all who are with him, you know, one of the sad realities of chapter 34, all who are with him includes all these newly widowed women of Shechem and their children and their slaves.
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That's all part of his household now. It's all part of the train that's going to go to Bethel. But Jacob is evangelizing them.
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And so he says to all of them, put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, change your garments.
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See, Jacob is thinking clearly again. He recognizes that this call to return to Bethel is a call to be renewed and restored by God's grace.
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It's a call to enter into God's presence again. Oh, he's not calling me to Bethel unless he's going to reveal himself to me.
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And if he's going to reveal himself to me, I need to be pure and I need to get rid of all this garbage in my life.
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And you can't come with me unless you purge the idols in your life and change your garments and make yourself ready to meet with God.
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That's essentially what Jacob is saying to his household. We remember in Genesis 31 that Rachel smuggled the household gods away from Laban.
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And apparently, if it's not these household gods, then it was the gods of the
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Shechemites and the other Canaanites in the area. We see throughout the history of Israel as a nation how they constantly gave themselves over to hybridized worship with the gods of the nations.
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He reminded his family, as we'll see, of why Bethel was so important.
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He gives a testimony. So he doesn't just give the command, but then he also gives the testimony. This is where God revealed himself to me, right?
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Put away the foreign gods which are among you, incline your heart to the Lord God of Israel.
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That is what Joshua said. And in the same setting in Shechem. And so Jacob here is speaking to Israel and he's giving them a testimony.
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Put away these false gods, purify yourself. Remember that it was God who met with me when
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I ran from my brother Esau. He's thinking clearly again. Now, the action of removing false gods, the action of becoming clean, ritually clean, that's implied by the changing of the garments.
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It shows that he understands the significance of worshiping God at Bethel, that God will be present and it requires a holiness in not only heart, but even in appearance.
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And as he approaches Bethel, we're reminded of Israel's call to approach the worship of God in the same way.
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And this ritual cleanliness becomes codified. And you have the priestly codes that demonstrate this ritual cleanness in approaching
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God's worship. And all of this is meant to instruct us as believers about the holiness that is required if we're to meet with God and experience his presence and his power in our lives.
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Jacob and his sons had sinned. Jacob and his sons had the influence of idols in their midst.
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Jacob and his sons needed to purge the idols from among them. And I use that word purge decidedly.
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It's like purging the leaven out of the tent. What we see here is that repentance is again the only path, the old path toward revival.
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Repentance in faith. Repentance in faith. Putting away these household idols is the form of repentance for Jacob and for his household.
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And repentance is not something, we often say this, it's not something a Christian does at the beginning of their
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Christian life. And then they just carry on. Repentance is the
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Christian life, as Martin Luther said in the first of his 95 theses.
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When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
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That's Luther. Also we recognize the concern that Jacob is finally showing for his family.
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Do you remember one of the saddest reports of chapter 34 was Jacob seemed unsure of how to handle the situation with Dinah.
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He didn't show the concern and the outrage that Simeon and Levi, her brothers, showed.
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And as a father, that just was not a good show, not a good sign of him leading.
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Even just as a man, far less a spiritual leader. But now look at the concern he has for his family.
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Now he's directing and ordering his family's life. Purge these idols from among you.
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If only he had done that ten years ago. If only he had been doing that week after week for these ten years.
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Chapter 34 would have never happened. Dinah never would have left her family secretly. Her sons, his sons would have never slaughtered the
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Shechemites. They would have been evangelizing the Shechemites. You see the influence that Jacob has. He's recovering that now.
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Put the idols away. I love what Spurgeon says about this. The idols of the family, the acts and the deeds of our young, which grieve
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God, even the doings of the old, which are inconsistent with our profession, all of these things that we indulge in the divisions of our heart and our family, all of that is sinful and unlovely and it must go if we ever hope to be made right again.
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There must be a breaking and a burying of idols if we plan to worship God of Bethel.
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So what do we do, Spurgeon? Begin to pray in your families, especially when things have gone wrong.
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Get them right by drawing near to God more distinctly.
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We're going to talk about that in the third action. We have receiving the
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Word of God. We have this great putting away of idols, this great purging or act of repentance.
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And then we'll see in the third action that there's a need to build. There's a need of action, change.
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And that's what Spurgeon is suggesting here. Draw near to God more distinctly. Build. Make radical changes.
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And then he anticipates an objection. Did I hear you say... I would have loved to be at the Metropolitan and hear him talk to a false opponent.
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Did I hear you say, well, we don't want to be formalists. Well, I mean, we could make these changes, but isn't that kind of legalistic?
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You know, we're going to read our Bibles. This many times a day, and we're going to pray like this. That's formalism.
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That's legalism. And isn't God all of grace? No. I'm not afraid you would be a formalist,
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Spurgeon says. I'm afraid of you actually neglecting anything that would help your family or even your own spiritual growth.
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I pray you labor to acquaint yourselves with God. Draw near to the
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Lord again. More thoroughly than you've done in the past. This is the only way to remedy the backsliding of the household.
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The significance for Israel is profound. I've already referenced it, but let's actually look at it in Joshua 24.
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Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. Jacob and his sons are at Shechem when
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Jacob, Israel, is saying to his sons, these future heirs of the tribes,
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Purge yourselves of these idols. Put them away. Cleanse yourselves. And we read in Joshua 24, at Shechem, he called all the elders of Israel together.
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Verse 2, he said to all the people, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers, including
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Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, they dwelt on the other side of the river in the old times.
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That's the Euphrates. And they served other gods. But I took your father
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Abraham from the other side of the river, led him throughout all the land of Canaan, multiplied his descendants, gave him
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Isaac, and to Isaac gave him Jacob. Verse 13, I've given you a land for which you did not labor, cities which you did not build, and yet you dwell in them.
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You eat of the vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant. Now therefore, fear the
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Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth. Put away the gods of your fathers that they served on the other side of the river.
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Serve the Lord. You see what Joshua is saying to Israel? It's what Jacob is saying to the tribes.
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Put away these gods that the other nations are serving and serve the Lord. Now therefore, verse 23, put away the foreign gods which are among you, incline your heart to the
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Lord God of Israel. And the people said to Joshua, the Lord our God, we will serve his voice, we will obey.
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We don't have it there as the response of his family, but they all follow him to Bethel. And it seems just like the people at Shechem in Joshua 24, they're saying we will obey because they all lend their idols over to be buried by the oak tree of Shechem.
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And so the result, let us arise, let us go up to Bethel. This is verses 3 and 4.
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I will make an altar there to God who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me in the way which
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I've gone. He's now giving a testimony to his family. He wants his sons to know the
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God of Bethel. He wants Simeon and Levi to find this path of repentance and restoration.
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Oh God, that You would reveal to them what You revealed to me, that You would be to them what
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You've been to me. So you see this man now spiritually revived, and he's not even at Bethel.
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This is all the pretext, the preconditions of revival. The Word of God has come, and he's brought to repentance, this zeal to purge things in his life that keep him from the presence of God.
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And as he's doing that, he's on the path to restoration. Verse 4,
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So they gave Jacob all of the foreign gods which were in their hands. Oh, you mean these gods?
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And they're pulling them out of their pockets and backpacks. It's almost embarrassing. And the earrings which were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree which was by Shechem.
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That is the terebinth of Genesis 12 when Abraham first entered into the land. And so here we've come full circle in the mantle of the covenant heir of Abraham's promises.
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He's directing the tribes of Israel to purge themselves of idolatry at the very place where Abraham first worshiped
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God in the land. Now what do we make of these earrings? Well, there actually is some debate about the significance of these earrings, but most scholars seem to think they serve the cultic value, which is why they're included in this idol burial at the great terebinth tree.
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Some suggest, and this seems likely, that the earrings almost symbolized either vows or prayers that were made to these idols.
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It was almost like a votive to say, I've made this prayer or this vow, and you've heard it, you've heard these.
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And so the earrings represented really a beseeching or a provoking of the idols towards some cause or towards some end.
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And so sometimes the earrings would be on the suppliant, on the worshiper. Sometimes they would actually be put on the idols.
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They would be sort of pinched around the ears of the votive idol. And if they were in the ears of the idols, or if they were in the ears of the worshipers, the fact that they're given over with these idols to be buried shows that the whole family is removing the idols from their midst.
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Not one earring is going with them to Bethel. Everything is purged.
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They're cleaning the floor in preparation to meet with and worship God. That is revival.
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That is revival. I was sharing, I might have been with Marty and Tony a few weeks ago.
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There's really fascinating accounts of the Welsh revival between 1904 and 1906.
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And several of the coastal fishing villages and other areas in Wales, there was this profound influence.
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And you saw this movement among villages and towns and cities where people were brought to clean the floor, as it were, as they were making themselves ready to meet with God.
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And there was, in some of the centers of industry, 30, 40, 50 years worth of workers that had been occasionally taking a wrench or a screwdriver.
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Maybe it stays in your pocket when you leave and clock out and clock back in. And the Lord began to put such intense conviction upon these men under conditions of revival that anonymously they would bring back these tools that had been missing for 5, 10, 20, 30 years.
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And so eventually the management had to start putting out signs like if you've taken tools, you're forgiven, please keep them because we can't actually do anything with these piles of old tools.
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And just again, a screwdriver, a nail, a staple. If it was something that was sinful, get it out of here.
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We don't want to have anything to do with it. We want to repent and be restored. And it shows the same kind of zeal.
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Even the earrings have to go. We don't want to be associated with the idolatry in any way. I love what
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A .W. Pink says. There can be no doubt that in the readiness of the family's response, we see the hand of the
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Lord. It's not just God's grace reaching into Jacob's life as a father and spiritual leader.
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It's reaching into his son's. In fact, the power of God is evident at every point.
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The immediate effect of God's Word upon Jacob to immediately rise up and go to Bethel and the whole unanimous response of the family.
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And that's how you'll know that the Lord God is at work reviving you and reviving your household.
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When you take these kind of steps by faith and you say, we can't do this anymore. We have to get back to basics.
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We have to clear the floor. We have to purge this garbage from our lives. And the whole family says, yes, we must do this.
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Yes, we will go with you. Yes, we want to meet with God in this way. Remember how passive Jacob was in chapter 34, but look at him here.
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God is already restoring him and he's not even at Bethel. As soon as Jacob speaks, they give him their idols.
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As soon as Jacob leads, they follow. That's what's been missing. He hasn't been leading them. And as soon as he does, in the humility of repentance, the sons that had disrespected him only a few sentences ago all of a sudden follow him.
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They know that he's a man to be followed. There's an aura of reverence about him now.
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Perhaps the Lord put a fear, a holy fear upon them toward the Father, but not only do we see that, we see in verse 5 the hand of the
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Lord as a hand of protection. He puts the fear of the Lord upon the nations. They journeyed and the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.
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And so now God's presence in an interesting way is actually protecting
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Jacob as he travels to Bethel and the protection looks like terror among the nations. And again, we think of Jacob as Israel.
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He's almost giving us the clue that Israel is going to have the hand of the
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Lord protecting them and if they walk in this kind of repentance and faith, God will protect the nation of Israel by putting the terror of himself upon them.
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So think of Moses writing this to the Israelites and they're saying, if we bend our knees to the
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Lord in this way, if we put off the filth and the idolatry from our lives, if we pursue worshiping
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God in spirit and truth, we cannot fear the nations around us. He will put his terror upon them in order to protect us.
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Rahab's report in Joshua 2, I know that the Lord has given you the land. The terror of you has fallen on us.
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The inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you. So we have a striking illustration of God's sovereign protection of his people.
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This has not changed. God is the same yesterday, today, forever. There are situations that cause us to be anxious and fearful.
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We just need to focus on pursuing the presence of God in our lives, doing what God has called us to do, putting away the idols that so easily entangle.
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Our protection and our provision, that's in God's hands. How's he going to provide in this way?
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It's not going to work out. We're not going to be able to make ends meet. We're not going to get by. It's not possible.
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I just don't have the stamina. I don't have the physical capability. This can't work. You pursue the presence of God.
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He will provide. He will protect. He will make straight your paths. Not a hand can be raised against the
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Lord's people, whether that hand be an opponent, or a circumstance, or a physical liability.
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So those are the three actions. Receiving the word of God, putting away the idols, and then building.
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Building an altar, the third point. Building an altar. So Jacob came to Luz, that is
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Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan. He and all the people who were with him. And he built an altar there and called the place
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El Bethel, because there God appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother.
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It's significant that he doesn't just say, oh yeah, well this is Bethel. I remember I named it
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Bethel, so this is still Bethel. He says, this is El Bethel. And I think here we see part of the transformation in his life.
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It's literally Bethel is the house of God, so El Bethel is the
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God of the house of God. He had only known God really circumstantially at that first initial revelation.
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And we saw that in the bartering. Alright, if you're willing to do this for me, I guess you'll be my God. And I'll call this the house of God.
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He didn't know that much about God at that point in time, but he knew the house of God.
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He knew the significance of that place and that moment in his life. But 30 years have gone by, and in those 30 years, he doesn't just know about the house of God.
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He knows the God of Bethel. And so he calls this place El Bethel.
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It's almost saying, now I know you. Now I've seen your face. Now I know the
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God of the house of God. Matthew Henry, the comfort which the saints have in holy ordinances is not so much from Bethel, but from El Bethel.
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The ordinances are empty things if we do not meet with God in them.
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Everything we do in this Bethel, in this house of God, is as empty as the altar at Shechem if we're not actually meeting with God when we come.
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And if you're like me, you have to frame and prepare and pray and beseech that God will meet you here.
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It's just another room, Lord, unless you meet me here with your presence.
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It's just a Bethel, formally, unless you come and make it
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El Bethel. And that's essentially what we're striving after whenever we come and gather together to worship the
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Lord. With verse 8, we have an interlude of sorts.
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I don't want to spend too much time on this. We will talk about the subsequent deaths and the rest of chapter 35, but this is kind of previewing the fact that we're about to enter a shift.
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This revival will give way to the death of Isaac and, of course, the birth of Benjamin, which is the very beginning of the
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Joseph cycle after chapter 36. And so we have an interlude here. Again, the narrative is laconic.
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We did not know that Rebecca's nurse had been with them. She died a ripe old age. One estimate was 180 years.
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That's pretty impressive at this point in time. But she's buried, and that's a detail, an interlude.
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And then we have a repetition of the promises of God, verses 9 through 12. God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Paddan Aram and blessed him, and God said to him,
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Your name is Jacob. Your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name.
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So he called his name Israel. This was the revelation given at Peniel, but 10 years have brought
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Israel closer to the old ways of Jacob. And so here, returning to Bethel, God says,
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Your name is Israel. Stop acting like Jacob because you're Israel.
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And also God said to him, I am God Almighty. You should remember that from Genesis 17.
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Be fruitful, multiply, a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you. Kings shall come from your body.
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The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, I give to you and to your descendants after you. I give you this land.
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So this is following Genesis 17. The first thing we'd notice is verse 9. God appeared to Jacob again.
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This is a theophany. We had at the beginning in verse 1 the word of God, but this is actually the presence of God, the theophanic manifestation of God.
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God appeared to Jacob. And Jacob seemed to know that if he moved to Bethel, he would have another
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Bethel -like experience of God's revelation. And so we see again the way that God uses
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His presence to empower His people. It is God's presence that revives
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His people. Revival is a work of God's Spirit bringing us near to God through Christ.
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And so the Spirit of God makes God present to us. And that empowers us.
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It gives life to us. It washes away ten years of stale and empty worship. It pulls us up out of that mire.
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It gives us zeal to purge the garbage and influence of the world from our lives. It's no longer appealing.
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In fact, it becomes detestable. I want you. I want your presence, Lord. That's what revival is.
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The appearance of God. I was reading an account.
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Tom Lennie is the author. It's called Glory in the Glen. I can only think of one other brother that would have an interest in reading this,
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Brother Jim. It's a history of revivals in Scotland from 1880 to 1940.
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And I just collected some of the reports that people made about what it was like to be a part of these revivals as they swept in different areas.
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The Outer Hebrides and the Isle of Lewis along the western coast, along the northeastern coast where there's a lot of fishing villages.
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These are some of the things that were said. The sense of God's nearness is often felt by believers and non -believers alike causing not only many sinners to turn to Christ in repentance, but even those who are careless to at least feel shamed.
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See the kind of power of that? Even those who refuse to bend the knee, they're almost embarrassed, almost ashamed about it.
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They can't deny the power that they're seeing in their midst though they harden their hearts against it.
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I was met with the gracious and sensible presence of God. Not something you write in a card.
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This is not something throw away. This is someone saying, I know what Jacob experienced.
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I've actually experienced what Jacob experienced in chapter 35. I met with the presence of God.
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He came near. He revealed His name to me. Love, and oh
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I felt such little of His love. And I was broken down at His feet.
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Quite suddenly upon one and another came an overwhelming sense of the reality and the awfulness of His presence and of all eternal things.
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God was so gloriously near the whole atmosphere was charged with His presence.
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You see that is revival. The presence of God. Notice that these people don't say, oh yes it was wonderful.
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My family started doing better and my kids are doing well. They're very successful now. And I worked out my anger issues and I have better self -control.
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And I've noticed that I'm a lot more humble and I love reading the Bible. What is revival? Those are just the benefits.
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That's the outflow of revival. What is revival? I met with God. I've known
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God's presence. I can barely describe it.
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So powerful, so rapturous, so glorious. Like Paul, I don't know whether I was in the body or out.
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That's revival. Spurgeon says, there are times when God is very near to us.
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I wish it were always so. Some of us can mark out epics in our spiritual history when we were so conscious in a wonderful way that God had drawn near to us.
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We felt His presence. We were thrilled. The Lord seemed to put us in the cleft of the rock and make
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His glory pass before us. I have known such times. Oh God, that I would know them more often.
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It is worthwhile to be purged and to be cleansed, to do anything to be able to have this kind of divine visit.
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A clear view of God in Christ, a vivid sense of His love is a sweet reward for broken idols.
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Oh, brothers and sisters, that we would smash our idols, pluck those little earrings, those foxes in the vineyards from our midst, bury them.
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They are worth experiencing the presence of God reviving us to strength.
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Of course, it is God repeating these promises of Genesis 17. I am God Almighty, Jacob.
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El Shaddai, just as I revealed myself to Abraham. We see, just like Abraham in Genesis 17, the name is changed, like Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel.
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We see a promise of kings coming. Even here, a foretaste of the Gospel to come.
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Yes, kings will come from you. A thousand years, in fact, will the Davidic dynasty begin and a thousand years after that will come the true
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King, Jesus. The true King of David. David's son, but David's Lord.
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And then, of course, He echoes the promise of Abraham to be made fruitful. I will make you fruitful.
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I will make you multiply. And that's not just echoing Abraham. That's going all the way back to the Garden when
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God commanded Adam and Eve, Be fruitful. Multiply. Cast this dominion over what
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I have made. Of course, instead of casting that dominion and the fruitfulness of God's design, they corrupted the design and they corrupted what
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God had made. And they brought the fall upon themselves and upon all of creation.
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And God called Abraham out of his paganism to be the beginning of his answer to the fall.
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And so, in this promise, I will make you fruitful, He's saying,
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I will redeem the curse of the fall. There is a seed coming from Abraham.
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He will be a king in your lineage and he will undo the curse of the fall.
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And therefore, the last parallel is a multitude of nations will come. A multitude of the
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Gentiles as far as the east and as far as the west will gather around the table of this king. And so we have the gospel here in these promises at Bethel.
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And then lastly, we have building again. As a result of building this altar and experiencing this revival, this presence of God, he sets up a pillar.
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No longer does he just pour oil on it like 30 years ago. He also offers a drink offering. It shows his gratitude.
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Another act of worship at this pillar. May have been the original pillar and he resets it up.
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Jacob shows a heart of gratitude toward God. So brothers and sisters, as we consider these three actions, we have to frame it with a question.
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Are you dwelling in Shechem this morning? Beginning or continuing this 10 year stalemate?
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Or are you approaching Bethel? There really is no other alternative. Are you just going through the motions at the altar of Shechem?
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Or are you approaching with the same kind of zeal the altar at Bethel?
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Spiritual decline is chapter 34. Spiritual revival is chapter 35.
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And the difference between chapter 34, decline, and chapter 35, revival, is simply in these three actions.
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Receiving the Word of God. Putting away the idols from our midst.
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And building. In your life, do you easily shrug away from direct temptations, but give in to those subtle influences that might indicate that you're dwelling in Shechem?
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It's just like the four and wives of Solomon that slowly but surely draw his heart away from the
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Lord. That's what the influence of the world is like for us. As one said, we hardly realize it and it creeps in so quietly.
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And then we've drifted far from Bethel, far from Penuel. Listen to these great metaphors.
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Gray hairs are on a man before he knows it. Right? You just wake up one day and all of a sudden you're like, what in the world?
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Sometimes you have that black gown at the hairdresser's shop. And all of a sudden you see gray hairs, pepper your cloak and you're like, what in the world?
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Summer fruit is beginning to rot within long before its surface is pitted with specks. The devil is too shrewd to make a
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Judas with one stroke. He wins us from the side of Jesus by hairbreadths.
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Thousands of degrees. We would never think of letting in the lion, but we spare the little foxes.
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And the little foxes break down the hedge which the lion charges through. You see?
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The influence of Shechem. So subtle. And then one day you look out and you see a massacre in front of you and you say, how did we get to this?
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The actions of Jacob. Receiving God's word. Hearing.
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Putting away idols. Purging. Building an altar. So really, three actions.
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Hearing, purging, and building. So first, hearing. Revival begins with hearing the word of God.
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It still begins with the revelation of God. The revelation of God is the beginning of revival in the sense that we hear
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Him. He reveals His word to us. But then it also is the end of revival. We actually have a manifestation of His revelation.
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His own presence and power in our lives. It begins with the sight of God.
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It was like this for Moses in the desert. It was like this for Isaiah in the year that King Uzziah died.
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This is how God renews our faith, brings us to revivals. And hearing the word of God, as we see in verses 1 through 15, is hearing the call to repent.
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Because you don't get from verse 1 to verse 15 without verse 2. And verse 2 is repentance, the putting away of the idols.
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So Jacob unmistakably hears, rise, come to Bethel, come back to my presence, come back to my refuge, find my grace and mercy again.
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He can't help but hear that gracious call without hearing within it the command, repent, cleanse your hands, purify your heart, draw near to me.
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And so the call to receive God's word is also the call to repentance.
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Remember the beginning of the Gospel of Mark? John the Baptist. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the
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Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. What did it mean for John to prepare the way of the
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Lord? Mark 1 .4 Preaching a baptism of repentance and remission of sins.
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That's preparing the way of the Lord. What prepares the way from Shechem to Bethel? Repentance and remission of sins.
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What prepares the way for Israelites who have stale and idolatrous worship to come be able to behold
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God's Savior in the person of Jesus? It's the prophet saying, repent.
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This is Alexander McLaren. The preacher of guilt and repentance is the herald of pardon and purity.
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Repentance involves renouncing, purging, putting away whatever stands before you and the gracious presence of God.
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What in my life is hindering me from coming to the altar at Bethel and worshiping
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God and feeling this kind of presence and this kind of power? I don't know if he will reveal himself to me, but I know
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I must purge these things if I have any hope to see his face. And so, that hearing of the word of God leads to purging.
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And this is everywhere given to the Israelites. Burn your idols. Burn them.
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Bury them. Smash them. Smear them. Don't be ensnared by them. That's the only alternative that God gives to his people.
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And Numbers 19 -20, to the man who is unclean, who will not purify himself, he will be cut off from the assembly because he's defiled the sanctuary of God.
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Right? The earrings and the gods can't be brought to Bethel. They can't be brought to the true altar of God's worship.
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So you have to purge them. You have to purify yourself. What part has a believer with an unbeliever?
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What agreement does the temple of God have with idols and earrings? You are the temple of the living
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God. God has said, I will dwell and walk among you. I will be your God. And so they shall be.
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Therefore, come out from among them. Be separate, says the Lord. How do you become separate? You purge.
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You repent. Don't touch what is unclean and I will receive you.
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I will invite you. You'll find my presence at Bethel. And so Paul says, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
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That is the old path toward revival in the life of a Christian. And then lastly, we build.
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We build like Paul instructs in 1 Corinthians 3. We build wisely. Not foolishly.
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Not carelessly. We don't use wood and rubble and hay and straw. We use the precious things of the
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Lord, the precious means of grace. We build wisely that we might know Him who is the cornerstone, even
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Jesus our Lord. This is what it means to experience revival in your life.
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The effect that will have in your home. The impact that can have in a church and then through the church.
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There's so much more to say about revival at that angle. A whole sermon on prayer would be required.
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A .T. Pearson who wrote a study of revivalism said there's never been a revival without a period of concentrated prayer preceding it.
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But what I want to focus on is the activity of Jacob, these three actions, receiving
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God's word, putting away idols, building an altar. And I hope that's the effect this passage has on all of us, myself included.
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That we would receive God's word in this way and that it would compel us to purge those things in our lives and that we would be brought to build.
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To build. And I close with this account, this testimony from one of these
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Scottish revivals. This is the revival of Wiest in the Outer Hebrides, 1880.
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And this is a reverend, D .C. Ross. He was a minister in Appen. This is his account, part of his account.
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There is an uncommon eagerness to hear the word of God. Most especially how the blood of Christ makes atonement for the soul.
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Right? That's revival. Tell me more and more and more about Jesus.
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Every night of the week, even Saturday, with occasional day meetings, people gather from far and near to hear the gospel.
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And such was the power of the truth that at times, one and another were constrained to cry out loud, which was discouraged because it distracted the people.
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You know, good Scotsmen, you know, come on, keep it to yourself. Others had a hard struggle to suppress their cries.
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Others seemed to be silently weeping. Some were awakened when they returned home from the meeting.
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Isn't that profound? You know, just like, oh, yeah, I know, seems like something's going on here, but, you know, then they get home and privately, they're brought into the rapture of the
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Lord. One man was startled out of his sleep with the word of God ringing in his ears.
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And it was noticeable how boys and girls were in constant attendance. Right? This isn't just an adults -only club.
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Revival of the spirit of God affects every age. Children. Do you hear that?
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Children were being stirred by the spirit of God. It was noticeable how boys and girls were in constant attendance and cases are known of little ones lagging behind their companions, slipping away to pray in the sandy hollows.
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Two boys threw their once fondly cherished treasure, a profane songbook, into the fire of their own volition, feeling,
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I suppose, that they were throwing their dearest idol into the flames. Grown -up people, unable to read, have actually begun to study the alphabet and are now able to spell their way through the
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Word of God, searching through it as if they were looking for hidden treasure. Did you notice something in that account?
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It's unbroken. That's as I read it. Do you notice? Every night of the week but Saturday, with occasional day meetings, the people gathered from far and near to hear the
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Gospel. They hear the Word of God. They're eager to receive the Word of God.
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Some companions. Two boys threw away their once fondly cherished treasure, a profane songbook, into the fire, feeling,
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I suppose, that they were committing their dearest idol to the flames. They were purging. They were purging.
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I know this is a book I shouldn't have and I want to get rid of it. And then people who were illiterate began to take up the alphabet.
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Forty years, I haven't needed to learn how to read but I want to be able to read the Scriptures. So let's start with the
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ABCs. That's building. That's building.
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Receiving God's Word. Putting away idols. Building. May God help us to do these things.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank
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You for Your call. Thank You for Your grace. Enlarge our affections, our appetites, our desire that we might actually receive
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Your Word, that it would fill us with an unembarrassed, unhidden, unopaque zeal to purge ourselves of garbage and filth.
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That we would be so consumed by our love and awe and gratitude toward You and desire to see
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Your presence in our lives that we could freely tell brothers and sisters of those idols that we must purge.
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Even seeking help where we need it. Do this work in us. I pray for the men in this church that like Jacob, they would be brought out of the passivity of their own shekems into the zeal and the power and the strength of Bethel.
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That like Jacob, even here at this place, they would be able to lead their families, lead their homes in these ways.
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I pray that for myself as much as any man. I pray for the wives,
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Lord, that they too would be moved by Your Spirit of God in this way. That they would further Your work.
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That they would enhance and compliment the leading of their husbands. And where that's lacking, that they would show a zeal and a priority to You that would be a means of even winning their husbands over.
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I pray for the children that we would see and the children hear the same kind of movement of Your Spirit that was seen in 1880.
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That You would sanctify our households and purge what is filthy from them. That we would experience
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Your presence and be revived. These things we ask in Your Son's name. Amen. Now is our time for interaction.
01:00:14
Brother. Question. I find it interesting that they buried the idols but they didn't just burn them.
01:00:37
And then it's interesting that the nurse was buried in the same place. Yes. I found that kind of interesting.
01:00:44
Yeah, there's a lot of speculation about that, but I couldn't find anything that seemed to give a good reason why it was significant.
01:00:52
Certainly the sense of getting rid of this, maybe even the connotation that these are dead. Idols that had been seen as living and active, they're being treated as if they had died.
01:01:02
That's likely, but I almost wish they smashed them to little pieces, but that's okay.
01:01:10
By the way, Deborah was buried under, it's just like they kind of stuck that in there. It's weird. Yeah, that's interesting.
01:01:36
Maybe it is burying them. It's like you're burying the dead. Like we think, well, he can go back and get them later if it doesn't work out.
01:01:45
That's probably not the case. I will say that I appreciate,
01:01:55
Ross, your emphasis on repentance and faith. And we have a sovereign
01:02:04
God. You can't muster it up, as you said. So what do we do?
01:02:09
What do we do as fathers, as leaders, as mothers, as husbands, as wives?
01:02:16
You prepare the place to go to worship, and you speak that this is what involves worship and praise.
01:02:25
Hey, certainly all these revivals, like you said, in all these revivals, you saw the fruit of revival.
01:02:33
And I'm sure, I mean, I remember here in Stuart reading things about New York City and things like that, and the bars are empty.
01:02:41
Nobody's drinking. The bars went out of business, right? No one's drinking anything. There's this sense that it affected the whole community, and that even the non -Christians, as you said, were ashamed to sin.
01:02:57
And we're clearly in a place where it's different. It's divorce, right?
01:03:04
Homosexuality, rainbow Christianity. They say rainbow Christianity. It seems to be like people are saying this is part of Christianity.
01:03:14
So what do we do? We can't muster up and say, don't do that, don't do that. But we're called, as Jacob was called, to bring his family together and to bring the church together to worship
01:03:27
God and to constantly say, put away your idols. If you read
01:03:34
Acts, you see that word often in their idols. Paul comes to Athens, and what does he see?
01:03:42
He sees idols everywhere. And so he goes in and he starts preaching in the synagogues.
01:03:49
He starts preaching everywhere. You see it everywhere that there is a fruit of unrighteousness, and the
01:03:57
Christians should know that, not just for evangelism, right? We often say, oh, look at how this one's living or that one's living.
01:04:04
They need to be evangelized, but we should see the fruit in our own lives, of the idols in our own lives that we don't see as clearly, and we should worship
01:04:17
God and repent and put them away or ask for help for putting them away.
01:04:22
Ask for understanding to help to put them away. And so Jacob did a profound thing in the
01:04:30
Lord by asking his, like things that we can't imagine doing. As you said, part of his household were the
01:04:39
Shechemites, right? I mean, it's hard enough to ask your own family, right?
01:04:46
But to think to ask other families, right? And as a church, what are we supposed to do?
01:04:52
What are we supposed to do? Like you better not do it, and I've done this, you better not do it and pull the speck out of your brother's eye without pulling the plank out of your own eye.
01:05:02
But you should prepare your heart to do it in a humble, loving way.
01:05:11
That one of the things that we're called to do as a church, as a local church, is to rid ourselves of the idols in our lives and not be satisfied with the status quo in your life, the things you've done in the past.
01:05:27
You know, Jacob could have, he could have lived on his previous encounter in Bethel for the next 30, 40 years.
01:05:35
No, no. He, as you said, you need to have this encounter again and again and again.
01:05:44
And we better make sure that we don't live in the status quo of what we've done and what
01:05:49
God has moved you and your wife to do in the past or you to do in the past as an individual as you've drawn close to the
01:05:55
Lord, but to continue to look for biblical ways to continue moving forward in Him.
01:06:01
It's not an easy, it's not easy to do. Amen. So a couple observations in the text in verse relative to the terebinth tree, by the way.
01:06:19
In verse 4, they put the, they hide the idols under the terebinth tree which is by Shechem.
01:06:30
Then following that, they travel to Bethel and then in verse 8, Deborah the nurse is buried under the terebinth tree below Bethel.
01:06:40
So is it possible there are two different terebinth trees? Yeah, possible. I haven't,
01:06:46
I didn't spend much time on the death of the nurse. Yeah, but you know, between the burying of the idols and the burial of Deborah, you have them traveling to Bethel.
01:07:01
So it seems like, it seems like it, maybe there's two trees, two different trees.
01:07:07
It could be possible, yeah. Maybe burying things under a terebinth tree is kind of a custom. Yeah.
01:07:12
The question would be, you know, is it a place marker?
01:07:18
Is it something that is known? You get the sense that when they reference the terebinth at Shechem that it's a known site.
01:07:26
And so the idea is that the terebinth, to say the terebinth would be significant enough because it's a place that could be understood or would have been known.
01:07:34
Otherwise, it would be a detail that probably wouldn't be shared or at least location wouldn't be given. And so maybe both of these locations are known.
01:07:42
That's one of the issues. And one more observation at the very beginning of the chapter, God said to Jacob, arise, go to Bethel and dwell there.
01:07:50
And so Jacob does that and then it's interesting, God doesn't confront
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Jacob about all the idols that are in their midst. Yeah. And obviously,
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Jacob has been tolerating them because he says to his household, put away the foreign gods.
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Yeah. But God doesn't confront him about that. It's just curious. And yet, he understands the cue exactly which is something that we experience all the time, right?
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You know, nothing about idolatry or purging or cleansing could be shared. We could have spent, you know, 45 minutes just talking about the holiness and the glory of God.
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And if you were feeling stirred and anticipating being able to encounter that and you were just gripped by it, it would have the same effect upon you, upon your life that it had on Jacob here.
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You would know that that means you need to repent. I can't have this in my life anymore. I don't want this anymore. And so,
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I think Jacob, as we all must understand that when God gives a call in this way, when God begins to shed grace in our lives, one of the ways we know that he's shedding grace in our lives is our response is one of repentance.
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And it's a sign that we are receiving the grace of God is that we are repenting. The danger or the fear is that we claim to be under the grace of God and our repentance testifies otherwise.
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How could we then make a travesty out of the grace of God, which is what Paul's responding to in Romans 6.
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So, yeah. It's confusing because, you know, there's a lot of this emotionalism where the revival is defined by how you feel when you encounter
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God. And the feeling isn't repentance for a lot of people that we know. And I'm not saying that in a prideful way at all because it's like that in our lives oftentimes.
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We can have this emotional experience with God. You know, I don't even know how to define it, but it does not involve repentance.
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And we have a Christianity in our country that really, when there's testimony of many people who have an encounter and a revival with God and there's no repentance in their lives that they talk about.
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I'm not even saying that I see. It's more talked in a way like, you know, I love God. He's the creator.
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You know, it's this, but there's no change in their life with obvious idols or sin and things like that.
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And so it is important for the true church to really see the difference.
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You know, we all get moved by wonderful songs. We all get moved by just in ways, euphoric ways, the
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Lord. You know, they can't always be trusted. Right? And we have many, many examples of that and we have to be really careful.
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It's almost like emphatically we have to say, you know, what comes with revival is repentance.
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It is drawing near to God. It is putting away these idols and the sin. We have to do that because we have, you know, we have to say that to the world, right, as well, because I talk to many people about the
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Lord all week long and there is no repentance talked about. It's almost, it is actually, oftentimes when you talk to them, it's a license to sin.
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It's a license to keep living the way they want to live with this emotional feeling toward the
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Lord. And I, you know, I can be bent toward that. We just, we really have to set that line and really look at this rightly as you preached,
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Ross. That's why I mentioned John the Baptist at the beginning of Mark. You know, you could describe the arrival of Jesus as a sort of revival among the
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Israelites that were looking for the consolation. And certainly those that were receiving the baptism of John were, you know, being revived, either hoped for being revived.
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And it's interesting that God doesn't say, all right, John the Baptist, I want you to go, you know, pep talk, make a really exciting, powerful conference, get stage lighting and fog machines and, you know, really get people into this excitement mode.
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No, it's just, you know, preach repentance. You know, that's what's going to prepare the way to meet with God.
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And there's more we could say about preparation along those lines, but I think if we just stick to hearing the word of God, purging and building, that we'll probably answer some of those challenges anyway.