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A brief bit of encouragement for the journey from God's Word. Today's Scripture reading: Genesis 33-34 / Matthew 13 / Psalm 13
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Music: "Awaken the Dawn" by Stanton Lanier https://www.stantonlanier.com CCLI #20109360
Well, good morning. I'd like to share a few thoughts from Genesis 33 and 34 that I trust will be an encouragement to you on the journey ahead today.
In Genesis 33, we see an illustration of what we know in our heads, but often doesn't affect our behavior or our feelings in our heart, and that is, how often do the things that we worry about never come to pass?
In the earlier chapter, chapter 32, 31, 32, Jacob is heading back to his homeland and he's going to be meeting his brother
Esau, and he's scared to death of that meeting. He's afraid that his brother is going to kill him.
He gets word that his brother's coming out with 400 men when Esau hears that Jacob is coming, and Jacob is just convinced that Esau is coming to kill us.
He's going to wipe us out. That fear, on the one hand, you could say is a reasonable fear, because remember, why did
Jacob leave his homeland in the first place? Because the word came to Jacob that Esau wanted to kill him, because Jacob had deceived the father to steal the blessing from Esau.
On one hand, it seems reasonable, but on the other hand, if Esau succeeds in what
Jacob is afraid will happen, then God's promise would fail.
God promised that the blessing would come through Jacob. God promised
Jacob that he would bring him back safely to his homeland in Canaan.
God promised that. If Esau is successful in killing Jacob, then that promise would never come to pass.
Can he trust God or not? When we're filled with fear and anxiety and worry, often the promises of God get put in the background of our mind and just kind of forgotten about, aren't they?
It's a sad reality. The fact of the matter is Jacob really didn't have anything to fear, because we read in verse 4 that when he and Esau meet, it says,
Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.
There was no need to fear. There was no need to be filled with anxiety and worry and fret.
God took care of Esau's heart. We've been looking the last few days at the theme of deception in the life of Jacob, and it's run through a lot of things, hasn't it?
Through Jacob's life, through his father -in -law, even through his own life, and now we see in chapters 33 and 34 that theme of deception continuing throughout the course of this story.
It seems that Jacob deceives his brother Esau in verses 14 through 17, that Esau offers to accompany
Jacob in this journey, and Jacob says, no, no, no, no, you go on home, and I'll come and join you there.
So Esau goes on home, and in verse 16,
Esau returned to Seir, but it says in verse 17, Jacob journeyed to Succoth and built himself a house and made booths.
Succoth is not anywhere near Seir. Did he deceive his brother, again, out of fear?
It seems maybe that's the case. Distrust? Yeah, perhaps. And then there's also another occasion of deception in the next chapter, when
Jacob is himself deceived in verses 13 and following, in chapter 34, by his own sons, and his sons deceive the citizens of Shechem in this plot to exact revenge on their sister,
Jacob's daughter Dinah. But Jacob and his sons, they're not the only deceivers.
In this whole incident with Hamor and Shechem in chapter 34, you see their real motive that comes out.
It sounds like, initially, when they're talking, when Hamor and Shechem are talking to Jacob and his family, it sounds like all they really want to do is just live peaceably together with one another, let me have your daughter, and I love her, and we'll live happily ever after, but that's not the real motive.
The real motive comes out in verses 21 through 24, when Hamor and Shechem, his son, communicate to the men of the city to convince them to go along with this treaty with Jacob and his family.
They say, here's what will happen. We'll get them to sign this treaty with us, come into this covenant with us, and we'll take them over.
Everything that's theirs, it'll be ours. We'll get their daughters for ourselves. We'll just be able to have them complete.
We'll overtake them. That's the real motive. Deception. Trickery. How deep it runs through the human heart.
I trust that God has challenged us when we've seen all these examples of deception in these chapters in Genesis over the last week, that we will be warned against it, and we will be determined to defeat the temptation to deceive others and manipulate others to get what we want.
Our Father and our God, I pray that we would take this to heart and be challenged to avoid the sin of deception and manipulation of others, we pray in Jesus' name.