FBC Daily Devotional – January 25, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Monday to you, 25th of January, and here we are entering the last week of January already.

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Can you believe that? We're about 112th done with this year.

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Well, I hope you had a good weekend. We're able to get to God's house and gather together with God's people and worship the

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Lord together, but perhaps you weren't able to do that, and perhaps you're still feeling the sense of the need to be safe from the

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COVID thing and isolated and because of your condition. I understand that, and I hope that the

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Lord is encouraging you in this time of really isolation, and I hope that even he may use these devotional times to encourage you a little bit along the way.

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Are you following the reading plan for these devotionals? If so, then today we're in Genesis 28, 29.

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You will have read that or will be reading it yet today. I encourage you to do so.

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And in this passage that we read is this fantastic dream that Jacob has, the dream of what we call

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Jacob's ladder. A little backstory to that, you remember that Jacob and his brother

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Esau have had a little bit of a falling out, a significant falling out actually, because Esau really wants to kill

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Jacob. He can't stand him. He hates him so much. He wants to kill him. And mom gets wind of the plot,

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Esau's plot to kill Jacob. So she goes to dad, Isaac, and says, you know what, again, notice the lack of transparency here, the lack of full truth and nothing but the truth.

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She goes to Jacob and says, she goes to Isaac, Rebecca does, goes to dad and says, you know,

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I don't want my son marrying one of these Canaanite women, so let's send

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Jacob off to my family, back to Laban and Paddan Aram, and let him find a wife among my family.

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They're God -fearing people, these Canaanites. And Isaac says, yeah, it's a good idea.

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We need to do that. So they pack up Jacob and send him off to go to Paddan Aram, and off he goes.

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That night he camps, sets up camp and lays his head down against a pillow to sleep, and in his sleep he receives this dream, he has this dream.

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Now again, think of the context here of this dream. What's just happened? Why did

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Esau want to kill Jacob? Because of Jacob's deception, and it was flagrant, it was gross deception.

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Here's his mom, who's tricking the dad out of doing what the dad intends to do, and she does so by getting

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Jacob to buy into this plot, and Jacob goes before his dad, pretending to be his brother, flat -out lies to his dad.

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His dad asks him, who are you, and he says, I'm Esau, I'm your son Esau. This flat -out lies to him, and he gets away with it.

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Jacob receives the blessing from his father Isaac, and Esau is left out in the cold, and that causes

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Esau to hate, to despise his brother Jacob. And so off Jacob goes. Now, what does

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Jacob deserve? After all that deception and so on, what does he deserve? He said, well,

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God did promise that Jacob would be the one blessed. I understand that, I get that, but does it ever, the promises of God, do they ever justify us violating the law of God?

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No, of course not. So Jacob deceives, what does he deserve?

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What does he deserve? Well, regardless of what he deserves, what he gets is grace.

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He gets his grace. Seriously, he lays down, he has this dream, and in this dream, listen to what the

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Lord says to him. And if you listen carefully, you'll recognize that, hey, I've heard this before.

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Here's what the Lord says. He says, I am the Lord, I am Yahweh, the

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God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie,

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I will give to you and to your offspring. This is exactly what the Lord told Abraham.

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This land, the land of Canaan, I'm going to give to you and to your offspring. And he says, your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth.

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Again, when the Lord told Abraham that, he had no kids. And when the Lord told

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Jacob that, he wasn't even married yet. He had no children. He says, your offspring will be like the dust of the earth.

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You will spread abroad to the west, to the east, to the north, and to the south. And in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

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Same thing he told Abraham. So what the Lord is doing is telling Jacob, this Abrahamic covenant, this promise that I made to Abraham is coming through you.

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Not through your brother Esau, but through you. And so, as the

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Lord continues, he then says, behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and I will not leave you until I have done what

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I have promised you. Do you get the significance of that? What did Jacob deserve?

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Well, he deserved punishment of some kind. He certainly didn't deserve, didn't deserve all this blessing.

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What did he get? Grace. Grace. Now, by the way, aren't you grateful that the

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Lord doesn't give you and me what we deserve? Oh, but by his grace, if you've come to faith in Christ, he has, by grace, saved you.

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You didn't deserve that. And even as his child, he doesn't always give you what you deserve.

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He gives you grace. Now, that doesn't overlook Jacob's sin.

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That doesn't overlook his character flaw of being a deceiver. And God doesn't just ignore that.

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But what God does with that, to deal with that, is what he does often with us.

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He chips away at it. He chisels away at Jacob's character to mold him and shape him.

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And the way he does that comes out in the next chapter. He gets to Paddan Aram, he meets

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Laban, and Laban has this beautiful daughter, Rachel, and Jacob wants to marry

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Rachel. Laban says, okay, work for me for seven years, and you can have her as your wife.

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Jacob says, okay, it's a deal. Work seven years, time comes for the wedding, have this big feast, big wedding celebration and ceremony and so on and so forth.

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And the night comes for, time comes at nighttime for Jacob to deliver his daughter,

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Rachel, to, I mean, Laban to deliver his daughter, Rachel, to Jacob, takes his daughter to the tent and consummate the marriage, and gets up the next morning, and it's

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Leah. It's not Rachel. It's Leah. Jacob has been deceived.

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He's been deceived. Now, as much as that is a sordid tale in itself, you've got to get the point here that what the

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Lord is doing, and he's going to continue to do to Jacob, is chisel away at his character flaw of deception by having him be the victim of the very thing that he is guilty of.

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So here's this principle of sowing and reaping. It plays out in some very practical ways, and it touches us.

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It touches us, and as it does so, the Lord uses that principle to mold us and shape us.

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So take great encouragement in the Lord's gracious dealings with Jacob, but at the same time, let's realize that the flaws, the sins that so easily beset us, the

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Lord doesn't just ignore them. He will work in our lives to root them out and to change us into Christlikeness.

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Well, let's pray and ask the Lord to deal graciously with us, even as he molds us and shapes us.

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So our Father and our God, we realize today, every one of us who would be honest with ourselves and with you, that we are a needy people.

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We come to you with flaws. We come to you with sinful hearts, and so easily are we led astray.

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And yet we're grateful for your grace, that in your grace you've saved us, and in your grace you continue to mold us and shape us.

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In your grace, you give us great and wonderful promises. And then, Father, in your gracious work, you chisel away at our flaws.

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You mold us and shape us into Christlikeness. Oh, do that wonderful work in us.

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May we be fully responsive to all that you do. And this we pray, in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.

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All right, well you have a good rest of your Monday, and trust that God will bless you richly in it.