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Bro. Bill Nichols
Isaac sent away Jacob. If it says that, that's where we are. Isaac is getting ready to send his son off on a journey to get a wife. He has sent him with two blessings. He sent him with a blessing of the land and he sent him with a blessing of a great population.
So here we go. And Isaac sent away Jacob and he went to Pandanaram, unto Lebanon, son of Bethuel, the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, and Jacob, and Esau's mother. Okay. Esau is going to leave the narrative for a while, but before he does, he's gonna make one last attempt to establish his preeminence with Isaac.
You'll see this as it goes on. When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Pandanaram to take a wife from Thence, and that as he pleased him, he gave him a charge saying, thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.
And that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother and was gone to Pandanaram. And Esau, seeing that the daughters of Canaan, pleased not his father, decided to do something about it. Then went Esau unto Ishmael and took unto the wives, which he had of Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, and of Abraham's son, the sister of Nebuchadnezzar, to be his wife.
So he's got a new wife now of the family of Ishmael. This is John MacArthur's take on this event. And I'm gonna warn you, it's not exactly what Brother David told me, so I'm gonna tell you both of them.
And I kind of believe, Brother David, that I agree with you more, but it's only because of the kind of man that I think Esau is. MacArthur said that Esau, recognizing that his father was unhappy with his choice of Canaanite wives, of course he could tell that, decided to add another wife to his collection.
By marrying back into the line of Abraham through the family of Ishmael seems to have been an attempt to gain favor with his father and to show an obedience similar to his father when Jacob was sent to obey his father and mother and was gone to Ben-Darom.
He had hoped by such gratifying of his parents to atone for past delinquencies and maybe have his father change his will. Now, this is my comment. He did not add to the, he didn't reduce the iniquity.
He actually added to it. Even though that may have been his goal to bring some sort of resolution between he and his father, and that's what Dr. MacArthur seems to think he's trying to do. He was actually, increased the iniquity rather than gaining it.
Well, that's kind of what Brother David said. If he is, but he didn't tell him he couldn't marry the wives of Ishmael. It was the wives of the Canaanites that he couldn't marry. So MacArthur kind of thinks that he was attempting to get some sort of common ground so that one of his wives would be at least acceptable to his father.
Now, that wife would not have been acceptable to his father either. That would just made it worse. So rather than reducing the iniquity, he actually increased it by adding to his pagan wives a wife from a family that God had already rejected, the family of Ishmael.
This is Brother David's take. If I record this, if I remembered this right, Brother David, correct me if I'm wrong. Now there is another take on this passage which Brother David suggested last Sunday.
Maybe Esau saw that his father was not pleased. Clearly he saw that with his choice and selected a wife from a family that God had already rejected out of pure spite. Well, that would have been well within his reckless nature.
I don't want to say disobedient because he wasn't disobedient in some sense. When he was sent to get the porridge, he went to get it. When he had tasks to perform, he did them, but he was at least reckless.
He was a reckless man and took chances he didn't need to take regardless of what that choice was. It only made a bad situation worse. Would you look at where we are right now today. If you go right now in the Middle East, the first thing you're gonna run into is Israelites.
We see Israel, the descendants of Abraham, through Jacob and Isaac. And of course, Jacob's other name is Israel, so we see Israel. The land through which God promised the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant.
All of this, all of these, everything that's going to come to the world will come through Abraham and Isaac and one of the twins, not both, Jacob. That's one group of people you'll run into and they claim ownership of the land.
I'm gonna read something and I'm gonna come back to it later, but just so you've got it fresh in your mind. And behold, the Lord stood above it. He's talking about the latter. It's gonna be about three or four verses later in the chapter.
And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father and the God of Isaac, the land whereupon thy alias, to thee I will give it and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth and thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south.
And in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold, I am with thee and I will keep thee in all places where that thou goest and I will bring thee again to this land for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken of thee.
That's a passage we will look at in detail later, but the very least that I want to convey to you is, the Lord tells us who the blessing is coming through. Now we come to our second family, not the second in order, it's actually the first in order.
Ishmael, Abraham's second son. What do we know about him? And where his descendants are? We know that Ishmael was conceived by Abraham through Hagar when he and Sarah decided that God needed help in delivering the promise.
It's always a bad decision to think God needs you to help him do his promise. What did he get? As a result, a son described as a wild donkey of a man. I thought that was so interesting. When I looked it up, it doesn't say the first time, it doesn't say, it just says a wild man.
But if you look it up, it is a wild donkey of a man. And his relatives are still out there. Here's what it says about he and his relatives. A son that will be described as a wild donkey of a man, a man whose seed would know no peace.
So Esau determined in his mind that he would please his father.
That's, see, I don't, see, that's why I, as much as I love Dr. MacArthur, he is a New Testament scholar. Most of his stuff is New Testament. And some of this stuff, he's gonna pick up and say, this is, it's reasonable.
If I, if my twin brother had gone off to find a wife somewhere else and be gone for some time, we know at least 14, 15 years, I would try to make peace with my father. And I would try to do something to bring him back.
But I don't think this is it. I don't think, a wild donkey of a man pretty much describes it. He's mad at his, absolutely, and he's mad at his brother so mad he wants to kill him. Which is gonna give you another story later on.
I've been reading ahead, of course we all have. We, we're gonna have it come back. And on the way back, he's gonna send, he is such a scoundrel. He sends his, he sends his worst wife first. He sends them, he sends them in order so that if Esau kills one of them, the rest of them can run.
That's not the man, that's not the man, the mad donkey. That's the man who married the wife of a, the, a wife whose father was a wild donkey. Yeah, I think so. I think it's. Yeah, and I think, I think the Lord will do that for us.
Yeah, I think he gave him peace. He will be a wild man, and his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell, he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.
So that's where he's gonna be. He's gonna, he's gonna be amongst them. His hand is gonna be against every man's hand, and every man's hand is gonna be against him. There will never be any peace amongst them.
Every man. And they're all over Belgium, and they're all over Europe, and they're all over Dallas, and they're all over. They're all over the city. And, and, and. They're a very broad bunch of men, I imagine.
Very big.
Yeah, and, and I used to think when I read this, five or six years ago, that what they, what they meant was he's gonna dwell in the presence of his brethren right over there in the Middle East. Uh-uh, wherever they are.
Wherever they are, they're gonna be amongst them. Well, that's the second family. Then we get to the third family. The seeds of the sons of Katar, a wife that Abraham took in his old age. Some scholars, and I think, I'm one of, I'm not a scholar, but some scholars say, and I believe they're right, that he took Katar as his wife while Sarah lived.
She was still alive. Oh, here's what I do know for sure. She bare him seven sons. Seven, I said seven, six. She bare him six sons. And who knows how many there are. So the solution becomes more and more confusing.
And now we get to the final family we wanna talk about. And that's family number four. The seed of Esau. It's not bad enough that Esau married some Canaanite wives. That would be bad enough. Now he adds to the complication by marrying back into the line of Ishmael.
So it's no wonder there is contention today on who owns the land. I mean, it really is. You can see how the claim of every Palestinian, the sons of Katar, and every Edomite, the sons of Esau, and the Ishmaelites, I don't know if there's any of those anymore, but wherever they are, they all claim land.
We could never sort it out. It would be impossible to sort out to whom the inheritance should go if we didn't have a word from God. And fortunately we do. And we're gonna deal with that in a few minutes.
We're gonna come back to it in a few minutes and we'll wait for God to sort out where everything goes. I kinda gave you a hint before when I read it to you. The narrative now leaves Isaac and Esau and picks up with Jacob on his journey.
And Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Haran after a journey of about 50 miles. That's a good, hard day's hike. I doubt that anyone, oh, maybe one or two of us, Ben, could walk 50 miles, but I'd have to be helped along a wheelbarrow or something.
But at least he is tired enough that he slept in an open field. And he lighted upon a certain place and tarried there all night because the sun was set. And he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows and lay down in that place to sleep.
You'd have a dream if you slept on a rock. Now, Mrs. Mitchell, I can kinda visualize you as the princess and the pea. So, that you wouldn't even be able to sleep with a pea in your bed, much less a boulder.
But anyhow, he slept with a boulder. This place will be identified as Bethel, and that's gonna be called the house of God later on. It's about 50 miles north of Beersheba, about 60 miles north of Jerusalem.
So, he's walking a distance. And there he spent his night in an open field. And he dreamed and behold, a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God ascending and descending.
Now, that's a portrayal, a graphic portrayal of the heavenly Lord's personal involvement in the affairs of the earth, especially as they relate to the divine covenant in Jacob's life. Now, Jacob hasn't been told this yet.
Jacob has been blessed by God, but in the mouth of his father. Now, for the first time, while he's on his way out of the land of Canaan, God reveals himself directly to Jacob and confirms the Abrahamic covenant with all of its three elements of land, seed, and blessing, including the one that Isaac failed to mention in his blessing.
As he dreamed and behold, a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God ascending and descending. And behold, the Lord stood above it at the top of the ladder in heaven.
And said, I am the Lord of Abraham, thy father, and of Isaac, the land whereupon thou liest. To thee, I will give it, and to thy seed. So here it's God that's speaking, and who is God giving the land to?
Jacob. And how does he word that to you? He tells him directly, I am giving it to you. I am giving this land to thee and thy seed. No one else. So who does the land belong to? Jacob and his seed. First the affirmation of the land, then the affirmation of the seed.
And I said sea, I meant seed. And thy seed, and you gotta be careful as you read this through, because if it weren't for Galatians, I could not possibly understand what he's talking about. But the passage in Galatians tells us about this, and so I'm gonna pop back and forth between it.
But right here, thy seed. Here the seed is many. It's clear from the context it's many, because thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth. There's a lot of dust, there's a lot of seed. Jacob is gonna have many seed.
And thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And in thy, and so that gave him the promise of numerous offspring. And then it's, puts a little colon there, and it puts a new statement, a new statement entirely different in kind.
It says, and in thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Now, how many seeds is that? Exactly one. Exactly one. Exactly one, let's read it. And thy seed, many, shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, colon.
And in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. How do I know that's, how do I know that that's one? Because Galatians tells me it is. In Galatians 3, 16, it says, now to Abraham and to his seed were the promises made.
He saith not to seeds as of many, but as of one, and unto thy seed, which is Christ. So all of these blessings of land and all of these blessings of seed, and it's interesting to me, and I haven't made sense of it yet.
Which ones did Isaac relay to Jacob? Which ones of the promises of the blessings did Isaac relay to Jacob, his son? Just the land and just the numerous seed. He didn't put this colon and then some more material.
And in thee and thy seed shall all the families be blessed. So when Paul comes around to writing about it, he says, and now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. Which promise is important to Paul?
Not the land and not the population, but the one seed, Jesus Christ. That's where all the blessing will come from. And I think that the Lord is stressing on Jacob, the importance of that part of his blessing.
Now we've had that all the way through from the beginning, from the promise being made to Eve, that through her seed would all the nations be blessed. So every real blessing that comes from the earth, every spiritual blessing comes from here.
Does that make sense or am I rambling way too much? Okay, now we get to a series of wonderful promises. I am with you. I will keep you. I will bring you back to the land. I will not leave you until I have done all that I promised you.
Now that is a good, healthy, vision to hold in front of you when you're going off into a, when you're one day into a journey of over 15, over 14 years. I don't know how much I tried to find and I couldn't find it.
I know that he spent seven for Rebecca and then he did another seven. Not Rebecca, Rachel. I've got him confused again. Which one is it? Rachel is Jacob's wife? And Rebecca is Isaac's, okay. If you're one day into a journey, that's going to take at least 14 years.
Seven for Rachel and then seven more for the real Rachel. And then a period of time to build his herd. I don't know how long that is. But so at least more than 14 years. It's a good thing to be with you.
I am with you. I will keep you in all places with the Valgoas and I will bring thee again into this land for I will not leave thee until I have done that thing which I have spoken of thee. Okay. Now the dream is over.
And Jacob is ready to react to his dream. And I thought, so curious. Number one thing, the very first thing Jacob recognized is the presence of God. And that's great. And the very first thing he fails to recognize is that God's presence is everywhere, just not here.
So he's going to lay out a worship service. He's going to praise the Lord. He's going to do a lot of things, but he's doing it based on the idea that he thinks there's some special location that belongs to God.
This is God's place. But it's not. Every place is God's place. And Jacob awakened out of his sleep and he said, surely God is in this place. And I knew it not. Surely God is in this place. And I knew it not.
Now, I may have asked this before. I'm gonna ask it again. There's a practical lesson that can be learned by all of us in the answer to this question. When are God's children most likely to recognize the presence of God?
Everybody in here, everybody in here, I believe, is a child of God. And we recognize the presence of God a lot. Do we recognize the presence of God all the time? Okay, when we're walking with him, but sometimes we recognize the presence of God and sometimes we don't.
When are we most likely to recognize the presence of God? That's a good time. And what are you doing when you're in that quiet time with God and nobody else? You're doing the same thing he said when you're walking with him.
When you're walking with him, when you're walking with him, when I'm walking with him, when I'm walking with him, I recognize the presence of God. If I've got other things on my mind, I was going to rag Coach Davis about North Carolina's basketball.
I know what he did last night at nine o 'clock. He was watching that North Carolina game. When he was in the midst of that North Carolina game, I bet sometime he was not aware of the presence of God. That is not fair.
Maybe I should say me. He's there. When we look around and we say, I know that I'm God's child and there's no place I can go that I can't get away from him. I'm with him all the time, but I'm not really with him all the time.
Sometimes I'm watching the Villanova game and all the time when I'm sitting. Yeah, and how can you fail to recognize the presence of a God when you're out in the world? Now, see, you are really big into the outdoors and I am too.
I mean, I love it. And I can't be out there and not recognize the presence of God. And I can't sit down at a math table and work a problem and see how everything fits together and how did that happen?
But how does the square root of 16 turn out to be four? I mean, that is like magic. We got numbers that we got these Arabic numbers that allow us to do all sorts of things. Try doing multiplication with Roman numerals.
You know how you do it? You change it to Arabic, multiply and switch them back. But when you see something like algebra, such an elegant thing developed, you say, how can it not be God's hand in it? So what did he think when he saw it?
Just what we all have seen. And he was afraid and said, how dreadful is this place? How can anything be dreadful with Jesus around? Well, let me tell you something. I have given this some thought and it is really, really, really dreadful.
There is nothing more dreadful than to be in the presence of God. Now, they have, and here's the thing. It would even be more dreadful if God didn't allow you to pretend to be him.
Jesus is all right on his face.
That is dreadful, that is dreadful, that's fearful. And you're recognizing your condition. Now, the Lord has promised you that he's gonna pay your position for you. And the Lord that sees you up here, he's not gonna see you, he's gonna see Jesus.
And therefore, it's not as dreadful as it would have been. If it hadn't been for Jesus, it would be really, really, really dreadful. There is a passage and I didn't look it up. It says something about to be, how fearful it is to be in the hand of a righteous God.
I have not got that exactly laid out, but that, is that what it says? Unprepared. So how would you be prepared? That's it. And he was afraid and said, how dreadful is this place? There is none other but the house of God.
And this is the gate of heaven. So he thought that's how you got in. You got in right there at that ladder, you crawled up the ladder. I think he's what he thought. I mean, that was just my opinion. Nobody told me that.
I just thought maybe that's how he thought you got up, climbed up that ladder. The Babylonians, not the Babylonians. What are they called? The, yeah, the Tower of Babel people, whatever they are. The Babylonians, they thought they'd build a way up.
None of those ways work. In Isaiah 6, one is probably the most fitting example of what one does when one comes to the face of God. In the year that King Uzziah died, I also saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
And above it stood the seraphims, and each one had six wings. And with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
And the whole earth is full of his glory. And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. That's what Isaiah saw, and here's what Isaiah said. Then said I, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
For my eyes have seen the king of the Lord of hosts. And then one of the angels said, I'll take care of it. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar, and he laid it upon my mouth and said, lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged.
Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I sin, and who will go for us? And then I said, here am I, send me. And then he gives him a really interesting charge. And I think this is kind of the charge that we all are given, especially in these days.
I think, Brother David, back in the days of the Puritans, I don't think they were given this charge. But listen to what he says. And he said, go tell the people. He said, go and tell this the people. Hear ye indeed, but understand not.
And see ye indeed, but perceive not. And make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with the ears, and understand with the heart, and be converted, and be healed.
So what does he tell them to do? Go tell the people. But when you tell them, tell them this. You're not gonna see, you're not gonna hear, you're not gonna understand. You're just gonna be given the conditions of your judgment.
We look out here around him, we say things, and we do things, and nobody seems to understand. And he said, then said I, Lord, how long? How long do you want me to do this? And he answered, until the cities be wasted without an habit, and the houses without men, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord hath removed men far away.
And there should be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. Sometimes I think that the word that we're given is not designed for us at all. It's designed to be told by us to other people with the full understanding that they cannot and will not see, that they cannot and will not understand.
Well, that was Isaac's situation, and he was in a time right before the end of his country. This is Jacob right at the first of it. Jacob is looking at God and seeing an awesome, dreadful thing. I said, Isaac, I meant, Isaiah is at the end, and Jacob at the beginning.
Yeah, thank you, that would, thank you. That's all I can say, thank you. Okay, let's get back to Jacob. I got his name written down. I'll get it, maybe, and Jacob rose early in the morning and took the stone that he had for his pillow and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on top of it.
Some people say, well, where did he get his oil? You know, they used oil to break bread, to bake bread. He could have had some. It was only a five-mile walk down. Jerusalem, if you wanted to go get it, it's not a big deal.
And he changed the name of that place Bethel, which means the house of God, but that's not what it went by at first, but the name of that city was called Lutz at first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, if God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I shall come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God.
Now, a couple of things, and I'm gonna deal with them in less order. Martin MacArthur said this, marking a particular site as a special religious significance by the means of a stone pillar was a known practice.
A drink offering was a change of place name and a vow of allegiance to the Lord in exchange for promised protection and blessing completed Jacob's ceremonial concentration of the house of God, Bethel.
And this stone which I have set for a pillow shall be God's house, and of all of that that thou shalt give me, I shall surely give one tenth. Now, when does tithing come into play? Okay, I'm gonna give you a star for that.
That's the first place I know that tithing took place. Apparently, tithing had taken place earlier, but it was not yet in the law, right? It was not in the law. It was done in obedience, in wishing to do something well for God.
So Abraham tithed Mechizodek. What about Jacob? Here's a tithing, giving a tenth. It had not yet been commanded by God. When was it commanded? Under Moses, this is over 400 years later. Tithing, though not commanded by God, was obviously already known and voluntarily practiced.
So people have done it. And it served to acknowledge God's providential benefits in a donor's life. And I put in this little paragraph about Melchizedek to remind you of it, but Kenner's already done it, so we won't do it again.
And I'm running a little late, but anyhow. Number 20, verse 20. And Jacob bowed a vow, saying, if God will be with me and will keep me in this way, that I go out and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on.
This is the first I just read. So that I will come again to my father's house in peace. Then shall the Lord be my God. And this stone, which I have set for a pillow, shall be God's house. And of all that thou shalt give us, me, I will surely give a tenth unto thee.
Now, there are many people that take this to imply that Jacob was bargaining with God. If you will do this, I will do that. Dr. MacArthur said, it's better to, in that, in verse 20, when it says, and Jacob bowed a vow, saying, if God will be with me, if you will translate that as, since God is with me.
And that's a similar word, and it could be taken either way. If you translated that as, since God is with me, I will, and it keeps me in the way, gives me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, and I come again unto the father's house in peace, then, since God is my Lord, I will give a tenth.
So, he says, some take this verse to imply that Jacob may have been bargaining with God, as if to buy his favor, rather than purely worship God with his gift, and it's best to translate the if in verse 20 to since, and see Jacob's vow as an offering of complete, genuine worship, based on the confidence in God's promise.
But one other thing you need to know. If, indeed, Jacob was bargaining, which Jacob is a scoundrel and a bargainer, if he was bargaining, it is best that we reject the Jacobonian method altogether, and rely entirely on the grace of God, because we are going to get nothing to our advantage by bargaining with God.
And I am not, I think Dr. MacArthur's right on this one. I like this one, Brother David. But that was his statement. If, in fact, I'm not right, it's best that you reject Jacob's bargaining with God. Hey, Bill.
Well, what Dr. MacArthur is going to tell you is, if you think he's bargaining, just make sure you don't. That's right.
You're right. Would you say that again, because I don't think everybody heard you. I said, you know, back in 16, it says Jacob awaked out of sleep, and he was afraid. In 17, it says, and he was afraid.
And this all took place right at that time, so, you know, I think maybe he had some parameters to there.
So you're thinking maybe the great scare that he had would have made him be less likely to bargain? A little bit, for a minute there. For a minute there. But we know he's going to bargain some more later.
And he is going to find, in chapter 29, his match.
Maybe he was trying to cover all these places.
Yeah, he's going to find, in chapter 29, his match. The scoundrel, and the old story is, the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. Jacob's acorn didn't fall far from the tree either. He just inherited his scoundrel was from Laban.
Most gracious heavenly Father, thank us for all of the many blessings that you've given us. Thank you for giving us a place to come together to study your holy word. Bless us and keep us, of course. Take us through all of the messages today.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
We'll see if we can get us a lot more. Just make this action. I got there and took the wrong one. Right? Good morning.