Genesis 28 The Geography of God

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service. This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series, Beginning with God, walking through the book of Genesis.

If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

God Meets Us in Real Places and Carries Us Through Transition

The nostalgia of things, and that's just not the way that I've been put together. I'm not super connected with kind of the stuff of this world, and I'm grateful for the time that we've had in this building.

But I'm not as put off by change as some people are, and so it's a little bit more work for me to be to understand kind of like where people come from in that regard, and yet I recognize that there might be some connections to this place that you might need to deal with in your heart.

And this has been a place where God has met us. Has that been cool? Is that worthy of celebration? Is that worthy of our attention and worth saying something cool about? Absolutely. And I think that that is amazing.

But the reality is the way that God's put me together. I like adventure. I kind of like new. I like the idea of going to a new place and seeing how God is gonna bless us in that new location and all of that.

And some of you are built built that way too. You're like, yeah, bring it on. I love a challenge. I love I love some new things and and venturing out for for God. But God once again has filled in my gaps, my inability to necessarily understand all of the ins and outs of the way that we all work in that in that regard.

And he has given us a specific text this morning that speaks to us immediately where we're at in this regard to geography and his presence with us wherever we go. And isn't it just like our God to give us a text that I'm going through the book of Genesis.

You know that I couldn't have I couldn't have planned this out for this text to be this week out in advance with, you know, I've taken a break and we went through 1st John. We've done all this and I didn't know when we were gonna be moving, if we were gonna be moving, long before I even knew that we were gonna be moving this week to a new facility.

God, I had already written this down, by the way. I already knew that I was gonna preach this text about six months ago right now before I even knew we were moving. So it's really cool how he works that in our text this morning.

God is gonna appear to Jacob. Jacob the one of the really whose name is going to be changed to Israel and he's gonna appear to Jacob in the middle of transition. And Jacob will come to realize that there is a geography to God.

He is a God of time and space and he will at times meet us in physical locations that we can find on a map. He will take what we perceive as routine and mundane places and convert them into sacred space by his Holy Presence.

And not only does God meet with Jacob in geography, but then further in this text God promises to Jacob that he will be with him wherever he goes. That wherever Jacob goes he will be with him. And before we just dismiss this promise as something that God offered to Jacob, like that's really good for him.

How many of you would agree with that? That's kind of cool. Like it would be cool to have God appear to you as an individual and say I'm gonna be with you wherever you go. Great for Jacob. But before we just dismiss it as something that he said to this man in ancient times, we need to remember that the same God promises, the same promises that he's given to Jacob are echoed to all followers of Jesus Christ through his words that he will never leave us or forsake us.

It's as if God wanted to remind us here in our last week at 244 -66 Red Arrow Highway here in Matawan that it is great to remember the ways that God has met us here in this geography. But God is not stuck here in this place.

We are not leaving him behind but he goes with us and he will never leave us or forsake us. So I want you to open your Bibles, please to Genesis 28 page 19 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you.

So if you pull that out, you can turn to page 19 and follow along as I read Genesis chapter 28 the words of God to us here in our last Sunday at this location recast. Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him.

You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. Arise, go to Pat and Aram to the house of Bethul, your mother's father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.

God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you that you may become a company of peoples. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham.

Thus Isaac sent Jacob away and he went to Pat and Aram to Laban, the son of Bethul, the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob, Jacob's and Esau's mother. Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Pat and Aram to take a wife from there that and that he had blessed him and blessed him.

He directed him you must not take a wife from the Canaanite women and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Pat and Aram. So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac, his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife besides the wives he had, Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth.

Jacob's Dream at Bethel: Heaven and Earth Connected

Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran and he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and laid down in that place to sleep and he dreamed.

And behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached the heaven, reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your offspring.

Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.

And he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven. So early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on top of it.

He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then Jacob made a vow saying, If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that I come to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God.

And this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God's house and of all that you give me, I will give a full tent to you. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the way that you have met us in this place.

And I know that many of us could testify of the way that you have impacted our lives through this location. And yet here we are on the brink of a final service here and moving on to another location. And Father, it's amazing and glorious to see the way that in your timing and in your mercy, you have opened us up to a text that is particularly about transition, particularly about your presence and your comfort and your hope of going with us wherever we go.

And Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to the reality of your great love, the connection that you have to us in our world, that you can break into us just like you broke into Jacob and broke into his life.

Father, I thank you for the ways that you have broken into mine and the way that you have revealed yourself and created sacred space in my heart and in places that I can identify and find on a map where you have met with me.

And Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to the glory of your presence with us even here this morning and as we go on to a new location, your presence there with us as well. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

Scripture Is Valuable Even in Transitional Passages

I'm very grateful for Rob leading us, especially in Josh's absence, just that he was able to step in for us here in this last service here. I'm so grateful for the band. Make sure you have your Bibles open in front of you to Genesis chapter 28.

As we walk through this text, we're going to walk right through it like we always do. And so having that open helps you to kind of reflect on the word of God as I'm talking and going through it and really looking at this text that shows God's perfect timing for us as a church in what he has to say to us.

Now, I want to point out that verses 1 through 9 of chapter 28 are really transitional material. And somebody actually said to me at one point this week, you know, do you have to preach on every part of the Bible?

Or is it kind of like, can you just take a transition portion and just kind of brush over? And I think there's room for some of that. At the same time, I want to make sure that you know that I'm not skipping anything just because it makes me uncomfortable or anything like that.

We kind of go through this and recognize that all of Scripture is God-breathed, right? It's all valuable for us. Even in those transitions, we can see some lessons or some things for us that impact us or show us how we ought to live or something about God.

And I want you to remember that as these loose ends are tied up, that we're looking at loose ends from last week. Last week, we saw Jacob and his mother, Rebecca, formally steal the blessing, the formal blessing from Jacob's brother, Esau, and deceive his father, Isaac.

And so we saw that whole scenario come down. Everybody was behaving poorly in the text last week. And by the end of last week's text, Esau was plotting to murder his twin brother, Jacob, a great way for the chosen people of God to be behaving, right?

Like a pretty rough text last week. And so Rebecca has convinced Isaac, her husband, to send their son, Jacob, away to find a wife from among her own clan way up in Mesopotamia. We know that she had secondary motives and that was to save Jacob's life because she actually knew Esau was going to try to kill him.

And so she basically convinces Isaac, well, you know, don't let him take one of the wives from the people around here. Send him way up north to my people and let him find a wife from among there. And so that plan is enacted in verse one with Isaac calling Jacob in and sending him off.

Now, notice that any rebuke of Jacob is completely absent. What has Jacob just done to his father in the last week's text? He's just deceived him and ultimately stolen his blessing that he was planning on giving to his brother, Esau, and he's taken that for himself.

But there is no rebuke. Now, remember part of the blessing, this is kind of ironic, but part of the blessing from Isaac was blessed is anyone who blesses you and cursed is anyone who curses you. Do you think that factors into Isaac's interaction with his son Jacob moving forward?

I think it does to some degree. And so Isaac isn't going to chew out Jacob for deceiving him. Instead, he just commands Jacob to leave and head for Pad and Aram up north to his mother's household to find a wife among his cousins.

Now, you know, some of you, any of you that get squeamish when you think about, you know, the idea of going to a family reunion to find a wife is not necessarily a great idea, right? And yet at the same time, you have to recognize that this is a social custom of that time.

It's not that crazy far out there. And that's what was pretty common in that time. They wouldn't have batted an eyelash at that in that culture during that time. And yet at the same time, we'd be breaking Michigan law to do that here.

So, but verses three through four are valuable in our understanding of Jacob moving forward. He stole the blessing from his brother. He deceived his father. He tricked him into blessing him. But now something amazing happens.

Isaac offers a blessing to his son, Jacob, of his own free will. It's as if Isaac has now seen the hand of God and the blessing of Jacob and has come in line with it and has recognized that God's hand is indeed on his son, Jacob.

And here in verse four, he specifically passes along the very blessing that was offered to his grandfather, Abraham, passed on to him, Isaac. And now he says, may you, Jacob, be the recipient of that same blessing that was given to my father, Abraham.

Now, before Jacob left his father, his father offered him a voluntary blessing here in this text. And I can imagine if you put yourself in Jacob's shoes, do you think that might've had some impact on him moving forward?

That it wasn't just that he had to steal his father's blessing, but that in the end, finally, his father actually verbally, of his own will, offers him a blessing. Do you think that that would have an impact on a child's life?

Even if there's been strained relationship between father and son over the years, how many of you know there's power in our words? There's power in particularly, did you know there's power in a father's words?

Have you experienced that? Some of us haven't. Some of us have experienced the power of the absence of our father's words. And both are powerful in a person's life. Would you agree with me on that? And here, Jacob actually gets sent off with a blessing from his father, even regardless of what we might understand it.

Is motivating Isaac in here? Is it partly that he himself wants to be blessed? We don't know and we don't see all the ins and outs of what's going on in Isaac's mind, but he does offer a blessing. Remember Jacob.

Jacob, you gotta remember his character all throughout this text. Jacob was the homebody. He was the mama's boy, always close to mama's skirt. Working in the kitchen, you know, he was a good cook, that kind of stuff.

And he's now going to be the one that's going to be sent out into the big bad world to wander for a period of time. There's a little bit of irony in that. But before scripture focuses completely on Jacob for several chapters, it's now going to tie up a portion of Esau's storyline.

From this point on, by the way, just like it is declared to be the truth in the blessing to Jacob that his brother will serve him. Now, anytime that Esau is mentioned in the text moving forward, it's only in conjunction with Jacob.

It's only as much as he furthers the storyline when Jacob comes back in to enter the land. The fear that he has of his brother Esau, it's still serving the plot line of Jacob moving forward. But verse six implies that Esau, look at verse six, it implies that Esau was completely oblivious to the fact that his two Canaanite wives had a bitter relationship with his parents.

He is shown to be a little bit thick in scripture. If your parents and your wife were at odds with each other, you might get a clue about that, right? There might be some indication about that. And he's like, oh, I guess my dad doesn't like Canaanite wives, the text says, because he sent my brother away to get a wife from among my mom's family.

So it's like he's putting the pieces together. Now, I'm not trying to overstretch this.

Or try to overemphasize Esau.

The actual text in the Hebrew language, whenever Esau speaks, I've mentioned this before, it actually becomes almost kind of a dumber way of speaking when Esau talks like he says,.

Hey, give me some of that red stuff for my mouth.

Like when he's talking about the stew with Jacob and stuff and everything is just kind of like a little bit like he's not quite connecting everything. He's never shown to be super intelligent in the decisions that he makes.

And I'm not just trying to be hard on him. It's just the way that scripture paints him. What he does next verifies that he was a little bit impulsive, didn't necessarily think through all of his decisions.

When he hears that his parents don't want Canaanite wives, which he already has two, remember the text told us that last week. He already has two. He decides to go find a wife that would be pleasing to his dad.

So he goes to Ishmael's family, his dad's brother. Well, if mom's brother is okay, then maybe dad's brother is okay too. The problem being, anybody have any indication what Isaac and Ishmael's relationship was like?

Is it kind of strange that Esau would go to Ishmael to find a wife? This is not going to be pleasing to daddy, okay? He is taking and marrying together two families that are not intended to be married together.

And Esau is a tragic figure in the text. It's like he's always a day late and a dollar short. And he's always just kind of making decisions I don't think it's unfair to say he seems to be an impulsive character in the text.

But in verse 10, Jacob leaves and heads out for the city of Haran. And the first nine verses, all of the loose ends are tied up from that previous story, or most of them. And so he leaves and he heads for Haran, a city in the district of Paddan Aram up north.

This is a trip of about 550 to 600 miles. Anybody, you know, that's a pretty significant road trip. It's kind of like between here and Nashville-ish. So would that be an undertaking for you guys in a car?

Did you make some plans and some preparations for that? Here he is going, you know, at best by donkey, maybe by camel. It's going to take, this is a significant road trip. And he is on his way. Any vision that you have, by the way, any image that you have in your mind of him traveling alone, anybody kind of primarily think of him like kind of, you know, going through the desert on his own.

He's out, he's exiled or something like that. And he's trying to get, that's probably a byproduct of us having modern transportation, where it isn't that hard to go to Nashville on your own if you wanted to.

Or really our independent culture, where we can just travel on our own whenever we want. Remember the wealth, the wealth of Isaac that had been left to him by his father, Abraham. It's likely that Jacob is traveling with an entourage here that he is not alone.

He's got camels. He's got, he's got to take water with him. He's got to take packs with food and things like that. And so don't have in your mind, rarely should you have in your mind, unless the text tells you that somebody was traveling alone, should you have the image in your mind that they're traveling alone, like Joseph and Mary on their way to Bethlehem, alone on the donkey.

And there's hundreds of thousands of people on their way to Jerusalem and moving around the country at that time. So we get these images in our mind. He's traveling with a group. And on a trip that likely included dozens of nights of sleep along the way, one particular night is going to be recorded for us.

Now, how many of you know that there's a lot of trip here that's missing? How many of you ever been on a road trip and just kind of kept a journal or something and some funny things happen? You have funny things happen on road trips?

I think probably all of us have had that. Everybody's looking at me really blank. Either you're really sleepy or you've never been on a road trip. But I mean, in college, we would have some epic road trips where just crazy stuff happened.

And, you know, I don't know. Anyways, we're not going to get into that.

No.

One-on-one. That's a one-on-one conversation. So this is a lengthy trip. But there's a night here that is worthy of recording. And I want to just suggest to you that the same could be said of your life and mine.

In the midst of routine time, there is a type of time that occurs that is saturated with significance in our lives. We all can relate to that. We all understand it. There are wedding dates. There are spiritual encounters.

There are graduations. There are births. There are funerals. In other words, what I'm trying to say is there is a certain type of day where when your head leaves the pillow in the morning and somewhere between the time that it leaves, your head leaves the pillow in the morning and goes back to the pillow at night, you are changed.

Do you know the kind of day I'm talking about? Sometimes those are days that are changed for good where it's like life will never be the same. And then there's other days where everything changes and it's like life will never be the same.

And we have those days of significance where something occurs in our lives that transforms us, that changes us. And we are not the same people after those events. Well, time slows in the telling. The narrator wants to slow things down for us and we're gonna zoom in on this huge trip.

We're gonna get an hour or so. Jacob stops for some rest one night. Notice that it's already after dark. They're probably looking.

Have you ever had that road trip.

Where you're looking for a hotel and everything is booked up and you're just like, well, maybe we'll go to the next exit. Maybe we'll go to the next exit. And eventually it's kind of like, man, I'm just, we're staying at the next dive we find.

Anybody ever been there? Okay, a couple of you. And so I kind of picture that like night has already fallen. You don't wanna be traveling in ancient times after dark, not just wild animals, but roving bands of robbers and murderers and thieves and that kind of stuff come out at night.

And so you wanna just kind of find a place to set a guard and be there for the night. But there they are. He finds this nondescript place, nondescript, which is really interesting because this is an extremely significant place, but it's just a certain place.

He just, it happens upon it on the way out of the promised land. The significance is unknown to Jacob as they set up camp. He uses a stone for a pillow and lays down to rest. Now I wanna just point out to you that back then men were men and pillows were rocks, okay?

I mean, apparently that's the case. Now I've been known to be so picky that if the pillow wasn't just the right thickness, not too thick, not too thick. Any of you with me on that? Any of you old enough to get to that pickiness yet?

And it's kind of like, you just gotta have the right thickness of pillow.

And I want you to remember.

That Jacob was the softer of the twins. And he's using a rock as a pillow, okay? It makes me wonder if Esau would have been looking for some nettles and some poison ivy to use as a pillow or something.

I mean, what? I could do better than that.

But this dude is using a rock as a pillow. But apparently the rock was the right consistency and it put him to sleep. So Jacob is suddenly in dreamland and verses 12 through 15 all occur within his dreams.

We're actually getting an insight into what's going on in the mind of Jacob while he sleeps. Jacob's dream is recorded and in his dream the most prominent feature is a stairway. Now I wanna point out that I use the word stairway.

Some of you got really uncomfortable because you want it to be Jacob's ladder because that fits well with what everybody talks about, Jacob's ladder. The translation is, it's ladder in this one, right?

In the ESV. Yeah, and I looked at a bunch of different translations. A lot of them have ladder. I actually believe that what he has in his mind, what he actually sees with his eyes is more of a stairway.

In these times, it was common for cultures to build these big pyramids. There's pyramids all around the world, by the way. There's some in Central America, South America. There's some in the Middle East and then all throughout even Babylon where they built these things called ziggurats.

They were pyramid-shaped temples with a massive stairway on one side with the image being that they extended between the heavens and the earth and that the priest would ascend to meet with God, get his message and then come back down.

And it's likely, those predate this era that we're talking about. So it's quite possible that Jacob, Abraham, Isaac, that some of them had encountered or seen this form of worship before. And it's likely that God appears in some form that he can understand in some way that he's able to understand culturally.

But I don't know how important what the escalator looked like that he sees, but in his mind, he has this image of some conveyance back and forth between the realm of heaven and earth. And what he sees is that the base is set on earth, the top was in heaven and angels were traveling back and forth fulfilling the will of God between God.

So the images, these angels are coming forth from God to go do his bidding, coming back to report, getting other assignments and going out into the world. In this dream, it's like God has peeled back the reality of what is truly going on and he gives Jacob a glimpse into the behind the scenes spiritual truth of what is going on around him that he had no clue about.

Jacob's eyes were open to a spiritual reality that God is not disconnected from real time and space of this world. He's connected to what is going on on this planet. He's engaged and he even sends out his emissaries throughout the world to accomplish his bidding.

And the Lord, Yahweh, the self-existent one, the one who needs nothing to sustain himself is seen standing above the stairway, overseeing the whole operation of what is going on in the world. And he speaks, he opens his mouth and he speaks.

Now, since most of us in this room would say we have a relationship with God, I wonder what you might expect God to now say to Jacob. If you take into account what you know of God or at least what you think you know of God or what he is like, how do you expect him to respond to this deceiver and swindler?

Knowing how you feel about God, knowing how you expect him to respond, knowing how you were raised to understand God, what do you think his first words are gonna be to Jacob? What are you expecting at this point?

How about liar and thief? Would that come to mind? Like maybe that's what God's gonna do.

Is he's appearing to him in a dream.

And he's gonna convict him, he's gonna lay him low, he's gonna judge him now. Like could you in your mind imagine that the first words that the holy and righteous God says to the swindler and deceiver and cheater of his brother and father is your judgment is now, dude, you're smoked.

Can you imagine God being like that with Jacob? Some of us were raised in a household or in a family or in a church where that might be a pretty logical conclusion. Our expectation is that God would be like that to a sinner, that he would at least say how dare you lie to your father and steal your brother's blessing, that he couldn't let that go, right?

Instead, Yahweh starts with a formal introduction. Hi, hi, Jacob, I'm Yahweh. Basically what the text says. Hi, Jacob, I'm the self-existent one. I'm the holy one. I'm the one who exists in and of myself.

And by the way, just to clarify in case you're confused about who I am, I'm the God of your grandfather and the God of your father. I'm the one who has sustained them. I'm the one who's been their object of worship.

God doesn't identify himself. He doesn't introduce himself to Jacob and say, hey, Jacob, I'm your God. He says, I'm the God of your grandfather and the God of your father. What he's working to do here is to introduce himself and to become Jacob's God.

Everything in this text looks like a first time meeting. Jacob has done what he's done in his life absent from God. And some of us can relate to having a time or a period in our lives where we did what we did absent from God.

And then we met him, right? And that's what we're encountering here is a first time meeting with God between Jacob. With Jacob and without further ado, God launches into a unilateral promise. What's he going to do first?

I'm going to be with you. He makes a promise to this swindler, to this cheater. And God uses the same phrase he used to give the same promise to Abraham decades before this. Are you ready for this? At this same location, he's been wandering throughout the night trying to find a place to lay his head.

And he has stumbled upon the very location, Bethel, where God made the promise to Abraham, where he first met his grandfather. Isn't that like God? To orchestrate this event at this location, to bring the grandson back and continue to pledge the same promise to him at this place.

God uses the same terminology and the same language and promises to give him the land where he sleeps. He promises to give this unmarried man numerous offspring that will spread out in all directions, north, south, east, east and west.

And he promises to bless all the peoples of the earth through him. He says, one of your offspring is going to be a blessing to all. Again, just re-emphasizing that same promise that was made to Abraham, passed on through Isaac, now being given directly to Jacob.

I want to point out that Jacob is blessed by the choice of God. He just keeps receiving blessings. First, he swindles one, then he's given one freely by his father. Now he is blessed straight from the mouth of God.

Is he worthy of this? Is Jacob worthy of this blessing?

Not anymore.

And to cap all of this off, God pledges to be with Jacob wherever he goes. He promises to bring him safely back to the land and promises his faithfulness to never leave him until he has accomplished all the good things that he desires to accomplish and promises to accomplish in Jacob.

Anybody willing to use a stone as a pillow if you could get these results? There's one night out, one night out under the stars, rock as a pillow, you know, I'd be out there. But now Jacob's response is awesome.

He awakens as a changed man. Something has shifted in his understanding. I mentioned that sometimes we have experiences that occur that transform the trajectory of our lives and we are never the same afterwards.

And this is one of those events for Jacob. His first statement is one of transformed reality, one in which he now sees life differently than he did before. He says this statement, surely the Lord is in this place.

I didn't know it. I didn't know it.

Ignorant me, God was here and I, and I was blind to it. Does that sound familiar? Is that, is that a possible statement that could be uttered on our lips about any place that we go? Surely God was at MPI and I knew it not.

Surely God was at Pfizer and I knew it not. Surely God was in my neighborhood and I was not a tenant to it. What's the difference? God has broken in and revealed himself and his presence in that location to Jacob.

And now his eyes are open and he says, surely the Lord was here all along and I didn't have eyes to see. Do you hear that? It's a powerful, powerful statement. God broke into the time and space of Jacob.

He invaded his sleep and came to him in a dream that could be recorded on a calendar. This is an event that happened on a night, on a week, on a day during a time period, during an hour or so. It's a real day in a real time.

But not only was it a real time, but God came to Jacob in a real place. And Jacob suddenly is aware that God was there all along and he was ignorant of it. God has sanctified a physical place in the heart of Jacob.

He has turned a nondescript section of the desert. It just happened upon it, found a good place to sleep and there he settles in his crew for the day,.

For the night.

And God did so for Jacob by peeling back the blinders of Jacob's eyes and revealing his presence. And what Jacob experienced as a certain space, just some space in verse 11, has been made into sacred space by the revealed presence of God.

I'll list a couple of places that have no meaning to you whatsoever, but they've impacted you to some degree. There's a little room in the First Baptist Church of Middleville, Michigan. There's a little chapel in the town of La Vega in the Dominican Republic.