Leading to Green Pastures - Genesis 35:1-15

As many of you know, I am a Minnesota sports fan, I grew up in Minnesota and that's always been where my loyalty has lied. And I appreciate that you treat me so well even though many of you are not. You don't share my interest in that.

A number of years ago, the University of Minnesota hired a football coach who made some big promises. It had been 40 years since Minnesota had made the Rose Bowl. And by the way, they still haven't made the Rose Bowl in that time.

And as some of you know, the Rose Bowl has historically been a game rewarded at the end of the year to the champion of the Big Ten Conference. It is arguably the most prestigious bowl in college football.

This new coach hired said that he was going to take the Gophers to the Rose Bowl. He made this promise. All the fans got excited and I remember T-shirts were made and everyone said, this is the time the program is going to be brought back to prominence.

No coach before had ever made such bold promises and these predictions. And you might think, well, if a coach is going to make this prediction, he's not going to fall flat on his face, is he? Well, you guessed right.

He did fall flat on his face. His first season as head coach, he had one win and 11 losses. The second year, things started to look a little better. He had seven wins and six losses, qualifying for a lower level bowl game at the end of.

The year.

Then the following year, he did a little worse, finishing with six losses and seven wins, once again qualifying barely for a bowl game. The last year he coached the Gophers, the bottom fell out. He had one win and six losses.

The school fired him, not even letting him finish the season. This coach who predicted that he would take the Gophers to the Rose Bowl finished with 15 wins and 30 losses, so that's 15 games under 500.

And the two level bowl games he made it to, he lost both of those games. And you're going to like this one the best. He never beat the Wisconsin Badgers, their biggest rival. This Minnesota coach promised to take Minnesota to the promised land of college football and instead he took them to the wasteland.

Why do I bring this story up? That's a good question. I bring this up because people in this world promise to lead others to green pasture. It happens all the time. Coaches do it, politicians do it, CEOs do it, businesses make these promises to customers all the time.

We all see those infomercials on TV where they're saying that your life is going to be so much better if you buy our product. But typically, people are selling you a bill of goods. They can't deliver on what they are promising.

But thankfully, the Lord does not do this. What he promises, he delivers on. He truly leads his people to green pastures and an enormous blessing. We are going to see this today as the Lord does this with Jacob.

And we are going to be encouraged that he does this to us, his people, as well. Our text this morning is Genesis 35 verses 1 through 15. I encourage you to turn with me there. If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on pages 34 and 35.

This sermon is titled, Leading You to Green Pastures. And our big idea is the Lord leads his people with the purpose of blessing us. The Lord leads his people with the purpose of blessing us. So we're going to see three ways how.

Calling Us to Have Both Feet In

The first way how is by calling us to have both feet in. Calling us to have both feet in verses 1 through 4. But before we jump into our text, I want to give a little recap of last week's sermon. We looked at the disturbing story of Shechem and Dinah.

We read that Shechem sexually assaulted Jacob's daughter. After severely violating her, Shechem desired to make Dinah his wife. He asked Jacob and Dinah's brothers if they would give her over to him in marriage.

Dinah's family was obviously outraged at what had been done to her. But they deceitfully made Shechem believe that they were going to let him marry their sister. So what they told him was if you and your people receive the circumcision that Jacob's sons had received and Jacob had received, then they would let Shechem marry Dinah.

Shechem happily went along with this and he persuaded the men in his town to be circumcised as well. So Shechem thought it was a done deal that Dinah was his wife. But two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, murdered Shechem, his father, and all the males who had been circumcised.

This was clearly an act of revenge. And I showed you two vital truths that we pulled from this text that we must understand. And the first one is that there truly are egregious sins committed in this world.

There truly is great injustice. And the second is that revenge is not the answer. When someone does something harmful to you, we should never be those who try to plot revenge against that person. And as I mentioned, this doesn't mean physical.

Oftentimes when we think of revenge, we think of, I'm not going to physically harm someone. It goes so much more than that. It's in thought. It's in word. It's in deed. We can do lots of things to try to get back at people.

And Scripture teaches us not to do that because the Lord is going to write every wrong that's ever been committed, even the most egregious sins, which is a beautiful truth of Scripture. This leads us to our text today.

Jacob is now leaving Shechem, which is located in the northern part of the land of Canaan, which was the land of promise, the land that the Lord promised to Abraham and his offspring. And the Lord tells him to go from there.

Verse one, God said to Jacob, arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau. The Lord already had spoken several times with Jacob.

So Jacob knew the Lord's voice. And he tells him to go up to Bethel. Now, if you look at a map of Israel, Shechem is located north of where Bethel was located. So when it says go up to that location, we might be thinking, well, they have the directions wrong.

But what this means is that Bethel was located on a higher plane than Shechem was. So it was in a mountainous region. So they were supposed to go up to that place. So that helps us understand the direction here.

And Bethel is significant in the life of Jacob because this is the place where the Jacob's ladder event occurred, where the angels were ascending and descending on a ladder. And the Lord in human form spoke to Jacob.

He spoke to him as if he was standing right here. It was that close and intimate. And Jacob made a promise to the Lord there. He said that if he proves faithful to me, then he will be my God. At this point, this is over 20 years after that encounter.

What we have seen in the life of Jacob over that time is the Lord has been very faithful to him as he always is to his people. All those years before he went up to Aram, where he providentially met Leah and Rachel, he married them and had 12 children.

The Lord protected him from Laban, Leah and Rachel's father, who tried to keep him in captivity all that time. And the Lord delivered Jacob and his family and all of his possessions from Laban. During his time in Aram, the Lord blessed Jacob spiritually and materially.

Remember when he came to Esau, Esau said, I haven't seen you in over 20 years and look at all you have. The Lord had been so good to Jacob. So this location Bethel, which he hadn't been to in over 20 years, would have been a sentimental location for Jacob.

And he would have said to himself how wonderful the Lord is and how good he has been to me. So when the Lord speaks to him here, he listens very closely and does exactly what the Lord tells him. The Lord has proved himself to him.

The Lord tells Jacob in verse one to make an altar there. The last time Jacob was in this location, he set up a pillar, which would have been smaller than an altar. Now he is going to set up something more significant, an altar.

And this would have been an act of worship. The same thing his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac did years before. After seeing the Lord's great work in his life, he was able to thank and praise the Lord.

And Jacob is not the only one who is going to worship Yahweh, which, by the way, is the name for God, the Lord, his people will as well. Verses two through four. So Jacob said to his household and to all who are with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments.

Then let us arise and go up to Bethel so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone. So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears.

And Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem. So when the Lord commanded Jacob to go up to Bethel and build an altar there, he knew that this included Jacob's people as well. In the ancient Near East, at this early point in history, people worshipped many false gods.

The human heart is an idol factory. If you don't worship the one true God, you will worship something else. That's true in our world today and it's true in the ancient world as well. The people surrounding Jacob worshipped these gods made by their own hands and even Jacob's own people worshipped these gods.

Remember when they fled Laban's house in chapter 31 and Rachel took her father's household gods with her? These would have been figurines made up of metal or stone. The presence of these gods in the midst of Jacob's family and people would only be tolerated for a time by God.

And at this point the Lord is telling them that your allegiance must be completely to me. Monotheism is the worship of one God. That's what we as Christians are as we worship the triune God. There is a belief known as henotheism.

What this means is that one worships multiple gods but you prefer one God over the other gods. This might have been with what Jacob's family was dealing with. On paper they would have said that they worshipped the Lord but in practice they had all these figurines with them, all these false gods that they worshipped.

And the Lord is telling them your allegiance needs to be completely to me. Jacob not only tells them to put away the foreign gods but they are also to purify themselves and change their garments. And later Israel in the sacrificial system, the priests were given these instructions that before they were to enter the presence of God they were to be clean.

And these garments would have symbolized cleanliness in spiritual terms. What Jacob tells the people in verses 2 and 3 is that they are going up to Bethel to worship the God who answers him in the day of distress.

That's such a significant part of this passage. He says that the Lord is the one who delivers in the day of distress. And you can see Jacob's full devotion to the Lord here. He is putting a stake in the ground.

Up to this point his people had one foot with God and one foot with the false gods. They weren't all in. Now this time of year where we're all excited, right, the snow is melting, the ice is melting, and some people get courageous this time of year when the water is cold and the ice just went off and they want to test the waters and see, can I swim in it?

Usually maybe several weeks after the ice has cleared and you go down to the water and you stick your foot, right, and you might stick both feet in and you might go a little further in but it takes a lot of courage to throw your whole body in the water and dunk your head and go swimming.

That's how it is with the life of faith. Some people, I'd say a lot of people, a lot of Christians, they just put one foot in like okay this is how much I want but I don't want to go all in for the Lord.

I don't want to give my full self to the Lord, only some of myself. So my question to you is are you all in for the Lord or do you just give some of yourself to him? Ask yourself this question today because I'm afraid that many Christians would say they are all in like Jacob's family would have said but their actions prove otherwise and I have a series of questions I want to ask you right here and I ask these questions to myself as I ask them to you.

How often do you pray? How frequently do you tell someone about Jesus? If you miss church on Sunday or a Bible study, do you feel lethargic like man I really need to get fed again? If you lost your Bible, how long would it take before you knew it was gone?

Back at my old church we had an older gentleman that passed away a number of years ago but towards the end of his life he lost his Bible and he was almost in a panic because he couldn't find it. It was his lifeline.

That's a good time to be in a panic. Jesus said man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. We need his word every single day. So Jacob is saying to his family are you all in or are you wishy-washy?

Are you still going to be partly devoted to these false gods and partly devoted to Yahweh? And frankly it is rare to find Christians who have both feet in, especially in America where we don't face the persecution that many believers do around the world.

But my prayer is that our church, Eureka Baptist, would be full of people who are all in for the Lord. People who look like Christ all over this community and I'm encouraged and I don't want to kind of beat you over the head here.

I want you to be encouraged by this because I'm seeing such good things in this congregation. You are going in the right direction and I just want to say keep it up. I mean I observe things. I hear people say things in our congregation.

I'm like you didn't talk like that a year before and you probably don't even know it but you've grown and that's encouraging. But ask yourself this question. Can I take steps of faith? And we can of course but will you?

Are you willing to take steps of faith with the Lord? And the good news about our passage is that Jacob's family and the people with him listened. They went all in for the Lord. As verse 4 says, they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears.

And these rings may have been on these figurines so that was a part of the false gods they were giving up. And the end of verse 4 tells us that Jacob hid these figurines under the terebinth tree and when he left them he was sending the message we are not going back to these.

We are going to leave these here never to turn back. And when we give ourselves fully to the Lord we must say I'm not going to back going back to the mediocrity I once had. Our devotion must not be more for other things than for God who deserves our highest devotion.

The Lord has such an abundant and joyful life for those who will walk closely with him. That's what Jesus says in John 10 10. I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly. The Lord leads his people with the purpose of blessing us and the first way how is by calling us to have both feet in.

Delivering Us Repeatedly Through Trials

The second way how the Lord leads his people with the purpose of blessing us is delivering us repeatedly through trials. Verses 5 through 8. Now the focus of point 1 was giving our full allegiance to the Lord as Jacob and his people did.

However verse 3 of point 1 and verses 5 through 8 are tied together. So I'm going to be referencing verse 3 quite a bit here. In verse 3 after telling his family and his people to leave with him to go to Bethel to worship God he says something wonderful about the Lord.

He said that the Lord answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone. As I mentioned earlier Jacob has dealt with much distress in his life. He probably wonders how he's even alive and doing so well.

He knows the answer. The Lord has stood by his side and carried him through. Psalm 34 17 through 19 are three of the most precious verses in scripture. King David wrote when the righteous cry for help the Lord hears and delivers them out of all of their troubles.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers him out of them all. This is a great verse to quote when we are in distress.

It is a guarantee that the Lord will deliver us from our trials. It's always amazing the different trials that we face as we go through the life of faith. Old trials leave new trials come and in those times we must lean on the Lord who is an ever-present help in times of trouble.

Psalm 46 1 tells us that. Now Jacob describes the Lord's help in the past in verse 3 as he is anticipating a major trial on the horizon. To remind you what this prospective trial was last week we saw that Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi slaughtered Shechem his father and all the men who were circumcised and they did it because of course they were angry because Shechem sexually assaulted their sister Dinah.

So Jacob says in 34 30 you have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few and they gather themselves against me and attack me.

I shall be destroyed both I and my household. So Jacob is concerned that the Canaanites are going to seek revenge for the slaughter of their own people by Simeon and Levi. In what we just saw in verse 3 Jacob believes that the Lord is a God who helps his people when they face adversity.

As Jacob has said he answers me in the day of my distress. Well let's read about the Lord delivering Jacob delivering Jacob again in verse 5. And they journeyed a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.

So what we see here the Lord supernaturally caused a fear to come upon the people of the land where they fear Jacob and his people. And I say miraculous because Jacob said at the end of chapter 34 that the Canaanites who surrounded him had more people than they did.

And if God did not intervene the people would have thought Jacob's clan did an outrageous thing and we need to get back at them. But instead the opposite happened. They were afraid of Jacob his family and everyone who was with him.

And the text does not tell us what kind of what caused the dread that came among the Canaanites. But it may have been that it has to do with the reputation of the Lord in this area. News travels fast and they would have known the history of this area.

The Lord had a great reputation among the peoples in this region. This is the same God who burns Sodom and Gomorrah to a crisp just two generations before. And they have been thinking we don't want to mess with the one who has that much power.

And not only did he destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness but he destroyed the entire planet because of the earth's wickedness and he destroyed it through the flood. So the Lord delivers Jacob once again.

You may be here today and you may feel trouble over you. I know what this is like because I feel this and I face this as well. There are times when you feel despair and you don't know if you can take another step.

You're just so overwhelmed. But you know what the beautiful truth is? You and I have been there before and he got us through. In verse 3 when Jacob said that God helped me in my distress, the Hebrew word for distress is in the present tense.

And what this is highlighting is the Lord has continually delivered him from adversity. Every year he could point out something the Lord delivered him from. Jacob says this about the Lord's faithfulness in verse 3, with trouble on the way.

Do you see what he's doing? He's reminding himself of the Lord's past faithfulness to him. And this is so wise for him to do because this will encourage you in the present. Jacob did it and we should do it as well.

The Lord didn't forget about Jacob and he doesn't forget about you when you are going through a difficult time. I quoted a psalm earlier that was incredible. Now I'm going to quote another one to you that focuses on looking at the past in order for encouragement in the present.

In Psalm 77, the psalmist Asaph is at rock bottom. And not just him but the people of Israel. They are at a low point in their history and he's so discouraged that in verses 2 -6 he says this. Listen to this honest prayer to God.

He said, In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord. In the night my hand is stretched out without wearing. My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints.

Selah, you hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old. The years long ago I said, let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search.

So Asaph is thinking, I remember the good old days when everything was good and right now it is horrible. He's thinking not just for me but the whole nation of Israel and he's asking where has the Lord's comfort gone?

I can't find it. Do you ever go through this? If you do go through this, don't be too alarmed because this is a pretty normal experience for the people of God. Asaph went through it and Asaph is thinking of the days of old when things were good for him in Israel and he's asking where is the Lord?

But what Asaph does is what Jacob did in Genesis 35, 5. He remembers the works that the Lord had done. He writes in Psalm 77, 9 through 11, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old.

I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What God, lowercase g, is great like our God, uppercase g. Asaph and Jacob are reminding themselves of how wonderful the Lord is and they are saying he will get me through this time of trouble.

He has proved himself before. He'll do it again and we need to take note of this and do this in our own lives. When you face a trial, look to the Lord's work in the past and see his faithfulness. It will encourage you in the present.

God hasn't changed. He's the same 20 years ago as he is now, which is incredible. Now after the Lord rescued Jacob and his people from this trial, Jacob worships the Lord by building the altar once he arrives in Bethel.

Let's see this in verses 6 through 8. And Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who are with him. And there he built an altar and called the place El Bethel because their God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother.

And Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Alon Bakuth. Okay, so Jacob shows his adoration to the Lord by building this altar and we've seen his grandfather Abraham do this and his father Isaac also built an altar.

In verse 8 notes that Rebekah's nurse, Deborah, passed away. If you can remember who Rebekah is, Rebekah is Jacob's mother. She was buried in Bethel and the somber moment is remembered by naming the oak tree that she was buried, Alon Bakuth, which means in Hebrew, oak of weeping.

And they are able to do this, to bury Deborah in peace because the Lord delivered them from another trial. Think about that. If they were, if the Canaanites were coming upon them, they wouldn't have even been able to bury their own dead.

But because of this peace they had, they were able to. So the Lord leads his people with the purpose of blessing us. The second way how is by delivering us through repeated trials. The third way how, our third and final way how the Lord leads his people with the purpose of blessing us is by reminding us of our very bright future.

Reminding Us of Our Very Bright Future

Reminding us of our very bright future. We'll see this in verses 9 through 15. Now Jacob is going to have the most intimate encounter with the Lord in this section. In verse 1 of this chapter, the text says that God spoke to Jacob, but now he is going to appear to him in verse 9.

God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Padan Haram and blessed him. Let's stop right there. The Lord appears to Jacob again, as he has done on several occasions throughout his life. And the Lord, of course, takes on human form at times to show his special closeness to Jacob and to his people.

And we must understand this about God. In one sense, God is so great that he is far above all creative things. He is far greater than we can ever imagine. But even though God is almost indescribable, he is so very close to his creation.

In fact, he's involved in every detail of creation. That's what scripture teaches us. Proverbs 16 .33 says, Jesus said in the Gospels, he says,. So we know that God is intimately involved with every detail of his creation.

And we've already seen that the Lord cares deeply about Jacob. As we have seen, the Lord has carried him through thick and thin to bring him to this point. And think about this about the Lord. He's closer to you than any human is.

When I talk about the intimacy of the Lord, no human can go where God can go. God knows things about you that no one else knows. Think about that. He knows things about you that you don't even know, which is a stunning thing to think about.

Now the Lord is going to tell him what he's already told him before. He reminds Jacob of what he has done to him in his life. Verse 10. And God said to him, your name is Jacob. No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.

So he called his name Israel. Now you might be thinking, didn't the Lord already name him Israel? The answer is yes. In chapter 32, verse 28, God named Jacob Israel. That was Jacob wrestling with God.

That was where Jacob fully submitted himself to the Lord. So why does the Lord say to him again, your name is Israel? We shouldn't see this as the Lord simply repeating what he said before. Rather, he's reminding Jacob what happened to him the last time he appeared to Jacob.

The last time they were together in this way, where the Lord was with him in human form, and they were very close together, the Lord wrestled with Jacob. The Lord is reminding Jacob what happened on that day.

It was on that day when Jacob fully surrendered himself to the Lord. And the Lord is telling Jacob, remember what happened to you. That is who you are now. And this has a clear application for our lives.

The Lord reminds us through his word who we are in him. I remember when I was in college, I was taking a class on the epistle of Romans, which is the sixth book of the New Testament. And my professor invited a man in who was involved with theater, and he was a very expressive individual.

And he came and he quoted to us from memory, Romans chapter eight. And I remember before my professor invited this man up to speak, he said, lots of people who know the Bible very well have been asked the question, what is your favorite chapter in the Bible?

And the answer that is the most common from everybody is Romans chapter eight. And that is because of the hope we have in Christ is spelled out so clearly. In that chapter, the whole chapter is focused on who we are in Christ, the work the Spirit's doing in our life, the transformation that has that he has done our very, very bright future.

Such a wonderful chapter. And that chapter of Romans reminds the believer of the incredible, incredible position he or she has in Christ. Your sinful flesh will lie to you. The world will lie to you. The devil will lie to you.

But we must block that out and remember who we are in Christ, redeemed, child of God, elect. Our names are written in the Lamb's book of life. Remember when the disciples were with Jesus? The disciples were amazed that they were able to cast out a demon.

They're some amazing power here. And Jesus says, do not be amazed at that, but be amazed that your names are written in heaven. He's saying, be amazed that you belong to me and you're forever secure. We must understand who we are.

And God is telling Jacob right here, you are Israel. Because when you wrestled with me and I gave you this name, you became different. You are mine. You are fully devoted to me now. And this is who you are.

This is your identity. And this is our identity in Jesus Christ. The Lord has a very special love for all who belong to him. His love for us is far greater than we could ever imagine. And he wants to remind you of who you are, just as he did for Jacob right here by calling him Israel.

The name he gave him when he fully surrendered himself. But God does not stop there. He repeats his great promises to him in verses 11 through 12. You get the sense as you read through Genesis that God loves telling his promises because he says it over and over again.

Listen to this again, verses 11 and 12. And God said to him, I am God Almighty, be fruitful and multiply a nation and a company of nations shall come from you and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you and I will give the land to your offspring after you.

So here the Lord repeats once again what he told Jacob in chapter 28 verses 13 through 15. I'm going to multiply your offspring and I'm going to give you this land. And this would have seemed so unlikely.

All these strong Canaanites are living in this land and the Lord is boldly telling him, not like the gopher's coach, he's boldly telling him a promise and he's going to deliver on it. He's saying this is going to happen.

And of course, history shows that the Lord delivered on this promise. He did drive out the Canaanites and the Israelites did enter the land of Canaan and dwelt there. And in the promise too, he also talks about this royal line that's going to come from him.

And this finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Messiah, the Messiah who is Jesus Christ, who is going to have a forever reign with his people. This comes from Jacob. Imagine having that in your ancestry.

He is going to come from your line. So the Lord appears to Jacob here to encourage him with these words about his glorious standing with him. And then the Lord takes off. He just comes with them, spends a little time with them, and then leaves.

Kind of like Jesus after the resurrection. He would appear with some people for a little while and then he would take off like Superman coming in to save the day and then mysteriously disappearing. And it makes you think, what must these have encounters been like?