FBC Morning Light – January 18, 2023

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good

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Wednesday morning, hope the first half of your week has gone well, and plugging away through the remainder of the days ahead.

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Well, yesterday we ended on a note that I want to resound again this morning, and that was the faithfulness of God to fulfill his covenant promises.

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In Genesis 35, we see this same idea reinforced once again.

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Remember, in chapter 34, we leave Jacob in Shechem, he's in that area in Canaan, he's bought a piece of property there, but that's not where God wants him to stay.

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The Lord comes to him at the beginning of chapter 35, he says, I want you to go up to Bethel and dwell there.

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That's where I want you to go and that's where I want you to live, and I want you to build an altar there unto me. Jacob obeys, and he takes his family to Bethel, and when he gets there, it says in verse 7 that he built an altar there, and he called the place

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El Bethel, that means God of the house of God. The city name, the town name

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Bethel, or Bethel, means house of God. That word

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Beth is a Hebrew word beth, and it means house. You see that also in the town of Bethlehem.

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Bethlehem means the house of bread. Jacob calls the name of the place

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El Bethel, he builds an altar to the Lord, and he worships him there. While he's in Bethel, obeying

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God, taking up residence where God told him to go, God comes to him again in verse 9 and says to him, verse 10, says to him, your name is

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Jacob, it's no longer going to be Jacob, but Israel will be your name. So he called his name

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Israel. Again, you have this name change. Remember, God did that when he made the covenant with Abraham.

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He said that your name is no longer Abram, I'm changing it to Abraham. He's adding the

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H sound in his name. Here, God changes his name from Jacob to Israel.

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In the rest of the book, you're going to see Jacob's name being interchanged between Jacob or Israel.

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Last Saturday, Mike Gottemoeller asked the question, why is it that after Abram was changed to Abraham, you always think of him as Abraham, but Jacob, you don't always think of him as Israel.

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You don't always call him Israel. Why is that? I don't know that there's actually a really good answer for that, but that's one of those questions that you kind of ponder a little bit.

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You say, hmm, I wonder why that is. Maybe later on, when we get to the latter chapters of Genesis, I may bring that subject back up again.

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Anyway, God changes his name. But here's why he does. The next verse tells us why.

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God said to him, I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.

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Hold on to that word, kings. Kings shall come from your body. The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac I give to you and to your descendants after you

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I give this land. Then God went up. God departed. What's happened here?

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God has just once again come to Jacob and reaffirmed the covenant that he,

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God, made with Abraham. This time, he reaffirms it with Jacob. Again, with all of the history here, all of Jacob's deceptive practices, all the things he's done through these last 20 -some years, how he's treated his brother, how he interacted with Laban, and all of that kind of stuff.

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God unilaterally, in his sovereign grace, comes to Jacob and makes this promise to Jacob.

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I pointed out that word kings. The Lord promised that kings shall come from your body.

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When you continue in chapter 35 and then go on to chapter 36, you see this interesting contrast.

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You ask yourself, why in the world did God see fit to have the inspired writer

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Moses put chapter 36 in here? Chapter 36 doesn't have anything to do with Jacob. It kind of seems to break up the story altogether.

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What's the point? Chapter 36 begins, this is the genealogy of Esau, Jacob's brother, which is

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Edom. When you read through this list, it probably bores most of us, because it's mainly just a list of names.

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These are the things. Esau took wives from the daughters, these are their kids that they all had, and these different wives, and he's got all these different wives, and he's got all these different kids.

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The whole chapter is taken up with the family, extended genealogical family of Esau.

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Then you come to verse 31, and it says in chapter 36, verse 31 says, these were the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned in the land of Israel.

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Then there's this whole list of these kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there was ever a king in Israel.

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You get this contrast, chapter 36 filled with all of these names of the sons of Esau, and you contrast that with verses 20, the end of verse 22, down through verse 26 of chapter 35, where it says, the sons of Jacob were twelve.

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What did we just hear earlier, this unilateral, sovereign grace promise given to Jacob?

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I'm going to multiply you so greatly that a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.

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But when you continue reading the next chapter and a half, you kind of scratch your head a little bit and say, well, it kind of seems like the company of nations and the kings that are coming from a body are coming from Esau, not

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Jacob. Is God really going to fulfill his promise? That's kind of the question you're left with at the end of chapter 36.

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I guess you know the rest of the story, and that he does, but isn't that an interesting contrast to highlight the absolute faithfulness of God, that he takes one who's seemingly so undeserving, one who is seemingly so relatively unfruitful, and it is through him that God brings about this tremendous promise and fulfills it.

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What an incredible, awesome, gracious God we serve.

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We thank you today, Father, for who you are. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for your power and your authority and your sovereignty.

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We thank you that you bring great things out of little things in your plan and in your purpose.

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Thank you for who you are, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, listen, have a good rest of your