Genesis 35: 1 NIV
Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there...
Where Are You Going?
There is a great risk you
take when it comes to your life with God. You can without grasping what has happened,
lose track of Him. It is a subtle shift,
one that barely registers in you but it happens and without warning you find
yourself away from God and on your own.
You probably won’t realize it, which makes it difficult to undue. We were at a campground with hundreds of
campers there but only about ten of them came to a worship service offered on
Sunday morning. If the collection of
campers at the campground fit the national average, somewhere around two
hundred or more identified themselves as Christians but saw no need to attend
the worship service they easily could have attended. Of course there were probably a wide range of
excuses many had for not participating but the majority most likely just did
not see a need to obey the Bible and worship with God’s people on Sunday and they
were oblivious to what effect that would have on them. The Christian community is at a critical
crossroad and you might be too. How far
will you go with your life in Christ? Is
it important enough to you to make it your top priority or will you like so
many other American Christians drift away from God and be comfortable casually
going along on your own?
The Bible has a
fascinating case study that must be considered if we care about this life with
God. Jacob, the son of Isaac and
grandson of Abraham, famously finagled out of his brother his birthright as the
oldest son for a pot of soup and then tricked his father into giving to him the
blessing intended for that same brother Esau.
Esau grew distraught over his change in fortune. Esau said, "Isn't he rightly named Jacob?
He has deceived me these two times: He took my birthright, and now he's taken
my blessing!" Then he asked, "Haven't you reserved any blessing for
me?" Isaac answered Esau, "I
have made him lord over you and have made all his relatives his servants, and I
have sustained him with grain and new wine. So what can I possibly do for you,
my son?" Esau said to his father,
"Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!"
Then Esau wept aloud. (Genesis 27: 36-38 NIV) Esau became so infuriated by how Jacob had
stolen from him the blessing his father had for him that he plotted Jacob’s
murder. When Jacob caught wind of Esau’s
fury, he fled for his life to the home of his mother’s brother, some four
hundred miles away. Over twenty years
Jacob stayed there, marrying a pair of sisters and gained their maids as
concubines. Altogether Jacob had
thirteen children, a daughter and twelve sons.
Finally, Jacob was so fed up with his conniving and scheming father-in-law
Laban that he was willing to risk his life and face the wrath of his brother
rather than spend one more day living under Laban’s “rule”.
Jacob’s return to his
homeland was no mere whimsy. The Lord
directed him back home. In a dream, God
ordered him to leave Haran and go back to where he met the Lord the first
time. “I am the God of Bethel, where
you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now leave this land at
once and go back to your native land.” (Genesis 31:13 NIV) Jacob packed up his family and left but not
without trepidation. He was afraid of
leaving his controlling father-in-law and Jacob was terrified his brother still
wanted him dead. Almost home, Jacob was
told by his servants that just ahead of him Esau, his brother, was approaching
with four hundred men. In great fear
and distress Jacob divided the people who were with him into two groups, and
the flocks and herds and camels as well. He thought, "If Esau comes and attacks
one group, the group that is left may escape." (Genesis 32:7-8 NIV) Panicked, Jacob prayed to God for help. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my
brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers
with their children. But you have said,
'I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of
the sea, which cannot be counted. (Genesis 32: 11-12 NIV)
How many of us have been
in a similar situation, desperate for God’s help, we pray for Him to rescue us. The Lord did save Jacob from his brother’s
wrath. In fact it went far better than
he expected; Esau shockingly wanted to rebuild the brotherly bond he once
shared with Jacob. Rather than seeing
God was in all this, Jacob turned down the opportunity to move close to Esau
and his family and instead settled in Shechem. The choice of where to set down roots seemed
inconsequential to Jacob at the time. He
had “arrived safely” at Shechem Genesis 33: 18 tells us or as the Hebrew text
reads, “in peace” or “shalom”. In other
words, Jacob felt pretty good about his move.
However Shechem was “hell” for his daughter and the devil’s playground
for his sons. Dinah, Jacob’s daughter,
was raped there and two of her brothers in a fit of rage and lust, murdered all
the men of the town and stole their livestock.
Crushed by the wickedness of Shechem and his own sons, Jacob found the
Lord was still there with him. Then
God said to Jacob, "Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar
there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother
Esau." (Genesis 35:1 NIV)
Before Jacob set off from
Haran and moved his family south into Canaan, the Lord made it clear to Jacob
who He was. “I am the God of Bethel…”,
not Shechem. It was never Shechem God chose
for Jacob to take his family, it was Bethel!
However, Jacob was not paying attention to the Lord and it cost Jacob’s
family dearly. Shechem was Jacob’s Sodom,
his Egypt. The happiness he had that his
brother no longer wanted to kill him was like a spiritual drug for it numbed
his fervor for God. The lack of attention
to the Lord’s guidance had proved disastrous.
He took his eyes off the giver of peace and put it on the pleasure of
peace. God is patient with our
distracted minds but just like checking your cell phone when driving can cost
you your life or the lives of others, the failure to keep your eyes on God can be
devastating. Nothing excites Satan more
than when God’s people are distracted by all the stuff they are doing and they
don’t have time to think about what the Lord is saying to them. Before you know it, you give in to a little
temptation here and disobey a scripture there and life begins to spin out of
control. You become so disoriented by Satan’s
subtle prodding that the God of strength and wisdom will be a distant memory.
You will find yourself thinking just like any pagan would and the fruit of the
Spirit God so eloquently described in Galatians 5: 22 disappears.
Consider just how wrecked
Jacob’s family was spiritually. As soon
as he heard from the Lord that he needed to move to Bethel and build an altar
there for worshipping God, Jacob knew that his family had big changes to make. So Jacob said to his household and to all
who were with him, "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and
purify yourselves and change your clothes. (Genesis 35:2 NIV) Notice how bad it was. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods
they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at
Shechem. (Genesis 35:4 NIV) Satan
had worked its way into the fabric of his family but Jacob had the courage and
conviction to root Satan out and start over.
What a tremendous joy it is to be so full of God that He bursts out of
you wherever you go! With their hearts right,
Jacob and his household practically sparkled with holiness and spiritual
power. Then they set out, and the
terror of God fell upon the towns all around them so that no one pursued them.
(Genesis 35:5 NIV)
Like a rat making a nest
in your house, the impulses of Satan work their way into you and refuse to
leave on their own. We do this, we say
that and don’t give a thought to whether it is of God or not as if it doesn’t
matter but it matters greatly. There is
a Shechem for every one of us and if we take our mind off the Lord, we will
find ourselves there and think everything is alright but it isn’t. God’s power will have left us and we no
longer have Him working with us. We will
say and do things that are more of the devil than they are of Christ and like
Samson, we won’t realize we are making a mess of what we have been given. But then, in our Lord’s patience and mercy,
He will make Himself known to us and we will have to decide if we will go to
Bethel or not. When we get rid of our
own foreign gods and do away with the stuff that we love more than Christ, we
will find that the power of Jesus crucified and resurrected fills us and the
fear of the Lord falls on those who come across us. As you build your life with Christ and set
your mind on Him at a moment by moment basis, you will have a way of knowing
just what to do and when to do it that will be supernatural and unexplainable
to human reasoning. Make Bethel your
home and stay away from Shechem.
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