Hebrews Lesson
183 December 17,
2009
NKJ Isaiah 41:10 Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen
you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with
My righteous right hand.'
We are in Hebrews 11, but we're not going to be there
for very long so don't turn there to start off. I’ll just remind you of where
we were last Wednesday night after we finished with our reflections on the
Pre-Trib Rapture Study Group meeting and what we learned about (a little bit
about) our history in terms of the history that’s behind the growth of the
Bible church side of the evangelical movement.
NKJ Hebrews 11:20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.
Now we looked at this last time in terms of the simple
statement of Hebrews. The writer’s
simply going to be another example from the Old Testament (from the patriarchs)
where he's looking at the testimony this time of Isaac and his blessing of
Jacob and blessing of Esau concerning, that is, in relationship to, things to
come. That was the focal point of those of the blessing.
Now last time we looked at those blessings –
rehearsed, reviewed the story of Jacob and Esau and their birth and the fact
that Esau was the older; Jacob was the younger. But in God's plan the older
serves the younger rather than the other way around which is the normal human
procedure emphasizing works for position where God is not doing it according to
the way man normally looks at things giving a certain amount of priority to who
is born first under the rule or law of primogeniture. So the older was to serve
the younger. And God had announced this as the two babies were struggling
inside the womb of Rebekah. God had announced that the older would serve the
younger.
That was the promise of God. The problem is that you
get #2 child coming out a little bit late (Jacob) and you get the episode where
he’s trying to grab the heel (or at least it looks that way) as he's coming out
of the womb. So he's known as the heel grabber. He has this character. Actually
it's a family trait because as we’ll see tonight as we've seen in our study in
Genesis, he was just an amateur compared to his uncle Laban.
Uncle Laban was a real manipulator; and someone who
was always getting the upper hand on everybody. He was the ultimate trickster
whereas Jacob was just the learner. But God has another plan for Jacob other
than being the manipulator and the trickster. This characterizes Jacob. It
depicts the trend of his sin nature, the flaw in his character that he's out
there trying to manipulate, trying to maneuver God, trying to get the blessing
to happen rather than learning to wait upon the Lord. He wants to move God’s
timetable up.
I know that nobody here has a problem with waiting on
the Lord, but a lot of people have problems waiting on the Lord and learning to
orient to God's plan and to God’s timetable. We want God's plan. We want
patience and we want right now, if not yesterday. That was Jacob’s problem. God
has to train him and teach him.
But before he gets to that point, we see that the
issues here that all come back to the Abrahamic promise. Remember promise was a
major part of our study in Hebrews 11. The promise is future. The promise
indicates something that hasn’t been fulfilled either in the present or in the
past, and it focuses on something unfulfilled. It is oriented also to hope. Hope
has the idea of a confident expectation. The confident expectation of the
believer is oriented to the fulfillment of a promise that God has made. Hope
and promise focus on the future. The believer is to be driven and motivated and
stabilized in the present because he understands where God is taking him and
how God is getting him there through that process.
So we looked at the blessing that Isaac gave to Jacob.
Of course this was done under a situation where Jacob had tricked and deceived
Isaac. Nevertheless because of the nature of the blessing as an aspect of legal
inheritance and passing on something it couldn’t be reversed even though it was
under deception. Jacob had dressed up as if he was Esau. His mother had made a
dish that would taste like one of Isaac’s favorite dishes that came from out in
the wilderness where Esau would go to hunt. They had this elaborate plan to
deceive Isaac and it worked.
So Isaac gives the blessing for Jacob in verses 27 to
29.
NKJ Genesis 27:27 And he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his
clothing, and blessed him and said: "Surely, the smell of my son Is like
the smell of a field Which the LORD has blessed.
He is deceived into thinking that it's Esau because
Jacob smelled like Esau.
NKJ Genesis 27:28 Therefore may God give you Of the dew of heaven, Of the fatness of the
earth, And plenty of grain and wine.
NKJ Genesis 27:29 Let peoples serve you,
He’s emphasizing that rulership dimension.
And nations bow down to you. Be
master over your brethren, And let your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone
who curses you, And blessed be those who bless you!"
So this is a reiteration of the blessing that God had
given to Abraham, the Abrahamic Covenant. It confirms to Jacob that he is the
seed through whom this blessing will pass. I put Genesis 12:2-3 up at the top
because I color coded some of the phrases there to show the similarity, how the
blessing of Jacob carried on that Abrahamic tradition.
In contrast we have the blessing that Isaac had left over
to give to Esau. When Esau came in, there's a tremendous amount of drama as
Esau realizes how not only the birthright but also the blessing has been ripped
off by Jacob.
So he comes to his father and begs his father, “Isn’t
there something left?”
So Isaac answers him and says:
NKJ Genesis 27:39 Then Isaac his father answered and said to him: "Behold, your
dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth,
…indicates a measure of prosperity.
And of the dew of heaven from above.
NKJ Genesis 27:40 By your sword you shall live, And you shall serve your brother;
Not good news for Esau that he would be serving his
brother Jacob.
And it shall come to pass, when you
become restless, That you shall break his yoke from your neck."
So this doesn't apply directly to Esau per se but to
his descendants looking at Esau and Jacob as the progenitors of two different
nations, just as God had said when He spoke to Rebekah and said, “There are two
nations struggling inside of your womb.”
There's one more blessing that Isaac had for Jacob.
After this, Esau absolutely flips out and goes postal as they say today. He's
threatening Jacob’s life that he is going to kill Jacob. He is just as angry as
he can be because he has been so ripped off by his brother the trickster that
as Rebecca hears him venting and screaming and yelling she calls in Jacob and
decides to send him away to her brother Laban up near Padan Aram in the north
so that Jacob will be protected.
Just before he leaves, Isaac calls him in and we look
at Isaac’s second blessing for Jacob in Genesis 28. So we're going to look at a
couple of different things here in Genesis 28 so that’s a good chapter to have
open in your Bible because I think it's important for us to look at the gap
between Hebrews 11:20 and 21 as it pertains to what God is doing in the life of
Jacob.
In Genesis 28:1, Isaac called Jacob in and blessed him
and charged him. Notice the word blessing again. I’ve got it highlighted on the
slide that there are 3 times that we have the word blessing used in these 4
verses showing that this is the emphasis of this section.
NKJ Genesis 28:1 Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to
him: "You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.
That’s first priority. You have to maintain that
separation. Now this is going to get lost – just a foreshadowing of
things come. This idea of separation from the Canaanites gets lost with Jacob’s
sons, the 12 sons who formed the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. They start
intermarrying with the Canaanites. But Isaac is still very much concerned that
they maintained, the family maintains a separation from the Canaanites and not
become influenced by their paganism. So the first charge is a prohibition.
"You shall not take a wife from
the daughters of Canaan.
The second is a positive charge to go to Padan Aram in
the north up in what is modern day Syria up near the border of Syria and
Turkey.
NKJ Genesis 28:2 "Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's
father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your
mother's brother.
NKJ Genesis 28:3 "May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply
you,
What does that refer to? That goes back to seed promise
in the Abraham Covenant that God would make Abraham the father of many nations
and then that would come through the line through Isaac.
That you may be an assembly of
peoples;
NKJ Genesis 28:4 And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with
you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave
to Abraham."
They don’t possess it yet. It’s future. It is a
promise to inherit the land and they never fully controlled the land that God
promised to Abraham in the Old Testament. That’s one of those important
aspects.
This morning as I was starting my day, I decided to
call Jim Meyers jus to go over last minute details related to my trip to Kiev
and I have the wrong phone number and I ended up calling Jim Dumas’ apartment.
Bruce Baumgartner answered the phone, which was providential because Bruce
said, “I was just think about
calling you.” He’s probably in the air as we speak. He would have left
about - what time is it now? No
he's probably getting up right now to the airport. He just wanted to go over
some logistical details as well as some details about the class.
But there's one student in the class, and we ought to
be praying for this young man. I don't have a name for him. He’s a nice kid, a
young guy. But somewhere along the line became influenced by covenant theology
and so far no one's been able to convince him of this hard and fast distinction
between Israel and the church. Pastor Baumgartner (bless his little heart…See
that’s what we say in Texas when we’re being nice to somebody who did something
we don’t like. We always say, “Well, Bless their heart) just kept telling this
kid, “You just wait. Dr. Dean is going to be here in a couple weeks and he’s
covering dispensations and covenants and he’ll answer all of your questions.”
I’ll get back at him. I’ll tell him Bruce is older
than me. We always have this thing going back and forth with the students at to
something we have with him and we play tricks on each and things. So there's
always this thing – who’s older? I always tell them it’s Bruce. Bruce is
5 years younger than I am but we won’t tell anybody.
So anyhow this is a basic problem. It’s a
hermeneutical issue. In Genesis 17 God said that the land would be
bordered– or excuse me Genesis 15 - that the land would be bordered by
the River Euphrates and by the Mediterranean. But they have never fully taken
control of that land.
Well, what happens when you get into the New Testament
when you start shifting into this more allegorical or spiritualized approach to
Scripture that Israel becomes the church is that the Promised Land (the
literal, physical, geographical land) becomes heaven. Wait a minute! How would
Abraham have understood that? Did God change the meaning? Is God sort of a bait
and switch – I’m going to promise you a physical land and physical
property but now instead I’m going to switch it and it’s going to be heaven and
I’m going tell you your people are your physical descendents. Now I’m going to
switch it and its only going to be spiritual descendants? We can’t do that and
be consistent in understanding the Scriptures. That's one of the important
factors to remember here is again and again and again as we go through Genesis
(and we did this in our study of Genesis) God reiterates the same promise to
Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob and to Joseph to make sure we all understand
what the promise is and to whom the promise is given. The promise is oriented
to inheriting or possessing the Land, a specific piece of real estate; and it
remained a promise, an unfulfilled promise, a future oriented promise in the
lives of all four of these patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. But
God gave it to them but they never saw it as theirs. They never possessed
it.
We see in Genesis 28:1-4 that in this second blessing
that Isaac gives to Jacob, he is reiterating the Abraham Covenant and the
promises of the Abraham Covenant and that these are for Jacob as the younger
who it is to be served by his older brother. What happens after this is that
Jacob going to have to leave. So
let’s just have a quick two-point summary. The two-point summary of this is
that:
And of course both involved the third aspect, which is
blessing. All of these were future to Isaac. They were all future to Jacob.
They were all future to Joseph, and they never saw them. But the focus was on the things to
come. Their focus was on the eventual fulfillment in eternity and they had to
learn to live in the light of that future promise of God so that understanding
what the future held was to have an effect coming back on them and how they
lived. It doesn't always and it
didn't always for them and it doesn't always for us. But that's our point of
contact for application. We have to learn to live in light of the promise that
God has given us, and the destiny that He has for us.
Here we have a map of the area of the land of Canaan. The
two circles indicate the two key locations that come up later on in chapter 28:
Beersheba in the south which is where Isaac and Rebekah are living at the time
of the inheritance blessing statements in chapter 27. So Jacob is going to get
up and leave from there and to head north to his uncle Laban, the son of
Bethuel, the Syrian.
Then something is going to happen to him as he is
heading out of the land. He comes to the area of the Canaanite city of Luz
which becomes renamed Bethel. This
is the same place to which his grandfather Abraham had come when he entered
into the land and had erected an altar there. If you look at the two lines that
are going up, the blue line stands out more than the green line. But the blue
line is the path of Jacob’s departure as he heads north, and then the green
line is the path of his return. You see that along the path that he's going to
exit the land and return to the land along the same route and go through the
same areas. In both cases he is going to be involved in an episode that occurs
in Bethel.
What we have to recognize here is that the point of
application for us that comes out of this is that we are to hang in there just
as these Old Testament patriarchs hung in there and never saw the promise but
maintained their faithfulness, their trust in God, their trust in the promise.
We are not to give up. We’re not
to yield to temptation. We are not to give up or to give in; but we are to
press on to endurance.
This is going to be developed more fully in the next
chapter in Hebrews. We’re in Hebrews 11, which is an application section, an
exhortation section. Chapter 12 is
a repeat, a second exhortation section. Just to give you a little preview of
things to come, Hebrews 12:3-4 states:
NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against
Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
See we have an example from the Old Testament. They
hung in there. Now there were times they fell off the path; but they got back
on. There were times that they were weary. There were times that they disobeyed
God; but the overall orientation of their life was to focus on the promise. We
are to take heart from that and not to grow weary, discouraged. Ultimately it
is the example the Lord Jesus Christ who went to an even more difficulty than
anyone else; and He did not give up. He did not become weary or discouraged and
neither should we. That's the basis of the exhortation there in verses 3 and
4.
NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him
That is, the Lord Jesus Christ.
endured such hostility from sinners
against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
NKJ Hebrews 12:4 You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.
You have to hang in there.
Now the next verse in Hebrews is Hebrews 11:21 which
focuses on Jacob’s blessing to his sons.
NKJ Hebrews 11:21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph,
and worshiped, leaning
on the top of his staff.
Now we come out of 11:20 and we’re focusing on the
initial blessing, we see Jacob is the last person that we think of that is
properly oriented to God or to God’s plan. What happens between verse 20 and
verse 21 is monumental. That’s between chapters 28 and roughly 35. We see the
spiritual growth of Jacob. This is important for us to understand in terms of a
lesson because what happens between his exit from the land and his return to
the land is that God works in his life to produce discipline and maturity. When
he leaves, he's undisciplined. He is the trickster. He is trying to find a
shortcut path to the blessing. He's not willing to wait on the Lord or to trust
the Lord. He is the heel grabber, the swindler, the manipulator. He has yet to
understand the grace of God or orient to God's plan or to His promises.
When we think about promises and think about how we
are to orient to promises beyond just simply the act of claiming them in the
faith rest drill; but the promises focus on a future and that future is to
shape our present reality. We are so convinced of the fulfillment of the
promise that it shapes our thinking, our motivation and our drive in the
present. This is what enables us to mature.
Now some years ago I heard someone make the
observation that the real key to maturity is the ability to postpone
gratification. Now if you have that as your definition, we live in an immature
culture because nobody in our culture wants to postpone gratification. But
that's really what maturity is. Maturity postpones gratification because you
understand there are greater goals and greater objectives. Your focus is on the
future and you’re not just living in the present. You understand that the
present is moving in a direction of future fulfillment. So as we mature,
whether it's in general emotional maturation process or spiritual maturity, we
learn to postpone gratification which means we have to be patient in life and
we have to learn to orient to God's plan and to God’s timing.
Now this is a real problem for Jacob because Jacob is
impatient. He wants it now and wants it his way according to his timing. In
order to learn to postpone that gratification and to relax and be patient, God
has to bring some discipline into Jacob’s life and into Jacob’s thinking and
the only way that we can truly focus on the future, the only way we can live in
light of our eternal destiny is when we get to the point where we can
discipline our thinking to focus on doctrine. When everything around us is
falling apart, everything's going to hell in a hand basket and everything is in
chaos; we are not going to take our eyes off the Lord. We’re not going to take
our eyes off the promise because that becomes our reality. It's more real to us
to than all the other nonsense that goes on around us.
So the key here is going to be discipline. Now I'm
bringing this in now at this stage because this too is where we're headed in Hebrews
12 where right after the two verses I citied a minute ago in Hebrews 12:3-4 and
5-7 this quote from the Old Testament and we get into the importance of God’s
discipline in the believer’s life. I'll be talking more and more about that to
try to bring our attention on what it means to be a disciplined believer.
So let’s have a little four-point introduction to the
Doctrine of Discipline.
People can’t be a success just by saying, “Oh, I want
to go out and I want to do this” and do it in an undisciplined manner, without
following certain rules or certain procedures. When we apply this to the
spiritual life, what we see is that what God is doing in disciplining us is
instilling in our thinking, in our life the modus operandi of following the
rules or the code of behavior where we're living life on the basis of God's
values and God's standards.
The noun focuses on the practice of training people.
And in the Church Age one of the ways in which God trains believers and is to
discipline believers in that sense of training them to obey rules and a code of
conduct is through the pastor teacher teaching from the Word of God in the
local church. But that’s just one element. That’s how we find out what the
rules and the code of behavior are.
That's the idea.
It’s training in a
code of conduct.
This fits very well with the terminology that’s used
in the Scripture. We have both Greek and Hebrew words that will need to be
studied a little more fully as we get into this. The Greek word, the verb is paideuo and the
noun is paideai,
which comes from the root word that has to do with a child. It’s ultimately
related to child training. Paideuo means to train up, for example to train up a child in
instruction, to train them, to educate them. It's all part of the idea in
discipline. It's not just negative consequences. It's instruction; it is
education; It is developing character, understanding of why things are done the
way they should be done. Paideia the noun indicates the idea of training, instruction, and
discipline as well. When we think about divine discipline, divine discipline
isn't just the negative of divine punishment for wrong behavior; but it is
training. God is involved in training us.
The focus on the end result is the idea of training,
preparation for future service, future service as a mature believer now and
future service on into the millennium and on into the future. The Hebrew word
that shows up is a word that’s found in Proverbs 3:11-2. This is what's quoted
in Hebrews 12.
NKJ Hebrews 12:5 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons:
"My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor be discouraged
when you are rebuked by Him;
NKJ Hebrews 12:6 For whom the LORD loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He
receives."
Here we see that part of love involves the negative of
chastening and reproof (these are not pleasant) and correction. But that’s part
of what the Word of God does. The Word of God is inspired and profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness. This is
not always pleasant.
The word that’s translated chastening in 3:11 is the
Hebrew word musar.
And it's interesting because the literal meaning of the word describes a band or
a bond, something that restricts someone. You may capture a prisoner and put
him in bonds, a chain or something of that nature. Figuratively it was used for
something that is used in chastening or restraining and that fits the idea of
self-discipline. Self-discipline means that we are learning to restrain our
lust pattern. We are learning to restrain our desires for immediate
gratification. We have to discipline ourselves according to a certain code of
conduct, to restrain our natural impulses and the driving lust patterns of the
sin nature. The idea of chastening is to bring self-control into the life of
the believer.
Another word that’s used to this passage is in
Proverbs 3:12…
NKJ Proverbs 3:12 For whom the LORD loves He corrects, Just as a father the son in whom he
delights.
..is the Hebrew word yakach meaning to reprove or correct. All of those are close ideas,
judging or deciding in the sense of reproving or correcting.
God is in that process of reproving or correcting us
in order to instill that discipline .
Then we have the negatives. Do not gossip. Do not lie
dealing with certain sins of the tongue. Don't give up. Don't fade out. Don’t
grow weary as we saw in Hebrews 12:3-4. Do not be judgmental. That’s really the
best nuance of that well known verse. Don't judge lest you be judged. The idea
there isn't making any evaluative or discerning decision. It’s against being
judgmental in the sense of putting yourself in the place of God and condemning
someone as only God can do i.e. putting yourself in the place of being a divine
judge. Being angry and do not sin, Ephesians 4. Do not worry. These are all
part of the negative prohibitions of behavior (unacceptable behavior) in the
spiritual life.
As we go through life, we face a variety of
experiences that under the sovereignty of God are designed for us. They may not
be so great for somebody else; but they are what God has directed us to under
His sovereignty. There are no accidents in the plan of God and so both the good
things that we experience and the adverse things are designed by God to teach us
to focus on Him in the midst of adversity, in the midst of crisis to put our
blinders on to narrow our vision down to focus on what the Word of God
says.
One of the things that happens whenever a person is in
a life-threatening situation is that the blood begins to flow to the center
mass of the body. It doesn't go to the outer extremities a lot. So manual
dexterity is lost and some other things are lost because the body goes into
this fight or flight syndrome where is focused down the center for survival.
This also affects eyesight so that tunnel vision will develop. Sometimes it
seems as if there is a slowdown of motion. People get in certain intense, life
threatening situations and they report that it seemed as if everything just
slowed down. And they lost peripheral vision. Everything focused on the threat
itself.
Well, that is what should take place spiritually is as
we get into crises and get into adversity and we are just at the point of being
overwhelmed, we should be so focused on the Word and the promises of God and
the future that God has for us and what He's doing in training us that we get
this tunnel vision on our spiritual life and focusing on the Word and on the
fulfillment of those promises. God takes us through these various drills in
life (various experiences in life) in order to teach us and to train us for our
future role of service.
That's what he did with Jacob. We've gone through the
chapters of Genesis where we see Jacob learning how to control his own desires
to manipulate and control life, to manipulate God to his own benefit. After he
manipulated the blessing away from Esau, he had to flee for his life, not a
really good consequence and he ends up with is relative Laban who is going to
outfox the fox. Laban is the chiseler’s chief chiseler and he's going to always
manage to one up Jacob.
We are only given a few examples and the prime one of
course is what happens when Jacob makes a deal. He barters (works a good deal
he thinks) with Uncle Laban for his daughter Rachel who Jacob is in love with.
After he works for 7 years and Laban gets the benefit of Jacob’s work, he gets
married and he discovers after the wedding night that Laban has pulled a fast
on him and substituted the older daughter Leah for Rachel. Jacob wakes up in
the morning and he's married to the wrong girl. He’s been tricked. The
trickster has been tricked.
So he goes back to Laban and he has to work out
another deal, another 7 years. See
God’s teaching him patience. He has to keep working there in those unpleasant
circumstances to learn to relax and to trust in God's plan and God’s
timing.
So during this time he has various children. He has
the 12 sons and one daughter Dinah and God is blessing him. But the love of his
life is Rachel. Rachel is unable to have children. Finally she has a son. She
has Joseph. Then at the end she will have one more son Benjamin and then dies
shortly thereafter as a result of complications with the childbirth.
Through this time we see the adversity, the
difficulties. We see humility developed in Jacob. And we see that he's learning
to trust God, not to try to manipulate things himself but to relax and letting
God control things. And the ultimate example that we’re given is when Jacob
goes through this really obscure situation that’s described in Genesis where he
makes this deal with Laban that Laban will let him leave if he takes care of
the flocks a certain way and he enters into this deal with the breeding of the
sheep where he negotiates the deal so that looks to Laban like Laban is going
to get the better end of this deal. Laban must have walked away from this
saying what a fool Jacob is. The deal was that all of the speckled and spotted
goats or sheep and the black sheep (this would be the recessive genes so there
were fewer of these) that were born would go to Jacob and the others would go
to Laban.
So Laban says, “That's a great deal,” and he’s
chuckling to himself because he knows that the predominant color of the sheep
is going to be other colors than speckled and spotted. So he moves all of his
sheep 3 days away to make sure that there's no way that the speckled and
spotted black sheep that he already has are going to hook up with Jacob’s
sheep.
Jacob goes into this really odd thing where he takes a
stick and he strips off the bark. When you strip off the bark and you expose
the white core of the tree underneath that. There is a play on words because
the Hebrew word for white is laban. The Holy Spirit is making a little pun there because he's
going to expose Laban, basically. And what God does is God overrides the
situation and causes a tremendous number of births of spotted and speckled and
black sheep and goats to that Jacob’s herds just increase and Laban’s out there
and God has blessed Jacob rather than Laban getting it through manipulation. This
leads ultimately to the fact that now Jacob wants to leave and go home. Laban
has been trying to do all these things to keep him from leaving and so Jacob
has to sneak out and to get away and make his way back home.
All of this shows the spiritual growth and maturity
that took place in Jacob’s life from the time he left the land until the time
that he returned to the land. But at both ends there are events that occur at
Bethel which are very important for understanding the whole role of promise and
fulfillment in the life and in the thinking of Jacob. In Genesis 28 where we've
been Jacob heads out and stops at Bethel. The Lord appears to him while he is
sleeping at night and he has this dream of a stairway or ladder to heaven. There
are angels of God that are ascending and descending on it. This is one of only
two places in Scripture where you have this phrase "angels (plural) of God".
Both occur in episodes of Jacob’s life.
NKJ Genesis 28:13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said: "I am the LORD God
of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will
give to you and your descendants.
The Abrahamic Covenant is being reconfirmed.
NKJ Genesis 28:14 "Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you
shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and
in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
So we have land, seed and blessing all reconfirmed in
these two verses.
Then in the next couple of verses we read:
NKJ Genesis 28:15 "Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you
back to this land;
He's on his way out. He’s going to be going into the
land of Laban, the land outside the land.
And God says, “Even though you're leaving the land I
will be with you wherever you go and bring you back to this land.”
for I will not leave you until I
have done what I have spoken to you."
This has a major impact on Jacob’s way of thinking
because God blesses him and reconfirms the covenant to him.
In verse 16 we read:
NKJ Genesis 28:16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in
this place, and I did not know it."
In verse 17 we see his response also which is he was
afraid. And this isn't just a matter of fear or superstition. He is afraid
because of the appearance of God and we know from a variety of passages
(Proverbs 1:7 being one of them) that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom. This is Jacob's first spiritual jolt that occurs at Bethel where he
realizes that God really has a plan for his life and God really is in
control.
That forms the entry point of his spiritual growth as
he goes out into his time with Laban up in the north. Then when he returns he
is going to be directed by God in Genesis 35 to go back to back to Bethel. He
has an episode where he goes to a place called Peniel. He names Peniel in the
Transjordan area as he returns back to the land and he meets God face-to-face
there in Genesis 32.
But in Genesis 35 God instructs him to return to
Bethel.
NKJ Genesis 35:1 Then God said to Jacob, "Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there;
and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face
of Esau your brother."
He then sanctifies the family. They have to put away
all the teraphim, the foreign gods that they have. The have to purify
themselves; change their garments and go and worship the Lord at Bethel.
What happens at Bethel? God is going to reconfirm the
covenant, verses 10 through 12.
NKJ Genesis 32:28 And He said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but
Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed."
This is the transformation spiritually. No longer is
he called the chiseler, the manipulator, the swindler. Now he's going to be
known as a leader or prince with God. The name Israel meaning that he is the
Prince of God.
NKJ Genesis 35:11 Also 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.
NKJ Genesis 35:12 "The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac I give to you; and to
your descendants after you I give this land."
Again we have the reiteration of the promise –
at the beginning and at the end – but there’s no fulfillment. The promise
isn't being fulfilled in his lifetime. It is still future. There's still a
future orientation for him and he has to live in light of that that future
promise.
One other place we’ll end up with tonight is 2 Peter
1:3 which ties all this together taking us to the New Testament and to the
purpose of promises. It is related to God's character, His essence, His power
at the very beginning of the verse. It is related to our sanctification the
last part of the verse.
In 2 Peter 1:3, Peter writes:
NKJ 2 Peter 1:3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to
life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and
virtue,
The beginning (the focal point) is on the power of God
and He has given us all things. Whenever we have that verb “to give” (the Greek
word didomi)
always emphasize grace when God is the actor, when God is giver.
His divine power has given to us
Then there's a qualifier – "that pertain to
life and godliness". Now there are two different words there that are used
in the Greek. The word there for life has to do with the physical life and the
word for godliness has to do with the spiritual life – eusebia. Godliness
is an old English word. It means godlikeness. Well, we are to become like God.
That was the idea in that word because God is conforming us to the image of
Christ. That is a word that describes our entire spiritual life.
He's given us everything that is related to life and
godliness. And how do we get there? What’s the intermediate means? "Through
the knowledge of Him". We activate what He's given us through the
knowledge of Him, through the knowledge of God. That means we have to study the
Word. We have to know the Word. We have to not just know the Word as an
academic study, but know that God who revealed Himself in the Word. It is that
personal relationship with God that is mediated through His Word. We have to
learn His Word and learn about Him, come to know Him not just in this sense of
knowing things about Him; but come to know Him.
Then He's further defined as the One who called us by
glory and virtue. That is the integrity of His character lies behind the
relationship that we have with Him so it’s a certain sealed relationship.
Then in verse 4 we read:
NKJ 2 Peter 1:4 by which
That is by the glory and virtue and by His character,
by His integrity.
have been given to us exceedingly
great and precious promises,
This is a fantastic statement here that recognizes the
value of the promises of Scripture that go to every one of us. He has given us
these promises.
that
…for a purpose
through these you may be partakers
of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
That is, through these promises, through their use in
the faith rest drill, claiming promises; but through a recognition that a
promise also focuses our attention on future fulfillment. It’s that certain
expectation of our hope that we can live today in light of eternity, that
through these promises we may become partakers of the divine nature. What that
means is that by claiming the promises (living in light of that reality) that
God is transforming us into the character of Christ.
This isn't a mystical idea that somehow we become more
and more divine. It is the idea that we reflect His character as we are
conformed to the image of Christ more and more in the process of our spiritual
growth because the choices are either claim the promise and obey God, postpone
gratification, be disciplined in our spiritual life or just fulfill the lust
patterns of our soul, just run off doing everything we want to in immediate
gratification.
How do we escape the corruption that in the world by
lust? It’s by claiming the promises, living today in light of reality, focusing
on the future so that the present circumstances are diminished because the
future is more real to us than anything that's going on in our immediate
vicinity. So this is the importance of the promises.
So next time we’ll come back and carry this through to
the prophecies and Jacob gave—Jacob as Israel to his sons and the 12
tribes at the end of Genesis.