Road To Emmaus: Jacob

Jevon Martin: I noticed that last time, they squeak if we shift. ⁓ they do a little bit anyway. But especially when we touch the wall. All right. Why don't you pray for us? Yeah. Dearly Father, ⁓ thank you for this opportunity that we have to reach people, Lord. ⁓ I can't I'll in a fun in a funny way, I can kind of imagine what Paul would have done with this kind of technology. but you know, Lord, ⁓ it is a it is a privilege to be able to connect with our congregants in this way. Lord, thank you for the people that have been listening. Lord, I pray that your spirit would be here in our midst today. May we just be in one with your spirit, Lord. May we be ⁓ speaking your words of truth this morning and just be encouraging and uplifting people ⁓ as we dive into your word. Father, thank you for the gift of your son. Guide our words, keep us from foolish talk, and ⁓ help us to speak wisdom. Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. What? Wednesday, June third. All right. Ready to roll? Ready to roll. Okay. Hey, good afternoon, guys. It is Wednesday, June 3rd. I am Jesse. This is Javon. We are probably coming to you on Thursday, June 4th, because that seems to be what the schedule has been lately. But ⁓ we are talking through the Old Testament. We're still in the book of Genesis, looking at some of characters there and seeing how they sort of connect us forward to the ⁓ the truth of the gospel and Jesus Christ and his message of salvation. Javon, do you remember all of the sermons that we've done so far in this types and shadows series? ⁓ maybe if I said sat down and thought about it maybe I could so the first one we talked about do you remember seeds the promised seed you should remember that one that's the one that's the one I preached if I forgot to talk about the the promised seed right we talked about Cain and Abel ⁓ the week after that how Abel was a type of Christ but Cain killed him. After that we talked about well the ark was the podcast but then what did we we did ⁓ Melchizedek before before that Abraham and Melchizedek yep exactly we talked about that and then this past week I talked about ⁓ Jacob ⁓ well actually two weeks ago We talked about Abraham and circumcision. That was a difficult one to find an illustration for. But we got that all worked out. And then this past Sunday, here ⁓ the end of May, talked about ⁓ Jacob, or I'm sorry, talked about Isaac, who is the father of Jacob. Today we're going to talk about Jacob because his grandfather Abraham got a couple of man, I just messed that all up. It wasn't circumcision. Start over. Okay. Why'd you mess up? I didn't ⁓ well I was I was talking about circumcision, but this past week was actually the sacrifice of Isaac. Right. ⁓ which I mean it was kinda connected, but Yeah, but the one before we did circumcision, right. Right. Yeah. But I just kinda got clumsy on my last couple of weeks. That was a last minute idea to go like, Hey, what do you remember? I probably could have done it, you just my gears I I always find that my gears are not shifting right away. I know and I I'd like to kinda surprise you and see them come out. So we're good. All right. There we go. Hey guys, what's going on? Today we're coming to you again from the Waterway Studio, also known as the Prayer Room. It is Wednesday, June third. I believe you're probably picking this up on someday after Thursday Startover. That's good because I was I realized I was sitting like Yo give me yeah give me a smoke, bro. ⁓ This is going to be like on the Outtakes album at the end of the season, right? All right. Ready to go? Yeah. Hey guys, this is Jesse coming to you here from the Waterway Studio, also known as the Prayer Room. That is Javon Martin. Today we are recording on Wednesday, June 3rd. You're getting this sometime after Thursday, June 4th. And we are continuing on with our podcast series talking about all of these types and shadows, these hints about Jesus and the gospel that we find in the Old Testament. We've been doing that for our sermon series, but as you know, ⁓ we've been filling in the gaps with some of the other characters and events here on this podcast. Podcast series, and this is episode number four. We're trying to figure this out. We've had two 10-minute podcasts, we had a 20-minute podcast, 30-minute podcast. Yeah. See where this goes. So today we'll do 10 times that long, right? No. No. Okay. But today we are going to continue our series. And today we're going to talk about Jacob because ⁓ Jacob's father, Isaac, was mentioned in the podcast last week. Isaac was a type of Christ because Isaac was willing and obedient to be sacrificed. ⁓ ⁓ he was obedient to his father. We read about that in Genesis twenty-two and ⁓ See how Jacob's grandfather Abraham had acted. ⁓ we talked about Abraham and circumcision. If you go back a week, we talked about Abraham and Melchizedek. If you go back before that, we talked about Cain and Abel, the blow. Cain and Abel, and then before Cain and Abel, we talked about we talked about the promised seed. So we're still in the book of Genesis, working our way through. And again, ⁓ today we're talking about Jacob. Remember, again, on Sunday, I talked about Isaac. He was a type of Christ, he was a godly man, and especially in his early Years. Do you know anyone, Javon? Don't name any names, but do you know anyone who in their younger years, like when they were a teenager or when they were in school, they seemed to have like a ton of promise. But then as they grew older, they sort of strayed away from that. Don't give me names. But do you know anyone like that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. People who were much less impressive in their 30s than they were in their teens. Well, you gotta remember, I'm only 26, so I don't have a lot. I won't make you say your age. Okay. Well Yeah. I I know some people who seem to have a lot more promise in their younger years than they what they exhibit in their older. That was kind of Isaac, okay? You know, he was obedient to his father, even to a potentially bloody sacrificial death early in his life. But as we read through Genesis 25, 26, 27, we see that Isaac and his wife Rebecca, though they were very much in love and they inspired each other, they played favorites with their boys. Rebecca had these twin sons, Esau and Jacob. ⁓ though they were twins, they were fraternal twins. They were not identical, they had very different characteristics, very different physicalities. But Esau was born first, Jacob was born second, and before they were born, God spoke and said, the older is going to serve the younger. The younger Jacob is going to be the one who inherits most of the blessing, most of the promise. He's the one who's going to be in the line of God's promise, who eventually was going to be Jesus. And so in Genesis 25, 26, and 27, we see some of these events playing out where Isaac and his wife Rebecca, they know that the older son, Esau, is going to serve the younger son, Jacob. But Isaac tries his best to bless Esau over and over again because Esau is his favorite. Esau's kind of the manly man. He's rough, rugged. He's out in the fields, he loves being out in the wild, and Isaac loves his son's wild game that is prepared for him. ⁓ Jacob is a little bit more ⁓ in some parlance. If we were teenagers, we'd tease him and say, quit being such a mama's boy. ⁓ it says in Genesis that Jacob hung out around the tents a lot. He was often more with his mother, and and his mother looked out after him. And so Isaac tries to bless Esau. Even though God said that Jacob would be the one who was blessed, Isaac is working hard almost to kind of work against God's plan. That's what we see in Genesis 25, 26, and 27. But Isaac's younger son, Jacob, truly receives the inheritance and the blessing, just as God announced before the boys were born. And Jacob is a character. His character development, his walk with God is actually a little bit the opposite of Isaac's. Isaac's had a lot of promise when he was young, grew up to be a little bit more or a little bit less aligned with the Lord. Jacob grows up, and as a young man, he's a little bit of a scoundrel, a little bit of a liar, but grows closer with the Lord. Javar, in your 26 years of long, long experience, do you know anyone who, as a young person, as a child or as a teen seemed to have very little connection with God, seemed to be selfish, self-serving, but as they grew, they got closer to the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. And have you seen anyone who, as they grew and as they walked through the trials that God seemed to put in front of them, have you seen folks kind of mature through those kind of things? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, you guys have seen that too, right? Those of you who are listening, think about what it is to be close to God in your younger years but then drift away, or think about what it is to kind of be a little bit of a self-absorbed, selfish person in your younger years, but grow closer to God. ⁓ those of you who are listening online, those of you who are watching, Which which would you rather your children be? If you had to pick, would you rather have somebody who starts off strong and then kinda tails off or somebody who maybe if with a sketchy beginning they grow closer to the Lord? There's always hope, right? There's always hope. But anyway, we've got this Jacob guy, and that's who our story's about today. Jacob's a character. He's got his mind on the blessings of God, but not the ways of God. We all know people like that. We can see so much of our world and just these characters here in the Old Testament. So we know people who want the best of God, but don't want To do things God's way. Jacob was that way. For example, when ⁓ Jacob and his mother Rebekah cook up a plan to trick their father, his father Isaac, into blessing him instead of Esau. Jacob tells five lies within like four sentences of speech. Jacob goes into his father Esau and or into his father Isaac, and Isaac says, Who are you? He says, I'm your son Esau, I'm your firstborn. I went hunting like you told me to do. I brought you some wild game, prepared the way that you want it, even though it wasn't wild game, it was just goat meat. And even though Jacob didn't prepare it at all, his mother Rebecca did, I guess there's a fifth lie, and then there was a sixth lie. Esau said, or I keep mixing up Esau and Isaac. Isaac said to Jacob, How did you kill this so quickly? And he says, Well, I got God's favor. I mean, none of this was explicitly true. Jacob is just working to get this blessing, working, working, working, to get this blessing that God said years ago would be his anyway. Jacob should have trusted God, but was working to get what God had already promised. Isn't that isn't that interesting how that can happen? Where where God gives us or shows us something. And then we try to do it on our own means, which we could kind of look back at Abraham, how he did that too. Right. God still accomplishes his purposes. But does that mean that the way we did it or the way we got there was right? No. Right. But I think sometimes we can focus just on the results and be like, Well, I got I got the good result. All is well that ends well, right? Right, yeah. No, no, there's times where it's like Jacob, like or sorry. Jacob, yeah, Jacob. I got it right, right? Right. I think so. Jacob went and did this in a way that he was not supposed to do, but God still used it, God still accomplished his purposes. And I think it's just an interesting it's an interesting thought to think about how what are things that sometimes we go, ⁓ that's the way it was supposed to go but really we actually messed up trying to do it on our own way and we were supposed to rely on the Lord. And just because God worked it out all in the end doesn't make it all right. ⁓ absolutely. And I I think that's a huge warning for ⁓ for those of us who are trying to live our lives following after God, those of us who are listening for the Lord, ⁓ and especially for people who have kind of gotten some direction from God about ⁓ maybe the Holy Spirit spoke, or or or maybe God has revealed something about ⁓ what you should do, where you should go, maybe what kind of career you should follow after, or what kind of school you should go to, or what kind of work you ought to do. ⁓ we have this tendency to kind of then rush ahead in our own power. Right. And certainly we don't just sit back and say, okay, God, just dump it into my lap. But Our efforts, if they ever lead us into sinfulness, like Jacob's five or six lies to his father, right, that's a clear path or a clearer indication that while we may be trying to work at the things of God, man, we need to do it working in the ways of God. Right as well. Right. Good point. Big blessing. Good catch. Good catch. But that was Jacob. I mean, Jacob certainly he and Esau would have been told by their parents, and and certainly Jacob being the favorite of his mother, Rebecca, ⁓ son, don't worry about your big brother. You will be you will be the child of the promise. I heard God say this, right? Yeah. But here Jacob's still scheming and lying to try to work it out instead of simply saying, all right, I'm going to live my life with integrity and trust God's plan. So we've got Isaac who starts off noble, declines as the years go by. Now his son Jacob is starting life as a self-absorbed liar, but God gets a hold of him and builds a noble man. Now, there's going to be, as you read through the scripture, there's going to be a lot of refining that happens in Jacob's life and the time that he spends with his uncle Laban. Spends about 20 years there, and Laban. Rebecca's brother is a lot like Jacob. He's a schemer. He's out for money. He's out for blessings. He's out for just acquiring, acquiring, acquiring. Takes advantage of his nephew Jacob over and over again. If you want to get mad at a person for being the way that they are, look at Genesis 25, 6, 7, and 8. And just look how Laban works. Jacob is annoying. Laban just comes off as like straight off bad. Yeah, yeah. But and the the the infatuation. Jacob busta had man to work that many years for Laban. I we're going, I we're jumping ahead, but ⁓ man, he's working a lot. I I'll tell you, I mean, I would have absolutely worked that way for Melanie, and I know that you would have put whatever it took to get the hand of Courtney years. Decades even. Right. Praise the Lord that ⁓ that we didn't have to do that. Wow. Now we're we're getting ourselves in trouble, man. We're getting ourselves in trouble. God really worked through Jacob to to bring to bring about a lot of change, to bring about a lot of healing, to bring about a lot of sanctification and and holiness. But it all kicked off. If you want to look at like the point of change, you can look at Genesis twenty-eight. This is where I am going to read scripture here. ⁓ Genesis twenty-eight, ⁓ in verse number eleven, Jacob has been setting off. ⁓ he's kind of tricked his father, he's tricked his brother, and he needs to get out of dodge. And so he's being told, Hey, go live with your uncle Laban for a while. And so he sets off, and it says, When he reached a certain place, Jacob stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and laid down to sleep. Out of curiosity, I have never slept with a stone as a pillow. Have you? No. I'm just wondering how comfortable that would be. must have been a thing. Maybe this man who lived among the tents was much tougher than I am. ⁓ could be. But Jacob had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with his top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending. Ascending and descending on it. Those of you who have ever heard the phrase Jacob's ladder, this is where it's coming from. Although it seems like a better translation might be a stairway, but Jacob's ladder, this is where it comes from. And so he has this dream, sees a stairway resting on the earth with his top reaching to heaven. It says in Genesis twenty eight, thirteen, there above the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham, and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants. The land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Basically, God shows up to Jacob in a dream and kind of echoes the promise that God gave to Abraham, the promise that God gave to Isaac. Hey, this is happening. You are my man here. I'm ⁓ setting you up for this. Jacob, as he woke up in the morning, he's like, Wow! Like he realizes what it was. He realizes God's speaking to Him. He calls this place the gate of heaven. He made a monument out of the stone that he had been sleeping on, pours oil on it, and just kind of anoints the place. He named the place Bethel or Bethel, which means the house of God. Okay, so he changes the whole name of the spot, says, This will be the house of God. And then it says in Genesis 28:20, Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking, will give me food to eat and clothes to wear, so that I return safely to my father's. Household. That's that's kind of the condition. Jacob says, God, if you'll basically take care of me, give me food, clothes, help me to get back home, then the Lord will be my God. And this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house. Jacob says, God will be my God, I will follow him. And then there's this last bit in Genesis 28-22. And of all that you give me, Jacob says, I will give you a tenth. Jacob speaking to God. He basically says, I will give you a tithe of all of this stuff. It's not too different than what his grandfather Abraham did when Melchizedek came out and blessed him. Interesting. Abraham gave Melchizedek a tenth. Yeah. Okay? Now here Jacob says, God, I will give you a tenth. I will give back in service in my dedication to you. I will give you a tenth of all that I get. Jacob here is being shaken. Shifted, we see a change just with this dream and seeing how heaven and earth can be connected through this stairway. Jacob says, Okay, instead of just being a greedy taker, which he was with Esau, which he was with Isaac, instead of just being a greedy taker, he goes to being a thankful giver. And there are those who say this is actually the moment of Jacob's salvation. Jacob actually believes what God is saying here, and he sees this connection, this stairway connecting heaven and earth. He sees the angels and ascending and descending. And that's the image that I want to linger on. That's actually what points us forward, and this image of Jacob's ladder, or this image of Jacob's stairway, stairway to heaven. I don't know, Zeppelin must have had some kind of picture of this as well. Here, I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. That was just right there. That was just right there. But this is actually what connects us to Jesus Christ and the gospel. In John 1:51, at the very beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry, Jesus is out recruiting his disciples. He's specifically speaking to Nathanael. Daniel says, How did you know about me? Jesus says, No, I saw you under the tree when the other disciples were talking to you. He says, Jesus tells Nathaniel, you're going to see more amazing things than this. He says, Very truly I tell you. This again, Jesus, about 2,000 years after the time of Jacob, Jesus speaking, says, You will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. So in Genesis 28, Jacob has this vision of angels ascending and descending. The language in English is almost exactly the same from Genesis 28 to John 1. Jacob has this vision of angels ascending, going up to heaven, and descending, coming back down. Heaven and earth being connected. Jesus says, You're going to see the angels of God ascending and descending on me. Jesus says, I am the bridge. Jacob got a partial picture. He could see that heaven and earth was connected and that God was in that place. But here Jesus is saying to Nathaniel, Whoa, whoa, whoa, Nathaniel, I am actually. the stairway. I'm the connection. I'm the only way from heaven and earth. And we see in John 146, Jesus says no one comes to the Father except through me. Angels coming Ascending into heaven, descending back to earth through the person of Jesus Christ. That's our type. Yeah. Right? Think it I think think think for a minute too, like on the how often so Jacob tried to do things on his own way. Uh-huh. How often do we try to build our own ladders? Yep, exactly right. That try to get us up. But Jesus is saying, no, no. There is no other ladder. There is no other way we can connect connect that bridge that gap. And I guess in your words, what is because I always we always talk about the gap. Mm-hmm. What is it? What is the gap? Well, I think on on a small scale, on a small scale, the gap is we try to have a nice life, a fun life, a blessed life, a good life. We try to do that on our own power and it's often just running around. Sometimes it's lying and scheming, other times it's just working really hard. Yeah. Trying to get what we can get to make life work. But if you're just here on earth, you've still got a problem of sin, you've still got a problem of peace, and you still got a problem of evil. Right. But when we trust in Jesus Christ and allow him to bridge the gap between earth and heaven, I guess what I'm thinking is That actually solves our problem of sin and separation from God. Yeah. Because while we may try to run, and a lot of people we know, a lot of people we see in the news have built all kinds of earthly fortunes and earthly comforts based on what they can do here. on the earthly realm, ⁓ what they're missing and and what we're missing if we don't come to Jesus Christ is any kind of a connection with God which takes care of our eternity with a promise of heaven forever for those who believe in Jesus Christ. It takes care of our present because we can have peace now with God instead of just being a rich, comfortable person who's at odds right with the Lord. And it takes care of our past because it forgives us of our sins, which are the things that divide us from God in the first place. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, and it's interesting to me that like if you this is just piggybacking off of what you're talking about because what I'm hearing from you is like we're the gap is that we're sinful we can't do it on our own then there's this holy God we're meant for a relationship with him but we can't we can't do it on our own. Right. And we need Jesus in his sacrifice. And th and thinking about who Jesus was. Jesus was fully God and fully man. Mm-hmm that communion between the earthly and the heavenly and then our in our own lives the spirit and sorry I'm just exactly the the the bridges that that are between the heaven and earth and and all of this. Sorry. And and he's the only one. You know Jesus is very clear. He says no one gets to the Father, the Father who is in heaven, no one gets there except through me. Right. And so there's this picture of there is there is one stairway. There is one gateway. There is one there is one ladder to heaven. Of course the angels are coming up and down on it. They you know the angels angels lift our prayers from here up to heaven, and angels bring God's word down to us. But ⁓ but what Jesus is saying is hey, you want to get to God, it's through me. And Jacob saw a glimpse of that you know in Genesis twenty-eight. And and he suddenly felt connected to God. And and if you follow Jacob's story from Genesis twenty-eight on forward, he's not a perfect man, but he is a much more righteous man than what we see in the earlier part of his life when he's scheming, lying, and just grabbing. ⁓ It changed him. It changed him. Just the same way that Jesus can change us. Jesus, the Son of God, Jesus, the ⁓ the Lord of man. Jesus connects our earthly reality with our heavenly home. Yeah. And ⁓ that's where we put our hope. Praise the Lord. So that's that's our little podcast for today. ⁓ hey, hey folks, I would just encourage you. You may have your plan, you may have your schemes, and some of your work may have really paid off for you. You might be doing really well, you might be wealthy and comfortable right now. But have you taken care of your relationship with God? ⁓ have you dealt with your sin problem by coming to Jesus Christ the Savior? Have you believed in Jesus Christ for eternal life? And and have you been Have you been brought back into fellowship with God, your creator? Because that's where life really is. So I just challenge you. Make sure you're all in the right place. Make sure that Jesus Christ is your way. Make sure that you you walk that stairway to heaven that's only through Jesus. Amen. All right. Hey, we'll see you guys next time. Have a blessed day. Alright. Well that felt long. I felt like I rambled.

Genesis 28:20 John 1:51