God Reaffirms His Covenant

Good morning. There is a section of 475A that when I go driving down at,

there's a point where I get two radio stations that come in at the exact same time.

And it's terrible. It's this one spot, as I'm driving, there's this particular

light that I would get stopped at, and then it's not when you're the first car

at the light. I think you're fine there.

But it's like three or four cars back from the light is this magic spot where

two radio stations merge at the same moment.

And it's been a few months, so I don't remember exactly, but I think it's a

Christian station and a country station, um, that, yeah, they both are there

to say, you know how terrible this is, right?

This is, it is not pleasant when the two stations come in. You're not like, oh, double the fun.

It's like a duet with Jelly Roll and Chris Tomlin, just what I always wanted.

No, it's awful. You realize listening to two stations at the same time is like

listening to neither station, right?

And so sometimes what I would do is, once it happened, and I'd realize,

oh no, I'm in that spot, I would try to see if I could move forward just a few

feet, even if the person in front of me was like, hey, what are you doing?

Because if it would get me into just the section that's just one station,

or sometimes I would reverse and if the person behind me looked like they weren't going to freak out.

If I could go back two or three feet, I could get into just one station because

I just wanted to hear one of them clearly.

The principle here and the reason I'm bringing up this story is to give your

attention and affection to something, it often involves rejecting a competitor, right?

In order for you to focus on the one, it involves doing something so that it's just the one.

And you have to reject this thing that's competing for your affection and your attention.

And it seems to me that that is something that Jacob and his family realize

in today's scripture passage.

It's something that they do as I'm going to read it to you. I think you'll see it, Jacob at least.

So we're going through the book of Genesis. Last week was chapter 34.

So today we are doing chapters 35 and 36.

I'm going to start reading to you from the beginning of chapter 35.

So Genesis 35 begins this way. God said to Jacob,

Get up, go to Bethel, and settle there.

Build an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.

So Jacob said to his family and all who were with him, Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you.

Purify yourselves and change your clothes. We must get up and go to Bethel.

I will build an altar there to the God who answered me in my day of distress.

He has gone with me everywhere I have gone. And then they gave Jacob all their

foreign gods and their earrings, and Jacob hid them under the oak near Shechem.

When they set out, a terror from God came over the cities around them,

and they did not pursue Jacob's sons.

So Jacob and all who were with him came to Luz, that is, Bethel, in the land of Canaan.

Jacob built an altar there and called the place God of Bethel,

because it was there that God had revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.

Deborah, the one who had nursed and raised Rebecca, died and was buried under

the oak south of Bethel. So Jacob named it Oak of Weeping.

God appeared to Jacob again after he returned from Patamaran and he blessed

him. God said to him, your name is Jacob.

You will no longer be named Jacob, but your name will be Israel.

So he named him Israel. God also said to him, I am God Almighty.

Be fruitful and multiply.

A nation, indeed an assembly of nations will come from you and kings will descend from you.

I will give you the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac. I will give you the

land to your future descendants.

And then God withdrew from him at the place where he had spoken to him.

Jacob set up a marker at the place where he had spoken to him,

a stone marker. He poured a drink offering on it and anointed it with oil.

Jacob named the place where God had spoken with him Bethel.

They set out from Bethel, and when they were still some distance from Ephrath,

Rachel began to give birth and her labor was difficult.

During her difficult labor, the midwife said to her, don't be afraid for you have another son.

With her last breath, for she was dying, she named him Ben-Oni,

but his father called him Benjamin.

So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath, that is Bethlehem.

Fun fact, this is the first time Bethlehem is mentioned in the Bible.

Yeah, it's a big deal in the Christmas story, but here's where it shows up first.

Verse 20, Jacob set up a marker for her on her grave, and it is the marker at

Rachel's grave to this day.

Israel set out again and pitched his tent beyond the Tower of Eder.

While Israel was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father's

concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard about it.

Jacob had 12 sons. Leah's sons were Reuben, Jacob's firstborn,

Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun.

Rachel's sons were Joseph and Benjamin. The sons of Rachel's slave Bilhah were

Dan and Naphtali. The sons of Leah's slave Zilpah were Gad and Asher.

These are the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan Aram.

Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre in Kirath Arba, that is Hebron,

where Abraham and Isaac had stayed.

Isaac lived 180 years. He took his last breath and died and was gathered to

his people, old and full of days.

His sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

And that brings us to chapter 36. And I am not going to read to you all of chapter 36.

If you have a Bible with you and look ahead, you will see that what I'm about

to say is true. Chapter 36 is a long list of names.

So I'm, instead of reading all of that, I'm going to read just a small portion

of it to give you a feel for it.

Genesis 36, starting in verse nine says this, It says, these are the family

records of Esau, father of the Edomites in the mountains of Seir.

These are the names of Esau's sons, Eliphaz, son of Esau's wife,

Ada, and Reuel, son of Esau's wife, Basimath.

The sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gadim, and Kenaz.

Timna, concubine of Esau's son, Eliphaz, Bor, Amalek, too, Eliphaz.

These were the sons of Esau's wife, Ada. And that goes on for 29 more verses.

And then it ends with this. This is verse 43, the final verse in the chapter. Magdiel and Aram.

These are Edom's chiefs, according to their settlements in the land they possessed.

Esau was the father of the Edomites.

So let me go ahead and like sort of summarize what's happening in these chapters

and comment on like the plot line and what it has to do with our lives.

Let me start with the beginning of chapter 35. So Jacob returns to Bethel is how the story begins.

So we've learned all the stuff we've learned in Genesis. And now Jacob,

as he's in the promised land, goes back to Bethel.

If you were here, you may remember Bethel is the place where Jacob first met God.

Okay. He and God first met in Bethel. It was the story several weeks ago that

we learned when Jacob was there and there was a ladder or a staircase.

Like there was this vision of a ladder or this vision of a staircase with angels

going up and down to heaven and down to earth.

And then God spoke to him and revealed himself to him. And Jacob said,

well, this is amazing. This is like God's place.

And so that was Bethel. So Jacob first encounters God there.

Then he goes and he spends about 20 years over where he's in the land of his ancestors.

And then now he's back and God says, I want you to go back to the place that

I first met you. So he does.

God reaffirms his covenant with Jacob there.

Jacob is renamed Israel in this passage. You see that?

Although if you remember from a couple of weeks ago, Jacob was already renamed Israel.

Like that was back in chapter 32. God said, your name will no longer be Jacob, it will be Israel.

Also in this chapter, Jacob is promised the promise of Abraham and Isaac that

he will become a mighty nation and that he will be given a promised land.

And that already happened back in chapter 28.

So there's a promise that's made to Jacob that is made again here in this passage.

There's a naming of Jacob that happens here. I don't know if God did these things

twice, or if this is like a repeating or a review of what has already been said.

But some of this had to have been like after he came back, this happened to him.

So here he is, and God reaffirms this covenant and says, you are Israel.

And this is the promise, the promise I made to your grandfather,

the promise I made to your father, this promise I'm now making to you.

Now the chapter goes on, several people die in this chapter.

Deborah, Rebecca's nurse dies in verse eight, which is interesting because she's

not mentioned up to this point that I can remember.

So she's just mentioned, like there's this character, she's dead.

Like that all happens in one verse.

So Deborah dies. Rachel, Jacob's favorite wife, dies in childbirth in verse 18.

Isaac, Jacob's father, dies in verse 29.

Jacob's 12th son, Benjamin, is born in this chapter in verse 18.

Jacob's firstborn son, Reuben, sleeps with his stepmom, his half-brother's mom in verse 22.

It's interesting to me that the text says that it happened.

And then the text says that Jacob heard about it.

And then that's it. It says Israel, like it happened. And it says,

uh, Israel heard about it.

End of sentence. So I don't know,

like, it sort of seems like he knew it happened and didn't do anything.

And if I'm interpreting that right, that fits with what I already thought about this guy. Remember?

He's just very like, well, what should we do about it? Maybe nothing for a while.

And so he doesn't, it seems like he doesn't do anything. And then I will let

you know later on, skip a few chapters ahead. He curses Reuben just before he dies.

Do you remember that from last week? So last week, Levi and Simeon commit a

bunch of murder and Jacob doesn't condemn them for it.

You know, he's just like, Hey, you just made things harder on us.

And then that's it. And it looks like a bunch of nothing happens for a while.

And then just before he dies, Jacob curses Levi and Simeon. Same thing happens here.

Reuben does this terrible thing. Israel is aware of it.

Jacob is aware of it. And then nothing is mentioned until just before he dies and he curses Reuben.

Uh, chapter 36 shows that Jacob's brother Esau becomes a nation of people known as the Edomites.

And so that's what happens in these chapters. Um, if I were going to show you

a timeline from Abraham to Joseph, it would look like this.

Okay. So here's the name of our series is from Abraham to Joseph.

And you wonder, how do you get there? Well, there's two steps in the middle.

Okay. It's Abraham to Isaac, to Jacob, to Joseph. Those are the four generations

that are in the back half of the book of Genesis.

So we covered the life of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And if you notice,

I put, we are here and we are at like the end of this Jacob story.

We are about to get into the final generation in the book of Genesis.

So this, I would say chapter 35

is the sort of the final Jacob story where Jacob is the star of the story.

And if the Lord wills next week, we're going to get into the story of Joseph,

which will take us into like, that'll be the rest of the book of Genesis.

Now there is some overlap here. Like Isaac is in Abraham's story, right?

And Isaac is in Jacob's story and Jacob is in Isaac's story and Jacob is in

Joseph's story. Like, when I say this is the final Jacob story,

I don't mean like he dies and he's never heard from again.

He will get mentioned later on in the book of Genesis, but it just seems like

the camera sort of goes off of him and onto his sons starting in the next chapter, chapter 37.

So here we are at the final sort of Jacob story.

Um so we've covered the plot line now let's talk

about the theological truths and application to our

lives first thing i'll point out to you point one is in

chapter 36 which we've already established is a long list of names chapter 36

shows us that god told the truth back in genesis chapter 25 verse 23 when he

Genesis 25:23

prophesied about esau and jacob's future so let's go back there let me show

you what I mean by God told the truth.

This is Genesis chapter 25, starting in verse 22. It says, but the children

Genesis 25 · chapter mention

inside her struggled with each other. And she said, why is this happening to me?

So the, the her here is Rebecca, right?

And so Rebecca is pregnant with Jacob and Esau in this passage.

And it's a particularly weird pregnancy. Okay. And so she's like, what is going on?

So she went to inquire of the Lord. Now, this is what I want you to remember.

And the Lord said to her, to what? Sorry, in your womb nations.

Two nations are in your womb.

Two people will come from you and be separated. One people will be stronger than the other.

Not just one of the twins will be stronger than the other, but one people group,

one whole nation will be stronger than the other and the older will serve the younger.

And so this is a prophecy, I think about Jacob and Esau, but this is really

a prophecy about the nations that they become.

And so God said, that's what would happen. And by the time we get to chapter

36, we see that did happen.

Jacob becomes the Israelites. He's the father of the Israelites.

Esau is the father of the Edomites, and their records are there in chapter 36.

All right, second point. Chapter 35 shows us that as we follow God,

we must get rid of all competitors to him.

That's what I was referring to earlier with the story about the radio coming

in. And this is a much bigger radio, God is a way bigger deal than radio stations.

But the idea being like, it can't be both, right?

So, let me go back and reread you that part. Genesis 35, starting in verse 1.

God said to Jacob, get up, go to Bethel and settle there, right? Go to our special place.

Build an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.

Okay, now look at verse 2. So, Jacob said to his family, and that was interesting,

he didn't say, hey, we got to go to Bethel and worship the Lord.

He says to his family, get rid of your foreign gods.

Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you. Purify yourselves and change your clothes.

We must get up and go to Bethel. I will build an altar there to the God who

answered me in my day of distress. He has been with me everywhere I've gone.

Then they gave Jacob all their foreign gods and their earrings.

I'm assuming here that the earrings were part of like the foreign God worship.

I don't think God has something against like all earrings. I'm assuming These

are like idol earrings So they have idols They got idol earrings And so they're

all Taking them off And gathering their stuff And they give it to Jacob And

it says And Jacob hid them Under the oak Near Shechem I assume hid them Under

the oak Means that he buried them So he buries all the stuff,

and then goes. When he says to his family, I guess, let me point this out.

He realizes we got to get rid of these foreign gods that are among us,

but God didn't actually tell him to do it.

I'm not saying God doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible. He does.

I'm just saying in this passage, God didn't say, get rid of all your foreign gods.

God said, go to Bethel, build an altar and worship me. And Jacob just knew better.

Like Jacob knew like, oh, we're going to have to get rid of all this before I go there.

He just somehow knew better.

And so he says to his family, not only get rid of the gods, he says,

purify yourselves and change your clothes. Why does it matter how they were dressed?

I think he was saying, we need to be different people when we get there.

I think this was a call to repentance. I think he was saying like,

there's a particular thing we're doing, it needs to stop.

And so he says, get rid of the foreign gods that are among you.

So, God just says, worship me.

Jacob realizes that means get rid of the foreign gods that are among you.

Now, that command is later enshrined into the Ten Commandments.

It's the first two commandments. The first commandment is, have no other gods

before me. And the second one is, don't make any idols.

God does not share his worship with another. God does not permit the worship of multiple gods.

And this applies not only to them, this applies to us.

If we are to follow God, we must get rid of all competitors.

If you are to follow God, you must get rid of all competitors.

So here's some advice that I heard from another pastor.

I don't really have a verse for this. This is just advice that I read and I thought it was helpful.

So I'm going to pass it on to you. He said something along this lines.

He said, some idols, the way that we deal with them is by getting rid of them,

like Jacob did, buried them under the oak at Shechem.

Some idols, the way that we handle them is by demoting them back to their proper spot.

So this is going to be kind of an example of it. Let's say this thing that you

idolize, this thing that is taking the place of God, it's competing with God,

it's taking you in a different path with your behavior, with your thinking.

Let's say the thing is porn, okay? Pornography. What are you to do with it?

You need to get rid of it. Like, there's no reason to have it.

There's no value to it. So you just get rid of it. You bury it under the Oak of Shechem. It's to go.

But let's say the thing that you idolize is food or your family or your body.

Like, unless you are taking Matthew 5, 29, literally, that's the cut your hand

off and gouge your eye out passage in the Sermon on the Mount.

Unless you're taking that literally, I think we can all agree that the way to

handle the idolatry of food isn't to never eat again.

The way to handle the idolatry of family is not to utterly forsake your family.

The way to handle the idolatry of your body is not to kill yourself.

When our priorities get sinfully out of line, we have got to start demoting

some things and giving them the value that God does.

Like if we say, well, this is more value to me than God, then what are we to

do with it? Especially if it's something that's got to be a part of your life.

Then you put it at the place that it is to be.

You put God first, God first, tippy top for sure, and then have him decide what

the order of everything else is.

And you go, well, how will I know what his order is of all the other stuff?

Studying God's word will be key into understanding his values.

I know sometimes we go, I don't know, I got to read this. And sometimes it's

really hard. But I'm just saying, if you get over time, the more you get to

know God's word, the more you will know, oh, this is a thing God thinks is a big deal.

Oh, this is a thing God doesn't seem to think is a big deal as I think it is.

Like you will figure that out over time.

And so you come to the point where

let's say the thing you idolize is your family, which some people do.

I can remember, I read this book by an atheist one time where he was talking

about how he visited a church and the pastor said, you're supposed to put God

above your family. And he was like, that seems crazy.

How could any religion expect that you would put God above your family?

In his mind, I guess that was family was like the top tippy top thing.

Nobody could possibly live for anything more than that. And he's like,

that just seems so unreasonable.

And so as we come to know the true God, we go, no, God is more important than everything.

But then now, what do I do with my family? Well, if we look at what God's word

says, your family's not worthless.

So the way you handle is not, well, let me utterly forsake them and never speak to them again.

No, you just put them in the proper spot, which is certainly below God, but is not at worthless.

So you say, I'm going to stop putting this thing above God. And you do that

with your home and you do that with your car and you do that with your money,

and you do that with everything. You put it in its proper place.

The third point is chapter 35 also reminds us that god is the god of generations past,

Isaiah 35 · chapter mention

the god of generations present and he continues with his plan into the future look at verse 12,

as as god is reaffirming this covenant that he has with jacob he says i will

give you the land that i gave to abraham that's his grandfather and isaac that's

his dad and i will give the land to your future descendants,

or your descendants after you.

This reminds me of how, like earlier on, when it was, when it was the staircase

ladder story, like he had said the same thing.

He said, I am the God of Abraham. I am the God of Isaac.

Like I am the God of these, these past generations. Abraham's not even,

he's not even alive anymore.

I don't think at this point in the story, he says, but I'm Abraham's God and I'm Isaac's God.

And I made these promises to them. And I'm making the same promise to you.

And I'm making the same promise to the descendants that come after you.

And God even protected them so that there would be descendants that would come

after them. Did you see how God protected them in this story?

It was just one verse. We might buy it real fast, but it's kind of interesting. Look at verse five.

It says, when they set out, okay, this is when they're going to Bethel.

This is, we just got rid of our

foreign gods. Now we're going to go to the place where I first met God.

When they set out, a terror from God came over the cities around them and they

did not pursue Jacob's sons.

Now that sentence kind of doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you know

the story before, which if you were here last week, you learned the story before.

Do you remember last week?

It was kind of tough. And some of us were like, I don't know if I want to be here.

But here's the thing. The story from last week makes sense of this sentence.

So I guess it was good that we didn't skip it.

In the story before this one, Jacob's sons had killed and plundered a whole village of people.

And Jacob said, and remember, he was very practical. He wasn't super like that

was wrong, but he was like, hey, you just made my life difficult.

Now there's all these people that are going to be angry at us.

Now there's all these people in the region that when they hear what you did,

they're going to come after us. Well, I think he was right.

Like, I think that is what would ordinarily happen. So then it says when they

set out, a terror from God came over the cities around them and they did not pursue Jacob's sons.

It seems to be implying if God had not intervened, what would have happened

is they would have pursued Jacob's sons.

They would have said, let's get rid of these people that are going around killing

everybody let's go and get rid of these people that are ruining the villages.

That that's what would have happened and then god caused a fear to come over

everyone and they said oh let's just let them go by and god protected this family

in the midst of their sin and preserved the covenant that he made with them.

Our God is the God of generations past. He is God right now,

and he will be the God of future generations.

And this is true, not just of the old covenant. This is true of the new covenant.

This is not just, oh, that's cool about land and Abraham and old people. And that's great.

This is about the new covenant as well. This is about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Like the gospel is that God is a God, like within the gospel of Jesus Christ,

God is the God of generations past and us right now and future generations.

Let me show this to you in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 2 verse 36. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know with certainty

Acts 2:36

that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.

So this is years and years later, like thousands of years later here, here we are.

This is the time period of Jesus, Jesus died, rose again, ascended to heaven

about like two months before this.

And this is Peter talking. Peter says, therefore, let all the house of Israel

know, which is interesting. Who's Israel?

Yes, it was in this. This is a hard question. Like it was just earlier in this very sermon. Okay.

Jacob is Israel, right? And so these are the descendants of Jacob that are being

talked about here. These are the citizens of Jerusalem.

And he says, I just want to let all of you know, with certainty,

God made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.

So, so Peter is talking to the descendants of Jacob all these years later in

Jerusalem. And he says, I just want to let you know the Messiah,

that's the guy you killed a couple months ago.

And they went, oh no, that's not good.

If that's true, we shouldn't have done that. So look at the next verse, verse 37.

When they heard this, they came under deep conviction and said to Peter and

the rest of the apostles, brothers, what must we do?

And thank God, Peter didn't go, you're out of luck. Peter said,

look at this, verse 38, repent, Peter said to them and be baptized each of you

in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins,

and you will receive the gift of the Holy spirit.

Peter said, you need to go in a different direction. You need to turn from what

you've been doing. You need to be baptized. I think this is Peter's way of saying

like, you need to join team Jesus.

That's how they would have done that right through baptism.

He'll forgive you of your sins. He'll give you the Holy spirit. And then look at this.

He says, for the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off.

He said, this is the gospel. You could be right with God. And it's not just for you.

Your kids can get on in this. One day when you're dead, your kids can be saved

too. Like he'll be there, God, after you're gone.

Look at this in Ephesians chapter three. Ephesians three, starting in verse 20.

Paul says, now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or

think, this is a reference to God.

According to the power that works in us, to him be the glory.

Now this is interesting.

In the church and in Christ Jesus, to who?

To all generations. for how long? Forever and ever.

That God is to be glorified in his church that goes on to all generations forever and ever.

Our God is the God of generations past. He is the God of generations present, us right now.

And he is the God of future generations.

Let's pray. God, we praise you for that we praise you for being the big giant

god over everything and and not only every person and every geographic area

but every time period i thank you for these sections in genesis,

i thank you for protecting people and passages that we would even look and go

i don't know that they even deserve to be protected and hopefully some of us

will look and go like well wait a minute, but God blesses me,

and I don't deserve that either.

I pray that you would help us, like, as your people, to get rid of any foreign

gods, to remove them or demote whatever it is we must demote so that we would

follow you, that we wouldn't give our attention and our affection to these competitors.

And so I pray you'd help us to do that, to fight against idolatry,

like, in this year, in this congregation, in this county.

Thank you for your grace we thank you for your gospel we thank you that you

will be god even even after we die we pray this in jesus name amen.