November 16, 2025: Pilgrim’s Progress - Genesis 35

Continue in our series in Genesis entitled Legacy of

Blessing, asking basic questions of human flourishing.

What am I, Who am I, and why am I here?

And we've been arguing week after week after week that if

you don't have deep and satisfying answers to these

questions, you're going to have trouble.

And that the Christian religion does deliver beautiful answers

to these questions through Holy Scripture in the testimony of

the church. We have seen in Genesis that the

Lord provides in all of these categories, particularly in the

promises that come to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob promises to

make them a place to live in the land of Canaan, to grow their

family into a great nations. They have a people to whom they

belong and also to give them holy work to be a blessing to

the nations. We've also seen through the

stories of the patriarchs and even before that in Genesis, how

badly sin disrupts and threatens these promises.

So instead of having a home because of sin, there is exile.

Instead of having family, you have even brothers murdering

each other or threatening to murder each other.

And instead of having divine and holy work to bless the nation's,

we see catastrophic cursing the spread of evil.

What we need to see as the stories resolve, as God's

promises are experienced, is for the patriarchs to experience

home, to experience peace with one another, and to promote

blessing when not only within their family but into the

nations around them. Last week we saw a horrible

story as we went all the way down to the depths of despair.

Talk a little bit about the context.

We go down into this horrible place of sin as Dinah, the

daughter of Jacob, is violated and as her brothers destroy the

males of a city to enact their vengeance.

And we're wondering what in the world how can?

How can they live here if this is what is going to happen?

How can they be a people under this kind of threat?

Jacob is terrified. He says my numbers are few, and

if the Canaanites gather themselves against me and attack

me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.

How can this be? And how will we possibly engage

the nations with blessing instead of genocide?

As we enter into chapter 35 and we're desperate for a solution,

the narrative tension is ratcheted up to a high point.

We need God to act, and indeed He does.

Chapter 35 and we see in chapter 35A Itinerary for a journey.

As the as Jacob's generation is coming to a close, we're going

to see him go on a journey with God into the land.

He's going to go back to the places that were important to

his father and to his grandfather.

He's going to experience high spiritual highs and devastating

spiritual lows on this journey. He's going to mark the places as

he goes in sequence and we're going to see how that is

insightful for us today because we too are on a journey.

We too walk with God. We walk with God.

So I'll work my way through this chapter and make some comments

and summarize and we will then look at some applications for us

today. Like Jacob, our father before

us, we walk with God. God said to Jacob, arise, go to

Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God

who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.

You remember the story. Esau is threatening murder.

Jacob flees for his life. He ends up in Bethel.

God comes to him, gives him a great vision of a stairway to

heaven, gives him a an Oracle saying that he is the God of

Abraham his grandfather and Isaac his father, and he is

going to give the blessings to Jacob as well promises to be

with him wherever he goes. Though Jacob is in great

distress and now here he's in distress again and God tells him

to go back where it all started. Go back to Bethel, verse 2.

So Jacob said to his household. Put Jacob said to his household,

and to all who are with him, Put away the foreign gods that are

among you, and purify yourselves, and change your

garments. Then let us arise and go to

Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the Lord who answers

me in the day of my distress, and has been with me wherever I

have gone. Interesting.

Jacob was so silent in the atrocities that came before, and

now he's acting in accordance to his faith.

An answer to this call and he asks his family to purge the

idols from among them, that they're going to go on this

journey to Bethel acting like a father and even a priest in this

text, verse 4, amazingly, they comply.

Verse 4 says so they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that

they had and the rings that were in their ears.

Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near

Shechem, this dysfunctional family that just destroyed a

city. Jacob buries their idols

underneath a tree and they're going to leave that place.

You'll remember he's scared because the Canaanites around

may band together and destroy us.

They're afraid, but God is going to act on their behalf.

Let's continue in verse 5. And as they journeyed, A terror

from God fell upon the cities that were around them so that

they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.

Jacob came to loose. That is Bethel, which is in the

land of Canaan, he and all the people that were with him, and

there he built an altar and called the place El Bethel

because we're there. God had revealed himself to him

when he fled from his brother. He's back to the place where it

all began making good on the vows that he made to God in the

1st place. That God, if you'll be with me,

I, you will be my God. Now he's back here building an

altar, worshipping the Lord. No, the text then is going to in

verse 8 to tell us of a death. In fact, this chapter contains 3

funerals as we see the older generation pass off the scene

and one from Jacob's generation pass off the scene.

And in this journey of Jacob's, this pilgrimage of Jacob's,

there's the the high highs of renewing the vows at Bethel, but

also the low lows as people die. Verse 8 says in Deborah,

Rebecca's nurse died and she was buried under an oak below

Bethel. So he called his.

So he called it's name alone. Bakuth, Rebecca's nurse took

care of his mother. Deborah's probably the closest

thing Jacob has to a grandmother.

This is a sad situation and as he buried the idols below a

tree, now he's burying his mother's nurse under another

tree. Verse 9 says God appeared to

Jacob again when he came from Padan Aram and blessed him, and

God said to him, your name is Jacob.

No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall

be called your name. So he called his name Israel.

We learned before in a previous text that Jacob's name means

grasper or deceiver, and we see his early life, him functioning

in that way, tricking his father, tricking his brother.

Then we learn as he grows in exile, as he is oppressed and

learning to depend on the Lord, and then as he wrestles with an

Angel from the Lord all night long, he's given this new name

Israel. That means that you have

wrestled with God and have overcome and God's reiterating

this change of name and he's going to go on and and continue

to expand and explain the blessings.

Verse 11 And God said to him, I am El Shaddai, I am God

Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply.

Looked at this before. Be fruitful and multiply, as a

refrain in Genesis goes all the way back to the very beginning.

Be fruitful and multiply. This is your purpose.

A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and

king shall come from your own body.

The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you,

and I will give the land to your offspring after you.

God reiterates and expands upon the blessings.

Verse 13. Then God went up from him in the

place where he had spoken with him, and Jacob set up a pillar

in the place where he has spoken with him, a pillar of stone.

He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it.

So Jacob called the name of the place where God has spoken with

him. Bethel sets up a pillar.

He marks this memory. God came to me again after all

these years reiterated the promises, but the journey

continues. The the pilgrimage extends verse

16. Then they journeyed from Bethel

when they were still some distance from Efrath.

Rachel went into labor and she had a hard labor and when her

labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, do not fear

for you have another son. And as her soul was departing

for she was dying. She called his name Ben One, but

his father called him Benjamin. These words in Hebrew, Ben honey

means son of my sorrow, and Benjamin means son of my right

hand. And so you see this commingled

devastation, losing the wife of his young love, but being given

a son on the same day. So Rachel died and she was

buried on the way to Ephrath. That is Bethlehem, and Jacob set

up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel's

tomb, which is there to this day.

Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent toward the tower of

Adair. Text slows down and gives you

just such sad detail as we go through the labor and the

delivery and the ebbing out of life of Rachel, the naming, the

setting up of a gravestone. And then he moves on to the next

stage of his pilgrimage. Verse 22 Devastating.

While Israel lived in that land, Reuben is his first born son,

went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel

heard of it. What is happening?

His son, his first born son, commits incestuous adultery with

his wife. He is betrayed, and any parent

who has experienced the devastating consequences of sin

in their children can't help but be shaken by the Spurs.

This is an act of rebellion, probably an attempt by the first

born to claim his status as the heir.

It sets up a bunch of stuff that's going to come up in

chapters later. We're going to have to move on,

though, as the text does with a genealogy.

You're wondering, why are there genealogies here?

And this is kind of in common. It's parallel with Abraham's

story and Isaac's before now, Jacob, that we kind of come to

the end of their generational time in the spotlight.

You get genealogies about what happens with their families as

you are the reader focused to look to the next generation.

Now the sons of Jacob were 12, the sons of Leva of Leah, Reuben

Jacobs, first born Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun, the

sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin, the sons of Bilhah,

Rachel's servant Dan and Naphtali, the sons of Zilpa,

Leah's servant Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who

were born to him in Padan Aram. Then in verse 27, we learn about

yet one more funeral on this journey, this pilgrimage with

Jacob, verse 27, And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre or

Kiriat Arba. That is Hebron, where Abraham

and Isaac has sojourned. He finally came home.

Rebecca, his mother, is not here.

She's not mentioned again until chapter 49 where it mentions her

tomb. He's home now.

The days of Isaac were 180 years.

And Isaac breathed his last, and he died and was gathered to his

people, old and full of days, and his sons, Esau and Jacob

buried him. Couple of things to remark about

that. One is that Esau and Jacob are

in the text together at the funeral of their dad.

Another picture of the reconciliation, which seemed

impossible. But it's also a generational

echo because if you'll remember, the sons of Abraham, Isaac and

Ishmael were together at their father's tomb when it was time

to bury their dad. Reconciliation among bitter

rivals. Hard journey, Highs and lows

simultaneous. So much like the lives that we

live. We get good news and bad news,

sometimes within hours of each other.

We walk with God through this life, and we understand that we

have sacred places on our pilgrimage, sacred places

perhaps of repentance and renewal and fulfilling of vows

and promises. And as our joys are commingled

with sorrow, we may even experience betrayal by the

people that are closest to us, even our sons and daughters.

We experience birth and we experience death and burial, but

we also experience reconciliation, and we look

toward the future, wondering what God is going to next.

Because friends, we walk with God to a place.

And like Bunyan and his masterpiece, Pilgrim's Progress,

he's teaching us and the Bible teaches us.

So we're walking with God where we're walking with God to the

Celestial City. Aren't we the Celestial City?

And the only reason that we can walk with God to the Celestial

City is because of the work of Jesus Christ, Son of the living

God, who also went on a pilgrimage with very distinct

stages, went through sacred places in order to win for us a

pathway to heaven. Let's think for a second about

our Lord Jesus Christ, son of Jacob.

We can note that our Lord Jesus buries our sin under a tree and

gives us clean clothes as we repent and cling to Him.

By faith we bury. He buries our idols under the

ground under the tree of Calvary, and the Bible says that

we are given righteous robes purchased for us by His blood.

Jacob in this text is moving to where God told him to go.

He needs to get to Bethel and then he needs to get to Hebron.

And our Lord Jesus knew what he was about and where he was

going. And the Bible tells us that he

set his face to Jerusalem. Even when people are telling

him, no, don't go there, they're going to kill you, he stays.

He sets his face to Jerusalem. He has a walk to make with God

to fulfill his mission in Calgary.

Benjamin, little baby Benjamin, whose mother died giving birth.

Benjamin named Son of Sorrow and son of the right hand.

We can think about Jesus because Jesus is a man of sorrows, isn't

he? But he is also the Son at the

right hand of God, the Father in heaven, the Son of sorrow and

the Son at the right hand. Jacob is betrayed by Reuben, his

first born, who invaded sacred marriage as an act of rebellion.

Our Lord is nothing like that at all, though he is the first

born. He is ever faithful, ever

chaste, the perfect groom, the righteous.

He is the true first born and the heir of all things.

This Jacob's son, the Lord Jesus Christ, will reconcile all

things. We see enemies Esau and Jacob

together burying their father. The Lord Jesus Christ can

reconcile warring disciples, warring family members, and

bring Shalom to the most difficult places imaginable.

So because because of what God has done for us in Christ, we

friends, Christians can walk this journey with God.

But maybe you're not a Christian yet.

You will notice in this text that it starts with repentance,

the burial of idols in the cleaning of clothes.

And the text calls us to believe in the name of the Lord Jesus

Christ. And you shall be saved.

If you haven't given your heart to the Lord, do it today.

Cry out to him. Lord Jesus, I'm a Sinner.

I'm tired of running from you come into my heart and life.

Forgive me of my sin. I want what the preachers

talking about and then begin this new journey, this Pilgrims

Rd. There's going to be suffering.

There's going to be high times. There's going to be low times.

It begins with repentance as we walk with God to the Celestial

City. But what are some other ways

that we can apply this text? Friends thinking this through,

thinking about journeys and how we mark sacred spaces and create

memories. And I think that's all beautiful

and something that I would encourage all of us to do in

your journey with God, Mark the miles.

Mark the miles. Where did you first find

repentance? Was it beside your parents couch

in your living room when you were a little kid?

Was it in youth group? Was it at summer camp?

Was it and the church service is some country church somewhere?

Where did you find repentance? That is a sacred place.

Mark the mile. We mark our highs and our lows.

In this text, Jacob is setting up pillars, but he's also

setting up gravestones. Gravestones are sacred markers

of sacred places, but they represent pain and loss.

We set these up to remember, but we also set them up to look

forward to what Christ will do when he raises the dead.

We mark miles, our highs and our lows, but this is this is

important not only for our own lives, but I think it's

tremendously, tremendously important as we're building

legacy into the next generation. And whether you currently have

kids or whether your kids are grown up and you have grandkids

or maybe you have no children at all, but you have spiritual

children and spiritual grandchildren, friends, we mark

the miles. But then we revisit these.

We revisit these places sometimes literally take your

kids or grandkids on a roots tour.

Show them those sacred places. Tell them what happened there.

They're going to act like you're weird.

Possibly they may say things like, when's this wrapping up

and where's my ice cream? You promised.

I get it. But friends take heart.

They're listening more than you think they are, and they'll

remember things that you said years later, things that you've

long forgotten. So take them.

Revisit those places. Tell them the story.

Show them the mile markers, which is the next thing.

Tell the story. You have to kind of go through

the process of thinking what these markers are and then

sharing them with one another. Friends, I have news for you.

Your story is not your story. It doesn't belong to you.

It's God's story, a story of redeeming love coming through

the pain and joy of your unique stained glass window, filling a

room full of warm light of all different colors.

It doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the glory of the

One who's writing it, and it belongs to the people who need

to hear it. Besides this book, the strongest

thing we have is Christian biography and testimony.

But when we tell these stories, we don't tell them in a braggy

way. Let me tell you how awesome I

am. No, Paul teaches us how to tell

these stories. We are to boast in Christ.

You have good glory to his name. So when you tell your story,

boast. And what the Lord is doing, how

he's writing this story and tell those, the next generation, how

they fit in, because you see how they repeat themselves over and

over and over again. Now as we're marking the miles

and as we're revisiting the past and as we're telling the story,

would be really, really hard to get stuck in the past.

Maybe, you know, people who are stuck in the past, but that's

not the point of this, to get stuck in some nostalgia about

the good old days. No, the point of looking back is

to look forward, look forward, look forward.

Jacob looks back to what happened to Beth El.

He's going to get there again and he's going to remember it

there. And then he's going to continue

on to Hebron. He's not stuck.

We look forward to the Celestial City, recognizing that we are

just passing through as aliens and strangers.

And though we may love this place and find a deer, if we

cling too hard, then we don't die well.

And we need to look forward to that which the Lord is preparing

for us. The New Testament, the book of

Hebrews, which I believe is a sermon.

The preacher goes back to the patriarchs to make this very

point. I'm going to read to you from

Hebrews 11. I'm going to read to you from

Hebrews 11, beginning in verse 8.

Hear the word of the Lord by faith.

Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that

he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out not

knowing where he was going by faith.

He went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land,

living in tents with Isaac, and Jacob airs with him of the same

promise, for he was looking forward.

He was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose

designer and builder is God. Let's not forget Sarah.

By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she

was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had

promised. Therefore from one man and him

as good as dead were born descendants, as many as the

stars of heaven, and as as numerable as and as the

innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

All these patriarchs and matriarchs died in faith, not

having received the things promised, but having seen them

and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they

were strangers and exiles on the earth.

For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a

homeland. If they had been thinking of

that land from which they had gone out, they would have had

the opportunity return. But as it is, friends, friends.

But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a

heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to

be called their God, for He has prepared for them and for you

and for me, a city. Look forward, look forward.

As I conclude, I'm going to share a story with you about how

these sacred spaces, sacred places, and the tendency for

things to loop back on themselves has happened to me.

I'm just old enough that my life starts to loop back on itself in

really interesting ways. So early this fall, we headed up

to Goshen, my hometown. I was raised in Sugar Grove

Church in Goshen, IN. My parents are still there.

They've been there for 40 years. All through my formation.

In those early days, I was at Sugar Grove Church, got baptized

in that church. My Grandpa Kennedy's buried in

the graveyard right outside the church, can remember his

funeral. So we were heading up to Goshen

for a very special evening, a Sunday night, because Matt, my

brother, my other brother, the brother you don't know, his

three children, my 2 nieces and nephew were getting baptized

that night. It's Sugar Grove Church.

It's an outdoor service. The evening was beautiful,

service was beautiful. And I'm sitting there in my lawn

chair and I'm thinking, huh? Matt and Eric and I, we got

baptized all in one night, all together just a few 100 feet

back there. Now all these years have gone by

and I'm seeing my nieces and my nephews in the same spot almost,

and grandpa's buried right over there and what is happening to

me? Look at how things kind of fold

back on themselves. And then I thought, well that

was beautiful, but we know we got to get back to Upland.

It's a 2 hour drive and it's getting late, but I couldn't

leave after the service. Friends, you know why?

Because all of these folks that raised me in the faith kind of

gathered around and formed a line.

They wanted to greet me. They wanted to hug me.

They wanted to tell me that they love me.

They wanted to meet my, my children.

So I'm looking at these 70 year olds who were in their 30s when

I was in that church and receiving such warm words of, of

blessing and encouragement. And I thought to myself, wow,

this is what this is what legacy means.

When the Bible's talking about the legacy of blessing, that's

what it means. And I came home so blessed.

And the next day, because we have our staff meetings on

Monday and the next day I just, I'm like, I have to tell my, the

staff, what happened to me. This is something to share with

the staff. And I shared the story that you

just heard. And I said to them, guys, look,

sometimes this is discouraging. It's hard work.

But you know what just happened to me?

I just talked to my Sunday school teachers from 30 years

ago and they met my kids. And what if that happens to you?

What? What if that happens to you?

You faithfully serve the Lord and somehow time sort of circles

around and you meet that squirrely little Rascal that you

had such a hard time with in Sunday school and now look

married children. And you can see that the

investment that you made, even when it was hard, it's now

bearing fruit downstream fruit, and it's multiplying.

We get so few glimpses of that. So much of that is for heaven.

We get so few glimpses of that. The Lord was generous to me.

I got 1. And I pray that that happens to

you because ministry is hard. Joys and sorrows together.

But what we're going to do is we're going to walk with the

Lord. We're going to recognize when he

fulfills his promises. We're going to get our new

names. We're going to bury people.

We're going to welcome the new babies.

And years from now, maybe millennia from now, we will get

to see our reward, which isn't like streets of gold and crystal

sea, as cool as that is. It's the people, It's the

nations, it's the be fruitful and multiply.

Now look at this massive Kingdom of God and y'all had a part in

it. May that be our legacy, may that

be my legacy, may that be your legacy.

No matter how bad the pain and the dysfunction is in your life,

you cannot top what we just read in the Bible, no matter how hard

your story is. And it's really hard.

I know it's really hard and I have full compassion for that.

But God is greater. God is greater then all of our

sin. We sing about it, we cling to

him, we believe it as best we can in this, in this side, as

the Holy Spirit empowers us. To conclude.

Friends, the Christian life is a journey.

It's a pilgrimage. We progress along the road of

joy and sorrow, walking with God who fulfills his promises until

we finally arrive at home with him forever.

Let us pray, Father, we humble ourselves before your greatness

and your mercy and your love. We confess our sins.

We ask for clean clothes. We pray that you would encourage

us. We're in despair, and let us

have humility when we are rejoicing.

Bless us now as we respond to You in song.

And I pray that as we enter this week that we'll be on mission to

bless the nation's. In Jesus name we pray, and by

the Spirit one God forevermore, Amen.