October 8, 2004
Genesis 35
BACK TO BETHEL
This is the final message in our series on the life of Jacob. Next week we will be picking up the story of Joseph. Before we look at the last message from Jacob’s life, I want to briefly step back and do a retrospective. It struck me this week that in the story of Jacob’s spiritual journey, we see recorded for us three very common landmark experiences that mark the spiritual journeys of many children of God. I think these are valuable to point out and use as a basis of comparison for our own spiritual journeys. As I highlight them, I would encourage you to ponder the question: Has this happened to me? Does it need to happen to me?
Spiritual Experience # 1: The journey from family faith to personal faith.
I believe that this is a universal experience of every true child of God. There must come a time when family faith becomes personal. When what we’ve heard from the church, from parents, or from a Christian world view, becomes actual personal faith. We saw that happen in Jacob’s life when he left home to journey to Haran and God appeared to him in a dream. We saw that this journey had two ingredients. First was a personal awareness of the presence of God in our lives. The awesome awareness that God is in this place. That God is with me. The second is the experience of actually trusting in the promises of God for ourselves, and seeing God answer prayer and keep his promises.
Spiritual Experience # 2: The journey from reliance on personal strategies and strength to trust in God and God alone.
We saw this last week in the wrestling match between Jacob and God, when Jacob finally came to the end of his own strength, and found himself simply clinging to God and crying out for his grace and his blessing. I believe there is a heart like Jacob’s in all of us. We all tend to rely on our own strength and strategies. God may use a variety of paths and take us through different kinds of experiences, but I believe that it is his goal to bring each of us eventually to that point of yieldedness and brokenness, to that point of weakness where we finally begin to trust in him and in him alone.
Today we come to a third landmark experience in the life of Jacob. While it may not be a universal experience, I believe that it is one that is so common as to be virtually universal. What is it?
Some years ago, while we were living in Kenya, we rented a favorite cottage for a holiday at a small village called Msambweni, on the coast. To get to the cottage, we had to leave the main road and travel several miles over some very rough road. On this particular occasion, this was made even more difficult by the fact that it was pouring rain, and so the many holes and low spots in the road were filled with water. Then, to complicate matters even further, we found the road we usually used was blocked by a large tree that had fallen across it in the storm. We were forced to use a back road that was in even worse condition and completely unfamiliar.
We continued to pick our way carefully through the flooded holes and over the rocks until we came to a fork in the road. “Road” at this point was a bit of a euphemism for the track we were following. But there were two clearly discernible tracks, and we had to choose one. There was no sign. It was a 50-50 proposition. As I surveyed the two roads, the one to the left immediately plunged into a wide mud-hole. The one on the right offered smoother travel. So I chose the one on the right. It began well enough, but gradually, as we traveled, this track became narrower and narrower, giving less and less sign of being in regular use. Finally, I stopped and asked a man who was sheltering from the rain under a large tree.
“Is this the road to Msambweni?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he answered. “You must go back to the last fork in the road and turn the other way.”
At that point in our journey, I faced an unpleasant fact of life. In order to go forward to my destination, I first needed to go back. I needed to retrace my steps and go back to where I had left the correct road.
Sometimes in our spiritual journey we make wrong choices. We choose the wrong path. Or we choose a series of wrong paths. The decisions may be small or large. They may have been made with careful consideration, or rushed into without much thought. We may get onto the wrong road through one large, dramatic wrong choice, or an almost imperceptible accumulation of small wrong choices.
But however we got onto the wrong road, there comes a time when we face the spiritual reality. To go forward, we need to go back.
We find Jacob in such a position in Genesis 35. We left Jacob last week limping across the Jabbok River, following that great turning point, that climactic event in his spiritual life. In that dramatic night, he was brought to the end of his own strength and brought into a place of reliance upon the blessing of God alone.
I wish I could say that following that dramatic turning point, Jacob, now renamed Israel, went on from strength to strength and from victory to victory in his spiritual life. But I would be lying if I told you that. Jacob continued to waver and wobble, and revert back to his old character traits all too frequently. This vacillation is even evidenced by the Biblical writer’s use of his names. In the case of Abraham, when God changed his name from Abram to Abraham, there is a dramatic shift in the text. He is never again referred to in the book of Genesis by the name Abram, but always as Abraham, the father of many nations. But it’s a very different picture with Jacob. He is given the new name of Israel, the one who struggles with God. But in the pages that follow, he is still frequently called Jacob. In fact it is interesting to trace the uses of the two names. There is a gradual shifting toward the end of Genesis, as the name Israel begins to predominate. But the name Jacob is never dropped completely. Throughout his life, Jacob continued to struggle with his old sinful tendencies. Even in the immediate afterglow of his all night wrestling match with God, we find that his old sinful habits reasserted themselves.
In Genesis 33, we do have the great story of his reunion with Esau, as Esau welcomes him with open arms. But immediately following the reunion, Esau suggests that they continue the journey together. Jacob declines, citing his need to travel slowly because of his children and his herds of animals. Esau then offers to leave some of his men as an escort. Again Jacob refuses, saying that there is no need of such a provision.
“Just go ahead,” Jacob said, “and we will follow at a slower pace.” But as soon as the dust of Esau and his entourage settled in the distance, Jacob turned away and traveled due west rather than south. I am not sure what Jacob’s motives were. Possibly he did not quite trust Esau’s good will and change of heart. I am not sure if there was a right or wrong in terms of Jacob’s travel plans. But I do think he was wrong to once again deceive his brother, instead of being straight with him. The old character flaw is still apparent.
Jacob proceeds to settle near a town called Shechem. This begins a time of drifting, both spiritually and morally, for Jacob and his family. This period probably lasted for 10 years or more.
At the end of that time, God came to Jacob. It is recorded in Genesis 35:1: Then God said to Jacob, ‘Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.’
“Jacob, you need to go back to Bethel where I first appeared to you. Jacob, to go forward, you need to go back.”
I wonder if God would say the same thing to us today? Have we gotten off track, taken the wrong turn? Have we settled down in Shechem, drifting, falling asleep spiritually? Do we need to be reawakened spiritually? Do we need to return to our own personal Bethel? Sometimes, to go forward, we need to go back.
(Read Genesis 35:1-7)
From these verses, I would highlight 3 steps in the process of going back to Bethel, each beginning with the letter R.
This comes through very clearly in this passage. Why does God tell Jacob to go back to Bethel? Because that’s where he first appeared to him. In each of our spiritual lives, I believe there are milestones, spiritual markers, times and places where significant things happened in our hearts and souls. Part of going back involves calling those times and places to remembrance. Do you remember when you came to faith in Christ? Do you remember that time you made a commitment at a conference or retreat or a campfire service to give yourself to renewed service for Christ? Do you remember the last time you felt totally in tune with God? There is a time and a place for what we might call “spiritual nostalgia.”
Bethel was a word, a name that would always ring with special power in Jacob’s life. When God said to Jacob, Go back to Bethel, he is first of all calling him to remember. And Jacob did. Look at his words to his family in verse 3: Come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.
Jacob was called to remember.
Verse 2f: So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, ‘Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. Then come let us go up to Bethel…so they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem. Then they set out..
Before we can make the journey back to Bethel, we have to remove those things which have crept into our lives and that are hindering us from living in obedience to Christ. This passage of Scripture bears witness to one of the greatest dangers to our spiritual lives. It is the danger of syncretism. It is the danger of compromising our commitment to God with the worship of other gods.
I am not sure where these idols came from in Jacob’s household. They may have brought them along from Haran. Or, very possibly, during their ten years of living near Shechem, they had begun to adopt the worship practices of their neighbors. “Worshiping the God of Abraham and Isaac is great as far as it goes, but why not hedge our bets, and cover all our bases, and also give some sacrifices to the local gods?”
Now, most of us do not come from societies or cultures in which the worship of actual idols is a particular temptation. But if we expand the concept of idolatry to include anything that we set up in our lives as more important and more worthy of our attention and affection and trust than God, I wonder if we all may not need to do a little spiritual housecleaning.
It’s important to recognize this truth. You can’t come back to Bethel, carrying your idols with you. You have to remove them, repent of your false worship, and seek spiritual cleansing. In the story in front of us, Jacob’s family responded, and they gave up their idols, and their ear rings, which were apparently amulets and objects of worship as well, and Jacob took them and buried them.
Is there something you need to remove from your life in order to go back to Bethel?
Go back to that place of closeness to God, of fellowship with him, and of obedience to his will. I like the simple words of verse 5: then they set out. No lingering, no delay. We continue in verse 6: Jacob and all the people with him came to Luz (that is Bethel) in the land of Canaan. There he built an altar and he called the place El Bethel, because it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.”
Can you sense Jacob’s excitement as he approached the spot? Can you sense the waves of awe and worship that washed over him? Possibly he was able to identify the actual spot, possibly even the actual stone he had set up as a pillar. 30 years is a long time, but those years faded away as he remembered his sense of awe at the presence of God in this isolated spot. There was no doubt a sense of suppressed excitement as he gathered the stones for the altar.
And as he bowed in worship and called on the name of the Lord over that altar, the voice of God came clearly to him again, and blessed him. (Genesis 35:v.10) ‘Your name is Jacob, but your name will be Israel. Then in v. 11-12: ‘I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body. The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.’ Then in v. 14: Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him and he poured out a drink offering on it; he also poured oil on it. It was an act of worship that duplicated and therefore recalled him to that earlier occasion.
In verse 15 it says: Then Jacob called the place where God had talked with him Bethel. Earlier, the giving of the name was a private occasion. Now, he pronounces the name in the presence of his family and extended household. Jacob had come home to his spiritual roots. Jacob had come back to Bethel.
Here is the third landmark in Jacob’s spiritual journey. As I said, it may not be a universal one, but it is one that is so common as to be virtually universal.
Spiritual Experience # 3: The journey back to our own personal Bethel.
Do you need to come back to your personal Bethel? Have you drifted away? Have you allowed your love to grow cold? Has the altar of your life become cluttered with other gods, other objects of worship and trust?
Take stock. Think back. Hear the words of Jesus to the church in Ephesus from the book of Revelation 2:4-5: I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.
It can happen so subtly, so gradually, that we are not even aware that it has happened. Like a fire in the fireplace that gradually burns to embers and then to ash as we doze in front of it. Wake up! Rekindle the fire! Remember those times of closeness to God. Remove those false objects of worship from your life. Return to Bethel. Return to your first love.
So, in the story of Jacob’s spiritual journey, we see recorded for us three very common landmark experiences that mark the spiritual journeys of many children of God. I think these are valuable to use as a basis of comparison for our own spiritual journeys. To ponder the question: Has this happened to me? Does it need to happen to me?
Spiritual Experience # 1: The journey from family faith to personal faith.
Spiritual Experience # 2: The journey from reliance on personal strategies and strength to trust in God and God alone.
And finally:
Spiritual Experience # 3: The journey back to our own personal Bethel.