Go and I will be with you

 Read Genesis 31

Jacob took advantage of his older brother and got his birthright for a bowl of stew.  We don’t see that sort of deal until Europeans arrive in the New World and purchased Manhattan Island for $24. That’s the story.  Revisionists now estimate the purchase worth closer to $1000.  In any case, it was the deal of the century.

Back to Jacob.  He traded a bowl of stew for his brother’s birthright.

Jacob deceived his father, Isaac, and received the blessing reserved for the older son.

Jacob was deceived by Laban and ended up married to Leah instead of Rachel. 

Jacob convinced Laban to give him as wages all of the spotted and speckled animals and then devised a scheme so most of the herds were spotted and speckled.  Laban might have vacillated between spotted and striped, but whichever it was is what the flocks bore as offspring.

Jacob’s flocks and herds grew, but eventually, Laban and his sons realized that something was amiss.  Their flocks were shrinking.  Jacob’s were growing.

Jacob got that feeling that it was time to leave town.  You might call it the 20-year itch.

Remember, that Jacob had left his father and mother to flee to relatives in the east because his brother Esau wanted to kill him.

Now Laban would like to put Jacob in a headlock and get even, whatever form that would take. Surely, he wouldn’t kill him…

It was time for Jacob to get out of Dodge.

We see no discussion or meditation upon the thought that the last time he saw his brother, Esau wanted to kill him.

Was it that the risk of remaining with Laban was greater than that of returning to his brother?  We see that Jacob had many reasons to leave, but he did not leave until one more thing took place.

What was that defining event?

God told Jacob to return to the land of his fathers.  But what about Esau?  Would it just be a long trip to walk into a murderous trap?

Listen to what God told Jacob.

Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you.”

God told Jacob that he would be with him.  Go and I will be with you.

Go and I will be with you.

Had Tom drafted this chapter, he might have said this instead.

Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Ollie.

Jacob was between a rock and a hard place.  Laban was angry with Jacob and did not treat him well but Esau might kill Jacob on sight.

          Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Ollie Jacob.

But God was delivering the instructions.

Go and I will be with you.

While all the human reasons told Jacob that he needed to part Laban’s company; it was the direction of God that led to action.

He told his wives to get packed.  They were leaving right away.  They didn’t object much.  In fact, they seemed to resent the way their father had treated them.  They were property.  They were treated as foreigners in their father’s household.  They were ready to go as well without any convincing required on the part of Jacob.

They were ready to go to a place that none but Jacob had ever seen.

Among the things that the girls gathered for the journey were Laban’s household idols.  Rachel took her father’s idols.  There is all manner of discussion as to why she took them and as to their significance.  Many are convincing but none are conclusive.

What is conclusive is that these people from which Abraham’s children would get wives were not quite attuned to the thought of no other gods and no graven images.  Those commandments were centuries down the road, but Laban knew God’s voice when he commanded him not to say anything to Jacob good or bad.

The word for household idols is teraphim (ter-aw-feme') – תְּרָפִים.  This one word seems to mean household idol.  I was expecting one word for the modifier—household, and another for the noun—idol.

But it was all rolled into one Hebrew word—teraphim. 

Why should anyone care?  Think about it.  There is one word for household idol.  One word.

Let me take this to Oklahoma.  Hey!  Who wants a Coke?

Of course, someone will say yes, so the reply is what kind?

Dr. Pepper.

Now the connoisseur of soft drinks knows that those are two separate drinks, but the evolution of our language lumps them all under the category of a Coke. It’s part of our language now.

Household idols was one word in the Hebrew language.  It’s almost a proper name.  It’s one thing.

Again, why does anyone care?

The term--the word--household idols was just a thing.  Everyone who was anyone had household idols.  What a crazy time. The one true God spoke to Laban and Laban knew who was talking to him, but Laban had household idols.

He knew the one true God and he had household idols.

In the mid-1990s, Florida was in a drought.  It rained all of the time in Florida except this one year.  When it doesn’t rain in Florida, it’s different than when it doesn’t rain in Oklahoma.  Years' worth of vegetation form a thatch.

That is, there is layered fuel for the fire all around.  There may not be a tree in sight, but there is fuel.  The fire would burn and continue to burn through these layers sometimes unseen until it hit trees or other above-ground fuel.

There were several months when we listened to reports of fires moving to different areas.  Then one day I was at my desk in my office and one of the ladies in the office came in to tell me that the fire was moving towards where I lived.

I jumped in my truck and headed home.  There were some detours enroute due to the fire.  I finally got home and after watching the fire seem to retreat and head out towards the sea, the sun went down and the wind changed and the fire was again headed towards us, this time with a bit more passion.

So, I left my vantage point and returned to the house to evacuate.  When I returned, I found a big stack of photo albums waiting for me.  These were supposed to go in my truck.

We had to take our household gods with us.

You might think that I would have first loaded my golf clubs, but those household gods were always in the truck ready to go.

We and the house we lived in survived the fire.  It came within a hundred yards or so of where we lived before it found better fuel and turned, so I got to unload all of our household gods.

The photo albums were important. They weren’t really gods.  They were stored in a closet most of the time. They did not really occupy first place in our lives, but sometimes simple things do seem to come before God.

So by way of a personal challenge, I ask us all to think now if we have any household gods.  Do we have things that come before God or are equal to God?

What about our jobs?  What about our kid’s sports? What about our favorite actors or musicians? Do we idolize them?

Have we put something before God? It might not be so easy to recognize.  It may be a household god.  It’s always there.  It’s always present.  Sometimes it preoccupies our minds, and then our hearts, and the entire process often goes unnoticed.

Here is a household god that we see more and more today.  We see it more because of social media, but it is the household god of being right.

Have you seen people online who can’t just accept that other people might have different opinions than they do?  They must argue every point with everybody.  They must be right.

Learning in the course of discourse has been discarded for having to be right.  I think having to be right is a long-time household god that has come to prominence in the last couple decades of this age because of the technology available in this age.

If we truly look at ourselves, I think that most Christians will find that we have one or two or many things that come close to being household gods.  Some may clearly have surpassed the one true God as far as being important in our lives.

Why do I focus so much on the term household god?  They are subtle.  They seem to go unnoticed most of the time.  We have to deliberately look at them and decide where they stand in our lives.

Sometimes we think that we are under attack by the Evil One and he is leading a mighty army against believers when the biggest battles that we fight are those subtle ones that disguise themselves are just household things—regular things—ordinary things.

Sometimes a regular thing is just a regular thing.  Sometimes it might be a household idol.  Think about it.  Examine your lives.  Only you know what is most important, but you have to issue the BOLO in your household.

Be on the lookout for household idols—for things that compete with God’s place in your life.

Here’s the catch.  If something in your life is more important than God, it becomes so easy to rationalize that it’s also necessary. 

Satan may attack you head-on.  Call upon the name of Jesus to defeat him.

Household idols—household gods—use guerilla tactics.  They don’t launch a frontal attack.  They may already be within your lines.  They subtly attrite your weaknesses.

Be on the lookout for household idols.  They burn like an underground fire.

Let’s leave Tom’s metaphors and get back to Jacob.  There’s a bunch going on between Jacob and his wives and between Jacob and Laban, but this is what I hope you take into your week.

God told Jacob to go and that he would be with him and Jacob went.  He just picked up his estate and left town. He went. He went at once.

What if we were told to do that?

Have we been told to do that? Let’s consider the end of Matthew’s gospel.

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Jesus told us to go and that he would be with us.

Go and I will be with you.

He told Jacob to go and that he would be with him. We are not moving back to where we fled 20 years ago.  We are moving into the world and bringing good news and God is going with us.  God is with us.

So, consider the story of Jacob returning to the land of his fathers and everything that goes with that story.  Now consider our story which is still in the making.  We both have the same directions and support from God.

Go and I will be with you.

OBTW—don’t pack your household gods for the trip. Just pack God’s directions.

Go and I will be with you.

Amen.

Trusting God in Deceptive Times

 Read Genesis 31

Jacob’s nom de guerre was deceiver and it seemed that he lived up to that nickname. He deceived his father.  He deceived Laban after Laban deceived him, and so we must consider this whole striped and speckled animal business.

Was Jacob really so smart as to deceive Laban into surrendering most of his flocks?  Jacob said he would take the odd balls—the darker, spotted, or striped animals from the herd as his wages.  Then without explanation as far as Laban knew, more and more newly born animals fit this description.  Laban had to be thinking, the fix was in, but how?

We might be thinking that Jacob was just a shrewd dude, and there would be something to that.  He did put the branches in the water and more and more animals were born spotted or speckled or somehow less than perfect in appearance.

But now we see in something of a literary flashback, that God had told Jacob that this would happen.  Did he tell Jacob to speed the process along by putting the branches in the water?  We don’t know, but it gives us a little better perspective of Jacob.

I will stay with the assessment that he was shrewd but I will not go so far as to say he was conniving.  Why?  Listen to what the Lord said to Jacob.

So Jacob sent word to Rachel and Leah to come out to the fields where his flocks were.  He said to them, “I see that your father’s attitude toward me is not what it was before, but the God of my father has been with me. You know that I’ve worked for your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me by changing my wages ten times. However, God has not allowed him to harm me. If he said, ‘The speckled ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks gave birth to speckled young; and if he said, ‘The streaked ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore streaked young. So God has taken away your father’s livestock and has given them to me.

“In breeding season I once had a dream in which I looked up and saw that the male goats mating with the flock were streaked, speckled or spotted. The angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob.’ I answered, ‘Here I am.’ And he said, ‘Look up and see that all the male goats mating with the flock are streaked, speckled or spotted, for I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now leave this land at once and go back to your native land.’”

It seems that Jacob was not swindling Laban out of anything.  God saw fit to reward Jacob—one of his chosen in the line of the Father of Many Nations—and punish Laban.  Both were a bit on the deceptive side, but Jacob had been given a mission by God. Jacob was faithful to God.

Jacob would put this Father of Many Nations thing into high gear and God would continue to bless him.  The whole putting branches in the water may have just been the part that God gave Jacob to do. It may have been a test of faith and the branches didn’t really impact the genetics.

The sequence of events suggests that this was Jacob’s idea, but it is a common literary tool to present one scene and then offer the explanation sometime later.  I think that’s what we see here.  God was blessing Jacob.  God was redeeming the years of service to Laban with blessings from above.  Those blessings just happened to be born with speckles or streaks.

I’m thinking that I will go ahead and claim 2 Ukrainians and 4 illegal immigrants as dependents on my taxes and hope that God sends me a message that this is how it’s supposed to be.  It might not work that way.

This screwball deceiver of a man was chosen by God to accelerate this Father of Many Nations business.  He, with the help of 4 different women, did just that, and God blessed this knucklehead.

Sometimes, I look around and think things couldn’t be more screwed up than they are in our time, but…

What if all the self-destructive things that our government is doing, gets us closer to that glorious day that is coming?

What if, all this trans gender, pick a gender, and gender blender stuff just gets us closer to the coming of the Lord?

What if the fact that kids just can’t make change any more without a computerized register moves us closer to the end of this age and the beginning of the age to come?

What if all of the nuclear chest pounding just moves us a little closer to the battle to come at Armageddon?  That part sort of stinks.  The whole world going to war in one place and I’m left to guard the north end of Burns Flat.  But what if all of the insanity in the world just gets us to not only the end of the age but to the reward, the inheritance, the abundant and eternal life stored up for us?

Maybe, it’s time to understand that the ways of the world are the ways of the world but God will use them for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Maybe, I need to understand that God will use the most hard-headed of hard heads to do his work. That one hits close to home

If I ever meet Jacob in heaven, I’m not going to transact any business with him.  I’m not making any deals with him.  I’m not buying his stew or letting him manage my livestock.  I’m not going to try my card tricks on him either.

I’m not having any dealings with that guy, but God used him with all of his short comings and with his deceptive nature to advance this Father of Many Nations business.

I think that I had better learn to trust in the Lord with everything I have more now than ever before.  I need to practice walking by faith not sight more in this time of deceit than ever before.

George Orwell once wrote that history ended in 1936.  He said it because in the Spanish Civil War battles were reported that never occurred.  Casualties were recorded in battles that didn’t happen.   

We saw the same thing in Vietnam with enemy body counts.  We see that fake news is just the norm in so much of our century. 

The Spanish Civil War put this fake news business into high gear and that was almost a century ago.

We live in a world of deceit, but God will not let the deceptiveness of the world cheat us out of what he has promised.  God rewards those who trust him and seek him and obey him.

So, where does that leave us?

Know the story of Jacob and Laban, Jacob and his wives, and Jacob and his God, but live trusting that God will use us with all of our flaws in a deceptive world that is doing everything it can to deny that God even exists.

God loves you as you are.  He doesn’t want to leave you there.  He wants you to grow in his grace, but he loves every broken part of you and will use you fulfill his plan and bring glory to his name.

Know these Old Testament stories.  They are important to your growth.  But know and live in the certainty that God loves you as you are.  He wants you to grow in his grace but he loves every broken piece of you.

He even uses hardheads to advance his gospel. I know that one for sure.

God loves you just as you are and will use you to bring glory to his name.  Trust him all the more in an age where it’s hard to trust anyone or anything.

Amen.