Hebrews Lesson 183                                                                                                       December 17, 2009

 

NKJ Isaiah 41:10 Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with

My righteous right hand.'

 

We are in Hebrews 11, but we're not going to be there for very long so don't turn there to start off. I’ll just remind you of where we were last Wednesday night after we finished with our reflections on the Pre-Trib Rapture Study Group meeting and what we learned about (a little bit about) our history in terms of the history that’s behind the growth of the Bible church side of the evangelical movement. 

 

NKJ Hebrews 11:20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.

 

Now we looked at this last time in terms of the simple statement of Hebrews.  The writer’s simply going to be another example from the Old Testament (from the patriarchs) where he's looking at the testimony this time of Isaac and his blessing of Jacob and blessing of Esau concerning, that is, in relationship to, things to come. That was the focal point of those of the blessing. 

 

Now last time we looked at those blessings – rehearsed, reviewed the story of Jacob and Esau and their birth and the fact that Esau was the older; Jacob was the younger. But in God's plan the older serves the younger rather than the other way around which is the normal human procedure emphasizing works for position where God is not doing it according to the way man normally looks at things giving a certain amount of priority to who is born first under the rule or law of primogeniture. So the older was to serve the younger. And God had announced this as the two babies were struggling inside the womb of Rebekah. God had announced that the older would serve the younger. 

 

That was the promise of God. The problem is that you get #2 child coming out a little bit late (Jacob) and you get the episode where he’s trying to grab the heel (or at least it looks that way) as he's coming out of the womb. So he's known as the heel grabber. He has this character. Actually it's a family trait because as we’ll see tonight as we've seen in our study in Genesis, he was just an amateur compared to his uncle Laban.

 

Uncle Laban was a real manipulator; and someone who was always getting the upper hand on everybody. He was the ultimate trickster whereas Jacob was just the learner. But God has another plan for Jacob other than being the manipulator and the trickster. This characterizes Jacob. It depicts the trend of his sin nature, the flaw in his character that he's out there trying to manipulate, trying to maneuver God, trying to get the blessing to happen rather than learning to wait upon the Lord. He wants to move God’s timetable up. 

 

I know that nobody here has a problem with waiting on the Lord, but a lot of people have problems waiting on the Lord and learning to orient to God's plan and to God’s timetable. We want God's plan. We want patience and we want right now, if not yesterday. That was Jacob’s problem. God has to train him and teach him. 

 

But before he gets to that point, we see that the issues here that all come back to the Abrahamic promise. Remember promise was a major part of our study in Hebrews 11. The promise is future. The promise indicates something that hasn’t been fulfilled either in the present or in the past, and it focuses on something unfulfilled. It is oriented also to hope. Hope has the idea of a confident expectation. The confident expectation of the believer is oriented to the fulfillment of a promise that God has made. Hope and promise focus on the future. The believer is to be driven and motivated and stabilized in the present because he understands where God is taking him and how God is getting him there through that process. 

 

So we looked at the blessing that Isaac gave to Jacob. Of course this was done under a situation where Jacob had tricked and deceived Isaac. Nevertheless because of the nature of the blessing as an aspect of legal inheritance and passing on something it couldn’t be reversed even though it was under deception. Jacob had dressed up as if he was Esau. His mother had made a dish that would taste like one of Isaac’s favorite dishes that came from out in the wilderness where Esau would go to hunt. They had this elaborate plan to deceive Isaac and it worked. 

 

So Isaac gives the blessing for Jacob in verses 27 to 29. 

 

NKJ Genesis 27:27 And he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his clothing, and blessed him and said: "Surely, the smell of my son Is like the smell of a field Which the LORD has blessed.

 

He is deceived into thinking that it's Esau because Jacob smelled like Esau.

 

NKJ Genesis 27:28 Therefore may God give you Of the dew of heaven, Of the fatness of the earth, And plenty of grain and wine.

 

NKJ Genesis 27:29 Let peoples serve you,

 

He’s emphasizing that rulership dimension. 

 

And nations bow down to you. Be master over your brethren, And let your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, And blessed be those who bless you!"

 

So this is a reiteration of the blessing that God had given to Abraham, the Abrahamic Covenant. It confirms to Jacob that he is the seed through whom this blessing will pass. I put Genesis 12:2-3 up at the top because I color coded some of the phrases there to show the similarity, how the blessing of Jacob carried on that Abrahamic tradition.

 

In contrast we have the blessing that Isaac had left over to give to Esau. When Esau came in, there's a tremendous amount of drama as Esau realizes how not only the birthright but also the blessing has been ripped off by Jacob. 

 

So he comes to his father and begs his father, “Isn’t there something left?”

 

So Isaac answers him and says:

 

NKJ Genesis 27:39 Then Isaac his father answered and said to him: "Behold, your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth,

 

…indicates a measure of prosperity.

 

And of the dew of heaven from above.

NKJ Genesis 27:40 By your sword you shall live, And you shall serve your brother;

 

Not good news for Esau that he would be serving his brother Jacob. 

 

And it shall come to pass, when you become restless, That you shall break his yoke from your neck."

 

So this doesn't apply directly to Esau per se but to his descendants looking at Esau and Jacob as the progenitors of two different nations, just as God had said when He spoke to Rebekah and said, “There are two nations struggling inside of your womb.” 

 

There's one more blessing that Isaac had for Jacob. After this, Esau absolutely flips out and goes postal as they say today. He's threatening Jacob’s life that he is going to kill Jacob. He is just as angry as he can be because he has been so ripped off by his brother the trickster that as Rebecca hears him venting and screaming and yelling she calls in Jacob and decides to send him away to her brother Laban up near Padan Aram in the north so that Jacob will be protected. 

 

Just before he leaves, Isaac calls him in and we look at Isaac’s second blessing for Jacob in Genesis 28. So we're going to look at a couple of different things here in Genesis 28 so that’s a good chapter to have open in your Bible because I think it's important for us to look at the gap between Hebrews 11:20 and 21 as it pertains to what God is doing in the life of Jacob. 

 

In Genesis 28:1, Isaac called Jacob in and blessed him and charged him. Notice the word blessing again. I’ve got it highlighted on the slide that there are 3 times that we have the word blessing used in these 4 verses showing that this is the emphasis of this section.

 

NKJ Genesis 28:1 Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him: "You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.

 

That’s first priority. You have to maintain that separation. Now this is going to get lost – just a foreshadowing of things come. This idea of separation from the Canaanites gets lost with Jacob’s sons, the 12 sons who formed the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. They start intermarrying with the Canaanites. But Isaac is still very much concerned that they maintained, the family maintains a separation from the Canaanites and not become influenced by their paganism. So the first charge is a prohibition. 

 

"You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.

 

The second is a positive charge to go to Padan Aram in the north up in what is modern day Syria up near the border of Syria and Turkey.

 

NKJ Genesis 28:2 "Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your mother's brother.

 

NKJ Genesis 28:3 "May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you,

 

What does that refer to? That goes back to seed promise in the Abraham Covenant that God would make Abraham the father of many nations and then that would come through the line through Isaac.

 

That you may be an assembly of peoples;

 

NKJ Genesis 28:4 And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham."

 

They don’t possess it yet. It’s future. It is a promise to inherit the land and they never fully controlled the land that God promised to Abraham in the Old Testament. That’s one of those important aspects. 

 

This morning as I was starting my day, I decided to call Jim Meyers jus to go over last minute details related to my trip to Kiev and I have the wrong phone number and I ended up calling Jim Dumas’ apartment. Bruce Baumgartner answered the phone, which was providential because Bruce said,  “I was just think about calling you.” He’s probably in the air as we speak. He would have left about  - what time is it now? No he's probably getting up right now to the airport. He just wanted to go over some logistical details as well as some details about the class. 

 

But there's one student in the class, and we ought to be praying for this young man. I don't have a name for him. He’s a nice kid, a young guy. But somewhere along the line became influenced by covenant theology and so far no one's been able to convince him of this hard and fast distinction between Israel and the church. Pastor Baumgartner (bless his little heart…See that’s what we say in Texas when we’re being nice to somebody who did something we don’t like. We always say, “Well, Bless their heart) just kept telling this kid, “You just wait. Dr. Dean is going to be here in a couple weeks and he’s covering dispensations and covenants and he’ll answer all of your questions.”

 

I’ll get back at him. I’ll tell him Bruce is older than me. We always have this thing going back and forth with the students at to something we have with him and we play tricks on each and things. So there's always this thing – who’s older? I always tell them it’s Bruce. Bruce is 5 years younger than I am but we won’t tell anybody. 

 

So anyhow this is a basic problem. It’s a hermeneutical issue. In Genesis 17 God said that the land would be bordered– or excuse me Genesis 15 - that the land would be bordered by the River Euphrates and by the Mediterranean. But they have never fully taken control of that land. 

 

Well, what happens when you get into the New Testament when you start shifting into this more allegorical or spiritualized approach to Scripture that Israel becomes the church is that the Promised Land (the literal, physical, geographical land) becomes heaven. Wait a minute! How would Abraham have understood that? Did God change the meaning? Is God sort of a bait and switch – I’m going to promise you a physical land and physical property but now instead I’m going to switch it and it’s going to be heaven and I’m going tell you your people are your physical descendents. Now I’m going to switch it and its only going to be spiritual descendants? We can’t do that and be consistent in understanding the Scriptures. That's one of the important factors to remember here is again and again and again as we go through Genesis (and we did this in our study of Genesis) God reiterates the same promise to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob and to Joseph to make sure we all understand what the promise is and to whom the promise is given. The promise is oriented to inheriting or possessing the Land, a specific piece of real estate; and it remained a promise, an unfulfilled promise, a future oriented promise in the lives of all four of these patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. But God gave it to them but they never saw it as theirs. They never possessed it. 

 

We see in Genesis 28:1-4 that in this second blessing that Isaac gives to Jacob, he is reiterating the Abraham Covenant and the promises of the Abraham Covenant and that these are for Jacob as the younger who it is to be served by his older brother. What happens after this is that Jacob going to have to leave.  So let’s just have a quick two-point summary. The two-point summary of this is that:

 

  1. First of all, the focus of the promise that God gave to Abraham is the land, the land, the land. The focus is on the land.
  2. The second aspect of the blessing emphasized the seed promise - that out from Abraham would come many nations, out from Jacob would become an assembly of people. It emphasizes those two aspects of the Abraham Covenant, the aspect of the land and the seed.

 

And of course both involved the third aspect, which is blessing. All of these were future to Isaac. They were all future to Jacob. They were all future to Joseph, and they never saw them.  But the focus was on the things to come. Their focus was on the eventual fulfillment in eternity and they had to learn to live in the light of that future promise of God so that understanding what the future held was to have an effect coming back on them and how they lived.  It doesn't always and it didn't always for them and it doesn't always for us. But that's our point of contact for application. We have to learn to live in light of the promise that God has given us, and the destiny that He has for us.

 

Here we have a map of the area of the land of Canaan. The two circles indicate the two key locations that come up later on in chapter 28: Beersheba in the south which is where Isaac and Rebekah are living at the time of the inheritance blessing statements in chapter 27. So Jacob is going to get up and leave from there and to head north to his uncle Laban, the son of Bethuel, the Syrian.

 

Then something is going to happen to him as he is heading out of the land. He comes to the area of the Canaanite city of Luz which becomes renamed Bethel.  This is the same place to which his grandfather Abraham had come when he entered into the land and had erected an altar there. If you look at the two lines that are going up, the blue line stands out more than the green line. But the blue line is the path of Jacob’s departure as he heads north, and then the green line is the path of his return. You see that along the path that he's going to exit the land and return to the land along the same route and go through the same areas. In both cases he is going to be involved in an episode that occurs in Bethel. 

 

What we have to recognize here is that the point of application for us that comes out of this is that we are to hang in there just as these Old Testament patriarchs hung in there and never saw the promise but maintained their faithfulness, their trust in God, their trust in the promise. We are not to give up.  We’re not to yield to temptation. We are not to give up or to give in; but we are to press on to endurance. 

 

This is going to be developed more fully in the next chapter in Hebrews. We’re in Hebrews 11, which is an application section, an exhortation section.  Chapter 12 is a repeat, a second exhortation section. Just to give you a little preview of things to come, Hebrews 12:3-4 states:

 

NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.

 

See we have an example from the Old Testament. They hung in there. Now there were times they fell off the path; but they got back on. There were times that they were weary. There were times that they disobeyed God; but the overall orientation of their life was to focus on the promise. We are to take heart from that and not to grow weary, discouraged. Ultimately it is the example the Lord Jesus Christ who went to an even more difficulty than anyone else; and He did not give up. He did not become weary or discouraged and neither should we. That's the basis of the exhortation there in verses 3 and 4. 

 

NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him

 

That is, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

 

endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.

 

NKJ Hebrews 12:4 You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.

 

You have to hang in there. 

 

Now the next verse in Hebrews is Hebrews 11:21 which focuses on Jacob’s blessing to his sons. 

 

NKJ Hebrews 11:21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff.

 

Now we come out of 11:20 and we’re focusing on the initial blessing, we see Jacob is the last person that we think of that is properly oriented to God or to God’s plan. What happens between verse 20 and verse 21 is monumental. That’s between chapters 28 and roughly 35. We see the spiritual growth of Jacob. This is important for us to understand in terms of a lesson because what happens between his exit from the land and his return to the land is that God works in his life to produce discipline and maturity. When he leaves, he's undisciplined. He is the trickster. He is trying to find a shortcut path to the blessing. He's not willing to wait on the Lord or to trust the Lord. He is the heel grabber, the swindler, the manipulator. He has yet to understand the grace of God or orient to God's plan or to His promises. 

 

When we think about promises and think about how we are to orient to promises beyond just simply the act of claiming them in the faith rest drill; but the promises focus on a future and that future is to shape our present reality. We are so convinced of the fulfillment of the promise that it shapes our thinking, our motivation and our drive in the present. This is what enables us to mature. 

 

Now some years ago I heard someone make the observation that the real key to maturity is the ability to postpone gratification. Now if you have that as your definition, we live in an immature culture because nobody in our culture wants to postpone gratification. But that's really what maturity is. Maturity postpones gratification because you understand there are greater goals and greater objectives. Your focus is on the future and you’re not just living in the present. You understand that the present is moving in a direction of future fulfillment. So as we mature, whether it's in general emotional maturation process or spiritual maturity, we learn to postpone gratification which means we have to be patient in life and we have to learn to orient to God's plan and to God’s timing. 

 

Now this is a real problem for Jacob because Jacob is impatient. He wants it now and wants it his way according to his timing. In order to learn to postpone that gratification and to relax and be patient, God has to bring some discipline into Jacob’s life and into Jacob’s thinking and the only way that we can truly focus on the future, the only way we can live in light of our eternal destiny is when we get to the point where we can discipline our thinking to focus on doctrine. When everything around us is falling apart, everything's going to hell in a hand basket and everything is in chaos; we are not going to take our eyes off the Lord. We’re not going to take our eyes off the promise because that becomes our reality. It's more real to us to than all the other nonsense that goes on around us. 

 

So the key here is going to be discipline. Now I'm bringing this in now at this stage because this too is where we're headed in Hebrews 12 where right after the two verses I citied a minute ago in Hebrews 12:3-4 and 5-7 this quote from the Old Testament and we get into the importance of God’s discipline in the believer’s life. I'll be talking more and more about that to try to bring our attention on what it means to be a disciplined believer. 

 

So let’s have a little four-point introduction to the Doctrine of Discipline.

 

  1. First of all, whenever we use the word, we have a problem. That basic problem is that too often we think of discipline as being equivalent to punishment. And we use it that way a lot. In many contexts it is synonymous with punishment. But that's only the negative side of discipline. The reason we think of it as punishment is because that we often learn and acquire self-discipline only by facing negative consequences. Only as we learn by our mistakes, either through the natural consequences of bad decisions when things fall apart, things don’t work or there's the additional compound of divine discipline, divine punishment on top of the negative consequences of our bad decisions. The problem is that discipline isn’t just a negative of punishment. But that is a major feature of it.
  2. The second point is to look at the word in terms of its basic meaning. I looked this up in the Oxford English dictionary (the OED) and saw that the noun discipline is defined as the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior. Just think about that in terms of anything that you've ever tried to accomplish in life. You’ve had to learn to follow a precise set of procedures in order to accomplish the goal, whether it's in athletics or whether it is in some form of the arts, in dance, in speaking. In any number of different things you have to learn a measure of discipline and to discipline ones self in order to achieve the goal. When you're involved in athletics, you’re involved in the military; you’re involved in academics you have to postpone gratification. There has to be that aspect of self-control. There are certain rules you have to learn and have to follow in order to be a success in anything. 

 

People can’t be a success just by saying, “Oh, I want to go out and I want to do this” and do it in an undisciplined manner, without following certain rules or certain procedures. When we apply this to the spiritual life, what we see is that what God is doing in disciplining us is instilling in our thinking, in our life the modus operandi of following the rules or the code of behavior where we're living life on the basis of God's values and God's standards. 

 

The noun focuses on the practice of training people. And in the Church Age one of the ways in which God trains believers and is to discipline believers in that sense of training them to obey rules and a code of conduct is through the pastor teacher teaching from the Word of God in the local church. But that’s just one element. That’s how we find out what the rules and the code of behavior are. 

 

  1. Then the verb means to train someone to obey the rules or the code of behavior by punishment or rebuke. That is the verbal aspect is to train somebody through the use of punishment or rebuke. This is what often happens when you get into athletics or you get into the military and you do something wrong and the coach makes you do pushups or the sergeant makes you do pushups or various other negative consequences that teach you very quickly to not break the rules. 

 

That's the idea. Its training in a code of conduct.

 

This fits very well with the terminology that’s used in the Scripture. We have both Greek and Hebrew words that will need to be studied a little more fully as we get into this. The Greek word, the verb is paideuo and the noun is paideai, which comes from the root word that has to do with a child. It’s ultimately related to child training. Paideuo means to train up, for example to train up a child in instruction, to train them, to educate them. It's all part of the idea in discipline. It's not just negative consequences. It's instruction; it is education; It is developing character, understanding of why things are done the way they should be done. Paideia the noun indicates the idea of training, instruction, and discipline as well. When we think about divine discipline, divine discipline isn't just the negative of divine punishment for wrong behavior; but it is training. God is involved in training us. 

 

The focus on the end result is the idea of training, preparation for future service, future service as a mature believer now and future service on into the millennium and on into the future. The Hebrew word that shows up is a word that’s found in Proverbs 3:11-2. This is what's quoted in Hebrews 12.

 

NKJ Hebrews 12:5 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: "My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;

 

NKJ Hebrews 12:6 For whom the LORD loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives."

 

Here we see that part of love involves the negative of chastening and reproof (these are not pleasant) and correction. But that’s part of what the Word of God does. The Word of God is inspired and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness. This is not always pleasant. 

 

The word that’s translated chastening in 3:11 is the Hebrew word musar. And it's interesting because the literal meaning of the word describes a band or a bond, something that restricts someone. You may capture a prisoner and put him in bonds, a chain or something of that nature. Figuratively it was used for something that is used in chastening or restraining and that fits the idea of self-discipline. Self-discipline means that we are learning to restrain our lust pattern. We are learning to restrain our desires for immediate gratification. We have to discipline ourselves according to a certain code of conduct, to restrain our natural impulses and the driving lust patterns of the sin nature. The idea of chastening is to bring self-control into the life of the believer. 

 

Another word that’s used to this passage is in Proverbs 3:12…

 

NKJ Proverbs 3:12 For whom the LORD loves He corrects, Just as a father the son in whom he delights.

 

..is the Hebrew word  yakach meaning to reprove or correct. All of those are close ideas, judging or deciding in the sense of reproving or correcting. 

 

God is in that process of reproving or correcting us in order to instill that discipline .

 

  1. The 4th point is simply that it's part of God's plan in every dispensation to train believers to think and to live according to His code of conduct. In the Old Testament that code of conduct was expressed from the time of Moses on in terms of the Mosaic Law; and in the New Testament it's expressed in the law of love, the law of Christ that are described through all the positive mandates in the New Testament as well as the various negative prohibitions. Positively, some of these include that we are to love one another. We’ve done an extensive study of that. We are to be gracious to one another, forgiving one another as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us, or been gracious to us. We’re to pray without ceasing. We’re to walk by the Spirit. We’re to rejoice always. We’re to cast our cares upon Him. These are all part of those positive mandates that God is trying to instill in us and get us to make part of our regular disciplined behavior.

 

Then we have the negatives. Do not gossip. Do not lie dealing with certain sins of the tongue. Don't give up. Don't fade out. Don’t grow weary as we saw in Hebrews 12:3-4. Do not be judgmental. That’s really the best nuance of that well known verse. Don't judge lest you be judged. The idea there isn't making any evaluative or discerning decision. It’s against being judgmental in the sense of putting yourself in the place of God and condemning someone as only God can do i.e. putting yourself in the place of being a divine judge. Being angry and do not sin, Ephesians 4. Do not worry. These are all part of the negative prohibitions of behavior (unacceptable behavior) in the spiritual life. 

 

As we go through life, we face a variety of experiences that under the sovereignty of God are designed for us. They may not be so great for somebody else; but they are what God has directed us to under His sovereignty. There are no accidents in the plan of God and so both the good things that we experience and the adverse things are designed by God to teach us to focus on Him in the midst of adversity, in the midst of crisis to put our blinders on to narrow our vision down to focus on what the Word of God says. 

 

One of the things that happens whenever a person is in a life-threatening situation is that the blood begins to flow to the center mass of the body. It doesn't go to the outer extremities a lot. So manual dexterity is lost and some other things are lost because the body goes into this fight or flight syndrome where is focused down the center for survival. This also affects eyesight so that tunnel vision will develop. Sometimes it seems as if there is a slowdown of motion. People get in certain intense, life threatening situations and they report that it seemed as if everything just slowed down. And they lost peripheral vision. Everything focused on the threat itself. 

 

Well, that is what should take place spiritually is as we get into crises and get into adversity and we are just at the point of being overwhelmed, we should be so focused on the Word and the promises of God and the future that God has for us and what He's doing in training us that we get this tunnel vision on our spiritual life and focusing on the Word and on the fulfillment of those promises. God takes us through these various drills in life (various experiences in life) in order to teach us and to train us for our future role of service. 

 

That's what he did with Jacob. We've gone through the chapters of Genesis where we see Jacob learning how to control his own desires to manipulate and control life, to manipulate God to his own benefit. After he manipulated the blessing away from Esau, he had to flee for his life, not a really good consequence and he ends up with is relative Laban who is going to outfox the fox. Laban is the chiseler’s chief chiseler and he's going to always manage to one up Jacob. 

 

We are only given a few examples and the prime one of course is what happens when Jacob makes a deal. He barters (works a good deal he thinks) with Uncle Laban for his daughter Rachel who Jacob is in love with. After he works for 7 years and Laban gets the benefit of Jacob’s work, he gets married and he discovers after the wedding night that Laban has pulled a fast on him and substituted the older daughter Leah for Rachel. Jacob wakes up in the morning and he's married to the wrong girl. He’s been tricked. The trickster has been tricked. 

 

So he goes back to Laban and he has to work out another deal, another 7 years.  See God’s teaching him patience. He has to keep working there in those unpleasant circumstances to learn to relax and to trust in God's plan and God’s timing. 

 

So during this time he has various children. He has the 12 sons and one daughter Dinah and God is blessing him. But the love of his life is Rachel. Rachel is unable to have children. Finally she has a son. She has Joseph. Then at the end she will have one more son Benjamin and then dies shortly thereafter as a result of complications with the childbirth. 

 

Through this time we see the adversity, the difficulties. We see humility developed in Jacob. And we see that he's learning to trust God, not to try to manipulate things himself but to relax and letting God control things. And the ultimate example that we’re given is when Jacob goes through this really obscure situation that’s described in Genesis where he makes this deal with Laban that Laban will let him leave if he takes care of the flocks a certain way and he enters into this deal with the breeding of the sheep where he negotiates the deal so that looks to Laban like Laban is going to get the better end of this deal. Laban must have walked away from this saying what a fool Jacob is. The deal was that all of the speckled and spotted goats or sheep and the black sheep (this would be the recessive genes so there were fewer of these) that were born would go to Jacob and the others would go to Laban. 

 

So Laban says, “That's a great deal,” and he’s chuckling to himself because he knows that the predominant color of the sheep is going to be other colors than speckled and spotted. So he moves all of his sheep 3 days away to make sure that there's no way that the speckled and spotted black sheep that he already has are going to hook up with Jacob’s sheep. 

 

Jacob goes into this really odd thing where he takes a stick and he strips off the bark. When you strip off the bark and you expose the white core of the tree underneath that. There is a play on words because the Hebrew word for white is laban. The Holy Spirit is making a little pun there because he's going to expose Laban, basically. And what God does is God overrides the situation and causes a tremendous number of births of spotted and speckled and black sheep and goats to that Jacob’s herds just increase and Laban’s out there and God has blessed Jacob rather than Laban getting it through manipulation. This leads ultimately to the fact that now Jacob wants to leave and go home. Laban has been trying to do all these things to keep him from leaving and so Jacob has to sneak out and to get away and make his way back home.

 

All of this shows the spiritual growth and maturity that took place in Jacob’s life from the time he left the land until the time that he returned to the land. But at both ends there are events that occur at Bethel which are very important for understanding the whole role of promise and fulfillment in the life and in the thinking of Jacob. In Genesis 28 where we've been Jacob heads out and stops at Bethel. The Lord appears to him while he is sleeping at night and he has this dream of a stairway or ladder to heaven. There are angels of God that are ascending and descending on it. This is one of only two places in Scripture where you have this phrase "angels (plural) of God". Both occur in episodes of Jacob’s life. 

 

NKJ Genesis 28:13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said: "I am the LORD God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants.

 

The Abrahamic Covenant is being reconfirmed. 

 

NKJ Genesis 28:14 "Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

 

So we have land, seed and blessing all reconfirmed in these two verses. 

 

Then in the next couple of verses we read:

 

NKJ Genesis 28:15 "Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land;

 

He's on his way out. He’s going to be going into the land of Laban, the land outside the land. 

 

And God says, “Even though you're leaving the land I will be with you wherever you go and bring you back to this land.”

 

for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you."

 

This has a major impact on Jacob’s way of thinking because God blesses him and reconfirms the covenant to him. 

 

In verse 16 we read:

 

NKJ Genesis 28:16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it."

 

In verse 17 we see his response also which is he was afraid. And this isn't just a matter of fear or superstition. He is afraid because of the appearance of God and we know from a variety of passages (Proverbs 1:7 being one of them) that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This is Jacob's first spiritual jolt that occurs at Bethel where he realizes that God really has a plan for his life and God really is in control. 

 

That forms the entry point of his spiritual growth as he goes out into his time with Laban up in the north. Then when he returns he is going to be directed by God in Genesis 35 to go back to back to Bethel. He has an episode where he goes to a place called Peniel. He names Peniel in the Transjordan area as he returns back to the land and he meets God face-to-face there in Genesis 32. 

 

But in Genesis 35 God instructs him to return to Bethel.

 

NKJ Genesis 35:1 Then God said to Jacob, "Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother."

 

He then sanctifies the family. They have to put away all the teraphim, the foreign gods that they have. The have to purify themselves; change their garments and go and worship the Lord at Bethel. 

 

What happens at Bethel? God is going to reconfirm the covenant, verses 10 through 12.

 

NKJ Genesis 32:28 And He said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed."

 

This is the transformation spiritually. No longer is he called the chiseler, the manipulator, the swindler. Now he's going to be known as a leader or prince with God. The name Israel meaning that he is the Prince of God.

 

NKJ Genesis 35:11 Also God said to him: "I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you, and kings shall come from your body.

 

NKJ Genesis 35:12 "The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac I give to you; and to your descendants after you I give this land."

 

Again we have the reiteration of the promise – at the beginning and at the end – but there’s no fulfillment. The promise isn't being fulfilled in his lifetime. It is still future. There's still a future orientation for him and he has to live in light of that that future promise. 

 

One other place we’ll end up with tonight is 2 Peter 1:3 which ties all this together taking us to the New Testament and to the purpose of promises. It is related to God's character, His essence, His power at the very beginning of the verse. It is related to our sanctification the last part of the verse. 

 

In 2 Peter 1:3, Peter writes:

 

NKJ 2 Peter 1:3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,

 

The beginning (the focal point) is on the power of God and He has given us all things. Whenever we have that verb “to give” (the Greek word didomi) always emphasize grace when God is the actor, when God is giver. 

 

His divine power has given to us

 

Then there's a qualifier – "that pertain to life and godliness". Now there are two different words there that are used in the Greek. The word there for life has to do with the physical life and the word for godliness has to do with the spiritual life – eusebia. Godliness is an old English word. It means godlikeness. Well, we are to become like God. That was the idea in that word because God is conforming us to the image of Christ. That is a word that describes our entire spiritual life.

 

He's given us everything that is related to life and godliness. And how do we get there? What’s the intermediate means? "Through the knowledge of Him". We activate what He's given us through the knowledge of Him, through the knowledge of God. That means we have to study the Word. We have to know the Word. We have to not just know the Word as an academic study, but know that God who revealed Himself in the Word. It is that personal relationship with God that is mediated through His Word. We have to learn His Word and learn about Him, come to know Him not just in this sense of knowing things about Him; but come to know Him.

 

Then He's further defined as the One who called us by glory and virtue. That is the integrity of His character lies behind the relationship that we have with Him so it’s a certain sealed relationship. 

 

Then in verse 4 we read:

 

NKJ 2 Peter 1:4 by which

 

That is by the glory and virtue and by His character, by His integrity.

 

have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises,

 

This is a fantastic statement here that recognizes the value of the promises of Scripture that go to every one of us. He has given us these promises.

 

that

 

…for a purpose

 

through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

 

That is, through these promises, through their use in the faith rest drill, claiming promises; but through a recognition that a promise also focuses our attention on future fulfillment. It’s that certain expectation of our hope that we can live today in light of eternity, that through these promises we may become partakers of the divine nature. What that means is that by claiming the promises (living in light of that reality) that God is transforming us into the character of Christ. 

 

This isn't a mystical idea that somehow we become more and more divine. It is the idea that we reflect His character as we are conformed to the image of Christ more and more in the process of our spiritual growth because the choices are either claim the promise and obey God, postpone gratification, be disciplined in our spiritual life or just fulfill the lust patterns of our soul, just run off doing everything we want to in immediate gratification. 

 

How do we escape the corruption that in the world by lust? It’s by claiming the promises, living today in light of reality, focusing on the future so that the present circumstances are diminished because the future is more real to us than anything that's going on in our immediate vicinity. So this is the importance of the promises. 

 

So next time we’ll come back and carry this through to the prophecies and Jacob gave—Jacob as Israel to his sons and the 12 tribes at the end of Genesis.

 

Illustrations