If you will turn with me in your Bibles to the 35th chapter of the first book of Moses called Genesis, beginning at the first verse. Pay very close attention, for this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to 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. So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel. so that I may make there an altar to God who answered me in the days of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone." 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. 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. And Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan, and he and all the people who were with him. And there he built an altar and called the place El Bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. Let us pray. Father God, only by your spirit are we able to make good use of the word which I have just read. So we ask that for the sake of your blessed son, Jesus Christ, that you would pour and shed abroad your Holy Spirit into our hearts and make us able to grasp the heights, the depths, and the breadth of the love of your own self for us in Christ Jesus. For these things we ask in his matchless and majestic name. Amen. All right. In order to open the words of the text, which is before us, I would like to make two general, well, three general observations from the text. I want us to first observe the God who makes himself known in this text. Then I want us to take a note of Jacob's response to God's revealing himself. And then the response to Jacob's response to God revealing himself. So first, let's take a look at God as he reveals himself to us in this text. We see in verse 1 that it says, God said to Jacob, arise and go to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to God who appeared to you. when you fled from your brother Esau. The first thing that I would like for us to observe is that God in our text speaks. You should always take note of when God speaks, because this is one of the things that sets God apart from all of the gods of the heathen. The gods of the heathen, the Bible says in one of my favorite Psalms, 115, that they have mouths but they do not speak, neither they utter anything from their throat. And so we have a God that it's not like Jacob is meditating under a terebinth tree and then he ascends up to God. You very rarely see in the Bible where someone is getting up to God by their own effort. God sovereignly makes himself known to Jacob. It does not appear that Jacob is seeking after a special revelation from God. It doesn't appear that Jacob is trying to get in contact with the Lord for any general reason. God, merely of his sovereign good pleasure, is making himself known to Jacob. He is a speaking God. Notice secondly, from verse one, that God is a patient God. What we're seeing here is the bookend from Genesis chapter 28. So in Genesis chapter 28, Jacob is fleeing from the face of his brother Esau. Notice that God makes reference to this both in chapter one, verse one, excuse me, and verse seven, where he says, build there an altar, make an altar there to God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau. And then again, in verse 7, it says that he built an altar when he fled from his brother Esau. So he's making reference back to verse chapter 28 of the book of Genesis. And there, when he's fleeing from his brother Esau, that's when you have Jacob's ladder. God appears to Jacob once again. And after he has this experience with God, He says, I will come back to this place if God brings me in peace, if he gives me my food and my raiment, I'll give him a tenth of everything that I get, and I will come back here to Bethel, and I will sacrifice to God. Now, it was in chapter 33, I do believe, that he comes back into the land of Canaan. God has kept his end of the bargain and it has been many years since God kept his end of the bargain and Jacob has still not kept his end of the bargain and God could have come to Jacob in a way of wrath and displeasure. I think of the way that God came to Moses when Moses didn't circumcise his children when he was on his way back to Egypt. God was about to kick his tail. Right. He was about to die. He was going to kill him. God would have been just to do this for Jacob. And yet all he does is appear to Jacob and very kindly and calmly remind him, do what you said you were going to do. Pay your vow unto the Lord. And I love this about our Lord. He is so patient and gentle with us. He carries us in his arms. He does not reward us after our sins. He does not give us all that we deserve. One of my favorite lines in the Psalter is, he did not suffer his whole displeasure to arise, speaking of the children of Israel, as they provoked him in the wilderness. And so even though Jacob has been unfaithful to his vows to the Lord, God is still faithful to Jacob. And instead of striking him with a rod and saying, get it together, Jacob, as the Bible says in the book of James, that he is long suffering, he does not abrade. God is very kind to us. Observe also in the text that God is merciful and he is gracious. It is a sin not to pay your vows to the Lord. So not only is God bearing kindly and gently with Jacob, He is also sparing him of all his deservings. He's blessed Jacob in spite of Jacob. He's given Jacob, you know, wealth and camels and horses, as we see when he returns back to the land of Canaan and he's confronting his brother. He says, I went over the Jordan with only a staff in my hand and the Lord has brought me back with two bands. God's been merciful and abundant in grace toward Jacob up until this point. And also, I want us to take a notice that in verse one we see I'm going to use a seminary term. We see an adumbration of the doctrine of the Trinity. Notice what we have there. It says that God said to Jacob, arise and go up to Bethel and dwell there and make an altar to God who appeared unto you when you fled from your brother Esau. Notice that God is referring to God in the third person. And so this is something that, by itself, it wouldn't make any sense to us. But as we see the later revelation of God, particularly in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it now makes sense to us why God can speak of God in the third person. It's just like in Genesis, I believe, 19, when the Bible says, And the Lord rained down fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven. That doesn't make quite sense to us. until we get to the New Testament and we see that the Lord is one being, but fully possessed and exhausted by three co-equal and co-eternal persons. So that's what we see in verse one about God who makes himself known to Jacob. Now I want us to take a look at the second part, which is Jacob's response to God, which is what we're going to pretty much focus on for this evening. So verse two says, so Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. One of the things that I find very interesting about this is that God, when he says go to Bethel, he doesn't tell Jacob anything about the foreign gods that are in the camp. He doesn't say anything about the uncleanness of the gods that are in the camp. He merely says, go and sacrifice to me at Bethel. But when God gives Jacob a pointed, direct word, there's something about the word of God that takes a man from being in neutral and puts him into drive. So up until this point, if you look at the whole history of Jacob from chapter 28 up until this point, his whole life is characterized by passivity when it comes to the ordering of his house. We could look at the line throughout the book of Genesis and really throughout the whole Bible of One of the issues that with respect to men in particular in the book of Genesis is the question in Genesis 18, 19. This is actually a statement, not a question, but there's a question that comes from this statement throughout the rest of the book. And when God comes to Abraham and he says, shall I withhold the thing which I'm about to do to Abraham, seeing as I know him, that he will direct his house according to my statutes and his descendants after him. So the question is, is Abraham going to direct his household and his descendants after him? Is Isaac going to direct his household and his descendants after him? Is Jacob going to direct his household and his descendants after him? And what we see from verse chapter 28 until the beginning of this chapter is that Jacob is a momentous failure in directing his house after God's statute. So in chapter 29, well, first, in chapter 28, no, chapter 29, excuse me, he ignores his first wife, like, for several years while he's in love with his second wife. And he's a polygamist. So that's a problem. And then in chapter 30, you have his wives having baby wars with one another. He obviously sees this, and he just doesn't do anything about it. Then one of his wives says, oh, how about you sleep with this servant girl of mine? OK. And then his other wife comes and says, how about you sleep with this servant girl of mine? OK. And then one of his wife says, I have bought your conjugal rights from your other wife so that I can sleep with you tonight, so come with me. OK. And then when he goes back over into the land of Canaan to fight against Esau, he takes his family and he puts them first so that Esau can take them out. So he gets the ugly wife, puts her first. He gets the cute wife, then puts her second. And then he comes last. And then you get into the previous chapter where Shechem defiles his daughter. And one of the things that will be helpful for us to understand the general context is that Jacob, as a patriarch in this period of the covenant of redemption, he has the authority of a father, the head of a household. He has the authority of a civil magistrate. He's the head of the Commonwealth of Israel, and he has the authority of the minister of the word and sacrament. As we see in our chapter, he builds altars, he sacrifices to the Lord. And so one of his jobs is that he should be waging war against the enemies of God, like Abraham, when The kings of the East came and they took away Lot and he got his army and he fought against the enemies of God. And so when Shechem defiles his daughter and then wants to marry her, instead of saying, Shechem should die for raping my daughter. And if you do not put him to death, I'm taking everyone out, because he's a coward. He doesn't do his job as a civil magistrate and kinsman of injure. And so his sons, recognizing his weakness and recognizing that the justice of God ought to go forward, they have a lot of zeal, but not a lot of knowledge and not a lot of direction. And Jacob's a coward. So instead of wielding his sons well, wielding his household well, directing them in the ways of the Lord, he's about to let his daughter be taken into the horde of the seed of the serpent. And so he's not doing very well here. But when the Lord appears to Jacob in chapter 1, the response of Jacob is immediately to put his house in order. And we don't even, going back to all his failures, we don't have to even look at all of the chapters previous. Because when he turns to his family and says, put away the strange gods from among you, it entails that he knew the whole time that his family had strange gods in their midst, and he let it happen. He's supposed to be devoted to the Lord. He's supposed to be worshiping the Lord, leading his family in devotion to the Lord. And instead of leading them, he's letting them have all kinds of idols. And that's one of the problems that we have. really in Christendom throughout history. We've tolerated the things that we ought not to tolerate, right? And then we tolerate things that we ought not to tolerate. And so, you know, we'll have a fight over the color of the carpet, but then when it comes to worshiping images or something crazy like that, or having false ideologies in the church will tolerate that. Like Paul says, you know, you'll tolerate a false Christ soon enough and you'll tolerate a false Holy Spirit. And so he's just a go along and to get along guy. He's a politic kind of guy. He just wants to keep it cool and under wraps. He wants unity more than he wants division. He cares more about the peace. If we think about ordination vows, when it talks about preserving the peace and purity of the church, he cares more about the peace of the church than the purity of the church. And we have to be very careful not to be like Jacob. Particularly, Jacob is emblematic, as men in the scriptures are, of the duties that are unique to men in the church and in the home and in the commonwealth. And one of the besetting sins, which all of us men have to be careful to avoid, is the sin of passivity. Going all the way back to Adam, what is Adam's problem? He's standing right there while a snake is talking to his wife and telling her to disobey God. And so what should have happened, I can't remember what theologian it was I was reading or listening to when he talked about Eve identifying with the serpent. I was listening to Gerstner once and he said what Adam should have done when Eve had assented to the serpent, he should have interceded for Eve. And I don't think that's what he should have done. I think he should have done Deuteronomy 13, put Eve to death. She is identified with the serpent. He is to crush her and the serpent under his foot and expel them from the garden. Instead, he just sits there, OK, I'll eat the apple. Same thing with Abraham. Abraham wants to, you know, Sarah comes up with this wonderful plan of having Hagar to have the promises come through her. OK, I'll do that. Isaac has Rebecca come up with contrivances and plans. And of course, he's blind, so he can't help it much. And so he allows this shifting between Esau and Isaac. And then you go later on to Moses, who doesn't take care of his sons. Eli, who doesn't take care of his sons. David, who doesn't take care of his sons. And you see a whole bunch of wreckage because of the passivity of men. And one of the reasons why is because when God gives authority to a person and a call to the person, Satan is very apt to withstand us at that very point of our duty. If you think about the book of Zechariah, when he has a vision of the high priest Joshua standing at the altar, his duty and call, his duty and call is to offerings to the Lord. His duty and call is to be an intermediary for the people of God. He's the high priest. And what does the Bible say? While he's standing at the altar in this dream, Satan is at his right hand, withstanding him. And so fathers in here, as you want to guide your family in the fear and admonition of the Lord, Satan is standing at your right hand, trying to withstand you. As ministers of the word in sacrament are in here, Satan is withstanding you in your bold preaching of the word, in your pure administration of the sacraments, in the government of the church. For civil magistrates, we are being resist... Well, not we, you are a civil magistrate, James, so, you know, pay attention. So he's withstanding civil magistrates. So instead of putting the civil society under Christ's crown and covenant, this wonderful banner that's behind me, pressing for the crown rights of Jesus in every sphere, Satan, who does not want Christ's sphere to be advanced, is resisting us. And because we, as men in particular, have the task of spearheading the advance of the kingdom of God in every sphere, Satan wants us to be passive. Think about this, particularly young men who do not have households yet and how God calls you to build a household and to raise children to the fear and admonition of the Lord and how there are so many things. So many people, so many voices who want you to do everything other than raising your family in the fear and admonition of the Lord, or future husbands, or present husbands. You know, the Bible says your job, according to Ephesians 5, is to wash your wives with a washing of water with the Word. And some people will say, oh, well, that's patriarchy. And, oh, that's misogynism. And, oh, that's just, that's domineering. And we don't believe in all that. And you might be painted out to be some sort of crazy person for doing what God commands you to do in His Word. But remember that Satan is withstanding you right at the point of your duty. But here's the thing about the wonderful Word of God. When God appears to Jacob and gives him his duty, Jacob is turned from being in neutral to being in drive. He makes up all of the slack from, you know, eight chapters of his unfaithfulness. So he immediately says, all y'all put your gods out of my sight. Get it out of my house. We're not we're not doing this. And why is that? You know, God didn't say anything about his idols, but he recognized he can't come in the presence of the Lord. He can't come to Bethel knowing that as the man of God, he has to give an account to God for His stewardship and know that He knows everything in His house is out of order and He has to offer sacrifices to God. Remember that. That you have to give an account, not just men in here, everybody in here, you have to give an account to God for every deed that you have done in the body. And when you remember that one day you're going to have to stand before God in the house of God, there's something about that that makes you want to get your life together. Amen. And so now let's take a look, as I'm trying to wrap it up, of the effects of Jacob's, the response to Jacob's response to God's word. So let's take a look at verse four. It says, so they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears. And Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem. And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around him, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. So notice two things. God, once Jacob, was faithful to his mission which God had given him, which is directing his household in God's fear. God blesses Jacob by inwardly working in the hearts of his family to surrender their gods. There is nothing more difficult to surrender than your idols. There's a reason why people take idols to themselves. It's not just because, I mean, you know, nowadays it's because we think it's cute and you know, the Buddha, it's the gold color and it matches my curtains. That's not why most people get idols. They get idols because they think that there's some sort of inherent value in it, that it hones the power of God, right? It gives you some sort of home court advantage. And so his command is met with an inward work of God to have them not just relinquish some of their gods, like think of Sarah, not Sarah, what's that woman's name? Rachel, earlier on, when Laban came looking for his gods, and she hid his gods under her bed, and pretended that she was on her cycle. And so, instead of them hiding their gods, which they could have easily done, you know, if you have a whole camp of people, and you have a lot of people in your house, and you have a lot of servants, you have multiple wives, multiple sons, it's very easy to hide your gods. But God, did something that the Bible says that not only did they give up their gods, but they gave up all their gods and their earrings. And so the significance of the earrings is that you have jewels that have magical powers, they're like amulets and talismans, and they give it all up. And so the reassurance that we see here in the text is that when particularly a man is faithful to do what God commands him to do, God is able to bless him by granting what he commands. So whenever you are afraid of the pushback that might come from you directing your household or your church or your commonwealth according to God's statutes. Remember that we have a God who has the hearts of kings and princes in his hand. And if he can turn the heart of a king, whithersoever he pleases, he can turn the heart of your wife, whithersoever he pleases. And he can turn the heart of your children, whithersoever he pleases. And he can turn the heart of your parish, whithersoever he pleases. And so you can be bold to direct your house according to God's word. And if your house does not immediately obey to the commands of the Lord, because people have a habit of doing that, you know that you have a God to whom you can go who can fix the problem because God's hand is not short. And God is generally faithful to bless his people's faithfulness. And so we need not be weary and well doing because God is able to make all grace to abound to you so that you having sufficiency in all things may be able to do the will of God. Secondly, notice that God is able to restrain the wickedness of his enemies. So one of the things that really get on my nerves, I have lots of things that get on my nerves, but one of the things that get on my nerves this past year are people on the side of the aisle that has an R beside their name, if you know what I mean. And they're pulling back from advancing the agenda of God, particularly with the issue of the unborn, the slaughter of the unborn, and the reason why they don't do it is because it's not politically expedient. Abolishing abortion isn't going to get votes. Saying that homosexuality is wrong and that gay marriage doesn't exist, that's not going to get you a lot of, you know, street cred with the homies, as it were. And so, they are demurring from their responsibility, which God commands them, because a civil magistrate is to execute God's justice in his world, because they are his ministers, but because they are afraid of the response of the people, They don't do what God commands them to do, even people who claim to be Christians. They're not trying to advance Christ's agenda. They're just trying to advance their political agenda. And this happens not only with the civil magistrate. It happens in the church, I'm very sure. It happens when someone needs church discipline, but you would just rather not deal with it because it's very hard to discipline someone. It happens when you're raising them. It's far easier to just let them act out in the middle of the grocery store instead of handling your business. And so, but recognize that even though you might be afraid of the response of wicked people, you have a God who is able to restrain the wickedness of men. Jacob, in the previous chapter, did not do his job under God because he forgot that God is able to make the wrath of God to praise him, and the remainder thereof he shall restrain. Jacob forgot that God has the hearts of kings in his hand. Jacob forgot that God is the prince of the kings of the earth, and he raises up kings and puts down kings whenever he pleases. And so we don't have to be afraid of the response of the people, like Aaron, you know, the reason why Aaron built the golden calf. Oh, you know the people, Moses, they are crazy. And they were cussing me out. And they were telling me that they really wanted these guys. And so I just put the gold in there and out came the calf. Or like Saul, you know the people, I was afraid of the people and so I sacrificed even though you told me not to. And so because people are afraid of men instead of being afraid of God, we don't direct what God has given us according to His Word. But Jacob is being reproached here in this text because God is reminding Jacob that I can restrain your enemies whenever I get ready. You don't need to be afraid of your enemies because I am bigger than them. Like our Lord Jesus says, don't fear man who can destroy the body, but just fear God who can destroy both body and soul in hell. So we should fear God, because God is almighty. He's not just our private corner, personal private God in our heart. He is the God of the whole earth. And He is able to make our enemies behave. And so that we see that God is in the business of blessing those who are in submission to his will and who are about the business of directing that which pertains to them according to his word. And so let's make a few uses to be made of the doctrine very quickly. If we see, first of all, that God. is patient with those who are not doing what they ought to do. Remember that we ought to be patient with those who are weak and struggling. Faithfulness to God is very difficult. Faithfulness to God takes a lot of work. Christ's yoke is easy, but it's not easy to carry that easy yoke. Especially when you have a world and a flesh and a devil that is resisting you every hour. And so that's why the Bible tells us in the book of Galatians that when someone is overcome with a fault, with a spirit of meekness, we are to restore him. So remember that just as God is patient in delivering us from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God. He's patient and gentle in sanctifying us. Let's be patient and gentle in ministering to one another, even though it's very frustrating and you just want somebody to get their life together immediately. God is more grieved with our sins than you are grieved with your neighbor's sins. And yet God is so patient. And therefore, let's manifest the patience of God. And if we are someone, another inference to be made with the use of the doctrine, if we know that God is faithful to bless our efforts to direct our business according to Christ's commands, let's boldly do it. Let's know what God commands of us and do what we know he commands us to do. trusting that he will bless either by an inward worth of his spirit or an outward restraint of his providence. Those who are faithful to him. Let us pray. Father God. We're so grateful that you are faithful. Even when we're not faithful. And we're grateful that you do direct us according to your statutes and according to your law. even though we don't direct our households according to your statutes and according to your law. So we pray now that as I hopefully have exposited well this text that you would apply by your Holy Spirit the truths that are here and cause us to see the wonders of your purpose for us in Jesus Christ to glorify him by households and by commonwealths and by churches that are ordered according to your will. For all these things we ask in Christ's mighty, holy, and majestic name. Amen.