Snapshots of Christmas

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Snapshots of Christmas

Up to Bethel

Genesis 35:1-15

In response to God’s question, “Can You Hear Me Now?” Jacob got alone with God and listened. Once he had listened he got rid of all the foreign gods in his household.

What must you and I do if we want to hear God’s voice?

• We must get alone with God and listen. 
• We must return to the spiritual, mental, and emotional attitude when we last sensed God’s presence. Go back to Bethel, the house of God.
• We must get rid of all of the idols in our lives.
• We must get our ears unclogged so that we can hear God.
• We must make an offering of ourselves on the altar, which is Jesus Christ.
• We must invite God to come and accept our offering.
• We must wait in His Presence.
• We must listen to what God says.

What will we do once we have experienced a fresh visit from God? We will want to return to Bethel again and again. We will make a memorial of God’s visitation that we must never forget. We will depart the place transformed by God’s grace.

I remember when God asked me, “Can you hear me now?” It was a revival when I was a student at Mt. Carmel Christian High School. I was sitting next to Keith Robinson. I was a freshman and Keith was a sophomore. After the sermon, we were invited to stand for the invitation. Friends and classmates began to flood the altar. Sixteen-year-old Keith got under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and he began to pray… loudly. I was standing right next to him, so I prayed too… loudly.

One wave of seekers came forward, prayed through, and returned to their seats. Keith kept praying… loudly. I kept praying too. A second wave of seekers came forward, prayed through, and returned to their seats. Keith kept praying… loudly. I kept praying too. A third wave of seekers came forward, prayed through, and then we began to testify. Oh, what a revival! I’ll never forget it. It became a benchmark in my life of what it meant to experience God. Experiencing God that night changed me. I long for my children to experience God in that way. I long for you to experience a powerful move of God’s Holy Spirit in genuine revival. Once you do, you’ll want to experience God like that over and over again; you’ll never forget it, and you will be changed.

But if we are to experience God, we must follow God’s plan as laid out in our Scripture lesson. We must get alone with God and listen. We must return to the spiritual, mental, and emotional attitude when we last sensed God’s presence: humility and hunger. We must go back to the house of God. We must get rid of all of the idols in our lives. We must make an offering of ourselves on the altar, which is Jesus Christ. We must invite God to come and accept our offering. We must wait in His Presence. We must listen to what God says. Remember, God’s talking, but are you listening? “Can you hear me now?”

Do you want to hear God’s voice? Do you want to experience a fresh visitation of God’s presence in your life? How will you answer when God asks you the question, “Can you hear me now?”

“Then come, let us go up to Bethel” (Genesis 35:3).

Get Ready to Listen

Genesis 35:1-15

In response to God’s question, “Can You Hear Me Now?”  Jacob got alone with God and listened. Once he had listened he got rid of all the foreign gods in his household.

As Jacob left Laban’s house, his lovely wife Rachel stole some household idols from her father.

“Now Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel had stolen the household idols that were her father’s” (Genesis 31:19 NKJV).

Laban discovered the theft along with the revelation that Jacob’s family had left his compound in Haran for regions unknown. Laban and his men went in hot pursuit of Jacob’s clan. He caught up with them at Mizpeh. Accusations reigned. Verbal protests and accusations flew.

Laban: “You have stolen my family idols.”

Jacob: “No way. Execute whomever has them.”

But unbeknown to Jacob, Rachel had the idols. She hid them under her camel saddle in her tent. When her father came into the tent to inspect, she lied.

Rachel: “Please don’t require me to rise, father. I’m on my period.”

The deception was complete. The idols remained hidden. Once at Bethel, God demanded that Jacob rid his household of all foreign gods. The 18^th century Methodist commentator on the scripture, Adam Clarke, suggests that these foreign gods could include Syrian gods, astrological charts, or gods taken in the spoil from Shechem.

Along with the riddance of idols was the command to remove earrings from Jacob’s family members ears. These ear rings may have had superstitious or religious significance related to idolatry. In a moment where God demanded that Jacob listen, He included a command to remove earrings from ears. In the ancient world, jewelry might be consecrated to some idol and warn as a charm to ward off evil spirits and provide magical charm. These earrings represented idolatrous beliefs that were obstructing the ears of Jacob’s family thus preventing their ability to listen to God.

The foreign gods and amulets were buried under a sacred tree so that no one would go back and dig them up again.   Jacob was serious about getting rid of idolatry. What idolatrous beliefs or practices are clogging your ears?  God is asking, “Can you hear me now?” The challenge for you and me is to remove our idolatry and abandon it permanently.

Jacob and his family were ordered to change their garments. This act of putting on a clean change of clothing represents purity. The Mosaic law would later require ritual purifications that represented inner and outer purity.

Once Jacob got alone with God and listened, got rid of all the foreign gods in his household, he returned to Bethel. There, Jacob built an altar to worship God. Jacob had returned to the spiritual place where he had first experienced God. Jacob renamed Bethel, which meant “house of God,” to El Bethel, “God of Bethel.” Jacob recognized that His encounter with God transcended time and space. It was no longer simply about a place, rather about the God of that place.

Once Jacob got alone with God and listened, got rid of all the foreign gods in his household, returned to Bethel, and experienced God again. God appeared to Jacob.

“Then God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Padan Aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, ‘Your name is Jacob; your name shall not be called Jacob anymore, but Israel shall be your name.’ So, He called his name Israel. 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. The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac I give to you; and to your descendants after you I give this land.’ Then God went up from him in the place where He talked with him. So Jacob set up a pillar in the place where He talked with him, a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink offering on it, and he poured oil on it. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spoke with him, Bethel” (Genesis 35:9-15 NKJV).

God appeared to Jacob in order to bless Jacob. For the second time in Jacob’s life, God declare that he has a new name, Israel. At Bethel, God renewed the Abrahamic covenant with Israel. Jacob set up a stone pillar to mark the place where God appeared to him some 30 years earlier. Jacob made an offering to God. Jacob named the place Bethel.

I find it interesting that it took Jacob so long to get back to Bethel. Perhaps as many as 10 years transpired from his leaving Laban’s household to his return to Jacob. All that time, Jacob delayed the receipt of the blessing God intended for him. Although Jacob was reluctant to listen, God kept speaking all the while.

Can You Hear Me Now?--Part 2

Genesis 35:1-15

Once Jacob got alone with God and listened, got rid of all the foreign gods in his household, returned to Bethel, and experienced God again, he was able to hear God’s voice.  Jacob listened to God.

After Jacob and his family left Haran and Uncle Laban’s house, they had traveled to Canaan. The departure was triggered by God’s call to Jacob.

“I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar and where you made a vow to Me. Now arise, get out of this land, and return to the land of your family.” (Genesis 31:13).

God’s call to leave Laban’s house was a call to return to the land of promise. It seems that God was calling Jacob to return to the place where Jacob had last encountered God, Bethel. On the journey south, Jacob met up with his brother, Esau, and experienced a reconciliation. But Jacob’s clan settled far north of Bethel. For the next 8 or 10 years, Jacob’s nomadic clan made Shechem their home.

Shechem was a blot on Jacob’s family name.

The town of Shechem featured a prominent young Canaanite prince conveniently named Shechem. Shechem was attracted to Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, and he seduced her. Jacob’s sons were enraged that an uncircumcised and idolatrous Canaanite had seduced their sister. When he was confronted, Shechem professed his love for Dinah and requested her hand in marriage. Jacob’s sons contrived a plot. They demanded that Shechem and all the men of his tribe undergo male circumcision. They complied. While all of the Shechemite men were sore and recovering from circumcision, the sons of Jacob slaughtered them in revenge for Shechem’s seduction of Dinah.

Jacob was shattered. Shechem had become a comfortable place to live. He told his boys that their action had made their entire family a stench in the nostrils of their neighbors, and would force them to move. In his distress, Jacob again got alone with God and listened. God called him back to Bethel.  Jacob had been there before.

Bethel meant house of God. God called him back to the place where he had heard God’s voice. Jacob led his family back to Bethel where he had first heard God’s voice. Once there, God called Jacob to several acts of obedience. God commanded Jacob to:

• Get rid of all the foreign gods in his household.
• Remove all their earrings.
• Change their clothing. 
• Build an altar to God. 
• Offer sacrifice. 
• Experience God anew.

Jacob got alone with God and listened.

We Don’t Break God’s Law—We Break Ourselves

I believe that sexual harassment is wrong. Every organization I have been a part of has had a clear policy statement prohibiting it. But I don’t believe that sexual harassment is wrong because of institutional policy, risk reduction, public image or brand protection. I don’t believe that sexual harassment is wrong because I am functioning from a feminist epistemology or neo-Marxist perception of power. No. I believe that sexual harassment is wrong because it is a gross act of exploitation of another person who is made in the image of God. Theologians call it imago dei.

The Biblical account of Creation describes the image of God upon humanity.

“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’

“And God said, ‘See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Genesis 1:26-31 NKJV).

“Let us…” Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acted as one in Creation to make humanity in God’s image or likeness. God gave humanity dominion over plants, animals and nature, not over each other to control people as if they were possessions or property. Enslavement objectifies others in an attempt to control human liberty. Such objectification is always wrong. Such objectification violates God’s creative design that bestows freedom of choice upon humanity, the pinnacle of His Creation.

I believe that sexual harassment is wrong not only because it is a objectifies people and violates the imago dei God gives to humanity as His creative gift, but also because I reject the shifting mores of political correctness.

Human nature depends upon rules. Rules create order. Order is demanded to ensure predictability. Predictability is at the core of learning. All of life depends upon order. God built order into the Universe to protect and prosper His Creation.

Sin distorts order. Humanity rejects God’s order. When we reject God’s order we don’t break His law, we break ourselves upon His immutable law. We crush, destroy, warp, sicken, and poison our lives with the toxicity of our rebellion. Such is the essence of sin. Sin is the rebel “I.” Sin is the infant cry from an adult body that insists “I do it my way,” all the while shaking one’s tiny rebellious fist in the face of Infinity.

It never works out well.

We don’t break God’s law. We break ourselves. We do so very badly. Over and over.

God created us with a need for very clear boundaries if we are to experience fulfilling expression of the sexuality that He so intricately designed within humanity.

“And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”  Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
“And Adam said: ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed’ (Genesis 2:18-25 NKJV).

God designed man and woman for mutual fulfillment in lifelong covenantal love. Sex is to be a beautiful recreative and procreative act within the boundaries of holy, committed love.

God gave the Hebrew people a moral law in the Old Covenant. This moral law provided details for sexual fulfillment along with prohibitions of those activities that undermine the healthy function of a community. He insisted that sex within holy marriage is good and fulfilling. Sex outside of holy marriage is objectifying and exploitative. Someone always winds up losing. So, He forbade certain sexual relationships:

• Sex with close kin (father, mother, step-mother, sister, step-sister, brother, step-brother, aunt, uncle).
• Sex with someone else’s spouse.
• Sex with someone of the same sex as yourself.
• Sex with an animal.

Everybody else was living this broken, sinful lifestyle. But God said “Not my people. They are in covenant relationship with me.”

Perhaps the political correctness train has lingered at the sexual harassment depot of the immoral braggadocio of a presidential candidate displayed via a videotape in 2016. I find no hope in the fact that the moral carousel has stopped at a temporary conclusion judging sexual harassment as wrong, because I know that the shifting mores of political correctness will continue to turn their attention to new interests.

However, one after another, the exploiters are being “outed.” Once outed, they are being ousted. Newscasters, politicians, media moguls, business executives, preachers, and priests alike. Some are not even being afforded due process. But that is not my point.

Here is the point. Abandoning God’s design for fulfilling human sexual expression, one man with one woman for life in holy marriage, is doomed to fail. We don’t break God’s law. Sooner or later, we break ourselves upon it.