Genesis 28

Most commentators will say he stole the birthright from his brother, but did he? Some would say it was a bargain that both parties agreed to. Jacob valued the birthright while Esau, who had it, didn’t value it one bit. However, we need to recognise a couple of points here.

Though Jacob had faith (unlike Esau), he depended on his own ability to get the rights he valued. Jacob used both Esau’s hunger and his incredible lack of interest in the birthright to entice him into selling it. Jacob used a weakness in Esau to his own advantage.

This is no different than any of the multitude of scams and cons that are around today where someone takes advantage of another person’s ignorance or greed. It goes to the heart of the human condition where the con is justified because the person who was willing to part with their valuables did so because they couldn’t see the bigger picture.

If Jacob’s heart was right he would’ve simply given his brother a bowl of stew and waited for God to make good His Word. The birthright was already Jacob’s, God had already said that, so there was no need to try and help God as we’ve seen is a constantly occurring theme so far in the book of Genesis.

God’s covenant blessings were gifts to be received, not grasped and wrenched out by human effort.

They carried the responsibility that they’re used for the good of others, not hoarded for a personal trophy.

This was lost on Jacob. It was good that he valued the birthright, but deeply faithless for him to secure it for himself in the manner he did.

The formality of his father, Issac, giving a blessing wasn’t necessary either. Abraham hadn’t given the blessing to Isaac, God did, and it is God who gave it to Jacob.

It was the elaborate trickery and deception of Issac, through his mother, Rebekah’s, instigation that revealed Jacob’s character, and God’s going to deal with him because of it, we can be sure of that.

But, why did God honour this blessing, when it was obtained under such fraud? God works through the free choices, both good and bad, of humans to accomplish his purposes. We often don’t give God good choices to work with, and that seems to be what happened in this case.

The plan that Rebekah now thought of to get Jacob away makes sense.

It was probably the right thing to do, but she didn’t mention to Isaac that she wanted to send Jacob to her brother to get him away from Esau’s murderous anger, however, she rightly mentions the fact that he could choose a wife back there from among her family instead of from the Canaanites.

There were plenty of negative consequences for Jacob. He had to flee with nothing but a staff and he was to spend the next twenty years in exile, but through the hardships of those years, his character was shaped and he became a man who could lead the tribes of Israel into their future.

Now, in this chapter, we’ll find Jacob leaving home. He comes to Beth–el where God appears to him and confirms to him the covenant made to Abraham.

Let’s begin at 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.

As we saw in the last episode. all the way through the Old Testament we find that God doesn’t want the godly to marry the ungodly. You can’t beat God. He’s put it down clearly all the way through the Word that the godly are not to marry the godless. 2 Corinthians 6:14 tells us as Christians under the New Testament, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? ” We become unequally yoked when we knowingly, as a Christian, marry an unbeliever and there’s always going to be a price to pay.

Now verses 2 to 4,  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. 

“May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; 

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.”

 

We see that Isaac understands that God had given the blessing to Abraham, then God had transferred the blessing to him, and that it is to be passed on to his son, Jacob.

In verse 5 now, So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.

So, what are we to say about the nationality of this family?

Well, you’d have to say that they were Syrians because that’s what they’re called in the Scriptures. Sometimes people will refer to Abraham as a Jew and an Israelite. But, No, actually he was not.

There were no Israelites until the time of Jacob whose name was changed to Israel. His twelve sons were Israelites. Yes, the line came from Abraham, he’s the father of the race. Likewise, you can’t call Abraham a Midianite, but he’s the father of the Midianites, and you can’t call him an Arab yet he fathered the Arab nations also.

Now to Genesis 28:6-9 ,  Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan Aram to take himself a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,” and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Padan Aram. 

Also Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan did not please his father Isaac. 

So Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had.

Now, remember we said that we were finished with the line of Ishmael? Well, we are in as much as the Bible won’t follow his line, but, his line will be mentioned as it crosses the line leading to Christ. So here, Esau goes out and marries a daughter of Ishmael. He thinks it’ll please his father, but we see here his great lack of spiritual perception because you see, the Ishmaelite line was as much rejected as the Canaanites or the Philistines.

Now we move to Genesis 28:10-11, Now Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Haran. 

So he came to a certain place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. And he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep.

The place he’s come to is Bethel which literally means, “the House of God.”

Bethel is twelve miles north of Jerusalem, and the home which Jacob left was probably twenty–five or thirty miles south of Jerusalem. So Jacob covered at least forty miles that first day.

He’s really keen to put as much distance as possible between himself and Esau. He wants to get as far from him as he can, but the further he gets away from Esau, the further he gets away from home.

What was he feeling that night? Well, he was probably very lonely and homesick. As far as the record’s concerned, this was his first night away from home. Did he perhaps wonder about the wisdom of his actions up to date? Did he maybe regret that they’d separated him from home and his loved ones?

It makes me remember my days or more particularly the nights on the fishing trawlers. There was always a time, usually a litttle while before and after sunset that a great loneliness and an almost uncontrollable sense of homesickness. Just that hour or 2 often bought on a deep sense of sorrow and a yearning for home.

Jacob’s a man now, not a little boy, but I think he probably experienced that same deep homesickness.

This is especially true since it’s the first time he’s been away from his mother Rebekah and as we’ve seen he’s been tied to her apron strings all his life, and now he’s separated. He’s out on his own now, and this is his first night away from home and we can imagine him with feelings of deep despair.

Notice what happens. He lies down and puts stones for pillows. People who have visited Bethel say it’s a dreary place. It’s been described as bleak and barren with large, bare rocks exposed. It’s twelve hundred feet above sea level, in the hills. There’re many places in Australia’s outback that would correspond to it, places like the Eromanga basin and the Simpson Dessert.

As bleak and forbidding as this place was it would be the high point in the spiritual life of Jacob, not only at this time but later in his life.

So this is the place he came to, and here he lay down to sleep.

Verses 12 and 13 bring us to the famous Jacob’s ladder. Then he (Jacob) dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 

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.    

By the way, it was here where God first appeared to Abraham after he had reached the land of Palestine.

To verse 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.

Here we see God giving to Jacob exactly what He’d given to Abraham first and then repeated to Isaac, and now He confirms it and reaffirms to Jacob that He will do this.

Verse 15,  Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.

This must’ve been extremely comforting and helpful to this lonesome, homesick chap who’s left home in such a hurry and under such desperate circumstances.

He’s on his way to a far country, and this first night God says to him, “I’m going to be with you, Jacob, and I’m going to bring you back to this land.”

The vision that God gave to him in the dream was of a ladder that reached up to heaven. What does that ladder mean?

Well, the Lord Jesus Himself interprets it for us it when He called Nathanael, as recorded in the Gospel of John 1:45-51. Nathanael was a bit of a know-all it seems. When he heard of Jesus, he said, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Our Lord dealt with him when He spoke to Nathanael revealing a deep knowledge of his innermost being. Nathanael asked, “How in the world do you know me so deeply?” And Jesus said, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael’s response was, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” He was pretty easy to convince, although he was a sceptic at the beginning. Let me give you the exact quote: “Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.”

And He said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

So what is that ladder, Jacob’s ladder? That ladder is Christ.

The angels were ascending and descending upon the Son of man. The angels ministered to Him; they were subject to His command. Nathanael will hear from the top of that ladder the voice of God, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

My friends, God is speaking to mankind through Christ in our day.

We simply can’t come to the Father directly. Every once in a while we hear of someone coming to God as if they have direct access to Him. We do not have direct access to God, friends.

We come through Christ and Christ alone; we have access to the Father through Christ. That’s the only way we can get into God’s presence.

The Lord Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the ladder, not a ladder we can climb but one that we can trust. He is the way to heaven. He doesn’t show us a way. He doesn’t give a formula that we must we religiously perform to get to heaven. No! He is the way, the only way. Trusting in His death, burial and resurrection is the one and only way to God.

This truth was given first to Jacob, the usurper.

Our Lord said to Nathanael, “You are an Israelite in whom there is no guile or deceit, as the King James has it” that is, no Jacob. Nathanael might have been a bit of a know-all and a smart-aleck, but he wasn’t a trickster like Jacob.

But God’s going to deal with Jacob.

God has given him this wonderful promise, but, unfortunately, Jacob still has so much to learn!

But that’s true of all of us today isn’t it? God has to teach us. He has to discipline us. He scourges every son whom He receives. He disciplines. He did it to Abraham and He did it to Isaac and now He’s going to do it to Jacob. Up to this point, everything’s been going Jacob’s way.

How many of us are like that?

It’s just like the lyrics of the old song God of the Mountain which go like this;

Life is easy when you’re up on the mountain

And you’ve got peace of mind like you’ve never known.

But things change when you’re down in the valley.

Don’t lose faith, for you’re never alone.

You talk of faith when you’re up on the mountain.

But talk comes so easy when life’s at its best.

But its down in the valley, of trial and temptation

That’s where your faith, is really put to the test.

So many of us talk the talk, especially when things are going well but in those valleys we go right back to trusting our own feelings and thoughts and fail to trust the Lord. God must shake us. He must allow trials to come to us because it’s only in trials that faith is grown. They put iron in our backbone of faith; they put courage in our lives and enable us to stand on that faith in God.

It seems that every day God gives us another opportunity to believe in Him and to trust Him above ourselves and this world.

Jacob has a long way to go. Notice what he does.

Verse 16 and we read, Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” 

And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!

Every church, every place where God is, is a dreadful place to anyone running away from God. It’s the place where the sinner ought to be able to meet God and come face to face with Him, through the Ladder who has been sent down from heaven, Christ.

When Jacob ran away from home, he had a limited view of God. He thought that when he ran away from home, he was running away from God, also. But he found that he’d not left God back home. “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not!” he says.

Oh, how many times during my life have I thought that my life was all up to me and that God wasn’t there? It’s only been the rolling by of years that I’ve realised the pitiful inadequateness of my own efforts and how much I need God every moment.

“How awesome is this place,” Jacob said. From his largely unspiritual and perhaps even superstitious perspective, Jacob was putting great importance on a particular place. He didn’t realise that if the presence of the LORD wasn’t with him in every place in every moment, then God could never fulfill His promise to him.

Now to verses 18 and 19 and we are of course in Genesis 28,  Then Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put at his head, set it up as a pillar, and poured oil on top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel; but the name of that city had been Luz previously. 

Now listen to Jacob. He has a lot to learn, and this is evidence of it. And we’re reading from verses 20 to 21 now,  Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God. 

What is he doing?

He’s trying to bargain with God. He says, “Now, God, if You’ll do this for me….”

But God’s already told him that He’s going to do every one of these things for him. God has said, “I’m going to keep you; I’m going to bring you back to this land; I’m going to give you this land; and I’m going to give you offspring.” Then Jacob turns around and bargains with Him, “If You’ll do it, then I’ll serve You.”

God doesn’t deal with us like that. He didn’t do business that way with Jacob either. If He had, Jacob would never’ve made it back to that land. God eventually brought him back into that land by His grace and mercy. When Jacob did finally come back to Bethel, he came back a wiser man. Do you know what he came back to do? To worship and praise God for His mercy. God had been merciful to him.

Isn’t it like many of us even today when we say we’ll serve the Lord if He’ll do such and such? “Lord if you get me out of this mess I’ll serve you the rest of my days.”

No, we won’t do anything of the sort, my friend. God knows it and He doesn’t work that way.

He’ll extend mercy to us, and He’ll be gracious to us without asking anything in return because He knows full well that the moment we’re out of that particular mud hole we’ll forget Him and carry on our own way till the next time, and the next. However, He does say that if you love Him, you’ll really want to serve Him. It’s called the bondage of love. It’s as if love makes us willing slaves to the one we love so much.

To verse 22,  And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.”

So Jacob erects this stone.

He’s trying to make a deal with God! Trying to get God to say, “What a good boy you are.”

How much of the heartache and anxiety in his life would Jacob have avoided if he’d prayed like this: “Because You promised to be with me and to keep me and to provide for all my needs, and to bring me back to the land which you swore to give to my fathers and to me, I will be completely Yours, Lord God.”

How many millions of us are forever trying to make a deal with God. My friends, God doesn’t do business with us. He just wants to become your Father through faith in Christ.

So until next times may God bless you and keep you in His Grace and Mercy.