Talk about a "rude awakening!" Poor Jacob, after slaving away for seven years for his beloved Rachel's hand in marriage, wakes up the morning after his wedding night to find the wrong person next to him. As the Scripture puts it, "behold, it was Leah!" (Gen. 29:25). Jacob's conniving uncle Laban switched daughters on Jacob, so that he ended up in the marriage bed with Leah instead of Rachel.
Jacob's expectations and hopes to marry the one he truly loved were dashed by Laban's trickery (of course, Jacob did get to marry Rachel, but only after he committed to serving Laban for another seven years). One of my favorite Genesis commentators, Derek Kindner, says this about Jacob's unpleasant surprise: "this moment [is] a miniature of man's disillusion, experienced from Eden onwards." How true. The serpent fed Eve a great line about the forbidden fruit, how she would not die from eating it, how she would become like God, and how she would gain the wisdom to know good and evil. When she and Adam ate the apple, they were let down in a mighty way. Not only did they not become like God, but they were sentenced to die and cast out of the garden. So much for their foolish hopes.
In this life, we are beset by disappointment and failed expectations. Whether like Adam and Eve, we are let down by the deceit of sin, or whether like Jacob, we are victims of another's lies and fraud, we find that very little in this world lives up to the hype. Certainly that is true when it comes to the glowing promises of Madison Avenue for whatever product they are pitching to us. Sadly, it is also true, far too often, for people when it comes to their own families and "friends." Promises are broken, selfishness prevails, and the result is broken hearts and disillusionment.
There is one expectation and hope that will never let us down - the promise of God's love for us in Christ Jesus. The Bible does't give us a whole of information about the details of heaven, or of life in the new heavens and earth. But, we can say for sure that it will be far greater than anything we can possibly hope for. As the Scriptures says, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor. 2:9).
Genesis 28 tells the account of Jacob's journey to Haran. If Jacob was the type of man given to reflection, his trek eastward to the country of his mother Rebekah's family, being several hundred miles long, would have offered more than enough time for some soul-searching.
Did he reflect on the purpose of his journey? Although he was sent out with his father Isaac's blessing, and with his charge to find a wife from Rebekah's family there, Jacob knew that his journey was a forced exit from his family and the beginning of an indefinite time of exile. Before Isaac sent him away with a blessing, Rebekah sent him off with a warning: Jacob's brother Esau was set on killing him.
So Jacob was fleeing for his life. And he only had himself to thank. Esau's rage was inflamed when Jacob so deceitfully took the blessing of Isaac away from him. Jacob was foolish, for the blessing was his in the first place. Had he, and his mother Rebekah, only trusted in the Lord instead of in their cunning, Jacob would have both inherited the blessing (despite Isaac's plan to give it to Esau; Jacob was God's choice, not Isaac's) and lived at peace at home. But apparently Jacob was faith-challenged; he relied on his own wisdom to acquire what God had already declared was his will to give him. Surely Rebekah had told him more than once the words God had spoke to her while he and his twin brother were still in the womb: "the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger" (25:23)
But because of his faithlessness and ungodly ways, Jacob was now a fugitive from his own family. Yes, he had in Isaac's blessing the promise that he would multiply, and that he and his offspring would inherit the land of promise. But what good were those promises, when he was now outside the land, and had no wife or children at the time?
And now, after who knows how many days of travel, Jacob finds himself in a "certain place" - who knows where? He looks for something for a pillow, and the best he can do is a rock. Some great thing this is, being the heir of God's promises to Abraham - sleeping on a rock in the middle of nowhere, escaping from a brother determined to kill him!
But then Jacob sees the vision in his dream: the stairway and the angels going up and down it. And the Lord himself stands next to him and speaks to him the glorious promises: that he is with Jacob and will keep him wheverever he goes, and that he will not leave him until he fulfills his word for him.
When Jacob wakes up, the first thing he says is, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it" (28:16). Now nothing is the same for Jacob. He's in the same place, to be sure, but it's no longer just a "certain place", but it is "Bethel", the house of God. The rock is no longer a head rest for Jacob, but he makes it into a memorial stone for God Almighty who appeared to him.
What was more real for Jacob then? What he saw in his dream, or what he saw when he woke up? The lonely wilderness, or the heavenly stairway and the awesome presence of the Lord? By faith, Jacob obtained "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The vision of his dream became a greater reality for him than the reality he woke up to.
Faith in God and in his Word is like that. By faith we know that God's promises are a greater reality than the reality we see with our eyes each day. By faith we know that this world is under the rule of Christ, though it seems at times to be at the mercy of the forces of evil and wickedness. By faith we know that death is not our end, but a better life - a far better life! - awaits us on the other side of the resurrection.
Christ came into the world. His Spirit dwells in his people. God is truly in this place. But, do we know it?
With Thanksgiving Day in mind, I preached on Luke 17:11-19 this past Sunday morning. In this passage, Jesus heals ten lepers but only one, a Samaritan, returns to Christ to give him thanks. The main point of my message was that wherever there is true faith and trust in Christ, there will also be heart-felt thanksgiving to him for his mercies. The Samaritan showed his faith in giving thanks to Jesus. In response to his exuberant thanksgiving, Jesus confirms him in his faith by saying, "your faith has saved you" (v.19). In response to the good news of the death and resurrection of Christ to save us from our sins, the question that presses upon us is not just, "Do I believe this gospel?", but also, "Do I give thanks to God for this gospel?".
That was the jist of my message on Sunday morning. But another thought occurred to me as I was reflecting on the passage. It is interesting that Jesus tells all ten men to "Go and show yourselves to the priests" (v.14), when one of them is a Samaritan. I am no expert on the religious and social circumstances of Jesus' day, but I do know that Samaritans were not part of Israel's religious life. For that reason, I would think that a Samaritan would not go to the Jewish priests for inspection of his (now-healed) leprosy as the Jews would have done.
If that is the case, perhaps the Samaritan's going to Christ rather than to the priests is a subtle testimony to the truth that Christ is the new Priest and the new Temple. The Samaritan is one step ahead of the Jews in his understanding of the times. Although it was Christ who commanded the lepers to go to the priests, it would not be long before the function of the Israelite priesthood would be fully taken up by him in his mediatorial work before God on behalf of sinners. The Samaritan, in anticipation of this, goes not to the current priests of the old covenant but directly to the One who would soon establish himself as the High Priest of the new covenant (Heb. 8).
Here are some further reflections on Genesis 5, after preaching on this passage last Sunday. If you weren't there on Sunday, or are unfamiliar with Enoch, he was the seventh from Adam through Seth. Unlike almost everybody else that has ever lived , Enoch never died. Instead, we read that "Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:24). Only Elijah had a similar experience (2 Kings 2:11, 12).
One of the commentators, John Sailhamer, makes the observation that, Noah and Abraham were also men in Genesis that the Scripture praises for their faith and righteousness. Noah also "walked with God" (6:9), and Abraham "believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness" (15:6). Sailhamer points out that all three of these saints were noted for their faith and righteousness, yet lived before the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai. Therefore, the author of Genesis (Moses, I believe) is telling us that true righteousness is not had through adherence to the law, but through another way, namely faith (or, another way to put it, "walking with God"). Here we have already a righteousness "apart from the law" (Romans 3:21).
Whether before or after the giving of the 10 commandments, God never intended the law to serve as a means of attaining eternal life. Enoch believed God (Hebrews 11:3), walked with him, and was transported to his heavenly home (at the "tender" age of 365!). Resurrection life comes by faith, faith in Jesus Christ. For he said: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11:25, 26).
One of my favorite Christian authors is J. I. Packer. He has a gift for communicating theological truths in a clear, succinct, and precise way. Last Sunday, I cited a passage from his book "Knowing God" in which Packer speaks of the Incarnation. I thought it would be worth putting on my blog since it is a perspective on Christmas we don't often consider. As Christians, our perennial concern with Christmas is the way it has become an orgy of consumerism and materialism instead of a time to reflect on the birth of Christ and celebrate the coming of the Savior into the world.
However, there is another aspect to the Incarnation that we sometimes miss. And that is, the pattern Jesus has set for us in his laying aside the riches and glory of heaven to bear the ignonimy of being born a human being, his coming in the "likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3). Speaking of 2 Corinthians 8:9 ("For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich."), Packer writes:
"...the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need" (Knowing God, pg. 64).
If we can redeem the crass worldliness of our culture's Christmas celebration, it will be both by pointing others to the Savior in the manger, and by putting on Christ-likeness in lives of humble, self-denying service to others in the name of that Savior.
One of the great privileges of being a pastor is the opportunity to spend extended time each week in the study of Scripture. It is also a responsibility; after all, preachers are supposed to know their Bibles! Having grown up not reading the Bible, I feel a need to play "catch-up" in learning the Word of God. For that reason, for the last few years, I've committed myself to reading through the entire Bible in the calendar year.
I say this not to heap praise on myself, or to suggest I've become an expert in Scripture (in the course of my ministry, I am often made painfully aware of my lack of expertise), but to encourage you to do the same. Reading through the Bible, I mean ALL the Bible - even the geneaologies and law codes - is a daunting task that takes more than a little perseverance. But, God will bless you if you do it.
I thought I'd list seven lessons I've learned from reading the whole Bible in a year. Here they are:
1. There are more sinners than saints in the Bible.
Adam and Eve were sinners. The patriarchs were sinners. The judges were sinners. The kings of Israel were sinners. The disciples were sinners. Evidently, God wants to impress upon us something about his grace, not man's goodness!
2. God is concerned about life here on earth.
Are Christians "so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good"? Not if they read their Bibles. The Lord cares about how we treat others, our relationships, our attitude and care for the weak and outcast, our stewardship of the created things he puts under our care, just to mention a few things in this regard. God didn't save us by taking us out of the world, but he saved us by coming into our world.
3. God deals with both individuals and groups of people.
Individualistic approaches to faith (ala Billy Graham and American evangelicalism), and conceptions of salvation focused exclusively on God's people as a body (ala N.T. Wright), both appear un-balanced in light of the Scripture's equal concern for the person and the church. The Bible speaks to both "me", and "we".
4. God's time is not our time.
Thousands of years passed from God's first promise of a Savior (Genesis 3:15) to the coming of Christ. The writings of the Bible itself span centuries. God works on his timetable, not ours! Patience breeds trust and fosters hope.
5. God is sovereign.
Even where the text doesn't mention God (e.g., the book of Esther), he is there causing all things to fall out exactly according to his eternal plan (Ephesians 1:11). Wow!
6. The Bible is full of hope.
Despite the sometimes dark and disturbing depictions of the corruption of humanity, and the sin even of God's people, there is throughout the Scripture a note of hope and expectation. God is good, and he will fulfill his promises!
7. The Bible is about Jesus.
This is not always obvious from certain OT passages. Sometimes it's hard to see how Christ is there. But, Jesus himself said the Scripture was about him (Luke 24:44). When you read through the Bible keeping this verse in mind, he does begin to emerge from the shadows, so to speak. And that's what Bible reading is all about - growing in the knowledge of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:1).