This morning we have a large chapter to
consider in our exposition.
It's 55 verses long and so I'm going
to take the liberty in the scripture reading
of reading just a few excerpts from chapter
31 and then in the message I will
try to make some further effort at covering
the entire chapter.
But let's turn to Genesis chapter 31 and
let me read a few verses beginning with
the first verse for our scripture reading.
Now Jacob heard the words of Laban's son
saying, Jacob has taken away all that was
our fathers and from what belonged to our
father he has made all this wealth.
And Jacob saw the attitude of Laban and
behold it was not friendly toward him as
formerly.
Then the Lord said to Jacob, return to
the land of your fathers and to your
relatives and I will be with you.
So Jacob said and called Rachel and Leah
to his flock in the field and said
to them, I see your father's attitude that
it is not friendly toward me as formerly
but the God of my father has been
with me and you know that I have
served your father with all my strength.
Yet your father has cheated me and changed
my wages ten times.
However, God did not allow him to hurt
me.
If he spoke thus, the speckle shall be
your wages then all the flock brought forth
speckled.
And if he spoke thus, the striped shall
be your wages then all the flock brought
forth striped.
Thus God has taken away your father's livestock
and given them to me.
And it came about at the time when
the flock were mating that I lifted up
my eyes and saw in a dream and
behold the male goats which were mating were
striped, speckled and mottled.
Then the angel of God said to me
in the dream, Jacob.
And I said, here I am.
And he said, lift up now your eyes
and see that all the male goats which
are mating are striped, speckled and mottled for
I have seen all that Laban has been
doing to you.
I am the God of Bethel where you
anointed a pillar, where you made a vow
to me.
Now arise, leave this land and return to
the land of your birth.
Notice incidentally then in verse 11 references made
to the angel of God, but when the
angel speaks in verse 13 he says, I
am the God of Bethel.
It is another one of the theophanies of
the Old Testament designed to prepare Israel for
the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The angel of God or the angel of
Jehovah is a reference to the Lord Jesus
who carried on ministry before he became incarnate
in the virgin's womb and through the birth
in Bethlehem.
Now in the remaining verses here, verses 14
through 21, Rachel and Leah express their agreement
with Jacob in his desire to leave and
Rachel also steals the household gods from Laban
her father.
Then in verse 22 we read, when it
was told Laban on the third day that
Jacob had fled, then he took his kinsmen
with him and pursued him a distance of
seven days journey and he overtook him in
the hill country of Gilead.
God came to Laban the Syrian in a
dream of the night and said to him,
be careful that you do not speak to
Jacob either good or bad.
And Laban caught up with Jacob.
Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the
hill country and Laban with his kinsmen camped
in the hill country of Gilead.
Then Laban said to Jacob, what have you
done by deceiving me and carrying away?
What have you done by deceiving me and
carrying away my daughters like captives of the
sword?
Why did you flee secretly and deceive me
and did not tell me so that I
might have sent you away with joy and
with songs, with timbrel and with lyre and
did not allow me to kiss my sons
and my daughters.
Now you have done foolishly.
It is in my power to do you
harm, but the God of your father spoke
to me last night saying, be careful not
to speak either good or bad to Jacob.
And now you have indeed gone away because
you longed greatly for your father's house, but
why did you steal my gods?
Then Jacob answered and said to Laban, because
I was afraid for I said, lest you
would take your daughters from me by force.
Now he's not making an excuse for stealing
the gods, but rather for fleeing.
He doesn't know at this point that the
gods have been stolen by his wife, Rachel.
The one with whom you find your gods
shall not live.
In the presence of our kinsmen, point out
what is yours among my belongings and take
it for yourself.
For Jacob did not know that Rachel had
stolen them.
Now the next few verses describe the search
and the failure to find anything and we
read in verse 36, then Jacob became angry
and contended with Laban and Jacob answered and
said to Laban, what is my transgression?
What is my sin that you have hotly
pursued me?
Though you have felt through all my goods,
what have you found of all your household
goods?
Set it here before my kinsmen and your
kinsmen that they may decide between us too.
These twenty years I have been with you.
Your ewes and your female goats have not
miscarried, nor have I eaten the rams of
your flocks.
That which was torn of beasts, I did
not bring to you.
I bore the loss of it myself.
You required it of my hand, whether stolen
by day or stolen by night.
Thus I was.
By day the heat consumed me and the
frost by night, and my sleep fled from
my eyes.
These twenty years I have been in your
house.
I served you fourteen years for your two
daughters and six years for your flock, and
you changed my wages ten times.
If the God of my father, the God
of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac had
not been for me, surely now you would
have sent me away empty-handed.
God has seen my affliction and the toil
of my hands.
So he rendered judgment last night.
The remainder of the chapter is the record
of the covenant made, suggested by Laban, made
between Laban and Jacob, and also of the
covenant sacrifice and the feast that followed.
And then in the final verse we read,
And early in the morning Laban arose and
kissed his sons and daughters and blessed them.
Then Laban departed and returned to his place.
May the Lord bless this reading of his
word.
Moses, the great lawgiver, in his final words
to the nation, gave them some instruction that
has been called the Song of Moses.
And in that Song of Moses he said
to the nation Israel, As an eagle stirreth
up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth
abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on
her wings.
So the Lord alone did lead him, that
is Israel, and there was no strange God
with him.
In these words there is a clue to
the strange ways of God with men.
And we want to look at that this
morning as we consider the subject, the stirring
up of Jacob's nest.
Those who have studied eagles know that eagles
have some very interesting little habits and little
ways of teaching the young eaglets how to
fly.
Eagles and their young like to stay in
the nest for a considerable period of time,
but the time comes when the little birds
must be thrust forth from the nest.
And so the result is that the eagles
destroy the nests and then push the little
birds out.
And as they fall out into the air,
not realizing that they have the capacity to
fly, they have to learn by the experience
of fear and then of the mother's help
that they do have it within them to
fly and to make their way along in
the air.
So the result is that as they fall,
the mothers catch the eagles and then drop
them again and then catch them and drop
them until finally they're able to fly for
themselves.
It's a beautiful parable of human life and
it also has some application to the spiritual
life of believers.
It is characteristic of all of us to
want to stay in the old home, to
be around the same people, and to live
in the same general type of atmosphere in
which we have grown up.
But the time comes when it's necessary for
us to make our way on our own.
In spiritual things it is like that too.
And it's necessary for us from time to
time to be thrust out of the comfortable
surroundings of our particular spiritual existence in order
that we might learn some new things about
our great God.
One of the greatest things that happens to
a Christian is the experience that God brings
into his life that forces him like the
little eaglets to learn to fly for himself,
realizing always that underneath are the everlasting arms.
Now Jacob, it appears, was afflicted with a
great deal of contentment at this time.
He had been in Heron for about twenty
years.
He had now become a part of that
part of the country.
He had a family now with wives and
children, and he had large flocks.
He had become a successful rancher.
And the result was, like Ulysses and his
crews, or Ulysses and his crews, he was
in danger of forgetting the land of his
birth.
The thing that was happening to Jacob was
the thing that often happens to us as
believers.
God has called us to be strangers and
sojourners here upon this earth, every one of
us.
And the tendency of each of us is
to plant our feet firmly upon the present
ground upon which we are standing, in the
present life in which we are living, and
to want to stay there, and to lose
the pilgrim spirit, to lose the sense of
a life in which we are truly trusting
God moment by moment.
Jacob had become occupied with his possessions.
He also has now become afflicted with wives
who are, to some extent, idolatrous, as is
evident from this very account.
And in addition, he had other things that
were keeping him tied to this life instead
of pressing on to the life that God
desired for him to have.
He was living in a foreign land.
So what happens to Jacob is what is
often the thing that happens to us.
God must, like the loving eagle, thrust his
little eaglet forth in order that he might
learn some further things about the life that
was intended for him.
So Jacob must be pushed from this contented
nest, or this nest of contentment in which
he was living, and from the inferior spiritual
life which he has been living, in order
that he might truly become what God intends
for him to become, as we shall see
in the latter chapters of this book, Israel,
the prince with God.
Now through it all, you can notice the
thing that is encouraging for anyone who is,
like Jacob, thrust by God into unusual experiences.
There is underneath Jacob all the time the
divine care, or the providence.
Providence is a word that means literally to
see beforehand.
And so the providence of God is that
power of God by which he, able to
see beforehand, cares for his children in the
experiences that they undergo.
Back in Genesis chapter 28 at Bethel, God
had given Jacob the fundamental promise.
In the fifteenth verse of that chapter, 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 promised you.
Now the experiences of Jacob's life looked at
from the divine standpoint are experiences in which
God undertakes for him constantly.
In the third verse of the thirty-first
chapter, the chapter that we are looking at
this morning, the Lord said to Jacob, Return
to the land of your fathers and to
your relatives, and I will be with you.
And then, of course, when Laban takes out
after Jacob in order to run him down
and to do harm to him, it is
God who intercepts Laban and warns him that
he is not to do anything that is
to harm Jacob and his family in any
way.
It's important for us to know that when
we are thrust forth into experiences designed by
God to deepen our spiritual life, we have
the rest or we have the sense of
the providence of God undergirding us.
If I were to be asked what would
be the greatest thing that could happen to
Believer's Chapel, I think I would have to
reply, the greatest thing that could happen to
Believer's Chapel would be for the congregation to
have the experience that Jacob has in this
chapter of being thrust forth into a new
experience in order that there might be development
and growth, growth into a new plane of
spiritual living.
It seems to me that in so many
of our evangelical churches, we tend to reach
a certain pattern of spiritual living, almost a
certain plane of spiritual living, and then we
seem to be satisfied.
And Sunday after Sunday and week and month
after month, year after year, we seem to
make no progress at all.
The greatest thing that could happen to us
would be for God to thrust us forth
and force us to make some new advances
in the Christian life, resting of course in
the enabling power of God through them.
Well Jacob now has been twenty years in
Laban's land and God thinks that it's time
to leave and so does Laban.
He thinks it's time for Jacob to leave
too.
In fact, there is working in the heart
of Jacob a kind of noble discontent, a
kind of noble restlessness with the life that
he is living.
That's expressed back in chapter 30 and verse
25 where we read that Jacob said to
Laban, Laban send me away that I may
go to my own place and to my
own country.
And then on top of that, the sons
of Laban had become jealous and envious of
Jacob because of the blessing that God had
given to him.
And they began to complain that Jacob was
stealing things from Laban.
That of course was untrue.
And Jacob also noticed that the attitude of
Laban had changed.
Formerly he greeted him by, with a big
hearty handshake and a mouth full of teeth,
but that seems to be gone now.
He notices that Laban no longer is as
friendly as he formerly had been.
It's all very wrong so far as Jacob
is concerned.
He had spent 14 underpaid years working for
Laban.
And in addition, Laban had taken advantage of
him in many other ways.
He had changed his wages 10 times.
So you can see that he had suffered
a great deal.
Laban is one of those kinds of men
that afflict many of our churches.
He was the kind of man who had
a second-hand religion.
He could talk a lot about the Lord
God, but at the same time he could
do many things that indicated that he was
not a true believer at all.
He, his religion is a kind of second
-hand religion, a mixture of truth and error,
a blending of the consciousness of the divine
presence.
But at the same time he has a
belief in the terrafim, or a belief in
images.
We have a lot of people like that
in our churches.
They attend church on Sunday morning.
They acknowledge that there is a God.
They say they believe in God, but their
lives reflect an idolatry that is directly contradictory
to the other things that they profess.
So Laban is that kind of man and
you will see that kind of thing in
him through this chapter.
But it is God's voice that finally stirs
Jacob effectually.
And we read in the third verse, return
to the land of your fathers and to
your relatives and I will be with you.
This is God's voice stirring up his little
eaglet.
The Bethel promises are renewed.
He promises that he will be with him.
And did you notice too that it is
God who is responsible for the leading.
One of the greatest blessings of the Christian
life is the assurance that it is God
who leads us.
We do not really have to find the
will of God for us, for he reveals
his will to us.
He leads us.
Our responsibility is to follow.
We do not have to seek his leading.
He constantly leads.
The characteristic of the children of God is
that they are led by the Holy Spirit.
We are constantly led by him.
Our responsibility is simply to recognize what he
is doing.
And God speaks to Jacob and says, Jacob,
now it is time for you to go
on back to the land of your fathers
and to your relatives.
For remember, underneath all of these experiences of
Jacob there are those fundamental Abrahamic promises that
through Abraham and his seed, Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, all the families of the earth are
to be blessed.
Jacob is a wise man in some ways
and very unwise in other ways, but he
was wise here because he called a little
conference of his family.
He called for Leah and Rachel and he
said, let's go out in the field and
have a little conference over some matters that
God has brought to my attention.
And when he's there, he acknowledges God's blessing
in the midst of his troubles.
Incidentally, that's the first step in overcoming troubles.
He argues his case with his wives in
order to persuade them to follow him as
he goes back to the land.
For after all, they were Laban's daughters and
so they must make a decision.
It is either Jacob or Laban.
His argument is in the form of three
contrasts.
First of all, he argues based upon Laban's
displeasure and God's pleasure.
He says in the fifth verse, I see
your father's attitude that it is not friendly
toward me as formerly, but the God of
my father has been with me.
So you can see your father is displeased,
but God is pleased with me.
Then he argues based, argues with an argument
based upon the craftiness of Laban.
An unweared kind of craftiness is over against
the unweared protection of God.
He says, you know that I've served your
father with all my strength, yet your father
has cheated me and changed my wages ten
times.
However, God did not allow him to hurt
me.
And then he says, take a look at
the diminishing flocks of Laban, and then take
a look at the multiplying flocks that God
has given me.
He says, if he spoke thus, the speckled
shall be your wages, then all the flock
brought forth speckled.
And if he spoke thus, the striped shall
be your wages, then all the flock brought
forth striped.
Thus God, notice he attributed to God, thus
God has taken away your father's livestock and
given them to me.
This is a rather interesting thing and Jacob
refers to the dream that he had seen.
In the dream he had seen the animals
in heat and mating by the water troughs,
and on the basis of that he had
devised his little schemes that we read about
in the preceding chapter.
One of the commentators explains what happens in
this way.
The actual animals that mated were not ring
streaked, speckled, and spotted at all, but were
animals in the solid color flock belonging to
Laban.
The meaning of the dream is quite plainly
that these animals were heterozygous rather than homozygous,
carrying the particular genes for streaks, spots, and
speckles, even though their own coats were all
solid color.
God could see into the gene structure, though
Jacob could not, and he knew the true
nature of the animals.
So Jacob learned from this experience in which
he sought to follow what he saw in
the dream that God was really with him.
Now then, he calls for a decision and
we read in verse 14 that Rachel and
Leah answered and said to him, do we
still have any portion or inheritance in our
father's house?
Are we not reckoned by him as foreigners?
Someone has said, reputation is what people think
we are, character is what we really are.
Now Jacob calls for a decision, and based
upon reputation, one might have thought perhaps they
might decide for Laban, but they decide for
Jacob, because there was something fundamentally right about
Jacob in the midst of all of his
wrongness, whereas there was something fundamentally wrong about
Laban in the midst of some of the
things that were right about him.
And so they say, he's treated us as
foreigners, he sold us, he's entirely consumed our
purchase price, he's taken our diary, so to
speak, and he's used it for himself.
And so they side with Jacob.
Laban pays the hidden price of all covetousness.
Ultimately, covetousness means that we lose what we
think that we have gained, and he has
now lost his daughters and also his grandchildren,
who are referred to here.
Well, they decide to make a hasty journey,
and in the midst of the decision to
make the journey, it is Rachel who steals
the household idols that were her father's.
These little teraphim were small idols, usually only
several inches high, although there have been found
some that were quite a bit larger.
They were very valuable, were often made out
of very precious metals, and so they were
worth something in themselves.
But they also signified some things that were
significant as well.
They signified, it is thought by some, that
the person who possessed them had certain rights
of inheritance.
The Newsy tablets suggest this, and consequently some
have thought that Rachel stole those because she
wanted rights of inheritance.
But at any rate, she did, and when
Laban is away from their home, Jacob gathers
his flocks together and his family together, and
hurriedly makes his way back to the west,
to his homeland.
Well, three days later, Laban finds out about
it.
It was a simple matter for Laban to
overtake Jacob, because he, of course, had his
large flocks and also his large family.
And so Laban, after a journey of about
seven days, overtook Jacob.
But a surprising thing happened.
God came to Laban the Syrian in a
dream of the night and said to him,
be careful that you do not speak to
Jacob either good or bad.
And here again, divine protection aids Jacob.
Incidentally, this is a most edifying, I think,
illustration of an important principle in the Christian
life.
Have you ever noticed that when a person
comes to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ,
out of a life of unbelief, that there
is immediately trouble and strife among friends and
family?
Have you ever noticed that?
That's always true.
There is always a fierce struggle that takes
place when a person becomes a believer, in
the midst of companions and friends and relatives
who are unbelievers.
It's the same fierce struggle in the spiritual
sphere that takes place between the Lord and
Satan.
And it's carried out in the midst of
the human sphere.
So here is a believer who is anxious
to make a separation between himself and the
worldly unsaved people of the East and go
back home where Jehovah is honored.
And a fierce struggle ensues with the family,
friends, material interests fighting to keep the Christian
from identifying himself wholly with the Lord.
The world pursues after the Christian who wants
to make a decision for the things of
God, struggles with that Christian, seeks to persuade
him not to make that foolish decision.
It asks us why we are not content
to abide with the world.
What is wrong with the world?
It also professes its willingness to honor our
particular religion.
In fact, we'll have a feast together and
we'll have joy and song and timbrel and
lyre.
As Laban says with reference to Jacob when
he catches up with him, it appeals to
our feelings and asks us why we are
so cruel in separating ourselves from the world.
Often the world accuses us of arrogance because
we have attributed our salvation to the Lord
God and affirm that we have come to
know him whom to know is eternal life.
And then of course finally it reproaches us
with our inconsistencies which are many of course
because the doctrine of sanctification is a doctrine
that has to do with our Christian living
and we are all in the process of
being sanctified.
There are many inconsistencies in the lives of
all of the saints and it is easy
for the worldling to pick out some inconsistency
in the life of a believer.
And so we are reproached with the inconsistencies
and Jacob was too.
Why have you stolen my gods?
But that struggle is an important struggle and
if you have come to faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ you will know exactly what
I mean because there is a struggle immediately
with the world.
Often when a husband becomes a Christian there
is a struggle with his wife.
When a father and mother become Christians there
are struggles with children.
When children become Christians there are struggles that
take place between the children and the parents.
And frequently there are businessmen who come to
faith in Christ and there are struggles with
their employers and even their employees or their
friends, the persons with whom they do business.
There is a fierce struggle.
The world always fights under the direction of
the evil spirit to keep the believer within
the circle of its own influence in order
that we might not identify ourselves with the
Lord God.
It's not surprising then that Laban pursues after
Jacob.
Now he didn't like Jacob.
He was not friendly to him.
But there was some moving force deep down
within that wanted to keep this man in
his presence even though he didn't like him.
It's a strange inconsistency that the world has.
It wants to have the believer and have
the believer one of them but it despises
the believer and does not like them.
Well now finally Laban overtakes Jacob and after
the divine interruption.
Incidentally this is the third time that the
patriarchs have a rather inglorious rescue by the
Lord God.
Abraham was rescued by the Lord God ingloriously
when he was in the midst of sin.
Isaac the same and here is Jacob following
along in the paths of his fathers.
Well Laban finally comes into the presence of
Jacob and in the twenty-fifth through the
thirty-second verses there is a kind of
stormy interview.
He exaggeratedly tries to put Jacob in the
worst light possible.
He plays the part of an outraged parent
and even a grandparent complaining that he'll not
be able to see his daughters or his
sons.
And of course he speaks of his grandsons
there.
He reminds us of a person who sends
flowers to his mother on Mother's Day and
then lets her do the dishes and babysit
for the grandchildren throughout the years.
Our big words are often expressed on certain
days but the rest of our lives we
live the same self-centered little lives that
we have always lived.
Well Laban is like that.
And then he reaches the climax of his
berating of Jacob by saying, why did you
steal my gods?
Jacob doesn't know about that which has taken
place and so we have the picture of
a very tense search that is made of
the tense of the individuals in Jacob's family.
But you know Laban has to learn a
very important lesson too.
And that is that our children usually reflect
us.
Now Laban was a very crafty, guileful individual.
Very cunning.
And Rachel was his daughter.
And so Rachel is very crafty and cunning
and she is full of guile.
And so Rachel outwits her own father.
And you read about it in verse 33
through verse 35 and it illustrates for us
the spiritual principle, God makes the wrath of
men to praise him.
And so Laban suffers from his own sins.
His sin of craftiness and cleverness and his
own daughter outwits him.
Well Jacob has long pent up emotions.
And these find expression now after it has
been discovered that there is nothing wrong with
Jacob's encampment so far as Jacob knows.
He becomes very angry.
He contends with Laban and he says, what's
my transgression?
What is my sin that you have hotly
pursued me?
You've felt through all of my goods and
what have you found of your household goods?
Set it here before your kinsmen and my
kinsmen that they may decide between us two.
And he reminds him of what he has
done for Laban.
He said, twenty years I have been with
you.
Your ewes and your female goats have not
miscarried nor have I eaten the rams of
your flocks.
That which was torn of beasts I didn't
bring to you.
I bore the loss of it myself.
You required it of my hand whether stolen
by day or stolen by night.
Thus I was.
By day the heat consumed me and the
frost by night and my sleep fled from
my eyes.
Now that last statement is one of the
most interesting statements that I know of in
this section of the book of Genesis.
Of course Jacob is eloquently berating Laban for
failure to find anything and his words pass
unchallenged because Laban knows that what he is
saying is really the truth.
But listen to how he describes his life
as a shepherd.
The life of a shepherd one might think
was an easy life, but it was not.
At night the temperature often went below freezing.
They had nothing but some skins.
In the daytime the heat was so hot,
as he expressed it here, that the heat
consumed him.
At night it was the cold and then
they often spent a month or two out
on the hills and in the pastures unable
to sleep because of the necessity for caring
for their animals.
And so Jacob reminds Laban of what it
means to be a shepherd.
Now the thing that I like about this
is it reminds us what shepherding spiritually is
in this life.
There are lots of people who want to
be a shepherd.
There are men who say I want to
be an elder in a local church and
shepherd the flock.
There are those who say I would like
to be a pastor teacher, having the gift
of shepherding the flock of God and teaching
the flock of God.
Well this is a picture of what it
is to be a shepherd of the flock
of God.
In the daytime it's the heat that consumes.
In the nighttime it's the frost and the
cold and in the meantime no sleep at
all.
It's not an easy task.
It's an incidental reflection of what it means
to be a shepherd of the flock of
God.
I don't want to discourage any of you
young men who want to be shepherds but
rather to encourage you, but to remind you
that in shepherding the flock of God it
is not an easy task.
And the good shepherd is the one who
is willing to bear the heat and bear
the cold and bear the tiredness and ultimately
to give his life for the sheep.
That's the work of the good shepherd.
Jacob was a shepherd and he was a
good one and he illustrates in his own
life what it means to be a biblical
shepherd.
It's not a romantic kind of existence as
it is often pictured and one only has
to read the adversities of the Apostle Paul
in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 to realize what
it means to be a shepherd of the
flock of God.
Well Laban evidently after Jacob's outburst thinks that
it's possible that Jacob will one day return
with a larger force than he has now
and he might come and decide that he
wants to war against me bringing Isaac and
all of his possessions with him and so
he decides that resignation is the thing that
is most suitable and so he suggests that
he and Jacob make a covenant.
And so Jacob agrees.
A pillar of remembrance is set up and
a pile of stones and they enter into
a relationship that is a kind of blood
brother relationship.
And even in the covenant words however Laban
suggests that Jacob is a devious kind of
individual.
We read in verse 48 Laban said this
heap is a witness between you and me
this day therefore it was named Goliad and
Mizpah for he said may the Lord watch
between you and me when we are absent
one from the other.
If you mistreat my daughters or if you
take wives beside my daughters although no man
is with us see God is witness between
you and me suggesting that Jacob might mistreat
his daughters.
And Laban said to Jacob behold this heap
and behold the pillar which I have set
between you and me.
This heap is a witness and the pillar
is a witness that I will not pass
by this heap to you for harm and
you will not pass by this heap and
this pillar to me for harm.
The God of Abraham and the God of
Nahor the God of their father judge between
us.
So Jacob spore by the fear of his
father Isaac and then the chapter concludes with
a reference to sacrifice and a feast.
Jacob offered a sacrifice on the mountain and
called his kinsmen to the meal and they
ate the meal and spent the night on
the mountain.
Now that I think is important too for
in the midst of this chapter that tells
us just the ordinary details of life we
finally conclude with the two men sitting down
in the relationship of enmity brought about by
virtue of the shedding of the blood of
sacrifice.
All of course a picture of the fact
that there is no peace there is no
resolution of enmity apart from sacrifice and especially
in spiritual things.
Without shedding of blood there is no remission.
If there is no sacrifice of the Lord
Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross there is no
salvation for any individual.
It is by virtue of the propitiation which
has been accomplished through the bloodshed there that
we are able to enter into a relationship
of justification.
Therefore justified by faith we have peace with
God justified through the foundational work of the
blood of the cross of the Lord Jesus.
So even in these simple little stories we
find adumbrated the work of the Lord Jesus
who is to come.
So God teaches his eaglets that they must
fly on their own.
The pilgrim spirit is the thing that God
desires in his believers.
We are pilgrims and sojourners.
We are here for a time to accomplish
a task.
It is not our task to build up
here upon this earth great riches.
It's not our task to become so attached
to the earth that we cannot grow in
spiritual things.
I think there is also a beautiful illustration
here of the principles of divine guidance.
Believers often ask how can I know the
will of God?
Well listen to the experience of Jacob.
What happened to him?
Well first of all there came a desire
in his heart to go home.
That was implanted there by God.
And he spoke to Laban about it.
He gave utterance to his desire.
Then the circumstances became favorable.
Laban's sons were jealous of Jacob.
And then in addition Laban himself became unfriendly
to Jacob.
So that circumstances confirmed the desire that God
had put in his heart.
And finally God spoke to him from his
word.
And generally speaking when the desire of the
individual confirmed by the circumstances and the word
of God takes place, we have some indication
of the guidance of God in our own
Christian lives.
And how beautiful the divine providence over this
often rebellious servant.
He loves his own, not as we so
often falsely tell little children, because we are
good.
But he loves us in order that he
might make us good by his grace.
The greatest thing that could possibly happen to
us would be that God should thrust some
of us out of the nest of contentment
which has been built for us.
That this congregation as a congregation should know
something of what it is to grow spiritually.
To have some new experiences.
They may not be pleasant outwardly.
It was not pleasant for the little eaglets
to be thrust out of their nest.
To have the nest torn up by the
eagle.
But as they were thrust out and through
the experience they learned some of the capacities
that they had within them and some of
the things that were intended by their very
existence.
The experiences of life that we have are
designed to teach us, to prepare us for
a deeper, more significant, more meaningful spiritual life.
That would be my prayer for you.
And it would be what I would ask
that you pray for me.
God might tear up some of the contentment
that we may have come to live in
and enable us to make an advance.
We can say it has been a year
of spiritual advance, of spiritual growth, of the
knowledge of God increasing in our own experience
and life.
If you're here this morning and you have
never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we
remind you that the beginning of life is
the acknowledgment of our sinful condition, our guilt,
our condemnation, and the reception of the Lord
Jesus as our own personal Savior, the one
who loved us and gave himself for sinners.
If God has revealed to you through the
scriptures that you are a sinner, then this
salvation is for you.
May God help you to flee to the
cross, receive the forgiveness of sins as a
free gift, not by joining the church, not
by praying through, not by doing good works,
not by observing the ordinances of baptism or
the Lord's Supper, but in free grace, as
a gift, receive the gift of life, becoming
a member of the family of God, justified
by his wonderful grace.
And then may God through the Holy Spirit
guide you and direct you into a relationship
to him that is deep and significant and
meaningful.
May your life be useful for the glory
of our great triune God.
Let's stand for the benediction.
Father, we are grateful to thee for the
privilege and opportunity that is ours to hear
the Word of God, to read it, to
have the assurance of the forgiveness of sins
through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the
assurance of the presence and guidance of the
Holy Spirit.
O God, may the result be, as the
days pass by, that our experience of the
triune God deepens and grows as we learn
of thee through the Word of God.
Enable us, Lord, to launch out in trust.
May we learn what it is to have
underneath us the everlasting arms as we seek
to fly in the air of spiritual experience
to the glory of God.
If there are some here who have not
yet come to Christ, give them no rest
or contentment in their lost state.
May they flee to him who offers eternal
life, free of charge, on the principle of
grace.
And for believers, Lord, give us a deep,
holy discontent with our present spiritual existence.
Enable us to grow, long to grow, long
to experience deeper things, more significant and useful
things for the glory of God, not for
our glory.
May grace, mercy, and peace go with us
throughout this week for Jesus' sake.
Amen.