So listen now to God's holy word, Genesis 35 beginning in verse one. God said to Jacob, arise, go up 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 the God who answers me in the day of my distress and 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, 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. And Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died. And she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Alon Bakuth. God appeared to Jacob again when he came for Paddan Aram and blessed him. And God said to him, Your name is Jacob. No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. So he called his name Israel. And God said to him, I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.' Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it. So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him, Bethel. Then they journeyed from Bethel, and they were still some distance from Ephrath. Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor. And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwives said to her, do not fear, for you have another son. And as her soul was departing, for she was dying, she called his name Benoni. But his father called him Benjamin. So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath, that is Bethlehem, and Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel's tomb, which is there to this day. Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the Tower of Eder. While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel heard of it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve, the sons of Leah, Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, the sons of Rachel, Joseph, and Benjamin, the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant, Dan, and Naphtali, the sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant, Gad, and Asher, These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan Aram. And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kiriatharba, that is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Now the days of Isaac were 180 years. And Isaac breathed his last, and he died, and was buried to his people, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of our God, it surely does endure forever. Let's ask His blessing now upon His Word. Lord, we come tonight, we've heard Your Word, and what a blessing it is to hear You speak to us through the Scriptures. Lord, open our ears, open our eyes, soften our hearts that we might receive this Word with faith, Lord God, and that it might seep its way down into our hands and feet. and leaven us, as it were, that we might be changed, transformed, and sanctified by it. We do ask this now, in your Spirit's help, in Jesus' name, amen. We too readily equate God's heavenly favor with our earthly pleasure, as if the two things ordinarily go together in lockstep. Now, this error is seen most transparently in the theologies of the Word of Faith movement or the prosperity gospel promoters. In one form or another, all of these people, they assert that God will make us rich and worry-free if only we have enough faith, because that's what God does for those who have faith. And we can see this for the foolishness that it is when it's peddled by a Joel Osteen or Kenneth Copeland or Jesse Duplantis. I mean, turn your TV on, pick a name, and you can see the foolishness. That heavenly favor and earthly pleasure, they go hand in hand. They're always found together. If God loves you, he'll bless you. But while we happily and readily condemn those men for their obvious false teachings, We may have more in common with them than we might like to think. Because if we're being honest with ourselves, there remains a temptation close at hand, even if you reject those bald-faced errors, there remains a temptation close at hand to assume that if God really loves us, then he will treat us the way that we want to be treated. If He really loves us, He'll treat us the way we want to be treated. We naively hope that His heavenly favor will entail the elimination of all of our earthly cares. Surely God, if He's a good God and He loves His people, He will grant to His people good health and a happy home, right? See, that's sort of thinking. may find a place in our midst even as we repudiate the prosperity pushers. We still think that if God loves us, he ought to treat us the way we want to be treated. And by adopting these assumptions to one degree or another, we do end up, I think, holding a subtle form of the errors promoted by the previously mentioned heretics. As we see their errors, let us see our own. Because we know from experience that this isn't the way things work. This isn't the way things work. In this fallen world, roses are surrounded by thorns, and rainbows require rain, and crosses precede crowns. And it's been that way ever since the fall. And as we see in the book of Genesis, it was definitely that way for Jacob. And one of the reasons I wanted to read this whole chapter tonight is because when we studied last week the first half of Genesis 35, old Jacob, he was on the upswing. He was on the upswing. He had fallen into sin at Shechem, sure. He fell into sin along with pretty much the rest of his family. But God commanded him to repent, he repented, and the Lord richly rewarded him for his repentance. And you see that in the reaffirmation, the confirmation of the covenant blessings at the end of that passage we studied last week. God declared, he spoke over his repentant servant, that after all that had happened, the covenant was still intact. The Lord still intended to work out his wonderful purposes for Jacob and his seed. Nevertheless, chapter doesn't end in verse 15. It continues right on. And we see that Jacob does not immediately lie down to rest on a bed of roses, does he? If he does, then it would be the ones surrounded by thorns. He's not going to spend the rest of his days in a state of pleasure and ease. No matter how many times God pronounces those covenant blessings and mercies over him, he's not going to spend his earthly days in pleasure and ease. No, there were troubles ahead. And they began to show themselves right away. With the promises of God still ringing in his ears. Genesis 35 verses 16 through 29 tells us of the way in which Jacob loses his wife, suffers betrayal at the hands of his son, and buries his father. Sorrow after sorrow. But the purpose of this text, and here's what I want you to see, the purpose of this text is not simply to recount Jacob's sorrows, though it does do that. I think the purpose of this text is to show that God was working through Jacob's sorrows. That is the environment. That is the context in which God would begin to unfold those promises which he had just made. Indeed, we could summarize the text this way, I think. amid many sorrows, the Lord builds Jacob's house in order that he may establish a people to be his treasured covenant possession. The Lord builds the house amid the sorrows, and he does this amid tragedy in verses 16 through 20, amid scandal in verses 21 through 26, and amid loss in verses 27 through 29. And so first tonight, turning to the text, we see how the Lord builds Jacob's house amid tragedy, verses 16 through 20. After returning to Bethel to pay his vow, Jacob and his family headed south, as the opening line explains. You see, when God sent Jacob back to Bethel, he was not obligating Jacob to live in Bethel forever. That was not the point. But Jacob had promised to return there and worship. He made that promise. And so God told him to return there and worship. And therefore he needed to, well, return there and worship. But he's done that now. And with that complete, he starts moving back towards that portion of Canaan where he had grown up in his father's household. And on that southward journey, something Pretty surprising happens. At no point have we been told that Rachel is pregnant. But pregnant she is. In fact, she is pretty far along in her pregnancy. Evidently when God told Jacob again, be fruitful and multiply, he either did or already had taken that seriously. She's pregnant again. And she is go into labor pregnant on this journey. I know when Chelsea's been pregnant, maybe this has been your case. Yeah, I get a little nervous going on long trips when you get close, but that didn't stop Jacob and his family. They go on the trip, and she goes into labor, and when the big day comes, it does not go smoothly. We read in verse 16 that when they were still some distance from Ephrath, they've not reached the place where they're headed, Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor. We live at an unusual stage in history. We live in an unusual stage in history because due to modern medical advancements, childbirth is a relatively safe process, relatively safe. Very few women, I think, not a woman, but I think this is true, very few women in developed societies with access to modern medicine go into labor expecting that either they or their baby will die. Doesn't happen that often. But in the ancient world, when babies were born in tents in the wilderness, mothers and children simply died as a matter of course. It happened all the time. It was tragic, but no great shock. If labor hit a snag, there was only so much that could be done, and great sufferings sometimes ensued. And according to our text, hard labor overtook Rachel and suffering began to overcome her in the midst of that labor. And she was filled with a sense of agony and dread and gloom and sorrow. And sensing this, her midwife being a good midwife, she tries to encourage her, she tries to push her forward and keep her going. And the text tells us that when her labor was at its harvest, the midwife said to her, do not fear, the baby's being born, for you have another son. That should have thrilled Rachel's soul. Recall that in the past, she had dealt with long bouts of infertility, even as all the women around her were having babies left and right, having babies for her husband, even. And Rachel, in that period of her life, when she had faced that infertility, she had longed for a baby of her own, going so far as to demand of Jacob, give me children or I shall die. That's what she says in Genesis 30. And so we know that in that original passage, at long last, she conceived and she gave birth to Joseph, praying even then that the Lord would add another son to her resume as a mother. And now it appears that that prayer is coming true. It's coming true. And her midwife wants her to celebrate that fact. She wants to get her mind off the pain, off the grief, and onto the celebration. And the Lord is answering her prayer. He's given you another son. It's adding another son just as she had asked, but Rachel, she doesn't celebrate because there's a problem. The problem is that the woman who had once declared, give me children or I shall die, was now dying because the Lord had given her children. Her last moments, those moments that she had so long waited for, were going to be moments of sorrow rather than joy. Sometimes when we get what we wanted, it's not what we thought it would be. And Rachel was learning that lesson the hard way. And her sorrow can be seen in verse 18. As her soul was departing, for she was dying, she called his name Ben-Oni. Rachel was on her way out of the earthly Canaan. This is going to be the only one of Jacob's children born in Canaan. And Rachel's on her way out. Presumably she's headed for the heavenly Canaan. We don't find lots of declarations about the state of her soul in the scriptures, but I think she's considered part of this covenant household. And she is presented to us, I think, as a woman who had given up her foreign gods, and she was committed to the Lord. And so we presume her soul's departing to heaven. She was dying at this point. She's dying fast. And recognizing this, she manages to use her gloomy, gasping, dying final breaths to name her son Ben-Oni. And that means son of my sorrow. What a name. If it was up to her, this child was going to be a lasting testament to her untimely demise. Jacob didn't care for that. You can understand why. It was a name chosen by Rachel when her mind was clouded by death. And if he were to stick with this name, he would have to think about his dying wife every time he spoke to his son. Every time, that name's going to conjure up those images, those memories of his beloved wife, Rachel, dying. Here we have a pattern which is broken in the book of Genesis. You go back to Genesis 30, you see all those other kids born. The mothers are naming the children of Jacob, but now he steps in and he says, no, it's not going to be Ben-Omi. He picks a new name and he's going to be Benjamin. Son of my right hand. That may not strike us as a particularly desirable name. Son of my right hand. How about son of my left? But that name in the culture, in the context, it communicated an idea. You wanted to be on the right hand. That's the position of power, of favor, of good fortune, of strength. And so think of it something like, this is the son of my good favor and my strength and my blessing. He's wanting to put a more positive spin on this son than Rachel was wanting. And this choice of a replacement name I believe tells us that Jacob has in this moment enough faith to see that God is building his house, even amid tragedy. He's building Jacob's house, just as he said he would do, even amid tragedy. Rachel had been his most treasured wife. Jacob loved her deeply, but when God took her, he mercifully, he did what he didn't have to do, he spared the son who would inherit the covenant promises first, held out to his grandfather Abraham. So here we find Jacob mourning with hope. Verses 19 and 20, they recount the way in which the patriarch, he set up pillars in the past to worship the Lord, now he sets up a pillar over Rachel's tomb to mark the place where she has fallen in the wilderness. And then he journeys on. Congregation, there are times in our lives when God gives us good gifts and then he takes them away. We can't hang on to them forever, at least not in this life, not in this world. This is true for the Christian as well as the non-Christian. Matthew Henry said it well, I think. He said this, those that enjoy the favors peculiar to the children of God must yet expect the troubles that are common to the children of men. For this reason, we have to learn to trust God's timing and plan even when tragedy strikes. That's a lot easier said than done. It's hard for us to accept that or to admit it in our flesh, but God knows better than we do. And one thing we do know, according to Romans chapter 8, is that we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. And so when Rachel died, Benjamin was born on the same day. It would have been hard to stomach in that moment. but God was working all things for Jacob's good. He was building Jacob's house amid tragedy. You know, we are not omniscient. We're not fortune tellers. And so we can't say what would have happened to Jacob and his family if Rachel had lived on. But things may have gone much worse for Jacob. We don't know. God knows. And Rachel passed in accordance with God's will, and the house was built. Unfortunately, however, Jacob's journey quickly carried him from trial to trial. As we come to verses 21 through 26, we discover that God wasn't just building Jacob's house amid tragedy. He was also building Jacob's house amid scandal. Now, he's journeying again. He's heading south and moving further south. He comes to a place, don't know a lot about it, called the Tower of Edir. And he decided he's going to set up camp for there for a while. We don't know much about what happened there. We know one thing that happened there and it was no good. Because it was in this location that a scandal struck the holy household of Israel, which would color its interactions for a long time. Verse 22 says that when Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine. Israel heard of it. This is so characteristic of Old Testament narrative. The description of the event is so brief. It's so to the point, but there's a lot going on here. Reuben was, and the list we're about to see of all the sons is gonna highlight this for us in case we've forgotten. Reuben was Jacob's firstborn. His mother was Leah, Rachel's sister. And when his aunt Rachel dies, Reuben goes and he has relations with her maidservant Bill. This was scandalous for at least two reasons. First, this was scandalous because it was immoral, sinful, abominable for Reuben to lay with his father's concubine. Yes, Jacob had failed the test of monogamy. And yes, she was on a lower tier than his full-fledged wives, Rachel and Leah. But Jacob still had a legal right to Bilhah. He still had a legal right to Bilhah. According to Genesis 30, Rachel, his wife, had given Bilhah to him as a wife. And as such, Deuteronomy chapter 27, verse 20, gives us the Old Testament's disposition towards an act like this. Here's what it says. Cursed be anyone who lies with his father's wife, because he has uncovered his father's nakedness, and all the people shall say, Amen. Interestingly, The New Testament offers a pretty strong condemnation of this behavior as well. Because this is the same sort of sin which Paul excommunicates a man for in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Do you remember that passage? The big issue there was that the church had tolerated a man who had laid with his father's wife. And he says, okay, we're going to put a stop to this. I'm going to deliver this man over to Satan. And so Old and New Testament is going to pointedly condemn this sort of behavior. But second, the second reason this was scandalous is because Reuben's deeds probably reflected a desire not just to lustfully take this woman, but the desire to gain control over his father and his father's affairs. I said there's a lot going on here. And this action flows out of a lot of family drama. Rachel had been Jacob's beloved. We've seen that again and again. But Reuben was not Rachel's son. He was Leah's son. And Reuben's mother Leah had always played second fiddle to Rachel. She'd always been in second place. And with Rachel out of the way now, Reuben was not going to let some lowly maidservant take her place. So he would go in and he would lie with Bilhah and so sour Jacob's relationship with her that Leah would surely be preferred over her. She would get the prestige, the prominence, and the place that she deserved. At the same time, This action in the culture of the day would communicate the sense of Reuben giving his father a run for his money and challenging Jacob's position as head of household. Reuben is, he thinks he's ready to take charge and he's going to do whatever he pleases, including take his father's wives. Deeply simple, deeply simple. If you want to put things into tidy categories, you could put it like this. I think Reuben's actions simultaneously break the Seventh Commandment, no adultery, and they break the Fifth Commandment as well. He does not honor his father. And so those are really the two things which cause us to be so scandalous in his household. It's not just a sin which happened in Jacob's house, but it is a sin against Jacob, which is meant to shame Jacob. And verse 22 tells us, using his new name, that Reuben's father Israel heard of it. No reaction is recorded. He was no doubt unhappy. But at least here in this chapter, Jacob says nothing. And we might, this will be understandable, to think of this as maybe another example of Jacob's shocking apathy. I mean, we saw some of that shocking apathy after Dinah's rape in Genesis 34. He heard about that too and did nothing. But I don't quite think that's exactly what's going on here, because by the time we get to the end of the book of Genesis, we are going to discover that Jacob held on to this and the offense which it caused till his dying day. Because if you get down to Genesis 49, and Jacob is handing out his blessings on his sons, you're going to see that on his deathbed, he is going to strip Reuben of his firstborn preeminence because of this. because of this offense against him. Nevertheless, even with a dead wife or a belly's child, Jacob now has 12 sons. He is not removed as the head of household. And we are reminded that he is father over his 12 children at this crucial moment. Because these children, we've seen not now for the first time, but for another time, these children have brought their father heartache, but they do remain a gift from God. And in that life, we're given these blessings that sometimes produce so much grief. We have to see them in a sense as the gift they are. And so these children are listed together. Here, for the first time, all 12 of them in Scripture, they're all listed, verses 23 through 26. Not in order of birth, but grouped according to their mothers. The dividing lines in the house of Jacob are laid bare. And these differences of parentage were already creating fissures in Jacob's house. They were going to create some more fissures in Jacob's house in the future. But still, God was building Jacob's house amid scandal. Scandal is a terrible thing, especially when it is found among God's people. You know, I say that. Full disclosure, I say that sort of thing and I see faces in my mind. I don't know about you, but I see faces in my mind when I say that. It's a terrible thing. It happens. People fall into grievous sin and bring great shame upon themselves and great shame upon the church, and they bring so much division and trouble into the household of God. We've got to understand that our sovereign God, is capable of using even scandal to accomplish his perfect will. Not even this falls outside of his decree. Calvin argues this point in his commentary. Here's what he says. He says, Satan endeavors by whatever means he can to pervert the grace of God in the elect. Notice here, Calvin is looking at this story and he's saying, Reuben is one of the elect. This is one of God's people. He is a blood-bought member of the Church of Christ, if you want to speak in New Testament terms. And Satan is trying to pervert the grace that is his. But he continues on, he says, and since he cannot affect that, he either covers it with infamy or at least obscures it. Hence it happens that disgraceful examples often steal into the church. And the Lord in this manner suffers His own people to be humbled, that they may be more attentively careful of themselves, that they may be more earnestly watchful unto prayer, and may learn entirely to depend on His mercy. Scandal is horrible. It's not the end of the world. That's really good news for us. Because Satan means scandal for evil. Ten times, he means it for evil. He wanted in this case to introduce evil into Jacob's household and have no doubt or qualms about it, he wants to introduce evil into the church. He wants to introduce evil into this church. He induces men to scandalize themselves and others wherever he can. When that happens, proper response is not to fall into despair and to lose faith and throw up our hands and say, see, this is all just made up. There's nothing to this. God is not really working in the life of his people. No, Calvin here is saying, and I think the scriptures are teaching us, when that happens, we have to understand that the Lord can bring about good, even in scandal, if the church will humble itself, persist in prayer, and cast itself upon the mercies of God. Because we're all sinners. That's the truth of the matter. We're all sinners. We are all capable of scandal. Because scandal, really, it's a reaction to our sins. And we're all capable of sin, and thus we're all capable of scandal. Therefore, when we hear that one of God's people has fallen into grievous sin, that ought to strike us with a holy fear of God, and also ought to cause us to look for the builder's hand in the providences around us and discover what good he might be working among his saints. Because though Reuben meant this to harm his father, the Lord was still going to use it in that great building process as he built up the house of Jacob. This would not tear down what the Lord had built. This would not destroy the works of God. This would not undermine the covenant. Even as they were covenant breaking, the covenant would not dissolve with the Lord. faithful Lord would hold it firm. So we see in this chapter that God was building Jacob's house amid tragedy. He was building it amid scandal. And finally, verses 27 through 29, God was building Jacob's house amid loss. But when Jacob had fled from his brother Esau and made his vow at Bethel, one of the things that he asked the Lord is he asked the Lord to bring him back in peace to his father's house. And these final verses of chapter 35 make plain that God did just that. He brought him back in peace. He came to his father Isaac at that place where he had long lived, known by many different names, somewhat humorous here. They're all listed out for us. Call it Mamre, call it Kiriathar, but call it Hebron, doesn't matter. It's all those things. The point is Isaac lived there and Jacob made it back to him before he died. God had kept his part of the deal. And while Rachel's death was a sudden and unexpected tragedy, Isaac's death was more a natural loss, occurring when Isaac had reached the ripe old age of 180. Remember, again, I've said this a number of times, the book of Genesis, we're still in that period of tapering off ages after the flow. And so when that time came, Isaac breathed his last and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days, and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. Often divided in life, Jacob and Esau were reunited at their father's death as they came together and laid him to rest. When Isaac passed from the scene, Just as these other two problems were not indications that God had given up on Jacob, neither was this. This was no indication that God had abandoned His servant. In fact, you might argue that Isaac's death was an indication that the covenant succession from one generation to the next was happening just as it was designed. Isaac had been gathered to his people. He had gone on to his heavenly reward. Now Jacob was, earthly speaking, the panfamilias of his family, of his household. All of the promises that he had received would become the inheritance of his 12 sons. While sad, Isaac's death cleared the way for Jacob's sons to step into the spotlight of a new and more glorious day in redemptive history. because the house was being built amid loss. And therefore we see, again, that God was building Jacob's house amid tragedy. He was building Jacob's house amid scandal. He was building Jacob's house amid loss. God favored Jacob highly, loved him. He had just confirmed from a heavenly word Jacob's possession of the covenant blessings. God's heavenly favor did not proceed lockstep with Jacob's earthly pleasure. Jacob would not have made a very good prosperity gospel preacher, because the Lord had given him as many hardships as he had riches. But God did this not because He hated Jacob, not because He had forgotten Jacob, not because he just wanted to torture Jacob. God did this because he was calling Jacob to something better than earthly pleasure. He was calling him to something higher than earthly pleasure. He was calling him to something more enduring than earthly pleasure. And so the Lord was teaching Jacob to set his mind on those things above. And surely the Lord would grant these things to him as he, over time, built Jacob's house and raised up these twelve boys with a spiritual heritage to carry on when Jacob had died. And God would use these twelve boys to build Jacob's house. They were encompassed round about by sin and many sorrows. There's a lot of troubles to come in their lives. That's pretty much the rest of the book of Genesis. But you know what? In God's grace and His mercy and in His kindness and faithfulness to Jacob, these 12 sons would have their names forever memorialized. While they stood here at the unglamorous, trickling headwaters of a treasured covenant people which God was forming for His own glory, Revelation chapter 21, we read it earlier, tells us that their names are known even in the New Jerusalem. Their names are written upon the gates of the city. Twelve sons of Jacob. Never would they know any such glory upon this earth. Never would they know any such glory upon this earth, but their real possession, their real heritage, their real portion and prize was to be given to them above. As they joined the twelve apostles, which we talked about this morning, in marking out the boundaries and borders of that city of God. And so my friends, as we close Genesis 35, let us learn that God is building His house amid our sorrows, even through our sorrows. And there is no better confirmation for this than the fact that Jesus Christ Himself was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. If not even He, our Lord, was exempt from such trouble, why should we be? He had to die so that we might have a place in the new Jerusalem to come. And he did die so that we might have a place in the new Jerusalem to come. And so when tears come, trials overtake us, let us entrust ourselves to Jesus, once crucified, but now raised and ascended and glorified in heaven. Because through faith in him, we too can be numbered among the treasured covenant people which inherit the promises made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Jesus is building His house. Jesus is building His church. And one day the church militant shall be the church triumphant as we enter into that new Jerusalem which we read about in God's Word. Until Jesus comes again, He will continue building that house no matter what sorrows come for us. And so let us take hold of Him Walk by faith, not by sight. Let's pray.