Turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 35. I want to read the entire chapter, but my sermon will be focused on the first 15 verses. And may the Lord bless the reading of his word. Then God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make an altar there to God who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother. And Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and has been with me in the way which I have gone. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods which were in their hands, and the earrings which were in their ears. And Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree which was by Shechem. And they journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. So Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. And he built an altar there and called the place El Bethel because their God appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother. Now Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died and she was buried below Bethel under the terebinth tree. So the name of it was called Alon Bakuth. Then God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan Aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, Your name is Jacob. You shall not be called Jacob any more, 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 proceed from you and kings shall come from your body. The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, I give to you and your descendants after you, I give this land. Then God went up from him in the place where he talked with him. So Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, a pillar of stone. And he poured a drink offering on it, and he poured oil on it. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spoke with him, Bethel. As we saw in the last chapter, chapter 34, that Jacob had been in disobedience to God. God had called him to come back to Bethel. where God had originally appeared to him after he fled from Esau. Bethel was the land of Isaac. It was where Isaac lived in that area. Geographically, Bethel is about a thousand feet higher than Shechem is. Shechem is lowland. We see a repetition here of the same story that's happened a couple of times already. You remember when Isaac went and sojourned with the Philistines in Gerar in the lowlands, so the Philistines. And he was very prosperous there and he did very well and got wealthy, but he got into conflict with the Philistines and he had to leave. And God drew him out of there and drew him up into the highlands, more marginal land, more difficult living. And yet God preserved and took care of Isaac there and protected him from these influences. We see the holy family repeating these mistakes and needing to relearn them in each generation. Jacob settled near Shechem in disobedience to God's instruction to him to return to Bethel. Instead he went to Shechem and dwelt near a Canaanite city. And the results were tragic. But now we see this gracious act of God coming back to him and calling him back to obedience. Calling him back to the path that he should have been on in the first place. They'd been contaminated with idolatry. We'd read earlier how Rachel had stolen the household gods of Laban. Now, because of the act of Simeon and Levi in Shechem, they had brought all of these Canaanite women and children into their homes as well. So the family of Jacob was clearly contaminated with idolatry. Jacob had been drawn to the potential of wealth and security, then he had been dedicated to the obligation that he had to protect his family from these influences. And yet God is still good to them. And he exhibits it in the first by calling Jacob to obedience. To leave Shechem, to go back to Bethel, to the land of Isaac, as he should have to begin with. And we need to regard this as the great act of grace that it is. Jacob's disobedience had brought hardship on his family. Great hardship. Great danger. And God could have simply abandoned him to the results of that. God could have allowed him to be wiped out by the other Canaanite nations in response, as the result of Simeon and Levi's wickedness, which was itself the result of Jacob's failure. Certainly their actions did have consequences. But God calls him instead to return to the path of obedience and provided for him on that path. Protected him. As he traveled, it said that the fear of God fell on all these nations around them. So that God sovereignly and graciously preserved him from the danger that he was in. protected him from the hatred that his own son's actions would have stirred up in the nations around him, and brought him back to Bethel, to the house of God. That's how we should always see the call to obedience. Jacob's... as the act of grace that it is. When we recognize, we see in the example of a story like Jacob, we see the ruinous effects that sin has on us. It shows the slavery of our minds when we think that sin is fun. When we think that disobeying God's word is fun and enjoyable. Because sin always brings the same things. It brings misery, it brings destruction. It hurts me, it hurts other people. It's a heavy burden. Jesus said that he who sins is a slave of sin. And if God were going to inflict on us the wrath that we deserve for our disobedience, then there'd be no point to the call to obey. If God was dealing with us in terms of strict justice, there would be nothing left for us, nothing left to obey. We would be destroyed, but the promise of forgiveness in the Scriptures is always associated with this call to obedience. Because God is a gracious God, but God is also a holy God. And God knows the goodness of His own law. And God is not ever going to pretend that obeying His law is some terrible burden for us. No, He knows that His law is good and His law is life. And that it is so much better for us to walk in obedience to His law than to walk in sin. And because He loves us, and He wants good for us, and He is doing good for us, then that promise of forgiveness of sins is always accompanied by the renewed call to obedience, to repentance, and to following His law. And so when God calls us to obey His law, that should always be received in that context. In the context of grace. In the context of forgiveness. Because a call to obedience is a call to life and joy and freedom. That call to obedience is always coming to a sinner. to one who is in rebellion and in violation of God's law. If it weren't, then there'd be no need for the call to obedience. You don't need to call a righteous man to obedience. And then God isn't dealing with us in terms of strict justice, because justice would simply demand the penalty, and the penalty is death. So when we hear God calling sinners back to repentance and obedience, that is a sweet act of grace to us. When we hear that voice ourselves, when we have lost our way and we've fallen into sin, that is how we should hear that call. As the call of a loving and heavenly Father. who loves us and forgives us and is not willing to see us destroy ourselves, which is what would certainly happen to all of us were we to continue in our sin." And we read that Jacob responded appropriately. He recommitted himself and his household to obedience. He recognizes, he sees the compromised nature of his household. And as the head of his household, he takes responsibility to bring his household more in compliance with God's laws. So he calls them to put away their foreign gods and change their garments. The changing of the garments is a symbolic thing. A recognition of leaving the past behind and recommitting oneself to obedience. Of course, putting away the foreign gods is not a symbolic thing at all, but a very real and necessary act to finally reject their pagan background. We saw Rachel had brought the household gods of her father with her, and it's clear that that was, as is often the case in these stories, that that one incident is used as a stand-in for a greater reality. The greater reality was that Jacob's house as a whole was infected with paganism. Now they brought in all these Canaanites as well from Shechem. There's a principle here, as there so often is in these stories. These stories are all archetypal. They all are chosen and selected carefully by the writer and by the Holy Spirit to reveal and bring into light these larger principles of the spiritual journey, the spiritual walk that we are all on. We might go along and sin for some time. God might permit that for a time, often does. And He might even graciously protect us from the worst results of our sin. In fact, He very often does that. You know, in Pat and Aram, their paganism, the paganism that was in Jacob's household, might not have had as bad an effect as it would have in Canaan. The paganism of the household of Laban was clearly a milder form of that paganism. it seems to be more a corrupted and degraded form of Jehovah worship, some ancient memory of it. The whole way these stories are discussed, the religion of Laban was closer to the true religion, much closer to the true religion, than the religion of Canaan. And so, paganism was tolerated. in Jacob's household in Padinarum. It did not have as bad an effect as it would have later. But that wasn't the case anymore. Now they were in Canaan with the virulent and degraded and corrupt and horrible forms of paganism that were present there. So that God had allowed the sin, had permitted the sin for a time, had not drawn attention to the sin, had protected Jacob from the worst effects of that sin, but now the time had come. God was bringing that sin to much greater attention and much greater light so that Jacob would deal with it. And Jacob becomes active again. He puts away his passivity that we talked about last time. As he should have before, he calls his family to commit themselves to Jehovah all the more firmly now that they were in Canaan and the stakes were so much higher. He realized he could no longer afford to be complacent about the idolatry in his family. The lines needed to be drawn much more clearly. And you know, Jesus said that broad and easy is the way that leads to hell and destruction. and that narrow and difficult is the way that leads to life. And few there be that find it, he says. And that tells us, among other things, that complacency and ease are the enemies of the Christian life. that we cannot simply go along as we always have. We all have sin in our lives, and that sin, if allowed to grow, if not attended to, any sin in our lives, if allowed to bear its full fruit, will destroy us. And so the great danger wherever we are in the Christian life is inertia and complacency to just go along as we have. And so Paul's call to renew our minds according to the gospel must be a continual call, not something we do one time when we're first converted, but a gradual process throughout our lives, a continually refreshing, recommitting ourselves to the truths of God's word. But we're frail. We're weak. We shouldn't be surprised or too terribly dismayed when we do fall into complacency. It will happen. We see it so many times in scriptures, in the story's various characters, that it's often precisely when things seem to be going well that we fall into sin. What did King David do when he had peace from all his enemies? He no longer had to go out to battle with the Philistines. Things seemed to be easy and going well for him. Well, Bathsheba happened. It was the cycle with Israel over and over again that it was precisely when they'd had security and when they had prosperity and when they had victory from their enemies that they fell back into idolatry and immorality. And our story here, when does all of this disaster at Shechem happen? It happens as a result of Jacob's failure to do what God told him to do. And when did that happen? When everything seemed to succeed. When he got back into the land of Canaan, when he'd reconciled with his brother, when the great danger that he thought he faced, the terror that he thought that his brother was certainly going to kill him, and all of that worked out and everything was great. And that's when we see him fall into complacency. So we should take warning from this. We should also remember, though, that as our story shows so well, that our God is gracious and long-suffering. And He will call us to obedience in His time. And often that will be painful, as it has been in Jacob's life. But the results will be more than worth it. And so God reminds Jacob of the covenants. He graciously preserves him. As he said, Jacob, to his credit, commits himself to obedience to God regardless of the danger. Not knowing what he's walking into, not knowing whether his sojourn is going to result in him passing through these Canaanite lands and being destroyed by them. But he does what God has called him to do. And God preserves him. God fills them with terror so that they all avoid him and let him pass through unharmed. And following that, we see that God reconfirms His covenant with Jacob. The promise that gives everything in His life meaning. He tells Him and us, once again, who Jacob is. Jacob is Israel. Jacob is defined by the promise of God. And that means that the past is only prelude. That all of what happened is just preparatory for what God is going to do. God can have this promise. His failure at Shechem has not destroyed God's plan and purpose. His failure at Shechem has not voided God's covenant to him. God reminds him. They need never look at some disaster that occurred, even one of their own making. And believe that therefore their life is off track, that they've somehow missed out on God's best for them because of this mistake, because of this failure. Now their life is forever messed up. No, because God is a God of covenant. God is a God of promise. By renaming him, God shows his authority over Jacob. He shows that Jacob is his child, just as Jacob himself shows a little bit later in the story when Rachel dies in childbirth. And just before she dies, she names her son Ben-Oni. Ben-Oni means son of my sorrows. And it reflects this bitterness and resentment that Rachel still has, that she's exhibited all through her life. But she's never learned thankfulness, sadly. She's focused on what she hasn't had that she wants, rather than all the gifts and blessings that she does have. Her self-pity and her failure to be thankful. But Jacob asserts his authority over his son and renames his son. Calls him instead Benjamin, which means son of my right hand. He's refusing to let Rachel's resentment and bitterness stamp his son. And likewise, Jacob's past of failure is not going to stamp his identity. That's not gonna be the definition of who Jacob is. That name which Esau said meant usurper, deceiver, the grabber at the heel. God renames him to show him that what defines Jacob's identity, who Jacob is, is not Jacob's past, but is Jacob's future. That future which is assured in the promise of God. God had disciplined him. And there were reminders of that. There would be a reminder of God's discipline that would go throughout Jacob's life. The limp that he now walked with. but who he is is defined by God's covenants, by his future and God's plan of redemption. Through Jacob would come Israel, the people of God, those through whom God would bring his redemptive purposes in the world. As we just read about in Romans chapter three, the great benefit and blessing that God brought to the people of Israel and God brought to the world through the people of Israel. And again, it would be easy to focus on all of Israel's failures and all of their mistakes and their rebellion, But as Paul says in Romans chapter 3, just because some of them didn't believe, does that mean that God was unfaithful? Through Jacob would come Joseph, and David, and Daniel, and Elijah, and Mary. Christ. All of these blessings that he would bring because of his covenant promise. Because Jacob was no longer Jacob, but he was Israel. Because of God's faithfulness, because of his promise. And so God reminds Jacob of that. At this key point, right when Jacob has failed so badly, right when it might appear that Jacob's own weaknesses have resulted in destruction, Right then, God reminds him of who he is in God's covenant. God always deals with his people through covenants. God deals with all of humanity through covenants, in fact. And understanding our place in our covenant relationship with God is vital to understanding our own identity. God made covenant promises to Abraham, and now those covenant promises have been inherited by Jacob, Abraham's grandson. God had been working with the world through this covenant, through this promise of grace, ever since that time. Those who refuse and believe and rest in God's gracious promises, those who look to self Rely on their self for their salvation, for their welfare, for their merit, for their blessedness. Deal with God in a different covenant relationship. They deal with God under the terms of the covenant that God made with Adam. That covenant that said, do this and live, don't do this and die. And that covenant relationship will bring God's justice and wrath down on all those who do not keep every word of the book of the law. But for those who accept his promise, those who are his people, those who are united to Christ by faith, He deals with us as He does Jacob. He gives us a new identity, a new name written in the book of life. And all the failure and shame and defeat that we experience in this life is only preparatory to that glorious future that He has reserved in heaven for each one of us. Jacob had failed rather dramatically, as we said, and he tasted some of the pain of that. But we see what covenant Jacob is in with God by how God deals with him. He doesn't come to him with recrimination and judgments. He doesn't turn his face away from his son. He calls him back to obedience and he reminds him of who he is. For Jacob is a child of the covenant of grace. Jacob has always believed the promise. For all of Jacob's weaknesses and failures, we see that throughout. Even all the way back with the story of the bowl of stew, we see that Jacob valued the blessing. He valued the covenant. He had faith. And God deals with him on that basis then. On the basis of the covenant of grace. He deals with him as a son. And we hear these promises of grace every Sunday. Every day when we pray and we read our Bibles, we're reminded of this covenant. Reminded of God's promises in Jesus Christ to his people. And we will grow cold and complacent. And we will fall into sin. And pain will come into our lives as a result. But along with that pain will be the gentle voice of our Father, calling us back to repentance, reminding us of His promise, reminding us of who we are. Faith will lay hold of that call, and we'll learn and grow from the failures of the past, but we'll look forward in hope to the future, confidence in the future. God is a God of promise, and the man of faith therefore will be future-oriented, looking to our eternal hope for the meaning of everything in the here and now. So when we, especially when we are in a place of sin and rebellion, as we will all be from time to time, And when we hear the call of God to obedience and repentance, it is of course natural to resist. Perhaps to stand on our independence and our unwillingness to let anyone else tell us what to do. Even if we would not articulate it in such a way. Or perhaps, maybe we will protest our inability and our weakness. We'll say, well I'm just a terrible sinner, I can't do this. We instinctually recoil from condemnation. But we should rather take it as the gracious call of our Heavenly Father, who has come to deliver us from the misery and bondage of sin. And that which God commands of His children, God will equip them to obey. God will supply the strength. Because He is a faithful God. We will get complacent. We will lose sight of our Father and the joy of His service. We will wander off the path and get stuck in the swamps and the jungles that the scriptures are so often warning us of. But He never loses sight of us. And He will come for us. He often lets His children wander for a time so they may learn some things about themselves and about the misery of sin. But He always calls us back. So return to Him. Like the prodigal son who returned to his father after learning a lot about the misery of sin in a foreign pigsty. And Jesus tells us in that same parable how the father welcomes his returning son, not with recriminations, not by demanding his pound of flesh first, but meeting him on the road with open arms, celebrating. God made this world and God created the rules by which this world operates. And in order to teach us wisdom, he often works through the natural processes and human interactions and forces of history. We can see cause and effect all around us. You see in other people's lives, you see they behave in particular foolish ways and then particular bad results come into their lives. We all see that. Someone spends their money wastefully and as a result they may very well become poor. And someone eats gluttonously and then they may become unhealthy. Someone is consumed by anger. They may lose relationships. And we should hear all of those things as the call of the Father in our lives. To repent and return. Because it's God that made this world. And it's God that made the cause and effects relationships. It's God that defines the way this world operates. And so when we experience the pain of our sin. We should take that as well as the call of the Father. To repent. And above all we should hear the call of the Father in His Word. As Jesus said, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. We look to the things of the world for rest. We think we'll find rest if only we had more money, if only we had greater pleasure, or entertainment, or reputation, or whatever our particular bent is. We look for rest in those things when the fact is, is that when we spend our lives pursuing those things, they give us the opposite of what they promised. Because this world is deceptive. Rest and peace is found in the service of God. Jacob would find a rest in the more marginal highlands of Bethel than he would in the greener pastures of Shechem. Because Bethel was the house of God. Bethel was where God had called him to be. And chances are good then that your household, your life, has accumulated some foreign gods along the way as well. Maybe it's time for spring cleaning. Every life needs it from time to time. We all get complacence. We all get bound up in inertia. And as you travel through this world, you will accumulate foreign gods. Whether you realize it or not. You will accumulate false confidence and false trust and lust after the things of this world. You'll get your eyes off God and you'll get your eyes on the pleasures and ambitions and promises of this life. As Jacob's household had accumulated foreign gods along the way, so do all of us. And remember his promise. Return to Him. And remember who you are. Because we are weak and changeable. We get off track. But He is always faithful and He calls us to return to Himself. So return to Him. Recommit yourself to Him. Get rid of the idols that just accumulate in our lives if we're not careful. And know that He will always receive us back into His love. He never left us. even if we lose sight of Him for a time, because our true identity is Israel, the people of God, defined by His promise and not by our failures. That is who we are and who we will always be, kept by the power of God, as the Apostle Peter says, through faith unto salvation, which is ready to be revealed in the last day. Amen. And let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that you don't leave us in our sin as we from time to time wander off track, as we from time to time lose sight of what we should be doing and where we should be going, and we accumulate sin in our lives. Lord, we confess, we are weak, we are changeable, but you know us. And you love us, and you are our Heavenly Father. And we know that you will never leave or forsake us. So Lord, come and find us. Come and find us in our sin. And call us back to repentance. Call us to put away our idols, and grant us the strength to respond in faith. We know that the faith that lays hold of your promises is the faith which you yourself supply so that you will receive all the glory. So we pray, Lord, that you would do this work in us so that we would respond, so that we would recommit ourselves to obedience, that we would remember who we are and return to your house. We pray all these things in Jesus' precious name, amen.