Well, before we begin with our message this morning, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Oh, most holy, heavenly Father, God of mercy, God of grace, please guide us this morning. Illuminate your truths to us that we might give honor to you in our own lives as you work in and through us for your glory and for our good. It's in Christ's name that we pray, amen. Well, this morning's passage is only going to cover Genesis 35, 1 through 15. We're only going to be able to take on half of this chapter. We've been trying to take larger chunks to give kind of a larger overview of what's going on as we see different things in this Genesis of our faith and of our understanding of God's plan of salvation. This morning's message is going to be faith increased through failure. If you are sensitive or have a high regard to sin and your own sinfulness, you will find this a particularly comforting message by God's design. As you see what God does in the midst of our failure to increase our faith, it's this understanding that God is able to use our failures to not just focus on that which brought about disappointment, maybe defeat, but rather to repurpose it or intend it for a purpose of greater value. I want to get you thinking about this before we get in there. I need to lay a little additional foundation, a little more of an introduction this morning in order to give some idea of what we see here and what's been going on. First, let me ask you, let me give you a personal connection to the message, and that is, when was the last time you felt defeated after a failure of faith in God? And if you can't think of it because the last time maybe wasn't a particularly significant one, maybe think of when the last significant failure, something that you really struggled through, the failure, your falling to sin, your failure of faith in God. And as you look through your memories and looking to try and find that, I want you to realize that, again, as I mentioned, Whatever that failure was, did it stop with failure? Was the last thing you had was regret? You had some feeling of defeatedness maybe? Or did you come out of that with a mindset of encouragement, a mindset of this isn't it? This occurred, but it doesn't have to stop here. God is able to do something with my failure in this area. And I think that a lot of us don't see God's purpose or God's hand, you might say, in what he intends to do beyond that. We get stuck at looking at the failure and sometimes we can get into a place of of self-pity, of inactivity, of pulling away from God, feeling not worthy to be in God's presence. And that's not what God does with our failures. Remember, this is an overarching theme we've seen in Genesis. We saw where Adam and Eve took their own counsel, took it upon themselves to go their own way, and as such, that what they intended for good for themselves turned out to actually be evil. But there's another understanding that what they therefore intended for evil, because it wasn't within God's will, God intends for good. And we see this being played out over and over in the narratives, and we're getting close to coming to Joseph where that narrative is going to just explode. But certainly we'll see that this morning play out. Ever since the fall in the garden, mankind, all of mankind, has been falling in faith. Whether it's a lack of faith at all, turning away completely, never coming to faith in God, or it's having a faith in God and then falling in moments of that faith away from trusting in God. Every human being experiences it. So don't believe the lie that somehow your Your failure is somehow unique and deserves some type of punishment by God, some type of, you know, God can't do anything with this. This is too ugly, this is too bad, this is too many, whatever it happens to be. Don't allow that understanding. That's hopefully what you will see out of this message today, out of this understanding of this passage. So let's take a look at some of the patriarchal examples. There's three patriarchs. We're on our third patriarch, Jacob. But what you may not have noticed, probably because I didn't point it out, at least repeat repeatedly pointed out, is that there's a pattern here of failure. And there's a pattern of what God is doing in the midst of the failure or with the failure. So with Abraham, we saw him face a physical famine. And where does he go? He leaves the promised land and goes to Egypt. He fears Pharaoh more than God, and he ends up giving Sarah, his wife, to Pharaoh. And she's in danger of being violated, sexually violated, by being one of his wives. And therefore, the covenant is endangered. The covenant can't go on if Abraham's wife is now in the possession of this king. It stops. There's a halt to it. So there's an endangerment to the covenant. And let's follow the failure through Isaac. Isaac also has a physical famine. He stays in the land, he stays in the lower portion of it, of Canaan. It's the land of Philistia. where Abimelech is ruling and reigning at that time. He fears Abimelech. He repeats his father's sin. He gives his wife, Rebecca, to Abimelech, thinking that if, you know, with her beauty, just as with Sarah's beauty, certainly this king will kill me in order to gain my wife, so I'll give my wife. And so he follows his father's lead and does that. Again, we see it repeated, and then we have a danger of her being violated, and again, a danger of the covenant being done away with because we have a lack of the woman that God has brought into Isaac's life. Well, when it comes to Jacob, we start to see a little bit of tweaking. And what's interesting about Jacob is Abraham and Jacob are kind of the bookends of the patriarchs. There's three. One starts. One is the one that Jacob, being the last of it, God uses him to bring in the 12 tribes of the nation of Israel, and we'll see a move to that nation. In fact, we see that in our passage today. Again, being a bookend, there's more on him like there is more on Abraham than there is on Isaac, the guy in the middle, so to speak. But Jacob's famine isn't a physical famine. It's not a famine of the land where he's deprived of food and potential provision. Jacob's famine that he faces is a spiritual famine. You can recall that he did not go directly to Beth-El and fulfill his vow. He came to Succoth, and we believe he was there for about eight years. And then he comes to the region of Shechem, and he's there for two years. So we have about a 10-year spiritual drought. a famine of sorts in his life. And we see that he becomes passive and we saw all of the ugliness that ended up occurring as a matter of Jacob's passivity in this area of his faith in the last chapter, chapter 34. And we saw that as both of the other two women of the patriarchs, they were wise. In this case, it's now it's Dinah, Jacob's daughter, And she wasn't facing the potential of being violated. She actually was violated by Shechem, the prince of the area. And what we see is Jacob fearing the rulers of Shechem and even in his somewhat rebuke of his sons after they slaughter, wrongly slaughter the inhabitants, at least the male inhabitants of Shechem. We see that Jacob includes his fear, not just of the rulers there, but of the surrounding cities that they are going to now exterminate him, that all of the people will be killed and the covenant thus is endangered by extermination. So those are the three patriarchal examples of failure, but we also see God's use of failure to increase each of the patriarchs' faith. In fact, with Abraham immediately following the incident in Egypt. We see that he trusted in God's provision. He goes to Canaan, returns back to Canaan, and the famine hasn't left. The famine's still there. He's there with Lot, his nephew, and the land can't hold both of them in it. The famine is actually used to now separate Lot out. So any claim that Lot would have as at least an indirect descendant, not one of his offspring, but certainly part of his family, God removes through the famine and Lot goes out. of the land of Canaan and has his family settle in the area of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so, interesting enough, we see that Jacob's faith was increased. He says, I'm going to stay in the land regardless of the famine. I'm going to trust in God. And what does God do? God protects the covenant and provides for Abraham. Then we see with Isaac, after his deal with Abimelech and Philistia, He trusts in God's provision. He stays in this region, again, of famine. He's in the promised land. God then provides wells for water, and the Bible told us there was now room to dwell because he was far enough away from Ambimelech that the conflict that the two peoples were having is now removed. So we see the increase in faith of, look, I'm staying here. I'm not leaving the land. I'm not going to manipulate things and make myself in a better position by giving my wife over to the person who has resources. No, no, no. I'm just going to trust in God to get me through this famine. We see a reward, and God ends up giving him the water to live on and the land that ends up prospering Isaac. And thus, the covenant was protected against extinction. Extinction meaning that if there was a famine and they couldn't survive, the whole covenant just dissolves because the people aren't there anymore. They die. And then in Jacob, we see his increase of faith. We're going to see that today. He trusts finally in God's protection. Before, he demonstrated his fear of these other people, of these people's ability to destroy him, the other Canaanite cities, the other Canaanite people groups. And he ends up going to Bethel. And God ends up at that location giving him a particularly special, I might say, a covenant blessing to him, personal blessing of him, a reminder of the personal nature of the blessing that each of the other two patriarchs had. It's a kind of a reward of his faith, the closeness that he engages God with there at that location and the blessing he receives firsthand. And again, we see that the covenant was then protected against the extermination of the people. So in the midst of each of these people, each of these patriarchs having failure when they when they turn to God, they trust in God, God takes the failure, he works through that failure, and brings about an increase in their faith. And that's what we want to focus on in particular today, is Jacob's increase in his faith. Remember the biblical axiom, or the biblical truth, God purposes our failures of faith to increase our faith. God purposes our failures of faith to increase our faith. We have got to get our minds around that and realize that now or when that failure comes upon you. You can so easily be sucked into that position of defeat where you're overwhelmed with the thing you have done to bring injury to God's name rather than the God who brings forth an increase of faith out of the failure. So let's take a look at that this morning. If you'll turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 35, verse 1. In the first four verses, we're going to see God give a command, and there's going to be a response to that command. But God gives a command that's designed to stir up the heart of Jacob, to stir up his faith, to stir up his trust, to stir up action in Jacob. And it's interesting. Sometimes we hear this or we believe this lie that God's commands, God's word to us that says, do this, is somehow a bad thing. Like, come on, we're Americans. We do our own thing. We determine what we need to do. And yet we see here that it's God's commands that he uses to remind us, do this. Just do this. Focus on doing this, and I will show you how I intend to use that ugly thing to bring you to a place of increased faith. So we have this understanding, hopefully we are reshaping in our minds, God's commands are not bad. God's commands are a blessing of sorts. They give me direction in my life. They tell me what I must do in the midst of the confusion and the fog of my failures in my faith with God. Genesis 35.1, God said to Jacob, arise, verb number one, that's a command, go up, verb number two, that's a command, to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to God who appeared to you, to the God who appeared to you." There's a very intimate connection that he's making with, and a specificity of who this God is. It isn't just any God. This is the God who appeared to you, and he's going to continue to mark and identify who that God is. It's himself, obviously. When you fled from your brother Esau, The God who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother who wanted to take your life, he wanted to murder you for the things you did wrong, your failures of faith and trying to deceive and manipulate and take what I had promised. I had given that promise to your mother and it was communicated to you and you took what I intended to give. So you had a failure of faith and now this brother is pursuing you and in this distressful time, this fleeing to Haran, I came to you. I am the God who comes to you in the midst of your failure. Let's continue on and see what he is commanding here. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother. So we've got the command understood and then watch Jacob's vows start to come into play here. His response, his taking action, his doing what he should do. Let's go back and understand the vow before we go into verse number two. Let's make sure we've got a clear understanding. Remember, God came to him in this dream and showed him that he was working through the angelic beings to basically bring, to oversee all that was happening on the earth. Jacob, the message is to you that I am in control. I am sovereign. There are difficulties going on in your life brought about by your failures of faith, but I am the God who works out those failures and brings about an increase of faith in you and an advancement of my covenant to the people I covenanted with. So there's those two parallel lines working. Well, Jacob understands this, what God has, and we're gonna see, I wanna summarize what God had said in that dream by way of Jacob's response to God, his vow to God. So in Genesis 28, 20 to 22, Jacob makes this vow after understanding what God intends to do, he says, if God will be with me, in other words, his presence, and will keep me in this way that I go, in other words, the keep as the understanding of protection and guidance, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, he's identifying provision, so that I may come again to my father's house in peace, in other words, in safety, and I come back reconciled to my father who I tricked, come back in a place of good standing with him, you might say, then Yahweh, the particular covenant-keeping God, shall be my God. And this stone, he references a stone that it was the stone that was originally he was using underneath his head as a pillow and God came to him in the vision, he uses this stone that I have made a pillar of that I have set up for a pillar, excuse me, shall be God's house. In other words, a symbol or a memorial. It's not actually God's house, it represents God's house. And all of that you give me, I will give a full tenth to you. In other words, I will give back to you in worship or allegiance. Another way of saying that would be, I want to demonstrate loyalty dependence upon you." So there's this understanding that this returning to Beth-El is particularly important because it is the formalization and the fulfillment of this vow on Jacob's behalf that this is, you are my God. I can't help but think of how many of us Whether, wherever it happened to be, whether it was in the years that you were growing as an adult and you realized you had to take your faith and it had to become your faith, or it could no longer be that of your parents' faith that you were leaning on, or you were an adult and you realized that you had an early experience and it starts to fade and you're wondering, what do I really believe? I know what I've said. But what do I really believe? Is God my God? Is He sovereign? Is He in control? And do I demonstrate that by trusting in Him? Or is this kind of, I've made Him into a God of my own choosing, and I make Him into a convenient God? So now, let's take a look in verses two through three. Jacob, his patriarchal status authority, it becomes re-established by his command to action. So God gave him a command. Jacob's status and authority have got to be damaged based on how he handled chapter 34. with his daughter Dinah being violated. He was passive. He showed no care for her. He showed all care towards himself. It was disgusting. It had to be disgusting to his people. It had to lower himself in the eyes of the people. This is our leader. This is who we are to follow. This is God's choice for a leader, but we're going to see this status and authority reestablished by his command, that is Jacob's command. This isn't what God, this is taking what God commanded him to do, go to Bethel, and now Jacob is building on that and commanding his people and saying, this is what we must do in preparation in order to meet God in Bethel. So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, and I'm in verse two, So we're going to see three commands in fulfilling his vow to God. And the first we see here, these three commands or these three verbs that he gives are all in the command form. The first one is, put away the foreign gods that are among you. In other words, the Israelite listening audience will recognize that as one of the Ten Commandments, you shall have no other gods before me." And so before we get there, we see Jacob making that statement that, put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify, there's our next command verb, purify yourselves. Now he's talking about the inward here, the mind and the heart, the commitment to God alone. Get away, excuse me, put away the idols, now give unto God by purification, the wholeness of who you are internally." And lastly, the third verb there of command is, change your garments. change your garments. This seems kind of surface-y. I mean, really? Is it just new clothes? Well, you have to understand in the ancient Near East, and we see it all through the Israelite, what God gives the Israelites and instructions in his word later on when they meet with him at Sinai and they move out and they're continuing to get the law as they're moving towards their destination. That the clean clothes represents the putting off of the stained clothes. And you might say some of the clothes were actually stained by the blood of the male Shechemites that were slaughtered. Whether it was Levi and Simeon or the sons that came afterwards and plundered these males and would have had the stain of that act on them as they stood over them and their clothing engaged their clothing. Or more generally, it's the stain of sin in general. The sin of not wanting to demonstrate a loyalty exclusively to God himself, but to the other things in life. And the garments therefore outwardly represent what's supposed to occur in the purifying, the inward change. No more. I have taken the steps to come to a place of resolve, of commitment. I demonstrate that through the, or this is demonstrated by the clothing I wear. It is clean. I stand before God with a clean conscience. I want you, my God. You are the one I am devoted to. So then in verse three, then let us arise and go to Bethel so that I may make there an altar. He's going to worship, that's the idea of the altar. I may make there an altar to God, to the God who answers me in the day of my distress. You hear again the God who keeps and who protects and guides. He realizes this through experience. He has understood what this has meant as God has protected him from the murdering plot of his brother and all through his interaction outside the land of Canaan as he was working to gain his wife, to grow his family. And that verse continues on. To the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone." His presence is there continually. It might be tempting to look at that and go, I've dragged God through my own sinful failings of faith. I'm not worthy to be in his presence. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think there's a form of humility in that. There's a form of repentance in that. That's a good thing in its initial movement of us to recognize our sin for what it is. But if we stay there, we stay in self-pity, We don't want to stay there. We have to realize that he is the God that doesn't leave in the midst of failings, failures of faith. He doesn't leave. He's the God that gives us these commands that stirs our hearts to get out of this place and move forward in our faith, to increase in our faith. What an incredible statement. So in verse four, at least the first half, and sometimes you hear scholars refer to this as 4A, you won't see an A there in your Bible, and maybe a B for the second part of it, it just means the first half of it. We're gonna see Jacob's patriarchal status and authority is reaffirmed by the people's response. So he's given a command, and I can tell you as a prior law enforcement official that you can give a command. But it's what people do with the command. Just because it's in command form doesn't mean you're going to get obedience. It doesn't happen that way. Just because Jacob has given a command, now we're looking as the audience to see, how will they respond to this command? And this is what we see in the people's response reaffirms Jacob's position as the patriarch, his authority and his status that God has given him. So they gave to Jacob. all the foreign gods. Now, when you think of the foreign gods, There's at least three groups that would fit into this. Well, we've got to remember the Teraphim was the Hebrew name used for these gods that are the false gods that were Laban's gods that Rachel stole from Laban, her father, when they were fleeing from him so that he couldn't use them in divination and trying to seek and find out and trying to know what's going on and how to to stop the fleeing of Jacob, though I must add that would have been useless because it was God-ordained. But Rachel takes them for that purpose. She doesn't take them to worship them. As far as we know, she still has them. But you also have assimilation of the Shechemite women, the males were killed off and the women are brought into this community, the women would have had their own set of these family figurines, their own images of their false Canaanite gods in their possession, and maybe even some of the older children would have as well. And then you have those that were taken in the plunder by the sons of Jacob of the males of Shechem. And you go, well, why would they take them? I mean, they have no value to them religiously. And again, unlike Rachel, who took them to make sure that Laban wasn't using them, the sons of Jacob in taking the plunder, and chapter 34 gave us a comprehensiveness, an understanding of how much they took from them in plunder. When they came across the precious metals used to these, used for the making of these gods, it's very probable that they would have taken some of these, again, not for their religious value, but to take them in order to melt them down and do whatever they wanted to do with them. But nonetheless, because of the proximity of time, they're still in their form of foreign gods. So everything needs to be purged and it says that they, so they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears. And you sit there, and we don't have a custom to associate this. Why was that important? Well, think about amulets. You know, as a kid, I used to watch some of the silly cartoons on, and some of the superheroes would have amulets that they wore, and these amulets gave them power, and interestingly enough, looking back, they gave them power from the false gods that were being promoted, though they weren't. There was more undertones of that in the cartoons. They don't come right out and say it. It's amazing how the world was shaping for the worse, my own understanding of that. But they would use these amulets as powerful ways to either become powerful or to seek their protection from them. It's something along that lines. Well, that's the way the Canaanite women would do with their earrings. They would have their amulets not on a chain around, or not only on a chain around their neck, but in their earrings of that nature so that wherever they went, their gods protected them. Their gods provided for them everything, even the earrings were given over to Jacob. There was no false or foreign gods left in their possession. And then we see in the last half of verse four, Jacob's patriarchal status and his authority is now recommitted by his act of complete and exclusive devotion to God. And we see that in this verse, the last half. Jacob hid them underneath the terebinth tree that was near Shechem. Interesting. Jacob takes them and he hid them. Interesting that the word hid there is actually an act of burial. It's an act of hiding them in the earth. he's discarding them. Jacob is making a statement in doing this by saying we have a new trajectory as a people of God. We are not double-minded, we are not a little of this of this kind of a smorgasbord attitude of God and a little bit of that I'm good with God, but as long as I have these other gods as well. No, no, no. There's only one God that the people of Jacob, the people chosen by God himself, will worship and all else is put away. So let's take a look at this for a second. Let's do a little application. An application concerning putting away idols in our life. And I came across a news article earlier this week and it fascinated me. And I thought, I think it does apply here. There was a survey done just very recently in England with the people of England. 4,300 people were surveyed. They were polled, in other words, to find out, in light of what changes you've had to make in your lives because of the coronavirus, Would you go back to the life that you knew before the coronavirus? And, you know, the news does a good job of laying it out there as kind of a cliffhanger, and that's really what drew my attention. I was trying to guess in my own mind what percentage it would be. What percentage do you think of the 4,300 people from the nation of England, in that proximity of the world, wanted to go back to their lives as they knew it before the coronavirus? 9%, only 9%. So let's contextualize this through the filter of what we understand is going on here in our passage. So they gave three reasons, three things that they liked that brought about, that were changed in their lives that they don't want to go back to. And I want to list the change And I want to recognize what was before, identify what was before. What was the idol they were worshiping that they no longer wanted, they wanted to put away? They wouldn't use it that way, but we understand contextually that's really what's occurring here. So, number one that they said, their lives were now less complicated, and more simplified. They like that and they don't want to go back. They want to put away the idol of busyness and oh how Satan loves to make our lives, fill our lives as Christians with busyness. rather than devotion to God and we confuse our activity with that with what God really wants in our lives and demonstrating devotion and advancing his covenant, his kingdom here on earth with his covenanted people. Second, they appreciated community more. Interesting. So the idol that they were now putting off was self. Self became less important. When they couldn't interact with others, they realized how much they enjoyed. There was an understanding that we are relational beings. We were created that way in the likeness of God, and they missed it. They don't want to go back to this, it's all about me, at least not to the degree that they were before. And so we see them putting away or putting off the idol of self. The third response, they spent less money. They realized that all the marketing that they had fallen to, everything that was in their eyes, in their ears, facing them, telling them, you need to have this, this is important, you will be happy if you have this. They realized that they couldn't get to those things and their deprivation because of this pandemic and the crisis it became, The lack of the flow of this kind of stuff brought about a reality that they didn't need it. They liked putting off materialism. Interesting. That idol that is so prevalent in our society today, they put that off. We can see in this context, not any issue as far as, none of this was theological on their part. It's just an example of what humans had done. We can see that played out. And so certainly we, as Christians, could look at this and go, wow. Have I, have you and I identified, much like the 4,300 people that were surveyed in England, idols? Idols that we didn't realize that we were worshiping and holding on to before the coronavirus. And through this God-ordained crisis, we now realize, wow, that kind of crept up on me. That really was an idol. And if you haven't done that, then I would like to convict your heart, as I was convicted, because I hadn't done that to any real degree this week, or at all since this thing has started, to do so. Because failure to use what God has ordained in our lives, this crisis, to recognize those things, is a failure of faith. It's the mindset of, I just can't wait to get back to those idols. And I want to say this delicately. Certainly there may be people that there aren't idols there. But that's not the norm of the human heart. Don't too quickly walk by that and say, well, that's not me. I didn't have any idols. You might find that in your humility, in your lowering yourself before God, and allowing the Holy Spirit to work through you, that there was something there that you were holding on to that was in competition with God. It was not actually bringing glory to God. It was bringing glory to you, or pleasure, or comfort, or whatever it is that you were chasing. So let's be reminded that we need to put into place some of these very things. You know, it's the Apostle Paul talks about in Ephesians, we need to put off the old way and put on the new way, the new understanding of how we engage God. These are still, I mean, you can see the consistency of Old and New Testament here. We see it first here with Jacob and giving the command, and we need to continue to apply that in our own lives. Let's continue on. In verses 5 through 7, we see Jacob's recognition of God's faithfulness. Verse 5, And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them. So they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. Isn't it fascinating? Jacob feared the response of the people of Shechem and the response of the other Canaanites after the people of Shechem, at least the males, were killed, more than he feared his God. And his God shows him in a very real and tangible way that you fear me, Jacob, and watch how I cause the dread of me to come over your enemies so that what I want accomplished will be accomplished. Wow, that ought to cut us to the core. Where are we fearing what we're facing? More than we're fearing in worship and in praise and in understanding of what we continue to see, the strong, outstretched arm, right hand, oftentimes referred to, of God. It's the idea of his power, his ability to bring dread, to bring terror, to bring fear. It's the type of incapacitating anxiety. You are so overwhelmed with fear you cannot do what you originally intended to do. Normally you see that in our lives, unfortunately, when we focus on the thing that we're facing and we allow it to overwhelm us. God uses it to do that to the enemies that want to stop what he's doing in and through his covenant people. That's what we need to be reminded of. We want to fear God and that kind of reverence of remembering what he's capable of. 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. Why El Bethel? What's the add there? What's the add on? Bethel, we knew, we learned was house of, or I should say Beth is, or in Hebrew here it is Bet of El, house of God. Now you have El at the front, the God of the house of God. Jacob is emphasizing the person over the place. This is the God of the house of God. He is behind all that has happened in my life as far as bringing me forth through my own failings and failures, I guess is a better way to say it, through all my failures of faith, He is the God that brings me. He is a person, if I could use that analogy. He is personal. There is an intimacy. This is a relationship. This is a relationship worthy of our trust because of his faithfulness and his ability to bring us through that which he says he will bring us through. That's what Jacob is emphasizing in the El Beth El. And then we see in verse 8 something interesting. It's almost like it's a parathetical statement. It's a statement that just is loaded in there because there's significance of what took place. And yet there's value also for us to see why this was put in there. In verse eight, and Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died. And she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Alon Bakuth, which means Oak of Weeping, is what he names it. Now, in order for Deborah to be in the picture, it means that Rebecca is dead. Rebecca has died. And it would be the norm in the ancient Near East that the nurse who nursed the children of the one who has died now finds her purpose within the nursing of the children's children, if that makes sense. So somewhere in there, Deborah, probably, I mean, most likely it's Succoth. It could be Shechem. I don't think it's Shechem. I really believe it was probably early on when Jacob gets to Succoth. There's interaction with the family. in that they know where each other are in the land. Jacob, again, does not go to Bethel like he should. But Deborah does come to Jacob to serve him and to help with the raising of Jacob's children. And what we see here Kind of a lesson, a takeaway we could have is the foreign gods were buried. It says hid, but remember that verb actually means to bury into the ground. The foreign gods were buried or discarded and forgotten under a tree in Shechem. And what we see here, Deborah, Jacob's nirth through childhood, was buried, remembered fondly, and was wept over under an oak at Beth El, or El, Beth El. And it causes us to pause and we see the striking difference of endings, endings of life, to those that demonstrate an allegiance to God, or at least to what God is doing by being a faithful servant. And that we can see by way of the weeping and the mourning and the grief demonstrated, probably particularly by Jacob, but also others in the family. of this death of Deborah, who was loved and cherished. What a striking difference of endings. The foreign gods, those that are in competition to God, are buried and forgotten. Deborah's nurse, excuse me, Rebecca's nurse, Deborah, she is buried and esteemed. She is wept over. The memory of her will live on and will be marked by this tree. So let's continue on. On our final segment here, we see that God blesses Jacob and the covenant continues. Remember, in each of these examples of the patriarch, the covenant continues, the covenant continues. Let's read in verse nine. God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Paderon 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, now I don't want to pause right there, remember this was already done in the area of Jabbok, of the river there when Jacob wrestled with the angel of God, who he later also referred to as God himself. And now we see the affirming in the form of, or the context of a blessing, a formalized blessing in line, or as a part of the covenant blessing. So let's continue. And God said to him, I am God Almighty. And we had seen this back in chapter 17 with Abraham, the other bookend, where God identified himself as God Almighty. We even sang a hymn. In fact, that's the hymn that Deacon Mark chose for this particular Lord's Day. It's El Shaddai. And it's the idea of God Almighty tied to creation. I am the creator of life. I have that power. That's exclusive power to me. There is no one else that can create life. I am God Almighty. I am El Shaddai. And therefore, as the creator of all life, I give the command, because it's going to come through me, be fruitful and multiply. Well, what's interesting about this command, every time it's given as a reminder to, whether it's initially to Abraham or then to his son Isaac, it's always tied to pre-birth of children. This is post. Jacob is old. Jacob is much older. The child-rearing days are almost behind him. He has 12 children, 11 sons and one daughter, and he's about to have His 12th son. So this isn't referring to Jacob multiplying in a sense of his generation. It's not more sons to Jacob. Look what he says as we continue on in the verse, the second part of verse 11. A nation. Oh, the multiplying is tied to a nation. The name Israel is the name that the people of God start to take on, not just Jacob. We start to see this family, the beginnings of this family, turning into a nation, I would say it that way. And a nation and a company, it's interesting that word company, that particular word company means assembly. or even congregation, we see that in the Old Testament, of nations. Well, you go, well, what do you mean? We got one nation, it's Israel. How could this be a company of nations? Yes, it's nations, and we in the United States should kind of get this ourselves. We have states, we are United States. In some sense, God is referring to each tribe as a nation. These are 12 individual nations who fall underneath the nation of Israel. and are governed underneath that more federal understanding of Israel. Don't tie any ties to America. I'm not doing that. I'm trying to give you the biblical understanding of what God is saying. Out of you will come nations. These 12 sons represent 12 tribes, which are loosely referred to as nations here. 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. And we're actually going to talk more about, who is this God that went up? And we're going to take a break next week, or at least the next time we come together. And I'm going to try and point out to you, there is a particular person. We know one God and three persons that are being referred to here. And we'll show what the scripture has to bear out about. Who is this person of God that goes up, that went up from him? Again, verse 13, then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. And Jacob set a pillar, in other words, a memorial, in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it. It's the only time we see a drink offering by any of the Israelites in the book of Genesis. A drink offering is a means or an act of veneration, an act of worshiping God. So he poured out a drink offering on it and poured out the oil on it, again, an act of veneration and worship of God. And then in verse 15, so Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him, Bethel, house of God. And we see that Jacob is now in a place where his faith has been increased. He has taken on the mantle that God had given him, the role of patriarch, and what is behind him, and his failures, God has used to ground him in his faith as a patriarch. No more shall I make that failure. I'm allowing God to take that which I have failed to do in the past and convict my heart and make me more grounded in my understanding of who I am in a humble sense, a place of humility, and who God is in my need to trust him and him exclusively. So let's finish with a few applications. Mankind's failure of faith will not hinder God in his advancement of his covenant of grace. That's the covenant, the new covenant we're in. We are covenant people by God's doing and regenerating our hearts. Therefore, we are part of the covenant. God will continue to bring about what he intends in the covenant. And even our failures cannot thwart that. Oh, hold on to that truth. The Jews, in fact, looking back at just before the covenant of grace was brought into its power by Jesus's death, we see this. The Jews' failure to recognize Jesus as God was used by God to bring about the crucifixion of Christ. Christ's death was the full payment for the sins of those who repent and believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So we have our big overarching truth, what they intended for evil, God intended for good. And we're just blown away by this. God is so merciful. failures don't stop these of course I don't want to over overuse this analogy in other words the Jews that did this most likely were not believers but they were part of the nation that should be believing they were part of what were what were God's people Let's continue on. Just like the patriarchs of old, God continues to use our failures of faith, the patriarchs were in the faith, we are in the faith, God continues to use our failures of faith to grip our hearts and increase our dependence and our dependence lived out by our trust and our moving forward in what God intends to do in our lives. The increasing of our faith that we are more grounded as we continue to say. When, and this is an important one to get, when you and I fail in faith, we need to repent and turn to God. Allow Him to turn our hearts away from our rebellion and turn to Him. devotion or devoting our lives fresh, new, purified. The picture of new garments as we stand before him, beautifully clothed in the righteousness of Christ and all the purity and the beauty of that picture. And lastly, our failures of faith do not have the last word. God does. And God intends to purpose our failures for His good, to advance His covenant, ultimately for our increase of faith, our good. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. O Heavenly Father, we thank you for your encouragement, your reminder in the midst of our recognition of our shortcomings, our failure to follow you in faith, our falling to sin, and yet the wonderful encouragement that you use even that to advance your covenant, to bring about good. Please God, please Heavenly Father, please sovereign over all Allow our hearts to be reminded of that in the midst of our failure. Do not allow us to stay in the muck and mire. Please, and remind us immediately of the beauty of your grace, your mercy, your power, your might, oh El Shaddai. It's in the name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.