But it is a good passage for us to reflect on, for us to meditate on, and even a good passage after participating in baptism and in hearing those first questions asked and answered, recognizing that even this child is a sinner in desperate need of God's cleansing blood. Ephesians chapter 2, the first 10 verses, this is the Word of God. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, which were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. The grass withers and the flowers fade, and yet the word of the Lord remains forever. Please be seated. When we started our series in Genesis, the kind of overall title that we gave to the entire series was The Genesis of Grace and Grace in Genesis. The word Genesis just sort of means the beginnings or the seed, so the beginning of grace we were looking at, but then we're also looking at grace in the pages and lines and history laid out for us in the book of Genesis. So the beginnings of grace and grace from the beginning. Grace is simply a religious word that sometimes loses a lot of meaning anymore. We talk about grace, we say grace before we eat. Grace actually means unmerited favor. So that's great, unmerited. Another churchy word to define a churchy word that's always helpful. Grace is simply getting something that you don't deserve and something that you could not earn. That's grace. You get something that you don't deserve and something that you cannot earn. And so as we were looking at Genesis, we were seeing how Genesis is the beginning of our understanding of God's grace, of God's relating to us by His grace alone. His relationship with us, something that we cannot earn and something we do not deserve. And it starts right in the beginning because Nothing is less deserving than nothing. Nothing deserves less than nothing. I mean, even something deserves something. And in fact, everything deserves something, but nothing doesn't deserve anything. So for there to be nothing, and then for that nothing To be something is grace. For God to exist in perfection, in perfect, holy relationship with Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in need of nothing, not wanting for anything, to speak into nothing and call forth something, is grace. That we exist is the beginning of grace. That God would speak into the void and chaos in Genesis 1 and say, let there be light. And there was light is grace. God creates it all. He fashions it all. And so for anything to be here is by God's grace. But then to go even beyond that, And not just to create, but to create personal, individual, to create a person, to create mankind is beyond just grace. It's amazing grace that God would take dust and breathe His own breath of life into dust and fashion in His own image the crown of creation, mankind, Adam and Eve, and then have a personal relationship with this creation that not a week ago did not exist at all. That's grace. That's amazing grace. God provides everything that they need. He creates Adam and Eve, and He creates them in perfect relationship with Him. He provides everything they could possibly need, more than they could need, actually. He provides for even their very wants. He gives them a perfect garden. He says, here, it's all for you. I'm giving it to you. Adam and Eve, not old enough to earn anything, are given this beautiful garden. Everything your hearts desire right here, anything you want, you can have it. Every tree of the garden is for you. He even gives them the rights of the garden and says, in fact, make it bigger. Expand the garden. You don't have to just stay here. Fill the earth with this garden. Be fruitful. Multiply. God gives. He hands over the gift of recreation to Adam and Eve. The joy of seeing life come forth, he says, now you do that. You create, you recreate, you multiply, you fill the earth with my image bearers so that my glory will be spread throughout the earth. And then finally, he says, now in a testimony, as a sign of our relationship, as a reminder to you who you are, and who I am, here is a tree, one tree. You may have everything in this garden, but so that you will remember that I am God and you are creature, that we are in perfect relationship with one another, and that by grace you even exist, here is a tree that will stand as an everlasting testimony to our relationship. Don't eat this tree. But it was not enough. And Satan, the deceiver, comes in Genesis 3, and he tempts, and he twists God's words, and he says, you know what? It's not enough to live in humility with God. You need to prove your value by your independence. You need to prove who you are by living independently. You need to make your own decisions. Be your own man. Be your own woman. God has promised you everlasting life if you don't eat of this tree. I'm telling you, you can have that now. You don't have to limit yourself. You can have your best life now. Go ahead, eat of the tree. You'll get everything you want, everything you'd ever desired. you can go kind of do an end run around what God is calling you to. And so this tree, which would have been an everlasting symbol, it was built to be, created to be an everlasting symbol and witness to man's relationship with God, became an everlasting symbol of our fall from glory. It became the very image of death, this tree, which should have been an image of life. And suddenly, everything changed. Everything changed. Man's relationship with one another, mankind's relationship, husband to wife, they began blaming each other. Even their relationship with God, they began blaming God. Well, not everything changed. From our perspective, everything changed. From God's perspective, God had created us by grace. God related with us by grace. And even after sin entered the world, God continued to relate to us by grace. See, if it's earned at any level, it's no longer grace. It's earned. But in Genesis 315, even as God is pronouncing the very judgments, the very consequences for sin, God begins by speaking to the serpent. And in Genesis 315, God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head. And you shall bruise his heel. God would one day defeat Satan once and for all. And amazingly, he would do it through the seed of the woman, through an offspring of the very image bearers who broke covenant with God. God would one day send a Messiah, an anointed one, who would rescue us. Mankind's fall into sin was as swift as it was total. We went from loving God and loving each other perfectly to blaming God and blaming each other for everything that is wrong in the world. Just one generation, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve murders his younger brother, in a fit of anger simply because his brother had had a more faithful heart toward God during worship, because his brother offered a sacrifice that was pleasing to God, and he did not. He murders his brother one generation later. Seven generations later, a man named Lamech, seven generations from Adam, writes a song And he sings the song not to his wife, but to his two wives. And in this song, he glories in vengeance and murder. He writes a song about murder and vengeance. And 10 generations after Adam and Eve, we're told that God was grieved. over the amount of sin in the world. He was grieved that He had even made mankind. But whereas for you and me, our grief, when we're grieved by things like this, whether it's our own past actions or things that other people have done to us, our grief usually leads to acts of self-pity, or acts of self-preservation, or sometimes our grief will lead us to quit or just lash out against others, God's grief leads to an act of selfless and amazing grace. And in Genesis 6, 8, we're told Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. It's the Hebrew word that is actually translated throughout the Old Testament in other places as grace. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And so to, again, to look at that and say, well, it's because he was such a good man. It was because he was so righteous. But the interesting thing is that verse 8 says, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And then verse 9 says, Noah was a blameless man. His righteousness was based upon the grace he found in God, not the other way around. And so God saves Noah and his entire family from the death that he and his entire family deserved. They received life. They received grace, something they didn't earn, something they don't deserve. And God reiterates his promise to him after the flood. As Moses and his family step out of the ark, God reiterates to him the same promises he made to Adam and Eve. The same call that he made to Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter nine. God says to Noah, behold, or excuse me, in verse seven, he says, be fruitful and multiply team on the earth and multiply in it. Then God said to Noah and his sons with him, behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you. God gives them the same call that he had given to Adam and Eve. The call that he gave to Adam and Eve was before there was sin in the world. So here God is calling these sinful people, Noah and his sons, go, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, team on the earth, spread out. But he says the basis for that call is my everlasting covenant. The basis for that call is I faithful. I do not change. I have established my covenant with you and with your offspring after you." And so surely now they have learned their lesson. Noah and his sons, now we get the, and they lived happily ever after. I mean isn't that how moral of the story stories work? Something bad happens, but it was because of something you did and you deserved for the bad thing to happen But now you've learned your lesson. And so now you'll never deserve another bad thing to happen again Well, if there's one thing that the Bible is not it is not a do-better-try-harder manual It is not a do-better-try-harder book of stories of success In fact, immediately after God reiterates his promise, I establish my everlasting covenant with you and your seed, Noah gets passed out naked drunk in his tent. His son comes in and looks for an opportunity to make fun of his naked drunk passed out dad. These are the, we've learned our lesson, people. These are the pillars of the faith. These are the wonderfully righteous. Look how good they are. They're going to do better. No. And even the descendants of Noah, rather than spreading out and filling the earth, as God called, they found this nice little valley. And they said, no, let's not spread out. Let's come together and not spread out. In fact, let's build us a tower. Let's build a nice tower that reaches all the way to heaven. And then we can make a name for ourselves. Looking for an opportunity, rather than to obey God and spread out, they come together and say, no, let's stick together. Rather than living by grace, they say, no, we can build our way. We can climb our way to heaven. Rather than looking for opportunities to glorify God, they say, this will be for us. We'll make our name great. At every level, they failed. Everything they tried to accomplish in that moment was a complete disaster. They wanted to come together, God scattered them. In fact, he changed all their languages in one moment so that they couldn't even understand one another and they scattered. They wanted to build a tower that reached to the heavens and the way the Bible describes it is that as they built this tower, it says God had to come down one day just to see what they were doing. It was more like an anthill. They're building this tower that stretches to the heaven, and God's kind of like, oh, isn't that cute? They thought they would provide for their own fame and glory, and it's become a story of infamy. And they have definitely, they did not bring any glory on themselves. And yet once again we see God's grace shining through because just as we saw ten generations after Adam comes this man Noah who finds grace in the eyes of the Lord. Ten generations after Noah we meet a man named Abram. a moon worshipper from Mesopotamia, Abram from Ur of the Chaldeans, and he finds grace in the eyes of God. And in Genesis 12, God calls to Abraham. Abraham, or Abram as he is named at this point, he's not looking for God. He's not soul-searching. He's not having a spiritual moment. God comes to him calls to him and in Genesis 12 God says go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed." God, out of sheer grace, promises to bless Abram and his offspring after him, to make Abram a great blessing to the world, that all of the nations would be blessed through Abraham and his offspring. This is an interesting promise for Abraham to hear at this moment, because at that point, he has not even a single child, let alone multiple nations of child. Abram and his wife have no children and it is evident to everyone that they never will have children. And yet this is God's promise, I will make you a great nation. And Abram followed. He followed by faith. And for 25 years he waited for God to fulfill that promise. 25 years after God had said, I will bless the nations through your offspring, he still had no offspring. At one point in the middle of those 25 years, Abram is having this honest, open conversation with God, saying, you said, and yet there are no children. Now I'm going to have a servant, and he's going to have to inherit everything. And God says to him, no. In Genesis 15, he says, no. A son from your own loins, your own son will be your heir. God would bless the world through Abram's offspring, through his seed. And in Genesis 15, 6, we're told this amazingly scandalous, startling truth. We're told that Abram believed the Lord and that he counted it to him as righteousness. Abram believed the Lord. He simply believed that what God was saying was true and God counted that as though it were righteousness itself. Here is Abram, weak-faith Abram, but he's trusting God. He's like, okay, I don't know how you're going to do this. And it is counted as righteousness. By that faith, Abram is made is seen as acceptable to God. The way that's been put in the New Testament is that Abraham was justified by grace through faith. His faith, believing God, was the conduit through which God's grace justified Abraham. He wasn't justified by faith. It wasn't that his faith was a new work that justified him, but he was justified by grace. He didn't deserve to be accepted by God, and yet God accepted him. God counted his faith as though it were righteousness itself. And when Abram, later renamed Abraham, was 100 years old, when his wife Sarah was 90 years old, they gave birth to Isaac, Throughout Abraham's life there were times of huge faith moments and there were times of huge faithless blunders. Trying to solve everything through his own scheming, through his own self-help. Trying to force God's hand, trying to expedite God's promises. And yet through all of it, God remained faithful to his own promise. God remained faithful because God does not, cannot deny himself. As Isaac grew, Abraham's son, when he was 40 years old in Genesis chapter 24, Abraham sent his servant back to his homeland where he'd come from to find a wife for Isaac. And it's a fascinating passage, and I would urge you to read it at some point, because you can look through this passage and see the fingerprints of God all over what the servant was doing, all over just circumstances, all over the servant's heart and his own faith in God. 25 times in this little chapter, God is mentioned by name. either as Lord or as God. God is mentioned 25 times as we see God providing a wife for Isaac. Isaac marries Rebekah. Rebekah, like her mother-in-law Sarah, was barren. She also had no children. After years of prayer and years of waiting, she finally has two sons. She has twins named Esau and Jacob. In chapter 26, God reiterates to Isaac what He had said to Abraham. In as much the same way as He reiterated to Noah what He had said to Adam. But God says in Genesis 26, verses 3 and 4, God says, I will be with you. and will bless you, I will multiply your offspring, and in your offspring, all the nations of earth will be blessed." Again, this promise that through your offspring, the nations of the world will be blessed. Harkening even all the way back to Genesis 3, where he says, through the offspring of the woman, I will deliver mankind. Unfortunately, here is where things kind of get pretty ugly. in the life of the patriarchs. Things look less promising. Because Isaac and Rebekah had favorites of their sons, of their twin-born sons. Isaac favored Esau. He liked Esau more than Jacob. His wife Rebekah liked Jacob more than Esau. This created a bitter rivalry between the two boys. When they were young men, Jacob conned his brother Esau into selling his birthright, his rights to the larger inheritance in the family. The older son always had the larger inheritance. Jacob cons his brother into selling those rights to him for a bowl of soup. Later on, Isaac Because of his favoritism for his older son, he plans on blessing his son in secret. Isaac is sick and he's in bed and he thinks he's dying. And so he calls Esau in secret and he says, I want to pronounce the family blessing on you before I die. Now, this is an exact opposition to a prophecy that God himself had given to them, telling them that the blessing is going to go to the younger son. It is through the younger son that my blessing will continue, and yet Isaac ignores this prophecy. But his wife, Rebecca, rather than going in a godly manner and speaking to her husband about this, she decides she'll fix it. She'll take it. She'll take care of it. I mean, after all, God said he was going to do this, so he must want us to fix the problem. And so she convinces her son, Jacob, who didn't need a whole lot of convincing anyway, to lie to his father, to deceive Isaac, to dress up as Esau, trick Isaac into blessing him with the blessing intended for Esau. This obviously makes Esau a little upset. Esau vows that the only comfort he's going to find in life is in killing his brother Jacob once his father Isaac dies. Jacob, again, obviously, that doesn't sit well with Jacob. So he decides, I should probably leave now. This would be a good time for me to not live in the same area as my brother Esau. And so, Jacob flees for his life, he leaves the one parent who loves him, he leaves the other parent who is apparently on his deathbed, and he leaves the land that he has been promised. And yet, even through all of this, God remained faithful. Even in this, God shows himself to be gracious, to care for Jacob, and here's Jacob on his way out of the Promised Land, and he finds this wonderfully comfortable patch of dirt in the wilderness to sleep on, and he finds this beautifully plush rock to lay his head down on to sleep for the night, and God appears to Jacob just before he leaves the Promised Land. And what each of us would expect is, of course, God would appear to him just before he leaves the promised land. God would say to him, no, no, no, don't you leave the promised land. If you take one more step, if you cross that line, oh, you don't even want to know what is going to happen if you step outside of this promised land. All the deals are off, but God doesn't. In Genesis 28, God appears to Jacob. And in verse 13, he says, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the east, the west, the north, and south. And in your offspring shall all the families of earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. God promises to be with Jacob. Why? Because Jacob is such a wonderful person? No, because God keeps His promises. Because God's relationship with His people is always by grace. It's not something Jacob could earn. It's not something Jacob deserved. But God says, no, and still, through your offspring, I will bless the nations. And it appears at the moment in chapter 28 that Jacob is going to respond by faith. He even makes a vow to God. He says, you know, if God is who He says He is, if God is going to do what He says He's going to do, well then, He will be my God. I will follow Him everywhere. I will worship Him. However, the words of trust in God seem to be just that. Just words. Because as soon as Jacob is outside of the borders of the promised land, he reverts to his own self-trusting ways, his scheming ways. And in fact, Jacob follows the exact path of the servant who found a bride for Jacob's dad. The servant who found Rebecca and brought her back, Jacob takes that exact same path, goes to the exact same place. He's in the exact same land. However, when Jacob gets there, not the servant of the son of the promise, but the son of the promise himself. Here is the grandson of Abraham. He is at this same place. And when he goes to look for a wife, the entire section never mentions God. Jacob never looks for God. The author never mentions God. And it is It is a mess. He travels to his homeland. He sees people there. They're his own people. They're of his kin. He kind of falls in, well, he falls in lust with this young woman. I mean, some of us would say it's love at first sight. But he's so infatuated with her that he goes, again, no prayer, no seeking God, no nothing. He goes in his own will. He's going to get a wife for himself. He goes to the father and he says, you know, I'll work seven years for you if you let me marry your daughter. This is an unheard of, unprecedentedly high bride price that he pays. But he has met his match in his future father-in-law, this man named Laban, because Laban says, sure, of course, why not? And after the seven years are up, Laban throws this giant wedding party. He gets Jacob drunk. Jacob goes into his wedding tent, ready to sleep with his new bride, Rachel. But what he didn't realize was that Laban had replaced Rachel with her older sister, Leah. Because Leah, well apparently she wasn't quite as attractive as Rachel and he was certainly not going to get a high bride price and he was never going to get someone to work seven years for her. And so Laban gives Leah to Jacob as his wife. He wakes up. He's understandably upset by that. But he has already set the bride price. And so now Laban says, well, fine. I tell you what. Work for me another seven years, and you can have Rachel also. I'll give you two for the price of, well, two. So Jacob agrees to it. And at the end of the section in chapter 29, it sounds sort of, you know, it's kind of soft pedaling and we're told, you know, and Jacob, well, he loved Rachel more than he loved Leah. But the very next verse in verse 31 of chapter 29, all the kid gloves come off. And it wasn't just that he had higher affection for one over the other. He hated Leah. He hated his first wife. And yet in the midst of this, I mean, even as he experienced favoritism as a boy, even as he experienced what that does to a person, rather than serving as a warning to him of how he would establish his household, it served as a pattern. And in the midst of this, in the midst of all this sin and contempt and hatred and scheming and lying, God continued to show how faithful he was, how God keeps his promises. And he continues to be faithful to sinful people. And so God gives Leah children. And over the next several years, God works through, and in spite of, just ridiculously scheming dysfunctional family. God gives Leah four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. And the whole time, the favored wife, Rachel, is barren. Well, not to be outdone by her sister, since she'd never been outdone by her sister before, Rachel decides, well, I can fix this. I'll give my husband a concubine. That always fixes things. Yeah, give him a concubine. Now there's three women in the picture. And so the concubine, Rachel's maid, has two sons, Dan and Naphtali. Leah decides, well, hey, two can play at this game. And so she gives her husband a concubine. Now there's four women in the picture. Her concubine, her former maid, she also has children. Gad and Asher. Then as if this couldn't get any more Jerry Springer-like, Leah one day buys bedroom rights from her sister Rachel for an aphrodisiac that her son found in the field. And then she has two more sons, Issachar and Zebulun. Then later we're told she has a daughter named Dinah. And the only thing upsetting about that is how it just kind of glosses over it. Oh yeah, she had a daughter named Dinah. Obviously the family really cared well for all of their children. And then years later, after scheming and blaming and nothing, God is gracious and he opens Rachel's womb and she has a son and she names him Joseph. And even there, Her heart shines through because her response to having a son is, now if I could just have one more. Throughout all of this time, Jacob was working for Laban, his father-in-law, and when Rachel finally has a son named Joseph, Jacob decides, well now it's time for me to move back. It's time for me to return to my homeland. It's time for me to leave Laban and all of his scheming. We find out later that actually it was God who had appeared to him. God called him back. God said, I want you to leave. I want you to come back to your homeland now. Why? Because Jacob was being such a stellar person? He had shown what a fine upstanding young man he had become out in the wilderness? No, because God is gracious. Because God calls sinners to himself. And so he's calling Jacob to return. God reminds Jacob in Genesis chapter 31 that he is still the same God who met Jacob in Bethel, who called him, who said, I will bless the world through you. I will bless your offspring. I will bring you back and I will be with you wherever you go. God reminds him, I am the God of Bethel. God even revealed to him how he was going to provide for him, how he was going to build up his household's infrastructure and their wealth. But even with God telling him that he would do that, Jacob resorts to old wives' tales and scheming and superstition to try to build his own wealth. And so eventually, Jacob leaves his father-in-law. And he comes back, travels back to the edge of the promised land. But before Jacob can return, he has to face his brother Esau, whom he had lied to and cheated 20 years ago. But even before he faces Esau, Jacob has to face God, whom he has ignored and lived without for the past 20 years, even as God has been with him throughout all of it. And in chapter 32. We hear this prayer from Jacob in verses nine to 13, nine to 12, Jacob says, Oh God of my father, Abraham and God of my father, Isaac, Oh Lord, who said to me, return to your country and to your kindred that I may do you good. I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant. For with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children. But you said, I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for its multitude." Jacob acknowledges who God is. Jacob confesses his own unworthiness of God's favor. I am not worthy of even the least kind act you've done to me. Even as he acknowledges that it is only God's favor that can save him at this point. And so once again, in mercy, God comes to Jacob. Coming to him at night as a man, in fact. And he wrestles with Jacob. A physical wrestling with Jacob all night. Jacob living out, essentially, what his life has been like so far. His wrestling with God. His striving, his scheming, his trying to outdo God. And as the morning dawns, God disables Jacob with a touch. And yet Jacob still refuses to let go of God unless unless he would bless him. And so there in the dust before the sun rose, God changes Jacob's name to Israel. He wrestles with God. And God blesses him again. And Jacob recognizes the significance as he says, I have seen God face to face. And yet I have been delivered. The only question as we come to the end of these 33 chapters was how is Esau going to receive the brother that he had vowed to kill? And at first it doesn't look very good for Jacob as Esau comes out with 400 foot soldiers to meet him. And so Jacob sends gift after gift ahead of him and ahead of his family. He sends out his concubines with their children. He sends out Leah with her children. He sends out Rachel with her son. And Jacob comes last, bowing down, not even looking to be restored as a brother, but looking to come as a servant to a lord, to his master. And yet Esau runs to greet him, and the forgiveness that Esau offers is so full and so complete that it reminds him of the forgiveness he's just realized as he met God face to face and was delivered. And he says, seeing your face, Esau, is like seeing the face of God, for you have accepted me. And wouldn't it be great if that was the end? And so now, they're all going to live happily ever after. Jacob and his brother are reconciled. Jacob has learned his lesson. He's learned how to pray and ask for forgiveness. He's learned how to humble himself. He's clearly going to do so much better now. But that is not the point of the story of Jacob's life. That's not the point of the book of Genesis. That's not the point of the Bible. It is not a, now you've figured it out, go do better and try harder. Rarely do any of the stories of the history of God's people end with, and so they learned their lesson. In fact, in the end of Genesis chapter 33, what we see is Jacob promising to come and visit Esau in his homeland, Seir, you know, once the kids and the animals have rested well. And he never does. In fact, what we also see is Jacob still on the outside of the promised land, not even across the border yet, coming up to the edge of the Jordan River and building a home there in Succoth. building a house, building barns, not going into the promised land. And then finally at the end of chapter 33, he does move into the promised land and he starts heading right down to Bethel, back to that place where he had met with God, where God said, I will bring you back here. I will be with you and I'll bring you back to this place. And he stops short of Bethel. He stops about 20 miles short of Bethel, still not returning, still sort of faithful, but not quite. And he stops within eyesight of a city named Shechem. And there he builds an altar to the Lord, and he names it God, the God of Israel, as though simply calling his actions faithful would make them faithful. And it sounds like such bad news, doesn't it? But if God is the God of grace, then it's always unearned. If God relates to His people, by grace because they cannot earn it and they do not deserve it, then God's people will constantly be proving that point. That passage in 2 Timothy that we read for our meditation reminds us that even when we are faithless, God remains faithful because he cannot deny himself. The message throughout Genesis prepares us for the message throughout the Old Testament. The message throughout the Old Testament prepares us for the message of the Gospel in Jesus Christ, that God calls and rescues sinners, that God remains faithful to His promises, that God is with you, that God's faithfulness, God's promises never change, not because you're such a great person or because you're going to figure it out someday, but because God never changes. There are so many well-intentioned Christians, and even those who would teach other Christians, who believe, and they even teach, that the way God related to people, to His people in the Old Testament, was through obedience. He gave them rules, they followed the rules. When they didn't, there were consequences. Now He relates to us by grace. That ignores almost the entirety of the Old Testament, because they never figured it out. It diminishes God's mercy and grace. It diminishes God's glory. It diminishes sin. To look at Jacob's life as he has led it to this point and say, oh, God picked him because he was such a good guy, ignores the reality of sin. The world has not changed. People have not changed. We are still tempted to bypass God's call to faith and faithfulness. We are still tempted to live by what we can see rather than by trusting God. We are still tempted to force God's hand to have our best life now. These very things even tempted Jesus. Satan himself came with this very temptation to Jesus when he said, if you would just bow down to me, I'll give you the whole world. It will all be yours. What was he offering? Was he offering something that wasn't already being offered to Jesus? No. Jesus knew that the world would be his one day, that he would rule and reign over the world, but that the path that had been chosen and marked out for him to that reigning was through death and sacrifice and trial and execution. Satan wasn't offering something that wasn't already offered. He was simply offering an easier way to get to it. You don't have to suffer. You don't have to go through the trial. It's what God wants for you, so why not help Him get it to you? And we are still tempted in this same way. But Jesus would not. Jesus would trust His Father all the way to the cross. Jesus would follow faithfully all the way to the cross. The cross, this picture, this symbol of barbarism. the most horrific execution style ever invented by man, execution by hanging on a cross. It was a symbol of the extremes of depravity, both the depravity of those who were executed in that way because it was saved for only the most heinous of criminals, and that it was also a picture of the depravity of those who would execute justice, that they could even invent Such a villainous, such a barbaric way of ending the life of an image-bearer of God. And yet, just as sin reversed the symbol of the tree in the garden, a tree that should have stood as a sign of God's relationship to man, through sin became a sign of our sin, And so by God's grace, a symbol of death and barbarism became an everlasting symbol of life and hope through Jesus Christ. And that is where we are in Genesis. Let's pray. Father God, we are grateful to you for your grace As we have already sung, you see the depths of our heart and you love us the same. Your grace is indescribable. God, may we be moved to worship you with our mouths, with our voices, with our hearts and our lives as we go from here because of the amazing grace we have found in Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's stand.