where we could look. We're going to find one thing today, though, the emphasis after this particular chapter really does shift off of Jacob. And if you were in the class on Joseph, you might sort of have remembered my remarking to that effect. So, that's very purposeful, that's very intentional with where we are in the story and with what the writer is trying to accomplish. But nevertheless, there are vignettes. There certainly are quite a few little things that still remain from Jacob. But we'll find a way to package some things at the end and do the best we possibly can. Let's turn to Genesis 35. We're going to read this chapter. It's 29 verses, so we're kind of borderline. But let's go ahead and read this together and I'll ask you just to follow along. God said to Jacob, 35-1, arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau. So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, that I may make there an altar to the God who answers. ESV translates this in the present tense. Most of the versions translate it in the past tense. So answers or answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone. So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the terebinth a lot of versions use oak, a tree that was near Shechem. And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. And Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel, Luz was the earlier name, 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. So the God of Bethel, because their God revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. And Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, watch this. It's Rebecca, not Rachel. Rebecca's nurse died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Alon Bakuth. That does mean oak of weeping. It's a different word, which is probably why ESV translates terebinth. That's sort of probably the more particular name. But this one is actually oak, and ela is the word for terebinth, and alon is the word for oak, anyway, for what that's worth. And God said to him, verse 10, 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 Jacob said to him, I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you. Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it. So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him Bethel. Now, let's read the end of the story here, or the end of the chapter. Then they journeyed from Bethel, when they were still some distance from Ephrath. Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor. And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, do not fear, for you have another son. And as her soul was departing from her, for she was dying, she called his name Benoni. which means son of my sorrow, but his father called his name Benjamin, which means son of my right hand, or son of the right hand. So Rachel died and she was buried on the way to Ephrath, that is Bethlehem, and Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel's tomb, which is there to this day. Israel journeyed on and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder. While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel heard of it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. The sons of Leah, Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. The sons of Rachel, Joseph, and Benjamin. The sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant, Dan and Naphtali. The sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant, Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Padon Aram. And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kirjath Arba, and the biblical name is Hebron, or Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Now the days of Isaac were 180 years, and Isaac breathed his last, and he died, and was gathered to his people, old and full of days, and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. Gracious Heavenly Father, we have obeyed You in that we have given attention to the reading of Your Word. And now as we teach and preach the Word through the day, we pray for Your additional blessing because that too is in response to what You have ordained and what You have called upon us to do in our public worship and we want Your blessing. More than anything, Lord, just hide me behind the cross. I pray for a fresh sense of cleansing and endowment from on high. I pray that you will just provide whatever liberty and freedom are needed through the course of the day to each of your servants, whether in ABF or in our worship services today, ministering your word that you may be glorified, your people may be benefited, and we will feel that it has been good to be in the house of the Lord. May we have that sense of your presence and blessing. We pray these things in Jesus' wonderful name. Amen. Well, you can see the title today is The Revival at Bethel versus the title from last week that I was using, which is The Trouble at Shechem. Trouble is sort of a bland word. I mean, it's expressive, but to say the least, more than trouble. I mean, really when you think about what happened at Succoth and Shechem more particularly, this is probably the lowest ebb. This is what you might, if you wanted a 50 cent word, this is what you might describe the nadir. I mean, there is no lower point, to my knowledge, in the story of Jacob as he came home from Padon Aram than what you find recorded in chapter 34. And Ron, I think, pointed out in his lesson, you know, you have two kind of dismal chapters. You have chapter 34 where you have the story that we're referring to now, and then you have the story of Judah and his problems in chapter 38. And sometimes you look at these chapters and you say to yourself, what on earth, why did God include these things and to what benefit, particularly chapter 38? Yet they're not only purposeful in the story, but there are a lot of lessons that you can draw from these. But I'm interested in pointing you to this low ebb as to what's going on, the low ebb of Shechem, because you probably have a period of anywhere from 6 to 10 years. I think you were given the figure last week of 8 to 9. It's really hard to nail it down. But when we talk about this, it's really important to realize that you don't just have Jacob hanging out for a little while. I mean, when he pitched his tent towards Shechem, and when he settled there and built a house and went in to the further, I mean, he was already in it, but further developed his cattle business. And you notice that one of the things that Hamor and Shechem portrayed as a strong point was, you can trade in the land. So it was a trading center. And what happens with all of this is that somehow, and it's easy for us to do this, somehow Jacob sells himself on the fact that maybe it would be all right to settle here for a little while. This really wasn't what God called him to do. And so what you get into is you get into the danger of complacency, selling yourself on the idea that, well, just a little bit is okay, but a little bit turned into a number of years. And in the number of years that he spent there, he eventually ends up in a backslidden condition. And I'm using our terminology, but that's exactly the truth. Now, we read the last verses from chapter 16 to 19. They're important in their own right. Nothing is without its import in the Bible. We know that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and all scripture is profitable. So even when you read those genealogies, there's a reason for them. But at any rate, this is all important. We can't take a lot of time. I hope I have a little time at the end just to make some very brief comments on that. But the highlight of this chapter is this story of what happens at Bethel, this revival. God doesn't leave Jacob in that condition, and that's a blessing to realize that God deals with him. And I'll just make the point right now, sort of looking ahead in the lesson. If you're God's child and you allow yourself to become complacent and you allow yourself to fall out of fellowship with God and you become careless in your spiritual habits and end up becoming backslidden I can tell you something is going to happen. God is going to make you very uncomfortable in that condition. God is going to chasten you because we're told in the book of Hebrews if you're a son or a child That's part of the program, and if you're without that, you're illegitimate. And so God is going to work, and we see that. God really does work here, but what ends up, if we want to kind of hone in on the practical, which is kind of what I try to do in a lot of this, is really you have something of a case study here of revival. And revival is a subject that we talk about a lot. You can study it in history, but you also hear it spoken of. And so I want to kind of talk about this a little bit today in that context and make four observations that I think it's pretty easy to draw out of the text and that the text will bear. First of all, I want to talk about the origin. You see signs that are put up for revival from time to time, right? Or you turn on the television set and someone advertises a revival. In fact, just this week, I was headed out past where my wife works, on towards the Marietta direction. I was headed out that way for a haircut. And I happened to see in Traveler's Rest, I happened to see a sign that had gone up advertising revival. And it was, you know, one of these signs, yay wide and tall like that. And about the only thing on the sign were the red letters that pretty much took up the whole area against a white background, the word revival. And I thought, well, that's interesting. I didn't see anything else, and there was no other information about when were the services going to start or anything like this. And then later, a day or so in the week, my wife sent me a picture she took on the way home from work. And they had erected somewhere near this, I guess, a big tent. And I don't know, maybe they're starting today. I really don't know. She said she couldn't see any signs or anything what they were doing either. So is this wrong, I guess, is my question. I mean, is it wrong for us to advertise revival services? Is it wrong for us to declare we're going to have revival? Eh, ish. You know what I'm trying to say? I mean, there's a human sense in which we talk that way. And we kind of know what we mean, hopefully, But technically, it really isn't accurate because revival is not a work of man. Revival is not something you can just declare and say is going to start on a certain point because revival is always a work of God. And to be sure, God is always using human agents. And so maybe the precursor, maybe in the lead up to a work of God, he's burdening different people. So you have the prayer meetings. Where is it, Jerry, New York City? In the 19th century you had that revival that came out of those prayer meetings, New York City. So yeah, obviously you have people, what was that, Fullerton Street? What was the street, Fullerton Street? Yeah, I didn't wanna say it if I didn't have it right and I figured he'd remember. So obviously you have people who, God is laying this on their heart. But again, we're right back to our observation, God is working. And if it's all just man-made, if it's all just us manufactured, if it's all just us bringing in a bunch of high-powered music and other things in an effort to produce these circumstances, and really a worst-case scenario, if it's us planting people towards the back of the audience so that when the invitation is given, these people come forward to kind of prime the pump for other people to come forward. If that's what we're doing, then no. No, that's really not of God. So we see this in the text. I'm not making a case that's not here. Verse number one says, and God said to Bethel, I mean to Jacob. Now, you don't see the word and, and this is another thing, I'm not quite sure why the ESV does this. Because if you look at almost every other version that we use, it will either give you the translation and or then. If you remember Hebrew from if you studied it, I mean, the word is very clearly there and it's called a wow consecutive and that means nothing to 98% of you or more. I'm only saying it so that you know I'm not talking through my hat. There is a word there and it's purposeful because There is a connection with what goes before. And if you're not careful, you just read this, God said to Jacob, it just kind of leaves it a little bit like, well, is this just a story? No. There's a real connection with what has gone before because Jacob has sunken into this backslidden condition. And who's the one who lights the fuse? Who's the one that stirs his nest? Who's the one that uses all of those, and this is important to see, who's the one who uses all of those untoward things that happened at Shechem? this disruption with Dinah and this cruelty on the part of Simeon and Levi and then Jacob. I mean, he was basically forced to leave because they went in there and they slew all those people and now he says, you've made me to stink and he's concerned about the danger to him. God has basically forced his hand. This is back to my point, beloved. God is at work. Even these untoward, horrible circumstances God is going to use this in Jacob's life because God isn't going to let Jacob mire at Shechem. He that hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Jacob belongs to God. God's sovereign hand of purpose is on Jacob. And if it takes spiritual dynamite to blast him out of Shechem, that's what's going to happen. So God now actually speaks to him. God appears again to him. That's what the text says. God appeared to him before at Bethel. Now God appears to him again and he says, go up, arise, go up. You stopped here. You should never have done that. Go there now. And God stirs in his heart. So what point are we making before we leave this? Biblically speaking, when you're talking about biblical revival, again, we use the word kind of a little bit maybe too generously and apply it to a lot of different things and our meanings aren't always really biblical in nature. But the focus of revival is God's people. And so if you want to have services in which your targeted aim is to see people saved, you may be better off to call them evangelistic services. Because evangelism is the byproduct of revival. The target of revival is God's people, not the lost. The lost are dead in their trespasses and sins. Revival, you gotta have the vive before you get the re. You gotta have the life before you can have it renewed. And so the focus is God's people. I know this because what does it say in one of our favorite verses that we always quote and don't get the point? 2 Chronicles 7, 14, if my people. which are called by my name shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways. Then will I hear from heaven, if my people And Psalm 85.6 and Habakkuk 3.2 do a great job of pointing us to the fact that God is the origin. God is the one who originates this working in our hearts. We're wholly dependent upon God. We can pray, we can yearn, and we should, but we need a work of God, not something manufactured or man-made. Wilt thou not revive us again? This is a prayer. Why would the psalmist be praying to God and saying, will you revive us again? if he was not dependent upon God for this work. And in Habakkuk 3.2, same thing, O Lord, I have heard the report of you and your work, O Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy. I got very sensitive to this in my years of ministry, not in an unbalanced sense, but just in really a desire just to be as accurate as I could be and biblical in our teaching. We had meetings. We would always call them special meetings or we would call them evangelistic meetings if that was the big thing that we were hoping to see accomplished. didn't so much use the word revival. It didn't mean we didn't pray that way. It didn't mean I didn't ask our people to pray that way and lead prayer meetings and all those types of things. But if God is pleased to send revival, we can use it for sure. What are the steps? I really wanted to use the word mechanics here. At the last minute I changed it to steps. just because steps is a little easier, I think, for us to get a hold of. But whether steps or mechanics, what I really want to talk about, what's involved? If God does a work, and what's involved in Jacob's life? Because God is doing a work. And so the first thing that we see is here, what does he say to him? Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there. Make an altar. So the very first thing that we know is associated with this is an altar. Now you can come up with a lot of thoughts, by talking about an altar, but I want to be sure we limit ourselves to what that would have meant to Jacob and a lot of things. There's several things you can talk about. The key thing I want us to look at because We're thinking in terms of patriarchal worship, and this is sort of filtering down from Abraham and Isaac, right? So, let's take a look at this and see what we see. If we go back to chapter 12, verses 7 and 8, you can turn or listen, but there's a phrase I want to be sure you get, okay? I'm going to read several verses. Chapter 12, verse 7, Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord who appeared to him. For there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord. Look at this phrase, and called upon the name of the Lord. Let's go to chapter 13, verse 4. This is after he gets back there. God says, go back to Bethel, to the place where he had made an altar at the first. You get away from God, you'll always find him where you left him. That's what's going on here. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord, where he built that altar before. Called upon the name of the Lord. In the life of Isaac, chapter 26, verse 25. So he, that is Isaac, built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. So to Jacob, first and foremost, what is building an altar all about? It's calling on the name of the Lord. Now he built an altar. It's the only other record of an altar in the life of Jacob. He didn't build an altar at Bethel the first time. You cannot find that in the text. He put the pillar up there and he poured the oil on it. But this is the first time he builds an altar. The only other one is that one that he erected at Shechem, the El Elohei Israel. Well, without getting too involved in that, you can erect the visible signs of religion and you can be involved in the outward practice of religion all day long and if it's not in here, it's just a waste of time and it becomes a false advertisement and part of a bad testimony to the world. What do you think those Shechemites thought about that altar? He isn't a whole lot different from us, so Jehovah must not be much different either. Not good. That really had very little value, but this is something different all again because it's all about renewing fellowship with God. When we get away from God, that's the first thing we have need of, beloved, and you do that by confessing your sins. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We can't spend too much time, but there are some little points here. So you have put away It says here, if you look at this, the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. So three things going on. First of all, put away, purify. Thirdly, I'm not showing it to you yet, but change your garments. So put away the foreign gods. You know there's some things you can't take from Shechem to Bethel if you want revival. You cannot bring your sins along and have revival. You cannot bring the foreign gods. And if you recall, this had gotten pretty close at hand because Rachel stole Laban's terrafem. I don't think that's the whole thing. I just think that's trouble close to home. I think the foreign gods also, probably in maybe the majority measure, were what this whole retinue. You've got to realize now Jacob is not just a husband and two wives and two others and children. He's got servants and there's a whole retinue of people here. And in settling around Shechem they've undoubtedly picked up these foreign gods, the gods of the Canaanites. And God says you need to leave that there. You can't bring that to my altar and have revival. You can't bring that along. You can have one or the other. You can't have both. It's just like Joshua said to them, choose you this day whom you will serve. And verse 4 says, so they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods and the rings that were in their ears. Now, you could get yourself into trouble with that, couldn't you? Maybe half or more of the audience. So I think what you have to realize here, folks, is the problem is not the article of I'm not sure that there's anything in the Bible that indicates that earrings are wrong. The problem's not the article of jewelry. The problem is the association of the jewelry. that these were probably in some amulets of some sense connected to this pagan worship. So there's a negative aspect to what's going on here because you can't take those things with you and have revival. You can't bring your sins along. Put those things away. Those things are what got you out of fellowship with God to start with. That's the negative aspect. And you know, you come over in the New Testament, you find the exact correlation. What does Paul say in Ephesians 4.22? I give you 21. Assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off the old self. Put off. There's a negative aspect to this. And He enumerates about eight different sins there. He says, let him that lie, or stole, steal no more. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. Be kind one to another. All kinds of things He talks about there. in that. You got to put that, that's part of the old man. You got to put that off. Same thing as in the parallel in Colossians, but now you must put them all away. This is consecration. This is the one half. What's the second half? Change your garments. And folks, you got to have them both. If you just get the negative, if you just go through and say, well, you know, I got to quit this, I gotta quit that, I gotta, you know, well, I mean you'll have half the thing and you won't have a real balanced picture. Change your garments, get rid of the old ones, put on new ones, which is exactly what the New Testament says in those same verses, let's look at them now, in verse 24, and put on the new self. Because if you divest yourself of the sins but you don't add to that, The consecrated life, to put on the new self which is created in the likeness of God, in righteousness and true holiness, or in the Colossian version, put on as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, compassionate hearts, kindness. You don't put on the positive qualities that are the Christ-like things, what do you have? Legalism. So there's a renewed cleansing that's involved here as well. God reinforces this when He reminds Jacob of his new name. He told him this already at Peniel but now He tells him again, you'll no longer be called Jacob. He sort of slipped back into that. I told you that at Peniel that you're a new person now. You have a new name. And here is my point. See, a lot of our preaching, if we're not careful, we tend to preach against these sins, which sins need to be preached against. I'm not apologizing for that. I'm just saying that if you don't add to that the new man and the cultivation of the new man, the positive habits of holiness, if you don't add those things to it, It's like a car with three tires pumped up in one flat. You don't have the picture. You've got a lopsided situation. And this is where, when we don't get this emphasis right in the parts of revival as we see them, this is kind of where we get into the problem of legalism. Got to keep moving. There's blessing. So here's something else that you can always point to. I mean, every time you obey God, he brings his blessing. And so if we come back to God, as he calls us to do when we're away from him, and God says it generally in verse number nine, God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Padan Aram and blessed him. There it is right there. There's the general, so it's from the text. But can we be more specific? Or do we just say God blessed him? In what ways did God bless him? Well, I've given you three right there. There's regained leadership. One of the things you saw in chapter 34 is Jacob's passivity. He's just quiet. It even says that in verse 5 of chapter 4. It says Jacob held his peace. When he heard about what happened with Dinah, it says Jacob held his peace. Then what do we read? We read about his sons. They're the ones doing all the talking. Where's Jacob? Why is he in the background? He's kind of lost his spiritual leadership, but he regains that here because when he says, put away the foreign gods, they don't argue. They do it. The safety that's afforded, look at verse 7. Is that the correct verse? No, I want verse 5. Did I say 7? That's a mistake. It's verse 5, and as they journeyed, the terror of God fell upon the cities that were round about them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. And I didn't give you this verse in the PowerPoint slides, but Proverbs 16.7 says, when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him. And of course, the reaffirmation of the covenant, which he had originally spelled out at Bethel before. and now spells out in even more elaborate terms. So those are the blessings. But I would hope that we would see the word again here. God appeared to Jacob again. And there's just something that's really precious about that when we realize that God, if we confess our sins, he really is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. I mean, he gives us a second chance. I don't think anybody'd much be here today without that, do you? I know I wouldn't. So, and we'll move off of this. I told you I wanted to have a couple minutes for this at the end. It's tough, you know, when you got stuff you'd really like to say about this and not a lot of time for it. But I do have a point I wanna make relative to revival. So bear with me through a couple of things where I'm just gonna talk about, I call them end notes. You know, an end note is technically different than a footnote, but footnote just at the bottom of the page, maybe end note at the end of a chapter, end of a book. And so there are some little end notes here. There are actually three things that are going on. We have the story of the birth of Benjamin. Why is that important? And I make the remark here, so I might as well just put it up at this point. Each of these has a specific purpose and has its specific import, points of instruction and interest. The birth of Benjamin, well, the family's not complete without Benjamin. You remember all the way back, Chapter 30, I'm gonna look. Chapter 30, maybe along about verse 25, no, 24. When Rachel has her first child, 30, 25, 24, when she's giving birth to Joseph, this is what she says, and she called his name Joseph, saying, may the Lord add to me another son. She paid a high price for the answer to that prayer. But that prayer was heard and that prayer was answered. And with that, you have the completion of the patriarchal family, 12. I'll throw something out for you. I think if you look at this in the Bible, you'll find 12 to be the number of the people of God. In the Old Testament, 12 patriarchs. In the New Testament, 12 apostles. in the New Jerusalem, 12 gates, 12 foundations. Think about the people of God. And so, there is something we can get from this. It's important. This has to be recorded because the family's not complete until the 12th is born. You know, when you think about this, I mean, there's no other record of any other children. I mean, the bearing that we seem like just one right after the other when we read about it before, that's all stopped. no more children. This one comes later. There's a difference. Joseph is kind of at the tail end and then there's some years that transpire until Benjamin. That's recorded for us so we know that here. The second thing that's recorded for us is just one verse. Thank the Lord. who wants to have to tangle with this, I mean, at least in detail. Verse 22, while Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine. I mean, this is Corinthianism all over the place, that a man should have his father's wife. That's what Paul says. I mean, Paul doesn't mince words about that and invokes church discipline on that situation, which I don't think any of us would argue with. This is egregious. I mean if they were upset that their sister had been raped and said this is a thing that ought not to be done in Israel, what on earth is going on here? There's a point that I'm going to make from this. And finally at the end you have, and of course then you have the listing of the 12, okay, in the 21 to 26. In 23 there it starts with, now the sons of Jacob at the end of verse 22. Yeah, one more thing. These are the three end notes, okay? And they're very important in the story of the book of Genesis, even in the life of Jacob. What is it? Well, Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kirjath Arba, which was the Canaanite name, that is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. So this is a triumph. He finally gets home. I mean this is what was said 30 years before when he left. 30 years. 20 with Laban and we'll call it 10 that he was involved with Shechem and all those. 30 years. 30 years he's been away. But when he first left home in chapter 28 and God appeared to him at Bethel the first God said to him in verse number 15, 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 promised, have promised you. And he's home. Finally. Finally home. The song that's called that. And one day that will be true for us too in a little different sense. Finally home. But he's finally home. There's a reunion. I mean if you think the reunion with Esau was sweet, this had to be sweet as well. He hasn't seen his father in 30 years. His mother's gone. Anyway, there it is. By the way, something interesting to just say for a moment before I give us the reason this fits in with revival. would be this. You know the Bible has a way of telescoping things at times and it's only kind of when you... it's there for us but you have to do a little bit more digging to come up with it. How old does it say he was in verse 28 when he died? What's that number? Anybody? 180. Anybody here remember how old Abraham was when he died? Was he this old? No. I'll give you a hint. He wasn't that old. Anybody knows? 175. Close. 175. How about Jacob? Did he make it to 175 or 180? No. Remember how old he was. 147. What's so significant about this 180, or at least one of the things that's really significant, is if you study this out and use the best time markers that you can get out of the story, If you read this, it just kind of sounds like Jacob comes in and within a couple of weeks, Isaac is, oh, finally, and he sees his son and he expires. That's not the way it is, folks. I mean, this 180 years basically takes Isaac until the time that Joseph is about 30, which is when Joseph stood before Pharaoh. Now think about that for a minute. There's a lot more going on than what we're told. We're just not given the information. So he's given some time. What a blessing. He's given some time with his father. Why make this point? Because in the, I mean, for what we're talking about this morning, because in the context of revival, what can you observe from these three stories at the end? Life goes on. all the things that make up life keep happening. And revival, life has to be lived in the light of revival. The point is that revival does not exempt us from life. You don't go to a revival service, or however you want to conceive of this in your mind, go forward and make a decision for God, and then everything is just easy from that point forward. You got over the hard point. Everything is kind of downhill sailing from here. No, no. Uh-uh, folks. If you look at these three things, I've just sort of summarized them as trials and triumphs, but look at what you've got here. You talk about sorrow. He loses the love of his life. Leah he buried in the family grave plot. He doesn't even get there to bury Rachel. He has to bury her on the way. He has to erect a pillar. And it says, Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath. This is the love of his life. She'd always been the love of his life. So sorrow is sometimes a part of life. I'm not standing in line. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm a big chicken. But I know it's there. I've got sense enough to know it's out there. What else is out there? Sin. Reuben. There's no comment on this, but Jacob has to deal with it. Can you imagine having to deal with that? Of course, if he hadn't had all those wives, But nevertheless, he has to deal with it. Nothing said here, but buddy, I'm telling you, when you get to chapter 49, he's got something to say. And Reuben disqualifies himself. And the importance of this in the story is that this paves the way for us to understand why it was that Jacob favored Joseph and for the ascendancy of Joseph, because Reuben disqualified himself. Judgment was also pronounced in that same place I'm telling you on Simeon and Levi for their part in that massacre in the city. What else? Well, there are triumphs. Like I say at the end here, he's got this time with his father. But folks, God gives us revival. How often do we need revival? Well, there's a pattern here, okay? I just want you to see this before we go. There's a pattern here. I gave you a nice little diagram in the lesson on chapter 33, but I just don't have it with arrows here, but watch this. Jacob's complacency at Shechem put an arrow pointing to the left. It led to tolerance. This is what Ron was talking about last week, permissiveness. Put another arrow to the right of tolerance, but it's pointing to disobedience and you've got a pattern. Allow complacency in your life. It starts off very, very subtle. Oh, I just missed my Bible reading today. Then it becomes two, then it becomes three. Oh, I just missed church Sunday. Then it becomes two, then it becomes three. You gotta watch the complacency because if you don't nip these things in the bud, They lead to tolerance. We then begin to accommodate, tolerate, permissive with respect to sin in our lives. And once you're there, you end up in a pattern of disobedience. So how often do we need revival? Well, just an ongoing need. That's why you're here. This is part of God's wisdom in telling us don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is, because every week we need it. And if you can swing it, in the middle of the week helps too. Too easy to slip away from God. Too easy to kind of get enamored with the world around us. Heavenly Father, just encourage our hearts and bless us as we end our class today in Jesus' name. Amen.