A Time For Reunion Under God Series

A Time for Reunion Under God

A. God’s Promised Protection

B. God’s People

C. God’s Providence in the Land

I remember as a young serviceman stationed in the Philippines for 3 years without returning home.

I was going to school doing things and always figured I’d have tomorrow to right wrongs and fix things that I had done wrong.

I had left my home not under the best of terms with my parents, feeling really bad about things that had happened earlier in my life and during my senior year of High School. I felt fully justified in my feelings, and even though I felt justified—I know today I was wrong for the bible tells us to “Respect and honor your father and your mother…” this even comes with a promise for long life.

That may be why as a young man, I never felt I had a future. Really, to think of it, I didn’t. For had I died in my sin and ignorance, I would have been condemned to the very pit of hell—for I had not trusted fully in my Lord and Savior and called upon His name asking Him to come into my heart.

I also remember getting on that plane after those three years and humming the words to “I’m coming home I’ve done my time…”. Today I would rather hum a Christian hymn like “When the roll is called up yonder I’ll be there…” but it was good even in my fallen condition at the time to be headed home.

Home to the parents of my youth,

Home to my siblings,

Home to my cousins,

Home to my grandparents,

And home to the swamps of the Atchafalaya Basin of Louisiana.

Let us journey in the different direction with Jacob today as prepares to head to the new home that God is calling His nation too.

Will you be ready if God calls you to a new home today? I pray you are.

A. God’s Promised Protection

Genesis 46:1-7 (KJV)

And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beer-sheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. [2] And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. [3] And he said, I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: [4] I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes. [5] And Jacob rose up from Beer-sheba: and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. [6] And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him: [7] His sons, and his sons’ sons with him, his daughters, and his sons’ daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt.

I start this message as I have started many messages concerning Jacob, he was a wise steward that continually was in communication with God.

Are you able to say the same?

If you cannot then that may be part of the strife in your life today. We are required to be in prayer…unceasingly.

We see that Jacob upon arriving at Beer-sheba is encouraged by a revelation from God. Beer-sheba may be regarded as the fourth scene of Abraham’s abode in the land of promise.

Jacob does something that has been passed down. He “Offered sacrifices.” He had gathered from the words of the Lord to Abraham Gen. 15:13, and the way in which the dreams of Joseph were realized in the events of Providence, that his family were to descend into Egypt.

Jacob felt therefore, that in taking this step he was obeying the will of God.

So being the wise steward we know him to be, he approaches God offering sacrifices at an old abode of Abraham and Isaac, before he crosses the border to pass into Egypt.

On this solemn occasion God appears to him in the visions of the night. He designates himself “EL” the Mighty, and the God of his father. The former name cheers him with the thought of an all-sufficient Protector. The latter identifies the speaker with the God of his father, and therefore, with the God of eternity, of creation, and of the covenant Promise.

God directs Jacob “Fear not to go down into Mizraim.” This implies both that it was the will of God that he should go down to Egypt, and that he would be protected there.