Genesis 35, The Journey Continues, Jacob. Burying Idols And Sin. Series

A reminder of where we were before Cafe church last week, Jacob had finally in his middle years be reconciled with his older twin Esau who we read he had swindled out of his inheritance in Genesis 33. He then realised where he stood with God and set up an alter to his God. The theme or key point of the message was what he called his alter, ‘Mighty is the God of the one who struggles with God.’ That point was really a realisation of Jacob about who the God of his father and grandfather was then how mighty this God now, his God was and is.

I’m going to very quickly skim past chapter 34 which in the English Standard Version of the Bible is entitled: “The Defiling of Dinah” in the New International Version, “Dinah and the Shechemites” which is about Jacob’s daughter, her being raped. Then two of her brother's Simeon and Levi’s revenge on not just the man who assaulted her but their killing all the males of his city, which Jacob tells them off for. There is a bit of a parallel here with respect, in my opinion, to what is happening between here between the modern state of Israel and the Palestinians on the Gaza strip as far as unbalanced retribution goes. Moving on...

In chapter 35 we see this definite deepening of the relationship that Jacob has with God.

This chapter starts with a wee heads up on who it was that appeared to Jacob when he was fleeing from Esau, God says to Jacob in verse one “Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an alter there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.” Bethal was the place of the dream of angels ascending and descending in chapter 28.

So off he trots with the family and all the groupies that had attached themselves to his merry little band.

This is when Jacob realises or maybe he has realised for some time that there were other gods within this company of people that were travelling together. Foreign gods, false gods, idols, objects for worshipping and the like have been around for a long time. Of interest here is that oak trees are often sacred places in the bible and some commentators point to the burial of those items as being a surrender of them to Yahweh as an act of submission and from that time all of Jacob’s tribe only worshipping the one true God. Of note: in our age there is even a danger to turn God, the God we know into a god of our own making a making that does not align with the God of the Bible. There’s even a commandment they didn’t have at the time that we have about false gods and how we are not to worship them. Biblical understanding of who God is, is very important, listening to his still small voice and not the voices of the world or that of Satan is also key to knowing God. There is a real danger currently to make Jesus who people want him to be. Interestingly Jesus had a thing about repentance and his followers not continuing in their sin. He talked often about Hell and its reality. It is best for all Christians to understand who Jesus really is, he really is the one who came to save us by defeating sin and death. William Booth said this many years ago; “The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”

There are those who find this sort of talk offensive, the gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ is offensive when we are out of line with God’s will for our lives. Back to Adam and Eve, we are a fallen race us humans, remember that the rescue plan started with Jacob’s grandad Abraham.

Jacob: Jacob’s instruction was for the people to rid themselves of their foreign gods, purify themselves and change their clothes. A complete change. He had them take the gods and they also took earrings which must have also had a spiritual dynamic and buried them under the oak at Shechem. As a result of their actions as they set out was that their actions had the result was that the terror of God fell upon the towns around them and no one tried to hunt them down. They were physically safe in their travels and spiritually safe because of their obedience to God.

So, they headed off to Canaan, built an alter to God as that is where he revealed himself to Jacob and they called the alter El Bethel, meaning “God of Bethal”. Now there was a death in the family with Rebekah‘s nurse Deborah dying and being buried below the oak below Bethal, the place was named Allon Bacuth or in English ‘oak of weeping.’