EL-BETHEL
Intro: Jerome Engles, Babies & Hymnals, $.75.
Years ago, a Pastor, named Jerome Engles was
making an announcement in church about the
new hymnals, a man in the congregation stood up
and also announced the annual Baptism service
where all the babies could be baptized. Jerome,
not hearing very well, thinking they’re still talking
about hymnals added, "And if you want one of
your own, you can get one from me for 75 cents."
In Gen. 35:1, God says to Jacob, Arise, go up to
Bethel--and Jacob heard and went! This may not
seem like any big deal unless you know that God
had told Jacob to do this before in Gen. 31:3, this
was about ten years before Gen. 35. But Jacob
wasn’t listening. Jerome Engles had a physical
hearing problem, but Jacob had a spiritual one.
Let’s talk about it. Look, and tell me, what was
God telling Jacob to do? Gen. 28 makes it clear
that the place Jacob was to head for was Bethel.
So, look at Gen. 33:18-20; where is he? (Shechem)
Where was he supposed to be? (Bethel!)
A little geography might be helpful. In Gen. 31,
he’s in, say, Erie. God tells him to head about a
hundred miles south, to, say, Pittsburgh, but, he
stops about 30 miles north in, say Cranberry. He
not only stops, he buys a piece of land, settles
down. His kids start to go to the Cranberry
schools, they hang out at the malls. Jacob, thinks
"Hey, there’s lots of good pro-spects for marriage
here, this place looks good, it’s close to Bethel,
surely God won’t mind if, I’m close, I’ll go to
church every week, get involved, it’ll be OK."
But, Shechem is not Bethel; and OK is not Good
Enough; Mediocrity will never worship His
Majesty; the Flesh cannot see the things of the
Spirit, Religion can never have the supernatural
joy of a Relationship with the God of Heaven
because it is Earthly.
Shechem is, therefore a place of the world, the
cares of the world, the troubles of the world, the
religion of the world, the trajedies of the world,
the pain of the world.
Anybody here living in Shechem? Anybody here
not living in Shechem? You want to die in
Shechem? Then, hear the Lord calling you,
"Arise, go up to Bethel!"
Bethel is the place where you can find God,
Bethel, means "The House of God!" In Gen. 28,
Jacob gave the name "Bethel" to the place where
he saw the ladder to Heaven, he said, this is the
Gate of Heaven, Heaven’s Gate is not some stupid
comet, it’s the place of the Spirit when you pray
and God is there! A lot of people pray and God is
not there, Jacob prayed and God was really there,
that’s why he called the place "El" Bethel. The
God of the House of God.
We have a "Bethel," here, but do we have an "El"
Bethel? We have a house of God here, but is God
here in a conscious way; a way we can see, hear,
feel, sense? When we come, do we have the sense
that we are entering His Gates, and His Courts;
do our songs mingle with the angels and saints of
heaven? When we leave, do we look at one
another in awe and say, "Surely, we have been in
the Presence of the Lord? If not, then we need to
learn the secret of putting the El in Bethel. The
Secret of the realized presence of God.
How do we put the El in Bethel?
God said it, Arise and Go up! It’s like a race. The
man in charge, says ready, set, go. Well, "Arise"
is Ready Set, and "Go," is Go!
1. First, Arise. Arise means you have to do
something. Arise means you have to see
something, you have to confess something, you
have to leave something and (next week) you have
to go towards something. You can’t arise and sit
at the same time.
(Test, testimonyy-Testaphony) (Big Switch-fight
out)
(1) See. Jacob had to see that he wasn’t where
God Wanted him. He was in the land of Shechem,
the land of mediocrity and "it’ll do" is not where
God wants us, yet most Christians live in
Shechem. It’s so sad, we often start off in Bethel,
but wind up in Shechem, we don’t mean to, it’s
just the easy way out. We think,
"It’ll do, I can live with it!"
God is not the God of "it’ll do," what if Creation
had a God of "It’ll do" In the Beginning, and
God said, "it’ll do." and God created man,
whoops, not exactly what I was hoping for, oh
well, it’ll do. The Tree, sin, Oh well, I can live
with it, sin and righteousness together, it’ll do.
NO.
We don’t want the land of "it’ll do," we want the
land of "This is very Good!" We don’t just want
Bethel, we want EL Bethel! First, we have to see
that we’re not where God wants us.
(2) We have to Confess. Jacob told his family to
gather the foreign gods, and cleanse your clothes,
and change them. (If anyone wants to find
scriptural support for clean, nice clothes for
church, this is it Illus. Wife was sick, sent
husbandto church. When he got home she
pestered him with questions about people, "What
was so and so wearing, who was -- sitting with?"
Hubby couldn’t answer any questions to which the
wife said, "A lot of good it does y o u to go to
church!")
Confess means you agree with God. You don’t
just see it, you say it! Honesty, no hypocrisy, no
denial, facing Where you are, and calling it wrong.
In this Jacob finally took a clear stand for God
with his family; until now he’s tolerated a lot of
compromise; their tents were filled with
statues, magic charms. their earrings were magic
charms, amulets, The Devil couldn’t have been
prouder. Well no more, he made them get rid of
the foreign gods. He had them bring them to him,
and buried them.
(3) They had to leave something. They didn’t just
talk about getting rid of their idols, they did it,
Cheryl and I don’t like horoscopes, they’re
satanic, and they’re false gods. Why believe the
stars, when we know the One who made the stars.
Years ago in Malta, my Grandmother came to
visit. Everyday we’d cut out the horoscope from
the paper and throw it away; every day my
Grandmother was wondering what this big hole in
the Newspaper was. We finally shared and she
was so struck by what we said, that, shortly
afterward, a 64 year old lady asked Jesus to come
into her heart.
Frankly cutting, burying, burning, all is fairly
easy. Jacob’s god wasn’t so easy. He wanted the
right to interpret God’s word his own way. God
clearly said, Go, Gen. 31, he clearly understood,
Bethel. So why is he in Shechem? Well close is
good enough. Jacob interpreted the Command
and applied it the Shechem!
His god was his right to his own interpretation.
This is the biggest god of our generation. We have
a couple of generations that believe they have a
right to pain free, luxurious life. And if we don’t
get it, we resent it, blame, complain, get depressed,
get angry, seek revenge, kill things, ram things,
break things! We seek out a theology that will get
us what we want. A life of Luxury, free of pain.
Years ago, Christian people believed both good
and bad came from the hand of the Lord, and
they submitted, sometimes with tears, but
they would always say, "The Good Lord sent this,
we’ll just have to thank him." "God is good, we’ll
just have to trust Him, I need this because God is
working in me a deep work."
Today, we rise up in our pride and say, "How
could God do this to me." "I don’t like God right
now, what else could happen, this is so evil."
"Where is God?" We can’t understand Lou
Gehrig standing in Yankee Stadium his career
over, staring into the face of a life full of pain,
saying, "I must be the luckiest man on earth."
We can’t handle pain, because we’ve reserved the
right to interpret and we don’t interpret God’s
way. God says, All things work together for good,
God says In Everything rejoice, we say not this,
I can’t. God says Count it all Joy, We say, no, I
can’t this hurts too much.
We need to bury the god of our own right to
interpret our circumstances, and arise to God’s
interpretation. Because the other side is Joy
Unspeakable and full of Glory. We usually get
upset because things don’t do our way. But things
are always going God’s way, it is possible, to live a
life full of the Joy of the Lord!
So Arise and Go Up.
