Jacob Follows Through

On July 25, 1911, Bobby Leach went over Niagara Falls in barrel, the first man and the second person to survive such a trip. After that, you could do anything, right?

Well, not so fast. Just a few years later, on a tour to promote his accomplishment, Leach slipped on an orange peel in the street and fell, injuring his leg. The injury got infected, the leg needed to be amputated, and days later, Leach died.

Have you ever celebrated a great victory, only to fall flat on your face from something trivial not long afterwards?

Jacob knew what that was like. After wrestling with God, getting a new name and identity, and reconciling with his brother Esau, Jacob had experienced huge amounts of redeeming grace.

But for whatever reason, he dragged his feet, and he didn't just drag his feet—he falls flat on his face, along with his whole family. Instead of heading to Bethel, he lingered outside of Shechem, which was only 30-35 kilometres away.

And there, we see him seeming to twiddle his thumbs as his daughter gets basically raped and kidnapped and his sons commit war crimes in response.

I wonder how many of us at this point would have given up on Jacob. Look at all that God has done for him, and look at what he does with that. Come on, Jacob! If we were God—and thank God we're not—would we have walked away at this point?

But God doesn't do that. God interrupts the chaos to get Jacob back on track with his plan of grace.

And we see how direct is this gracious interruption if we go back to verse 30 of chapter 34 where Jacob is having a conversation with his sons. "Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, 'You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land.' But they said, 'Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?'"

1. Get Up, Go Up

And then chapter 35, verse 1: "God said to Jacob." Here's what we need to realize: when this passage was first written, there were no chapter and verse numbers. And in the original Hebrew language that this was written in, verse 30, verse 31, and verse 1 all open up with the same verb.

English translations but in words like "then" and "but" to help us make sense of what's going on, but this is one of those places where another translation can really help us. Let's hear these verses in the King James:

“And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites: and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house. And they said, Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot? And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.” (Genesis 34:30–35:1).

Jacob speaks, his sons speak, but then God speaks. And the effect of God's words is something like, "Enough of this back-and-forth! Whatever happened there at Shechem, you shouldn't even have been there in the first place. Get going to where you should be. Follow through on your stunted journey."

This opening word, "Arise!" is a command. I love how the CSB translates it: "Get up!" Get up, Jacob! You've settled down but you need to get up and get going.

And then there's a second command: "Go up!" Go up to Bethel.

This is a really important command because it communicates at least two important truths. First, Bethel was "up" from Shechem. It was geographically higher in elevation, and it would be a climb to get there.

But secondly, "going up" in the Biblical story often communicates a divine encounter. Moses went up to Sinai. Altars were often built on high places. It's probably not a coincidence that Bethel is "up" from where Jacob is, and this command to "go up" may be a subtle clue that he's about to have an encounter with God.

And certainly, Jacob is commanded to "make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau."

This is very interesting language. The Lord is not just saying, "Make an altar there to God." He's making sure Jacob knows which God to make an altar to: the God who first appeared to him there at Bethel when he first ran away from his brother all those twenty-plus years ago.

By using this phrase, God is almost reintroducing Himself, perhaps implying that some distance has grown between them. It's like my wife saying, "Would you like to go on a date with this girl that you asked to marry you fourteen years ago?" It's kind of like saying, "Hello, I'm still here."

It's also a not-so-subtle reminder about the vow that Jacob made to return to Bethel and worship God, a vow that is still unfulfilled.

And it's also a hint that there is more than one God being worshipped among Jacob's company at this point, as we're about to find out.

2. A Holy Pilgrimage

So Jacob responds. His first act is not just to get up and go, because he is not just an individual anymore. "So," says verse 2, "Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him."

Just think. This includes not just the two camp's worth of people and animals that he returned from Paddan-Aram with. It now includes all the women and children and animals who used to live in the city of Schechem.

And while some of these people had probably heard of the "God of Jacob" or the "Fear of Isaac," there's no doubt that many of them worshipped all kinds of gods like most people back then did.

And as Jacob prepares to finally follow through on his commitment to the one true God, he recognizes that he needs to begin by cleaning house. So here's what he says to all his people: "Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments."

This is the first time that the people of Israel are given this command. Sadly, it won't be the last. At the end of his life, Joshua has to charge the people, "Put away the foreign gods that are among you" (Josh 24:23). Years later Samuel says the same thing (1 Sam 7:3).

This will be such a major issue for the people of Israel for most of their existence. Jacob's words here are just the beginning. But they are a good beginning.

Jacob also tells them to purify themselves and change their garments. This probably meant washing their bodies, and abstaining from anything that would make them dirty, and putting on clean clothes.

This is very similar to the instructions the Lord gave the people as they approached Mt. Sinai years later, when “the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments’” (Exodus 19:10).

Jacob recognizes that this is no ordinary journey. This is a holy pilgrimage to the house of God. Notice how he introduces God in verse 3: “Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone’” (Genesis 35:3).

God re-introduced himself as "The God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau." Jacob introduces God to his people as "the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone." Jacob knows who God is, he knows what God has done, and he knows that God has been with him.

And the people respond. “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 tree that was near Shechem” (Genesis 35:4).

Archeological evidence suggests that earrings often bore the image of gods or goddesses, and so had religious significance. And Jacob takes all of these earrings, all of these idols, and buries them in the dirt underneath a tree.

Out of sight and out of mind, these gods are removed from the people so that they may devote themselves to the God of Israel.

And so purified, they begin their journey. Remember Jacob's fear—that on account of his son's actions, the peoples of the land will gather together and attack him?

God appears to interrupt that conversation and send him to Bethel. But it's not as if God doesn't care about Jacob's safety. It's just that He's going to take care of it. Which he does. Verse 5: “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” (Genesis 35:5).

The fake gods are corroding in the dirt under a tree outside of Shechem, a city those gods were not able to protect from the wrath of the sons of Israel.

The living God, on the other hand, is with His people as their shield (Gen 15:1), and sends a terror upon the nations to protect them—just like he'll do for them again in the future when they leave Egypt and enter this land once again (Ex 15:15-16, Josh 2:9-11, 5:1, 7:5).

The pilgrimage itself was not that long in terms of distance—remember, this is only about as far away as Ridgedale. But on the other hand, remember that this isn't just a trip; this is a relocation with a huge group. A single adult could do this journey in 10-12 hours, but add in a few hundred animals and people and suddenly this journey is probably taking a few days.

But finally, as verse 6 tells us, Jacob came to Bethel, "he and all the people who were with him." And he does what he promised to do all those years before. Verse 7: "And there he built an altar and called the place El-Bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother."

This naming incident is really interesting. "Beth" means house, and "El" means God. Originally Jacob named this place "Bethel," the house of God. Now he re-names it "El-Bethel," God of Bethel, emphasizing not the place but the God who revealed Himself to him there and now has brought him full circle.

What must it have been like for Jacob to stand in that place again, remembering his terror and aloneness all those years before? And here he is, after years away, after a stutter-stop foot-dragging journey back, surrounded by wives and children and animals and a whole people that belong to him now.

The God of Bethel has kept His promises, and Jacob has finally kept his. Jacob has followed through.

3. Interlude

And in verse 9, this holy pilgrimage is brought to even greater heights when once again God appears to Jacob with a powerful speech that ties up not only this whole section on Jacob's life, but serves as a summary of this whole section of Genesis that started back in chapter 12 when God called Abraham.

But before we get there, verse 8 interrupts with the most unexpected interlude we could imagine.

“And Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Allon-bacuth” (Genesis 35:8).

Rebekah is Jacob's mom. Deborah was her nurse, a role that likely included being her handmaid or lady-in-waiting as she grew older. We have never heard of this lady at all until now. Why in the world is this detail inserted here?

Well, I think there's a few reasons. First, there's the simple fact that this lady, very important to Jacob's mother, was buried in this spot where he now is. A friend of mine once served as an intern for Albert Mohler, and on a road trip across the southern states they made several stops at graveyards to see where various famous people had been buried. A lot of history is found in cemetaries.

That's at least one level here. We're simply being told that Bethel, where Jacob is, is where his mom's nurse happened to be buried.

But there's more than that. And we get to that when we consider that we are never told about when Rebekah herself died. Later on in this chapter, we're going to hear about Isaac's death. We heard about Sarah's death. But Rebekah's death is not mentioned.

What's going on here is helpful if we remember what Rebekah was doing the last time we found her. It was chapter 27, and she was lying and deceiving her husband. Remember, Rebekah was the mastermind behind Jacob's deception which he gets most of the credit for. She was the one who planned to deceive her blind husband, told Jacob what to do, and then manipulated her husband in order to get him to send Jacob away after she found out Esau wanted to kill him.

Remember what she said to Jacob in 27:43? “Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away— until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?”” (Genesis 27:43–45).

Jacob went to Haran, or Paddan-Aram, and was waiting for his mom to tell him when it was safe to come back.

Remembering that adds a whole new layer to his experiences over the previous few chapters, doesn't it? The fact that he's there 20 years without any word from her, the fact that he's so uncertain about how Esau feels about him, the fact that he's back in Bethel because God and not his mom called for him back—all of this is pointing to the absence of Rebekah. She's not in the picture, and it's likely that she died sometime in this period.

And we're not told anything about her death. She gets no memorial. This silence is deafening, and the silence is deliberate.

And we know this is the case, and not just a matter of forgetfulness, because we are told about her nurse's death. We're told where she was buried under a tree, and that Jacob named the tree "Allon-bacuth," "Oak of Weeping."

I'm sure Deborah was a wonderful lady, but it's surely significant that we never hear about anybody else's nurse dying. It's as if, by talking about Rebekah's nurse, the author is making a point of letting you know that they aren't talking about Rebekah.

It's like when you bump into someone in the store who has something against you, and instead of saying "Hi, good to see you, how are you?" they say "wow, these dairy coolers sure are cold, aren't they?" By talking about something that's frankly irrelevant, they're making much more obvious what they're not saying.

Rebekah is being deliberately ignored, and this is how the author here passes judgement on her actions. This is letting us all know that what she did to manipulate and deceive her husband was shameful and unacceptable at the highest level.

But that's what makes the next section even more surprising. Because Rebekah's sinful deception is how Jacob inherited the blessing from his father. And even though she is written out of the record for her sin, the blessing that Jacob obtained by that deception is not.

4. The Blessing

And in that sense, verse 8 is a dramatic build-up that prepares us for verse 9 and following, when, as we read, “God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him” (Genesis 35:9).

And what the Lord does and says in this blessing is repeat and confirm the things He's said to Jacob already at various points in his life.

That this would happen shouldn't surprise us all that much. With Abraham, God made and then confirmed His covenant promises with Him several times, particularly in two sacred encounters described in Genesis 15 and 17. God appeared to Isaac twice, repeating to him the same promises (Gen 26:2-5; 23-24).

And so with Jacob. On His first time in Bethel, God appeared to Him and gave him the promises of Abraham, and now, on his return to the same place, these promises are repeated and confirmed. And there's five beautiful aspects to this blessing that we want to see.

a. Name

First, the Lord repeats Jacob's name change. Verse 10: “And God said to him, ‘Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.’ So he called his name Israel” (Genesis 35:10).

From Heel-Grabber to God-Wrestler. Even though he'd been given this name already, it didn't seem to stick. New obedience and faith didn't seem to follow. God now confirms and repeats this name change. You are Israel.

b. Introduction

Next, God introduces Himself in verse 11 as "God Almighty." El-Shaddai. This is the name He used with Abraham in Genesis 17 when, for the second time, He repeated and confirmed His covenant promises to Abraham.

It's the name Isaac used when he sent Jacob off to Paddan-Aram: “God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples” (Genesis 28:3). And here God introduces Himself as that God, the almighty God of Abraham who blessed Him and was with him.

c. Command

Third, God commands Jacob to "be fruitful and multiply." We just read how Isaac blessed him with these words, but here they are as a command from God.

These are the words God commanded Adam and Eve and Noah and his sons (Gen 1:28, 9:1, 7). And they confirm that, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God has begun a work of new creation. Jacob, or Israel, is like a new Adam from whom will come a new humanity. It's just that instead of, like with Noah, clearing the old humanity away first, God creates this new people in the midst of the existing nations.

Jacob will one day bless his grandsons by saying,"let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth’” (Genesis 48:16).

And we can see how this promise of a new humanity is fulfilled even more clearly in Christ. If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation (2 Cor 5:17).

d. Royal Offspring

Next, in verse 11, the Lord says “A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body’” (Genesis 35:11). This is almost identical language to the promises given to Abraham again in Genesis 17. God is establishing His rule on earth. Adam and Eve were told to have dominion, and He always meant for His people to rule.

Jacob will be a nation, and kings will come from him, kings like David whom He will take as his sons, kings who will rule on the earth as His representatives. God is establishing His kingdom through covenant. And we know how this promise can be traced all the way to the final king, David's son, who today is ruler of the kings of the earth.

There's more here, though, and it's in that phrase "company of nations." Not just one nation, but a company. Is it true that a company of nations came from Jacob? Abraham had Ishmael and Isaac, each of whom became nations; Isaac had Esau and Jacob. But Israel is the end of the line. There was only one nation of Israel.

Wouldn't the Lord have been more accurate to say "A nation will come from you"? Is it true that "a company of nations" came from Israel? Unless this also points forward to Christ, and foretells the way that Gentiles from every tribe, tongue, nation and language will be counted as sons of Israel through Jesus, the true offspring of Abraham.

e. The Land

Finally, the Lord repeats the land promise in verse 12: “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.’”

This was the same promise God gave Abraham when he first arrived in that land, and which he repeated several more times to him and Isaac throughout their lives. "To your offspring I will give this land.’” (Genesis 12:7, 13:15, 15:18, 17:7-8, 24:7, 26:3).

Jacob, Israel, now inherits this promise. That land in which he lived as a nomad in tents would belong to him and his offspring.

We can see how this was fulfilled in a limited way through the nation of Israel, who hundreds of years in the future would dwell in that land, even though they struggled to fully claim it for themselves.

But once again, there is more. God promised to give this land to Israel's "offspring." Singular. Which, for years, could have been read as a collective singular. Like saying, "my hair" to refer to my individual hairs.

But the Apostle Paul sees more here. “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16).

I didn't actually realize quite so clearly before this week that the promises that God specifically made to Abraham and his offspring, the promises that Paul is referring to here, were almost all the land promises. “For all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever” (Genesis 13:15).

This is something that a lot of Christians don't seem to fully grasp, and it shows when we get caught up in confusion over who the land of Palestine or Israel belongs to. Scripture is extremely clear on this: the land of Israel belongs to Jesus. It's his, along with the whole earth. Jesus is the offspring of Abraham who has inherited these promises. And if we start there, then a lot of other things start to fall into place.

5. Response

And so, with these promises made, God "went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him." And Jacob responds: “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” (Genesis 35:14).

We should probably understand this as the same pillar that he had slept on and set up years ago, the pillar he promised to return and build a house for God on. He's already built an altar here, and pouring out a drink offering and oil on it are the kinds of things you'd do in a religious shrine. So we should understand Jacob, acting like a priest, as setting up some kind of rudimentary temple or house for God here, confirmed by a final repetition in verse 15 that he calls this place "Bethel," "house of God."

Jacob has followed through. He's kept his promise to the Lord, and the Lord has repeated His promises to Him.

6. Our Response

And we should recognize just how significant and important this chapter is in the flow of Genesis. This is a bookend passage, not just to the first time God appeared to Jacob and Bethel, but to the first time God made covenant promises to Abraham in the first place. Because this is the last time that God makes promises to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob.

And what's next? We have two weeks left in this part of Genesis, seeing how Isaac's life came to an end, and tracing out Esau's story. Then in a couple of years we'll plan to come back and finish up Genesis with the story of Joseph, in which Jacob's sons, not Jacob himself, take the centre stage. Then Genesis ends with Israel's sons down in Egypt, the stage set for four hundred years of slavery after which God will call them out in fulfillment of these covenant promises made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

So today's passage is really the climax of Jacob's life, and in many ways the climax of this whole period of the patriarchs, of covenant promises being made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the whole rest of the story of Israel, and the whole rest of the story of the Bible, is about these covenant promises being kept.

That's why you and I are here today. Because God made these promises, and then kept these promises. Remember what Mary said when she met Elizebeth? What was God doing in sending Jesus? “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever’” (Luke 1:54–55).

We are here today because God Almighty wrestled with Jacob, made him fruitful, and gave him a royal offspring who inherited not just that land but all authority in heaven and on earth.

And He did this through a man who just a chapter earlier couldn't be bothered to make the 30 km journey to keep his word to the Lord, who had shrugged his shoulders as his daughter was raped and kidnapped, who didn't have the courage to stand up to his sons. He did this through a man who was coerced into receiving this blessing through a manipulative mom whose disrespect to her husband was so great that Moses skips her funeral.

But this is all important. Jacob's failures in Shechem are important, because they show us, as I heard someone say to well this week, that the engine moving this story forward is not the excellence of the human characters but the steadfast love of a covenant-keeping God.

And that's what I hope we take away from this yet again. It's not that we can't learn anything from Jacob's life. It's not like we can't learn the importance of following through, and that it's never too late to re-commit yourself to the Lord no matter how many years you feel like you've wasted.

But Jacob's following through only happened because God made it happen. And it only meant something because there was a God who was patiently with him the whole way, protecting him, blessing him, who hadn't walked away or given up on him, but was ready and waiting for him to follow through in order to make and repeat these promises.

This is not about Jacob. It's about the God of Jacob.

The God of Jacob who, four thousand years later, is our God.

For some of you, this is a significant Sunday—it's grad Sunday, and some of you are finishing up your time at Bible college. And you wonder what's next. And you wish God would just tell you what's next.

You don't need to know what's next. You just need to know the same thing that Jacob did: that the faithful God of covenant is with His children everywhere they go, and will bring them safely into His presence at their journey's end.

So we can go, go in to uncertainty and danger, go to the corners of the earth, because Jesus Christ—Jacob's son and Jacob's God—is with us until this age ends.

Maybe you're not a Bible college student, but you've got just as much uncertainty in front of you. You have your own growing pile of failures that seems to rival Jacob's, and you wonder if there's any hope for you.

Maybe all you have ahead of you is a normal week, with the duties of your job or the responsibilities of a home, unbelieving co-workers or hungry babies, and you're not sure exactly how you're going to make it through.

Do you need to be reminded that the faithful God of Jacob is not making an exception for you—that all of His promises, He's still going to keep?

That He's still going to be with you every step of the way in these next seven days? That He's still going to keep on forgiving you when you confess your sins to Him? That He's still working all things for good—even the things that you don't yet fully understand?

There is no more important place we could be this morning than in a posture of faith and dependance upon this faithful God.

And there's no better place to go to be in that posture than the Lord's table, where we remember how Abraham's true offspring held up the cup of the New Covenant. Where we remember that He was sacrificed in our place to pay the debt for our sins and Jacob's sins. Where we proclaim that He is coming as He promised. Where we enjoy a covenant meal with our covenant God and His covenant people as we wait and trust for Him to do all that He promised.