Feast and Follow with Knollwood

God's Everywhere Authority (Reupload)

Apple Podcasts wouldn't play the last one due to some sort of technical issue on our end. Hopefully, this will fix it! 

God’s Everywhere Authority

Do you love transitions in life? We look forward to at least a few of them. Starting life at college, a first baby, a first grandbaby, a new job that fits your passions better or moving from single to married. We look forward to those because we expect them. It is a normal part of the growing up process, and since they are such well-worn paths we know what to expect more or less.

 

It is the unexpected transitions in life we fear. Those are the ones we don’t see coming and are not a part of everyone’s experience. Suddenly changing a job, losing a pregnancy, getting that dreaded phone call from the doctor, watching a spouse mentally or physically fade away. It feels scary because this new experience doesn’t have the same sort of “well-worn path” feel that the ones I described earlier. It feels like uncharted waters. Familiar comforts are stripped away as you are forced to realize what you are really holding on to.

 

In this section of Genesis, it is a major transition for the rest of the book. For the final time, a member of Abraham’s clan is going to leave the homeland, never to return. Jacob is about to embark on his solo journey as the sole holder of the promise. He is about to go home, truly home.

 

Jacob is only going to be able to make this transition by holding onto God’s promises that He will be with Him. It is my hope this morning that by the time we get to the end of our time today, you will realize that God has no borders. There is nowhere where God does not rule, and that applies to whatever country you find yourself in, and whatever stage and area of life.

 

God will move you when He’s ready and He will be with all the way.

Don't Stick with Sticks

We love a good come back story, don’t we? It is the subject of our favorite movies and stories we like to tell, how people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, facing long odds, and with nothing but their own ingenuity and creativity, they win. This informs our own country’s ethos of rugged individualism and self-reliance, and it is very easy for us to unhelpfully mix this in with our Christianity.

 

Now, the Bible is all for working hard and taking personal responsibility, but the Bible is quite clear as to Who gets the credit for the outcome of that hard work. Proverbs 21:31 “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.” Psalm 127:1 “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” These passages (as well as others) are not saying that preparing and building are bad, but we just have to remember who to thank when it is done.

 

This text in front of us is beginning to drive that message home, although it won’t do so explicitly until the next chapter. Though it is only a short passage, we are about to review six years of Jacob’s life after the 14 years he has spent in serving for Laban’s daughters (Gen 31:41).

 

The main point we are going to be walking away with today is God is not halted by our adversaries And God is not helped by our antics.

All Natural Remedies for Spiritual Problems

What we have in front of us today is a painful story. We have an unloved woman yearning for the affections of her husband. We have a loved woman who has everything in her life except that which she most desires, a child. We have a passive husband, tossed around by every twist of emotion in the household. We have two other women seen only as objects and means to an end.

The sad news is this is all done entirely to themselves. None of this was necessary. All of it was an attempt to control things that cannot be controlled. The glad news is that God is going to turn petty competition and profound longing into the nation of Israel that will one day bring the Messiah.

Our two points today: Coveting kills joy through false promises, yet God blesses whether we see it or not.

Bumpy Providence

One of the great blessings in modern life is the GPS. I don’t listen to directions very well, mostly because they are entirely absent of street names. When my family moved to Jasper, Alabama, at a time before smartphones were widespread, I would tell people that I had just moved there and needed directions to such and such. Their directions would begin with, “Well, do you know where the old Sonic used to be?” I would reiterate that I had just moved here and thus didn’t know where anything used to be! One time someone used an old fallen tree that wasn’t even there anymore as a landmark!

Enter the GPS! Finally, no more hazy directions! Everything is laid out clearly on a map to take you right where you want to go. Or so I thought. Abby and I on one trip had to drive through Atlanta. The GPS, ever helpful, suggested that we take a detour off the highways in order to avoid traffic. I pushed “yes” and it took me through some very scary sections of Atlanta. This was a very different path than what brought me into the city! I did get home, but it wasn’t the way I expected.

The GPS often makes us think that because a journey starts out one way that it will absolutely continue as it should. We often bring the same attitude to God’s plan for us. We think that because it operated one way for our parents that it will definitely work that way for us. Or even expecting the patterns of our own lives to repeat. When that pattern is disrupted, we can often feel like God is abandoning us. Or if this pattern is interrupted by our own sin, we can feel as though there is simply nothing good that can come from this situation now.

Jacob is about to find out how God works. The path of God’s providence is often bumpy, but we will see God work it out to his good. Today, our main focus will be Trust God with the twists.

Jacob's Ladder

How would you react to a portal to heaven? What if it was located in a particular room of your house or out in a certain field. Would you visit it often? Would you feel worthy of it? Would you be scared of it? I don’t ask these questions to be coy or hypothetical. Even though this is probably the first time you’ve had that kind of question posed to you, you already have the answer to all these questions. Believe it or not, you have encountered such a reality. No, it doesn’t look like a literal window into paradise, but when it, or I guess I should say “He,” is encountered, you will find the answer to all those questions I’ve just posed. It’ll be clearer what I mean as we go on.

In this passage we get a small glimpse into this portal that Jacob seems to stumble into, and what it does to a man like Jacob. There is some mystery surrounding this passage, but what is shown here is beautiful and ties in with our taking of the Lord’s Supper here today.

Our two points here are: God condescends to His people, and our only response is worship.

 

Characters, Circumstances, and Covenants

It has been wisely said that when at first you don’t succeed, just do it the way mom told you to do it the first time. We have the tendency as humans to think that we know best about life, especially our lives, and God, while usually having some good ideas, can be ignored without consequences. We saw last week the absolute disaster zone of Isaac passing on the blessing to Jacob. This week, we are going to see the beginning of God’s grace moving in Jacob’s life.

What we are going to cover today is seeing how Genesis is going to move to Jacob being the main character going forward, yes, that Jacob. The rest of Genesis, more or less, is going to be following Jacob finishing with his death at the end. Therefore, it will suit us to get our bearings about where we are going. We will do a little more than that as we will have the somewhat unexpected opportunity to talk about marriage.

Our main point today: God continues His blessings and God’s blessings in marriage come from His commands for marriage

Rightly Called Jacob

Do you have a perfect family? Everyone gets along, there’s no conflict, no hidden sin, no masks to have to wear this morning? Well of course not! We are all sinners and that includes even as a collection of people called a family. We all realize that and know that we are all in the same boat. Yet there are some of us that think our family is especially dysfunctional, or to use Biblical language, extra sinful. We wonder how God is able to do anything with or through in our family. If that’s you this morning, you may be thinking, “Oh, if you only knew.”

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Thus far in Genesis, families in such a condition may be feeling even more inadequate. Yes, Noah and Abraham have had their stumbles, but it isn’t like there’s a horror show at every turn.

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Well, let’s meet Isaac’s family. Before we begin, we must keep something in mind. We are not here to look at this example and walk away like the Pharisees and say, “Whew, glad my family isn’t as messed up as Isaac’s!” Maybe you don’t have sons plotting to kill each other, but we all have the seeds of the sins that we are going to look at here. We are meant to walk away saying, “Now what areas in my family need repentance?” As we will see, God is going to work redemption even through the very sins we see here committed. Yet we will also see that to sin makes everything harder on oneself. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Our two points are Fighting God beats yourself and God will use even sin to bring about His purposes.

For He Who Promised is Faithful

Putting away Christmas decorations can be a hazard. I saw a photo recently of a ladder leading up into a person's attic. Just to the left of the ladder, sticking through the ceiling's drywall, was a foot. The caption read that the person was warned not to step on the drywall, but they didn't admit to not knowing what drywall was until after stepping through it. If you, too, don't know what drywall is, it is a plaster that is held together between two sheets of paper. It is usually fastened to planks of wood to hold it up. When you are in the attic, you are to place your weight on the wood holding up the drywall, not the drywall itself. 

Now, maybe you are bit handier and wouldn't make such a mistake. You wouldn't place your trust in things that can't hold your physical weight. But are you as careful with your soul? The thing about the Lord is He gives wonderful gifts of financial resources, family, and even your local church, but the gifts are meant to be the pointer to Himself, the actual object of your trust. We don't trust the gifts; we trust the giver. 

Today, we jump back into Genesis to continue the story of redemption as it relates to Abraham so far. It began with the creation account showing us that God is very powerful. Once we got to Abraham's story, we see that God is faithful. He made promises to Abraham that He fulfilled and was faithful to Abraham even when Abraham wasn't always faithful to God.  

Today, we pick up with Abraham's son Isaac. What may be so surprising in this story is how little time we spend with him. Isaac's story only lasts about a chapter before moving quickly on to Jacob who will be the focus more or less through the end of the book. This doesn't mean that he is unimportant or that there isn't so much that we can learn from this chapter. 

Our main point today is that we are to Trust in the Giver, not the Gifts.

And Grace Will Lead Me Home

We find ourselves at the threshold of another year, and this is typically the time where we begin to review and renew. Reviewing what happened and renewing resolve for yet another year. If you’ve been listening to the radio this Christmas, I’m sure you’ve heard the guilt inducing lyrics from John Lennon, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun.” Can you feel your chest tighten? Time’s running out! I can think of all the pounds I’ve added, the money I’ve overspent, and the time I’ve wasted! But, ooooh, not this year, this year is going to be different, because I am going to do xyz and prosperity will sure to follow!” Sound familiar? Have you noticed that this happens a lot?

 

Or maybe you are thinking differently about the future because things look brighter. Perhaps you see the early indications of the market pointing to a better year. We can think that our country has finally been reclaimed and only prosperity awaits!

 

Deuteronomy 8 points us to think differently about the new year and the best way to live in it. Both of these attitudes point back to ourselves as the masters of our fate, and what our passage is here to tell us is this is a very dangerous way to think about the New Year. Let’s find a better way to think and live in the new year.

 

 

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