July 28, 2013 WITH US ALL THE WAY
Preface to the Word
This summer in our worship we’ve been looking at some old stories – stories of some main characters in the drama of God’s relationship with Israel. Those characters are Abraham and Sarah, their grandson Jacob, and Jacob’s son, Joseph. The old stories come out of the first book of the Bible, known today as “Genesis,” which is the Latin word for “origin.” Before we hear the reading from Genesis 35, (which tells another story about Jacob), I want to say just a few words about Genesis and how to understand it.
For centuries the stories in Genesis were not written down, but were passed along from generation to generation by the tellers of stories and the singers of songs and the teachers of proverbs. It was much later in Israel’s history – either during the reign of David or Solomon, or during the exile when the Israelites were taken captive by the Babylonians – that scribes and priests began to actually put these stories and songs down on parchment and to edit it into one story. I hope to say more about that later. But for now let’s concentrate on the basic message of Genesis, which covers the time of Creation to the Israelites sojourn to Egypt.
The book essentially has two main sections. First there is the primeval history, or pre-history, which is universal in scope and tells how the blessing of God enabled humanity to multiply, diversify, and disperse over the face of the earth. It is not history so much as a prehistorical view of the movement from Creation to the return of chaos in a catastrophic flood, and the new beginning afterwards. You see, the primary purpose of Genesis is not to present a straightforward history but to tell the dramatic story of God’s dealings with the world and, in particular, to interpret Israel’s special role in God’s dealings with the world.
Around chapter 12, with the introduction of the man named Abram, later renamed Abraham after he enters into a covenant with God, we come into the second main section of Genesis, which is Israel’s ancestral history. This part of Genesis deals with the limited family history of Israel’s ancestors: that is, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, their twin sons Esau and Jacob, and Jacob’s family, the chief member of which was Joseph.
The migration of Abraham and his family in response to God’s promise is a major turning point in the unfolding story of origins. God’s Creation has been marred by human violence, which in God’s judgment threatened to return the earth to pre-creation chaos. So out of the human family God gradually separated out one family line, promising that the descendants of Abraham and Sarah would increase in number, they would receive a land, and they would have a relationship with God that would benefit the rest of the world. Despite trials and tribulations, the people God had chosen to be a blessing move toward the horizon of God’s future and when the book of Genesis ends in the time of Joseph’s wise and benevolent administration in Egypt, the promise is pressing toward its realization.
Today we turn to the 35 chapter of Genesis. Last week, three chapters earlier in chapter 32 of the “book of origins,” Jacob was about to meet up with his brother Esau and he was frightened by the prospect. You see, Jacob had cheated Esau out of his birthright and blessing, and then run away since Esau had threatened to kill him. The night before crossing over the river to reunite with his brother, Jacob spent a long dark night wrestling with a mysterious man. Jacob eventually prevailed and received a blessing and a new name, “Israel.”
The good news is that Esau was actually glad to see Jacob again and they reconciled. Jacob and his large family and herds and flocks then moved on to settle by the town called Shechem. But it didn’t go well. The son of the ruler of Shechem raped one of Jacob’s daughters and then had the audacity to say that he wanted to marry her. So in the marriage arrangements, Jacob insisted that if their peoples were going to intermingle, then all the males of Shechem would have to be circumcised. They agreed mainly because they hoped to eventually get access to all of Jacob’s wealth. After the men of Shechem were circumcised and, shall we say, “indisposed,” some of Jacob’s sons raided the town in revenge of the rape and killed all the men. Other sons of Jacob followed soon after and looted the city.
When we learned of it Jacob was horrified and feared retaliation from the other people in the region, so they pulled up stakes and moved on to a place called Bethel.
I’m going to ask Nancy will take it from here….
Scripture: Genesis 35:1–15 and Romans 8:31-39
Sermon: Introduction
“One night,” so the familiar saying goes, “a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; one belonged to him, and the other to the Lord.
“When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.
“This really bothered him and he questioned the Lord about it. ‘Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you'd walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don't understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.’
“The Lord replied: ‘My precious, precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.’”
I.
A. The man who dreamed that dream could have been Jacob. After all, Jacob was known to have had another dream at a difficult time in his life. As we can read in chapter 28, when Jacob was running for his life from his angry brother Esau, he came to a certain place where he rested for the night. There he took a stone and placed it under his head and in his sleep he had this magnificent dream of a ladder connecting heaven and earth with angels ascending and descending. It was there that Jacob discovered in a powerful way that he wasn't down here on his own to slug it out under his own power. It was at this place that he discovered God was here beside him, involved in the realities of his life, walking by his side.
“Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go," God said to Jacob. So Jacob called that place “Bethel,” which in English means “the house of God.”
B. Now years have passed and God has called Jacob back to this land of his beginnings. Responding to this driving force within him, Jacob says to those who are with him, “...come, let us go up to Bethel, that I may make an altar there to the God who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”
C. Perhaps one of the best things about growing older is the opportunity to look back over life (like the man who had a dream of footprints in the sand), back along all the winding paths our lives have followed, to thumb through the pictures we have pasted into the scrapbook of memory, and to say with Jacob, “Look at this! Look at the way the Lord has helped us in our trouble! God has been with us every step of the way!”
D. It's a remarkable affirmation Jacob makes when you consider his life. As his story unfolds in the chapters of Genesis, we can see a life filled with difficulty and with challenge. It’s a story of a man who wrestled with himself, with God, and with others. It's the story of a man who struggled with difficult choices, sometimes not at all sure he was doing the correct thing, sometimes fully aware that we was not. His life was complicated by tangled relationships with his brother, his father, his uncle, his two wives, his two concubines, his eleven children. When he returned to Bethel and looked over the long shoreline of his existence, he did not look back on a smooth, easygoing life.
Nevertheless, he built an altar to God and worshipped, offering wine and olive oil to the ever–present and ever–loving One who helped him in trouble and was with him all the way.
E. For most of us, it is only when we look back across the road we have traveled that we can see clearly how the Lord has been with us.
F. And it’s interesting to note what Jacob did not say about God!
He did not say, “I will build an altar to the God who gave me everything I ever wanted.”
He did not say, “I will build an altar to the God who saved me from every danger, protected me from every injury, rescued me from every problem, kept me from every disease.”
He did not say, “I will build an altar to the God who made my life smooth and easy.”
No. He offered his sacrifice to “the God who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” That was enough for Jacob.
Perhaps it should be enough for us, too.
II.
A. I remember a Convocation on church growth and evangelism I attended in Richland, Washington in 1979. It was sponsored by Central United Protestant Church, one of the largest churches in Protestantism, which was pastored at the time by the Rev. Joe Harding. He’s now deceased but at the time had just retired from his position with our denomination in the Division of Evangelism. As it happened, I was housed in the home of a member of that church who was a printer. Before I left he gave me a booklet he had printed about the thirty-year history of the church. As I glanced through the booklet, I came across a story about an event in the life of the pastor and his family and it has stayed with me ever since.
On January 8, 1974 Sarah Harding, only daughter of Rev. Joe and Lucy Harding, was one of two girls killed in an automobile accident. Her death brought a deep grief to her family as well as to the staff and congregation because of her youth and talents. However, the course of action they followed was reflected in a poem sent by Paul Jensen:
“...God has never said, ‘Because I love you, I will never let anything hurt you!
“God has said, ‘When sorrow and suffering, and death, and loss come upon you, I am there with you, loving you, comforting you, helping you to be brave and go forward wisely...’”
B. God's promise of divine strength, comfort and presence was proclaimed anew in Jesus Christ. Talking to his fearful disciples shortly before his death, the Lord promised them, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live... Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
“God has said, ‘When sorrow and suffering, and death, and loss come upon you, I am there with you, loving you, comforting you, helping you to be brave and go forward wisely...’”
C. James Harnish, pastor and author of a book on the people of Genesis, tells of a trip he once made to Kenya during which he worshiped in the Anglican All Saint's Cathedral. During the service they sang a hymn by Joseph Addison that goes like this:
When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love, and praise.
Unnumbered comforts to my soul
Thy tender care bestowed,
Before my infant heart could know
From whom those comforts flowed.
When in slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
Thine arm, unseen, conveyed me safe,
And led me up to man.
Through every period of my life
Thy goodness I'll pursue;
And after death, in distant world,
The glorious theme renew.
Harnish writes: "As I sang that hymn, my mind raced back across the ocean and across the years in a rapid review of my life –– opportunities, relationships, choices that had been used by God to bring me to that moment. The young Kenyan family beside me probably wondered why I stopped singing to catch the lump in my throat. As I placed my offering in the velvet pouch-like basket, I rejoiced with the poet and said to myself, ‘That's my song, too!’ I am confident that the emotion I felt during the offering in Nairobi is the same emotion Jacob felt as he prepared his offering at Bethel: the awesome awareness of the undeserved goodness and mercy of the God who had been with him all the way.”
III.
A. I’m thinking that this is at least part of the reason why you and I are here in this place of worship today. That in our own personal and unique ways, we have each journeyed to this place to raise our hearts in praise and prayer, fashioning an altar out of our adoration for God and pouring out upon it the wine and oil of our gratitude and joy. We have experienced the promise of Christ who said: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live...”
B. It doesn't mean our lives have been free of questions, doubts, mistakes, fears, conflicts, assaults and pain. It simply means we are discovering with the Apostle Paul that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Here’s how he said it in his letter to the Romans:
31What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36As it is written,