The Lost Years in Haran

Genesis 28:1-2; 33:18-20
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, November 06, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

We have studied the lives of the patriarchs and we have learned a great deal from them: both what to do and what not to do.  These were all great men, elect of God and specially blessed by God.  In only three short generations, this small family has made amazing progress.  Patriarch Abraham came with nothing but a few people and a barren wife, yet he acquired flocks and herds, a promise to the land, and the promised son Isaac.  Isaac extended the family business and became rich, growing “very wealthy” (Gen. 26:12–15).  He also became a minor military power, to the point where local kings sought a treaty with him.  And of course he had two sons.  God was with them.  Jacob, whom we have now been studying for some weeks, had also done well.  He went off with nothing to Haran in Genesis 28, but by Genesis 33, where we are today, he had married, had eleven sons, had other children, and had returned to the land.  Not alone, not empty as he went, but with droves of flocks and herds and with a household.

Now these elect men, these great men, were still merely men.  They feared and they sinned, and the Bible is unsparing in its presentation of both their highs and their lows.  It doesn’t give us a rosy picture.  It tells us the real deal about them and the real deal about ourselves.  Abraham ran to Egypt in fear of famine, and he lied regarding Sarah.  Abraham and Sarah got into the “Hagar Solution,” in doubt of God’s promise or in desperation to make that promise come true, the promised son and heir.  Isaac did the same thing before Abimelech, going and lying about who his wife was.  And Isaac let his taste for wild game cloud his judgment regarding Jacob and Esau.  He knew that older Esau would serve younger Jacob, and yet he attempted to give the blessing to Esau instead.  And, of course, Jacob is the great schemer, using all his leverage against Esau, deceiving his father Isaac, and trying to trick Laban.  All these tricks and lies by Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham led to mess.  They should have trusted in the Lord and played it straight.  We have exposited these scriptures over the past few weeks and months to show that all their scheming led to mess and to strife.

Today I want to look at something slightly different—an equally bad, but perhaps more subtle consequence of all the scheming.  It is not just the direct consequences of the bad actions.  It is not just the immediate bad outcomes, but the missed opportunities and the subtle teaching or the subtle learning of how not to do.  You see, when you violate God’s will for your life, you suffer all kinds of calamities.  Some of them happen right away.  You produce an Ishmael and you end up with a big mess on your hands.  You marry a woman and her sister and then take her maidservant and her other maidservant as your wives, and you end up with a household full of strife, full of fighting.  That is the immediate bad outcome.  But there are longer-term bad outcomes and there are things you miss out on when you are not in God’s will.  You miss the blessings that God has for you.  So it is not just that you get a bad consequence, but you also miss out on the grace that God has for you.

1. Twenty Years in Haran

Jacob’s time in Haran takes up only about six chapters in our Bible (Genesis 28–33).  In Genesis 28 he leaves, and in Genesis 33 he comes back.  But what passes by in a few pages takes twenty years or more of Jacob’s life.  Some argue that it is 34 years and some argue that it is 40 years.  It depends on how you read Genesis 31:38–42.  But either way, it was a long time.  Whether it was 20 or 34 or 40 years, he was gone for a long time.

And of course many things happened in that long time.  Jacob married Leah and then he married Rachel, and then Bilhah and Zilpah.  He had eleven children by his four wives and concubines.  He acquired flocks and herds.  That may sound like a lot of success, but we have to be careful how we measure success.  We must not equate a lot of activity with a lot of achievement.  We know from our prior study that there were fights among the wives, that there were economic shenanigans with his father-in-law Laban, and that Jacob fled due to hard feelings between Laban’s household and his own.  But as we look at a little closer, we begin to see that there is much more, and much more long-lasting, consequences of that time in Haran.

First, they live in bad environment.  Things in Haran were not the same as things back in the Promised Land among the people of God.  While Abraham and Isaac had one wife at a time in keeping with the biblical mandate of Genesis 2:24, Jacob takes two sisters as wives within a week of each other, and then two more as second-class wives or concubines.  This appears to have been perfectly acceptable in the culture of Haran, perhaps even common in that culture.  After all, nobody makes a peep in any of these stories at this outrageous scheme.  Laban himself proposes it—this is the father of the two girls that Jacob marries—Laban himself proposes the scheme.  And neither Leah or Rachel, raised in Haran, makes any objection to this scheme, at least not as recorded.  Then they each propose their own maidservants as concubines, or baby-maker wives, a sort of crude surrogate system for its time.  The wives proposed it.  Neither maidservant seems to have been consulted in the matter, and neither sister-wife seems to have objected.  If anything, you get a sense of regret, of “Why didn’t I think of this great idea first?”  It is all very base.  It is all very immoral.  It is all very unloving, and just plain inhumane in its treatment of Bilhah and Zilpah especially.  But my point is that no one blinks an eye at this scheme.

Contrast the life of Isaac and Rebekah back in the Promised Land.  In Genesis 24:67 we read, “Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah.  So she became his wife, and he loved her.”  Where is the love here in Haran?  We don’t see it.  It is all squabbling sisters and subliminal female warfare.  Or look at how each responds to trouble.  Genesis 25:21 tells us that Rebekah was barren.  It is a big problem when you are the promised son and you are supposed to produce more heirs than the sand on the seashore.  His wife was barren.  How did Isaac respond?  Did he go get a sister-wife?  Did he go get concubines?  No!  Genesis 25:21: “Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren,” and Jehovah Jireh.  Verse 21: “The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.”  And Jacob?  In Genesis 30, what happened?  “When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I’ll die!’” So we have the same problem: she appears to be barren, or at least not having any children yet.  Did Jacob follow Isaac’s example and pray to the Lord?  Let’s look at the text: “Jacob became angry with her.”  Then he slept with Bilhah at Rachel’s insistence (vv. 3–4).  Then Leah stopped having children (v. 9).  Did they pray this time around?  Did they go to the Lord as his father Isaac had done?  No.  “[Leah] took her maidservant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as his wife.”   And then, of course, we have the whole tacky mandrake episode aimed at producing more children.  No one is going to the Lord and praying.

Had they been back in Canaan with Jacob’s father Isaac, the man of God, perhaps Jacob would have heard, “We prayed for you when your mother was barren and God answered prayer.”  There was no need for a Bilhah or a Zilpah or plants with supposed magical properties.  “Son, let us seek the Lord.  He provided you, and He will provide for  you.”  But Isaac is not there in Haran with Jacob.  He is far away, back in the Promised Land.  And in Haran, all alone, it is maidservants, mandrakes, and mess.  There is no biblical counsel to be had.  Jacob did not have the blessing of oversight of the man of God for him, his father Isaac.

Second, his children are raised in this environment.  Depending on whether you think Jacob was there 20 or 34 or 40 years, his children were either between six and thirteen when he left, or in their twenties and thirties.  Either way, it is a long time to be raised in a bad culture with bad practices.  The land of idolatry, multiple wives, and immorality—this is how they met the world.  And when you are surrounded by such immorality and anti-biblical living, it is going to find its way into your home like water through the cracks.

It is certainly true here.  We know from Genesis 31 that Laban had household gods.  That is not what God said to do, but Laban had his own idols.  We have the mandrake nonsense of Genesis 30, suggesting some kind of fertility cult.  We have the two wives mess and then the two maidservants.  Imagine the perspective of the older children.  “Why do I have four mommies?”  It is a good question to ask.  But they don’t know the difference.  They think it is perfectly normal.  There is no questioning it.  The kids don’t seem to know or ask why, or even notice that they live in this multiple-wife household.  It probably just seemed normal to them.  It was probably the thing that was done in Haran.  It was probably the normal practice among the unbelieving pagan society all around them.  We can see from Genesis 28 that Esau married multiple wives: Judith and Basemath, and then later, Mahalath.  This may have been the normal thing among the unbelieving people of that time.  So it didn’t even stand out to Jacob’s children as weird because they don’t know any different.

Even if Jacob had been circumspect within his own house, this stuff finds its way in.  And we know they were not circumspect within their own house.  It finds it way in through unbelieving relatives.  It finds its way in through the marketplace.  It finds its way in at the watering hole and at school and work and the grocery store and TV and the Internet.  If you are marinated in something, you will eventually take on its flavor.  Like smoke at the campfire, you leave, but you still smell like the smoke.  (GTB)  What permeates the surrounding culture will soon permeate your household and your children and even you.

This happened to Jacob himself.  He was the one who took on the four wives, after all.  But he was probably a little bit better equipped to deal with it, having been raised in a godly home with Isaac as his father.  But his children were totally unprepared.  They did not have any frame of reference for normal.  They did not know that this was not the biblical way.  Maybe they had been told that this was not the biblical way, but everything that they had seen suggested that this was normal behavior.  They were born into this and raised in it from birth, and they soaked it up during their formative years.  And they probably thought that this was just normal.  So much of our understanding and thinking about things is formed by what goes on around us, the background noise of our culture that we do not even think about.  We look at our culture for what we eat or what we wear.  I remember a story from the 1980s.  Mikhail Gorbachev went into an American grocery store and could not believe the bounty of the American grocery store because he was used to shortage in Russia.  When they came here, there was bounty, there was plenty, there was everything, and it was all relatively cheap.  But for these Russians with a more normal frame of reference, they thought it was unbelievable, all the fresh produce and fresh food at the American grocery store.

Or take marriage.  In our own culture, dating is the normal way to go and find a wife.  We don’t blink an eye at it.  In other countries, they still do arranged marriages.  They don’t blink an eye at it.  Why?  It is just normal for that culture.  You don’t think about it.  On the West Coast, home ownership and car ownership is totally normal.  In Montana, there are 184 cars per 100 people.  I think that means Montana has more vehicles than it has people in it.  In Washington, D.C., it is 51 cars for every 100 people.  No one owns a car in Washington, D.C.  It is easy to get around on the Metro and it is too expensive to park.  They would consider it very strange to have more cars than people.  We in California would consider it very strange for have a household to have less than two cars.

Jacob’s children were not exempt from this kind of thing, and we will preach about it especially in the following weeks.  But I want to give a little bit of a summary now to show what happened to them.  In Genesis 34, Dinah goes out, ostensibly to visit the women of the land, but ends up in a compromising position and is raped by Hamor.  That is not her fault, but it became her problem.  And you have to ask, why was she in that position, going out to find a man?  She said she was going out to visit the women of the land.  She said it was girls, but she ended up with this guy.  In Genesis 34, Jacob’s sons want to seek revenge.  So they deceive the Hivites and murder them—not just Hamor and Shechem, who arguably deserved it, but they murdered all the men in the town, and then they stole all of their stuff.  Now, there is proper retribution that belongs to Shechem especially and perhaps to Hamor for the rape of their sister.  Perhaps they satisfied their vengeance.  But this is not a biblical response, to kill all the men of the town.  The rapist should die for sure.  All the men of the town—what did they do?  But where did they get this idea of personal vengeance?  Probably they picked it up in Haran.

In Genesis 33, we see Jacob’s household is full of foreign gods.  They are going around with rings in their ears which, in context, has some kind of symbol of pagan idolatry.  Where did they get that idea?  Back in Haran, in the household of Laban.  In Genesis 37, they viciously seized their brother Joseph with intent to kill him, and then cruelly sell him into slavery and then callously lie to their father that Joseph was dead.  Day after day after day, they lied to their father that Joseph was dead.  Where did they get this idea?  In Genesis 35, we see that number one son Reuben sleeps with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, the mother of his own brothers Dan and Naphtali.  Where did Reuben get this idea?  In Genesis 38, Judah treats his daughter-in-law Tamar very shabbily, sending her away as a widow and later sleeping with her.  And if you are tempted to come to Judah’s defense by saying that he only thought she was a prostitute, that is not a very good defense.  That is no great recommendation of his character.  Where did he get this idea?

Where did they get all of this immorality?  Who taught them about prostitutes, about such sexual immorality, about idols and jealousy and plotting to murder their brother or sell him into slavery?  I am sure it was not Jacob who taught these things in the home.  Likely, they soaked it up from the surrounding culture in Haran that they grew up in, in northwest Mesopotamia.  Had they been raised in the household of God, had they been raised near godly Isaac, their grandfather, perhaps it would not have been so.  It may not take a village to raise your children, but it surely matters what village you raise them in.  The truth is that most of what our children learn comes from what they see around them in the home, in the church, and in the surrounding culture.  So we must be very careful what we expose our children to, especially our young children.

This is not a call to move to an isolated compound in the desert or even to Idaho, no matter how good that sounds on some days.  We are not called to go and shut ourselves up and put a bushel over the light.  No, we are called to shine as lights to the fallen world, to be salt and light for the world, to love the world by telling them about God, by telling them about the salvation available in Jesus Christ alone.  And to do that, we must be engaged in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in community organizations, and even in politics, recreation, and civic groups.  We have to get out there and meet people that we don’t already know to tell them about Jesus Christ.

But we must be careful as we do so to safeguard the young and impressionable, our believing children.  They are not yet equipped to deal with the depravity of the world, and they lack the experience and maturity to see past the temporary pleasures of sin and to see the eternal downside.  Our job as parents is to train up our children in the way they should go (Prov. 22:6).  That is difficult to do even in an ideal environment.  Christian parents, Christian church, Christian school—we have that kind of thing here, and yet it is still very difficult to train them up in the way they should go.  We parents, of course, are still sinners and we all have our own version of the empty way of life and that is going to get passed on to them one way or the other.  So if it is that hard to do in the most ideal circumstances, how much more difficult will it be if we expose them to excessive worldliness and unchecked culture around us.  They will soak it up and they will consider it normal.

And it is not just our kids or Jacob’s kids.  Look at Lot’s daughters in Genesis 19.  The angel of the Lord had to drag them out of the city of Sodom.  You see, they loved Sodom too.  And when their mother is struck down and they are in the cave with their father, what do they conclude?  Genesis 19:31: “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth.”  Who said that is the custom all over the earth?  Who said that you should be following the custom all over the earth?  That is the custom of Sodom.  But, see, it is all they knew, having been raised in that place.  So their assumption is that people everywhere live just like us.  Everywhere is just like Sodom.  After all, it is all we know.  It is 100% of their experience.  So what do they do?  Verse 33 says that night they got their father to drink wine and they raped him.  In verse 35 the younger daughter does the same, and both become pregnant by their own father.  It is an outrageous thing.  Where did they get this idea of drunken incapacitation?  Where did they get this idea to rape a man to impregnate themselves?  Where did they get this idea that this was all acceptable to do?  This is their father.  They should have a visceral disgust for this kind of thing.  And yet they plot it out and they do it one night and then they do it the next.  Sodom, Sodom, Sodom—that is where they got this idea.  They soaked up Sodom and out it came later in life.  Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t we?  This is the norm.  After all, we saw it in Sodom for all these years.  We know how to solve this problem—the Sodom way.  Just as Jacob’s kids soaked up Haran and it came out later in life, so Lot’s daughters soaked up Sodom and out it came.

But Jacob’s children should never have been in this position in Haran in the first place.  It should never have happened.  These kids should have been back in the Promised Land, soaking up, not the surrounding culture of Haran, but stories of Abraham and stories of Isaac; stories of the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac; how God delivered their ancestor Noah through the Flood; how God called Abraham from Ur and later Haran, and then promised him both land and offspring.  They should have heard that that promise was not just for them but about them.  Who is this offspring that God spoke of?  It is them.  That is you, kids.  God has a plan for you.  Years ago, before you were ever born, God had a plan for you.  In eternity past, God had a plan for you.

They should have soaked up stories about how their grandmother Rebekah and their great-grandmother Sarah were barren, but God provided children.  They should have soaked up stories about how God provided for them in famine and preserved them in war; how God miraculously led Abraham’s servant to that well and miraculously directed him to Rebekah in prayer.  And see how she went boldly in faith on the camels the next day because she knew it was the will of God.  You can imagine it.  It is not just a story that they heard.  They had probably heard it in Haran.  But they could have heard it from Rebekah.  “That was you! Oh, Grandma, how could you have such faith!”

They would have heard how God destroyed wicked Sodom and Gomorrah, how God provided the miracle child in Isaac, and how the angel of the Lord interceded to stop the sacrifice.  It is one thing to hear about that story; it is another thing to hear it from Isaac.  “Oh, Grandfather, how did you go on top of the wood for the fire and the knife was raised up.  How did you have such faith?”  The angel of the Lord appeared.  Maybe he saw the angel.  Maybe he heard him.  But either way, Isaac was there in the story, and it comes across with so much more punch, much more impact.  It makes God much more real to us.  What faith Isaac had!  What faith Abraham had!  What faith Rebekah had!

Perhaps they would have heard a few of these “what not to do” things sprinkled in from the lives of Abraham and Isaac.  But they did not get any of this.  They missed out.  They probably never met Rebekah at all.  They probably had very limited time with Isaac.  Genesis 35 suggests that perhaps they had some time with Isaac.  But it was a missed opportunity for them and a missed opportunity for Jacob.  They were not filled with the good things of God, but rather became filled with the evil things of Haran.  So this bad storage that they had stored up produced bad fruit later in life, just as we are told in Luke 6:43–45.

Their time in Haran was not good.  As I said before, Jacob produced much: two wives, two concubines, eleven sons, at least one daughter and probably more, and great wealth.  He went away from Canaan, from the Promised Land, as one man alone, sleeping on a rock, empty, with only his staff, and he returned with a household full.  But you have to ask: What was that household full of?  It was not full of godliness.  It was full of worldliness.  Jacob forfeited the grace that could have been his, and the grace that could have been his children’s, by staying in wicked and godless Haran instead of returning to the Promised Land; instead of going back forthwith to the people of God back in the Promised Land.  So they missed out on a lot of grace, and it caused a lot of problems.

2. Jacob Was Loved by the Lord

Yet still, Jacob was loved by the Lord.  We have been tough on old Jacob, and rightly so.  But don’t become confused.  Jacob was a great man and a godly man.  Just look at the end of his life.  He worshiped as he leaned on his staff (Gen. 47:31).  He is in the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith,” which tells us that he worshiped “by faith” as he was dying.  He was a child of the promise.  Remember, I said that his father prayed for him.  His parents prayed for him, and God delivered.  God brought him forth.  He was part of that promise made to Abraham and that promise made to Isaac.  Jacob’s sons were the beginning of the twelve tribes of Israel.  God appeared to Jacob many times: at Bethel, at Shechem, as he waited to cross the river and meet with Esau, and again in Genesis 45, and God spoke to him many other times.  He raised up a fine son in Joseph who was, I would note, not born in Haran.  Go back and read his prayer in Genesis 32: “Save me, I pray.”  He prayed to God, and he prayed God’s promises back to Him.  Listen to Jacob in Genesis 48.  He tells his sons, “I am about to die, but God will be with you.”  Listen to his final wishes in Genesis 49: “Bury me with my fathers in the cave of Ephron in the Promised Land.”  In other words, don’t leave me here in Egypt.  Take me home to God’s Promised Land, to the home that God gave.  I was absent for too long in my life.  Don’t leave my bones in Egypt in my death.  Take me to God’s land.  And implicit in that command, “Go back there yourself.”

When we compare these two Jacobs, when we look at Jacob at the end of his life, we have to say, “Who is this man?” He doesn’t bear any resemblance to the Jacob about whom we have been reading and preaching recently—very little resemblance to the Jacob that we have criticized and picked apart.  They don’t even call him Jacob anymore.  They call him a new name: Israel.  How do you square the Jacob we have been preaching about and this Jacob we see at the end of his life?  The answer is found later, much later, in the book of Romans.  In Romans 9:13 we read, “Just as it is written: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”  The answer is election, divine election—the sovereign and electing love of God.  You see, Jacob is a sinner.  Jacob is full of scheming and all the other stuff.  But it doesn’t matter.  God’s election prevails.  God’s love, the love that takes an old stony heart of the scheming Jacob and makes it new, that gives him a heart of flesh, a heart that loves God, and causes us to confess and causes Jacob to confess, “Jesus Lord”; a heart that believes that God raised this Jesus from the dead.

Jacob was great not because he was rich or powerful or intelligent or any of those things.  Jacob was great because he was loved by God in eternity past, chosen by God in eternity past, not loved for being lovable.  No, God loved us because He loved us.  God loved us so much that He gave His only Son to become a man, to die on the cross, to suffer the Father’s infinite and just wrath on the cross, which we deserved.  He did this that whoever believes on Him shall not perish eternally but shall have eternal life instead (John 3:16).

Jacob loved God because God first loved Jacob in eternity past (1 John 4:19).  Before all time, when Jacob was His enemy, when we were His enemies, God loved Jacob and God loved us (Eph. 2).  Jacob was great because God chose him and was with him wherever he went (Gen. 35:3).  The point here is rather obvious: You can be great too, like Jacob.  Maybe you will have flocks and herds and maybe you won’t.  But you can be great too like Jacob if you have confessed “Jesus Lord,” and if you are justified by the same God of Jacob.  You are offered the same salvation as Jacob was offered, and you are saved by the same blood of Christ, by the same faith if you confess “Jesus Lord,” if God makes you born again.

Like Jacob, you too can be sanctified.  Perhaps you have a checkered past.  But God can make you a new person to live not according to the flesh anymore but according to the Spirit.  So I ask you: Have you made mistakes like Jacob?  Have you lost years in your version of Haran?  Have you leaned on your own understanding and persevered in your own strength?  You too can change, just like Jacob, and into Israel.  You too can be sanctified by the powerful Holy Spirit of God working in you so that you look back on your past life as you are old, as you lean upon your staff, as you worship by faith, as you die, you can look back on your past life and say, “I don’t even know who that other person was.  It was me, but I don’t even know who that person was.  I am not the same anymore.”

God can repay you for the lost years, the years that the locusts have eaten in your household.  You too can worship as you lean on your staff.  You too can leave your children a legacy, not of flocks and herds, or of household idols and earrings, or of mandrakes and maidservants, not of real estate or money, but a legacy of God.  You too can say to your children at the end of your life, “I am about to die, but God will be with you.”  Abandon the old Jacob-way of life and embrace the new Israel-way of life, dependent upon God, not dependent upon yourself.  Focus on His good, perfect, and pleasing will and way rather than your own ends and your own schemes.  Don’t lose any more years like Jacob lost.  Gain with God and gain by God.

Even if you have not confessed Christ, you can be great too.  Cry out, as Jacob cried out, “Save me, I pray” (Gen. 32:11).  This is a prayer that God will honor and answer.  Save me from the infinite punishment that I deserve.  Save me by faith in the God-man, Jesus Christ.  Save me.  Have mercy on me, a sinner.  You can use the same strategy Jacob used: unconditional surrender.  It works.  The way to victory is unconditional surrender to God.  You can pray the same promises just like Jacob prayed promises.  Jacob prayed, “Save me, as you have said.  Save me, for as you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and I will make your descendants like the sand of the sea.’” That was the promise to Jacob.  What did He say to you?  What is your promise to pray back to this God?  Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  That prayer is not just for the Romans in the time of St. Paul.  It is for you and for every person from every time.  For Romans 10:13 says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  So Jacob cried out, “Save me, I pray,” and prayed God’s promises.  You can cry out, “Save me, I pray.”  Why?  “You said you would, and you cannot lie and you cannot violate your word.”  I urge you to trust in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation and be saved and sanctified and go to glory with God.

Application

A few final words of application.

1. For Christian Parents

Christian parents, don’t lose years like Jacob did.  Find the place where God will bless you and stick close to that place.  Don’t do things that force you to go away or endanger it, as Jacob did.  In our time, some go away for work or more money or for some other worldly purpose.  Don’t do that.  But what I am saying also is, live in a careful way that gives you choices to be close to the place where God put you.  By defrauding Esau, Jacob put his ability to live in the Promised Land at risk.  By deceiving Isaac, Jacob put his ability to live in the Promised Land at risk.  Don’t take those risks.

If you find yourself in a version of Haran, either physically away in Haran, or you have created a little Haran in your own household, don’t stay there.  Don’t stay in Haran.  Don’t stay away from God’s kingdom and God’s people, whether for fortune or due to fear of anything else.  The kingdom and the people of God in Jacob’s day were really only available in one place, in the Promised Land, in the household of his father Isaac.  And in our day that it is not much easier to find than there.  In that day, there was only one place.  In our day, true churches are rare.  Your church, which God knit you and joined you together with, is by definition a singular place.  It is hard enough to find any true church that exists in the world today, but what I am saying is that God has a specific true church for each one of His believers.  He determined the exact times and places men should live (Acts 17:26).  He gave different gifts to different people for the building up of a particular church (1 Cor. 12:18).  Find that place where God is and stick close to it.  Find it and hold on to it.  Our Pastor has come up with the idea of three circles.  You put the church, the kingdom of God, at the center.  Then you find a home around the church.  Then you find a job around the home around the church.  In our culture, we do it the exact opposite way.  We put our career or some other thing at the center, and then we find a place to live around our job, and then there will be some church or the other around that place.  Yeah, there will be some church or the other, but will it be a true church of God?  Will it be the true church where God has placed you?

Don’t lose the years.  The problem with lost years is that once they are gone, they are gone.  You cannot get them back.  And as it was to Jacob, it will be a grief to you, and it will be a grief to you even if you are saved as one passing through the flames.  Raise up your children in the way they should go and raise them up in the place they should be.  Leave a godly legacy for them to enjoy and to build upon.  So that is the charge to Christian parents.

2. For Christian Grandparents

What about Christian grandparents?  Make use of the time that you have.  Isaac and Rebekah could not testify to their grandchildren about the things that God had done in their lives because those grandchildren were far away.  Maybe for ten, twenty, thirty years of their lives, those grandchildren were far away.  They couldn’t testify to their grandchildren, but you can.  If you are so fortunate to have them nearby or down the street or even next door, tell of all His wonderful acts to your grandchildren.  Tell them of the “ancient days” of the 1980s or even the 1970s.  Tell them what God did for you.  Tell them what God did in you.  Tell them what God did in the church and for the church and through the church.  When you hear stories of first-generation people in this church, you are amazed at what God did.  Tell them to your children and let them be amazed.  You were there, many of you.  You can testify with a special force that those of us who have just heard the stories secondhand or thirdhand cannot bring.  You were there and you saw it.

Tell them all about God and what God has done in your life and in the life of the church as you sit at home and as you walk along the road.  Amaze them with the stories.  The stories are amazing.  I hear stories from Pastor and Gladys Mathew about the revival that they witnessed and experienced in India.  It is almost unbelievable.  I believe them because they tell the truth and because God is amazing.  But they are almost unbelievable—the things that you hear that they saw and they witnessed.  Tell them to your children and your grandchildren.  Build up their faith with your life and your testimony as Isaac and Rebekah were unable to do because their grandchildren were far away.  And if you find yourself in the position of Isaac and Rebekah where your grandchildren are far away, use the means at your disposal.  Speak of God when you visit them or when they visit you.  Or use the telephone or the email or the Facetime or whatever it is to influence your grandchildren for good.

3. For Those Who Have Lost Years

For those of you who have lost years, don’t lose any more.  Stop today the old way of the world and the flesh.  Do today in the new way of the Holy Spirit.  Redeem the time starting now by living according to His word.  Our God can and will do exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.

4. For All Believers

Finally, the application for all believers: Marvel at God.  We have taken Jacob apart, but we are all Jacobs.  We are all sinners.  We are all schemers.  We are all deceivers to one degree or the other.  We were all bad trees producing bad fruit.  But He moved for us, He moved in us, and He saved us.  He made us good trees to produce good fruit, not because of us, but because of His great love and rich mercy (1 Cor. 1:30).  It is because of Him that we are in Christ Jesus.

Don’t be proud but be grateful to the God who saved you.  Boast, but boast about Him and about His great salvation that is available to all.  Glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  Do it now, do it tomorrow, and do it until you lean on your staff.  Then do it forever in glory in heaven.  Amen.