Finding God For Yourself

Title: Finding God for Yourself

The last time we studied Jacob’s life we saw him doing one of the most despicable things a man can do.

He did it at the request of his mother.

You know, sometimes people excuse themselves for being mean by saying it was because their mother didn’t love them when they were little.

Believe me, Jacob couldn’t say that.

Jacob was loved and spoiled.

However, when he was asked to do something that was not the honorable thing to do, he did it.

He stole the birthright from his brother even though the birthright was already his.

The formality of his father giving a blessing wasn’t necessary at all.

Abraham hadn’t given the blessing to Isaac—God had!

And it is God who gave it to Jacob.

His trickery was not only unnecessary, but God will deal with him because of it, you can be sure of that.

It is because of this trickery that his brother hates him, so his mother conceives a plan to save him from his brother’s wrath.

The plan that Rebekah has now thought of is plausible and logical.

It was probably the right thing to do in this case.

She didn’t mention to Isaac that she wanted to send Jacob to her brother so that he would get away from the wrath of his brother Esau, but she did mention the fact that he could choose a wife back there from among her family.

Isaac liked the idea, so we read…

Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him: “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”

All the way through the Old Testament we find that God does not want the godly to marry with the ungodly.

And the New Testament tells Christians that they are not to be unequally yoked.

For example, it says in 2 Corinthians, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?”

Intermarriage between believers and unbelievers is something that God strictly forbids.

Then Isaac said to Jacob…

Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father; and take yourself a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother. “May God Almighty bless you, And make you fruitful and multiply you, That you may be an assembly of peoples; And give you the blessing of Abraham, To you and your descendants with you, That you may inherit the land In which you are a stranger, Which God gave to Abraham.”

It is obvious now that Isaac understands that God had given the blessing to Abraham, that God had transferred it to him, and that the blessing is to be passed on to his son, Jacob.

So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padan Aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau. Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan Aram to take himself a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,” and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Padan Aram. Also Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan did not please his father Isaac. So Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had.

Esau goes and marries a daughter of Ishmael.

He thinks it will please his father.

But now let’s see how Jacob is doing.

Now Jacob went out from Beersheba and went toward Haran. So he came to a certain place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. And he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep.

The place he has come to is Bethel.

The name literally means, “the House of God.”

Bethel is twelve miles north of Jerusalem and the home which Jacob left was probably twenty-five or thirty miles south of Jerusalem.

This means that Jacob covered at least forty miles that first day.

You can see that he was really hotfooting it away from Esau.

He wants to get as far from him as he can, but the farther he gets away from Esau, the farther he gets away from home.

Jacob is a man now, a pretty big boy, but I think he is homesick.

This is the first time he is away from Rebekah.

He has been tied to his mama’s apron strings all of his life, and now he is untied.