All right, welcome everybody. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. That hymn we sang is a great way to introduce this passage about God's mysterious ways and yet there's a smiling countenance behind his mysterious ways and the key to it is to understand it by faith.

Okay, so I trust that the Lord has a lesson for us tonight in this passage. Okay, let's bow before the Lord in prayer. Dear Holy Father, we pray that you teach us from your word. about your faithfulness to us and about the importance of trusting in you moment by moment, of trusting in your promises, of walking not by sight, but of walking by faith. And so we thank you for who you are. We thank you for this life that you've given us and pray that each one of us might be encouraged by what we see in your working in the life of Jacob. And we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.

All right, well, please turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 33. Genesis chapter 33, and I'm gonna read verses 12 to the end of the chapter. Then Esau said, let us take our journey and go, and I will go before you. But he said to him, my Lord knows that the children are frail and that the flocks and herds which are nursing are a care to me. And if they are driven hard one day, all the flocks will die. Please let my Lord pass on before his servant and I will proceed at my leisure according to the pace of the cattle that are before me and according to the pace of the children until I come to my Lord at Seir. Esau said, please let me leave you with some of the people who are with me. But he said, what need is there? Let me find favor in the sight of my Lord. So Esau returned that day on his way to Seir. Jacob journeyed to Sukkoth and built for himself a house and made booths for his livestock. Therefore, the place is named Sukkoth. Now Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan Aram and camped before the city. He bought the piece of land where he had pitched his tent from the hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, for 100 pieces of money. Then he erected there an altar and called it El Elohe Israel.

All right, well we're in the midst of a series. The title of this series, you might have forgotten it, that's okay, I had to look it up too. The title of this series is God's Faithfulness Continues to Isaac and Jacob. So it's a story of God's faithfulness to Isaac and Jacob, and the idea of it continuing is it started with Abraham, and then these are the continuing generations. It's continued to Isaac and Jacob.

So this is the series on this portion of the book of Genesis, the part that's about Isaac and Jacob's life, and actually Jacob is the one who's the most prominent. In this, there's lessons to be learned from Isaac's life, but there's actually more lessons to be learned from Jacob's life, and so he has a more prominent role. So it highlights God's faithfulness and faith. the life of faith. That's what's shown, especially in the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

And faith is the human virtue, you could say, that corresponds to the faithfulness of God. If God is faithful, then it's our faith in him by which we see the reality. of his faithfulness and learn to live by it and are actually changed by the reality of God's faithfulness to everything he's promised and to good for us. And so that's the emphasis for this family. I've kind of called it the faith family during this series as if that's their last name, but it's not. It could have been. That would have been a good last name for them because that's really what's on display in their life and in your life as well.

God's faithfulness continues to you. It's the same faithfulness that he's had to this family every step of the way. What he promised to this family is still being worked out in the world on a macro scale and on a micro scale in your life as well. And God is glorified by all of that.

So the life of faith is actually a progress. It talks about that in Romans. Abraham grew strong in faith. It's a progress, but not in a nice step, a straight line, like step by step without any breaks in it. It's a zigzag path. It's a jagged path. There's two steps forward and one step back, and that's how the life of faith goes, and especially if so for Jacob. No one illustrates that more for Jacob.

So Jacob finds, and he's starting to learn and continuing to learn, that all things work together for good, for those who trust in God and love God according to the faith that they have in Him. And so that's what God is setting forth, His faithfulness to the promise, and also He's setting forth the importance of faith.

Okay, the passage that I just read seems kind of uneventful. It seems kind of mundane. It seems like just kind of tying up a few loose ends and mentioning a few places. So it's in keeping with what I've been doing. I try to do half a chapter at a time. There is a genealogy chapter coming and I won't do half of it. I'll just take the whole genealogy when I get to that, but I like to take half of a chapter and all of scripture is given by inspiration of God and it's profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped for all good works and so it's all relevant. There's something in here for all of it, even if I'm I don't know what it's going to be before I start studying, but there's always things hidden in it.

And actually this passage is immensely significant because it records that Jacob did reach Canaan after the long time spent in Paddan Aram. And that's kind of been the story of the main conflict of Jacob's life. And that's verse 18, which I read, Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is the land of Canaan. When he came from Paddan Aram and camp before, the city. So this is a major bookend. This is a big milestone of God's faithfulness. He's back in the promised land and it's a big milestone of Jacob's faith as well. He trusts God. He's still trusting in the promises and enough to move back to the place that he came from because he's still remembering and still has faith in the promises.

And in order to appreciate and kind of catch the significance of this, it doesn't seem like much, it just seems like just kind of tying up a few loose ends. You have to appreciate the significance of place in this story, or the significance of geography. And if you don't catch that, you're probably gonna miss the significance of this passage. There are four, maybe five places mentioned in this short chapter. Most of them start with the letter S, Seir, Sukkoth, Salem, Shechem, and Paddan Aram, we already mentioned that one.

So let me give you from the start, kind of an introduction before I get to the verse by verse part, let me give you three reasons why place matters, or geography matters, especially in this story.

So let me give you three reasons. The first two reasons, they're kind of valid points. I think they're worth making or touching on these points. But they're just warm up for the third point, which is the real reason why faith is important.

So first reason why the places are important here is it shows that this really happened. It's really happened in a real place, in a real time. You can go look it up on a map. So the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the stories found in the Bible is not the odyssey. or the voyage of the Argonauts. In other words, it's not mythology. And in those stories, you can trace out maybe a vague map. One of those stories supposedly takes you near Ukraine or somewhere like that. But the places there are not real places. There's no island of the lotus eaters or the cyclops. It takes place in the land of imagination or in Neverland. And so it's a mythology.

This is a real time. It's a real place, it's in the real world. There's a real struggle with faith with real people of Jacob with a real God who's alive and who's at work in many of the same ways in this world and it's the world that we live in. And so the places that are mentioned are places that you can go and look up on a map, you can go visit those places and that's one reason why the places are mentioned and the places are important.

A second reason is one that just makes it maybe a little hard to grasp for us because we live in modern times, and that is place was way more important in the ancient times than it is to us. And by ancient times, I kind of mean just kind of any time before our own time. So if you stack it up on a bar graph, ours is like tiny in comparison to the normal mentality towards place.

Today, people are not rooted very deeply in a place, and maybe especially in our country, which is kind of the land of new beginnings. And I'm sure there is certainly a strength to that, but a weakness to it as well. And so maybe us living in these times have especially a hard time with these places and the significance of these places the same. Well, who cares what place it's in? He pitched his tent and checked them or stayed here. One place is as good as another. And we tend to see that as more of a detail.

But place is really important. And I think that maybe the more ancient mindset is closer to reality than we are. Modern life and the conveniences of modern life allow us to be insulated from reality sometimes. to things like the importance of place, or even the importance of having a body, being constrained to bodily existence and the place that your body's in is just one part of that.

So the reality is something more like this, that the place where you are, the place where you're from, in some sense is part of your person. In some sense, it's part of who you are. In some sense, it's part of what makes you to be you. And I'll give a quick illustration of two people in current events who had to choose to go back to their own country or to stay in their own country where there's danger of death, because it's a war-torn place, or of imprisonment. And they had an opportunity to go into exile where it's safe. And they both made a choice to go to their home. their home country, and when asked, said, well, it's not really a choice. If I didn't go back to my home, I wouldn't be the person that I am. And so both of them sort of looked at it that way. I'll tell you who it is if you ask me after. I'll tell you who they both are. I don't want to make it a distraction to the message, but I'll tell you who they are afterwards, and you'll recognize who they are. But that's sort of, you can't get away from the place where you are being important.

Okay, well I told you those are kind of warmups to the real reason kind of background that, because the real reason is God chose for place to have a real significant role in this story. And by this story, I mean the story not only of his dealings with this family, but the story of his unfolding redemptive purposes for the world.

So those other two reasons may give some explanation why God chose for place to be important in this story. But the real reason is, He did. And so the promise from the beginning to Abraham was that a nation would come from his family, and as a nation, being obedient in a specific land, that was important from the start, they would be an instrument of blessing to the whole world. And the blessing would, I think, reverse the curse. It comes right on the heels of talking about the curse, which the whole world participates in. And the blessing is gonna be restored. This is the big promise to Abraham. The blessing is gonna be restored through this family.

And here's the detail, and it's actually significant. Through this family, as a nation, being obedient in a specific land, and it's the land of Canaan, and there's boundaries that are given for that land, and so the land is significant. Brad touched on, in Habakkuk, the promise for the world is that someday the knowledge of God would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. That hasn't happened yet. The knowledge of God is spread throughout all the earth, through the church, through the Great Commission, there's churches everywhere, but it doesn't cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. You know, the waters cover, this is pretty comprehensive, the way the waters cover the ocean floor.

And one day the earth is going to experience that, and scripture talks at the end about a thousand year reign of Christ on the earth. He's gonna reign as King of Israel. and with Israel in the land and being obedient and being an instrument of his blessing to the earth, Abraham's family. So these places in Canaan, the promised land, are significant, more significant than we're likely to say, especially today.

And I think looking back on it today, we can tend to fall into this where we say, well, you know, the importance of the place, those promise to Abraham, must be the shadow, and now that the reality of our salvation has come, the cross and the resurrection of Christ, we've kind of evolved to a higher plane, so to speak, where the land doesn't matter, we can kind of forget about that. What's the point of keeping track of some tract of land in the Middle East? It was important to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but it's no longer important to us.

Well, that's not the way that God gave these promises to Abraham, and so from the start, he said to Abraham, Genesis 12, get forth from your country and from your relative's house, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." And then he goes back to it time and time again, the importance of the land, and I won't read some of the passage, but in one of them, he says, I've given to you, the land is an everlasting treasure. possession, an everlasting possession to the nation of Israel. And so God's purposes are still, he hasn't put them on hold. He still has a purpose in the future for Israel in that land. It's a troubled land today. It's a contentious land today, but it is still significant in God's purposes.

And it's also figures in, related to this, to God's specific, his more micro purposes with Jacob. So at Bethel, when Jacob's fleeing the promised land, the Lord appears to him, there's the ladder coming down, Jacob's ladder, and the Lord appears in a really significant event in Jacob's life, and the Lord promises him, yeah, you're leaving the land now, In fact, it's good that you're leaving the land, but I'm gonna bring you back into the land. So Genesis 28 and verse 15. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised to you. So there's an individual promise to Jacob and it's related to his promise for the whole world. I'm gonna bring you back into this land because it is significant.

So we're gonna end this chapter with this significant thing, very significant thing that Jacob is back for the first time in the promised land, in the city of Shechem. And so Jacob can say at the end of this passage, I'm back in Shechem. the land, the promised land. All the promises to my family and to the whole world was not a dream, was not a mirage. Three generations have passed. And what often happens in that amount of time, it's what's important to one generation is no longer important to the rest of the generation, just because life goes on, you know, new opportunities open up and people move on from the past. But Jacob hasn't forgotten and God hasn't forgotten. He's brought him back to the land of Israel and Jacob is still believing in those promises because they're all true and the land shows that to be so.

So God is faithful to his promises, even his promises concerning this land and God will be faithful to you too. to everything He's promised to you, to forgive your sins, to give you a pure conscience, like we talked about this morning, to transform you, to never leave you or forsake you, to take you home to His eternal life in the end. And so that's the faith that we walk by and to cause all things to work together for your good as well.

Okay, so Jacob, to pick up and to give a very short review, he's coming back into the promised land. He had to kind of make a quick run. He's trying to scoot into the door of the promised land, trying to get away from Laban. He's got one important obstacle blocking the way right on the threshold of the promised land, and it's a big one. It's his brother, Esau. And that's been the main conflict of his life, at least for the past 20 years, is running away from Esau. He's been outside of the promised land for 20 years. And now he comes face to face with his worst nightmare. Esau's coming upon him with 400 men, and he's just totally at Esau's mercy. He's not an army or a fighting force of any kind. And he's terrified. He's terrified. Scripture makes very clear.

But the amazing thing that happens is that somehow, God has made his most implacable enemy, his friend, behind it. frowning countenance, the Lord hides a smiling face. And that's true of this with Jacob and Esau. So we left Jacob kind of in the midst of this scene of reunion with his brother. It's a happy scene. It's a happy reunion with Esau, especially for Esau. Jacob's just kind of in shock. He kind of can't take it in. It seems, I think, too good to be true. And so he's responding still with some fear, not, faith, or maybe it's fear mixed with faith. There's some real faith that's there with Jacob, and we left him right in the middle of that because it came in the middle of the chapter. 

So, okay, I'm gonna go through verse by verse. I kept you extra time this morning, so I think this is gonna be short, we'll see. We'll go through these verse by verse, and it falls pretty naturally into three parts. First, Jacob rejects Esau's kind offer of help. That's verse 12 to 15. Second, Jacob and Esau part ways, that's verse 16 and 17, and then it's, here's the culmination. The third point, Jacob returns to the promised land, and that's in verse 18 through 20. 

Okay, Jacob rejects Esau's kind offer of help. We're at the tail end of this reunion meeting, verse 12 of chapter 33. Then Esau said, let us take our journey and go, and I will go before you. Okay, this is a new note. This is Esau speaking to Jacob, and he's speaking in terms of us. Let's take our journey together. Let's all of us take a journey and go, and I will go before you. I'll be the lead guard in this. From what Jacob says to Esau when he declines it, you can see that Esau is not just offering protection for Jacob, but also hospitality. He's actually inviting him to Seir, to his place, maybe for a short stay. It's an invitation to come and stay with him as well. And Jacob declines it, verse 13. But he said to him, my Lord knows that the children are frail and the flocks and herds which are nursing are a care to me. And if they are driven hard one day, all the flocks will die. Please let my Lord pass on before his servant and I will proceed at my leisure according to the pace of the cattle that are before me and according to the pace of the children until I come to my Lord at Seir. 

Jacob doesn't trust Esau. One commentator said, this is the mistrust of someone with all kinds of tricks up his sleeve. He's lived by all kinds of tricks, and he kind of thinks he's walking into one with Issa being all of a sudden so nice to him. And so he's not sure what to expect, and it seems like he just wants to get away. 

He actually has nothing to fear from Esau. And it's not because of Esau. It's because of the Lord. It's because of what he learned about the Lord's favor to him through that wrestling match at night. The wrestling match was hard. The meeting with Esau was easy. There was no struggle. with it and so the Lord is showing favor to him through Esau and he's catching that, he's catching that but he hasn't fully caught it yet and so he's still really wary of Esau and you get the idea that Jacob just kind of wants to get away. 

He's willing to say kind of whatever it takes to give away, to get away from Esau again. He gives a reason. with this kind of utmost courtesy that's almost kind of distasteful because it's so fawning. He's calling him my lord and your servant, referring to him in the third person. He doesn't even like he's royalty or something. He's just wanting to get away and wanting to make a clean break. 

But he gives this reason, and it's probably a real reason. The pace at which your fighting men are going to travel because I've got little lambs that are still suckling. It's gonna kill them if they go one day at that pace. And he's also got little kids. He's got a whole bunch of small children as well with him. And so he points that out. And it's probably a real reason. It's true enough. It's not the only reason.

Probably the other reason that he doesn't mention is that he's afraid. He's still afraid of Esau. So behind that reason is a fear. But also there's another reason perhaps as well, and this is maybe, so to speak, a theological reason, and that is he's headed for Canaan, not for Seir. And Seir is not on the way to Canaan. In fact, it's the opposite way to Canaan. And it may be that Jacob doesn't want to be waylaid. He knows that one thing can lead to another. He was planning to stay with his uncle for a matter of weeks, ends up staying for 20 years because one thing led to another. So it may be that he's set his sights on the promised land and doesn't want to delay in going to Seir.

And so he says this at the end, I can't go the pace according, I must proceed at my leisure according to the pace of the cattle and before me and according to the pace of the children until I come to my Lord at Seir. And someone said, well, he's promising to visit him, but there's nothing recorded in scripture. He says, I'm gonna go at my pace and let me come to you in my own time, is what he's saying. And Seir, I'm not sure if he was lying to him or if it was just expected, well, he's gonna come and visit him when he makes time. So Esau's flexible.

Verse 15, Esau said, please let me leave with you some of the people. I've got 400 men, maybe brought for that purpose to help protect Jacob in his time when he's exposed. He says, well, let me just leave a few. Please let me leave with you some of the people who are with me and then I'll go home, he says. But he said, what need is there? Let me find favor in the sight of the Lord. And so Jacob is saying, Let's make a clean break and let me find favor in the sight of my Lord is sort of like, this is enough. I've found favor in your eyes, that's it. And so he makes a clean break with Esau.

I think Jacob could have had a fuller reconciliation. if he had a stronger faith in the Lord. But what he has is enough, and he parts ways with Esau, I guess forever, according to what we have in Genesis. We're not told of any other time. And then they become two nations, Israel and Edom, and have a very fraught relationship all the way into New Testament times, are often at enmity, And when they're at peace, it's shaky at best, sort of like it is here with Jacob and Esau. So Jacob rejects Esau's offer of help.

The second part of this passage, Jacob and Esau part ways, verse 16 and 17. So Esau returned that day on his way to Seir. Jacob journeyed to Sukkoth and built for himself a house and made booths for his livestock. Therefore, the place is named Sukkoth. So they both leave and they go in opposite directions from here. Esau goes south and a little to the east, I think, and Jacob's gonna go north and kind of turn back the way he came a little bit and a little bit to the west. They're going in opposite directions and Jacob is headed back to the promised land.

Esau doesn't care about the promises of his family and where he goes and where he's at home, where he feels at home shows that he feels at home in Seir. And so that's the way he goes without Jacob. Okay. And Jacob journeys to Sukkoth. It's on the way to the promised land. It's actually not quite in the promised land. It's on the east side of the Jordan River. It's out in the boundaries to the promised land is always the Jordan River on the east. Am I saying that right? Yeah, on the east side. It's always the Jordan River. The Lord gave him permission to stay kind of outside the borders. Two and a half tribes stayed on that side of the Jordan for a while, but it's not really part of the land. They had to have special permission And it's not really part of the land that is promised. 

So Jacob's certainly headed towards the promised land, but he doesn't exactly make a beeline for the promised land. And I'm sure he had his own reasons, probably the good of his flocks and sheep. It was better pasture land here, so he kind of takes his time and you can tell that from the buildings he builds. He journeyed to Sukkoth and built for himself a house, whatever whatever was was probably not super permanent because they had kind of a nomadic You hear a lot about tents and stuff like that, but house is a pretty flexible word. So however permanent their dwelling could be, he built that and made booths, little stables for his livestock. And that's what his wealth is in. Therefore, the place is named Sukkoth Booths. And so he makes these little stables. He's not quite in the promised land. 

How long did he stay there? Well, he stayed for a while, long enough to build for a number of years, for sure. It doesn't tell how long he stayed there. Maybe his little kids that he had, maybe they grew up there. They did for a considerable part of their growing up years in Sukkoth. But there's kind of, there's a magnetic pull for Jacob. His face is headed towards the promised land and he's eventually gonna get there and get back. And so Sukkoth is only gonna be a stepping place for him and then he's gonna take up his journey again. 

So Jacob and Esau part ways, and then the third point here, Jacob returns to the promised land, and that's in verse 18. Now Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan Aram and camped before the city. And so this is the big milestone. This is his back in the land of Canaan and the promised land. And so the promise is fulfilled all the way from Ped-An-Aram, that's where he spent in Mesopotamia with Laban. And that time is over and he's back in the promised land just as the Lord has promised to him, promised to do for him in Bethel is to bring him back to this land and he ends up in the city of Shechem. 

Now, let me point out something. that you have to look at, and it has to do with the Hebrew and the way that different translators have done this. So my translation, and probably yours, says something like this. Now Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem. If you have a King James version, or some other ones as well, it will say something like, now Jacob came to Salem, or Shalem, Shalem, which is just kind of the same thing, a city of Shechem. So there's a question whether this word, it's the same word that they're all looking at, but whether it's a place name, Shalom, or whether it's what the word means, which is safely intact. I'll say a little bit more about that in just a moment, because I think that's the right way to take it. But there is a place called Shalom. Salem or Shalem that is just outside of Shechem, about three or four miles outside of Shechem from the direction that he's coming from. So just a little bit east of Shechem, which is the bigger city. So it's kind of like a suburb. And sure enough, I looked it up on a map today, a modern map of Israel, and there's a little village near Shechem that's called Salem or Shalem. So there's people living there. And it also, like a lot of the place names in Israel, goes back to ancient times. Place names kind of don't change over time. So perhaps that's what's meant, is that you end up settling kind of in this suburb. of Shechem for a while before he bought this other piece of property in Shechem. 

Most modern translators, however, take it to be what the word means. Salim is the word. It's related to the word shalom, but it's a little bit different. Salim. We actually read this word when I read this morning at the end of the service from 2 Chronicles 16.9. that the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the world, seeking someone whose heart is shalim, shalim, toward God. And the word means intact, or perfect, or whole. He's looking for someone whose heart is wholly devoted. intact as a whole, 100%, perfect, devoted to the Lord in order to show himself strong on their behalf. So I probably agree with the modern translators who take it to this way. Jacob came intact to the city of Shechem. 

If it is a place name, It may still be that the meaning of the name is significant, because that is a part of the story a number of times for this family, that the place name is significant. It matches what the Lord promised to, Jacob in chapter 28, I'm gonna bring you safely back. And they use the word shalom, in peace. It's related to this word salim, intact, perfect, and whole that he gives to Jacob. So 

I think it's significant. I think it's significant and something I think you're gonna take away from this message is God took care of Jacob. and his family. He brings them back into the promised land and he brings them back intact. He brings them back whole. And that's what Jacob was worried about when he was worried about Esau coming and massacring the family and the little children. They weren't harmed at all by Esau. 

The Lord gave to Jacob, graciously as he's come to recognize his family, and he's done it basically in spite of Jacob himself, in spite of his unbelief at times, in spite of his sins, in spite of his many schemes that he tried to put into place to try to get God a shortcut to where he's going, and God has caused all of those to work together for good for Jacob, and he's brought him back according to his promise, not only to the city of Shechem, but brought him back safely, whole, intact with this whole family to the city of Shechem as well. 

And so it's something for us to take away as well, this little detail, this little word hidden in this passage, but it's the way that the Lord works in his faithfulness as well.

Okay, the next part, okay, so he's back in Shechem, that's really significant, and he buys this piece of land, verse 19. He bought the piece of land where he had pitched his tent from the hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, for 100 pieces of money. Then he erected there an altar and called it El Elohe Israel. Jacob, as well as Abraham and Isaac, had this strange experience in the promised land where they existed always throughout their life as strangers. Sojourners, foreigners in the land, aliens, oddballs. They existed as a family with no connection to a nation or even a clan or an extended family. They're just sort of an island out there kind of wandering around from place to place in the land. And then if they wanted something more permanent, they had to buy it from the inhabitants, make a deal with the people there. And the Lord keeps on telling them, actually, you own all this land. So why do they have to buy a piece of land when they do? Well, they're walking not by sight. They're walking by faith in the future.

And so the Lord tells them things like, everywhere that your foot is going is going to belong to your descendants as well. He buys this land, as Abraham had done before, probably as a burial plot, because this is the place where Joseph is gonna be buried in this tomb. Jacob's not gonna be buried here, he's gonna be buried where the rest of his family is buried in the plot that Abraham bought. But he buys this little plot of land For 100 pieces of money, we're not really told the denomination, just pieces of money. So I don't know if he got a good deal or a bad deal here. But he bought it, probably just a normal transaction that he makes from it. But it's significant, this little piece of land that he's going to buy. He's going to say, this is mine. And that is an act of faith. in the Lord as well.

And it's here in the promised land and Abraham, or sorry, Jacob sees it as significant because it's here on this little plot of land. Then he erected an altar there and called it El Elohe Israel. And so this is significant that he erects an altar here. He knows that God has shown favor with him. And so he's confident the Lord is gonna be pleased with his gifts, enough that he builds an altar to the Lord to make offering to the Lord. And so the land of promise for him is also a land of worship of the Lord.

It's interesting later in the Pentateuch, the children of Israel are told, when you get back into the promised land, I'm gonna choose a place. And that's where you're going to put the tabernacle. And this is the only place where you're going to offer sacrifices that are pleasing to me. But he doesn't tell him what the place is. And so if you had to guess at the end of the Pentateuch, what that place was going to be, the Lord will show them. What's significant? You might guess Shechem. That'd be a really good guess. That might be near the top of the list. It's the first place Abraham landed when he came to settle the new land. He went out not knowing where he was going. And when he got to Shechem, the Lord told him to stop. And that was gonna be the place. And that's the place he first made an altar. Did the same thing as Jacob. Made an altar and worshiped the Lord there in Shechem.

The place turned out to be, of course, not Shechem. But Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which was a surprise choice. Not a very good candidate. It wasn't really significant. The only thing significant about it was the place where this strange figure was from, Melchizedek, who was a king and a priest, and he just had a very brief interaction with Abraham, and that's the place that God chose. He chose David, and along with David, chose Jerusalem, and both of those were kind of surprising and unlikely choices, but God likes surprises. His ways are mysterious. He moves in a mysterious way. And so anyway, Shechem is a significant place for Jacob as it was for Abraham and for the nation. It's more to the north rather than Jerusalem, which is a little more centrally located. in Israel. Okay, and then this transaction introduces some new characters and they're kind of, I guess, the royalty of this city or they're, that's probably the wrong word, the people in charge of this city. And so he buys from the hand of the sons of Hamor. Shechem's father, this man who has the same name as the place, Shechem, for 100 pieces of money. 

And so this one bookend of God's faithfulness is gonna introduce a new round of trouble for Jacob. That's gonna be next time, but it's also a new way of demonstrating God's faithfulness to Jacob as well. Okay, we'll end this with this altar, and actually just end with the name of this altar. He erected there an altar And he called it El Elohe Israel. And the name is significant. The name is significant here. It means God, El, the God of Israel, Elohe Israel. He names the altar, and what he's saying with this, he puts his own name in it. Israel is his name. So he's saying God, the God of the whole universe, is my God, is the God of Israel, is my own God. 

We talked about the deacons today. The promise for the deacons who serve well is the reward of that service's great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus. And it's confidence to say something like this. that the God of the universe is my God and put your name in there. God the God of will or put your name in there. I belong to God and God belongs to me is what this is saying. So much so that he takes the trouble to build an altar knowing that God is gonna be pleased with the offerings that are offered up, and so that's what we do with our lives. As well, our whole life, the Christian life, is described as an altar that we make knowing that God is gonna be pleased with the gifts, no matter how small, when they're offered up in faith and with goodwill towards God himself. 

So he names the altar after a God with his own name, God the God of Israel. And with his new name, he doesn't say God, the God of Jacob, but with God, the God of Israel. And so his old name, Jacob, trickster. is what it means, or more literally, heel catcher, and that really described Jacob. He sort of lived by his wits and by his schemes, but through all of the experiences that culminated, especially in this wrestling match with God, where he received a new name with God, he came to understand a new way of prevailing, not by his own wits, but by faith in God, by trusting in God. in his promises. 

And so Israel means he prevails with God, prevails in this way by clinging to him, clinging to his promise, asking God to bless him and not letting go of God until God blesses him. And so God says, by this you've prevailed with God. and with men, and you're gonna be given, that's your name actually, is Israel, the one who prevails with God by faith. So God is your God, if you're in Christ, by faith, and this is your new name too. Not in some way that replaces the nation of Israel, but certainly you participate in it, you're grafted in to this branch, this is your way of prevailing, you prevail with God by faith and believing in God. in his promises, and you do so if you follow in the footsteps of Jacob, if you follow in the footsteps of faith. 

All right, that's it. So let's bow before the Lord in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we pray that you'd encourage us in all the little details of our lives to walk by faith, to walk trusting in your promise, trusting that all of your promises are true and are true for us, that you care about both the little things in our life, the big things in our life as well. We thank you most of all for our salvation and we thank you that you give good and perfect gifts. We pray that you'd bless us with a growing faith and that our lives would be transformed in every way into holiness by that faith. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.