FBT Daily Devotional: Genesis 31

#trauma #faith #Faithbeyondtrauma #freedom #discipleship #healing #deliverance #carrolltonga #austellga #carrollcountyga #debtdoubtworrystressfearfree #brokenchains #fbt #traumarecovery #recovery

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So we're starting off this morning and this week with Genesis chapter 31. So I'm just going to backtrack just a little bit just to explain what's going on with Jacob at this time. At this point, he has essentially stolen his brother's blessing. I was joking back and forth with Pastor Reggie about this. I'm really enjoying going through Genesis because I'm it's really helping to humanize these characters for me. You know, anytime just from the outside looking in, when we're just thinking about the Bible, we're thinking that, you know, people are just very, you know, we're thinking it's just like a holy thing and this is just a lot of storybook stuff, but there are a lot of human aspects and aspects that are not too foreign to the lives and the things that we see people struggle with now that I'm noticing in Genesis as I'm going through it in a little bit more detailed way. So in this point, um, Jacob has stolen his brother's blessing. He has deceived his father, and he has a, I guess, a propensity for deceiving, for kind of finding a way to kind of skirt around what he should be doing or what or getting things that he may they may not necessarily be for him. But through and through, um, he still is has received the blessing. Um, so so right now we're jumping into 31 where um he's actually fleeing his uncle. But um what got him there in the first place was that he had to flee from Esau because he deceived his father, Isaac. Um, so I just want to kind of go over, I'm just gonna read a little blurb from chapter 28, because through it all, um Jacob he was transformed. He went, he went a path that maybe that it wasn't directly with God's will, but he was transformed from it, and he still was able to see and have a relationship with uh the father, and also and what I'm gonna read now, also be see a preview in the future and to see Christ. So um I'm just gonna read a little bit of Jacob's dream at Bethel, and then we're gonna go into deeper in the up chapter 31. Now, the dream in Bethel is chapter 28. As he slept, and this is referring to Jacob, as he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from heaven up to sorry, reached from earth up to heaven, and he saw the angels of God going up and down on the stairway. Now that may sound familiar to you because um Jesus described that to Nathaniel as him. So in this dream, despite all the wackiness of Jacob, um God chose to give him that dream, to give him that glimpse of the future. At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father Isaac. The ground you are living lying on belongs to you, and I'm giving it to you and your descendants. Your descendants will be as numerous as the dusted earth. They will spread out in all directions, to the west, to the east, to the north, and to the south. And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants. What's more, I'm with you. I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until you I have finished giving you everything that I promise. So at this point, he is on the run. He is um, you know, going to a place where when we uh catch up with him in chapter 31, he's actually running from again. Um, so one thing I do want to, and I'm reading this out of my Bible, just a little blurb. God began to cure Jacob's addiction for deception and cheating by forcing him to work for a man even more addicted. So Jacob he deceived his way into his father's blessing. And then in turn, he was deceived by Laban. Um, he he was informed to go there by Rebecca. She was Laban's brother, if we kind of remember that whole situation from Isaac, finding his wife. And because he, you know, he went by he was working, he fell in love with the younger daughter, Rachel. Um, Laban tricked him into believing that he was going to marry Rachel, but he married Leah. And he's and long story short, when we catch up with Jacob in chapter 31, he has worked uh for Laban for 31 for um for 20 years. So at this point, um, there's a lot of back and forth with wages, a lot of back and forth with, okay, well, you know, if you do this, I'll give you that, or you can get these animals, et cetera, et cetera. But through it all, there was provision. And I think the lesson for us to learn or to remember throughout this is that once the Lord has promised something to you, and it doesn't have to even be an individual promise, because I know sometimes it's it's very easy for us to kind of, you know, we're expecting to hear something, we're expecting to get something deposited in here when, you know, the promises, regardless, are in here. They're in the, I'm pointing to my physical Bible. So there are promises that are directly rooted to us following Christ, to us um just living um his word out. So that promise cannot be taken from, taken by worldly measures unless we give it away. If we're in the right place at the right time doing what we're supposed to be doing, then that cannot be taken from us, regardless of what it feels like, what it seems like, regardless of what we think that we're missing out on, especially when it comes to uh to like these material things. So jumping back into the chapter and what we were kind of, you know, what we kind of missed between Friday and, you know, I know everybody was catching up following along, but what we missed between 26 and 31, um, Jacob has been quote unquote cheated or deceived by his employer at this point. So I know a lot of people may have, you know, either you've heard of that or that unfortunately has happened to you. But through it all, there is provision. There is provision the Lord still provided from whichever way Laban tried to trick him, Jacob was able to counteract that and and profit in that. And that's just about the protection of the Lord. And going back to what I just read off from chapter 28, the Lord said that he was going to be with Jacob, and you know, he is not a man that he should lie. So as we're going through uh chapter 31, at this point, um, Jacob, he's on the run. He goes to his wives, he says, Hey, look, we gotta go out and we gotta leave a body here. The Lord has told him to leave. Um, so is with his wives there all along with it. Um, one interesting part of this is that the I'm sorry if I ruined this, but the younger daughter, Rachel, Laban is not a follower of the God of Heaven's army. He is a pagan. And he um, so he had um pagan, you know, pagan statues, etc. And because they were the daughters were not going to get any um anything left to them, any type of inheritance, they steal these statues. And when I was reading through the chapter, I was like, well, why would they still, you know, they they're believers, um, they're following their husband, they believe into the in the true God, but why would they steal these statues? And so as I was doing a little bit of research, I got a couple of different, you know, assumptions. Um, one was that they were looking to protect themselves because they didn't want Laden to be able to curse um Jacob from afar. Some of it was them trying to do something similar to what Jacob had done, trying to kind of um basically acquire wealth for themselves because they weren't going to receive anything. But ultimately, what ended up happening, and this is an important piece for all of us that have struggled with family members, struggled with, you know, anyone in close proximity, um, ultimately, by them stealing those um those pagan statues, they were able to strip um Laban from his gods. And they were able to, him and Jacob were able to create a covenant, even though they had two very different outlooks on the situation. Because even if we look at it from Laban's point of view, you know, his employee has stolen, you know, his employee and relative have, in his mind, stolen his wives, his grandchildren, and items that belong to him. Now, even though Jacob was not aware of this, that was the truth. And then from Jacob's point of view, God told him to get out of there. And obviously he was going to leave with his. So I think one thing that I want to say in closing is that a lot of times we can kind of hear a message from God and we can be concerned about how it's going to affect other people. And if we we could hear something and we're still, as Pastor Reggie always says, we're still thinking about them. Well, what how will they feel about this? How will I be able to explain this to them? But one thing that we have to understand is that if we receive something from God, the God Almighty is their God as well. When I say they're the other people, now, regardless of whether they choose to walk with Christ or not, he's still working on them the same way that he's working on you. He's their God as well. So in in this chapter, we see that there is a boundary that is literally created. Now, we talk a lot when we talk about boundaries, a lot of time we're talking about figurative boundaries. But we're in reading this, we understand that boundaries are acceptable, they can be appropriate, and they can be for protection. Because in the end of the chapter, what ends up happening is there is a treaty and they agree to go their separate ways, and it closes with Laban. He kisses his grandchildren, he kisses his daughters, he goes his way, and then throughout the rest of the chapters, we'll see what happens with Jacob. And with that, we're ready for breakout rooms.