The Book of Genesis
Part 67
Prompt Obedience
Chapter 35:1-8
During the visit of the Editor to the other side of the Atlantic, the studies in Genesis were discontinued for a month. In resuming them, we pray that the Lord may guide in all our meditations, that His name might be glorified and our souls blessed.
In the June issue we considered Jacob’s partial obedience (Chapter 33:17-34:31). Let us recommence our examination of the life of the Patriarch as with prompt obedience he moves back into Bethel.
What a difference there is between our last lesson and this one! In the former, we saw only partial obedience and its results; in this we are to witness implicit obedience and its blessed consequence; Jacob’s stay at Shechem was characterized by shame and sorrow; his return to Bethel, by satisfaction and strength. The contrast here seems to illustrate the difference between the carnal and the spiritual nature in the believer. Let us notice several salient points in their logical sequence.
The Prompting
“And God said unto Jacob, Arise go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.”
Three verbs of action are used by the Lord: “Arise,” “Go,” and “Make.”
To trust in the Lord and to wait patiently for Him to act on our behalf may be a very blessed experience under certain circumstances, but there are other circumstances in which one must arise and act in response to divine probings. Of course, when the Lord calls upon His people to act, He imparts the ability to accomplish. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).
God in His goodness as He gave this command to Jacob blended with it a veiled promise. God who had rescued him from the hand of Esau could also deliver him from the Shechemites through whose land he had to travel.
The Preparation
As Jacob prepared himself and his family for this return journey to Bethel, there is an urgency in his movements. He becomes very imperative about matters, and speaking with authority says, “Put away the strange gods.” “Cleanse yourselves.” “Change your garments.” Before Jacob could be morally fit for the presence of God, idolatry had to be judged and abandoned, personal holiness had to be practised, and the outward evidence of that inward sanctification had to be displayed in the garments of the Spirit. In terms of the New Testament, there had to be a putting off and a putting on (Col. 3:8-14).
The Plan
“And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.”
Here Jacob is really busy in his full obedience to the divine command. First, he calls upon all, himself included, “Let us arise.” There is a suggestion that heretofore there had been a hesitancy if not a lethargy in his return to Bethel. Did Shechem and his recent investments there hinder him from going all the way for God? Was the disgrace at Shechem the means permitted to shake him loose and force him along the way to Bethel? It does seem that there had been some reluctance on his part to perform the will of God. Such, frequently, is the experience of the backslider in heart who is filled with his own thoughts.
In the second place, Jacob said, “Let us arise, and go up to Bethel.” Geographically there was a natural ascent into the mountains of the area, but we may also consider a higher spiritual altitude here as well. Divine discipline through a great variety of circumstances had been salutary for Jacob, like the Psalmist, could say, “It was good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes” (Psa. 119:71).
His insistence in going up immediately is worthy of note. There was a way back to Bethel. Thank God, there always is a way back into fellowship with the Lord! He is the God of recovery. The Lord’s appeal to the nation of Israel illustrates His attitude toward all His own. “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity, and receive us graciously; so will we render the calves of our lips … I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away from him” (Hosea 14:1-4),
Notwithstanding the gracious loving appeal to the wandering soul, we must remember that the road back is as long as the road away. The bitterness and the regret found in many a restoration has been produced by the facing of the details of departure. The only possible means of recovery from backsliding is the way of repentance and faith.
In the third place, Jacob said, “I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.”
What a wonderful faculty is memory! There is no doubt that Jacob occasionally relived the day of his distress, the day when Esau approached with four hundred armed men. There is no doubt that he recalled with pleasure the vision of the two camps at Mahanaim (Gen. 32:1-2).
Here Jacob reviews the kindness and love of God. He had not always sensed the presence of the Lord, but now he realized that God had been ever with him.
These serious reflections urged him on to obey God’s command, and here he states his intention to build an altar for God at Bethel. He is not so much interested in raising a pillar, as on his former visit. He is not making a bargain with God. No, he is ready to offer all to God in worship.
The Progress
Whenever there is prompt obedience to the will of the Lord, there is notable progress, and no better illustration of this can be found than what is stated in these verses: “They gave unto Jacob all the strange gods.” “They journeyed.” “Jacob came…and all the people that were with him.” “He built there an altar.”
His diligence in the ways of the Lord so impressed his household that they surrendered their idols. It will be remembered that Rachel had stolen some from her father. It is also to be expected that all his servants from Padan-Aram would be idolaters. Jacob would not longer tolerate these images in his household. Each one gave these former objects of veneration to Jacob, and he hid them so that they could not again be found. His entire household henceforth was to know only the living and true God.
God’s ways of protecting His people here were altogether different to His ways at Mahanaim. Here he did not send forth His host as a body-guard, but rather influenced the populace round about. “The terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them.” A supernatural dread fell upon them so that in spite of the slaughter of the men of Shechem by Jacob’s sons, none pursued them for revenge. God is not limited in His means of protecting His people. He may use a special method today and an entirely different one tomorrow. He who sent an angel to deliver Peter (Acts 12), and a chief captain to deliver Paul (Acts 23), employs many means in this ministry of love.
The journey to Bethel was accomplished with sincerity and with haste. Thirty years had elapsed since Jacob had stood upon that ground. What recollections must have been his!
A difference between this altar and the one he had built at Shechem has been noticed frequently. The name given to the altar at Shechem was Elelohe Israel, the God, the God of Israel, suggesting God’s relationship to Jacob. Here at Bethel the full name El Bethel is given, the God of Bethel, or the God of the House of God. Jacob’s thoughts on this occasion are wholly of God, not upon any relationship to Him. As another has pointed out, his spiritual condition being higher, his conception of God was higher.
The entire experience here as expressed by Jacob himself reveals the fact that occupation with God results in worship. That attitude of worship indicated such a state of spiritual response that God appeared unto Jacob and blessed him, bestowing upon him the name of Israel. God had appeared to him when he left his father’s house to wander in fear and in need (Gen. 28:10-22); He now appears to him in the day of the gladness of his heart, the day of his return to God.
The Pain
“But Deborah Rebekah’s nurse died, and she was buried beneath Bethel under an oak: and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth.”
It is not known how Deborah Rebekah’s nurse had entered Jacob’s household at this time. Had she gone out to meet Jacob at Bethel, or had she travelled all the way to Padan-Aram to find him? In her death a very precious link with the past was broken.
The tree by which she was buried received the name Allon-bachuth, the oak of the weeping. This probably intimated the esteem in which she was held. She was probably a much loved person, and her passing caused Jacob sorrow and tears.
This incident reminds us that even when our spiritual state is the best, we are not immune to the common afflictions of life. “Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”
Thank God, when the grief of bereavement presses sore upon us, and we sorrow over the loss of loved ones, we sorrow not as those that have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13).
“Is there anything you are in the habit of doing which dulls your sense of fellowship with God or takes the keen edge off your spiritual life? Whatever impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off the relish for spiritual things; that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.”