For each sermon, I usually practiced 2-4 times at home. I changed the sermon sentences (even structure) here and there while I was practicing it. And I usually skimmed through the entire sermon on Sunday morning with my coffee.
I usually don't have a topic for each sermon. I don't find it necessary. If I have to have one, I name it after I finished preparing the sermon. After re-reading this sermon, I name it "From Bethel to Bethel: Jacob meets Jacob."
Scripture: Genesis 28:10-22; 35:1-8
Topic: From Bethel to Bethel: Jacob meets Jacob
When Jacob was born, he grasped his brother’s heel, Esau. Thus, he was named Jacob, meaning “he grasps the heel.” It also means “he deceives.” This is Jacob. Gen. 25:27—“The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents.” He was a quiet man. Every time he did anything, he thought about it twice. He thought about himself—his own interest. This is how he dealt with people. This is how he interacted with God. He thought about how to grab his brother’s birthright. By the time he fled from home, he also grabbed his brother’s blessing from Isaac. He deceived Isaac by pretending that he was Esau. Jacob’s actions expressed Jacob’s name outwardly.
Bethel was just a common place until Jacob met God in that place. Bethel means “house of God.” The first time he stopped by Bethel, it was the beginning stage of his faith. It was the first time he learned about God directly. He heard about the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac. Now, the God of Abraham and Isaac is about to become the God of Jacob. In the passage, God gave him Abraham’s promise (Gen. 12:2-3): “I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (28:14). Then God assured him a threefold promise (Gen. 28:15): “I am with you” (presence); “I will protect you” (protection); “I will bring you back to this land” (homecoming).
We all meet God in different places. Those places become sacred and memorable. I guess that GCAC is the place where most of us found God, or being found by God. We meet God here in our conversions, in our repentance, in our prayers, in our fellowships, in Sunday worship, in our relationships, in our marriages, etc…God is not confined by the four walls of the building, but we do experience him in this place. It’s the place we grow old, where we change without knowing it, where we grow up. Bethel was the place where Jacob met the God of his ancestors—“I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.” (Gen. 28:13)
Notice how Jacob replied, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth” (Gen. 28:20-22). By nature, Jacob dealt with things or with people always with a conditional sentence. He also dealt with God with a conditional sentence: “If…” Jacob followed and loved God with conditions.
In On Loving God, Bernard of Clairvaux suggested four degrees of loving God:
1. When man loves himself for his own sake.
2. When man loves God for his own good.
3. When man loves God for God’s sake.
4. When man loves himself for the sake of God.
The first time Jacob met God in Bethel, Jacob loved himself for his own sake. God is someone he could bargain with. God is someone he could utilize for his own good. Although he “loved” God, he loved and followed Him for his own sake.
Twenty years later, Jacob arrived at Bethel again (see Gen. 31:38). He reasoned his faith differently. He interpreted his relationship with God differently. In the past twenty years, he experienced God—His goodness and benevolence towards him. He said to his household, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. Then come, let us go up to Bethel, where I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone” (Gen. 35:2-3). The place Bethel, after twenty years, is renamed. It’s called El Bethel—God of the house of God (35:7). Jacob visited the same place. What he saw was more than the house of God: He saw God in the house of God. Same reality; different theological horizon. Same place; different Jacob. Jacob stood at the place where God promised him the threefold promise twenty years ago. He now said, He “answered me…”
Jacob needed twenty years to prove what God promised him when he was in Bethel the first time. Now, the second time he was in Bethel, he was a changed person. Not only did he get older, but he also grew up in his understanding of God. Now, the conditional sentence no longer worked for him, for he realized that God never treated him with a conditional sentence. God never said, “If you love me, I will bless you. If you tithe, I will give you more, etc…” Rather, God said to him twenty years ago, “I will be with you. I will watch over you. I will bring you back to the land.” A divine promise with no condition.
I remember when I was in college, I wanted something so bad, but I didn’t get it at the time. One day I remember I was reading Romans, it said, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? (Rom. 8:32) Theologically, He promised us with a condition. But he fulfilled that condition for us by giving us his Son. Through his Son, He assured His promise for us. Thus, to himself, He promised with a condition in his Son. To us, He promised with no condition, for we have believed in His Son and received Him as our Lord. Free gift; grace only.
From Bethel to Bethel, we are changed persons. Or we are surprised by our unchanged spirituality over the years?
From GCAC to GCAC, it’s in this place I made many major decisions: my faith, my work, and my marriage. It’s in this place I name it “Bethel—the house of God.” I turn from my sins in this place. I commit my sins in this place. It’s in this place where the cycle of falling short and turning from has occurred. The first time I came to GCAC, I was a non-believer. What did it mean to believe in Christ and follow him? I didn’t really know. I didn’t have any prior knowledge of Christian faith. I didn’t like religion anyway. Why believed something to let people label you as a religious freak? The second time I came back to GCAC after seminary training, I am a pastor. What did it mean to serve Christ and his people? I didn’t really know. Even now, sometimes I wonder, “Am I doing the right thing?” When I returned the second time, I guess I returned with more knowledge of Christian faith, but not with more knowledge of His Church and the people in it.
But from GCAC to GCAC, I believe that my faith has grown mature. In the beginning, I brought my problems to God. I had my problems. I prayed to God. It was all functional. Now, my problems lead me to God. It’s relational. In the former, I just wanted to deal with my problems. In the latter, I want to deal with my problems with God. In the beginning, the fact that God was remote wasn’t good for me to understand the presence of God; now the hiddenness of God or the remoteness of God is part of my faith. I am glad to accept and embrace this aspect of my faith. In the beginning, problems hindered me from maturing. Now, problems make me become mature. In the beginning, I thought that problems came from outside. Now, I start to realize that problems come from within: from who I am, from my own worldview, and from the inner self.
From Bethel to Bethel, we see the life of Jacob: how he interacted with his father, Isaac and his brother, Esau, and how he interacted with his uncle, Laban and his own family: four wives and 12 sons and one daughter. What we usually miss is how God interacted with a person like Jacob. Did God know Jacob when he said, “If you…” in Genesis 28? I believe so. Did God want him to change that? I believe so. But did God know that it took Jacob twenty years to realize his inner core problem? I don’t think so. But God waited for twenty years. God waited. He never let him get away with his core problem, for that’s where Jacob needed to face and deal with in order to grow up and be a better person.
Someone asked, “What to do now! Convert the world?” A man replied, “No.” Then he continued, "Convert the church? As it’s famously said, ‘Judgment begins at the house of God.’ It has the divine light and divine provisions, and because of that is most responsible to guide humankind." The man replied, “But ‘no’ again. Do not ‘convert the church.’ Your first move ‘as you go’ is, in a manner of speaking: Convert me.”
When Jacob wrestled with God in Gen. 32:22-32, Jacob was left alone across the river. One night, a man came to wrestle with him till daybreak. The Bible says, “When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’ But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ Then the man asked him a question, “What is your name?” Then Jacob answered, “Jacob.” (Gen. 32:25-27) This is the first time, in the narrative, Jacob directly said his name: “I grasp. I deceive. I cheat.” What is your name? I cheat. What is your name? I deceive. What is your name? I grasp. It is like a drug addict finally admits, “You know, I think I might have a drug problem.” This is Jacob’s confessional statement. In his entire life, he never made a confession. He never got converted. Then the man said to Jacob in v. 28, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel (meaning “he struggles with God”), because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” The change of name indicates a radical shift in Jacob: from self-governing to theo-governing, from selfishness to confession, and from conversion to regeneration.
It took Jacob twenty years to make such a confession: Convert me. Convert the world? Convert the church? “Your first move ‘as you go’ is, in a manner of speaking: Convert me.” From that moment on, Jacob loved God for God’s sake.
For us, how many years does it take to love Him for the sake of Himself?
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