You Cannot Outrun God’s Salvation Promise

• Good morning Renovation Church Shoreview, my name is Matt and I’m your guest speaker this morning. Pastor Matt Martinez has a very important fantasy football draft tonight so he called me up and said, “hey I need you to speak on Sunday so I can prepare for this draft.” “I mean absolutely, fantasy football above all I guess.”
• Just kidding… I was the one that begged him to join my league.
• This morning, we are in the last week of our summer series “The Life of Jacob”. And we’ve seen the ups and downs of Jacob’s life as his trust in God grows. As he learns and starts to understand the covenant promise God has made to him, his father Isaac, and his grandfather, Abraham. And this morning we will bring Jacob’s story to a close, and as we’ll see… it closes on a somber, yet hopeful note.

1. Image:
1. One of my favorite books is a book called “What’s so amazing about grace” written by author Philip Yancey. It’s just a beautiful collection of stories and illustrations that try to portray God’s immense grace to us. It’s one of the only books, maybe the only book, that I’ve cried while reading. I can’t recommend it enough. However, Philip has written numerous wonderful books about God and faith, but unfortunately, earlier this year, he confessed to his wife and to all those who followed him that he had been engaged in a 9 year affair…
2. Need: We talk a lot about God’s forgiveness of our sins, and how sinners can be forgiven and given the Spirit of God. But I don’t know how much talk there is about major sin after someone has been a believer for a long time. Satan loves to trap mature believers in sin and use shame to neutralize their effectiveness in the kingdom. But that’s not what God wanted for Jacob, and that’s not what God wants for us.
3. Subject: This morning’s message is titled “you cannot outrun God’s salvation promise”
4. Text: Genesis 35:1-15 (page: ____)
5. Preview: This morning we are going to see the problem that Jacob finds himself in, the solution God gives him, and what we do with this story.
6. Context:
1. Now, before we get into Genesis 35, we first have to talk through the context. Last week, Pastor Matt preached through chapter 33 where we see forgiveness and reconciliation between Jacob and his brother Esau as he returns to Canaan, the land God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But he doesn’t return with his brother even though they have been reconciled, whether it’s awkward, or Jacob is still nervous that Esau may change his mind and kill him, he takes his family to live next to the Shechemites. But after an offense against Jacob’s daughter Dinah, he did not go to the Lord for guidance and instead chose deception and passivity which allowed his sons Simeon and Levi to lead an attack against the Shecemites.
2. So Jacob finds himself basically stunned about everything that has happened and his sons

Verses 1-5: “Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.”

2 So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes. 3 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.” 4 So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the oak at Shechem. 5 Then they set out, and the terror of God fell on the towns all around them so that no one pursued them.

BODY

1. Problem: I. Jacob and his family have sinned against God (v.1-5)
1. Jacob’s family has been a curse, not a blessing.
1. Bless those around
2. Protects them from others
3. Laban was successful
4. Esau was blessed through the gift
5. Sechem was supposed to be blessed:
1. His sons took wrath/retribution into their own hands and did not trust God.
2. Supposed to be blessed by God, through Jacob as a microcosm of the greater blessing/salvation of Jesus.
2. Return to Bethel (v.1)
1. God is inviting Jacob back to the place where he first met God and where he first put his trust in him.
1. Genesis 28:20-21: 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “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 21 so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord[a] will be my God.
2. God answers this prayer:
1. God provides for him materially and financially with Laban
2. God gives him wives and kids
3. And ultimately, God brought peace between Jacob and Esau so that Jacob could return to Canaan.
3. So God fulfills Jacob’s prayer - and you’d think, OK great, now that Jacob has seen the blessing of God in his life and he’s confessed faith in him, he is going to follow him and live righteously…” But that’s not what happens, Jacob fails to live up to his previous declaration that “the Lord will be my God.”
4. He chose passivity, and did not seek God, and his family took retribution into their own hands and sinned in a pretty terrible way.
5. So God wants to bring Jacob back to the place he made his declaration of faith.
2. Repentance (idol image)
1. We see these household idols pop up in Jacob’s story, they were likely these small, carved fake gods. They were popular in the ANE. And if you remember, a few weeks ago when we were reading about Laban (Jacob’s father in law) chasing after him, Rachel, Jacob’s wife, had stolen Laban’s household idols, and it looks like they had just been hanging around.
1. Jacob, a man who said the Lord will be his God, kept these false little gods around.
2. A modern corollary for this image, I think would be to add our own idols…
2. And on their way back to Bethel, Jacob leads his family in repentance…
1. It’s a minor detail (v. 2) “get rid of the foreign gods, wash yourselves, change your clothes.”
2. AKA - Turn away from this disobedience, and this idolatry, and prepare yourself for spiritual renewal, i.e. turn towards Jesus
3. Even though they have been following God for a long time, and God has been blessing them for many years, they still needed to repent.
3. Where is the place you have sinned against God?
1. What is that area of your life that you have slowly taken into your own control?
1. What is the area of your life where you have stopped trusting God?
2. Maybe you’ve been following Jesus for many years and many decades and you feel like your sin now is more shameful than the sin you committed while you were a non-believer.
1. I have absolutely felt this before. Because as a Christian we feel like we should have ouryour sin and your weaknesses figured out, we have the Spirit of God living in us and yet like Paul says in Romans 7, “I don’t do what I should do, and I do what I know I shouldn’t…”
2. So what is that area that brings you shame…?
1. Hang onto that for the rest of this message because God hasn’t abandoned his salvation promise to you.
2. This week we are focusing on the sinner, but if you want to hear more about relational reconciliation and forgiveness, I encourage you to watch Pastor Matt’s message from last week.

Verses 6-8: “6 Jacob and all the people with him came to Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan. 7 There he built an altar, and he called the place El Bethel,[a] because it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother. 8 Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak outside Bethel. So it was named Allon Bakuth.[b]

Note: This is what I love about the Bible, it will throw - what seems to be random - statements of fact that help us understand the time and history that this narrative takes place in. In verse 8 it shares that Rebekah’s nurse died and that’s why that place is called Allon Bakuth (alan back-uth, or “oak of weeping”). This is a real story, here on this Earth, with theological and practical ramifications that impact us thousands of years later.

1. Solution: Jacob returned to the place where he met God (v.6-8)
1. Jacob’s First Visit to Bethel
1. The first time Jacob was at Bethel he needed guidance, he was at a low point in his life. He had just swindled his brother out of the covenantal blessing that was already his! And Esau wanted to kill him. So Jacob runs for his life and then God reveals himself to Joseph.
2. And this first appearance at Bethel where Joseph builds an altar for God, this would be a parallel for our salvation experience.
2. He returns 30 years later
1. So Joseph returns to Bethel which was where he put his faith in the living God. And he goes back to Bethel about 30 years after he first went there on his way to serve Laban. He had been growing in his faith for 30 years and even 30 years into his faith journey, he still needed to go back to God, turn away from his sin, turn away from his idols, and ask for forgiveness and restoration.
2. The pattern is repenting (quote)
1. Alistar Begg: “Repenting is not simply something that begins our Christian Experience. Genuine biblical repentance is to be the hallmark of all that Christian living really means.”
2. Whether you’re just coming to faith, or you’ve been a believer for a year, or 30 years, one of the signs of your faith is true is that you keep coming back to God. With whatever sin it is, however big and however small. The pattern of life for the believer is a life of continual repentance.
3. 10 year anniversary of believing
1. My story
2. What is your Bethel? Think back to the season, the moment, the location…
1. And ask God to evaluate your life and just say “Lord are there any idols in my life.
2. Like Jacob, is there anything standing in the way of “the Lord will be my God.
1. An important pattern of the Christian life is to remember your salvation, remember your Bethel.

Verse 9-15: 9 After Jacob returned from Paddan Aram,[c] God appeared to him again and blessed him. 10 God said to him, “Your name is Jacob,[d] but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.[e]” So he named him Israel.

11 And God said to him, “I am God Almighty[f]; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will be among your descendants. 12 The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.” 13 Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him.

14 Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him, and he poured out a drink offering on it; he also poured oil on it. 15 Jacob called the place where God had talked with him Bethel.[g]

1. You cannot outrun God’s salvation promise (v. 9-15)
1. Exegesis: God is re-sharing the Abrahamic covenant with Jacob
1. One-sided covenant, God made a covenant with Abraham but it was one sided. It was a covenant that God himself was to uphold.
1. The Land
2. Descendents
3. Blessing
2. And even after they fallfalling into sin, God re-affirms HIS covenant and says I will do these things not because of you, but because of me (God).
1. Because God is a covenant God who keeps his promises regardless of JacobDavid’s failures and regardless of our failures.
2. Showing the redemption and the forgiveness that God is extending to Jacob, he gives him a new name - ISRAEL.
3. God named a nation after Jacob - that’s redemption.
1. Side bar - that’s a fun little Bible fact for you this morning, the reason why the nation of Israel is called Israel, is because the nation was born out of Jacob - now named Israel
2. [image]
3. These are Jacob’s 12 sons that become the 12 tribes of Israel.
1. Joseph’s spot is given to his 2 sons Manasseh and Ephraim.
2. The descendents of Levi are the Levites, and they aren’t a tribe of Israel, instead they were the religious and priest class of Israel and didn’t own land the same way the 12 tribes did.
3. And Jesus came from the line of Judah
4. So God chose to use Jacob, Jacob failed even after years of following God and we see God forgive and restore Jacob - because Jacob could not outrun God’s salvation promise.
2. Theology: What this means for believers - You cannot outrun God’s salvation promise.
1. In the same way, if you have put your eternal trust in Jesus and his saving work on the cross, you too cannot outrun God’s salvation plan.
2. Whether you’ve been a believer for 5 minutes, 5 months, 5 years, or 50 years, YOU CAN NOT OUTRUN GOD’S SALVATION PLAN.
3. OT: I find it helpful when thinking through my own sin and my own failures to remember the failures of the hero’s of our faith.
1. Abraham - didn’t trust God and lied to Pharaoh about Sarah being his wife.
2. Isaac - Isaac repeated the sin of his father and with cowardice lied about Rebekah.
3. Jacob - as we read in this story, was passive and allowed his sons to take retribution into their own hands and led his whole family into sin.
4. Jacob’s sons sell Joseph into slavery.
5. Moses - saw the gloryglorify of God on mount Sinai and saw his miraculous works in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet he strikes the rock for water and God withholds him from the promised land.
6. David - the one in the Bible said to “be after God’s own heart” commits adultery and murders Uriah by having him sent to the front line.
7. I could go on and on… the Bible is very intentional when it highlights the sins and failures of the father’s of the faith… because none of them were the seed that was promised to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. He shows up on the scene in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and his name is Jesus.
1. He is the blameless, righteous, lamb of God who - as John the Baptist declared - “will save his people from their sins…”
3. Direct Application/Encouragement: God’s salvation promise to you
1. No matter how far you’ve fallen, no matter how hard sin has kicked you on your back, no matter how much you’ve given up on yourself.. You cannot outrun God’s salvation plan for you.
1. Philippians 1:16: 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
1. “he who began a good work in you will finish it”
2. John 6:37: “37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
3. Romans 8:38-39: “38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
4. Eph 1:13-14: 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.
5. John 10:28-29: “28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all[a]; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.”
2. AKA - church, if you have believed in Jesus you cannot outrun God’s salvation promises.
3. Story book end: CT Yancy wife (attachment)
1. “I will not break that promise” that takes immense courage and grace to say something like that. But that’s what Christ says to use when we fall short in our walk with him. He made a promise to us
2. This obviously doesn’t excuse sin, or minimize its effect - we talked about that last week - this week was about God’s redeeming power for his people.
2. Gospel
1. Maybe you’re sitting here this morning and as I was reading God's promises to us in the 5 new testament passages, you realized that those weren’t written to you.
2. That you haven’t put your faith and your trust in Jesus and you a
3. Those promises can be yours, but you need to humble yourself like Jacob did, put away your idols which means to turn away from your sins, and follow Jesus. And these promises of forgiveness, eternal security, and salvation can be yours.