Thank you, brother.
Lord, when we come to Your word, it is an awesome thing, because it is the power to change our lives through the Holy Spirit and to, Lord, alter everything at once. It is a powerful thing, Lord.
We come before Your word this morning. Lord, we ask that You would take away the things of man’s mind and man’s flesh, and that, Lord Jesus, Your Spirit would be able to speak, and that You would be able to share with us what is on Your heart this morning.
Now, Lord, we thank You for Your great love for each one of us, Lord—a love that just will not let us go, a love that we can always count on. Lord, we come back today and ask that Your love would shine through the words that are shared this morning. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Well, it has been a while since I have shared. You know, I have been sharing from the Old Testament, and we are on the life of Jacob at this point.
It is important that I share just a little bit from last time, because it directly affects what is on my heart this morning. I am going to share on the life of Jacob one more time, but from a little different perspective.
The real issue in Jacob’s life was what the Lord was dealing with in Jacob. He was the one who had stolen the blessing from his brother Esau. He wanted the things of God; Esau was not that interested, but Jacob was. By deceit, he was able to receive the blessing and the birthright.
Because of that, he had to leave, because his brother Esau had threatened his life. He went through about twenty years of discipline at the Lord’s hand. He had gone to Laban, his uncle, and his uncle was very much like he was—a real schemer and a bottom-line guy who wanted to get all he could out of whatever he had invested in.
So Jacob ran up against a person of his own kind, one of his own nature. The Lord really began to deal with him. He worked so hard seven years for his first wife, and his uncle tricked him, so he ended up with Leah instead of Rachel. Then he worked for another seven years and finally was able to marry Rachel. For another six years, he worked to gain cattle and sheep of his own.
In his later years, the precious love of his life, Joseph, was taken from him, and he suffered in grief for fourteen years. Through all these trials and difficulties, we see this very self-reliant person eventually transformed from a self-reliant, self-centered, all-for-me life into one who is leaning on his staff, his hip still out of joint, and worshiping God. There was a real transformation in his life.
What the Holy Spirit was dealing with in Jacob’s life is an issue He has to deal with in all of us who love the Lord and want to go on with the Lord. The issue is what is referred to in the Word as the natural man.
It is that life we are born with from our parents—the life of our soul. It is reflected in our will. We have our own will. We have our own mind. We can do our own reasoning. Of course, we have our emotions to express how we feel. This is the life of the soul.
This is the life we are born with. It is the life that Adam was born with, the life that God breathed into him. He had soul life.
But what we need to understand is that Adam, even though he was totally innocent and had not sinned, had not taken of the tree of life, which is spiritual life. He did not yet have that spiritual life that God desired him to have.
We remember how he fell into sin through disobedience. Unfortunately, when he fell, all mankind and his descendants fell with him. In other words, we are born with this same nature that Adam had, and it is a fallen nature.
So not only did he have the natural life, but at this point he became what the Bible refers to as the old man, under the sin nature. Praise the Lord, at Calvary’s cross the Lord Jesus Christ, through His victory, has made it so that we have been crucified with Him. Therefore, the old man has been crucified, and we no longer have to serve sin or be its slave. We have been freed from it because the old man has been taken out of the way.
However, the natural man is still there. Your soul is still there. You still have your own will, your own mind, and you still express what you feel from out of yourself. That is the natural man, and that is the issue we find with our brother Jacob.
He wanted the things of God. He was passionate for the things of God. But he tried to possess them through the natural man—through his own willpower, his own reasoning, and his own scheming. That was the natural man, and God could not accept it.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, when He was born, was born without sin. But He did have this natural life. He had His own mind, His own will, and His emotions. Yet that is not the life by which He lived when He was on this earth. He lived by the life given to Him through the Holy Spirit and the Father.
It is simple to understand. The Lord Himself said:
Not My will, but Thine, be done.
He had a will, but He said, “Lord, I do not want to live by My will. I want Your will to be done.”
And what did our Lord say? He said, “I can do nothing of Myself. Whatever the Father tells Me to do, I do it. Whatever He wants Me to say, I say it.” I take Him for my will. I take Him for my mind.
That is what we have to be transformed into: learning to live by that life of Christ which we received when we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Our brother has been speaking on living in the new covenant and how important it is to learn to live by this anointing within. It is a different life.
It is a life that should be animating our soul now. The only way this natural man can be dealt with is through the application of Calvary’s cross in our life.
The Lord Jesus said that he who desires to save his soul life will lose it. But if you want to gain your soul life, then you are going to have to come under Calvary’s cross, take up your cross, and follow Him.
The natural man is gradually weakened through the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Finally, you get to the point where, instead of being dependent upon your own willpower, your own mind, and your own reasoning, you are depending upon the anointing within. You are depending on the life of Christ within, and you say, “Not my will, but the Lord’s will be done.”
That is what the cross is all about in your daily life. When you have a will, and somehow in your circumstances you see that the Lord would have you act or react in a certain way, yet you find yourself unwilling—well, brothers and sisters, if you are going to apply the cross in your life, you have to come to the point where you say, “Lord, I am willing. I am willing to do Your will. Thy will be done.”
The same is true with our reasoning. We can reason according to the world and worldly values, and we find ourselves in deep trouble, just as our brother Jacob did. But God was with him all through his life, and He finally delivered him to the place where he was a spiritual man.
Now, I hope my voice holds out this morning.
This morning, what is on my heart is this matter of the King and His kingdom. As I looked at the story of Jacob’s life, I saw that it was really all about the King and the kingdom, and I wanted to share that with you.
The prophet Isaiah, in the year that King Uzziah died, said:
I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.
Then came his words: “Woe is me. I am undone, because my eyes have seen the King.”
The apostle John was the one who touched the Lord and, I would say, was in touch with the Lord’s heart more than any disciple. John loved the Lord, and he leaned on the Lord’s breast. He knew the Lamb. He knew the Lord personally.
We all know the Lord personally. We know the Lamb. We are familiar with the Lamb, and we meet this morning because the Lamb offered Himself in sacrifice on our behalf. At the Lord’s table, we remember this.
We are familiar with the Lord to some extent, and we love Him. We know He loves us, because if you really understand the table, if you really see what this table is about this morning, there should be no doubt in your heart that the Lord loves you deeply and dearly.
But on the Isle of Patmos, the Lord appeared to John as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Our brother and sister shared this morning in our time of worship. John said that when he saw Him, he fell at His feet as dead.
Before this King, John was undone. He was very familiar with the Lord as the Lamb and with the love of the Lord. But on the Isle of Patmos, brothers and sisters, he met the King—the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
He saw might, authority, power, justice, righteousness, and love in a way he had never seen before. It undid him, and he was on his face.
The point I am making this morning is that we know the Lord to varying degrees. We know Him as the One who loves us dearly and deeply, who gave His life for us. We know Him as the Lamb, as the great Redeemer, the One we can come to for forgiveness, and the One we can come to when we are down and out and He will give us help.
But do we know the King?
Well, He is coming soon. That is the good news. But, brothers and sisters, we need to be before the Lord and say, “Lord, I need to see You as King. I need to know You in this way, or when You come, I will not be ready.”
He is awesome as King. He is above all, and we tremble at His words when we are before this King.
I have only tasted of that a little bit in my lifetime—the two times I was in court, knowing that the judge had the final say over my life and over my punishment. But here is the King, and we need to know Him as both Lamb and King.
This morning, I would like to look at our brother Jacob’s life through the perspective of the King and the kingdom.
We have already talked about Abraham as representing God, the Originator of all things. When we see Abraham’s life, we know that God initiates all things. God has a kingdom. He initiated it. He is the Originator of the kingdom that He desires and wants.
In Isaac, we see the life and way of the King. There are two things in his life that are so critical. One was when his father took him up to Mount Moriah and was ready to sacrifice him on the altar. We know that this is a picture of our Lord: the Father presenting His Son on Calvary’s cross.
In Isaac, we see that kingdom life is Calvary life, brothers and sisters. When we come to the end of Abraham’s life, all is given to Isaac. He inherits everything. He does not have to work for it. It is an inheritance. It is grace, brothers and sisters. This life that we live is a life of grace.
Calvary life and the life of grace go together.
When we come to Jacob, we see the Holy Spirit working to bring Jacob to the place where he is fit for the kingdom.
When you look at New Jerusalem, you see all the stones and pearls. They are believers who have been transformed from living stones into precious stones. When we accept our Lord Jesus Christ, we become a living stone, but there is a great transformation work to be done to turn us into precious stones.
Last time, I shared about the twenty years under Laban—actually, the fifteen years with the loss of Joseph before Joseph was returned to him. All the pressures of Jacob’s life finally transformed him.
God is a God of reality. He is not satisfied with us just knowing His doctrines. He wants us to experience the reality of what these doctrines are about. Jacob had to experience it. His heart was obviously ripped out at the loss of his son, but it did a deep work in our brother. It was a work needed to turn him into a precious stone.
I am still doing an introduction, by the way, so be gracious to me this morning.
When we talk about the King and the kingdom, we need to remember that God’s kingdom means that God is in authority over everything. God is King. Our Lord Jesus is King, and They rule over everything.
The kingdom of God is anything under His authority, and everything is under His authority. But we remember that Lucifer became a fallen angel and turned into Satan.
He was still under God’s authority, because he had to get permission to touch Job’s life. But he was not really a part of God’s kingdom, because he was not in obedience to God. He was not submissive to God. He was opposed to God. He wanted the Son’s place—Christ’s place.
So he was cast out to this earth. Then this earth became dark and void, and there was no kingdom of God on this earth.
Strictly speaking, brothers and sisters, the kingdom of God is where the Lord is King—not only where His authority is expressed, but where there are those who are submissive and obedient to Him. In His kingdom, He is able to express who He is and to express Himself.
This whole creation is an expression of God’s heart. We know it is a fallen creation, but think of the glories and beauties we see in this world alone. He is a creative God, and His kingdom is a reflection of Him.
Whatever He makes reflects Him. He has an artist’s heart. You have artists who paint merely by technique, but you also have artists who paint with an expression of their heart. It is the same with musicians. There is quite a difference between music that is technically right and music that is played from the heart.
This is what our Lord is after: a kingdom through which He is fully expressed.
Adam was created in the image of God, the only creature created in His image and after His likeness. God was going to have man as a vessel to bring His kingdom to this earth and to take it from the hands of Satan back into God’s hands.
I know technically it was still in God’s hands—He never let go of it—but as far as men being submissive, unfortunately, we are submissive to the wrong one. The bottom line is that when Adam fell into sin, the image was lost. The expression was lost.
But God, thank God, moved not only to recover His kingdom, but He determined to redeem man and bring him back to the place where he could be part of His kingdom. He never gave up His heart or His thought.
In the Old Testament, we see this great redemptive work in the coats of skins that had to be slain to cover Adam and Eve’s sin. Later, in the life of Abel, we see that the acceptable sacrifice to be right with God is the blood of a lamb.
Then He raised up Abraham. From Abraham there was to be a people on this earth—a people who would live in the promised land and establish a nation and a kingdom as a testimony that God had a kingdom on this earth.
This kingdom that God raised up on earth as a testimony to all the earth and its peoples came to its peak when David was king. But David was really just a type of the One who was to come.
God’s kingdom finally came to earth when the Lord Jesus Christ was born. His kingdom came to earth. He was fully submissive to God and fully obedient.
The Word says that He is the exact image and expression of the Godhead, and that all the Godhead dwells in Him. He is God’s kingdom on this earth. All the character and nature of God is reflected in our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord: God has sent His kingdom upon this earth.
What was His message? In Matthew 4:17—it is Darby, by the way, not King James—it says:
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn nigh.
That was the Lord’s word to the people: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn nigh.” This word repent was not just dealing with our sins.
Repentance was dealing with who we were outside of Christ. The natural man is not what God can accept. We need to repent of living by the natural man instead of by the anointing and the new covenant we have been called to live in.
Sometimes we think, “Lord, we are just not quite ready.” Well, we are far from ready. When the Lord really begins to open our eyes, we see how much we have been living out of this natural life and by this natural life. We know so little of the King ruling and reigning in our lives. We need to repent.
The Lord’s heart was to save man and redeem man—no doubt about that, brothers and sisters. But there was something greater on the Lord’s heart. Redemption was God’s way of bringing man back into His kingdom.
When we accept Christ, we are translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. So the greater picture is the kingdom that the Lord wants to bring us into and make us a part of. It did require the cross.
In Acts 1:3, during those forty days after the Lord had ascended from the grave and came back to walk the earth, He appeared and disappeared. What was His message?
He presented Himself alive after His suffering by many proofs, being seen by them during forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.
Peter’s first message in Acts 2:36, after Pentecost, was this: “This Jesus, whom you have crucified, is Lord and Christ.” He is not only the Anointed One; He is the King. He is Christ. He is Lord.
Paul, toward the end of his ministry, in Acts 28:31, received all who were willing to come to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.
At Pentecost, the Lord had His beachhead, so to speak, on this earth. Those familiar with war, particularly World War II, understand that when soldiers had to take an island, they first had to establish a little beachhead—a place for their presence to be and from which to operate in taking the whole island.
In the Word of God, when we talk about the kingdom, the Lord speaks of mystery in Ephesians. The mystery of God is Christ, and the mystery of Christ is the church. In the Old Testament, we find types and hints of what God is after.
Now I would like to begin, after this introduction, to look at our brother’s life.
Genesis chapter 28. We will be looking at this chapter for a bit, so you can open it and hold on to it, or follow it up here.
Jacob is being sent out to Laban because Esau is so angry with him. His mother realizes that Esau is going to kill him if he gets hold of him. So she sends Jacob out, and Isaac blesses Jacob.
Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said, “Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother’s father, and take thee a wife thence of the daughters of Laban, thy mother’s brother. And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest become a company of peoples; and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee, that thou mayest possess the land of thy sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.”
The issue here is God Almighty—El Shaddai. I think probably most of us, even our young ones, have in our lives sensed or been dealt with by God Almighty. He is the One who rules over your life even when you do not want Him to rule over your life.
Sometimes you come face to face with God Almighty, and you have to yield. The Almighty, the Deity, the One above everything, the One with all authority, is the One really giving this blessing.
What is the blessing? “You will become a company of people, a multitude of people, and you will inherit or possess the land.”
What does this blessing tell us? It tells us that God Almighty, the One in all authority, is looking for a people—a company of people—who are submissive and obedient; a company of people where He can put His name, where He can begin to express who He is to the world, and where they become a blessing to all the world.
In other words, the Lord was after a kingdom on this earth—a kingdom where He could say, “This is Me,” to the whole world.
Where was this kingdom to be established? In the promised land, in Canaan. Canaan is a type of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to possess the Canaan land—our Lord Jesus.
This picture tells us that God Almighty, the King, wants to recover His kingdom on this earth. He is going to raise up a people through whom He can do that. They are going to be people under His authority and in Christ, because they are in the promised land.
He will have a testimony on this earth to His character, and they will become a blessing to the whole earth. This should sound familiar to us as living stones. In 1 Peter 2:9, it says:
Ye are a chosen race, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession.
From this blessing, brothers and sisters, we begin to see that not only is God interested in transforming Jacob, but what He is after is His kingdom.
Some might say, “Well, Jerry, you may be stretching these Scriptures a little bit to make it all the way to the kingdom.” But let us look a little further at our brother Jacob.
Let us go to Genesis 28:10-15.
Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went towards Haran. And he lighted on a certain place, and lodged there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and made it his pillow, and lay down in that place. And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, angels of God ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood above it, and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land on which thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in every place whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”
Wow. Our brother is on his way to Laban’s house. Of course, he is weary. The sun has set, and he lies down to sleep. He uses a rock for a pillow. I believe I would be dreaming too if I used a rock for a pillow.
Anyway, he has this dream. God appears to him in a dream. What does he see? He sees this ladder. It is touching earth and reaching to heaven. Angels are running up and down this ladder, and from the top, God speaks to him and reaffirms the promises.
Does this not remind you of the Lord’s Prayer?
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Is this not the Lord’s Prayer? These angels are coming up and down the ladder from heaven to earth, declaring God’s will and making God’s kingdom come upon this earth. It is God’s desire to have His kingdom on this earth, His will done on this earth, and a people who will execute that will.
Heaven is brought down to earth in this dream. There is this ladder connecting heaven and earth, so that God’s authority might be known through this ladder and through the angels, the messengers, going up and down.
The Lord is showing Jacob something. Frankly, when you look at Jacob’s life, all he is interested in from God is being blessed. That is what he is interested in.
But the Lord is trying to show him something much greater—something of His purpose, something of how He is going to bring about His purpose, and that Jacob, the one interested in blessing, is going to be part of this kingdom.
Let us look for the spiritual application in John 1:47-51.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, “Behold, truly an Israelite in whom is no guile!” Nathanael said to Him, “Whence knowest Thou me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.” And He said to him, “Verily, verily, I say to you, Henceforth ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man.”
Jacob’s dream. You see what Jacob was dreaming.
I think Nathanael understood exactly what the Lord was saying. It was based on Nathanael’s recognition that Jesus was the Son of God and the King of Israel. That is extremely important.
They were looking for a Messiah, but they had no idea He was the Son of God. Nathanael had been given this revelation as soon as he saw the Lord—that He was the Son of God. I hope we have all had that experience when we met the Lord: that we were speaking to God, the Son of God.
Not only that, but Nathanael said, “You are the King.” The Lord said, “I am going to show you greater things. You are going to see the Son of Man with angels descending and ascending upon Him.”
In other words, this ladder is the Lord Jesus Christ in Jacob’s dream. He is the One able to establish God’s kingdom on this earth. It is by our Lord Jesus Christ that God can come to this earth and express Himself.
Not only is Jesus the ladder; He is the angels as well, because He has given us His message. He is God’s Messenger, His true Messenger.
Jacob is beginning to see that this great family God is talking about is not simply a great company of people. They are to be God’s kingdom on this earth.
When the Lord Jesus came to this earth and walked as a man, even though Nathanael saw who He was, many did not. When He did not meet their expectations of kingship—of overthrowing the Roman government and making them top dog—they turned against Him. They crucified the King.
They killed Him. After three days, He arose from the dead, and we know He ascended to the throne.
But what about His kingdom on this earth, brothers and sisters? The King has gone back to His throne in heaven, but what about the earth? Had the enemy really won at Calvary? Was God’s purpose for a kingdom on this earth lost?
Actually, we can find the answer back in Genesis and Jacob’s life. Let us turn again to Genesis 28:16-22.
Jacob awoke from his sleep, and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” And he was afraid, and said, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” And Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone which he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I go, and give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, and I come again to my father’s house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God. And this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that Thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.”
That old bargaining natural man—our brother Jacob.
I mentioned that the Lord was on the throne after Calvary, but what about His kingdom on earth? We see what happens in Jacob. When he awakes, the ladder is gone. The voice is gone. What is left is this stone that he had been using for a pillow.
He sets it up, and he anoints the stone as a testimony that this is God’s kingdom on earth. This is His house: Bethel, the house of God.
With the anointing, the stone has become the house of God—a testimony on this earth of God’s kingdom.
What is the spiritual application of this part of Jacob’s experience—not the dream anymore, but his awakening to what the Lord has shown him?
In the book of Acts, one hundred and twenty disciples gathered in the upper room. The Lord had appeared to about five hundred and told them to gather and wait upon Him until the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. One hundred and twenty were faithful to that calling.
On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on these one hundred and twenty. When our Lord Jesus ascended back to the throne, the holy oil of the Holy Spirit was poured upon the King’s head and came down to the skirts of His garment, which were these one hundred and twenty disciples.
This is a picture of Psalm 133:2, where it talks about the oil being poured on Aaron’s head, the high priest, and coming down his garments all the way to the hem.
In 1 Corinthians 12:13, we are told what actually happened spiritually: they were baptized into one body, the body of our Lord Jesus Christ—the church, the living stones. They were now a house.
They were the body of Christ. They were the ones called to be God’s kingdom on this earth.
What was Jacob’s reaction? Back in Genesis 28:17, Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” He was afraid and said, “How dreadful is this place!”
What a strange reaction to such a glorious dream. He was afraid. “Dreadful”—the house of God.
When we think of the house of God, rightly so, we think of life, fellowship, love, and freedom of the Spirit. These are wonderful things.
But when we see the kingdom, what do we think of? We think of authority, government, responsibility, discipline, and order. That is the kingdom.
The kingdom and the house of God do not seem to go together, but they are two sides of the same coin. The kingdom and the church are to be one.
There is life, but with authority. There is fellowship, but with government. There is grace, and there is responsibility. There is freedom, but there is order. There is love, and there is discipline. They belong together. That is what God’s kingdom is.
Even the natural man can enjoy the house side of this—the fellowship, life, grace, and freedom. But it trembles at government. It trembles at God being in full authority in our lives. That is what Jacob had to face, yet we see how he bargained with God.
You can be in a place where there is fellowship, love, some life of the Lord, and some grace expressed. But I want to tell you, brothers and sisters, God is after a kingdom. His house has this other side to it: government, discipline, authority, and responsibility. It is all part of the same thing.
If there is no authority, discipline, or responsibility taken up, it is really not the house He is after. It is not His kingdom. With spiritual life there is authority; with fellowship, government; with spiritual grace, responsibility; with spiritual freedom, the order of the Holy Spirit; and with spiritual love, discipline.
At this point, Jacob is a part of the house. He is in it, but he is not of it. He is still after what Jacob can get out of it. He is not really of the house.
Our Lord Jesus says that we can be in the world, but we should never be of it. Here is a living stone in it, but not truly of it at this point. Jacob recognizes something of what he has seen and something of the truth, but he is not ready to fully commit because of that independent nature of the natural man. He wants to be his own king. Bottom line.
He is terrified. You remember the story in Acts when Ananias and Sapphira sold some land and said, “We are giving all of this to the saints.” They wanted the praise of men.
The Holy Spirit immediately disciplined them, and they both died. It was severe discipline, and it says the whole church feared. That was the strength and power of the life and authority of God in that early church, brothers and sisters. That is the kingdom.
Jacob moves on. He is under God’s sovereign authority, but he is not truly submissive to the Lord. So the Lord lets him go on in his own natural life while still controlling the circumstances of his life.
After twenty years with Laban and all of his difficulties, God finally speaks to him again in a dream. In Genesis 31:13, He says:
I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, where thou vowedst a vow unto Me. Now arise, depart out of this land, and return to the land of thy kindred.
After twenty years of discipline, God is finally able once again to appear to him. He does not say, “I am the God of Abraham and Isaac.” He says, “I am the God of Bethel.” Obviously, He wanted to bring Jacob back to what His original purpose was—to get him back to the house of God.
Jacob responds and begins to leave. “I am the God of Bethel. You need to be committed to Me as your King, and you need to live in My kingdom.”
On the way back, Jacob comes to the river Jabbok, next to Peniel. He receives a very disturbing message: his brother Esau, whom he had tricked, is coming with four hundred men.
Jacob is basically undone. He comes up with all these schemes to try to pacify his brother. In the end, he has to be willing to give it all to Esau. He has to be willing to give it all up.
The Lord meets him that night and wrestles with him. You remember how they wrestled all night long, and as the sun began to rise, Jacob would not let go of the Lord. He said, “Until You bless me, I am not going to let go.”
The Lord blesses him with the same blessing, but first He touches his thigh—his natural strength. That natural man is what God is touching in our brother Jacob. He touches him, and Jacob is wounded in his hip for the rest of his life.
God has to get him ready for Bethel. The natural man never survives at Bethel.
Jacob was still after the blessing, but God wounds him there. The Lord changes his name and says, “Your name is now Israel, no longer Jacob.” Israel means striving with God in Hebrew, but the Jewish people say it means, “God is King.” I thought that was interesting. He had to recognize that God was King.
In Genesis 33:17, Jacob is on the way to Bethel, but he settles in Succoth. He does not go to Bethel. He settles down and builds himself a house. He is not ready for Bethel.
Then the Lord raises up circumstances. Jacob’s daughter Dinah is taken by one of the local rulers, and eventually her two brothers, Jacob’s sons, go in and slay all the men of that particular tribe. Jacob becomes extremely disturbed. He says, “All the people of the land will now be against us. We have to leave.”
At that point, in desperation, Genesis 35:1-4 says:
God said to 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.” And Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, “Put away the strange gods that are among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments; and we will 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.”
God appears to him and says, “Go to Bethel,” and then He adds the words, “Dwell there.”
Jacob was trying to dwell somewhere else in hopes that it would be acceptable. But God finally wakes him up and gets him back to Bethel. God once again calls him Israel and repeats His promises.
He goes back to Bethel, anoints the rock again, and sets up a testimony. Finally, Jacob is of the house.
Before, he had been a living stone in it. But finally, after all those years—twenty years—he is of the house. He is in it. He is one with it. He is of it.
But, brothers and sisters, that was not the end. Just getting back to the house, being a part of it, and really being of it was not the end. He had to be further disciplined, and he lost his son Joseph, his precious love.
You need to know that in our life with the Lord, in our becoming a precious stone, the Lord will deal with all of our loves—every one of them. I do not care what they are. He will deal with what we love. He has to, to turn us into a precious stone.
Last time, I talked about a lump of coal, what our soul is like. It can be transformed like a diamond. A diamond is transformed through millions of tons of pressure, heat, and time—many, many centuries before a diamond is made from coal. That is our soul life. That is what happens: transformation into a diamond.
At this point, you might say that Jacob had finally become a diamond, but it was not polished yet. It may have been a five-carat diamond, but to serve God’s purpose, it needed to be cut to one carat—to get the perfect angle and the reflections that are needed.
Jacob’s life of transformation was still going on. Finally, after fifteen years, we know the story because we have read it recently: Joseph has become the ruler of Egypt. Jacob sees his son and is restored to his son. Praise the Lord.
At the end of Jacob’s life, he is leaning on a staff, worshiping God, satisfied with God. A man who only sought blessing has now become a precious stone himself.
Brothers and sisters, it was necessary that he be part of the house—the kingdom on this earth. But there is an eternal kingdom coming. Part of being related to the kingdom on earth is being prepared for the eternal kingdom: the precious stone and the eternal kingdom.
May the Lord use these lessons today to help us use our brother’s life to see His kingdom and the King.
Lord, we do thank You this morning for Your blessings. We really do, Lord. We want to say that we appreciate Your blessings. But Lord, we thank You that You are doing a transforming work.
It is our heart, Lord, that we would see our King and yield to our King; that we would become living stones in the kingdom of God, being transformed into precious stones.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, Lord. Amen.