Grace—Even After All That

As we come to Genesis 35, it seems like all of the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—have been on a roller coaster of obedience, failure, grace, obedience, then failure again. That is because they have. So have we. These fathers of faith were to know that grace has a path of obedience that it walks out, but while that can focus on the conditions of the covenant, there is a flip side that is very good news. Grace meets us to empower that obedience. As Paul said to Titus, “For the grace of God has appeared … training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age … a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (2:11, 12, 14). It is good news that God will persist in fulfilling his holy purposes with us. 

• Grace corrects our course.

• Grace buries our idols.

• Grace recalls the promise.

Doctrine. Grace is greater than all our sins—from the beginning to the end.   

Grace corrects our course.

By this I do not just mean that grace gives us a “second chance.” Of course it does that and more—“his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (Lam. 3:22-23)—but this can be meant subjectively, as if those second chances were a new blank slate to follow our hearts on! No, instead, God sets the course. Listen to the words of the text:

“God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau’” (v. 1).

Jacob started well after wrestling with the angel. So we often start well and deviate. We are in need to be told, “repent, and do the works you did at first” (Rev. 2:5). A loving Father gives course corrections, as the next chapter in Revelation to the churches echoes the words of the Proverb, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent” (Rev. 3:19).

If grace corrects our course directly—namely, from God to us as individuals—it also corrects courses indirectly. What I mean is that, as you move on to the next verses, Jacob fulfills the role of prophet, priest, and king to his family. He relays the whole message to them. And he does not presume on their salvation. He addresses their foreign gods and then points them ‘to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone’ (v. 3). That’s not to exclude them. Just the opposite, it is to make sure that they take seriously being included. We think of how the Puritans of old had such a tremendous burden that so many who heard them week after week were not in fact born again. The father of a household must carry that same burden, as Job, who we are told,

“would send and consecrate them [his children], and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.’ Thus Job did continually” (Job 1:5).

There is no statute of limitations on a Christian parents’ duty to declare God’s claims on our children. It doesn’t matter what failure or offense has been perceived. It doesn’t matter if we ourselves have given up or felt like giving up. If they can hear our voices, then God’s course correction to us is for us to pass down that course correction to unbelieving children.

Grace buries our idols.

Note the contrast here. It is just like the full turn of repentance. Not simply a new goal, and not merely a flight from sin. But always both, a turning from sin to Christ; a turning from false gods to the true God. As when Israel was told, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel” (Josh. 24:23). This was exactly the message Jacob was to give to this infant church:

“So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, ‘Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone” (vv. 2-3).

Notice that Jacob is to lead his whole family into this absolute purification—including ritual washing and changing clothes, prefiguring the priesthood of Israel, as when

“the LORD said to Moses, ‘Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments … So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people; and they washed their garments” (Ex. 19:10, 14).

This very command implies that some still did harbor foreign gods of one kind or another. By now most of these children are grown. We are not given a glimpse into their reaction. Were any of them tempted to be skeptical or bitter, seeing their father to be a hypocrite? They still go on to sin big, so it is not far-fetched. But here is the key. That has nothing to do with Jacob’s call. He is to look at them like the general of a military unit and give these commands: “But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Josh. 24:15).

But hearing the message of repentance is not enough—“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (Jas. 1:22). The putting away of idols is a good violence against our sinful nature. It takes effort and it looks like something. It is even a strong evidence of true conversion. As Paul said,

“For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction … and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:4-5, 9).

So here in this text: ‘So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem’ (v. 4) Remember, that the inward state of the heart is not always needed in a narrative for something to function as a type. Sometimes the Scripture is simply saying: It looks like that. It was a taking and a burying out of sight. The earrings must have had some cultic significance—as when Gomer “adorned herself with her ring and jewelry” (Hos. 2:13), as part of her Baal worship—so their inclusion speaks to the thoroughness of this purification, rather than some absolute statement about earrings in every circumstance

Grace so buried the idols for Jacob that God even caused a supernatural fear to ensure that his mistakes wouldn’t come back to bite him in this case: ‘And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob’ (v. 5). God does not always do this, and this is not any absolute promise to us.

But we are receiving a picture here of something very different than shallow grace or squishy grace, or a grace that is related to my sin only to make me forget about sin in a way that trivializes sin. NO! Grace makes war against my sin, both in Christ’s work (once and for all) but also in the rest of my trajectory in life.

Grace recalls the promise.

One possible lesson, pressed home by some commentators,1 is that after a certain amount of self-imposed suffering, we are finally ready to hear grace. So we hear things that we’ve hear before, but we were hard of hearing.

“God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, ‘Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.’ So he called his name Israel. And God said to him, ‘I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you” (vv. 9-12).

What all is repeated here? The promise of a nation or offspring, that kings will come from him, and then the land promise. What might be easily missed is the reaffirmation of the Genesis 1:28 language of filling the earth. This makes all the more sense when the church explodes outward from the Jewish people to the Gentiles.

Why is the name change repeated? Belcher comments that it serves “as a reminder of his change of character and the need to be fully committed to God.”2 We need a new identity in Christ. In Adam, we always have the sense of running from ourselves. Traditionally, we bury that sense. We repress it. We set to work on other things, as if they last. Now, in our culture, we physically seek to re-identify ourselves. And on the other extreme, often the church will press back against this, as if the identity of the individual is the whole problem. But no—God made us as individuals and to long to feel loved as individuals and to be fulfilled in the individual way that God made us. Jacob is not only a type of a people group—he is that—but he is also a type of an individual whose identity will be given by God. And to the individual child of God—each of His sons and daughters need to hear that, for you personally:

“the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29).

There is one more act of recall here, and its from Jacob. First, we read in the summary introduction to this scene: ‘there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel’ (v. 7). He is reaffirming, or recommitting himself to, the truth which he had known before, that God has been with him here in a special way. It is like the punctation on repentance, and it is a gracious exclamation mark to say, in effect, How could I have forgotten? How could I have made such a mess of things?

“Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you” (Ps. 116:7; cf. 31:21-22).

The mess we have made is recalled—not to drown in the shame, but to remember that He who was there from the start remains through it all.

“Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it. So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him Bethel” (vv. 13-15).

Jacob needed to do more than hear the promise again. He needed to speak it, to himself and to others.

Rachel would need to hear it repeated, as her days were short.

“And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, ‘Do not fear, for you have another son.’ And as her soul was departing (for she was dying), she called his name Ben-oni; but his father called him Benjamin” (vv. 17-18).

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Instruction. From this passage we are instructed that God calls his saints who are most aware of his grace to spend their latter years laboring that grace into our loved ones. The realization of grace staying with us means that its never too late until the Lord takes us home. God decides when the labor is done (when its too late) and that comes only at death. We never say NEVER about those we have walked this life with. Jesus said, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work” (Jn. 9:4). None of us should ever say, “No, I’m done. I give up. It hurts too much to think of them like this. I gave all.” No, Christ gave all.

We don’t give up, since God did not have His grace give up on us. Grace till the end is needed because of sin till the end. This isn’t the ninth of nine lives for Jacob. Even after all this, we read this incidental detail: ‘While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine. And Israel heard of it’ (v. 22). And more trouble will come, so more grace will be needed.

Use 2. Correction. Grace is incompatible with undermining a father’s command of his home and his call that the home be purified. It is customary in Evangelical to celebrate Father’s Day by pummeling fathers with law without mercy; but I have always seen fit to go a different route.

Jacob had just blown it big in bringing them to Shechem. Now what? Jacob’s right to speak, his ground to obey and fulfill the role of head of his home, was one-hundred percent, the righteousness of Jesus Christ in his place, and zero percent his own performance. And that means that not one percent of his performance can be used as an excuse to sideline him or bog him down with charges of hypocrisy. His wife needs a husband NOW—not once he gets all cleaned up. His children need a father NOW—not once he measures up to this guy or that guy, who I’m pretty sure is someone infinitely less than Jesus.

We make ourselves traitors to King Jesus if we ever set ourselves up over any man and say, “No, no, you answer to me until you can get yourself cleaned up, and then we can talk about your calling to lead your home.”

NO—Israel’s hope to get back up and lead, and your hope for the same, is JESUS CHRIST having embodied the perfection of the law and having taken the whole weight of your sin—not for cheap grace, but a costly grace that frees up fathers to obey right now without delay and without condemnation.

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1. Hughes, Genesis, 420.

2. Belcher, Genesis, 214.