Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2006 : March 12, 2006

Theme: It's Not Easy Being a Christian When...I'm Alone

Church year occasion: Lent 2

(Spoken in 1st person, after running up to the front of church, breathless) "O man, am I tired! Is he coming? I hope not. Boy, is my life a mess! You think you've got problems! Maybe you do, but they must be pretty bad to compare to mine. My family is a big mess. I'm running for my life from my brother who's trying to kill me. (Look back over shoulder to see if he's coming) And now I'm all alone. All I have is my staff -- and I'm supposed to travel 500 miles on foot to my relatives in Haran -- and I don't even like the outdoors! God's probably turned his back on me, too, after what I pulled.

"Sorry. Maybe I should introduce myself. My name is Jacob. That's right, Abraham...Isaac...Jacob -- I'm Abraham's grandson, Jacob. My father Isaac sure named me right. Jacob means "heel-grabber." He named me that because I was grabbing my twin brother Esau's heel when we were born. He's the one chasing me. But my name means more than that. You wouldn't say, 'You're grabbing my heel,' you'd probably say, 'you're pulling my leg.' It means you're kidding around, not telling the truth, deceiving them. That's what I am -- a deceiver; a liar. And that's just what got me in this mess. (sit down)

"Years ago I deceived my brother Esau into giving me his birthright. As the oldest, he should have gotten it. He would have been head of the family after our father dies, and gotten twice the inheritance as me. But most importantly, in our family it meant that the promised Savior would be one of his descendants. But one day he was famished after a long day of hunting, and I traded him a bowl of soup for the birthright. I know I should have trusted God to take care of it, but I couldn't resist.

"But just a few days ago, my mother Rebekah heard my father tell Esau to go hunting and cook up what he caught just how he likes it, and then he'd give my brother Esau his blessing. So Esau was still trying to get the blessing, even though he sold it to me -- and my father was still trying to give it to him even though God told him I should have it. So my mom convinced me to pretend I was Esau. He's a hairy guy, so I put goat's fur on my hands and neck, dressed up in his best clothes and went into my father with the two goats my mom prepared. My father is blind, so we hoped it would work. He was pretty skeptical at first, but I lied straight through my teeth, right to his face. When he asked me how I got done hunting so fast, I even said God helped me out. What blasphemy! But it worked. My father blessed me by saying I would rule over all my brothers and God would bless me with all kinds of physical blessings. And just after I left the tent, Esau came in. He begged for his blessing, but my father couldn't give him any. He just predicted that Esau and his descendants would live hard lives away from God's blessings, and they would serve me and my descendants. That made Esau really mad, as I'm sure you can imagine. Now he wants nothing more than to kill me. What a mess! I lied to my father and deceived my brother, I probably won't see my mom again, and now I'm very much alone. I bet God has left me, too. Why wouldn't he? But I need him now more than ever. (Yawn) But it's dark now and I have no torch, and I'm dead tired. I'll go to sleep and try to get myself out of this mess tomorrow. Let's see, I suppose this rock is as good a pillow as I'm going to find tonight. Wow, it can't get much worse! Oh, wake me up if Esau comes, OK? Thanks. Good night."

Jacob was alone, and he had only himself to blame. He made his own bed, and now he had to lie in it. What should God have done with Jacob? Probably leave him, right? Since he wanted to do things his own way all the time, let him do that and see how much more of a mess he gets himself into. Serves him right. God probably should have treated Jacob that way, but he didn't. Jacob was about to go to school -- God's school. When Jacob left his family he was alone and scared and a deceiver. Twenty years later he would come back with a firm trust in the Lord God and ready to do his will. That change needed to take place because Jacob would be called Israel, the father of God's people. Yes, God probably should have abandoned Jacob -- Jacob certainly deserved it -- but instead he showed Jacob the full extent of his love because he knew that Jacob needed him now more than ever.

Let's read our text and see our amazing God in action.

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said, "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac."

That would have gotten Jacob's attention pretty quickly, don't you think? At just the right time, God gave Jacob what he needed in his difficult life. The stairway closing the gap between earth and heaven showed that God was anything but far away, and uncaring about his servant. No, he was very concerned about Jacob and had direct, personal contact with him. He had his angels busy serving Jacob. He called himself the LORD, the gracious covenant God of free and full forgiveness. Based on that powerful picture, the LORD made Jacob some promises -- the same he had made to Abraham and Isaac before him. "I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying." Jacob now had nowhere to call home, but God would graciously give him the very land he was lying on. In fact, it would be the very land on which God's Son himself would walk and teach and do miracles, and eventually suffer and die. He said to Jacob, "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." Jacob would have many descendants, even though at the present time he wasn't even married, but God would take care of that. God said, "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring." This was the greatest promise -- the Messiah, the Savior, would be one of Jacob's descendants -- obviously all people would be blessed through Jesus, and Jacob had a part in that by God's design because he would be an ancestor of the coming Christ. "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." Jacob wasn't alone; God himself was with him. In spite of Jacob's sins, God would shower his forgiveness on him and bless him. Eventually, all these promises were fulfilled for Jacob in God's good time.

What has your life been like this past week? Has everything gone according to plan -- no worries at all; it's very obvious God is with you just as he always is -- or does it seem that he might be far off, not caring about how your life is going at all? Maybe some of our problems are of our own making, just like Jacob's. Maybe we've been the ones to go away from God and his will by doing things our way. Do we think listening to God's Word is boring so we distance ourselves from it? Maybe we're all alone because we want to live life the way the world does, not like some boring Christian is supposed to live. Maybe we don't know why we feel alone, but we just do.

Sometimes when we feel alone, it's God's making. Perhaps he took a spouse or a child in death. It's easy for us to blame God or to grow bitter toward God and others. God might be putting you through the school of hard knocks right now. He wants to cut off your sinful corners of self-reliance, cut you down to size, so you finally realize that the only way you'll be a good disciple of Jesus is by following his will, not your own.

When you feel alone and worthless, God is with you, fulfilling his purpose through you and for you, and continually blessing you as well. And just as his timing was impeccable in Jacob's case, so it is with us as well. The Apostle Paul said in our second lesson:

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5)

If God didn't care for us personally, do you think he would have sent his own Son to die for our sins in our place? Of course not! But if God wouldn't spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how won't he also give us everything else we need besides? He will, and he has through Christ. Any time we think that God is far off and not concerned with his creation, we can look at the cross and just begin, just begin, to get an idea of how much God loves us, because we will never be able to search out the unsearchable riches of God's grace to us in Christ. Jesus himself referred to this episode in Jacob's life and showed it was a picture of what he would do for us. He told his disciples in John 1:51, "You shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man." So Jesus was calling himself the stairway to heaven. He is the way, the truth and the life -- no one comes to the Father but by Jesus. And he's promised to be with you to the end of the world, just as he promised to be with Jacob. And the Holy Spirit has given you the eyes of faith to see that your eternal punishment for all the times you've tried to live life your way and not God's has been washed away forever.

When we see that awesome sight of God's forgiveness of our horrible sins, we have to have the same reaction as Jacob:

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

Jacob was ready after seeing God's grace to live his life with his eyes of faith wide open. So are we. We can live our faith when we see what the cross means to us. God is with us. God is protecting us. God is blessing us. We just have to open up the eyes of faith that God has given us. We need to see God's grace, especially the grace of the cross and what Jesus did for us there. He would give up his life as a ransom for all our sins there. That's why he can tell us, "I'm with you always -- to the very end of the age." And we can believe him and know it's true, and that he's with us even right now. True -- it's not easy being a Christian when we're alone. So isn't it nice to know that, as Christians, we'll never be alone? Amen.