Genesis 28:19

LIFE’S BETHELS

‘He called the name of that place Bethel.’

Genesis 28:19

Jacob had his Bethel, and it came to him just at the moment when we should least have expected it, just at the time when he was smarting under the sense of his own sin, and loneliness, and outlawry. The King of Love Himself appears to him, and says: ‘I will go with thee wherever thou goest.’ Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity, and we never find a man down on his luck, out of work, or in trouble, or in any difficulty, but what the Bible comes and speaks to him, and says: ‘God loves you; Jesus died for you.’ And even now and here, in the midst of your present extremity, God is ready to befriend you. Yea, though thy father and thy mother forsake thee, the Lord will take thee up. Oh, this blessed linking of earth to Heaven, of the sinner to God by the great Mediator Jesus Christ Himself!

I. What makes our Bethel? Is it not the sense of God’s nearness to us and our need of Him? The churches would all be full if the people felt their need of God, for this is God’s house, and we want it to be the gate of Heaven to you all. Now, and here in God’s house, we may look up into Heaven and see there our Saviour, Who loves us with an everlasting love, and round about Him those whom we have ‘loved and lost awhile,’ our dear ones who worshipped perhaps in this very church, who found it good to be here, who often said when they left church, ‘This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven.’ If they could speak to us from Paradise to-day, do you not think they would say something like this: ‘Oh, I am so glad to find you in God’s house, thinking about Him, and His love, and His great claims upon your life. I am so glad to find you there, away from the rush and the roar, and the unsatisfactoriness of mere earthly pleasure and excitement’? What is the great reason why pious men of all ages have built these Bethels? Is it not in order that we, with all our multiplicity of temptation, and difficulty, and work, may have close at hand a quiet, holy, beautiful place where we may draw aside from the cares of earth and get close to God and touch the Unseen, and hear the sweet Voice of Love saying, ‘I will go with thee wheresoever thou goest’? Yes, it was a happy moment in the life of Jacob when he and God could talk thus together. It is the beginning of his better life; it is the time when, very feebly and weakly, but very really, he is putting out his hand and catching hold of the Almighty Hand of God the Father; it is the time when he sees, as in a glass darkly, something of the plan of salvation, and how God desires to link our world with His by the Ladder, Who is Jesus Christ Himself.

II. Let us look at Jacob’s beautiful prayer to God, in which he vows a vow of obedience. This is the use of all Bethels—that as God speaks to us we may make our vows back to Him. Church and church-going will do us no good unless we hear God speaking to us in the reading of His Word, and in the preaching, and in the prayers, and in the music, and unless, having heard God’s Voice, we do our part and answer back and make our vows that God shall be our God. Will you do this, will you rejoice before God with this blessed vow of Jacob’s, ‘The Lord shall be my God’? It will help you so all through your life. This is the house of God; we desire that it should be the gate of Heaven. You see sometimes little children pointing upwards, but the Book says that Heaven is where God is, and if God is here then Heaven has begun upon earth. If God is here, then His love is with us, and we shall grow more loving here and now. Why is it that so many homes are said to be hells, and so many business houses are full of gambling, and impurity, and horrible words? Is it not because God is excluded? Cannot some of us take God into these places and create an atmosphere, and bring about a wonderful sense of nearness to God? Let us see to it that, if our lives are spared, we may practise our preaching, that we may translate it into our daily lives, and that this Bethel of ours that has brought us into touch with God and made us feel how Jesus loves us, shall go with us, and that this God shall be our God for ever and ever.

Illustration

‘The Pagan had a poor thought of God, but his gods were very present ones. Our God is greater than his, but not less present to his worshippers. The connection between earth and Heaven is nearer than we are apt to imagine. If, as Southey suggests, our sympathies could be sufficiently quickened we might stand on the mountain at sunrise and hear the soft voices of the wild flowers singing their song of praise to God, while the deeper notes of the oaks and pines make up the harmony.

Better than all angelic ministries was the knowledge that God Himself was by his side, the companion of his wanderings. Never more could Jacob be lonely with such a consciousness. Mountains and streams, clouds and tempests, are but His ministers, fulfilling His word. All these attend upon the steps of a good man who acknowledges his sinfulness and humbly waits on God.’