Return to Bethel

Return to Bethel

12 July, 2026

Thesis: Returning to Bethel is a call to spiritual renewal and restoration, where individuals must confront their idols, seek cleansing from sin, and devote themselves to God, ultimately returning to the house of God as mature believers who love and worship Him for who He is, not just what He does.

Summary: The sermon explores the biblical story of Jacob's return to Bethel, where he rebuilds his relationship with God after a period of spiritual compromise. The text highlights three requirements for returning to Bethel: putting away foreign gods, purifying oneself, and changing one's garments. These commands are rooted in God's call to Jacob to leave his past behind and start anew, free from the idols and impurities that had accumulated over time. The sermon emphasizes the importance of recognizing idolatry in our own lives, seeking God's presence and worship, and trusting in His faithfulness and mercy. Ultimately, the text points to Jesus Christ as the ultimate example of returning to Bethel, who came to earth as a prodigal son and demonstrated God's love and redemption through his life, death, and resurrection.

Sermon

# Return to Bethel

All right, good morning, everyone. Let me position this pulpit so I can see everybody. We are going to be in Genesis chapter 35. The title of my sermon this morning is a very simple one: Return to Bethel.

This is very Acts 2-ish, isn’t it? They’re gathering in people’s homes. As long as we’ve got plenty of seats today, we should be fine. If we have to start putting people in the windowsills, I hope I don’t preach long enough for somebody to fall out and die, like what also happened in the book of Acts. That is not on the agenda of things to do.

Genesis 35.

Has anybody ever heard of the 1940 classic You Can't Go Home Again by American novelist Thomas Wolfe? He says those words: You can't go back home again. Of course, he’s referring to your family, your childhood, possibly romantic love. He’s speaking of a young man’s dreams of glory and fame. He’s saying you can’t go back to the things that once seemed everlasting because things are changing all the time.

Wolfe wasn’t entirely wrong, was he? Time goes in one direction. Houses are sold. Parents die. Childhood friends scatter. There’s a sense in which none of us can really return to a moment that has already passed.

Thankfully, the same is not true regarding us and our relationship with God. It’s not true of Jacob, and it’s not true of us. In fact, as we will see, God is always calling the prodigal to come home. The good news is that you can go back home because God seeks and saves the prodigal son.

If you remember Jesus’ parable in Luke 15, the prodigal son squanders his inheritance, goes off into a far country, and loses everything. Then he finds himself feeding pigs, and he’s like, “I had it so much better at my father’s house. I’m going to go home. I’m going to beg him, ‘Hey, just make me like a servant. I just want to go home.’”

He rehearses to himself all the things he’s going to say. He’s going to apologize to his father. Little does he know that the father is already on the road. He sees him from afar, runs to meet him, embraces him with outstretched arms, falls upon him, weeps, kisses him, and brings him back home again.

What we have in Genesis 35 is the Old Testament version of the story of the prodigal son. Like the prodigal returning to his father, Jacob is coming back home to Bethel after his failure in Genesis 34, and God is calling him back to restore him.

We need to set the context. Everybody remember chapter 34? Horrible, right? I had the pleasure of preaching it. There’s rape, murder, and vengeance. We have Jacob being a horrible father. He’s not worried about his daughter being violated or about his two sons, who just killed every man in the whole city. He’s like, “Man, I hope this doesn’t make me look bad in front of everybody else.”

Jacob just makes a mess of things. And yet, here in chapter 35, God calls him back. God says, “I know, Jacob, you blew it. Your family is a dysfunctional mess, but I am calling you back home.”

Let’s read Genesis 35, beginning in verse 1:

And 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.”

So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments. Then let us arise and go 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.”

So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears. And Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem.

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.

And Jacob came to Luz, that is, Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. And there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother.

We’ll pause right there. We will go through the entire chapter, but the bulk of our sermon is going to be concentrated in these verses.

## The Call to Return

First, we notice the call to return to Bethel. God says to Jacob, “Arise, go to Bethel, and make an altar.”

There are three things here. Number one, arise and go. Number two, dwell. In other words, don’t simply pay a visit to Bethel and then go about your life, doing things your own way again. No, go to Bethel and live there. Set up permanent residence there. Then, thirdly, build an altar. Return to prayer. Return to devotion. Return to worship.

The Hebrew word arise is a common word used throughout the Old Testament. God uses this word when he calls Jacob’s grandfather, Abram, to arise and leave Ur of the Chaldees and go to a land that he will show him. He used this word to speak to Joshua after Moses’ death, telling him to go into the Promised Land. Jesus actually uses a Greek word related to this Hebrew word with his disciples in Gethsemane when he says, “Arise and let us go.”

It is God calling someone to leave where they are and go to where he is sending them. Our application for today is this: If you hear His voice calling you, do not harden your hearts, because today is the day of salvation. Perhaps God is calling you to repent of sin, to leave a life of self-control and self-sufficiency. Today, if you hear His voice, arise and go to Him.

Notice he says, “And dwell there.” Don’t visit. Don’t just pass through. This is not a pit stop on your way to somewhere else. God says, “I want you to take up residence in Bethel.” In other words, make the house of God the home for your family.

Here is a word of application for us: What are we building our homes on? What are we building our families on? Is the house of God the house of our families, or are we just visiting Him for an hour or so on Sundays and saying, “You know, see you next week”? No. The call is to dwell in Bethel.

We’ve talked about this before—not us in particular, but if you were with me at the other place. Bethel means the house of God. This is the same place where Jacob, some thirty years earlier, found himself fleeing for his life from his brother Esau, whom he had cheated out of his birthright.

At Bethel, he was exhausted from a day of running. He laid his head upon a rock and made it his pillow. Sounds very comfortable, doesn’t it? He must have been exhausted. There he had a dream or a vision, and there was a ladder stretching from heaven to earth. He saw the angels ascending and descending upon it. God met him there, introduced himself to Jacob, and gave him promises. He promised that he would protect him and provide for him.

Jacob makes a deal with God. His response is conditional: “If you do everything you say you’ll do—if you’ll be with me and give me your presence, your promises, and your protection—then you’ll be my God.”

It’s transactional faith, not yet mature devotion. But he does imply a vow: “I will come back to this place. I will come back to Bethel.”

Nearly thirty years have passed since that time. He’s had children with four different women, accumulated wealth, and, unfortunately, accumulated a lot of items that should not have been present in his household, as we’ll see in just a moment. He has found himself living in Shechem, and we saw in chapter 34 the disastrous consequences of being where he was not supposed to be.

Yet through Jacob’s own time of crisis and his experience of the consequences of his compromise, God mercifully calls him back. Isn’t that the mercy of God, that sometimes He allows the disastrous consequences of our compromise?

I think we expect God to receive us on a performance basis—that if I can somehow stop doing X, Y, and Z, clean myself up, and fix myself up enough, then I can go back to Bethel. But that was not the command, was it? The command was simply, “Come.”

Jacob’s obedience in destroying the idols, purifying himself, and changing his garments, as we’ll see, is a consequence of coming to God. His obedience flows from a heart that has been changed and renewed.

Notice the three requirements for return. In verses two and three, Jacob says to his household and to all who are with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments.” We’re going to spend some time thinking about these three commands. Then he says, “We’ll go to Bethel, and I will make an altar to God.”

Thankfully, we finally see Jacob taking some leadership over his household. The crisis in Shechem really started to reveal the rot that was in Jacob’s family, and now Jacob finally decides to do something about it.

But notice, before we go too far, that Jacob describes God as “the one who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”

Isn’t that amazing? Jacob’s like, “Yeah, I have blown it big time, yet God has not forsaken me. God has still been faithful to me.”

Man, that’s good news, isn’t it? Because I blow it every week; I blow it every day. If my salvation were secure because I was faithful enough, I would surely perish. Thank God we are secure on the basis of God’s faithfulness.

## Put Away the Foreign Gods

Requirement number one: Put away the foreign gods.

Jacob knows that his household—his wives and his children—has been carrying around foreign gods. One thing that’s interesting is that God really doesn’t say anything about throwing away the false gods; Jacob does. Jacob knows that going to Bethel implies getting rid of these idols.

If I am to have my relationship with God renewed and restored, I can’t have these things in my house. I can’t hide these idols in my tent, build an altar outside, pray to God, and then sleep with these little teraphim and these little idols by my bedside.

Where did these idols come from? We read in Genesis 31 that Rachel, his wife, had stolen these gods from her father, Laban. Why on earth did she need them? Well, she didn’t. She wanted them—wanted them so badly that she stole them and hid them under her saddle.

Then, when her father, in anger, was looking for them, she wouldn’t get up because the way of women was upon her. She thought she had hidden these idols. She thought she could get away with this compromise of worshiping Yahweh while holding on to these household trinkets. She was only deceiving herself. Jacob knew about it, her children knew about it, and most importantly, God knew about it.

What on earth were these idols for? In my research, I found out that in the ancient Near East, a lot of times these household idols would be like heirlooms. They would be passed down from generation to generation, and he who possessed the idol possessed the family inheritance.

Perhaps she’s trying to protect Jacob. Jacob’s been scammed for something like twenty-four years—or twenty-one years. He’s met a bigger liar and deceiver than himself, and maybe she thinks, “If I can keep these gods, eventually my husband will be able to take what belonged to my father.”

Perhaps she thought, “What can a few extra gods hurt, right? They’re just a few extra gods. What can a few extra gods do to protect Jacob?”

Why is idolatry so attractive? What does idolatry look like for us today? I’ll give you a few reasons why I think idolatry is so attractive to us.

Number one, idols are gods that we craft in our own image. God makes us in His image, but we would rather remake God in our image. Idols are shaped to fit our personal preferences and desires.

Secondly, they are gods we think we can control. We pull them out when we need them, then put them back up when things are going well. There’s no accountability. There are no expectations.

Thirdly, I believe idolatry is attractive because idols ultimately exist to serve us. Some idols were thought to bring fertility, others healing, others the harvest, and others military victory. There’s a god for every need, right? Pick the one that suits you. Idols exist to serve us.

Idols can also make people feel safe, and people feel safest when they’re around something familiar—something they can manipulate, something they can control.

But notice that we can do none of these things with the true God. We don’t get to craft Him. We can’t manipulate Him. We can’t reduce Him. We can’t turn Him into a slightly smarter, slightly stronger, slightly better version of ourselves. Nor does He exist to suit our preferences or fulfill our desires. He doesn’t exist for our comfort or our glory.

Before we’re so quick to criticize Rachel, we need to examine our own hearts and ask, “Is there any idol that I’m harboring?”

To paraphrase Martin Luther’s catechism on the Ten Commandments, he says an idol is anything we love, trust in, depend upon, need, or desire more than God.

Does that ring a bell for anybody? Is there anything you can’t live without? Is there anything you desperately need, something without which your life and identity feel incomplete? It might be a career. It might be success. It might be an accomplishment. It might be a degree hanging on a wall. It might even be a spouse or a child. It might be revenge, reputation, or the affirmation of others.

Whatever we love and cling to more than God becomes an idol. John Calvin says that our hearts are a perpetual factory of idols. We are always making gods in our own image. Our hearts are always being pulled astray from the worship of the true God to the worship of something else.

Throughout Scripture, God is uncompromising toward idolatry. In fact, one of the Ten Commandments says—anybody want to guess?—“Don’t make a graven image.” No idols.

“Well, that’s just the Old Testament.” But John writes in 1 John 5:21, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Both the Old and New Testaments warn us about idols. Paul would write, “What agreement has the temple of God with idols?”

Loved ones, God will not share our hearts with an idol. God will not share our attention or our devotion with an idol. God has no competitors for our hearts.

How do we deal with idols? How do we deal with sin? The Puritan John Owen—I love the way he puts it—says, “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.”

We need to be ruthless against sin. We need to demolish these idols. We need to put them to death.

Notice what they do in verse 4. They give Jacob all the foreign gods they had and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hides them under a tree near Shechem.

Here’s my opinion. You’re free to disagree. I don’t think Jacob went far enough. I feel like he should have destroyed these things. I feel like he should have ground them to powder, melted them down, or done something more extreme rather than hiding them.

Think about it. Rachel’s like, “All right, I’ll go get my dad’s idols.” Then here are his children walking around with earrings, little amulets in their ears. He’s like, “Give me that.” He digs a hole and just buries them under a tree.

On the surface, it seems like he dealt with it. But what if he gets a hankering to go back? All he has to do is dig them up. It’s almost like a contingency plan. I’m not saying Jacob had that in mind, but at least the opportunity to go and retrieve them was there.

How does the Bible tell us to deal with sin and idolatry? Jesus takes extreme measures. In Matthew 5, he says, “If your right hand offends you, cut it off. If your eye offends you, pluck it out.” Of course, he’s not speaking in literal terms. Whatever would lead you to look, to handle, or to do anything that would compromise your integrity—cut it off. Be extreme.

Paul writes in Colossians 3:5, “Put to death that which is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Our sins are not to be simply counseled, coddled, or compared to someone else. They are to be crucified. They are to be put to death. They are to be cut off and done away with entirely.

Here’s the glorious truth: We can’t deal with idols effectively on our own. As soon as the temptation rears its head again, guess what we’re going to do? We’re going to run back to the tree and dig them up. We’re going to go back to the guy or gal. We’re going to revisit the site.

We can’t destroy idols on our own, but Christ can, because all of my sin and all of your sin was crucified on the cross with Christ. As Pastor Blake said, they have been buried with Christ. They are no more. They no longer have power over us. They have been rendered incapacitated. We don’t have to return to them. They have been destroyed through the cross.

His death is our death, and his resurrection is our resurrection as well. So be harsh with sin. Crucify it. Kill it. Put it to death.

## Purify Yourselves

Requirement number two is to purify yourself.

Jacob’s family needed consecration after living with idols. This consecration—being set apart for God’s purposes—involved removing the defilement that came from their involvement with false gods.

Throughout the Old Testament, we see God commanding the people to consecrate themselves. When Moses gave the law at Sinai, he told the people of Israel, “Wash your garments and prepare yourselves, because God is coming down on the mountain.”

Loved ones, approaching the presence of God is never something the Israelites were to do casually, and we are never to approach God casually either. We can’t approach God casually when we’ve been living carelessly. We can’t enter his presence flippantly when we’ve been flirting with sin.

That’s the reason James commands us, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” And, as Pastor Blake read, “If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to what? Cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Where does this cleansing come from? How are we, creatures of dust so defiled by sin, able to be cleansed and enter the presence of an infinitely holy God? It’s only through the blood of Christ.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

I’m glad that through the blood of Jesus, I don’t have to walk around defiled. I don’t have to bear past guilt in my conscience. I can be cleansed. When God looks upon Christ, He can pardon me. So now, when I stand before God, I stand cleansed. I stand clean.

## Change Your Garments

Requirement number three was this: Change your garments.

We see that in verse two. New clothes represented a new beginning. This was a fresh start and a visible transformation. What they wore outwardly reflected the work that God had done inwardly.

Paul says the same thing in Ephesians 4:22–24, which we’ll be talking about Wednesday, actually. He says to put off your old self and be renewed in the spirit of your minds. Put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Colossians 3 echoes this: Put off sin with its practices and put on the new self. Romans 13:14 tells us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Isn’t that amazing? He gives us a new set of clothes. When we come to him, we take off the old desires and the old sinful passions like a soiled garment, and we are clothed, as Isaiah 61:10 says, in the garments of his righteousness.

I love how John describes it in Revelation 19. He describes how the church is given fine linen, bright and pure, which are the righteous deeds of the saints.

When we come to Christ, we also get a new wardrobe, don’t we? We are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. God can look at us and treat us as he would treat Jesus—as if we had lived Jesus’ life ourselves. We have been clothed in his righteousness.

This morning, if you’re wearing dirty rags, come to Bethel. Come to God. Let Him cleanse your conscience. Let Him give you a new set of clothes. Let Him robe you in His righteousness so that you stand no longer dirty or defiled, but cleansed, forgiven, and accepted.

## The Protection God Provides

Notice also the protection provided. We’re going to pick up a little bit of speed here.

Verse 5 says, “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.”

Remember what Jacob was afraid of in chapter 34. After Simeon and Levi killed all the men in the city of Shechem, he said, “Boys, you’ve done it now. Everybody’s going to hate us. They’re all going to come after us. They’re going to pursue us. They’re going to kill us all. What have you done?”

But notice that when Jacob and his family move in obedience, God protects them. When they put away their idols, stop justifying their sin, and move toward Bethel, God gives them supernatural protection. It literally says, “A terror from God.” These people were afraid to do anything to Jacob and his family.

I love what Proverbs 16:7 says: “When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”

Jacob was simply to obey and trust God with the outcome. Trust God with the outcome.

Here’s a practical word for us. Maybe we hesitate to obey God out of fear of what obedience might cost. Have you ever been there? You feel like God wants you to go somewhere or do something, and you’re like, “I don’t know. What will other people think? I don’t have the funds, the resources, or the abilities.”

God’s saying, “Just go, and I’ll take care of the rest. Jacob, go. Don’t worry about the nations. Don’t worry about what everybody else thinks. Don’t worry about the outcome. Just trust me, and let me take care of the consequences.”

## The God of the House of God

Notice in verse 6—or, excuse me, verse 7—the worship that is offered. Jacob comes to Bethel with all the people who were with him. He builds an altar, and he calls the place El Bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother.

This is big. Thirty years earlier, when he was in this place, he simply called it Bethel because surely God was in this place. There was something interesting about this place.

A lot has happened since then. Now he goes back to Bethel. He doesn’t just call it Bethel, the house of God. He calls it El Bethel, the God of the house of God.

What has happened? His attention has shifted from a place to a person. He is no longer enamored with what God might do for him—give him protection, provision, descendants, and all the promises God gave his grandfather and father. No, he doesn’t care about that right now. He simply loves God. He knows the great thing about Bethel is that God is there.

That’s why it’s the house of God. It’s not the house of Jacob; it’s the house of God.

That’s maturity, isn’t it? I want us to dwell on this for a few moments. This is what returning to Bethel means for us spiritually. It reminds us that God is greater than our encounters with Him. God is bigger than our experiences. He is worthy of our worship, not because of what He gives us, but because of who He is.

See, Jacob, all his life, was after the gifts: “What can God do for me? What can I get out of this? What can I get out of this person or that person?” Now he’s enamored with the giver of those gifts. He recognizes that all he has ever desired, really, is God.

Loved ones, many times we believers are infatuated with experiences and pleasures and health and wealth. That’s the reason the prosperity gospel is so popular. True biblical Christianity, true maturity, says, “I love God for God.”

I love what John Piper says—I’m paraphrasing him—when he speaks of idolatry. He says that we worship whatever we love. So love God and be done with idols.

Jacob was able to throw this junk out of his tent because now he simply loved God. Idols meant nothing to him anymore because God was everything to him.

Let’s not fall into the trap of wanting the gifts of God more than God Himself. If you listen to a lot of the old hymns—and I’m not picking on any of them—they sing about heaven, streets of gold, a mansion on a hilltop, and being reunited with loved ones. Thank God, all those things are true, and all those things are good.

But the Bible paints the picture that God is the light of the believer’s soul. Heaven is heaven not because of what awaits us, but because of who awaits us. Heaven is heaven because God is there, and I want to be there because He’s there—because He’s the God of the house of God.

Look at what Psalm 16 says: In His presence is fullness of joy; at His right hand are pleasures forevermore.

So, Lord, may we not make the good things You give us into an idol. May we seek You for who You are.

Notice now that Jacob builds an altar. This was a family pattern. Abraham built altars. Isaac built altars. Now Jacob completes three generations of men who marked their lives with places of worship.

I want to ask us specifically: Are we leaving behind a legacy of worship? Will our descendants after us be able to look back at our lives and say, “Yes, their lives were marked by devotion, worship, and obedience”?

You could trace the patriarchs everywhere they went because they left a trail of altars. May the same thing be said of us. May people know the legacy we leave behind because we leave a trail of altars. We leave behind devotion. We live lives that honor God.

## Renewal at Bethel

Look at verse 8. This is very easy to skip over. It almost seems like it’s just an obscure detail. Deborah, Rebecca’s nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So he called its name Alon Bakuth, which means the Oak of Weeping.

Who’s even heard of Deborah? Most of the time, when you ask somebody, “Hey, who’s your favorite character in Genesis?” I guarantee you they’re not going to say, “Oh, yeah, it was Deborah, Rebecca’s nurse.”

Who’s she? Yet the Holy Spirit saw fit to include her name in what I believe is one of the greatest books in all of Scripture. Deborah must have been an old lady because she served Rebekah, who was Jacob’s mom. She had been a servant in the household probably for the better part of her life.

What do we know about Deborah? Next to nothing. And yet God records her name here.

Let’s look at verse 9:

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.”

And 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 God 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.

Don’t you love that God meets Jacob once again, reaffirms him, and confirms his covenant? Once again, he gives him the promise that he gave to Abraham and to Isaac. He promises him a people, a place, and a purpose. He says kings are going to come from his own body. It points to Jesus, right? The King of all kings.

But Jacob is to see himself in light of who God is. God reveals himself as God Almighty, the same name by which he introduced himself to Abraham in Genesis 17. Then he gives him the command he gave Adam: “Be fruitful and multiply.”

What’s happening here? Did Jacob not know what he was supposed to do? Yes, he did. Did Jacob not know that God had changed his name to Israel when he wrestled with the man down by the river? Of course he did. But God is renewing him once again.

Loved ones, aren’t you glad there are times when God renews you and reminds you who you are in light of who He is? We all need a Bethel to return to—to remind us who we are in Christ and to remind us of the exceeding great and precious promises He has given to us.

Jacob, in response, builds an altar. He returns to devotion and worship.

Loved ones, the Christian life, like we see in Jacob’s life, is often a series of new beginnings, isn’t it? Constantly rebuilding the altar. Constantly returning to Bethel. Constantly being renewed.

## Sorrow and Hope at Bethlehem

I want us to look very quickly at verses 16 through 20:

Then they journeyed from Bethel. And when they were still some distance from Ephrath, Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor. 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 Benoni. But his father called him Benjamin.

So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath. That is, remember this, Bethlehem. And Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb. It is the pillar of Rachel’s tomb which is there to this day.

The beloved wife of Jacob, Rachel, dies. For reasons unstated, the family leaves Bethel. Perhaps Rachel is being jostled on the back of a camel or in a wagon. She goes into hard labor, and she is pushing this baby out. In her dying breath, she cries out that his name is Benoni. It means “son of my sorrow.”

Remember Rachel. In Genesis 30:1, she says, “Give me children, or I die.” She did not know what she was asking for, did she?

Now, I do not want to paint this in the light that God is judging Rachel for something. Pregnancy was very dangerous in those days. It still is today, even with modern medicine. But what she thought she needed the most ended up being her death.

“Give me children, or I die.” Remember, her identity was bound up in being a mother, and it cost her her life.

I love what Jacob does: He renames this son Benjamin, which means “son of my right hand.”

Now, let’s put our thinking caps on. I know the hour is getting late, and we are almost done, okay? But I cannot leave this out because Matthew in the New Testament links this place with the birth narrative of Jesus. So does Luke.

It is here, in what will later become Bethlehem, that Rachel’s story will be connected to grief again. Great sorrow would again be felt when Herod killed the boys two years old and under. Matthew tells us that Rachel weeps for her children once again, and he is quoting from Jeremiah 31:15–17.

It says Rachel was weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more. But there is a promise of hope:

Thus says the Lord, keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work shall be rewarded. They shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future.

In other words, Rachel’s tears, and the tears of every mother whose children were killed by Herod in this very place, are not the final thing that is heard. God hears them—the weeping at Ramah—and answers with a promise of restoration and future hope.

How? Why is there hope in this place of sorrow? Because Micah 5:2 says, “But you, O Bethlehem, Ephrathah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”

Let’s tie it all together. This place that marks a mother’s sorrow becomes the place of the Savior’s birth. This Savior will be the true Benoni, the true Son of Sorrows. Through his sorrow and suffering, this true beloved Son, born in Bethlehem, redeems our suffering. Because of his sorrow, sorrow will be no more. Ultimately, through his death, he will undo death itself.

This place of sorrow and weeping, this Bethlehem, becomes a place of hope because the true Son, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, was born here in Bethlehem, died on the cross, was buried, and rose again.

And guess what? Now he is the Son at the Father’s right hand. He is not only the true Benoni; he’s also the true Benjamin. Praise his name.

## Sojourners Seeking a Better Country

Just some final remarks as we close this chapter.

While Israel lived in the land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine. Israel heard of it.

Boy, this chapter is full of twists and turns, isn’t it? Children are born, friends are buried, spouses die, and a son takes his father’s concubine. Through this act, he’s challenging and even usurping his father’s authority. Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, through his sin, would lose the blessing of the firstborn.

Think about it. Reuben had everything to lose, didn’t he? He was his father’s firstborn. That meant he would receive the inheritance. He was the one who seemed the most secure, the strongest, yet it was then that he was overcome with temptation. In a moment of pleasure, he undid a lifetime of blessings.

Loved ones, listen. It takes years to build a reputation, but five minutes to ruin it.

Also, we don’t live in a vacuum. What we do affects not only us but generations to come. In Genesis 49, we’ll see in a few weeks, when Jacob gives the blessing to his children, “Reuben, you’re unstable as water. You’re not getting the blessing of the firstborn.”

What Reuben did affected his whole family line. Loved ones, what we do affects our children and our children’s children. We need to be careful how we live.

I’m not going to read this, but it gives us a list of the sons of Israel. Through all of this chaos and dysfunction, God is still building the nation of Israel. He will still send His Son through the tribe of Judah, and they will still be a blessing to the nations.

Verse 27 says:

Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kiriath-arba—that is, Hebron—where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Now the days of Isaac were 180 years. Isaac breathed his last and died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days. His sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

This chapter has been filled with joy and sorrow. It’s been filled with a return to the house of God and spiritual renewal, but we’ve also been reminded of the reality of sorrow and loss, haven’t we? His father Isaac dies at 180 years old.

One by one, through one opportunity and one event after another, Jacob is being reminded that he is a sojourner. He’s just passing through, like Abraham and like Isaac.

Loved ones, I want us to remember that through the regular rhythms of life, through joy and sorrow, God is there for us, just as He was with Jacob. We’re sojourning; we’re just passing through.

The writer of Hebrews, in Hebrews 11, says of the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—that they all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. They were seeking a homeland. But as it is, they desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one.

May we remember that we’re just passing through. We’re sojourners. We have a true and better promised land. We have a true and better Bethel. We have the house of God, which will be our eternal home.

## Remember, Repent, and Return

I want us to go into a time of reflection. What does returning to Bethel look like for you?

In Revelation 2, Jesus is speaking to the church of Ephesus, and he says, “I want you to remember the height from which you’ve fallen. I want you to repent and return and do the first works.”

Remember the love you had at first. Remember the devotion that you once had. Remember how the fire of zeal used to burn in your heart for the Lord. But now you’ve been in Shechem. You’ve been living in compromise, or you’ve been hiding an idol here or there in your own heart.

God says, “Do away with those and come home to me.”

Because Thomas Wolfe was wrong: You can go home. You can return to Bethel.

Come to the One who was born in Bethlehem, the One who now sits at the Father’s right hand. Let Him demolish your idols. Let Him cleanse your heart. Let Him give you a change of garments. Let Him bring you home to Himself.

Remember, repent, and return. Come to Christ today.

Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we thank you for your Word. Lord, it is so instructive to us. It is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

How I find myself like Jacob, compromising, allowing little sins in my life and justifying them or explaining them away. Lord, I want to repent of those. Whatever that may look like in this congregation—whether it means setting up a boundary, having a hard conversation, or deleting an app from the phone—Lord, may we destroy those idols.

Lord, may we come to You for cleansing. May we be robed in the righteousness of Christ. May we come back to Bethel. May we remember, repent, and return.

Father, we thank you that you are the one who is seated at the Father’s right hand, that you ever live to intercede for us, and that you actively pursue those like Jacob, like us, who are often prodigal children. And you bid us, “Come to me. Return to Bethel.”

We pray, Lord, that we would follow you and devote ourselves to you; that we would build an altar and lay ourselves upon it as living sacrifices. Lord, without reservation, without qualification, may we give ourselves totally to you.

We pray, Lord, bring us back to yourself. Keep us close to your heart. Bind us with cords of love to yourself, Lord. Keep us safe in your hands.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.