I am sure that many of us here this morning will have heard of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was very influential in evangelical Christian thought during the 1930s and even today, and was murdered towards the end of World War II for his active opposition to Hitler's policies. One of his statements was the following: when Christ calls a man to come and follow him, he calls him to come to die. While that, on the face of it, seems like a depressing statement, it is actually very profound and true. What Bonhoeffer means is that, when we make the decision to to follow Jesus, we must be prepared to give up our own personal plans for our lives, and instead commit ourselves to seek God's will for our lives, and to obey him. The life of Christian discipleship is a life of obedience to God, following in Christ's footsteps. During Jesus' earthly ministry, he walked the path that the Father had set out for him, and it led to the cross. When we decide to follow Jesus, the path we tread will also lead to a cross. It might be a cross of a different type than Jesus suffered, but the Christian life will almost certainly require some suffering and sacrifice from us. Bonhoeffer himself lived the words he spoke, and died a death by execution by the Nazis, but his teaching lives on.
Bonhoeffer's words, however, seem like a paradox, because Jesus says, in the 10th chapter of the Gospel of John, the following words: I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. Whoever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. Jesus clearly says that when we follow him as our shepherd, we will live life to the full. How can following him then mean that we are going to die? I think this is a great mystery, and that we are talking about the very deepest things of God.
In reality, both of these things are true. When we become Christians, and follow the Lord Jesus, we are in the process of both dying to ourselves and living a more abundant life in the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul says, in his second letter to the Corinthians, that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! The concept of “dying to self" expresses the true essence of the Christian life, in which we take up our cross and follow Jesus. Dying to self is part of being born again; the old self dies and the new self comes to life. Not only are Christians born again when we come to salvation, but we also continue dying to self as part of the process of sanctification. As such, dying to self is both a one-time event and a lifelong process. You remember well what Jesus said to Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
The title heading for the parshas today is: "He went out," and the reading from the Torah this morning is about a man who is called to leave his present life and start on a new journey, following God and serving him. As he sets out on his journey, he receives wonderful promises from God, gains new understandings of the meaning of the Scriptures, and sees amazing revelations. However, as he does this, he finds that it does not mean he is going to walk along a rose strewn path where everything goes perfectly in his life. On the journey, he must learn to die to self and live for God.
The man to whom I am referring is, of course, Jacob. In the readings today we pick up the story of Jacob just after he has deceived his father into giving him the blessing of the firstborn son, instead of giving it to Esau, and also after Esau has foolishly sold his birthright as firstborn son to Jacob for a bowl of soup. Esau recognizes that he has been deceived, and consoles himself with the thought of killing Jacob. So Jacob's mother Rebecca, advises him to leave Beersheba and flee to Haran to live with her brother Laban, in order to escape from Esau's anger.
On the way, Jacob lies down to sleep one night, and has a wonderful dream where he sees a stairway extending from earth to heaven and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. He also sees the Lord himself, who speaks to him, and gives him a wonderful promise. God says to him: I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 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 the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 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. 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.
So now Jacob is on his way, he has just received this wonderful revelation from God, so everything is going to be all right don't you think? From now on everything will go smoothly, and for Jacob it will be like walking in a garden of roses! Jacob is the bearer of God's promises to Abraham for the salvation of the world, so we would expect that everything would go well for him, wouldn't we? Of course, as you know, it was nothing like this. On the contrary, as we read the rest of this passage from the Torah, we see a woeful story of dishonesty, deceitfulness, sibling rivalry and intrigue, and family unhappiness and division, developing.
We all probably know the story very well. Jacob works for Laban for seven years in order to pay the bride price for Rachel, whom he loves. However, on the wedding day, Laban tricks him into marrying Leah, the elder sister. Laban then demands that Jacob work another seven years in order to pay for Rachel. After that, Laban continually changes Jacob's wages so that he doesn't know what is due him. They reach an agreement as to which one of them will keep which type of sheep and goats. Jacob, in his turn, deceives Laban by creating physical conditions which will favor the development of animals which will belong to him, so that his flocks increase at the expense of Laban's flocks. Then, seeing Jacob's success, Laban's sons conspire to rob him of the flocks which he has obtained. While all this is going on, there is constant rivalry and jealousy in his family life between Leah and Rachel for the affections of their mutual husband Jacob. Leah is desperately unhappy because Jacob doesn't love her, and tries to assuage her sorrow by giving him many sons. Rachel, while she is loved by Jacob, is also unhappy, because she is barren, and Leah mocks her because she cannot bear any children. Leah and rachel are constantly competing with each other, and they even get their maidservants to sleep with Jacob to bear children for them in order to go one up on each other.
There is a complete lack of godly love and unity and devotion within this family. And it all takes place against a backdrop of pagan worship and divination, with an absolute lack of understanding of the need to seek and obey the Lord himself. This is a very unhappy and dysfunctional family! Finally, it all comes to a head, when Jacob decides to take advantage of a temporary absence by Laban to escape from the situation by taking his wives and his children and his servants and all his flocks and head back to the land of Canaan. Moreover, Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him he was running away. So he fled with all he heard, and crossing the river, he headed for the hill country of Gilead. When Laban returns from his travel, and finds that Jacob has deceived him by suddenly leaving without telling him, he pursues him and catches him up in the hill country. Laban is very angry, and is only restrained from harming, and possibly killing, Jacob, by a direct intervention from God in a dream.
Now, if I was writing the script for a Hollywood movie about God's chosen man to carry the message of God's plan of salvation for mankind, I don't think that I would have made him anything like Jacob. Instead of making him a deceiver and a thief, I would have made him into a hero. I would have made him into an honest and honorable character. Also, if I were to describe his family, I think I would have given him one wife who was godly, honest, and faithful and completely supportive of him, and also quick to point out his faults, so that he would stay on the right path. And I would have surrounded him with family members also basically supportive of his mission. But this is not what actually happened, as we have seen.
Now, through all of this miserable tale, and in the face of all this evil, we find that the promises of God are indeed being fulfilled. Just as things are getting very bad between Jacob, and Laban and his sons, the Lord speaks to Jacob: go back to the land of your fathers and your relatives and I will be with you. Even though Jacob had been involved in so much ungodly activity, we can see that Jacob's heart had been kept open to hear from the Lord. God had been changing Jacob, and Jacob had slowly been giving up his old life. Later on, Jacob hears directly from an angel, and God says to him: I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you. I am the god of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now leave this land at once and go back to your native land.
In all his trials, Jacob acknowledges the work of God in his life through all of the terrible experiences he had while staying with Laban. Finally, he pours out all of his frustration and anger at the way he has been treated. At the meeting with Laban in the hill country of Gilead he says this: I have been with you for twenty years now. Your sheep and goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten rams from your flocks. I did not bring you animals torn by wild beasts; I bore the loss myself. And you demanded payment from me for whatever was stolen by day or night. This was my situation: The heat consumed me in the daytime and the cold at night, and sleep fled from my eyes. It was like this for the twenty years I was in your household. I worked for you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks, and you changed my wages ten times. And then, finally, he bears witness to the work of God in his life. He goes on to say: if the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you.
Isn't it like this for all of us, in our daily Christian lives? When we first come to know Christ we read and believe his promises to us, and we rightfully rejoice in them. The promises are true, and God is faithful to fulfill them. We naïvely think it will be easy to live with the blessings that God wants to pour out on us. However, as we go forward, we find ourselves getting so bound up in the trials and tribulations of living in this sinful world, and dealing with the consequences of our own sin and disobedience, that we miss out on the blessings of God and, instead, needlessly waste much of our time trying to rectify the problems we have brought upon ourselves through not acting according to his will.
But we can truly be thankful that God is always faithful. It is important to recognize just how sinful we are, and how much we need a redeemer. But it is even more important for us to understand that God has paid the price for our sins through Jesus Christ, and is much bigger than our sins and problems, and that he loves us even though we are sinners. In the midst of the dirty washing of our daily lives, even then, God is working for our good. Just as God was working for the good of Jacob, even while he was in the hands of his selfish and deceitful uncle Laban, and even while he was suffering the consequences of his own personal failure to obey God's standards, nevertheless, God was working in Jacob's life to change him. Slowly, ever so slowly, he was dying to his sinful self, and learning to live according to the spirit of God. Let us do likewise. Aided by the power of the Holy Spirit, let us fight to throw off the yoke of our personal sin, and to overcome the opposition of the sinful world around us. As the scripture say in the letter to the Hebrews chapter 12: therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning it's shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
As we seek to go forward obediently in our Christian lives, let us endure patiently the crosses that this will surely bring upon us, and scorn their shame, just as Jesus did. Let us look at how Jesus dealt with opposition from sinners, and have the same patience and resolve to overcome it that he had. Let us learn to die to ourselves, and live victoriously for God. Glory to his name, Amen.
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