Collecting Gods

The man Jacob, the deceiver, is clearly favored by God from pure grace. The Lord has a plan for the nations, and he is carrying out his promises through Jacob. Even though he doesn’t deserve these graces, everywhere he goes he finds that God is there and at work in his life! So when he flees from Esau, whom he cheated twice, God appears to him in Bethel and makes the same promise to him as he made to his grandfather Abraham. God is going to bless his offspring and through his offspring bless all the families of the earth! Then on his way to meet Esau years later, Jacob wrestles with God and lives to tell about it!

Jacob clearly knows which god is God. For this reason, it is somewhat surprising to find how he has allowed his family to follow and embrace other gods. It started with Rachel stealing household gods from her father, but evidently, it continued through his children as well. When God calls Jacob to return to Bethel, the place where he first met with him, Jacob calls for his family to “put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves.” That tells me that Jacob knew these were false gods, but he allowed and tolerated the collecting and adoring of these gods in his family! Sadly, we do the same. We allow our lives to get cluttered with other gods! We know they are false. We know only God will satisfy. But we tolerate and adore them anyway!

The bright side however is that when God called Jacob back to Bethel, he did call for a time of purification! He prepared himself and his family to meet with God. That’s great leadership for a father! We need to do the same! We need times of personal and family purification where we clean our lives before the Lord and prepare to commune with him and meet him!