Various Speakers - December 30, 2012
48. Genesis 31 - Jacob Runs
By James Fairfield. In Genesis 31 we see Christ moving, changing, and growing Jacob and his family, while Laban continues to seek only his own selfishness. The inevitable happens when Jacob and his family move away from the abusive Laban. God uses the last 20 years of suffering to produce great character and faith in Jacob, just like He uses the hardships in our life to mold us into the people He made us to be. It is often through times of suffering that our faith is restored and our hope renewed. Through our tough life experiences the goal of scripture is that we should be drawn to repentance because we understand that God is good. Our goal is not to have our problems disappear, but to be more like Christ. We give thanks to God and repent of sin because Jesus forgives, Jesus restores, and Jesus heals.
From Series: "Genesis"
he book of Genesis has a groove to it. It runs from poem to song to narrative to poem to song. The Book of Genesis has a unity to it that fits with the entire Torah (the Pentateuch or the first 5 books of scripture). There is a definitive strategy laid out and sometimes this leads to a narrative that isn’t always smooth and uniform. This has led many people to assume that Genesis was written by different authors and is a disjointed mess. For example, the short narrative about building the city of Babylon (Genesis 11:1-9) is almost entirely self-contained and shows little external relationship with other narratives within its immediate context…But the narrative plays a strategic role in the development of one of the major themes in the book: covenant and restoration. By placing a self-contained story between two genealogies the story actually shows the difference between what man desires “Let us make a name for ourselves” (11:4) and the central point of the patriarchal narratives--”and God said, “I will make your name great’” (12:2a). Thus the genealogies of “Shem” provide a narrative link between the story of the city of Babylon and the account of the call of Abraham. Far from being disjointed, Genesis is a literary masterpiece that weaves all the scriptures themes together in wonderful unity.
