Scott Moore: Welcome to the "Building Faith and Family" podcast with Steve Demme.  I'm your host, Scott Moore. Thanks for joining us today. Good morning, Steve. How  are you today? 

Steve: I'm peachy. How are you? 

Scott: Good. I'm a little more awake than normal. 

Steve: I'm packing and cleaning the house, getting ready to go up to the mountains  for Labor Day, where, with our family, and my niece and her family, we will have 20  people for a long weekend. This is going to be a fun time. 

Scott: Is it going to be nice weather? 

Steve: Supposed to be perfect weather. I’m looking forward to hearing, "Papa, let's go  for a ride in the golf cart. Papa, let's go kayaking." While the parents all sit around and  look at me while I take care of their kids, and they have a vacation for three days. Scott: Nice. 

Steve: The best part of the day is when I take my naps. 

Scott: We got to go up and visit my daughter and her husband and Henry at their new  house up near Cleveland. It was so fun to hear the pitter patter of little feet as Henry  ran around the house. 

Steve: That's awesome. 

Scott: He laughed sometimes while he's doing...Pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter  patter. He's running around. 

Steve: It took a long time to get that boy to this place. 

Scott: Yeah. It's nice to have some of the fun stuff. 

Steve: Amen. Praise the Lord. Today we're going to continue on our talk on the rock.  It rhymes. Let's pray. Father, thank you for giving us eyes to hear our last time  together. Thank you for giving us what we ask for because we need spiritual eyes, and  we need spiritual insight, and we need to have ears to hear that are circumcised  according to scripture. 

Circumcised heart, eyes, and ears, and we pray for the work of your spirit to do that  for us. Don't let us be spiritually dense, but let us be spiritually acute to discern what  you're saying to us through this topic. In Jesus name, amen. 

Scott: Amen. 

Steve: I'm going to read two passages. I normally read some select scriptures from  these passages, but I think it's worth reading the whole chunk to get the context. This  is Genesis chapter 28. Jacob has set out from his home with Isaac and Rebecca. Esau  has threatened to kill him. He's going to a new place by himself. 

There were no embassies. No police forces. When you think about it, this is some  adventure. I’m going to break into the 28th chapter, 10th verse. 

"Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed  there that night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he  put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep, and he dreamed. 

"Behold, there was a ladder set up on the Earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.  Behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Behold, Jehovah  stood above it and said, 'I am Jehovah, the God of your father, Abraham, and the God  of Isaac. The land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. "'Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to  the West and to the East, and to the North, and to the South, and in you and in your  descendants shall all the families of the Earth be blessed. 

"'Behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to  this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.' Then  Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Jehovah is in this place. This is none other than  the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' 

"Early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it  up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel." I can probably do three sermons on that portion of scripture right there. There is so  much packed in there. Genesis, it's so readable. The whole book is filled with  accounts, and you're witnessing the progression from Adam, and then to Abraham,  and then to Jacob, and then to Joseph, and now you're in Egypt. It’s a compelling  saga. Once I read the whole book of Genesis on a Saturday. 

Our text for today, these 10 verses, we see Jacob alone fleeing from the threat of  death by his brother's hand, who could do it. He was a hunter. A mighty hunter. But  God appears to him, and reassures him, "I am with you, and I will bring you back." Then He made a promise to him, which I don't know about you, but when you're  young like that, I don't think you take in these legacy promises. He promised him that  he was going to receive this land, and his descendants were going to be like the dust  of the Earth and spread in every direction, and in him and in his descendants, all the  families of the Earth will be blessed. 

These are similar promises that He made to Abraham and to Isaac, and in which are  still on the evening news to this day. There is still fighting over this land, which God  gave to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob and his descendants. 

This is pertinent, is what I'm trying to say. This is not a really interesting experience  about a disheveled youth who'd been set adrift, fleeing for his life, but no, he's  sleeping and God appears to him. God comforts him, and God gives him these  far‑reaching, incredible promises. 

He saw angels of God ascending and descending on what appeared to be a ladder. It  could have been more than a ladder, which we think of as a ladder as one person can  go up at a time. It could have been a stairway. There could have been multiple angels  at the same time going up and down, for this was a busy place. 

God was there. God was at the top of this stairway or ladder. Then Jacob wakes up  after these far‑reaching, incredible promises. Jacob awoke from his sleep and said,  "Jehovah is here." Then he said, "This is the house of God," which in Hebrew, house is  bēṯ, God is ʾĒl, it's Beyt El, it's Bethel, which is why he named it Bethel, house of God.  He also says, "This is the gate of heaven." 

When I read that, I think, "Well, we can't come to the Father except through Jesus.  Jesus is the way to the Father." "Nobody comes to the Father except through me." I have that thought in my head, and I think, "Well, if this is the gate of heaven and if  God is indeed at the head of this gate, or this stairwell or runway, whatever it is,  where's Jesus?" Then I think, "Oh, he's the stone. He's the rock." We talked about this.  We read a ton of scriptures about this. 

Another name for Jesus is Jesus the Christ, which we know, and probably most people  listening to this ‑‑ I know you guys are pretty good Bible scholars, you wouldn't be  listening ‑‑ but is Jesus the anointed. Here, we have this rock that is anointed with oil  and is the gate of heaven. 

This is an incredible chunk of Scripture. Now, hold your breath on that because he  comes back to this same place in the 35th chapter. It's similar, and yet there's more,  which is why I want to read it right away. 

"God said to Jacob," now, this is after all the shenanigans with Rebekah's uncle,  Laban, and changing his wages. Again, interesting reading, but we're seven chapters  later, he's going back. God said to Jacob, "Arise, go up to Bethel and live there, and  make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother  Esau. 

" Jacob said to his household and all who were with him, 'Put away the foreign gods  which are among you and purify yourselves, and change your garments, and let us  arise and go up to Bethel. I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the  day of my distress, and has been with me wherever I have gone,'" which is exactly  what God promised him. "I will be with you." 

" They gave to Jacob all the foreign gods which they had, and the rings which were in  their ears, and Jacob hid them under the oak which was near Shechem" We could do a  really neat trail talking about that oak in Shechem, but we won't at this point. " As they journeyed, there was a great terror upon the cities which were around them,  and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel, which is  in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. 

" He built an altar there, and called the place El Bethel, because there, God had  revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. Now Deborah, Rebekah's  nurse, died, and she was buried below Bethel under the oak, and it was named Allon  Bachuth. 

" Then God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Paddan Aram and blessed  him. God said to him, 'Your name is Jacob. No longer shall your name be called Jacob,  but Israel shall be your name.' 

" 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.' 

" Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. Jacob set  up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it, and poured oil on it. Jacob called the name of the place where  God had spoken with him, Bethel." 

As I read that through this morning, reviewing my notes, I noticed that word Bethel  appears one, two, three, four, five times in the second passage, and in the first  passage, it only appears once when it was originally named. There's overlap there. We know that the reason he was called Israel was because he'd had a wrestling match  with an angel prior to Genesis 35. It appears that Genesis 35, that's when they went  to the courthouse and they got out the piece of paper and they officially changed his  name. "Your name is no longer Jacob, but now Israel." 

To this day, we know a nation, a group of people called Israel. Throughout the rest of  the first covenant, you might say, up and through Malachi, Israel appears over and  over, and we watch the 12 tribes break off into the two tribes and the 10 tribes. Whilst the two tribes go up to Babylon, return under the leadership of Ezra and  Nehemiah, the 10 tribes go off and are dispersed among the nations. Yet there's tons  of promises about those 10 tribes in Jeremiah, in Ezekiel, in Hosea, and in the New  Testament. 

The point is it all started here with Jacob and the stone. The stone, the rock. Not only  was it anointed with oil the second time, it had a drink offering on it. I'm going to  introduce a thought. I don't know what it is about our minds, but maybe it's our  exposure to Christian things. 

When I read, "Jesus is the door, Jesus is the good shepherd, Jesus is the lamb," I don't  physically see him as a lamb except in the book of Revelation. I do see him as a  shepherd because I've looked at little posters in Sunday school classes of Jesus with a  rod and a staff, and he's got a bunch of sheep around him. 

I don't see many pictures of Jesus being the door or a loaf of bread, and yet he says,  "I'm the bread of life." Do you see what I'm saying? It's a stretch for us to connect the  fact that Jesus is the rock. He's the stone. 

He's the source, as we read the last couple podcasts, he's a source of water for  millions of people and their cattle. He's the source of the water. He's the one that  when Moses struck the rock and when he spoke to the rock, produced the water that  sustained these people. 

The more I study it, the more I'm getting comfortable with it, especially when I see  these, if I can put it, one of the first words we used here was anthropomorphism.  When I see that he's pouring oil on it, he's pouring a drink offering on it, this is more  than a piece of mineral. He's treating it like it's God, and it is. It's Jesus. I can see him as the door because he's the gateway to heaven. I can see him as the  rock. If I can read this again, we read it last time. In 1 Peter 2, with all this churning in  our minds, now read this, "As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in  the sight of God, chosen and precious." He's a living stone. 

" You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house," a spiritual  house, like a Bethel, "to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to  God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture, 'Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be  put to shame.' 

" The honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, the stone that  the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, a stone of stumbling and a rock of  offense. They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do."  in those five verses, stone, stones, cornerstone, rock of offense, stone of stumbling,  multiple times for cornerstone and the stone. Then my mind goes to Matthew chapter  16. "You are the Christ, the son of the living God," Peter's declaration. Then Jesus says, "On this rock, I will build my church, the house of God, and the gates  of hell shall not prevail against it." Then one day I was praying, I was talking to God  and I said, "Well, how do we become a part of this stone? I want to be a living stone. I  want to be a part of that house of God that God is building." 

I know that the apostles and the prophets are the foundation, describes them in  Revelation, but how can I make this practical? How can I be a part of this cornerstone,  this living stone? How can I be a living stone? 

The Spirit answered me simply, Matthew 7:24, "Everyone then who hears these words  of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock." I  used to picture houses and sand and rocks, but now I read that night and it's like I  went, "Ugh."  

I've been singing about this wise man in this house on the sand and the house on the  rock, and I missed it. There it is. If we're obedient, this is the people that make up  God's church. The people that don't hear these words of mine, but the people that do  them. The people that put them into practice. 

The people that love His word and love the word and love the rock will be built and  incorporated into His rock. That was more of a sermon than a study. All right. There  you go, brother. It's your turn. 

Scott: It struck me that the idols that the people of the Old Testament had chased  after for so long, when did any of those idols ever produce water for them? It's  another example of how Jesus sets himself apart in every way. 

Then when he shows up in the New Testament, it's like this is the guy. He's been with  you all this time. He's the rock. He's the source of your life. When you were wandering  in the desert, he's everything you'll need. It seems so obvious that I don't see how  they don't get it.  

Steve: Yep. Although it's only taken me 50 years to see it. 

Steve: You remember what you said last time? You quoted this. "Their rock is not like  our rock." It was Deuteronomy 32:31. You quoted that, and you said it again. These  idols, their rocks were not like our rock. Their rock didn't do anything. Our rock  provides us water. Our rock is a gateway to heaven. See what I'm saying? Scott: Yeah. 

Steve: There's so much packed into there. Our rock reveals the father. 5

Steve: There's a lot more, yet I'm getting ahead of myself. Our rock has human  characteristics, too. That's the thing, and we're going to see that more in the next  podcast. It connects the dots for me. 

Christ is the rock. Christ is the source of water. Christ is the way to the father. He's  the door. He's the highway. He's the ladder, so to speak. He's the way to and from the  Father. This knowledge expands my love, appreciation, and understanding of Christ.  That's the point. 

Scott: Amen. 

Steve: Just reading it, like we did today, I saw things even today that were new. I've  written passages out, I've cut and pasted the scriptures. It's something when Jacob  sets the stone up for a pillar and then pours oil on top and anoints it. He knew that this was more than just a mineral. He knew there was something special  going on here, and this is where God lived, Bethel. We're still laying the foundation  now. There's more to come, so this is all good. 

Father, thank you for Christ, our rock. Thank you that our hope is built on nothing  less than this rock. Jesus is our blood. Our hope and righteousness, as the song goes  on. Christ, the solid rock, we stand, we hope, and we embrace. 

Even where our little gray matter is probably struggling to catch up with us, our heart  bears witness. This is God's word. This is what God saw. This is what transformed  Jacob and Israel, and we're going to see has a role all through scripture. Thank you  for helping us today. In Jesus name, amen. 

Scott: Amen. That's our show for this week, folks. Thanks for joining us for the  Building Faith and Family podcast with Steve Demme. If you have a question for the  show, email Steve at spdemme@Gmail.com. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.