Mon.’s Devo - Joseph’s Dreams

Gen. 37:1-11

 Isaac had paved the way for Jacob.  He and Abraham had been strangers in the land of Canaan and had to fight for land, wells, and position so that Jacob could walk back in and be at home and accepted.  That is what each generation does for the next… they plow the hard ground for the next one to walk more safely and confidently.  Our forefathers fought wars on our land for us to experience peace and safety.  Now, our generation is fighting wars on foreign lands for us to continue to live in peace.  

In todays readings we get a snapshot into Jacob’s family life.  Joseph is 17 which means “immature”.  He is shepherding with the his brothers that were born to the handmaidens.  They were not treated the same as a son so they probably were very jealous of Joseph’s position in the family.  It doesn’t say what they were doing but Joseph came home and tattled on them.  Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons because Joseph was born when he was old and mellowed.  He treated him differently and all the other sons noticed.  Israel made Joseph a colorful coat which made his prejudice even more obvious.  One night Joseph had a dream and told it to his brothers.  In his dream all the sons of Jacob were binding their sheaves together when his sheaf stood up and all of their sheaves bowed down to his.  They understood that dreams were ways that God spoke and they realized how to interpret dreams.  Dreams are a symbolic language.  They all knew what it meant but hated the interpretation.  They sarcastically asked him if he would reign over them and rule them.  This only made them hate him more.  Then, he had another dream that the sun and the moon and 11 stars bowed down to him.   He told this one to his father and his brothers.  His father had the same question but not with the same attitude.  He believed the dream, where his brothers hated him for it.  

Lord, help us not to be jealous of those you single out to lead over us.  

Fri.’s Devo - Esau’s Descendents

Fri.’s Devo - Esau’s Descendents  6-8-12

Read Gen. 36:1-43

Names, then and now, are so significant of what is going on.  Esau’s wives had sons whose names meant: “god of gold”, 

“friend of God”,  “hasty”, “occult”, and “ice”.  His son’s went from gold to ice and from a friend of God to the occult.  He went the opposite direction from Jacob in every way.  He dwelt in Seir which means “rough” instead of “the house of God” where Jacob chose to live.  Esau is synonymous with Edom.  His offspring had many famous people like Amelek and Korah - who both brought woe to the children of Israel in later times.  I do not have the discernment to understand what all the names mean and what they mean to us now, but I know it is significant.  I did find verse 24 interesting because it makes you pause and wonder what it is doing in the Bible… seems to be so out-of-place.   Right in the middle of the genealogy of Esau it tells us a fact about one of them.  They found some mules while watching their father’s asses.  The only mules I know that got lost were the ones that Saul had lost when Samuel met him and anointed him king of Israel in (1 Sam. 9, 20) but that was many years later.  One day I'm going to ask God about all these seemingly out-of-place verses.  I'm sure there is a reason.  Esau became a mighty nation just like Israel did.  They had kings and dukes and did not follow God.   One day Israel would look at them and say they wanted a king like they had - and God would give it to them.  God chose Israel’s descendants to be a people set apart for him.  He was to be their king and through them he would show how he loved, protected, provided for, and disciplined his children.  

Lord, we have taken your name and you are our father and our king.  May we walk complete in that truth.  

Thurs.’s Devo - The Death of Isaac

Read Gen. 35:21-29

Jacob buries Rachel and they travel to the tower of Edar which means “a flock” and there they stayed.  While there, Reuben had sex with his father’s concubine which was a huge sin.  It ended up costing him his place as the first-born.  Next we have a list of Jacob’s sons listed by their mother’s names:

Leah: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun

Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin

Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid: Dan and Naphtali

Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid: Gad and Asher

These are the 12 tribes of Israel.  It dawned on me while reading this that Benjamin was motherless his whole life.  Maybe this was why his brothers later were so protective of him. 

Jacob finally made it back to where his father, Isaac was and was able to show him his children and have one last visit with him before he died at the age of 180.  Esau and Jacob buried him.  Isaac was living in the city of Arbah also known as Hebron which means “four giants”.  This was one of Abraham’s favorite places.  He met God at this place.  Sarah, Jacob, and Abner were buried here and later it became a levitical city of refuge.  During the kings it was a place where the kings reigned before Jerusalem was built.  

So Isaac died “being old and full of days”.  I looked up how many men died “full of days” and only a few:  David, Job, and Jehoida.  They were all good men who followed after God so I think that “full of days” means that they fulfilled their destiny.  Lord, we pray that when we die you will say of us that we are full of days. 

Wed.’s Devo - “Rachels Death; Benjamin’s Birth

Read Gen. 35:16-20

Jacob leaves Bethel, the house of God and travels to Ephrath which means “fruitfulness” but before he can get there Rachel goes into labor and it is very severe and grievous labor.  She is dying as she gives birth to a boy.  When she is told it is a boy she names him Ben-oni which means “son of my sorrow” but Jacob changes his name to Benjamin which means “son of the right hand”.  The right hand had to do with power and inheritance.  Spiritually, Benjamin is a picture of the New Testament Church.  We have been given the power and authority of Jesus to do the things that he did on the earth and greater.  (John 14:12)  Jacob buried Rachel here in Bethlehem.  Which means that Benjamin was born in Bethlehem.  The church was born in Bethlehem when God sent his son to the city whose name means “the house of bread”.  In John 6:30-35 the people came to Jesus and asked for a sign that would give proof that he was the son of God.  They explained that their fathers had given them manna that they would believe.  Jesus responded that Moses didn’t give you that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.  When the people asked for this bread he said,  “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believes on me shall never thirst.”  

Lord, help us to walk in the power of your resurrection and do the greater works that you promised we would do.       

Tues.’s Devo - A New Man and a New Name

Read Gen. 35:8-15

I love it when God puts an unexpected, out-of-context sentence in that has nothing to do with the other ones.  Verse 8 is one of those.  They have traveled to Bethel to the same place God appeared to Jacob before and Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse dies.  This is the only time she is ever mentioned.  Before this we didn’t even know Rebekah had a nurse named Deborah, so this sentence must mean more than what is says.  If Deborah was Rebekah’s nurse then she was the one who delivered Esau and Jacob and nursed them.  She is their second mother.  They buried her “under an oak”.  I looked up that phrase and several things happened “under an oak”:  people were buried, God appeared to people, people saw and talked to angels, sanctuaries to God were erected.  So I think that under an oak had to do with portals to either heaven or the underworld.  They named this one Allon-bachuth which means tree of weeping which showed how much they loved her.  Deborah watched over their first birth, but she had to die before Jacob could experience his new birth.  As soon as she dies, Jacob had an encounter with the Lord and God gave him a new name, Israel.  Israel means “he shall rule as God”.  This is the picture of salvation.  When we get saved we get a new name and it is written in the Book of Life.  Now, he tells him to be fruitful and multiply because he has something to reproduce.  He renews his promise of the land with him and his blessing on him.  Jacob set up a pillar to mark his experience and anointed it with the oil of the Holy Spirit and the wine of the blood of Christ.  Of course, he didn’t know the significance of what he was doing at the time.  

Lord, thank you for our new birth in you.  Help us to discern the times we are living in.

Mon.’s Devo - Calling a Nation Back to God

Read Gen. 35:1-7

God called Jacob back to the place he had visited him before - Bethel which means “house of God”.  He told him to build an altar to him.  Jacob’s household had blood on their hands and had turned away from following God with their whole heart.  They had absorbed the gods and religions of the people they had lived among and God was calling them to repentance.  Jacob told his family to put away the strange gods they had accumulated and cleanse their hearts and change their garments.  

Garments were a covering that assumed the shape of the one that wore them.  God told Moses to put holy garments on the priests.  When God was talking to the churches in Revelation 3:4 he said that there were only a few names in Sardis that had not defiled their garments so they would be able to walk with him in white; for they were worthy.  Today our garments are what people first see when the look at us.  Do we reflect Jesus or do we look just like the world.  Are we guarding our minds with Jesus so that we wear righteousness like a cloak?  Are we wearing holy garments?  Apparently, Jacob’s family needed to wash their garments and come clean.   He took his family back to the place God had spoken to him.  They gave him all their strange gods and all their earrings and Jacob hid them under the oak in Shechem.  They buried their past sins and went in pursuit of God.   Because they did this God put an invisible shield of protection around them.  Everyone was afraid to touch or harm them.  Even though they had just killed an entire city and carried everything they had away, no one came after them because they feared their God.  They came to Bethel and built an altar to God in the very place he had been years before when he fled from Esau’s wrath.  Many times, God will call us back to the place where we encountered him and renew our vows to him.    

Lord, may we have a leader in America that will call us back to you and what you have done for us.

Fri.’s Devo - The Impulsiveness of Jacob’s Sons

 Read Gen. 34:1-31

Leah had one daughter named Dinah whose name means “justice”.  Her family lived close to the Hivites and one day Shechem, the prince of their country saw Dinah and took her and raped her.  Being a prince in that country meant he could have any woman he wanted so he didn’t consider what he did as wrong.  He decided that he loved her so he asked his father, Hamor to get her for his wife.  That was not the way it was done in Jacob’s family and when they found out that their daughter had been defiled, they were not happy.  Her brothers were ready to fight.  Hamor came out to ask Jacob’s sons for Dinah’s hand in marriage for his son.  He not only asked for Dinah’s hand in marriage but for there to be marriage between his people and their people.  He was willing to pay whatever bride price they came up with.  Jacob’s sons deceitfully told Shechem that if he would have all the men circumcised then they would intermarry.  This sounded like a good thing to them and they agreed.  (I think I would have rather given money!)  Anyway, they went back home and bribed the men of their city with all the wealth of Jacob which would be theirs too if they made a covenant with him, so they agreed.  They all got circumcised on the same day and on the 3rd day when they were good and sore, the sons of Jacob came and killed all the men.  They took Dinah from Shechem and took all their belongings.  They took their wives and their children also.  When Jacob found out he rebuked them for making him an enemy to all the people around him.  His sons had not been concerned with the outcome; they were looking for justice, not peace.  Actually, they were seeking vengeance.  I wonder how it would have ended up if they would have sought peace instead.  

Lord, you say that vengeance is up to you and not up to us.  Help us to not take matters into our own hands, but let you punish our enemies.