Genesis 24-50
Video Clip: Cast Away – Tom Hanks
All Alone
Have you ever faced a difficult circumstance and felt alone or stranded? Maybe even found yourself talking to yourself or to some object because no one else is there to listen. You wonder if anyone cares.
Illustration: I remember moving the summer after my 7th grade year. My dad was transferred from Ashland, KY to Charleston, WV. I had left all my friends that I grew up with which is never easy to do, but as a junior higher, the emotions I felt were extreme. I now lived in a neighborhood with no one my age, and I had to enroll at a new school where I knew no one. I started school, trying to make friends, but I felt all alone. And to top it off, I had an English teacher who liked to make fun of the way I talked. I kept thinking of the fact that he was a WV making fun of my KY accent. It didn’t quite add up, but he would especially make fun of the way I said the number 19. In fact, every time we would go over our class assignment, he would have me do the number 19 and not without saying it. Have you ever felt alone?
Have you ever noticed that you can be in a crowd of people and still feel very alone? We have all experienced moments of deep loneliness in this life. Even those extroverted people who seem to be the life of the party know what it is like to be alone. We long to be known, cared for, loved, rather than just being part of the crowd.
I think that is what can even be potentially so difficult about attending her on a Sunday morning. Looks like a small church but once you are inside, it can be so easy for someone to move in and out of the doors without even being noticed. Sure a greeter may say “hi” because that is expected, but if no one else makes an effort to personally say hi or notice them, a person can be in a crowd of people and still feel alone. That is why it is so important for you to notice the people around you, and say, “hi.”
Sometimes we can even feel alone when it comes to being known and loved by God. It can be easy to believe that God cares about the big things in the world. International crises, the decisions of presidents, kings and queens, world hunger – surely these are all things that must occupy the heart and mind of God.
But what about the little stuff? Is God available to help with my personal needs? Does God care enough to help me figure out the right career? Is he concerned about helping me choose healthy friends? Does God care enough to get involved in the process of helping me find the right person to marry? Does God care about what I’m facing? Does He care about what the person I care about is facing?
Some people might even say that God doesn’t care. They might even say that the Bible isn’t even relevant or reflective of our world. Of course, most of these people haven’t actually read the Bible because a simple reading of the book of Genesis will show you that the Bible doesn’t gloss over anything. It is real life, down to earth, and relevant sometimes to the point of being startling.
Examples of stories…
That is just in the book of Genesis. These people are messed up. They are not the Waltons! They need Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, Dr. Ruth, Dr. Spock, Dr. Suess, or somebody.
The stories recorded in the Bible are there to point us to the real hero – God. We often think that the real heroes are the characters we read about like Abraham. But a closer look lets you know that these so called heroes made some pretty bad choices. They are real people and they are not the heroes. God is the hero. God is working with real flesh and blood people. God knows that these people are living in a fallen world and that sin does incredible damage. So God sheds light on what people are really like, but also on what He is like. At the end of the day, we discover that God is the hero and that each of these stories points us toward Him.
God is the one who creates us out of community and He cares for His community. When we mess up and enter into sin’s downward spiral, God is the one who provides a way to save us. God is the one who enters into covenant with us.
And once again, we begin to discover that God is the hero working behind the scenes caring for us even when we feel like we are alone. 
God is with Isaac – Genesis 24
Abraham was growing old. God had blessed him. His son Isaac was approaching the age to marry, and Abraham was concerned about who he would marry. Abraham’s own people. Abraham was so concerned that his son would not leave the covenant with God. Abraham wanted to make sure his son wouldn’t end up worshipping other gods and dishonoring the one true God. So he called his chief servant in for a meeting. Eliezer was Abraham’s chief servant over all of his affairs. When Eliezer entered the room, Abraham asked him to make an oath.
In our day and age, we often seal an agreement with a handshake. That works quite well for most people, but in Abraham’s day, the tradition was very different. They would place their hand under a person’s thigh as part of making the promise. Don’t worry we are not going to bring that tradition back.
But Abraham asks Eliezer to promise that he would not get a daughter from anyone other than
How many of you would like your dad to choose who you are going to marry? Better yet, how many of you would like your dad to choose someone else for you to marry? I wouldn’t suggest that we should do that, but Abraham was taking seriously the importance of marriage. We live in a day when people often treat marriage lightly. They don’t realize the danger of marrying someone with different beliefs especially when one person is committed to God and the other isn’t. And the result can be tragic for the person’s faith in God.
Abraham sends Eliezer with a caravan of 10 camels loaded with wealth and food. Anyone who saw this caravan coming would have known that someone with great wealth was coming.
So Eliezer is heading to a part of the world he doesn’t know. He hasn’t been there and he doesn’t have a map. He must then find Abraham’s relatives and convince them to send their daughter away to marry someone they have never met. Big challenge.
So Eliezer decides to pray first. While he is still praying, on his knees, in process, Rebekah walks onto the scene. She is a relative of Abraham, she is also available, and she is very pretty. What more could Isaac want?
Eliezer had actually asked God to send a woman who would be willing to water all ten of his camels. A thirsty camel can drink up to 30 gallons of water. Simple math shows that Rebekah would have to be willing to draw up to 300 gallons of water – an enormous task.
Rebekah exceeds the prayer. She is even willing to go and marry Isaac and her family agrees. Eliezer discovers God at work, and he realizes that God was in the entire process, that God had been caring for all the details, he gives God thanks.
Key Verse: Genesis 24:26-27 The man fell down to the ground and worshiped the Lord. [27] "Praise be to the Lord, the God of my master, Abraham," he said. "The Lord has been so kind and faithful to Abraham, for he has led me straight to my master's relatives."
For centuries Christian theologians have used two words to describe God. One of them is transcendence which means that God is eternally self sufficient apart from creation. God is totally other from us. He is infinite and holy. God is transcendent but if you stop there you leave with the idea that God simply created the world and then had nothing to do with it. He doesn’t meddle, interfere, or help.
The other word used to describe God is immanence which refers to a God who is continuously and actively present with us. God is active everywhere. God sees, knows, cares, and works.
Genesis is teaching us that the one and only transcendent God, who existed before time, who was in the beginning, who created the heavens and the earth, is also the immanent God who is with us right here, right now. The Creator is concerned about us. God is Immanuel, God with us, and He is concerned about the little details of our daily lives.
God cares about details in your life. When you feel all alone, like God doesn’t care, like no one is listening, or when you are faced with a difficult decision, when you face difficulty or someone you care about faces difficulty, when you are faced with a career decision, family problems, financial struggles, marriage issues…Know that God cares about the details in your life. 
God is with Jacob – Genesis 25
Isaac now has two sons. One of them is a con artist. His name is Jacob. He likes to scam people and he is like that right out of the womb. Esau was the other brother. He wasn’t the brightest light bulb on the chandelier and he had some serious body hair issues but he had won his fathers devotion. Isaac favored Esau over Jacob while Rebekah favored Jacob.
At one point, Jacob tricked his brother into giving him the family birthright and later Jacob’s mom, Rebekah, teaches Jacob how to deceive his brother out of the family blessing. There are some really messed up family dynamics going on here. When Esau realizes what he has lost, he plans to kill Jacob so Jacob has to run for his life.
While Jacob is running for his life, he comes to a place in Genesis 28 where he has a dream of Angels climbing up and down on a ladder from heaven to earth. Song even refers to it called Jacob’s ladder. An incredible picture of the connectedness between God’s kingdom and those who dwell on earth. When Jacob wakes up he realizes He has been in God’s presence and he wasn’t even aware of it. A medieval French Rabbi Rasi said that what Jacob meant was “If I had known God would be here, then I wouldn’t have gone to sleep.” (Jewish Spirituality – page 21) I often wonder how many times God is there working in our lives and we are asleep? We miss seeing God because we aren’t paying attention.
Jacob travels many miles to his grandfathers, Abraham’s, hometown. There he meets his Uncle Laban and he meets his match when it comes to deception. Laban is the king of con artists. Jacob falls in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. Jacob is so crazy about Rachel that he agrees to work seven years so he can earn her hand in marriage. But we read in Genesis 29 that the years seemed like days to Jacob. This guy is one “love sick, desperate guy.” However, on the wedding night, Laban sends Rachel’s older sister Leah into the tent with Jacob. Jacob wasn’t happy. It was a custom in that culture for the older daughter to marry first, so Jacob ends up having to work seven more years to finally marry Rachel. During that time, Laban had even changed his wages several times.
Jacob is now on the receiving end when it comes to deception. Jacob needs new eyes, a new mind, a new heart, a spiritual overhaul. For twenty years, Jacob goes to character school. In fact, during this painful process, Jacob’s heart changes and he decides to stop running and to return to his brother and make things right. And that is what he does, and it is during this time that we read in Genesis 32 that God changes Jacob’s name to Israel (a little foreshadowing of God keeping his covenant with Abraham and the name of a future nation that would form from Jacob’s sons).
Key Verse: Genesis 32:26-28 Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is dawn." But Jacob panted, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." [27] "What is your name?" the man asked. He replied, "Jacob." "Your name will no longer be Jacob," the man told him. "It is now Israel, because you have struggled with both God and men and have won."
Through a series of events there is a spiritual transformation in Jacob’s life. He becomes a new person. His life is changed. God still uses events in our lives to change us. Doesn’t mean He causes an event to happen, but God uses events. That doesn’t mean that God necessarily causes events to happen, but He uses events. In fact,
God is more concerned with a person’s spiritual maturity than comfort. God is more concerned about your spiritual development and your character development than about making you happy. Sometimes we miss seeing how God longs to change us because we aren’t awake. We are too busy complaining, feeling sorry for ourselves, being angry at our situation, or running from our fears. Like God changed Jacob, this person who had lived in deceit, manipulation, and fear, God wants to change your life. 
God is with Joseph – Genesis 37
Well Jacob has twelve sons. Let this video introduce them to you.
Video: Veggie Tales Video - Joseph
Joseph was the brother that no one seemed to quite like except Jacob. You would have thought that Jacob would have learned a lesson from his dad about not playing favorites, but that wasn’t the case. Jacob liked Joseph more than the others and it showed. In fact, the rest of the brothers got used coats, but Jacob gave Joseph a new coat of many colors – some refer to it as the Technicolor dream coat. The problem was the meaning behind the coat. In the ancient near East, there was a ceremony involving such coats in which the person receiving the coat was declared the primary heir. That would mean that Joseph, the eleventh son was receiving the rights to the farm. Joseph was the one who would get the family inheritance, and the other brothers could see clearly that Joseph was more important than them every time he wore that coat. This was a recipe for sibling civil war – disaster.
And that is exactly what happens. We are told in Genesis 37 that Joseph would even give bad reports about his brothers to Jacob. Joseph wouldn’t just tattletale. He actually made up stories and his dad believed him. He would even share dreams that he had with his brothers about 11 things that bowed down to him. In other words, he was saying that one day the 11 brothers would bow down to him.
These brothers hated him. They actually plan to kill him, but they end up selling him as a slave to some travelers going to Egypt. He becomes a slave in the home of a wealthy leader and earns his way into a position of leadership, but the wealthy leader’s wife makes advances on Joseph. Joseph rejects the wife, but she lies and says he assaulted her. So Joseph is now placed in prison.
It is interesting that Jacob who was the deceiver had to learn what it was like to be deceived. Joseph who dreamed about being exalted ends up experiencing life at the bottom of the pile. But each time Joseph experiences pain, we read “The Lord was with Joseph.” (Genesis 39:2; 39:20-21)
In Joseph’s darkest hours, from his times of greatest pain and aloneness, we read that God is with him. And soon we find that Joseph is able to help Pharaoh, leader of Egypt, and God uses Joseph to save many people including his family from starvation during a time of famine. Joseph actually becomes the second most powerful person in Egypt.
Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt to get food and when they realize who Joseph is, they bow before him begging for their lives. They are sure he is angry with them. But listen to what Joseph says in Genesis 50. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not angry with you…
Key Verse: Genesis 50:20 "As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil. He brought me to the high position I have today so I could save the lives of many people.”
Joseph realized that God was at work through it all, even in the times when he didn’t realize it.
God is with you for the long haul. Even in the times of greatest darkness, the times of greatest pain, the times when you feel all alone, the times when you feel like no one cares, the times when you feel like God is nowhere to be found, even if parents or friends gave up on you, God is there. God sees the big picture and He is committed to you not just when times are good or when times are bad but through it all. 
God is with you.
In the moments you feel most alone, abandoned, and fearful, know and hear God’s persistent reminder that He is with you. The Lord is with you. God who is transcendent is also the immanent God who cares about you and the details of your life, and he ultimately proved how much he cared when he came to where we are in Jesus. The Lord is with you.
Invitation/Prayer: reflection time
The reality is that there are those today who feel alone, who are faced with a major decision, who are facing a difficult situation or someone you care about is facing a difficult situation, who are experiencing pain and heartache, who feel like God is nowhere to be found. Come and talk to God who cares about you and the things you care about.
Send Out
As you go through this week and face difficulty, go knowing that you are not alone. God is with you.
Resources:
Old Testament Challenge – God is With Us (Session 4)