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Sermon
Genesis

Relentless Grace

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May 5, 2024
Genesis 28:1-22
Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Grace

The Sovereignty of God

Election & Predestination

Transcript

0:17Well, let me encourage you to keep your Bibles open at Genesis chapter 28, and then would you join me as we pray, father forbid it that we would play church this morning, that we would come, and yet our hearts would be far from you. And so we want to encounter the living God this morning. So come in the power of your spirit and open our eyes, open our hearts so that we would behold Jesus in all of his splendor and majesty and glory. Do that for the sake of your name and for your glory. In Jesus name, amen.

1:03I'm channeling my inner Sam Crabtree. I I brought a visual aid here this morning. This is a rock. If you couldn't tell, hopefully you can tell I'm gonna set it here. And when you look at this rock, Most of you just see a gray unimpressive rock. But when I look at this rock, what floods my memory is the first family vacation that we took to the shores of Lake Michigan. I remember sitting on the edge of the Platte River that flows into the blue clear water of Lake Michigan. I remember swatting at those biting flies that come out in July, and that itch like crazy if they bite you. I remember picking golden sweet cherries and tart cherries at North Star Organics in Frankfurt, Michigan.

1:54I remember sampling all the cherry sodas at Cherry Republic, and I remember searching all of the shorelines of Michigan for these Petoskey stones. How many of you have heard of Petoskey stones? Only a handful. Okay, these are fossilized coral with this distinctive hexagonal pattern. And they're beautiful, especially if you put 'em in the rock, Tumblr, and they get shined up. So this rock represents much more than just a rock. It signifies a set of memories and experiences in the same way. When we come to Genesis chapter 28, Jacob's Stone Pillow comes to represent much more than just his journey, but rather his encounter with the living God.

2:40Jacob encounters Yahweh and he gets memorialized. Jacob meets God, and the rock that he sleeps on comes to signify God's blessing and God's promises that he's made to him. And this morning I, I want to have us call to mind those watershed moments like Jacob experienced here in Genesis 28. Do you remember the first time you apprehended? You understood, you saw for the first time the truth and the beauty of the gospel when you felt in your heart for the first time that God really does love me. Do you remember when you first experienced the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit or, or you heard that one message and you said, did not our hearts burn within us?

3:44Those moments, those memories remind us of God's presence with us and his relentless grace towards us. And that's what we wanna look at this morning in Genesis 28. This is that moment, that watershed moment of God's relentless grace in pursuing Jacob. Now before we jump into the text, I want us to see two big kind of problems or tensions in the text. One that is a carryover from last week. But these are the two big tensions in this text. The first one is that Jacob leaves behind the promised land. You see that in verse one, Isaac called Jacob blessed him and directed him and tells him to leave the land.

4:29And so Jacob leaves behind the promised land, he leaves behind the inheritance, he has no riches and he has no offspring. And he's going out into the wilderness. And this seems to put into jeopardy God's blessing. God had promised him this very land offspring is numerous, and now he's on the run away from his murderous, hairy brother. And with a rock as a pillow, he lit, he hits literal rock bottom at this point, it's a low point in his life and it looks like Esau wins and Jacob loses. That's the first problem in our text. The second one is that God continues to bless Jacob even though we've seen again and again, he's this no good, dirty rotten scoundrel.

5:16Jacob is not a good guy. He's the last guy you want as your financial counselor. He's just constantly deceiving people left and right, and, and yet somehow God blesses him. And this creates this tension, this problem in our mind. How can God bless such a rotten guy? In fact, back last week, you, you may remember Genesis 27 20 when Isaac says to him, how did you get game so quickly? What does he do? Yahweh gave me this blessing. Yahweh granted me success. He blasphemes the very name of God to be part of his lie, to deceive his father and to steal from his brother.

6:05How can God possibly bless someone like this? So, so those are the two big tensions in our text. The land and blessing are in jeopardy, and the chosen son is unfit and undeserving. So what in the world is God doing and what is he teaching us this morning in Genesis 28? So I'm gonna tell you the main point right at the beginning, and then I want us to see it in the three scenes that follow. The main point of the sermon is that God relentlessly pursues his people with his presence. God is pursuing, relentlessly pursuing, he's chasing down Jacob into the wilderness so that he might lavish his grace upon him.

6:51Genesis 28 shows God chasing down this no good, dirty, rotten scoundrel of a man to lavish, to overcome him with grace upon grace. And as a result, this is gonna be Jacob's watershed moment where he begins to encounter the one and true living God. And as a result, he's gonna be transformed by it. Now, if you're just joining us, uh, we're in the book of Genesis telling the story of the patriarchs, and I just wanna bring you up to speed. Remember that Jacob's mother, Rebecca has been sort of the puppet master in, in the background kind of orchestrating everything and Jacob flees to find a wife and to escape Esau's desire to kill him.

7:36And what we see is this really dysfunctional family. Isaac is passive, Rebecca is manipulative, he, Esau is homicidal. He, he wants to kill Jacob. And Jacob is a deceiver, and yet God is gonna bring something good out of this mess. So we have three scenes, we get Isaac's blessing in verses one through five. We get Esau's incompetence in six through 10 and or six through nine, excuse me. And then we get Jacob's dream in 10 through the end. So first we look at Isaac's blessing. Now, back in Genesis 27, 1 of the last verses there, verse 46, Rebecca says to Isaacs that she loathes her life because of Esau's wives.

8:23And as a result, Isaac sends Jacob to Rebecca's brother Labin in pattern Ram forbids Jacob to take a Canaanite wife and tells him to find a wife from among his mother's brother's, daughters. Now verse five, we see that Jacob obeys, and this sets this chapter in motion. He's going to go find a wife from among his mother's relatives. So this would be like the reality TV show, the Bachelor right ancient edition. He, he's going, he's looking for a wife instead of roses. He'll be like, you get a goat, you know, or whatever it is. Uh, and he's not gonna return until Genesis chapter 32. But Isaac sends Jacob with a blessing.

9:09You see that in verses three and four. And it's very noteworthy here because he's already blessed him. The, the blessing that he stole from Esau was just this general blessing of prosperity. But now as he sends Jacob away, he says, the God almighty, bless you, El should die. This is reminiscent of God's revelation to Abraham in Genesis chapter 17 verse one where he said, God almighty. Now, Jacob doesn't get just a general blessing, but he gets the blessing of Abraham. And you see that it says that there this blessing repeats all the promises made to Abraham and Isaac. So what's the big deal here? What, what's the big deal?

9:55Big deal. Excuse me, there, there's this unbroken chain of blessing that goes from Abraham to Isaac now to Jacob. And Jacob is actually retracing some of the footsteps of Abraham going back to Haran or pattern Haran, and God's blessing to Abraham now goes to Jacob. You see language there that is very reminiscent, not just of Abraham's blessing and Isaac's blessing, but it goes all the way back to Adam. You see that in verse three. God almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that that's the promise made to Adam and to Noah. And so we see this unbroken chain of blessing that's being passed down, and it shows us that amid all of the dysfunction and all the chaos and all the mess, that God is the one who's orchestrating everything.

10:54Rebecca thinks she's orchestrating everything, but God is the one who's got it under control. Everything is unfolding according to his plan. And what does that mean for us this morning? I imagine that we're all facing various challenges and circumstances. Maybe we're not running from our murderous Harry brother into the wilderness, but we have, we have suffering and trials and circumstances that are difficult and unemployment and just stuff issues, things that weigh on our mind. Maybe we've hit a low point.

11:32And this is a reminder that God is orchestrating everything according to his perfect wisdom in order to show blessing to his children, to show grace. Nothing in your life happens apart from God's sovereign plan. There's nothing where God looks down at your life and says, oh no, we let that happen. He, he, he is in control of all things. And, and yes, there are hard things in our lives, and yet God is still orchestrating everything so that we might see him and experience more of his grace. Now look with me at scene two. We come to Esau's incompetence in verses six to nine. And, and we know that Jacob's rotten, but now so is Esau.

12:28He sold his birthright for a AEB of stew. He rejects his parents God and marrying two hitite wives. Verse eight shows us that he just begins to realize that his Hittite wives had made life bitter for Isaac and Rebecca, we see that in Genesis 26, verse 35. Rebecca even says, I loathe my life because of them. In essence, she's saying, I'm better off dead than to have these two women as my daughters-in-law. And you thought you had it rough with your in-laws. The Canaanites and the Hittites are, are gonna be the consistent enemies of Israel. We see that in Deuteronomy 20. And Esau learns this lesson far too late.

13:13And he clumsily thinks Well in, in order to please my father, let, let me take another wife, the daughter of Ishmael. Now what we begin or, and not really begin to see, but we get to see in greater depth, Esau is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He, he's a couple of cards short of a deck and, and he tries to please his father Isaac, but by marrying someone from his father's side. But this does two things. The first is that Ishmael was Isaac's chief rival to the inheritance. And, and so nowhere in the text does this tell us that Isaac is pleased by this third marriage. But the second thing that this does is that this third marriage aligns Esau's family with Ishmael's family line.

13:58And now it sort of seals the deal that he's on the wrong side of God's blessing. See, these two rejected older sons, Esau and Ishmael of the patriarchs become Israel's most significant enemies, the Edomites and the Ishmaelites. And even to this day, many in the Middle East descend from these two tribes and they still oppose Israel to this day, but it seals his status as the rejected son who marries the daughter of another rejected son. So Esau has no birthright, no blessing, and three wives that his parents don't care for tough life. Now we come to scene three, 10 through 22, and we're gonna spend the bulk of our time here.

14:45There are two parts to Jacob's dream sequence. The first is this dream vision of what he sees, 11 to 15. And the second is Jacob's response. And we can begin to think of this dream as his story of transformation. He's on this physical journey, but really what's happening is this is a spiritual journey that God is leading him on. So we get Jacob's dream vision. Verse 11, Jacob lays down with this stone pillow for the night. I imagine it may be the size of a stone like this. It signifies that he's hit rock bottom. He, he's out in the wilderness. He, he's used to the comfy tense in beds, uh, of his father who's become very, very rich.

15:31But now he's in, in the middle of nowhere and he has a stone as this pillow. Verse 12 tells us that he gets this dream and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top reached heaven and behold the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Does this remind you of anything, maybe the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 where humans sought to ascend to heaven, but that was driven by human ambition. This is divine revelation. The angels go up and down this ladder, and I think it's supposed to tell us that this is from God. The heavens have opened up both literally and metaphorically, and God's come down to give Jacob a message.

16:20There's this divine vision, this opening, this encounter. And what happens we see in verses 13 to 15 is Yahweh God himself reiterates his covenant promises to Jacob, I am the Lord capital L-O-R-D-I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham, your Father and the God of Isaac. Verse 13, there we see this unbroken chain of blessing that goes from Abraham to Isaac and now to Jacob, and he gives him several promises. I don't know if you took the time to read all those promises, but I count seven different promises. And again, this number of completion, there's land, there's offspring. You've been blessed to bless others.

17:09I'm gonna give you my presence, my protection, my re return to the promised land and my guarantee that you'll return. Here's this amazing sevenfold promise of what God is going to do for Jacob. And it reiterates everything that he told Abraham and Isaac. And now it goes to Jacob. He's entirely undeserving. He, he's lying self-serving manipulator. But now he gets these promises. So, so what do we do with that? What? How do we make sense of this? What is going on is that God breaks in and he surprises Jacob with his presence and with his grace entirely undeserving. God apprehends him in the wilderness.

17:58He, he t-bones him in many ways by his grace. He chases him down as he goes out into the wilderness and he lavish promises upon him, gives him his presence, promises it to him. And this is the relentless grace of God at work in Jacob's life. He cannot run from God, but God chases him down to give him blessing. And what this does is it reminds us of the pattern of the gospel. This is not just true of Jacob. This is not just one localized event. This is the pattern of how God operates in the world and in each one of our lives. That while we were sinners, Christ died for us. While we weren't looking for him, while we were running the opposite direction, God comes and he t-bones us with his grace so that he would get our attention.

18:53And so that we would say, oh, surely God is in this place. Jacob is this blasphemer, this schemer. But God hits him with this freight train of grace. He doesn't come and say, get yourself cleaned up, Jacob. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. I need you to repent of all these sins and and stop doing those things. Instead, he just breaks in lavish his grace upon him so that he would get his attention. And as a result, as we'll see, Jacob is transformed and changed. He breaks in and he gives us the grace we need in order to know him. He says, I am to be your God and Jacob, you're not deserving of it.

19:43You've done nothing to merit it. In fact, you've done lots of things so that it should never happen. And yet by my grace, I'm come, I've come so that you might have life. It's this watershed moment and we see it again and again in the gospels, don't we? Jesus makes spiritual orphans, his beloved sons and daughters, and he lavish now upon them this inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. When you had no inheritance, you had no right to anything that God would ever give you. And now you've been given this glorious inheritance. And this is true for us this morning in the midst of our suffering and trials and grief, whatever we're facing, God breaks in so that we would see that He alone is God.

20:42There is a God in the universe. Jacob knew just enough to, to leverage the name of Yahweh in order to lie to his dad. And yet now he walks away saying, Yahweh is real, and Yahweh has met me. Jacob's blessing goes from Abraham, God's blessing, excuse me, goes from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, and Jacob now encounters God's relentless grace. This is a picture I think of Psalm 23, verse six, and many of you know this, surely goodness and mercy or the steadfast love of the Lord, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. All the days of my life. Jacob's walking around and what follows him, the hound of heaven pursues him with grace and mercy.

21:36It's like those, I think Charlie Brown cartoons, right where the storm cloud comes and just rains on one person instead of rain. That that kind of acid rain it, it's grace that just follows you all the day wherever you're going. Now we see Jacob's response. How did he respond? Three things. Fear and awe. Worship and devotion. First, fear and awe. This is awesome. Surely God is here. He calls it the very gate of heaven. He's awakened the reality. Not only is God real, not only is Yahweh truly the God of my father's, but now he's my God. And heaven's opened up. This is where God has been. I have met him. And this is no less true this morning when we gather as God's people, the Lord is present among us.

22:29It's not because this building is special, this converted warehouse or, or when you're watching online, it's not because a particular place is special, but because God is present among his people. And so do we come to church week after week expecting not just that we're gonna see people we know and hear a message and and and hear from God's word, but do we expect that we're gonna encounter the very living God? There's these trends. You know, they take these surveys, pew research or whatever of evangelicalism and you know, it says, you know, people used to go to church like four times in a month, and now it's like three times and then less and less.

23:12It's two times a month. People are more and more sporadic and, and I think the reason is because people don't realize that you're not just part of a club. That you're not just coming to pay your dues to a God so that he says, okay, they put in another hour good for him, but rather we have come to encounter the very living God. God is here. Do we anticipate that he's going to speak to us even if we know our Bibles really well? Even if you've studied Genesis 28, all the days of your life for 60, 70 years, do you expect that God by his spirit is gonna speak to you in a fresh way so that you would walk away and say, oh, I have seen the Lord afresh.

24:00Do we pray that God is going to meet us, that he's gonna save the lost and bind up the broken? Do you pray that every Sunday people would leave this place and say, surely God was in this place? May that be true. Jacob's second response is that of worship, the stone becomes this anointed or consecrated pillar for worship. It kind of like X marks the spot. This pillar becomes the gate of heaven, if you will. It's like those signs when you drive into Minnesota, you know, welcome to Minnesota or, or whatever it may be, right? This is God's country or, or or whatever it may be. And so this pillar, maybe he turns it up on its side and he becomes God's place and he names it Bethel, the house of God.

24:48And so what we're seeing is that everything is slowly being transformed. Oh, rock becomes a memorial. Lu becomes Bethel, the house of God, and Jacob is going to become Israel. He's undergoing the spiritual transformation as he goes through this trial. And the third thing that we see is his devotion. Jacob makes this vow that's a long vow, and he has three preconditions for God. And then he has three promises that he makes to God. He wants protection, he wants provision, and he wants safety. And in return, he promises his loyalty and devotion and possessions say that. Uh, so what's going on here?

25:36What, what's this vow all about? I think it's this, that Jacob is on the road to transformation, but he's not fully arrived. He's in progress like we all are. He kind of, God has met me and at the same time, I'm still really nervous about where I'm going. What's going to happen? Am I gonna have food? Am I gonna have clothing? Am I gonna go back to this promised land? There's anxiety and worry that fills his mind. He's gonna a glimpse of this gracious God, and he's like his, he told me his presence is gonna go with me, and so I'm gonna trust him. And at the same time he's saying, I wanna make sure in in next week, we're gonna look at three chapters verses 29 to 31.

26:26I know that's a lot, and so let me encourage you to read it at home. But the reason we're taking all three chapters at once is so that we can see at a single glance that it's the fulfillment of exactly this. God gives him protection, God gives him provision, and God gives him safety as he's out there with laben who's cut from the same kind of cloth as Jacob, likewise a trickster. And so let me encourage you to read it. So the main point is that God relentlessly pursues his people with his presence. God reminds Israel that he's with them wherever they go. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

27:13And that is likewise true this morning for all those who are in Christ Jesus. If you're a believer here this morning, God pursues you with his love and his grace. You think sometimes that God's grace flows in one direction, in one spot, and if you step off to the side, kinda like the camera, oh, it's eventually not gonna be able to see me. God's grace is not gonna hit me if I go too far in either direction. And the reality is that God chases us down in order to bless us and to give us his promises and to watch out for us. And so whatever trials or suffering or painful circumstances you are walking through right now, whatever fear of the unknown, whatever griefs or sorrows that you are facing, even if you walk through the very valley of the shadow of death, God's grace, his goodness, and his mercy, his steadfast love follows you all the days of your life.

28:22That cloud of grace just continues to track you down so that God can lavish his blessings upon you. And I know it feels like sometimes it, the blessings are falling over there and I'm over here and I don't feel any of those blessings. And yet we need to be reminded by God's word. God has given us promises so that we would follow him in every step of obedience, and he reigns down his blessings even when we can't see them. Amen? Amen.

28:57We will fear no evil because God is with us. So how do we apply this passage here this morning? What is God doing in Genesis 28? And what is he doing in our life? I I wanna draw out three applications for us this morning. The first is that we would see God's relentless and amazing grace. See, God's relentless and amazing grace, we've touched on this already, but here, Jacob, with this low point thinking that he somehow lost the promise despite getting it, getting the words, but leaving behind the promised land, God pursues him, blesses him, gives him promises, and he's transforming him. And he says, I'm gonna bring you back God.

29:37T-bones him hits him with this freight train of grace. And so maybe you're like Jacob this morning, you've been around church, you know your Bible, you can talk the talk, but you've never walked the walk. You've never trusted Jesus. His word does not stir your affections. You hear preaching and you're like, eh, I gotta did better. You find comfort and joy in, in money and sex and power and prestige and getting the respect of others. All of those things are more compelling to you than Jesus. Maybe you're at a low point in your life fleeing the problems of your own making like Jacob, maybe life has not turned out the way that you hoped there.

30:21There are things in your life that you're like, I wish I could have a do-over on that one. And yet I want you to see the relentless and amazing love of God in Christ Jesus that is hunting you down, tracking you so that he might lavish his blessings upon you. And so just listen to the miracle of the new birth as articulated in Ephesians two. I'm gonna read verses one through seven. And this is true of everyone who's in Christ. You were dead in the trespasses, in sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, we were working with and alongside and under the authority of Satan, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

31:23We were deserving of nothing but condemnation by king Jesus, but God. But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace. You have been saved and raised us up with him and seeded us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And now, don't miss this so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. He's lavished his grace upon us already. And he says, there's a whole storehouse, a whole warehouse of grace that I'm saving up, that I might lavish it upon you in the coming ages.

32:16You've only tasted, uh, a couple of drops, just a tiny little bit of my grace that I'm gonna lavish upon my people. And guess what? I need all eternity to show you how glorious it is. My grace upon you. Do you see the relentless and amazing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? By grace we have been saved. We were talking among the pastors when we look at an outline of the message before it goes live in, in a sense on Sunday. And well, one of the pastors said, encourage them to tell the stories of how God t-boned them with grace. Do your kids know the story of how you first came to faith? Not not just the story.

33:10You know, we, we we're good at telling the abbreviated version, you know, in Christian circles, tell me how you came to faith. You can do the 32nd version, the two minute version, the 10 minute version, the two hour version. Uh, but but do you love to tell the story of how God overcame your resistance, your hardness of heart, your callousness, and how he saved you? Do your grandkids know grandparents? Do your neighbors know? Do we tell these stories of how God apprehended us and overcame us with his grace? I I still remember the summer before my senior year off at this camp, growing up in this household where I never felt like God truly loved me.

33:57And in that summer camp, hearing this speaker declare God's love. And I just remember for the very first time feeling like, God, I want to experience and feel your love for me. And I could see it in your word. And then I felt it in my heart of hearts. And I I remember saying, Lord, I wanna feel your love and I could just feel the spirit wash over me again and again and again. When was the last time that you told that story of how God apprehended you by his grace? Second, second application, respond to God's grace with awe, worship and devotion. God chases down. Jacob lavish his grace upon him.

34:42And in a sense, he doesn't say it in these words, but the disciples in him on the road to maus did our hearts burned within us. And I imagine Jacob wakes up and he's like, this is awesome. Like God was here. This is the gate of heaven. Heaven opened up in this spot. Like I've seen the Lord like he's real. And so do we respond with fear and awe? Do we respond with worship? This is why we conclude all of our services with singing. It's not just so let's bookend the service with singing so that people feel happy. It's so that you can respond to God's revelation of his word so that the song you sing at the end, you say, praise God for what he revealed.

35:26And now I wanna reflect that back to him in worship. We get to observe the Lord supper here this morning, remembering Christ's broken body and shed blood for us. And then the third is this devotion. He says, I'm gonna give the Lord a 10th. The question for us this morning is, if we take our faith seriously, do we seek to obey all that Christ commands? And then is devotion seen in our lives? Would someone look at your life or your calendar or your checkbook or your bank statement since we don't write checks anymore and see your devotion to Jesus? Here we see Jacob giving a 10th. It's a necessary but not sufficient sign of his devotion that he, he's changed.

36:17And he says, I, I anticipate that God is going to bless me and I wanna reflect that back to him because he's begun to understand that God is the one who owns it all. And, and do we at the very minimum give a 10th back to God? Third, celebrate that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us. So when you read Genesis 28 and you see this image of this ladder or staircase where the angels are going up and down, it should bring to mind John chapter one, where Jesus is having this conversation with Nathaniel and, and Nathaniel says, can anything good come out of Nazareth? And then Jesus comes and he sees him and he says, I saw you before Philip came to you under the fig tree.

37:01And then he says, whoa, you're the son of God. You're the king of Israel. Like, he's like, you must know because you knew that I was sitting under this fig tree. And Jesus is like, hold onto your horses. You're gonna see a lot more than that. And what he says is, though not hold onto your horses, he says, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. So what's Jesus saying there? He, he's reappropriating the image from Genesis 28 and then the son of man imagery from Daniel seven to say, that's me. I am the ladder. I am the staircase.

37:36When heaven opens up and when people want to go to heaven, they need to go up onto a ladder. And when heaven comes down to earth, it comes down through this ladder. And I am that ladder. Jesus says He's the one mediator between God and men. One Timothy two, five, he's the stairway to heaven. He's the narrow gate. Matthew seven 13 and 14, he's the door of the sheep. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. He tells us, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And so what this tells us is that Jesus is the better ladder.

38:17He's the better stairway he brings us to God. There is no other way for us to enter into the heavens, approach the throne of grace apart from the work, the sacrifice of Jesus. And Jesus says, I am with you always to the end of the age, and I will never leave you nor forsake you. So this rock becomes this reminder of God's relentless grace of our redeemer, and that he is indeed the rock of our salvation. Let's pray. Father, we pray that we would in this gathering encounter the one true and almighty God, that you would meet us by the power of your spirit, touch every heart, all those watching online, and that they would know that Yahweh is God, he's real, and he's chasing us down so that he might lavish his grace upon us in Christ Jesus.

39:39And for those who are trusting you, oh, that we would bask in the waterfall of your grace. And for those who do not yet know you, oh, that they would come and surrender as you overwhelm them with this freight train of grace. I pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Genesis 28:1-22

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