Genesis 35:1

Notice this. Here we see a beautiful feature of God's way of dealing with souls. There is not one word said about Shechem, its pollution and its confusion. There is not a word of rebuke for having settled down there. Such is not God's way. He uses a far better way. If we had been dealing with Jacob, we would have come down on him with a heavy hand. We would have given him a severe lecture about his folly in settling at Shechem, and about his personal and family habits and condition. But oh, how well it is that God's thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not like ours!

These few words were with power. They formed, I believe, the great turning point in the life of Jacob, or rather, in the history of his soul. They were few and simple. Nothing strange or startling came with them, no vision and no miracle. But they were a day of power. He had already come away from the vision of the ladder at Bethel, from the magnificent sight of the army of angels at Mahanaim, and from the wrestling of the divine Stranger at Peniel. None of it had helped him or moved his soul forward. But now power visits him. God's hand can do God's work, though it has only a sling and a stone, or the jawbone of a donkey, or lamps and pitchers. And God's Spirit can do God's work in souls, though He uses only a word, or a look, or a groan.

That was a reminder to Jacob. The Lord said, "You are going back to Bethel. That is the place you left, the place where I met you before, the place you called Bethel, the house of God. All these years you have been wandering about, taking care of your own house — and acting deceitfully about it too. Now it is time to get back to My house. You are concerned about your circumstances, you are concerned about your interests. What about My interests now?" God has a house too. We should truly care about the house of God. And the house of God today is "the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).

God stepped in and called Jacob back to the place where He first made Himself known to him. There he was to dwell, and there his altar was to be. At Bethel, as we saw in Genesis 28, God declared what He would be for Jacob and to Jacob, without raising any question about Jacob's response or behaviour. God is always true to Himself and to His word. Before God gave the law through Moses, He was dealing with these fathers on the basis of His promises in grace. Those promises still stand.

"Strange gods"? Yes, there they were, and he knew it all along, but he never felt how serious it was until God called him to go to Bethel. His conscience is now awake to what had made no impression on his mind before... Now it is God's presence that brings light into his soul — not providential power, not His disciplinary dealings, but the call to Bethel. And the false gods must be put away.

God seems to have spoken this to Jacob alone. But Jacob never thought for a moment of separating himself from his family, either in privilege or in responsibility... So a call to Jacob put Jacob's house under responsibility. God called him to go up to His house, and at once his conscience asked whether his own house was fit to answer such a call.