God Is Witness

We are not a trusting people, which is probably why we have so many ways of forcing each other to do things they have promised. Business build contracts with built in financial punishments if the agreements aren’t honored. When we have a marriage ceremony, it is done the way that it is for a reason. Couples make promises in public. This does two things. One, it is done in front of people for us all to be witnesses that this happened. Others can call the couple to account if they end up not doing what they promised. Two, this is done in front of God which is a way of saying that if they don’t hold up their promises, then God Himself will judge them.

 

This second example of a marriage is the closest thing that we have to a covenant today. Marriage has been cheapened as an institution with quick and easy divorce, but the seriousness of what is being done is easy to see, once you know why it is being done that way.

 

What we are seeing here today is a covenant between Jacob and Laban. We’ve seen covenants many times in the book of Genesis so far. The most common are between God and man. We saw the first one between God and Adam and Eve. Then we saw God and Noah, and since Genesis 12, we have been watching the covenant between God and Abraham unfold.

 

We’ve seen a smattering of covenants between Abraham and Abimelech and Isaac and Abimelech, but this one feels a little different than what we have seen so far. Here Jacob is making a covenant between members of his family! The Abimelechs were afraid of Abraham and his son, and it looks like this covenant is being made for a similar reason: Laban is afraid of Jacob. Jacob clearly has God on His side, so if one wants peace, then they better make sure that they are on Jacob’s side as well.

 

God is clearly continuing to move in Abraham’s family further and further away from their original homeland. Abraham moved out at God’s command, but he had to send his servant back to get a wife for Issac. Isaac had to do the same thing for Jacob, but after this moment, there is no going back to the “homeland.” Jacob, in a way, is going to become the homeland. Israel is being created and solidified as a people group on its own, something we will see more clearly as we get into our text today.

 

Our main points today are God is the true basis of community and God witnesses all that is done and will judge accordingly (Psalm 2)