Those Travelling With Us


A Sermon On:

Genesis 32: 1-21



PREPARED BY

KEN GEHRELS

PASTOR

CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH

NEPEAN, ONTARIO



In the early 1960's the school system of Alabama was totally segregated, a system for the blacks and one for the whites. A court order forced the integration of the two. The first black child to enter a white school was a young grade 2 student named Ruby Bridges. As Ruby went to school that first day hostile men of the community threatened to stop her, or harm her, or worse. Lynchings, even of children, were not unknown. The local police wouldn't do anything. They were on the side of the vigilantes. Federal marshalls had to be called in, fully armed. Two rows of officers, one on each side of her, carefully and strongly escorted her past screaming, hysterical mobs of whites who swore and threatened all kinds of unmentionable things which they would do should they get their hands on little Ruby.
They stood there like two rows of giant oak trees guarding a road between them, a road along which walked this little girl.

A man named Jacob once walked a dangerous road as well. He was travelling from the land where he had lived for over 20 years, the land of his father-in-law. After a close encounter with this man who was quite hostile and who didn't want to see his daughter and grandchildren leave, Jacob is on the move. He's going home. But that, too, will be dangerous. For waiting at home is a brother he has cheated, a strong violent sort of man. And there is his ageing father - to whom he has lied. A father who clearly favours that other son.
Jacob is going to unfriendly territory.
Who knows what awaits him.

On he trudges.
Till suddenly he encounters a most amazing sight.
A sight that Ruby Bridges, if she had been there, would have identified with.
Please join me in reading about it -

Genesis 32: 1-21


Can you imagine this scene in your mind?
Picture Jacob, trudging along and thinking about this meeting, the sun blazing down, when SUDDENLY there is another blazing light. It is the blazing light of angels, tall strong and brilliant angels. Two camps of angels. Two lines of them - one on the right of Jacob's caravan, and one on the left.

What could this have possibly looked like?


Have you ever driven down a back road or a lane where there were large trees, say oaks or maples, on each side forming a canopy, almost a tunnel, through which you drove. Isn't that impressive? Especially in Fall when these trees blaze with yellow and red colours. Their branches extend like arms over the road and you drive along in awe, overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. You feel like stopping and resting there, safe and protected, within that place, with the trees as your giant protectors.
Could it be that this was what it was like?

Jacob calls the name of the place Mahanaim - "Two Camps."
It seems that the assembly of angels which Jacob saw was divided into two groups. Two camps - one on Jacob's right, and one on Jacob's left.
More powerful, more impressive, and more brilliant than any stand of Canadian Maples or Oaks. Reaching out with their arms over Jacob and his entourage, while they march forward. Safe and secure he goes between them.

Two camps - two lines of shining angels.
Forming the same sort of protecting shield that the Federal Marshalls did in that segregated southern town so many years ago when they formed a human corridor and allowed little Ruby to pass safely into school.
Mahanaim - two camps. The federal marshalls, the troops of heaven, massed and positioned around the vulnerable child of God who is returning to his home as commanded by the LORD.

This is not the only occasion where such a presence of angel soldiers is described in the bible. In many places we read of angels carrying out protecting work, sometimes alone and sometimes in groups - angelic battalions. A couple of examples come immediately to mind:
in 2 Kings 6 a prophet of God is in a city which is surrounded by an enemy brigade under orders to capture and kill him. The prophet Elisha and his servant have no way of escaping. The helper begins to panic. Elisha prays, "Lord, open his eyes that he may see how things really are." God answers and the servant sees the enemy brigade surrounded by a vastly superior force of angels with chariots and horses of fire, prepared for the word to come down and destroy that enemy. Elisha is saved .In 2 Sam 5.24 King David is preparing for battle with the army of the enemy Philistines. God tells him to attack after he hears the sound of marching go past him in the tree tops. This marching was the sign to him that the invisible heavenly army of God had gone ahead of him into battle. The result is victory for David and the army of God's people.
These are pictures of the truth of the Bible passage we read to begin our service: Psalm 34.7The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and he delivers them.
These supernatural incidents in the lives of Jacob, Elisha, and David are meant to teach US about a supernatural truth for our lives:
God will not allow the lives of his children to be short-circuited or steered off course from the purpose He has prepared for them; God will NOT allow our lives to be made meaningless, or rendered useless or blocked into a frustrating dead end - ruined by all the natural and spiritual forces in creation which smear devastation all around.
Jacob had been told by God to head back to the land of his fathers, his heritage, his faith, his inheritance; back to the land that had been promised him by God in a dream; back to the land where God was going to build a nation through whom the Saviour of the World would be born.

But Jacob sees a big obstacle - his brother Esau. What would become of his life? The angels come as a reassurance to Jacob that he doesn't travel alone. God travels with him. And God's power will see to it that the Divine Plan for Jacob's Life WILL come to pass. He will not be rubbed out by a vengeful Esau, squashed like some insignificant bug who is a temporary nuisance and then is quickly forgotten.

The angel of the LORD encamps round those who fear him, and he delivers them.
God's power goes with his people in their appointed road of life.
Can you relate?
Imagine --You scurry down the halls of SRB or Merivale High, and as you do there is an honour guard of angels perched on top of the lockers, watching and protecting your every move as you develop the gifts and talents God has given you in preparation for a lifetime of serving Him.Imagine - -You push the vacuum cleaner down the hall of your home and angels watch silently from either side as you care for the family God has entrusted to you.Imagine - You drive the road to your next customer, or hustle down a side aisle at the shop, and all the while two squads of angels, one on your right and one on your left, wing along with you running cover for you, as you serve Jesus Christ by representing Him in the workplace and developing and using that part of creation in which you are involved.
The angel of the LORD encamps round those who fear him, and he delivers them.
God goes with his people in their road of life.

CAN you imagine that?
You say - "But that's Bible stuff. Maybe that happened 3000 years ago, but it doesn't happen today."
Oh, my friend, Yes it does!! God is just as alive and real now as he was then. He is no less interested in his people. He is no less powerful. He is no less active.

You say - "But that's Bible stuff. Maybe that happened to these heroic characters like Jacob, but God certainly wouldn't put out guardian angels for a character like me...... would he?"

Let me ask - Why wouldn't he? Look carefully at the kind of character Jacob was. His name says it all - "DECEIVER". Even when he leaves the home of his Father-in-Law, he deceives him. There is always another shady deal and fast move waiting up his sleeve. The bible, in these chapters of Genesis, pulls no punches and shows us plenty of them.
And Jacob was no model of faith, either. Take this very incident. One would think that having seen this majestic sight of angels would give the man confidence. Far from it.
A messenger approaches, "Sir, we have news of Esau." "Yes?" "He's coming, and four hundred big guys, armed to the teeth, are with him." Jacob's mind goes blank. He forgets about the angels and can think only about screaming, sand-covered Bedouins on knobby-kneed, spitting camels racing towards his household through the desert. Quickly he implements a disaster plan to save as much of his possessions and family as he could from what he is certain will be a horrible meeting.
And it is only after he has finished with all that that he sits down to catch his breath. And then - "angels, angels, angels! Yes, the camp of God! Dumb me. Here I am, sweating it out, my gut twisted in knots because I'm afraid of losing everything and meanwhile God has sent angels. God has given me his promise, too, didn't he! A promise to care for me. A promise to ensure that I will be well looked after.... Know what? I'm going to hold him to that!"
And finally he prays. Even that's not a pretty and humble prayer. It is more like - "God, you better do it!!"
Then he jumps up and makes more preparations.

Jacob remains a very earthy sort of character, with a half-baked, constantly changing and growing faith. He never really "arrives" and so provides a real picture of encouragement to those of us who have a half-baked sort of faith, who constantly find ourselves leaving church with shoulders slightly sagged, wondering how on earth we are ever going to be able to live up to that tremendously high standard which is set before us; wondering how God could ever be possibly interested in us.

Then sometimes it's a good thing that we can read the bible and discover the flunkies of faith, the religious dropouts, the D- students in the school of spirituality. Like Jacob, who with all his quirks and quarks, ups and downs, good points and bad, remains the object of God's constant care.
God points to Jacob and says to the commander of his army of angels, "better go and accompany that man. He needs your help."

So it is too for us, at school or at home or in the fields or at work or in society, God points to us and says to the commander of his army of angels, "better go and accompany those people. They need you help."
That's the amazing thing about faith in the Living God of the Bible. We don't get a relationship with him, we don't get protection by him, we don't get his love by virtue of our being so good and perfect and honourable. We get it because he WANTS to give it. Period. We deserve it only because his son Jesus Christ gave his life in suffering and death to pay for all the double-dealing and deception and ineptness and wrong that appears in the lives of Jacob, and you and me.
The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear his name, says the Bible. It means this. When we come to God and honestly admit that we aren't perfect and that we need help, when we simply accept Jesus into our lives -- Jesus I know you died to pay the Cosmic Court of Justice's sentence that the black records on my life deserve, and I thank you for doing that. I believe in you and I love you -- when we simply accept Jesus this way, then deserving or not, we get this amazing supernatural guardian angel protection.

It's important to remember that this army of angels that surrounds Jacob does NOT mean that nothing hurtful or tragic will ever happen to Jacob or his family. In fact just two chapters after this incident, his precious daughter Dinah is raped by a prince of a neighbouring town. And one chapter after that his dear wife Rachel dies in childbirth.

And you all know that. So many of you carry scars and wounds from dark moments in life. You know that Christians still get sick, still get unemployed, still suffer tensions in family relationships which need much work. Christians still die, sometimes in horrible ways. Christians are NOT immune from the sufferings of this broken and hurting world.

But Christians are not alone. We are not like little bottles bobbing aimlessly on a giant and stormy sea, never really sure where we will wash up, or if for that matter we will end up anywhere. Perhaps we will sink instead. Christians are not alone. And Christians do NOT have to face life in their own power. God goes with them.
From time to time, for reasons that finally only God knows, there will be incidents in the lives of all of us that hurt, that we don't like at all and perhaps resent deeply, but which God allows to happen. They happened to Jacob too - even after the vision of the angel guards.
But life will carry on, and God will provide the strength to carry through. He will not allow us to be side-tracked or snuffed out in a meaningless sort of way. He will make, somehow in some way, all things work towards his purposes - even when the Devil is there trying desperately to wreck and destroy and turn everything to hurt and pain and wrong. And that is the key.

God's angels will ensure that our existence on this earth is for some good reason. They will surround our steps to ensure that happens. And when the time comes they will provide, for every believer, an honour guard for the last trip, the trip to heaven's gates. That is what happened this past week to Frank Romp.

So, when you drive down a back road or laneway and pass a tall stand of trees majestically lining the ditch, whether in their summer greenery or blazing colours of fall or the glimmering light of sunshine coming through ice-coated branches after a storm, stop for a moment and imagine them as angels.

Remember Jacob. Remember God's promise to you, and then carry on.

The angels of the Lord encamp around YOU who fear his name and they deliver you.