Genesis 28:10-22
Just
another night (11)? No! - this was a night to remember, a night Jacob
would never forget. God came to him with His wonderful promise of love:
‘I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you’(15).
At Bethel (‘the house of God’), powerfully transformed by the presence
of God - ‘Surely the Lord is in this place’(16) - , Jacob consecrated
himself to the Lord. ‘If’(20) means ‘Since’. See Romans 8:31 - ‘If
(Since) God is for us, who can be against us?’. Giving the tenth (22) -
this is not legalism, a kind of repayment scheme. There can be no
‘salvation by works’. We are saved by grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). Our
giving must always be a heartfelt expression of thanksgiving to the God
of grace: ‘Loving Him who first loved me’. We are saved ‘to do good
works’(Ephesians 2:10) - not because we do good works!
No comments:
Post a Comment