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The good news of the gospel is that we don’t have to stay the way we are. No matter how many times we’ve failed the Lord, we can go home again if we truly repent and obey. It happened to Abraham (13:1-4), Isaac (26:17), David (2 Sam. 12), Jonah (Jonah 3:1-3), and Peter (John 21:15-19), and now it’s happening to Jacob.
God spoke to Jacob (v. 1). For several years, Jacob had lingered thirty miles away from Bethel and had paid dearly for his disobedience. But now the Lord spoke to him and told him to move to Bethel and settle down there. Jacob already knew that Bethel was God’s appointed place for him and his family (31:13), but he had been slow to obey. “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works” (Rev. 2:5 nkjv).
Jacob had built an altar on the property he had bought near Shechem and had called it “God, the God of Israel” (Gen. 33:20). But God wasn’t pleased with this altar because He wanted him worshipping back at Bethel, “the house of God.” The Lord reminded Jacob of his desperate situation over twenty years ago and how He had delivered him and blessed him. At Bethel, Jacob had made some vows to the Lord, and now it was time to fulfill them.
Many of the problems in the Christian life and in local churches result from incomplete obedience. We know what the Lord wants us to do, we start to do it, and then we stop. When we don’t continue to obey God and accomplish His will, even what we’ve done starts to die. What Jesus said to the church in Sardis, He says to us, “Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect [having been fulfilled] before God” (Rev. 3:2 nkjv).