Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #6 of Genesis, chapter 28, and we will read Genesis 28:6-9:

And when Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padanaram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; And that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Padanaram; And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.

In our last study, we were looking at a Scripture in Ezekiel 12 where the Lord commanded Ezekiel to pack up his stuff and “remove in their sight,” that they might consider, and that they are a rebellious house.  And the implication, of course,  is spiritual and having to do with the time of the end and the end of the church age, which Judah represented, and God’s command that would be opened up and revealed to the understanding of His people to come out of the churches.  We were to depart out of the midst and not return.

From there, we also went to Jeremiah 42, where the Lord (through the prophet Jeremiah) was responding to the remnant, the few that were left in the land.  These were soldiers that were out in the field in battle and had come back at some time after the fall of Jerusalem and Judah to the Babylonians.  At this time the governor that the Babylonians had set up there had been slain, and these few were troubled and they came to Jeremiah, and they came humbly, it appeared, and they requested him to go to God and let them know what they should do: “Whatever the Lord says, we will do.”

And we went there (to Jeremiah 42), and the reason we went there because of what we are reading in Genesis 28.  We know that at the time of the separation between Jacob and Esau (between those loved and those hated by God) fits in with the separation of the wheat and the tares that God worked out over the course of the Great Tribulation when judgment had begun at the house of God.  We first went to Ezekiel 12 because God said that Ezekiel was to take his stuff and “remove in their sight,” and to let them know that they were a rebellious house.  And, likewise, God commanded His people to come out of the churches and we were not to do so in a way that would not be noticed.  No – we were to tell our pastors, tell our elders, and tell our friends in the congregation.  “The Bible is declaring that the church age is over.   The churches are apostate.  The Holy Spirit has left the churches and Satan has been loosed, and he has entered in.  It is time to come out!”  We were to let them know why we were leaving.

So these things that we are reading here, historically, have a spiritual relationship to the end of the church age and God’s command to come out and, especially, that Esau witnessed that Jacob had received the blessing and that Jacob had departed the land of Canaan at the command of his father and mother to go to Haran.  Then we read in Genesis 28:8:

And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father;

The reason given was that it was the time for Jacob to leave and to find a wife, and they did not want him to take a wife of the daughters of the land.  Seeing and understanding this, Esau then proceeded to take a wife from the daughters of the land, a daughter of Ishmael.  That is, he was being blatantly rebellious.  He was openly rebellious against the commandment of God and against his mother’s and father’s wishes and what would be pleasing to them.  He was doing more than just transgressing the Law of God regarding being “unequally yoked.”  He was of a godly family, and he should have sought a godly wife, but more than that, he was transgressing God’s Law regarding honoring one’s parents and obeying and respecting them.  So it was very grievous sin he was committing, and that is what led us to Jeremiah.

So Jeremiah did go to the Lord (in Jeremiah 42), and the Lord waited ten days before responding.  It is the same way as when we go to the Bible, and we are going to the Lord, desiring to know things.  We want God to answer and reveal truth to us, but we are always at the mercy and will of God.  We wait at the feet of Christ.  We wait for Him to give to us the piece of bread, as He multiplies the loaves, if it is His will to do so.  When we are studying a verse that we do not understand, where God, in his infinite wisdom, has determined that we are not to know the thing at this time, we might have to wait ten days, or ten months or ten years.  But when God delayed in this manner in the historical situation that the Jews were in as the Babylonians were approaching, He is adding intensity to the flames of the “testing fire,” and they were getting more and more fearful: “Why have we not heard anything?  Why is Jeremiah not coming back?”  Then there was day three, day five, and day seven, and the rebellious heart and the rebellious nature that was in them started to come to the surface.  And when ten days had come, this is what Jeremiah said to them, as the Lord had given him to say, in Jeremiah 42:19:

JEHOVAH hath said concerning you, O ye remnant of Judah…

Notice, again, that it is addressing the remnant.  And, finally (at the time of the end), there were these few people that were of the Reformed faith, and some of them listened to Family Radio and gave every outward indication of being elect.  But when it came to the severe testing program God presented to them to leave their churches, they refused.  So God is addressing them as they believe themselves to be, the “chosen few,” and He says, in Jeremiah 42:19-20:

… strong>Go ye not into Egypt: know certainly that I have admonished you this day. For ye dissembled in your hearts, when ye sent me unto JEHOVAH your God, saying, Pray for us unto JEHOVAH our God; and according unto all that JEHOVAH our God shall say, so declare unto us, and we will do it.

So humble and obedient, it appeared, or at least that was the lip service they gave.  They professed that they would be obedient, but it was really a different story.  Then it goes on to say in Jeremiah 42:21:

And now I have this day declared it to you; but ye have not obeyed the voice of JEHOVAH your God, nor any thing for the which he hath sent me unto you.

He is telling them in advance that they are not going to obey what He is saying.

Then it says in Jeremiah 42:22:

Now therefore know certainly that ye shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, in the place whither ye desire to go and to sojourn.

They wanted to go to Egypt.  They wanted to flee the land of Judah and go to Egypt to escape the Babylonians.  As far as the spiritual picture, what would Egypt represent?  I think it would continue to represent the church, as we read in Revelation 11:7-8:

And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.

The apostate church from which the Spirit of God has departed is turned into “Egypt,” because Egypt is “the house of bondage,” and without the Spirit of Christ, there is no deliverance through salvation any longer.  And Satan entered in, as typified by Pharaoh, the one who kept the Jews captive.  In other words, God returned Israel to “bondage,” as we read in Deuteronomy 28:68:

And JEHOVAH shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships…and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

Spiritually, that is what happened when there was the transaction of the Holy Spirit leaving (the churches) and Satan entering in.  The churches became as Egypt.  So these men that were insisting upon going to Egypt, we can understand as not wanting to come out of the churches during the Great Tribulation.

Then we read in Jeremiah 43:1-7:

And it came to pass, that when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking unto all the people all the words of JEHOVAH their God, for which JEHOVAH their God had sent him to them, even all these words, Then spake Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the proud men, saying unto Jeremiah, Thou speakest falsely: JEHOVAH our God hath not sent thee to say, Go not into Egypt to sojourn there: But Baruch the son of Neriah setteth thee on against us, for to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans, that they might put us to death, and carry us away captives into Babylon. So Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, and all the people, obeyed not the voice of JEHOVAH, to dwell in the land of Judah. But Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, took all the remnant of Judah, that were returned from all nations, whither they had been driven, to dwell in the land of Judah; Even men, and women, and children, and the king's daughters, and every person that Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah. So they came into the land of Egypt: for they obeyed not the voice of JEHOVAH: thus came they even to Tahpanhes.

Now they were being very obviously rebellious.  “We will not obey.  You speak falsely.” 

It is funny how things changed.  Just ten days earlier, they had come humbly to Jeremiah.   And why did they come to him?  It is because they recognized that Jeremiah, who had been prophesying for decades concerning these things, was a true prophet of JEHOVAH.  The majority of the prophets were saying things like, “God will fight for you and restore the vessels that were taken into Babylon, and our people will come back.”  They lied to the people year, after year, after year, and it had gotten so bad that they recognized that Jeremiah was telling them the truth all those years.  That is why they came to him.  That is how they knew he was a true prophet of JEHOVAH, and they said to him, “Whatever God says, we will do.”  And, yet, as soon as they do not hear what they want to hear…you know, this is an important point.  We have seen this taking place over and over again, during the last twenty or more years of the Great Tribulation and now into the Day of Judgment.  We have seen people that seemed so faithful, and at one point in time when they would talk to us, they sounded just as humble as these people and just as broken.  And they gave every indication that they were truly God’s elect, part of the remnant.  They were not like so many hundreds of millions in the churches that had false gospels and all kinds of crazy doctrines.  They seemingly understood the truth, and they even followed it for a period of time.  They knew the Lord’s true prophets.

We can relate to the things we are reading here because this has been unfolding before our eyes as we have been living (and are living) at the time of the end.  In our terms, they would have listened to Mr. Camping, an obviously faithful man of God.  And why do I say it was obvious?  It was because of the way he would elevate the Bible:  “Only the Bible, and nothing added, and nothing subtracted.”  He would not have allowed that for a second , but only the Bible, the Holy Word of God.  The matter in which he highly esteemed the original Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures, and not just with lip service, but in practice, for year, after year, after year.  He was giving every indicator of being a true man of God.  And this is a major way we can evaluate whether someone is “true” or “not true” is that they will tell you “hard truths.”  The true prophets in the Bible (and God makes note of this) speak of wars, famine, pestilence and judgment; whereas, it is the false prophets that say, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.  But Mr. Camping qualified as a faithful man of God, and God opened up his understanding, and he taught what the Bible says faithfully, even though it was unpopular and provoked many.  Many were offended by these things, and they lashed out and tried to destroy him with their mouths and, yet, this “remnant” knew that this was where the truth was coming from, and they listened, and listened. 

And when it came to doctrine, God opened up hard teaching upon hard teaching, guaranteed to spot the prideful heart of an unregenerate soul, and that pride rose to the surface on this point of doctrine and that point of doctrine, as God brought them forth concerning the faith of Christ, the Sunday Sabbath, baptism being the washing away of sin, the end of the church age, Christ having been slain and having made payment for sin before the foundation of the world, the doctrine of hell, and Judgment Day beginning on May 21, 2011.  All of these things were coming forth, and at some point, those proud hearts rose up and they shook their fists: “I will not obey.  You speak falsely.” 

They said these things even though it was the same methodology of comparing Scriptures that had produced these doctrines and hidden truth that came forth at the time of the end, and they were not able to say, “You speak falsely because you did not take these verses into consideration.  You misspoke when you said this.”  No – it was only their own feelings and their own ideas, coming forth from their own minds.  They just did not like it.  It was not what they signed up for.  It was not the traditional viewpoint and the typical teaching that had been around for hundreds of years; or it went against their confessions (or whatever the reason), and they do not like it, and they refuse to go any further.  They will cease to follow these things, and once they go back from one doctrine, they start going back from all the other points of doctrine that they seemingly had believed.  And they are “walking back.”  They turn around and they are headed for “Egypt.”  That is what the Bible is teaching about what has been (and is) happening at the time of the end.

We read in Jeremiah 44:13-23:

For I will punish them that dwell in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence: So that none of the remnant of Judah, which are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall escape or remain, that they should return into the land of Judah, to the which they have a desire to return to dwell there: for none shall return but such as shall escape. Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of JEHOVAH, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men? Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men, and to the women, and to all the people which had given him that answer, saying, The incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, ye, and your fathers, your kings, and your princes, and the people of the land, did not JEHOVAH remember them, and came it not into his mind? So that JEHOVAH could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which ye have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day. Because ye have burned incense, and because ye have sinned against JEHOVAH, and have not obeyed the voice of JEHOVAH, nor walked in his law, nor in his statutes, nor in his testimonies; therefore this evil is happened unto you, as at this day.

They stopped trying to cover it up.  They were not trying to put on “another face” any longer, and they are revealing who they are in heart.  And they are not worshippers of JEHOVAH.  They are worshippers of the queen of heaven.  They were the “remnant” in name only.  They identified with JEHOVAH only as long as it served their purposes, but in truth and in heart, they were always rebels.  They were idolaters.  They were always ungodly people.  They were not “true” men in whom there was no guile.  There was much guile within them because they all possessed hearts that were still desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, except they had tried to cover it up.

And this has been the story of the church age, as so many “covered up” their ugly sinful condition of being dead in trespasses and sins with their outward adornments: “I am a Christian!  Praise the Lord, praise the Lord!”  And others at the time of the end were trying to “cover it up” by following the faithful teachings of a ministry like Family Radio at that time, saying, “To God be the glory for this!  To God be the glory for that!”  But, in truth, they were just as ungodly as all those that had been bundled as tares in the churches and all the unsaved out in the world – there was no difference, except they had an outward identification of some sort with the true, faithful doctrines of the Bible.

But God has been putting the fire to all those that say they are His people, and their actual spiritual condition becomes known.  The “day” declares it, and they are revealed to be “wood, hay, stubble.”  But God’s elect remain “gold, silver, precious stones.”