Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #16 of Genesis 33, and we are going to read Genesis 33:16-17:

So Esau returned that day on his way unto Seir. And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth.

I will stop reading there.  As we have already seen, Esau represents the Law of God and, therefore, identifies with God Himself as a figure of the Law.  We are told in verse 16: “So Esau returned that day on his way unto Seir.”  Seir is a place that identifies with Edom and Esau, and it is also used in the Bible as a figure of the Law, and we see this especially in Deuteronomy 33:2:

And he said, JEHOVAH came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law for them.

JEHOVAH came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them.  There is the link or tie-in between mount Sinai, which identifies with the giving of the Law, and Seir.

Then there is the giving of the Law in Deuteronomy 1, which we have looked at a few times.  It says in Deuteronomy 1:2:

(There are eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadeshbarnea.)

Horeb is another name that identifies with the Law of God.  I know I have said that a lot already in regard to Sinai and Seir, but it is true.  It is what the Bible teaches.  For example, let us go to Deuteronomy 5:2-3:

JEHOVAH our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. JEHOVAH made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.

Then regarding this covenant, it says in Deuteronomy 5:6-9:

I am JEHOVAH thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods before me. Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them…

Then it goes on, and we recognize this as the giving of the Ten Commandments, and it was said to have taken place at Horeb.  And certainly that identifies with the giving of the Law, as the Ten Commandments represent the completeness of God’s Law or commandments and, therefore, it pictures the whole Bible because the Bible is a Law book full of the commandments of God.  It is the completeness of the commandments of God.

So when we go back to Deuteronomy 1:2, we read that it is eleven days’ journey from Horeb, or from the point of the giving of the Law.  But now we have to look at it in another spiritual way, and we realize that God first gave the Law back in the Garden of Eden at the creation of the world when He gave the commandment regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “…thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”  The Law of God was given, and from that point until the coming of Christ was 11,000 years, and that is what is view with the eleven days’ journey, a day for a thousand years.  So it was 11,000 years from Horeb, or the first instance of giving the Law back in the Garden of Eden, by the way of mount Seir unto Kadeshbarnea.  Kadeshbarnea was the location where the spies went into the Promised Land, so it really does figure the entry into the Promised Land, the land that God promised to give to Abraham as an everlasting possession, the kingdom of heaven.  With the first coming of Christ, He entered into the world, and then later demonstrated His atoning work at the foundation of the world, and that atoning work was what purchased the Promised Land of the eternal kingdom of heaven for those that He died for and saved.  That is why the Lord is making this statement: “(There are eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadeshbarnea.)

It was by the way of mount Seir to Horeb.  In order to get from the giving of the Law at the beginning to the Promised Land, you have to go by the way of mount Seir, and mount Seir also identifies with the Law.  That is, it is that pathway or narrow way that leads to heaven, and it is laid out in the commandments of God.  You follow the Word.  You follow the statutes and Law of God found in the Bible, and it will lead you all the way to Christ, and Christ is the essence of “the way” and the kingdom of heaven, the Promised Land.  Remember, that is what we read in Romans 10:4:

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

The Law was given that all the world would become guilty before God, to show us our sins and convict us of our sins, so God multiplied the Law with the growth of the volume of the book of the Bible as He moved prophets of old.  He kept speaking His Law.  There are 66 books in the Bible, and God filled up His Word and completed His written Word by the end of the first century A. D., and one of the purposes of His Word was to convict sinners of their sins, and to show them that they are not good enough – they cannot keep the Law perfectly.  They cannot get to heaven by their own good works or righteousness.  The Law would show them their transgressions, again, and again.  Even if you keep the Law outwardly and you do not murder…oh, but you have hated someone, and the Bible teaches us that hatred is a form of murder.  Or you have not outwardly broken the Law of adultery…oh, but you have looked on a woman with lust, and the Bible teaches that is a form of adultery.  So in thought, word and deed, the Law of God demands absolute perfection.  Keep the Law and live, but if you transgress the Law on one point, you are guilty of all.  For that reason, everyone that comes to the Bible is convicted (of sin) by the Bible, and he is judged by the Bible as a lawbreaker.  You have sinned, and the wages of sin is death.  Therefore  you are subject to death. 

But that same Holy book that has all these commandments also leads us to Christ.  He is the end of the Law for righteousness.  No – you cannot obtain righteousness through your own efforts or your own work.  No man is justified by the works of the Law.  But there is a righteousness that the Law reveals to us, and it tells us that our righteousness is in Christ.  So as we are being bitten by the serpent, as it were, we are to look unto Him, and not trust in ourselves, or in anything we have done.  But by the grace of God the gift of salvation includes the gift of faith and of repentance as a whole package that God wraps up when He saved a sinner through Christ.  And that is why we are told there are eleven days’ journey from Horeb by way of mount Seir (the way of the Word, or the way of the Gospel, or the way of God’s commandments) unto Kadeshbarnea (unto Christ, or unto the entry into the Promised Land through Him). 

So here is the difference, if we go back to Genesis 33, and we read Genesis 33:16:

So Esau returned that day on his way unto Seir.

Was it Kadeshbarnea?  No – it was unto Seir.  You see, the destination of Esau and the 400 men that followed him was not Kadeshbarnea.  The Law will not bring you into the Promised Land.  We learned that in the way God used Moses to lead Israel through their wanderings in the wilderness for forty years, but only up to the point of the Promised Land.  Moses, a type of the Law, led them to Christ (Joshua), but he could not take them over Jordan into the Promised Land of Canaan.  It was not within the Law’s ability.  If there were a Law that could bring salvation, then, verily, salvation would be by the Law, but there is not.  It is only Christ Himself that can bring salvation and save His people.  So Moses brought the people right to the very brink of entry, just like the Law leads us right to Christ, but it is only Christ – and Joshua’s name means “Jesus” – that can take the people across Jordan and into the kingdom of heaven.

So that is what we see here in Genesis 33:16.  The destination of Esau (the Law) and those that follow him is Seir.  It is the Law itself, and they cannot go beyond the Law.  And, of course, that is not the destination we desire.  We do not just want to go to the Law, or to Sinai.  That is what Hagar and her son Ishmael represented, the covenant of the Law.  Mount Sinai in Arabia is not the place, spiritually, that God’s people want to go to, but it is the Promised Land of Canaan, the eternal habitation of the kingdom of God.  That is where we want to go.  The Law directs us all the way there, but only Christ can take us into that land.

So, once again, we are seeing that Esau is a picture of the Law, and his destination can only take him and those who follow him to Seir, which identifies with the Law.

Let us continue, and go to the next verse, in Genesis 33:17:

And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth.

Jacob, who is a type of Christ, journeyed to Succoth, and “Succoth” is a related word to “booth,” or to the word often translated as “tabernacle,” and it identifies with the feast of Tabernacles.  So he journeyed to Succoth, and made booths (tabernacles) for his cattle.  Therefore the name of the place is called Succoth.  In the next verse, the Lord talks about Jacob coming to Shalem, a city of Shechem.  So verse 17 is unusual in that we are given this information of Jacob’s journey to Succoth.  And he built a house, and he made booths for his cattle, and therefore the name of the place is called Succoth.  But the next thing we know he is in Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan.  We wonder why God is giving us this information.  I am not completely sure, so what we are going to do is to look up the information we are given concerning the house, the booths, the cattle, and so forth.  We will just talk about that.  I do not think we are going to get too specific as to timing or anything like that because we are not given too much information here.

So let us start with “house.”  Jacob journeyed to Succoth and built himself a house.  Once we understand that Jacob is a type of Christ, we know that Christ has built a house, as we are told in Hebrews 3:6:

But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we…

Other Scripture confirms that He has built it, but it is a fact that Christ has built the (spiritual) house that consists of those He has saved.  As we are told in this verse, His house are we that “hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end,” the “we” are the elect of God. 

We read in 1Peter 2:5:

Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

We have talked about this a lot.  There is like a dual track that runs in the Bible, where God speaks of “Jerusalem below,” and “Jerusalem above.”  God talks of that church below, or of that church above, the eternal church.  God speaks of the “house of God,” which can point to the earthly church, and then there is the spiritual house, the invisible church consisting of everyone who has become saved, the “living stones.”  Every time the Lord saved someone they were a living stone that was added to this spiritual structure until the house was complete.  In our time, by the date of May 21, 2011, God had saved everyone that was to be saved, and the house was completed.  This is the house that Chris is over, “whose house are we,” and this would be the house that is in view when it says that Jacob built him a house.

Just to add to this, let us go to Genesis 7:1:

And JEHOVAH said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

So Noah would be a picture of Christ and His house.  Literally, we know it was Noah’s family.  But for those that insist we have to take the Bible literally, Noah’s family were not made of wood and stone, were they?  They were not an actual “house,” but they were his household, but God uses the same word for “house” that is used numerous times in the Old Testament.  And He said, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark,” and it was not a physical structure, but people, and it points to the spiritual house of Christ that is made up of people, the living stones that are built up as the body of Christ, and they come together to form the house.

Let us look at one other verse in Hebrews 11:7:

By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

It was the saving of his house.  There is God’s salvation program.  He came to build a house, the house built upon a Rock.  It is the house of all He has saved, and He even used the same kind of language in speaking of our family members – they are my house.  Noah built an ark to the saving of his house, and that would be the same spiritual picture as our verse where Jacob built him a house.