Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #3 in Genesis 35, and we are continuing to read Genesis 35:2-5: 

Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments: And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.

In our last study, we were looking at the word translated as “put away,” #5493 in the Hebrew concordance.  We went to several verses, and we saw how the Lord often uses this word in order to call His people to Himself, and to repent and turn away from false gods to serve the true God of the Bible.  The other thing we saw was that they would “turn out of the way” of the true God of the Bible to false gods, and we looked at several verses that taught us that this was a common occurrence in the history of Israel.  And we will look at a couple more instances.  Let us go to Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament.  It says in Malachi 2:8:

But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith JEHOVAH of hosts.

The “way” is the way of Christ, which is the truth of the Bible.  Again, God is speaking to Israel, and Israel would, in turn, represent the churches and congregations.

Also, it says in Malachi 3:7:

Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith JEOVAH of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?

Basically, it is a call for repentance.  Return.  You have gone out of the way, or you have gone away from the Word, the Law.  You have violated God’s Law, and this is the reason why you are suffering, and why tribulation has come upon you.  This is the reason why your enemies have prospered over you. 

Just think of the 23-year Great Tribulation.  God loosed Satan, who is the enemy of His kingdom, and He allowed Satan to enter into the churches, the outward representation of His kingdom on this earth, and to rule over those within the churches.  Why would God do that?  It was only because they had gone out of His way, which means away from Christ.  Then the Lord judges.  He raises up the enemy and oppresses the people of God that have gone astray in this manner.

God also uses this word in a more personal way, or individual way, in Job 28:28:

And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.

The word “depart” is our word.  To go out of the way of evil…and evil is everything outside of the way of the truth of the Bible.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  The glory of God exists within the Word, and within the way of Truth.  And all men have departed from that glory.  They have departed from that Word.  So God calls them to “depart from evil,” which would mean to return to Him.

Also, this word is used in a more personal way in Proverbs 13:19:

The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul: but it is abomination to fools to depart from evil.

Again, they have gone away from God, and away from truth.  And it is unthinkable to them to give up their sinful pleasures to serve the God of the Bible, their Creator.  It is an abomination to them.

In the next chapter, we read in Proverbs 14:16:

A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident.

So the wise represent the “other side of the coin.”  So the individual that God has saved is made “wise” because the Spirit of Christ, who is Wisdom, indwells him, and that person fears and departs from evil; he goes away from evil, which can only mean that he goes the way of God, and the way of His commandments.

Let us go back to Genesis 35:2:

Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments:

I mentioned that “being clean” points to salvation, and that is the only way that anyone can truly be clean.  It is to have had our sins paid for by the Lord Jesus.  Just to show that this is what is in view, when we look up this word (which is used often in the Old Testament), we find in Leviticus 16:30:

For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before JEHOVAH.

And that is the idea.  It is to be clean from sin.

In 2 Kings we read the account of Naaman the Syrian who was plagued with leprosy.  He was a leper, and he came to Israel in order to be cleansed from his leprosy.  He encountered the Lord’s prophet Elisha, and Elisha told him to go wash in the river Jordan.  We read in 2Kings 5:10-14:

And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of JEHOVAH his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean? Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

The cleansing of leprosy in the Bible pictures salvation.  Leprosy is akin to sin, and to have it washed away is to have your sins forgiven.

Also, we can look at Psalm 51, a Psalm we are very familiar with, and David cried out to God in Psalm 51:7:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Then it says in Psalm 51:10:

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

A “clean heart” is also what is in view in Ezekiel 36:35:

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

That is an important thing regarding this word we are following, as it has to do with idolatry and following false gods.  Then it goes on to say in Ezekiel 36:36:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

So God “sprinkles clean water,” just like Naaman dips himself seven times in Jordan, representing the Word of God that brings the atoning work of Christ (the shed blood of Christ), and it applies the glorious atonement to the sinner, and our sins are washed away, and we become clean.

Again, that is God’s point as he moved Jacob to say, “Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments.”  Then it says in Genesis 35:3-4:

And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.

So they were obeying.  When called to repentance and called to turn from strange gods, Israel would often do so because they were in dire straits, and they were so heavily oppressed, and it was grievous to them, so they did turn to God.  And God did help, and He would deliver them through judges or kings, and often in mighty ways.  And here, when they were called upon to put away their strange gods, the children of Israel and the household of Jacob did so.  Interestingly, they gave Jacob not only their strange gods, but all the earrings that were in their ears.  And we wonder,  “What is the significance of the earrings?”  If we go to Exodus 32, we will find that word “turned aside” again.  It says in Exodos 32:7-8:

And JEHOVAH said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them…

There is that “turning aside” again, and this was at the time of the great deliverance.  They had been set free from Egypt, and they were following the Lord as Moses is leading them.  And Moses went up to the mount to receive the Ten Commandments at the hand of God.  And practically as soon as he went away, they corrupted themselves.  That is what God was telling Moses: “They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them.”  We could look at the coming out of Egypt as the beginning point of Israel, although it really started much earlier.  And this was 500 years later than what we are reading in Genesis 35.  Genesis 35 takes place about 1907 B. C., and we know they came out of Egypt in 1447 B. C.  And they were a newly born nation, a nation that had grown in captivity and slavery.  And now they had come out, and the first chance they get, they quickly turned out of the way.  So here is another reference to “the way.”  And Christ is the way.  He is the Word.  He is the truth.  So you can pick your preference, whether they turned out of the way; or they turned out of the truth; or they turned away from the Lord Jesus, eternal God, and the things God had commanded them.  Then it goes on to say in Exodus 32:8-9:

… they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And JEHOVAH said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

This is a very accurate statement concerning their spiritual condition that will prove true again, and again, and again.  And it can also apply to the New Testament churches and congregations, a “stiffnecked people.”  Apart from God saving a remnant in both Israel of old and in the churches, they remained a “stiffnecked people” because they were dead in trespasses and sins.

It is also here that we find a tie-in to the “earrings.”  Remember, it said, “And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears.”  Again, we ask, “Why the earrings?  What is the point of that?”  When we see what happened in the wilderness, we will see the connection, and we can find out what happened by going to Exodus 32:1-2:

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

By the way, keep in mind that these Israelites had just come from Egypt.  They had spent their whole lives in Egypt, and Egypt was in idolatrous land – there was evil everywhere, and false gods everywhere.  The Israelites lived among the Egyptians, and certainly they would have been influenced as they carried out their service to the Egyptians who had the upper hand over them as their rules and taskmasters.  They were the ones commanding the Israelites. 

You know, there must have been a deep impression made upon the Israelites (not to excuse their sin), and we also know that these Israelites were mostly unsaved.  There had been a deep impression made upon them that there was power and wealth and victory with false gods because it had been hundreds of years that those who identified with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were in subjection and bondage to the Egyptians.  So on various levels – in their subconscious and in their sinful condition – they had a tendency toward idolatry, as all unsaved people do.  Since turning from the truth to a lie back in the Garden of Eden, that has been the nature of fallen man.

But it was almost instantaneous.  Again, they said to Aaron, “Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.”

Again, it said in Exodus 32:2-4

And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

They used the earrings as the material to form the idol, the golden, molten calf.  Aaron cast them into the fire, and out came the calf.  So the earrings are tied to the idol because the idol was made from the earrings.

And it is interesting that the earrings were not just worn by women.  The earrings were in the ears of their wives, and also in the ears of their sons and daughters.  You know, many of us who are older grew up in a different time, and we spent at least some time in a world that was “semi-normal,” if a world that is wicked and cursed with desperately wicked people in it can be considered “normal.”  But it was at least a time when God was restraining the sins in the hearts of men to a greater degree, and at that time in most civilized societies, men did not wear earrings.  When we reached the time of the end and the Great Tribulation beginning in 1988, all of a sudden men began wearing earrings.  Of course women have been wearing earrings throughout the centuries, but for the most part men did not wear earrings.  You never saw it in films, or on television.  You would see it occasionally in certain cultures, but in the Western culture where the Gospel had come, there were no men wearing earrings.  Then when we reached the time of the end, there were many people with earrings.  Why is that?  I would not say that every man who wears an earring is involved in idolatry, but there is a tie-in between earrings and idolatry in the Bible.  I will not go any further with that, but it also tends to tie in with heathen practices, or those that do not have the true Gospel, and are pagan.   They have more tendency toward the males wearing earrings.  When the Gospel brought Christianity to many nations, it was just the women who would wear earrings.  That is just an observation on my part.  But there is an undeniable connection between the idol and earrings.

Lord willing, we will try to look at this a little bit more when we get together in our next study.  Also, we have to consider why the “strange gods” and the “earrings” were hid under the oak.  What is the significance of the oak tree?  Of course there is significance, or God would not have told us they were hid under the oak.  Lord willing, we will also take a look at that in a coming study.