Genesis 33: The Top City To Build Your Forever Home

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It's his word that transforms. You'll find more and see more than I can ever articulate. Welcome to chapter by chapter and today's chapter is Genesis 33. I remember the fear and the joy of buying my first home. I was fearful because it was a huge responsibility. I knew I could afford the mortgage was afraid of all the other added cost. Would I be able to maintain this huge decision? But I was also joyful. I was becoming an adult, no more renting but owning. My parents were so proud. Then I saw another level of home owning and it was building a home. It's when you get to choose the specifications you want in your forever home. That phrase, forever home, is what I would hear. Excited people say, it's my forever home. That phrase almost tripped up a man of faith who was not supposed to be a home builder or a homeowner. Jacob is the first patriarch to build a house and he's backsliding. He lost focus of his mission. He was supposed to live in a tent in the promised land but instead he builds a house on the wrong side of the river. He is just reconciled with his brother Esau. Jacob is about to start a new chapter of his life. God wrestled with him, changed his name to Israel in the previous chapter and even with a new name, a new mission and a new family starts to act like old Jacob. Genesis 33 17 says this, Jacob journeyed to Suckith and built for himself a house. Neither father nor his grandfather built anything but an altar, but Jacob decided to build a house for himself. It says of Abraham in Genesis 12, 8. He removed from fence and unto the mount down on the east of Bethel and he pitched his tent. Having Bethel on the west, AI on the east and Mary built it an altar into the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. It says of his father Isaac in Genesis 26 17, Isaac departed fence, pitched his tent in the valley of Girard and Dwellthair but it says of Jacob, he built a house. He was a tent man now living in a house. This was a massive mistake which we will see later because that tied him to a location when Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were to be tent people. We're told in Hebrews 11, they were to see further than my forever home now. It had nothing to do with anything down here but something bigger out there. Listen to Hebrews 11, 8. By faith, Abraham when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise as in a foreign land dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking for the city which has foundations whose architect and builder is God. There forever home was not some 4,000 square foot place with four and a half baths, Jacuzziapul, a man cave, an outdoor patio, et cetera, et cetera. Forever home to these three men of faith was to be in a city in heaven and the architect was God. Jacob just dumbed it down to being the architect himself. C.S. Lewis would say, "Our father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns or we would refer to them as hotels but will not encourage us to mistake them for our home." That's profound. This journey will have some nice pauses and even places. Like that's all they are, it's a pause. Don't build homes when there is just a pause. Peter the Apostle tried to build on the amount of transfiguration in Matthew 17 and was rebuked. Jesus needed them to be mobile for a little boy's deliverance in the valley below. Peter was trying to make a hotel a home. Jacob did make a hotel, a pause point, a home, and it got him in trouble. Jacob builds near a city he was supposed to move on from and his daughter gets raped there. His sons go into the city and murder the men. It's grew some story and all came from mistakenly mystifying your forever home as right here. To live where you were to pass through can become dangerous to you and your family soul. The tent mentality reminds us of the great 1919 him by Albert Brumley. This world is not our home. His lyrics for the first verse says it all. This world is not my home, I'm just passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven's open door and I can't feel at home in this world anymore. That last line is what Jacob and all of us need to remember. I can't feel at home in this world anymore. Jacob did feel at home because his natural ice sight got bigger than his faith eyes. Eugene Peterson helps us to stay focused by paraphrasing the Hebrews 11-10 passage like this. Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real eternal foundations. The city designed and built by God. In fact, the writer of Hebrews won't let the thought go because how important it is. The last chapter of the same epistle re-emphasizes the tent life by saying in Hebrews 13-14, we have no city here on earth to be our permanent home, but we seek the city that is destined to come. The list changes every year. But presently, there is the U.S. cities asking you to build your forever home in them. Austin, Texas, Ann Arbor, Michigan, St. George, Utah, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Fremont, California. The rankings focus on different factors like affordability, schools, quality of life, and job opportunities. If you are a Christian, you better make sure heaven is always at the top of your list for best cities to live in. Thank you for joining chapter by chapter. Every chapter from the greatest book, The Bible, the Word of God, seven minutes a day, seven days a week. We'll see you tomorrow.