The Pattern of the Orphan (Gen. 30:25-31:16)

“Remember, the only real leader you have is Jesus Christ. Unless you are daily taught of Him you will not be able to make the right decisions. To get to Him you need to pray, but it needs to be prayer of a unique quality. You can pray all night and all day and still not be in touch with His will. Prayer is not full and effective unless it adds up to our learning to wait upon the Lord for Him to make known His will. He needs to break down our tendency to cry out in prayer "Your will be done," and then to get up and still try to impose our will on circumstances.”

—Jack Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader

The Providence of a Loving Father (Gen. 29:31-30:24)

“You see, there is prayer, and there is God-given prayer. The former is superficial, the work of orphans, who may be religious people but are unwilling to surrender human independence to the leadership of Christ. God-given prayer and praise have as their essence a waiting on God, a willingness to be wrought upon by the hammer and the fire of the Almighty until the chains of self-centered desires fall away from the personality, and the love of Christ becomes the deepest hunger of the inner life.”

—Jack MIller

God's Sovereign Purposes are not Thwarted by Human Sinfulness (Gen. 29)

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”

— Isaiah 53:3-4

Jacob in the Wilderness (Genesis 28)

“The divine covenant partner commits himself to be present with, to preserve, and to protect his pilgrim-saint until he returns safely to the Promised Land. … The pilgrim obligates himself to come to God’s house and worship him with tithe in hand. These commitments commence the plot of [Jacob’s sojournings]. Jacob sets out to find a wife, but first God finds him.”

—Bruce Waltke

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

—Matthew 28:20b

Our People, Our Father (Genesis 27)

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

—Deuteronomy 6:4–9

God's Faithfulness Through Generations (Gen. 26:1-11)

“The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man’s troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.”

—Martin Lloyd Jones

God's Divine Purposes Will Succeed (Gen. 25:19-34)

Please note: due to a microphone issue, the last several minutes of the sermon were not recorded.

“There are no natural guarantees for the future and no way to secure the inheritance of the family. It must trust only to the power of God. Period. Period promise requires an end to grasping and servitude and an embrace of precariousness. It is only God who gives life. Any pretense that the future is secured by rights or claims of the family is a deception.”

—Walter Brueggemann, Commentary on Genesis

God's Providential Care (Genesis 24)

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling. …

“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

—Psalm 46:1-3, 10-11