Genesis 35:1-15 (HCSB)
1 God said to Jacob, “Get up! Go to Bethel and settle there. Build an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”
2 So Jacob said to his family and all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you. Purify yourselves and change your clothes.
3 We must get up and go to Bethel. I will build an altar there to the God who answered me in my day of distress. He has been with me everywhere I have gone.”
4 Then they gave Jacob all their foreign gods and their earrings, and Jacob hid them under the oak near Shechem.
5 When they set out, a terror from God came over the cities around them, and they did not pursue Jacob’s sons.
6 So Jacob and all who were with him came to Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan.
7 Jacob built an altar there and called the place God of Bethel because it was there that God had revealed Himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.
8 Deborah, the one who had nursed and raised Rebekah, died and was buried under the oak south of Bethel. So Jacob named it Oak of Weeping.
9 God appeared to Jacob again after he returned from Paddan-aram, and He blessed him.
10 God said to him: Your name is Jacob; you will no longer be named Jacob, but your name will be Israel. So He named him Israel.
11 God also said to him: I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation, indeed an assembly of nations, will come from you, and kings will descend from you.
12 I will give to you the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac. And I will give the land to your future descendants.
13 Then God withdrew from him at the place where He had spoken to him.
14 Jacob set up a marker at the place where He had spoken to him—a stone marker. He poured a drink offering on it and anointed it with oil.
Surrender means yielding to the power, control, or possession of another and completely agreeing to forgo other alternatives.
Without a doubt, God wants an intimate relationship with His creation according to Revelation 3:30. He wants our undivided attention, not half-measures, He’s not interested in part of but all of us according to Revelation 3:15; hot or cold, not hot and cold, we cannot be both.
You shall have no other gods besides me declare the Lord in Exodus 20:3, and over in Matthew 6:24, Jesus says we cannot have two masters, as it would cause divided loyalty. He further admonishes us to be like a child in our trust and dependability on the Lord in Matthew 18:3.
We must surrender to God to show complete faith in His love, faithfulness and mercy towards us.
We cannot mix God with something or someone else-paganism, religion or whatever, is not part of the spirit and truth spoken about in John 4:24.
Total surrender means putting all your trust in God, not doubting or wavering, as James 1:8 says an unstable minded man is unstable.
Jacob was aware that his family’s loyalty was divided, hence his instruction to put away their household or foreign god in verse 2.
Have you or your family got a household or foreign god? Have you got a generational deity you’re holding onto on some beliefs passed down from your family that they have been good to you? Remember Jesus said in Mark 10:18 that only God the Father is good.
There are all kinds of Christians and unbelieving believers; there are those who treat God as a seasonal deity, approached only during festive periods, those who only remember the Lord when they need something from Him and forgets about Him afterwards and those who trust Him with the rational and explainable things but may handle other aspects of their lives with “professional” or those who are more involved with the Lord.
God Almighty wants an exclusive relationship with us. He will not accept loyalty of another kind, seeing from Deuteronomy 6:5 that all means all, exclusive and total devotion-total surrender.
Acts 4:12 says salvation is in no other, there are no other names or ways to reach the Lord, not through a household, foreign, generational or paganistic god, only through Jesus the way according to John 14:6.
For Jacob and his family to meet with God, they had to surrender everything before presenting themselves to God. You can’t expect the Lord to answer you when you hop between other gods as seen in 1 Kings 18:20-39.
We see Jacob bury the foreign gods in verse 4, this is a symbol of cleansing his household and preparing them to seek and meet with God Almighty. Only after the cleaning and total surrender did the Lord reaffirm the covenant, He previously made with Jacob’s forefathers to increase and make them fruitful in verse11.
We cannot hold on to other things while trying to access the Lord’s altar, since He made us for His pleasure, He will not stand idly by while we replace Him with whatever takes our fancy-He jealously guards against this according to Exodus 34:14.
Give me your heart says Proverbs 23:26, observe my ways, not any other gods. Total surrender.
Shalom