There is no substitute for the preaching and teaching of God's Word. Each weekday on enjoying the journey, Scott Pauley leads us in a brief study of Scripture.

Today, on the weekend pulpit, we are happy to share a full-length Bible message given through Scott's pulpit ministry. These messages were recorded live in a local church or gospel event in recent days. It is our prayer that the message will be a help to you today. I want you to open your Bible with me again in the Old Testament to the book of Genesis, this book of beginnings.

And I want you to find Genesis chapter number 27,

excuse me, Genesis chapter number 28 in your Bible.

And we began this morning in the Bible study hour,

early in the book of Genesis, to see the first mention of this place, Bethel.

The first person that it is recorded went there and built an altar and met

God there was Abraham. When you come to Genesis chapter number 28, it is not Abraham. It is now

his grandson, Jacob. I have any grandparents are here. Would you raise your hand please? All you grandparents, that's good. You know, I used to think grandparents. I loved my grandparents, of course, but I used to think going in and out of church as grandparents were the craziest people on earth because all they want to talk about were their grandkids. And they couldn't talk for five minutes without pulling pictures out and saying, let me show you who they are.

And about five months ago, our oldest daughter gave my wife and I our first granddaughter,

and I have become one of those crazy people now.

She's just the greatest thing in the world, and she's sweet and wonderful and precious in every way.

But it has opened my spiritual understanding to some things, and that is that your purpose is not done when your children are grown that in scripture it is always at least three generations

there's Abraham there's Isaac there's Jacob there is Psalm 78 us and then our children, and then our children's children.

In other words, it's not just about what God is doing in you, it's about what God can set in motion through your life.

So, when you come to Genesis chapter 28, you're coming to the grandson of grandpa Abraham Abraham taught his son

Isaac some things about God Isaac was kind of an ordinary fellow aren't you glad God loves

ordinary people nothing really outstanding about his life he was a man of faith but

nothing like his father or his son in in the record of his life. He was a man of faith, but nothing like his father or his son in the record of his

life. But then the grandson comes along. We know Jacob as the schemer, the deceiver, the trickster.

His name means supplanter. You remember he outwitted it out, talked his brother on more than one occasion,

robbed him of the birthright, cheated him out of the blessing, and he was a mess. He was a mess.

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