Transcript
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Jacob has another key to his success. He
leaves the promised land as Jacob. And
we know that he returns as Israel, a new
name and a new identity. And he earns
that identity on his journey. But he
does something critical before he
leaves. He sets his center. He
establishes his north star that's going
to guide him on his journey. And you
know, it's like if you know where you
want to end up, you can go off track and
the GPS system will reroute you to your
final destination. But he put his final
destination into
course. And eventually, no matter what
happens, he's always redirected back to
his destination. Jacob establishes a
physical and spiritual destination, a
house of God that will be a house of
prayer for the entire world. What Jacob
does sets the stage for what the people
of Israel will do until the end of
times. Genesis 28:10.
Jacob departed from Beerva and went
toward Karan. He encountered the place
and spent the night there because the
sun had set. And he took the stones from
the place and he arranged them around
his head and lay down in that place. And
so if you haven't noticed it, the text
is bringing our attention to the word
the place. Hamakum. The place is key
here. And throughout the paragraph, the
word hamak, the place, it's mentioned
over and over again. It's like hamakum,
the place. Hamakum is also one of God's
names. So he is the place in which we
reside. We live within Hamakum, within
his space. Jacob discovers for the first
time in scripture that God can be sensed
in a place through a particular people.
He's not going to be found in spirit,
but specifically in Mount Mariah, the
Temple Mount. Jacob then takes a stone
from the place that he slept. He sets up
a mata, a spiritual monument. Genesis
28:18. Then Jacob rose early in the
morning and took the stone that he had
put at his head, set it up as a pillar,
poured oil on top of it, and he called
the name of that place bait l the house
of God.
And so that was his north star. He's
like, "Okay, I get it. This is where I
need to return to." So fast forward now
centuries and centuries of Jewish
history until this day for thousands of
years every Jew all of Israel was given
a north star by Jacob. Every synagogue
in the world before they lay the first
brick they bring an architect and they
designed the synagogue so it faces
Jerusalem. Every synagogue in the United
States faces the east. Everyone in South
Africa faces the north. Every synagogue
in Europe faces the south. Asia,
Australia, I mean all of Israel, they
praise pray facing Hamakum, the place in
Jerusalem. And when you think about it
and you look around the world and you
have like a bird's eyee view of history,
it's really remarkable. It's really
beautiful. It's one of those beautiful
images that I can think of. It's like no
matter what, for centuries upon
centuries, whatever happened the night
before, the Crusades, the Inquisition,
Muslim oppression, Nazis in Germany,
communists, the Jewish people woke up
the next morning, wherever they were,
they faced Hamakum. They faced that
place that Jacob set that stone and they
prayed to come home knowing somehow
sometime in some way God would fulfill
his promise and bring us back to our
place. And so Jacob before he went into
exile and before he descended into the
darkness he set his compass toward Bel
the house of God toward the land of
Israel in Jerusalem and his children
after him do the same exact thing. The
Land of Israel Fellowship [music] is a
global community. It's like a movement
that's happening all around the world.
[music] Jews, non-Jews, from so many
backgrounds, so many languages, so many
cultures, all of us connected [music] to
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to the Torah, connecting to each other.
It is like nothing else on [music] the
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