Genesis 28

v1-5: “If Jacob is to be an heir of promise, he must not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; those who profess religion should not marry those who are irreligious.” Wise advise that still applies for God’s people today.

v6-9: Esau married “a daughter of Abraham,” not to please God, but “only to please his father.” Beware of doing the right things for the wrong reasons.

v10-15: “Christ is this stairway… All the fellowship between heaven and earth, since the Fall, is by this stairway. Christ is the way; all God’s favours come to us, and all our service goes to him, through Christ… We have no way of getting to heaven, except by this stairway.”

v16-22: To have God’s presence with us is to have Him as “a guide as we face unknown ways,” to have Him as “a guard as we face danger,” to “be well provided for,” and “to have good company.”

Genesis 29

v1-14: The description given here of the care that shepherds give to their sheep “may serve to illustrate the tender concern which our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, has for his flock, the church; for he is the Good Shepherd, who knows his sheep, and is known by them.”

v15-30: “Love makes long and hard services short and easy to bear.” And “if we know how to value the happiness of heaven, the sufferings of this present time will be as nothing to us in comparison with it.” To those who love God and long for Christ’s appearing, “an age of work will be but as a few days.”