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Lead Your Family To God
“So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, ‘Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments.’” (Genesis 35:2)

Few challenges humble men as much as being told that we are responsible to lead our families spiritually! “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” (Ephesian 6:4). 

Most of us dads can easily count our failures and can easily be discouraged in family leadership. Yet, the events of Genesis 35 can be encouraging to us, as fathers. 

In Genesis 35 God calls Jacob to renew and revive his relationship with God. “God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau’” (Genesis 35:1). Bethel is where God wrestled with Jacob, giving him for the first time the name Israel, which means:  He Wrestles With God. 

This invitation from God to return to Bethel and to build an altar there lights a fire in Jacob. His faith seems entirely renewed. From this renewed faith in God, Jacob immediately steps up to lead his family. He begins by commanding them to put away all their idols and to turn their hearts back to God by purifying themselves. “Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments” (Genesis 35:2).

This is encouraging on several levels for dads. First, we can see that our impetus and ability to lead really comes from God, from following him in our lives. God’s command is an invitation to fellowship with him in worship: “Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you.” God is saying in effect: Come and worship me! Jesus’ invitation to us begins with: “Follow me” (Matthew 4:19). It is not our strength or wisdom by itself that we rely upon leading our families. We follow Jesus, and he leads us and equips us to lead. 

Second, this is encouraging in that, clearly, Jacob had not been doing a great job in leading his family spiritually! He was aware that they had idols, including his wife Rachel who had taken her father’s idols some years before, but had done nothing about it. Which means that God is patient with us in our family failures. He patiently, persistently encourages us fathers to build a family altar, that is, to lead our families from the world’s idols to God in worship. 

Third, when Jacob starts leading better, calling his family to turn from idols to the true God, they respond shockingly well. “So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had” (Genesis 35:4). God has so designed families that they work well when dads are out front leading spiritually, building a family altar of worship. It is not too late, brothers, to step up by relying on God to lead us, to lead our families. 

Jacob’s leadership begins with God calling him back to worship him. Jacob’s leadership in his family, then, is an invitation to join him in this same worship of God. The God, who, as Jacob testifies, has always been with him and always helped him. “Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone” (Genesis 35:3).

Fathers, we will only lead our families well as we can personally testify to them that Christ is the one who has always been with us to help us. “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Fathers, we lead our families best by closely following Christ, who then enables us to lead them to the same Christ, “the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”