Gen 28:15, And behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." In this passage is recorded a promise that God made to Jacob that extends to all those whom He has called unto Himself. This specific passage deals with the Word of the Lord to Jacob, but it is indicative of the very nature of God that is in evidence in the daily lives of His redeemed people. We will spend some time tracing this pledge of God through both the Old and New Testaments. 
The key to remember is that God does not change. He does not say one thing to one person and a completely opposite thing to someone else. Who He is and what He promises are the same; yesterday, today, and forever. Therefore, we can confidently appropriate His promise to Jacob as His promise to each one of us. As we will see, this promise has proceeded through the lineage of Israel down to us in Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Our Savior.
The entire account of Jacob’s life, as we will be reading in the next few chapters of Genesis, reveals the fact that God took this oath very seriously. He was with Jacob, soon to be called Israel throughout the entire time of his servitude to Laban, as Jacob was working for the hand of his beloved Rachel. In that whole experience, even with Laban’s deceit, God blessed Jacob with riches and with safety. When Jacob did return to the Land of Promise, in trepidation of facing the wrath of Esau, God went before him and prepared Esau’s heart to accept back, again, his brother. 
Through the entire account of his life, we see the Hand of God operating fully to bless and to keep Jacob with the very, continual presence of Himself as Jacob’s Shield and Safety and Justifier and Vindicator.  
We see this same Nature of God evidenced in Joseph, Jacob’s son. Gen 39:2+3, And the Lord was with Joseph, so he became a successful man. And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. Now his master saw that the Lord was with him and how the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hand. 
Initially, Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Yet, God was with him and kept him and brought him into Potiphar’s house. There, the hand of God’s abiding presence blessed Joseph in all his deeds and caused Potiphar to give Joseph control of all that he owned. Then, Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph, who would not be unfaithful to his master. In scorning the advances of his master’s wife, Joseph was accused of treachery and thrown into prison. 
Even in prison, the presence of the Lord was continually with Joseph. Despite the fact that he was unjustly accused and unfairly treated as a scoundrel, Joseph was in the place necessary for the Lord to bless him in a manner beyond all understanding. Throughout his imprisonment, Joseph was faithfully attended to by the presence of God, even in that dungeon. Gen 39:21-23, But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him, and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer. And the chief jailer committed to Joseph's charge all the prisoners who were in the jail; so that whatever was done there, he was responsible for it. The chief jailer did not supervise anything under Joseph's charge because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made to prosper. 
Because God was with him, Joseph flourished in a manner that brought him to the attention of those in power. He eventually was brought out of that prison and, by the continued blessing of God, became the overseer of all the land of Egypt. From slave to second in charge of all the Egyptian Empire, Joseph knew the sanction of the presence of God upon him. In this manner, the Israelites were rescued from starvation and brought safely into the land of Egypt, as predetermined in the heart of God.
This is something that we each must take to heart. There are several factors at work in both of these examples. The first is that both Jacob and Joseph were faithful in their responsibilities. They served their earthly masters with virtue and with the every capability at their disposal. They held onto the promise of God, but did not just sit back and expect Him to bless them. They were not indifferent nor were they slacking in the manner of their labor. They did all that was in their power to make their masters profit through hard work and accuracy of dealing.
Second, the circumstances did not dictate the full manner of their being blessed by God’s presence. No matter how they were treated by others, they counted on the Lord to make things as He so deemed necessary. They were treated completely unfairly. Advantage was definitely taken in both of their cases. But they counted on the Lord to make things right and dealt with others in the grace and the goodness of the Lord. They were blessed with the direct knowledge that God was with them and that He was supplying their every need. They allowed themselves to lose their ill-treatment in His graciousness and His merciful dealings, despite the way things seemed to be. 
This, then, brings us to Moses and the manner in which God made provision for the Children of Israel to be released from the enslavement of the Egyptians. Once again, we see that God was with His Chosen People even in their slavery. He raised up a man to deliver them and to lead them out of that bondage. God promised Moses that He would be with him and would guide him in the way in which he was to declare deliverance to the Israelites. Ex 3:12, And He said, "Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain." 
In following the manner in which Moses and God interacted with each other and with the people, it becomes very evident that a most personal relationship was in place. Moses walked and talked with God and was sheltered by the grace of God’s Love. Every day there was a reliance that Moses showed in coming before God and counting on Him to make every provision for the vast number of Israelites being led through the wilderness. God spread His hands to envelop Moses and to guide him and to declare all that was in His heart before this chosen leader. It was even to the point that when Moses came forth from the presence of God, his face had to veiled to protect those in his vicinity. This was a man who knew the intimate presence of God as his very source of ability and wisdom in bringing the Children of Israel back to the Promised Land.  
Moses relied on the Lord’s abiding presence with the every issue that developed in his responsibility as the leader of that wandering and constantly complaining and stubborn people. Through every trial of patience and frustration and disappointment, Moses knew that God was with His People. His physical presence radiated forth from the pillar of fire by night and the cloud of smoke by day. The manna and the quail were the continual reminder that God was taking care of His Chosen ones, even in their disgruntled attitude and stubborn refusal unto obedience. 
After Moses, Joshua led the next generation into the land flowing with milk and honey. The Lord was with him as we read in Josh 1:9, Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." 
After the conquest of the Promised Land, a series of judges were raised up to manifest the promise of God to not forsake His people with His presence. One of those was Gideon, as we read in Judg 6:15+16, And he said to Him, "O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father's house." But the Lord said to him, "Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man." 
This was a man who so trusted God that when God winnowed down the army from 20,000 to 300, he still went forth in the confidence that God was with him. The Lord provided a tremendous victory over the Midianites in the display of His awesome power. That would have been missed with a superior number of soldiers. 
So often, when we experience the hand of God’s deliverance, we become insensitive to the fact that it is by the very presence of God in our lives that we are given the victory. We try to claim some of the credit with our piousness and our self-righteousness, while all the time it is only by the might and the strength of God that we can ever find our triumph. With Gideon, there was no doubt that God was the One by Whom victory and deliverance was wrought. 
The Psalmist had no doubt in this as recorded often in the Word. In Ps 46:4-7, we have a tremendous declaration of the comfort and the peace that is ours in the direct presence of God. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, The holy dwelling places of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered; He raised His voice, the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah. 
This is something which, again, we may take for granted in our consideration of all that God has done. We forget that, in Jesus Christ, we are brought into the very presence of God. He is with us and we are with Him. He is our strength and our every source of comfort and rejoicing. No matter what may come our way, we are in the immediate and direct presence of God, in Jesus Christ, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 
Again, listen to the Psalmist in Ps 46:8-11. Come, behold the works of the Lord, Who has wrought desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariots with fire. "Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah. 
As His people, we are enabled to behold the very working of God as He manifests Himself in all His glory and might in our lives. Nothing comes into our presence apart from Him. He makes the whole of creation to obey His every charge concerning us, in His great and awesome love.
Cease striving and know that I am God… This is something that each one of us has to have the Holy Spirit work into our hearts and minds. We are constantly twisting and doubting and striving and trying to make our lives better through the efforts and the manipulations of our own hands. We turn here and there in every vain attempt to do this or that for the Lord that will improve our time on this earth. We often think that we have to perform great works that reveal copious amounts of energy for the Lord. Then, after we are exhausted and utterly worn out, God steps in and does what was always His heart in the matter, without our help or interference. 
On the other end of the spectrum are those who do not know what it means to trust the Lord in everything. We will explore every other avenue of release from the circumstances of our lives. We will strive after all kinds of methods and plans and whimsical manipulations to ease our internal strife and angst. Nothing, it seems, is too far fetched to try in order to make some difference in the plight of our living in this realm. It is only after we have tried everything else that we turn to God, in resignation and defeat, and ask Him to help us, which He always does. 
Oh that we would come to the place where we would Cease striving and know that I am God… in every situation at the very initial phase of that dilemma or work. No, we do not sit back and do nothing. Rather, we wait for the Lord to reveal what He wants us to do, then we do it, under His direct guidance by the Holy Spirit and in the strength and the energy of His life in us. We do not try to do anything on our own, but only as He so leads and guides in our lives. This is what it means to have the abiding presence of God with us every moment of every day.
Our Lord Jesus knew this reality as we read in John 5:30. He made no secret of the fact that He was utterly and absolutely reliant upon the Father for everything that He did and said on this earth. "I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. Such should be the actuality of the lives that we live on this earth. In the promise of God’s eternal presence with us, through all that we undergo in our every day life, there should be that evidence at work in us to reveal, not our will, but the divine will of God as the heart of why and how we do all things. This is another aspect of the fulfillment of God’s tremendous promise to be with us always. 
	When we continue next week, Lord willing, we will further trace this promise as highlighted by the Prophet Isaiah, as well as several of the writers of the books of the New Testament. This living knowledge of God with us is of utmost and tremendous consequence in our lives. We are to honor God for the fact that He has so promised and has accomplished this abiding presence of Himself in our lives through the death and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son, and in the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit. We must recognize this truth and so conduct our lives in full accordance in the knowledge that He is with us always. This will change our entire focus and attitude and conduct on this earth! So be it!
And behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." Amen.

	

This morning’s benediction is Isa 24:13-15. For thus it will be in the midst of the earth among the peoples, As the shaking of an olive tree, As the gleanings when the grape harvest is over. They raise their voices, they shout for joy. They cry out from the west concerning the majesty of the Lord. Therefore glorify the Lord in the east, The name of the Lord, the God of Israel In the coastlands of the sea. Amen.