1. In Genesis 31 Jacob and Laban set up a boundary marker as a means of protection from each other.  Boundaries are helpful in our lives to protect ourselves from ourselves especially in the moral area.  We need to think through boundaries for our lives regarding the opposite sex, and regarding what we read, watch, and view on the internet.  Boundaries are simply strategies to keep us from falling.

2.  As Jacob reaches the edge of the promised land he once again encounters angels as he did when he exited the land 20 years earlier.  The angels were representative of God’s protection of Jacob and would remind him that this conflict was not physical only but spiritual as well and required a spiritual response on his part.  As Dr. Allen Ross said:  “When God’s work is involved, the conflict is spiritual, not physical.  This was true for Jacob, it was true for Israel, and it is true today.  No human effort can be sufficient for these things.  The source of defense and means of victory come from God’s ministering angels.”