From the Pastor's Study
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Do you love transitions in life? We look forward to at least a few of them. Starting life at college, a first baby, a first grandbaby, a new job that fits your passions better or moving from single to married. We look forward to those because we expect them. It is a normal part of the growing up process, and since they are such well-worn paths we know what to expect more or less. It is the unexpected transitions in life we fear. Those are the ones we don’t see coming and are not a part of everyone’s experience. Suddenly changing a job, losing a pregnancy, getting that dreaded phone call from the doctor, watching a spouse mentally or physically fade away. It feels scary because this new experience doesn’t have the same sort of “well-worn path” feel that the ones I described earlier. It feels like uncharted waters. Familiar comforts are stripped away as you are forced to realize what you are really holding on to. In this section of Genesis, it is a major transition for the rest of the book. For the final time, a member of Abraham’s clan is going to leave the homeland, never to return. Jacob is about to embark on his solo journey as the sole holder of the promise. He is about to go home, truly home. Jacob is only going to be able to make this transition by holding onto God’s promises that He will be with Him. It is my hope this morning that by the time we get to the end of our time today, you will realize that God has no borders. There is nowhere where God does not rule, and that applies to whatever country you find yourself in, and whatever stage and area of life. God will move you when He’s ready and He will be with all the way. God Will Move You When He’s Ready We pick up our story here twenty years after Jacob arrived. He has spent 14 years working to obtain his wives, and now he has just completed the last six years to provide for himself a flock. It is looking like things are finally getting set right. Others are starting to notice, however, just how much Jacob is getting here. Laban’s sons, the ones who are supposed to inherit his wealth, are starting to think that Jacob is making too much. Importantly, they see him as getting this wealth at their father’s expense. Never mind the fact that Jacob is just doing what Laban agreed to, Jacob is just too successful. What’s worse, Laban has started to sour on relationships with Jacob. This is a big change from just a chapter ago when Laban was trying to make a deal for Jacob to stay. Everything that Jacob did to prosper the family’s homestead seems to be fading in the background as Jacob obviously gets richer. What’s more, God has now instructed Jacob that it is time to leave. He is to go back to the land of Canaan, where his fathers and kindred are. There is an ominous note to the word “kindred” as we remember that Jacob has a brother, and he didn’t exactly leave on the best terms. It is clear to Jacob that it is time to go, but can he convince his wives? In verses 4-16, we get a deeper dive into the details behind Jacob’s decision to leave and the provision that God has provided thus far. We find that it has been a tough working environment, and there has been a lot of pushing and pulling it would seem between Laban and God. It starts by stating generally that Laban doesn’t favor Jacob anymore, but God does. Despite Laban trying to cheat Jacob out of the animals he owes him, God has just kept changing which animals produce well. Everything that Laban does to try to get at Laban ultimately backfires. At the end of the speech, it is made undeniably clear that God has been behind everything, and now it is time for Jacob to return to Bethel (where he met God) and make good on that promise he made to God. God has done nothing but care for him, so now it is time for Jacob to hold up his end of the vow with his tithe. In an even clearer sign that it is time to go, Rachel and Leah agree! These two have been at odds for a while, but they are now in agreement that it is time to leave their home. They have their own bones to pick with their father, specifically, it seems that Laban has held out on giving them their dowry. Jacob worked to provide the bride price, but Laban had a responsibility to provide a dowry, an inheritance for his daughters (Matthews). He seems to have spent that. But once again, God has moved and provided all the necessary start to life they need. The takeaway from this section is that just because things weren’t pleasant doesn’t mean that God wasn’t ruling over it. Yes, it was hard to have wages adjusted to try to make Jacob’s cut as bad a deal for him as possible. Yes, it was insulting to have one’s marriage be a bargaining chip. But it was directly because of those things that God was building up this family to begin their journey. I’m sure all of you have similar stories. Looking back, it is clear that God was working through it all. God Will Be With You All the Way Returning to Jacob, he begins the flight away from Laban. He waits until Laban is busy with the sheep shearing, so he and his crew can slip out without being noticed. He gets a bit of a head start (the three days and seven days may actually just be a turn of phrase meaning short time and long time according to Matthews’ commentary), and makes it all the way to Gilead (about four hundred miles) before Laban catches up with him. Laban is chasing him because two things have been stolen. The first is that his household gods have been stolen and Jacob has stolen away. The Hebrew actually reads “stole the heart of” Laban, which is a way of saying that Jacob tricked Laban (Ross). There is a bit of controversy about what exactly these household gods were or why Rachel stole them. It could be as complicated as these idols were tokens of inheritance such that the person who owned them was like the person owning a deed (this is unlikely in my opinion, as women couldn’t obtain property like this (Matthews)), or it could be that these are the idols that Laban uses in his divination practices, or it could be simply that these things were made of valuable metals like gold and Rachel wanted some spending money. Whatever these things were, they obviously represented some sort of security for Laban. If they were his gods that they worshiped, then they are some pretty laughable gods. He’s gotta rescue them! Or if they were money, then Laban really is desperate to get an amount of gold that can hide under a camel saddle (more on that later). These things were not more powerful than God. Laban was ready to rumble and chased Jacob 400 miles to do it, but he was stopped in his tracks by God in a dream. You’ll notice how Laban is referred to now, “the Aramean.” He is now the foreigner. People are now judged in relationship to Jacob. Jacob is the man of promise. The tables have turned one final time. Whether in Laban’s home, or the hill country of Gilead, God has controlled every aspect of the game and ensured that his purposes were brought about. Now, the takeaway that you might expect me to say here is that God is everywhere, so you don’t have to fear those who might threaten you. And that is a true lesson, but we covered that before. I want to make our takeaway a bit more personal. Are there any boundaries that you assume that God doesn’t have rulership over in your life? That can manifest as anxiety or avoidance. Anxiety would say that God is everywhere but the classroom test. God is everywhere and providing for everything except the doctor’s waiting room. Or your job prospects. Or your marriage. God is there. Especially if it is difficult. It can also manifest as avoidance. You live like God doesn’t have anything to say about the way your marriage is being conducted, or the way your time or money is being spent. What you do with your body. God owns every bit of you and guides every bit. You can rebel against that, but that will only result in your pain (see Laban). If you are experiencing this, then I would call you to repent. If you are experiencing this as anxiety, I would call you to comfort. I would lead you both to the same place, the table. There is no better visual reminder of the presence and working of God than the Lord’s Supper. Here, we are reminded that Jesus once walked the world in flesh and now, even today, wishes to commune with us in Spirit. This was accomplished through the very death of Jesus. It wasn’t something that made sense at the time. How does one beat death by dying? But the cross and resurrection prove to us in the deepest possible way that God rules over all things and does so with His personal presence.
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We love a good come back story, don’t we? It is the subject of our favorite movies and stories we like to tell, how people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, facing long odds, and with nothing but their own ingenuity and creativity, they win. This informs our own country’s ethos of rugged individualism and self-reliance, and it is very easy for us to unhelpfully mix this in with our Christianity. Now, the Bible is all for working hard and taking personal responsibility, but the Bible is quite clear as to Who gets the credit for the outcome of that hard work. Proverbs 21:31 “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.” Psalm 127:1 “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” These passages (as well as others) are not saying that preparing and building are bad, but we just have to remember who to thank when it is done. This text in front of us is beginning to drive that message home, although it won’t do so explicitly until the next chapter. Though it is only a short passage, we are about to review six years of Jacob’s life after the 14 years he has spent in serving for Laban’s daughters (Gen 31:41). The main point we are going to be walking away with today is God is not halted by our adversaries And God is not helped by our antics. God is Not Halted by Our Adversaries Jacob is ready to leave Laban. We begin our section right after the birth of Joseph, a son from Rachel’s own body. Jacob is ready to leave now, having served all his time. At this point, he has been gone from home for 14 years since he tricked his father into the blessing. It has been seven years since that awkward wedding week. He’s ready to leave. Laban is not quite so ready to let Jacob go. Aside from just having another person around the homestead to help out, Laban has learned through some sort of witchcraft that Jacob has been uniquely blessed by God, and Laban has benefitted from being near him. This brings to mind the blessing that was given to Abraham that he and his descendants would bless the nations that blessed them. Laban doesn’t want that blessing to leave. Laban re-opens negotiations in an attempt to make Jacob stay, and Jacob has an idea. He needs flocks of his own, so he is going to take the speckled and spotted lambs and goats to be his, and not just taking the spotted ones that are already here but just the ones that will be born in the future. Jacob’s idea would be very favorable to Laban as presented. As one scholar points out (Belcher): Genesis: The Beginning of God’s Plan of Salvation God Is the Source of Jacob’s Wealth (Gen. 30:25–43)"Jacob is requesting the irregular of the flock. Normally the wages of a shepherd would be about 20 per cent of the flock, but rarely would the speckled portion of a flock be that high of a percentage. So it seems like this would be a good deal for Laban and he agrees to it immediately (v. 34)." Laban agrees to the deal, and then goes about making sure that this already advantageous deal really goes his way, he removes all the animals with spots on them so they don’t have lambs and goats with spots. Laban is a man of science and knows that parents often pass on their traits to offspring. He doesn’t want Jacob to have much of anything, so he gathers up anything that would make Jacob’s plan easy, puts those animals in the charge of his sons, and then walks a three days journey away. This could be as much as 60 miles away (Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible)! In our context, that would be from here to a little beyond Birmingham. This means that those spotted sheep aren’t going to get anywhere near Jacob’s flock. This is classic Laban, isn’t it? He offers to make a deal, and then he makes absolutely sure that it always goes his way. Those people still exist, don’t they? Maybe you even work for a few of them! Maybe, like Jacob, they are family! Yet, as powerful as they seem, God is the one ultimately in charge. This doesn’t mean that you have to resign yourself to be walked over or taken advantage of, but it does mean that you are not in the fight alone. The One who created the world and died for you, knows the situation you are in. If He has provided a Biblical way of escape, take it! Switch that job, get out of that abusive situation, and on the way to that escape rest in the fact that God knows and provides for you. That powerfully crooked person doesn’t stand in the way of God. And if you can’t, pray for the strength and joy to endure. One day, you will be delivered. God is Not Helped by Our Antics. Let’s check back in with Jacob. While God isn’t halted by his adversary, what role is Jacob playing in acquiring wealth? We pick up our story in verse 37. Jacob resorts to a folk belief, a local technique for sheep breeding, the pealed back stick method! The idea was that whatever was in front of the animal’s face during conception or pregnancy was imprinted in some way on the animal in the womb (Matthews). So if you wanted to have spotted sheep, you would put a spotted stick in front of the sheep while it was breeding. Now, we in our modern sophistication know that this is not how genetics work. There is a reason that Laban took his spotted lambs far away, as that is actually how genetics work. We don’t have any indication that this stick method was told to him by God. In the next chapter, Jacob describes a dream God gave him about spotted sheep, but that chapter doesn’t include how they were to be born, so I think that Jacob is simply relying on folk legend like the mandrakes of the previous section (Matthews). Despite this superstitious practice, God blesses Jacob’s efforts over these six years. Why? Was it because God wanted him to use sticks? No. God blessed him because He promised to. That’s it. Jacob isn’t doing anything sinful here as far as it goes, and eventually he does acknowledge that it was God who blessed him in the next chapter. But the sticks did nothing to advance God’s agenda here. What does this mean for us? We have superstitions as well. Be good friends with anyone who plays sports regularly, and they will eventually admit to their lucky socks or pregame rituals. We can even do this as Christians. While we are blessed by reading our Bibles and praying, we can quickly assume that because we did those things that God owes us to have a successful day as we imagine it. Yes, we should pray about the day ahead, but we should not assume that if we do what is right, we are owed ease. Just because we had the right response to a hardship does not mean God won’t bring that hardship again. This is even true with stuff that we “know” works that isn’t pure superstition. Yes, being careful with your money means that you will be able to address financial emergencies, but that doesn’t mean that God isn’t the one ultimately behind your provision. Yes, studying well and consistently for a test generally means that you will get a good grade on the exam, but we don’t get to take all the credit. Yes, going to the doctor, eating right, and exercising will generally lead to good health, but God is the ultimate provider of health. To put it another way, the section of the Lord’s prayer, “give us this day our daily bread” has not been made obsolete because Walmart exists now. This doesn’t mean we don’t need to go shopping or study for our tests. God uses our efforts, but we don’t give glory to our efforts. We give glory to God. This keeps us humble and keeps our confidence where it needs to be. Imagine what would have happened if one of Jacob’s sons stepped on one of those sticks and broke it. That might have seemed like all hope for an inheritance was lost! Imagine the strife within the family as Jacob looks at that broken stick, fuming at what his son did. And it all would have been for nothing! The stick isn’t the hope, God is! Take comfort in the hope you have with God. When the visual evidences of God’s care fade (think: health, wealth, quiet in the home), God doesn’t fade. We don’t have to mourn the bank account number. We don’t have to fear the boss at work. We don’t have to yell at the kids to just get them to behave. We don’t have to do something sinful just to keep a friend happy. Those are just sticks. Here’s a crazy one: your life doesn’t even depend on you. One pastor friend (Martin Wagner) put it this way, “You aren’t the answer to all your own problems.” God is caring for your life. You are not your own personal messiah, nor are you such for your workplace, home, or ministry, so stop thinking and acting like you are. Take a rest on Sunday. The world will keep spinning. Spend some more time praying and less time running around. Now, you may say, “But, Pastor, this is going to make people lazy!” Well, I actually want you to be lazy in work that isn’t yours to do. Be lazy in trying to hold up the world! That’s not your job. It is distracting you from what is your job, namely, to love those around you. We spend too much time acting like we must be constantly busy or we aren’t useful. Do we work hard? Sure, but not at the expense of time with Jesus and resting in Him. See Mary and Martha. Be diligent in the handful of things that God is truly calling you to right here, right now. Now, I can almost hear someone else saying in their heart, “Pastor, you don’t understand. My whole house really does depend on me completely. Unless I do the laundry/cook dinner/file taxes, my family will be unclothed, hungry, and in prison! I’ve tried taking a break, and everything fell apart.” I hear this, and I have been praying for you these last few days. Being the engine of the home is hard, and at the end of the day, someone does have to do those things. If this is you, let me offer you some practical suggestions. Assuming you have already clearly and with words communicated to your family that you need help with specific tasks and will let them do those tasks in their own way to no success, then pray not only for energy to do these things, but joy in that work. Jesus actually is there with you, so do the task with Him. Laundry can be an act of worship by praying for each family member as you wash their clothes. Laundry is a holy work when it is done for Christ. Secondly, know that this season of life is just that, a season. It can feel like you are trapped in this life forever, but you are not. Jacob was at work for Laban for twenty years. That means he probably left Laban when he was close to 100 years old. But he would live for 47 years away from Jacob and eventually living in Egypt with a son second-in-command of of the place! Crazy things can happen in this life, but glorious things will happen in the next. Your whole life is just a season, so keep looking to the promised land, comforted that neither adversary will halt it, nor antics advance it, because Christ died for it, rose again to it, and will one day bring you along, too. 
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What we have in front of us today is a painful story. We have an unloved woman yearning for the affections of her husband. We have a loved woman who has everything in her life except that which she most desires, a child. We have a passive husband, tossed around by every twist of emotion in the household. We have two other women seen only as objects and means to an end. The sad news is this is all done entirely to themselves. None of this was necessary. All of it was an attempt to control things that cannot be controlled. The glad news is that God is going to turn petty competition and profound longing into the nation of Israel that will one day bring the Messiah. Our two points today: Coveting kills joy through false promises, yet God blesses whether we see it or not. Coveting Kills Joy Through False Promises We hear the word “covet” thrown around pretty casually as just another way to say “want.” I hear people say, “I covet your prayers.” While that’s not a sin to say that, it just isn’t the proper understanding of that word. Coveting is wanting something to the point of being willing to sin to get it. That doesn’t mean that this sin is hard to commit. I can so want time to myself that I ignore prayer. That’s coveting. I can so want well-behaved children, that I’ll try to short-cut the process by being harsh. That’s coveting. I can so want acceptance by friends that I’ll compromise what I believe. Or so want good grades that I’ll cheat on a test. Or so want that toy that I’ll be mean to a sibling. It’s all coveting. At the end of the day it is what I want no matter how I get it. So how does this play out at first? This passage in front of us is neatly divided into four sections. The first and last sections start with an action of the Lord. The Lord sees in verse 31, and the Lord remembers in verse 22. The middle two are the sisters “seeing.” These middle sections display the craziness that results when we covet something and attempt to get it our own way. In this first paragraph, Leah is clearly in pain but isn’t as yet doing anything sinful to alleviate it. To be honest, she participated in the deception of Jacob. She decides to go along with her father’s plan to trick Jacob. Jacob already didn’t love her prior to marriage, and tricking him into marrying her certainly doesn’t help matters. Despite how she got into this position, and at this time in history she was in a rough spot (compassion where it is due), the Lord saw that Leah was hated. God was watching Leah, and acts for the hated one. God sees you, too. There are seasons of life where it feels like everyone is ignoring you, even the ones who shouldn’t be ignoring you. Parents, friends, even spouses can seem distant and distracted. That loneliness feels crushing. But God seems especially attuned to that. He has even experienced it in the person of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when all His disciples fled from Him after one of them directly betrayed Him to death. God knows what it feels like to be alone, to be hated. And He has compassion. He shows this to Leah by causing her to have children, sons even! A son means that the family name will continue, and for this family, the blessing to pass on! You can see Leah’s state of mind in how she names her children. All of these names are puns, play on words. They sound like other Hebrew words for the emotions she feels. She names her first son Reuben which sounds like the Hebrew word for “see.” She feels that now that she has given Jacob a son, a future, a descendant to pass on the blessing, the guarantee of land for future descendants, that she will finally get the love from Jacob that she desires. However, even with one son born, and even with three more to come in these verses, her status doesn’t change from “unloved.” She names her second son Simeon which sounds like shema or “heard.” She understands that the Lord “heard” she was still hated and thus sent a second son. The first son wasn’t enough, but she will find that the second son doesn’t help either. Son number three’s name sounds like the word “join,” Levi. She hopes that her husband will be attached, but even this doesn’t help. Finally, the fourth son is named Judah, sounding like the word “praise.” She is stopping the pursuit of her husband’s love and decides to simply praise God for what He is doing. If she could only see what these sons will do, though. Each of these sons, and all the ones to follow in the rest of our passage, will form the nation of Israel, all twelve tribes. The tribe of Judah is ultimately going to be the kingly tribe, the tribe of David, the tribe of Jesus. Levi is going to produce the priestly tribe, the tribe that will offer sacrifices for the sins of the people, the tribe that will point most clearly to Jesus’ sacrifice. All from the unloved one! You never know what is hidden in your pain. Some of your deepest pains will be the greatest offerings you give to the world. Those pains form you into a person able to serve, understand, and pray for others. Here, Leah channels that pain into praise. She is an example of what to do in this situation. She recognized the the Lord sees, and she worships Him. However, we are about to see what happens when Rachel and Leah see in a different way. God saw Leah with the eyes of compassion, but Rachel sees her with the eyes of competition and envy. Here’s where the “all natural remedies” kick in. Rachel’s seeing causes her to envy her sister and covet her position. This begins by yelling at Jacob for something he can’t control, a fact he angrily reminds her of. AS one scholar notes, “Jacob does not handle the exasperation of Rachel very well. He does not pray to God for his wife nor does he give her any comfort…Neither Jacob nor Rachel are trusting in the LORD to give them children” (Belcher). Yelling comes natural, but it isn’t the solution. The other “all natural” solution is to give Jacob her maidservant to have children with, since that went so well with Sarah and Abraham. Having a concubine was a very normal part of the ancient world, but the Bible never approves of this practice. Here these real women are just being used as baby machines, a practice we moderns do as well with surrogacy. In this practice, the child born to the servant (in this case Bilhah) was fully the child of the mistress (in this case Rachel). This isn’t even fully about having children, as such, but it seems that this is all about competing with Leah. She names her first child “Dan” which sounds like “judged.” The implication here is that God has finally done right by her in giving her a son, sort of (Ross, 511). The second son of Bilhah is called “Naphtali” which sounds like the word for “wrestle.” She feels in this moment that she is winning! Not to get left behind, Leah “sees” the situation, and suddenly the woman of worship enters the wrestling match. She has her own all natural remedies to this spiritual problem of jealousy by deploying her own servant, Zilpah, bearing her two more sons whose names sound like “good fortune” and “happy.” You think we’d be done at this point, right? Everyone has, as far as society is concerned, children. Competition done, right? Can’t be jealous if everything is equal, right? All natural remedies have worked? Nope. Leah’s son finds some mandrakes and gives them to his mother. Mandrakes were a plant considered to enhance the bedroom experience and increase fertility (Matthews). However, ingesting too much of the plant would be poisonous resulting in hallucinations, blurry vision, and even death. The plant has the same compounds we use in anti-nausea pills and those eye drops they put in to dilate your eyes. The fight begins for the mandrakes and reveals that the sisters still are in the same painful spot. Rachel wants them because, really, she still hasn’t had a child. Leah doesn’t want to give them because she still feels unloved by Jacob. All the competition, all that scheming, all those “all natural” remedies resulted in nothing. But we will continue down this path as the wheeling and dealing begin. Rachel sells Jacob to Leah for the night in order to get mandrakes, which Leah takes. Even without the mandrakes, she gets pregnant again, and names her son after a word that sounds like “wages,” a sort of double pun on the sale of mandrakes and on the mistaken idea that God was rewarding her efforts with the servant. She then has another son, and finally a daughter. That just had to be crushing for Rachel. Despite having the mandrakes, yet another all natural remedy it is another two years of no children. Finally, only when the Lord moves, He causes Rachel to have a son. “Joseph” sounds like the Hebrew word for “taken away” meaning this birth has removed the stigma of childlessness, and it sounds like the word for “let there be another son.” What a mess! God blesses whether we see it or not. Now, despite their sinful motives, the Lord blesses. No one ultimately needed concubine children or mandrakes. In fact, pursuing these things never gave them an appreciation for the sons they had. It was never enough. So what do we take away from this? God is blessing you whether you see it or not. Coveting things that God hasn’t given you yet isn’t going to help you see the blessings He has given you already. Modern science is actually waking up to the practice of gratitude. Apparently, scientists can actually see the change in people’s brains when they spend time being grateful for what they have. By all means do that, but as a Christian, you have something even more powerful than that. Again, by all means, be grateful for the things that He has given you. Write them down. But don’t forget to be grateful for the Giver of those gifts. You don’t just have gifts from God, you have the gift OF God. You have a good Father who knows and loves to give good gifts to His children far better than we can (Matthew 7:11; Psalm 84:11; James 1:17)! The climax of those gifts is spelled out in Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” You, as a sinner who offends God daily, has been given forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And as it says in Luke 12:32 ““Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” This world is too hard for you to intentionally forget that you are going to heaven. There are too many things to want in this world for you to not start every day saying, “I’m going to heaven to be with God.” That is the only way to combat your coveting. It’s the only way to combat anxiety, which is just coveting the things that you currently have and are afraid of losing. Stare at the ultimate blessing that you do already have. This doesn’t mean that the shimmer of things in this world goes away completely. God made a good world. There are great things in it. But over time as you practice turning your eyes on Jesus, the things of this world fall into their appropriate place, underneath the glory of Christ. 
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One of the great blessings in modern life is the GPS. I don’t listen to directions very well, mostly because they are entirely absent of street names. When my family moved to Jasper, Alabama, at a time before smartphones were widespread, I would tell people that I had just moved there and needed directions to such and such. Their directions would begin with, “Well, do you know where the old Sonic used to be?” I would reiterate that I had just moved here and thus didn’t know where anything used to be! One time someone used an old fallen tree that wasn’t even there anymore as a landmark! Enter the GPS! Finally, no more hazy directions! Everything is laid out clearly on a map to take you right where you want to go. Or so I thought. Abby and I on one trip had to drive through Atlanta. The GPS, ever helpful, suggested that we take a detour off the highways in order to avoid traffic. I pushed “yes” and it took me through some very scary sections of Atlanta. This was a very different path than what brought me into the city! I did get home, but it wasn’t the way I expected. The GPS often makes us think that because a journey starts out one way that it will absolutely continue as it should. We often bring the same attitude to God’s plan for us. We think that because it operated one way for our parents that it will definitely work that way for us. Or even expecting the patterns of our own lives to repeat. When that pattern is disrupted, we can often feel like God is abandoning us. Or if this pattern is interrupted by our own sin, we can feel as though there is simply nothing good that can come from this situation now. Jacob is about to find out how God works. The path of God’s providence is often bumpy, but we will see God work it out to his good. Today, our main focus will be Trust God with the twists. Trust God with the Twists We begin this chapter fresh off his dream at Bethel where God has promised to be with him and produce the same blessings as promised to Abraham. Scholars note that the Hebrew here points to Jacob’s outlook on his future. Where it says “went on his journey” the Hebrew is delightfully phrased that Jacob “picked up his feet,” which is a lovely way of saying that he had a “spring in his step” of sorts (Ross, 501). Life is good! But there is trouble on the horizon. It notes that he came to the “people of the east.” We’ve mentioned this before, the direction “east” is a symbol of sorts of moving away from God. We first see this all the way back in Genesis 3:24 where Adam and Eve are banished “east” out of the Garden. We will see this direction reverse in the New Testament when wise men come “from the east” to meet and worship Jesus. for the moment, Jacob is heading east, heading into hard times. But that trouble looks pretty far away for now, as things begin to fall into a familiar pattern. Jacob approaches a well where he is about to meet (one of) his future wives, Rachel. Right away, we should start thinking about how Isaac’s wife, Jacob’s mother, was discovered. Rebekah, too, was found by a well which Abraham’s servant just so happened to be at right at the time that he was supposed to be there. It looks like a repeat of Genesis 24! But there is one component of this story that is conspicuous in its absence: prayer. The servant before anyone came to the well, he was covering everything in prayer. This is something that is clearly missing in this narrative. Does this mean this is why everything goes wrong for him? Not necessarily. On the one hand, we have examples, particularly in the book of Joshua, where a lack of prayer is a big part of the reason for a lack of success (Joshua 9 and possibly chapter 7). However, we don’t look at our prayer lives as a formula to follow to get what you want. God does many things despite our prayerlessness, as I believe J.C. Ryle once said, but I think we rob ourselves of a lot of joy by not praying specifically to the Lord and see Him answer. In any event, Rachel comes up and Jacob is ecstatic. He rolls away this huge stone all by himself, kiss her and starts crying! Lot of feelings happening right now! She runs off to tell her father Laban, who, as we shall see, is always looking for a deal. After a month long stay, Laban opens the negotiations for the future. Jacob wants to get married, and in that culture, you needed to have something to give the family for a bride price. I know that sounds like a property exchange to our modern ears, but the loss of a daughter in that time was, in fact, a measurable economic loss. She is a shepherdess here, so to give her to Jacob did, indeed, mean that Laban would need someone else to help with the sheep. However, Laban is milking this for everything it is worth. At least one scholar points out that this was beyond even what could be required of a Jewish slave. Six years of labor was the max for that, and he is proposing seven years (Rick Philips). Jacob doesn’t have a whole lot of choice, though, as he has nothing at the moment being homeless and broke (Matthews). Fortunately, he loves Rachel so much, that those seven years fly by as if they were a few days. Rachel isn’t the only character entering this mix. We get a little narrative aside introducing us to the oldest daughter, Leah. There is some discussion as to what is meant by Leah’s eyes being “weak.” Some translations put it “delicate” to try to give a positive spin on it, but I think that the text is trying to be comparative here (Matthews). We are trying to draw a contrast between Leah and Rachel. Beautiful eyes were a sought after beauty standard in the ancient near East, and unfortunately, Leah struggles here. Rachel, however, is given top marks for physical beauty. This passage gives us many points of comparison not just between Leah and Rachel, but also between these sisters and Jacob and Esau. Rachel works out in the fields, similar to Esau, but Leah’s contribution to the family isn’t mentioned. Perhaps she is a woman of the tent, like Jacob (Matthews). There is also the way that they are differentiated. Most other places in the Old Testament refer to daughters by “first” and “second” daughters rather than “older/younger” (Matthews) which, I think, draws further comparison between Esau and Jacob. All of this sets up Laban’s big deception of Jacob, giving Jacob a taste of his own medicine. The question could be reasonably asked, “How on earth does Jacob not notice a different woman on his wedding day, and in particular on his wedding night?” Well, unlike our marriage conventions, the bride would have likely remained veiled the whole ceremony and into the wedding night (Matthews). Wine also would have been freely flowing during the feast after the wedding, so Jacob’s senses were not at their best, especially at night. Here, everything that Jacob used to deceive his father is used to deceive him. Lack of sight, good food, different clothing, and dulled senses are all used to trick Jacob into consummating the marriage with Leah, thus making the marriage irrevocable (Matthews). There is no annulment option, Leah is his wife now, full stop. Jacob is obviously upset, yet Laban says that this is cultural convention! It is just not how things are done around here. The oldest goes first. Ouch. However, Jacob is told that Rachel can be his wife at the end of the week if he serves anotherseven years afterwards. Once again, Jacob is in no real position to argue, so he agrees to these terms and marries Rachel after the week is complete. All of these twists and turns are things that God works through. Was Laban wrong to deceive Jacob like this? Yes it was, and Laban is going to get his own just desserts later for this. Was Jacob wrong to marry multiple wives? Yes, as God always intended to have a marriage be one man and one woman. While it hadn’t been set down in official law yet, Scripture never approves of polygamy and in fact goes out of its way to show how these marriages always lead to conflict. We will see how this works in that last part of the chapter when we get there next Sunday. Despite all of the sin, God is going to work through even this polygamous marriage built on lies to bring about the twelve tribes of Israel. Ultimately, all of this will produce the Savior of the world, Jesus Himself. While Jacob is getting something of a poetic justice here, Jesus would bear the ultimate occasion of being sinned against. He would be murdered on the cross for crimes He didn’t commit, and endure our just punishment for sin. He didn’t betray, yet was betrayed. He didn’t lie, but was treated as one. He didn’t murder but endured its punishment for you and me. He endured the consequences due to us Jacobs so that we might go free. Unlike Jacob, Jesus wasn’t stuck in that situation forever. But He paid for all our sins with His death, and having done so was raised from sin’s penalty to eternal life again. So what is our takeaway from this here? We need to trust the providence of God even when there are twists in the road. But what does that really look like? We can tend to think that this means that we are simply to become passive people resigned to our fate. “Well, God is in control, so whatever happens, happens. Nothing I can do.” No. This doesn’t mean passive resignation but prayerful participation. Look how Abraham’s servant went about finding a wife for Isaac. He brought the camels, brought the gifts, traveled the miles, talked to the families, but every single step was covered in prayer. Nothing was assumed to be “I got this. I don’t need to bother praying about it.” Bother praying about it! Yes, God will work despite your prayerlessness, but whey wouldn’t you want to participate in His work? We don’t pray to change God’s mind, but to change ours to reflect His! If nothing else, a prayerful approach to life reminds you that there is more to consider in your decisions than how much time or money it costs. I want you to try something this week. Pick two or three things that you just normally do without thinking. Maybe it is safety on your commute, productivity at work, creativity in a home project, your use of social media, how you play basketball, how you go to sleep, your interactions with your children, the things you worry about when you have a rare moment of quiet, and pray very specifically for those things this week. Jesus does tell us to pray for our daily bread, doesn’t He? Just see how differently you view those things after praying for them for a week. If you want extra points, write them down and see how God answers them. I’m not promising you’ll have an answer within a week or that it’ll be the answer you want. But I am promising that if you will take the time to notice, God’s bumpy providence is leading you towards Himself. How to do this practically? I like a system that John Piper has used and one that I use every time I preach. It is called APTAT. Admit. You admit that you are not able to do the thing that Jesus has called you to. Pray for help. Take Hold of a Promise (find a promise in Scripture relevant to your situation). Act. Do what you know you need to do! Thank. Thank God for how He worked in that situation. It is a very simple thing, but I have found great comfort in it. |
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