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We have so much to cover here, we are going to skip fancy introductions and jump right in! We find ourselves at a brand new chapter in Jacob’s life with a fresh challenge for him, the dreaded encounter with Esau. It has been twenty years since, from Esau’s perspective, he tricked him out of the blessing of Isaac. It is important to remember that even though Jacob went about it badly, the blessing was always supposed to be Jacob’s. Nevertheless, Esau took it badly and purposed to kill Jacob when he got the chance. 
Jacob, at the direction of God, heads back away from Laban to the promised land of Canaan, and back to his kinsmen, meaning Esau. This is going to be one of the hardest things he will ever face, and like the rest of us, there is a mixed bag in how he approaches this test. We will start with what Jacob does well and then make some critique on how this could be better, with the expectation that we learn from his mistakes AND his faithfulness. The main point I want you to draw from this is that we are to Prayerfully prepare for life with God’s promises in mind. 
Prayerfully Prepare for Life with God’s Promises in Mind

We are going to skip over the first two verses for the moment, as they will be more relevant for our critique portion of our lesson, so let’s just jump straight to the terror of this passage: Esau is on the way! 
Jacob knows that he is going to have to face Esau eventually, so he is going to try to figure out the best way to approach this. Do you remember when you need to tell your parents some bad news so you try to wait until they are in a good mood before you tell them you broke the lamp? You’re guilty, you know it, but you want to try to reduce the consequences as much as possible by waiting until their team won the game on Saturday. That’s Jacob’s strategy here. 
Jacob sends out an advance of messengers to get a sense of where Esau is emotionally on all this and gets a fairly vague response: Esau is coming with 400 men. Now, maybe this is a welcoming party, but given the last thing he heard from Esau was a murder threat, the most likely answer is that Esau is coming to do some damage. 
The text itself reminds us of why Esau could be upset. As one scholar points out, the words “Seir” and “Edom” (two names for the same country) mean “hairy” and “red” respectively, which are meant to remind us of how Jacob tricked Isaac (wearing goat hair to match Esau) and the color of the soup that Jacob made Esau buy with his birthright (Matthews). Not exactly pleasant memories of brotherly affection. 
Jacob jumps into planning mode, and starts arranging the camp in such a way as to minimize the damage that Esau may cause. He is greatly terrified and distressed. Blood pressure is through the roof! 
But what does Jacob do well here? 
Jacob begins to pray. This is at the center of the passage, and is the thing that I think we pay the most attention to. 
He opens with worship. Jacob begins with the introduction to whom He is talking, the God of his fathers, and ultimately the Lord of his life. This is the same God that guided Abraham to the land in the first place and has been faithful to Isaac in seeing wealth and blessing increase. This is not some god that has just popped up. This God has been faithful to his family for now three generations. 
Next, he moves into thanksgiving and confession. Jacob then moves into who is praying, namely, himself. He acknowledges that God has been faithful to him personally despite the fact that he is utterly unworthy of such covenant love. He hasn’t just been preserved but has been prospered. He went over the river with a stick and has come back with two camps worth of family and farm. 
How do you start your prayers? Do you, as someone once said, complain with folded hands? Are your prayers just slightly sanctified squalling? I don’t mean that you can’t tell God what is bothering you, as Jacob is about to here in a second, but if all you ever say to God is what you need and never thank Him for what He has done, you are leaving much of the blessing of prayer on the table. 
When we begin our prayers, we do well to remind ourselves who we are talking to and what He is able to do. You are talking to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the God of Hudson Taylor, George Muller, and Corrie Ten Boom. He is a God who is in the faithfully providing business. He is the faithful Father! This is why the Lord’s Prayer starts with “Our Father” and not “Give us this day…” You need reminding that we have a Father in heaven in the first place that canprovide daily bread. Praying isn’t just to make you feel better, it is actually doing something! As trivial as it sounds, literally anytime I am looking for something I’ve misplaced, I pray about it if for nothing else to remind myself how God cares for me. Also, it’s uncanny how many times immediately after I pray I find the thing I’m looking for. 
So only after reminding himself that He is talking with God does Jacob lay out the request, and then closes the prayer with a recital of the promises made to him. This is a textbook prayer. Opens with worship, continues with a confession of sorts (I am unworthy), states the cause of fear, closes with the specific promise to address this fear. Perfect! We would do well to pray similarly. 
Might it change our prayers for healing in our bodies if we started with a reminder that we are talking to the one who made our bodies in his image (Gen. 1:26-27)? It might sound something like this, “Our Creator God, who has formed our bodies of the dust and stamped them with his image, we are unworthy of such blessing due to the way we sin with our bodies (Romans 6:12-13). We pray for healing of this pain in my neck. We know that Your grace is sufficient for us, as it was for Paul (2 Cor. 12:7-9) and one day every trace of grief or pain will be wiped away (Rev. 21:4).” Now, can you pray, “Lord, my neck hurts!” Sure, but how much more comforting is what Jacob prays here? What if we follow the outline that Jesus laid out for us? 
How might that change your prayer life? It will certainly be an effective reminder to you that you aren’t just talking to the ceiling about your problems, as it were. You are going to precisely the one who can, the only one who can, deal with your issue. 
To be clear, I’m not giving some sort of formula that instantly solves all problems or even makes all negative emotions go away. I was reading in a book recently that prayer is not an ibuprofen that takes away pain immediately, but is rather like drinking water everyday. As time goes on, you see the benefit of the practice, but it isn’t a “fix-all” in the moment (Martin and Croft, The Unhurried Pastor). 
As an illustration of that, as I had said at the beginning, Jacob takes a misstep here, I think, but I’ll admit here that it is slight. Let’s go back to the first two verses we skipped over. 
When Jacob first arrives in the land, he is greeted by a host of angels, specifically, the angels of God. This is significant because the only other time we see that phrase in the rest of the Old Testament is when Jacob saw that heavenly staircase. God is providing for him a vision meant to remind him of God’s care for his family. I don’t think this is a random event that this vision is being provided for him right before he is to meet with Esau. Jacob even remembers the promise that God is going to provide for the children, but he is still making all of these preparations out of fear. 
If we can draw any sort of negative example to this it is the motivation of fear. I don’t think it is wrong that Jacob sends his brother a generous gift, but I think doing so with the motivation of fear and counting on the gift in addition to God is where Jacob is going sideways here. If God is really going to protect the children as promised, then this sort of thing is unnecessary. He doesn’t need to appease Esau for protection. He has that already in God. 
Now, perhaps you are saying, “Well, how do you know that he is counting on the gift in addition to God?” I think I can sus that out by how things are arranged in the next chapter when he finally meets Esau. Notice the order he places his children in. Who is at the very back? Rachel and Joseph, the favorites. He is counting on, if all else fails, their ability to escape because they would be the last to encounter Esau. He’s playing favorites again (Ross, 543). Tragically, while Esau was never really coming to attack Jacob, it is precisely Rachel and Joseph who will be the ones Jacob loses. Rachel will die in childbirth a few chapters hence, and Joseph will be sold into slavery for the majority of his life. All the tactics in the world cannot protect the way we want to. 
So how do we avoid this approach? Should we simply abandon all planning and wise protection trusting ourselves to God’s plan as fated? Some try to live that way, but God isn’t opposed to planning. God wants you to use the brakes on your car! God wants you to wisely spend your money to provide for your family. The difference I’m calling for here is your motivation and heart posture as you do. I’m saying we live in light of God’s promises through our obedience to His commands. 
Contrast Jacob to Abraham. Jacob is being obedient to God in going home and facing Esau, despite the dangers. Yet, here, he is trying to ensure his wishes (that at the very least Jospeh and Rachel are safe) are guaranteed. Abraham was also obedient to what God said, even though this meant direct danger to Isaac. The difference between the two is that Abraham was obedient to the point that he trusted God to raise Isaac from the dead. He carried up the knife because of what God said, not despite it. Jacob is trying to obey God without trusting Him. And since He doesn’t trust, he ends up sending way more animals than he needed to for Esau, AND reveals his favoritistic heart to the rest of the family. Imagine being Leah and her children placed in harm’s way before Rachel and Joseph. That’s gotta sting. 
In the same way, you act differently when you are acting out of distrust for God. You say that you want to provide for your family, so you set aside money for the future, but you don’t have a moment’s peace until you see the monthly statement. That’s obeying without trusting. It’s the money you’re really trusting. You study well for your test because you say that you want to work hard for God, and then feel completely crushed by a “C” on the test despite doing your best. That is obeying without trusting. It’s the identity of “Good Student” that you are trusting. 
Obey AND trust. So how do you get there? You have to remind yourself, like in our example prayer we did a moment ago, that your life is going somewhere, namely, a redeemed creation. And that is only coming because of Christ. 
You know, the word that is translated “appease” here is the same word used for “atonement.” Jacob is sending all these things for something (as we will see) he already has, the good graces of Esau. In the same way, we can think that we are constantly behind the eight ball with God and try to do things for Him in the hopes that he will be pleased with us enough to let us into heaven. What we are about to celebrate here with the Lord’s Supper shows us that we already have all the grace we need. We will go to heaven based on what Jesus does for us. 
That doesn’t mean that we don’t do things for God anymore, but we can do them motivated by the joy of what we already possess, rather than doing them out of fear and guilt. 
What’s the takeaway today? When you find yourself in fear, obey and trust. Bring your prayers to God, assuring yourself of His promises and love for you, and in light of that reality, obey Him without fear. 

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We are not a trusting people, which is probably why we have so many ways of forcing each other to do things they have promised. Business build contracts with built in financial punishments if the agreements aren’t honored. When we have a marriage ceremony, it is done the way that it is for a reason. Couples make promises in public. This does two things. One, it is done in front of people for us all to be witnesses that this happened. Others can call the couple to account if they end up not doing what they promised. Two, this is done in front of God which is a way of saying that if they don’t hold up their promises, then God Himself will judge them. 
This second example of a marriage is the closest thing that we have to a covenant today. Marriage has been cheapened as an institution with quick and easy divorce, but the seriousness of what is being done is easy to see, once you know why it is being done that way. 
What we are seeing here today is a covenant between Jacob and Laban. We’ve seen covenants many times in the book of Genesis so far. The most common are between God and man. We saw the first one between God and Adam and Eve. Then we saw God and Noah, and since Genesis 12, we have been watching the covenant between God and Abraham unfold. 
We’ve seen a smattering of covenants between Abraham and Abimelech and Isaac and Abimelech, but this one feels a little different than what we have seen so far. Here Jacob is making a covenant between members of his family! The Abimelechs were afraid of Abraham and his son, and it looks like this covenant is being made for a similar reason: Laban is afraid of Jacob. Jacob clearly has God on His side, so if one wants peace, then they better make sure that they are on Jacob’s side as well. 
God is clearly continuing to move in Abraham’s family further and further away from their original homeland. Abraham moved out at God’s command, but he had to send his servant back to get a wife for Issac. Isaac had to do the same thing for Jacob, but after this moment, there is no going back to the “homeland.” Jacob, in a way, is going to become the homeland. Israel is being created and solidified as a people group on its own, something we will see more clearly as we get into our text today. 
Our main points today are God is the true basis of community and God witnesses all that is done and will judge accordingly (Psalm 2) 
God is the true basis of community 

We pick up from last week to see Laban’s reaction to be excoriated by Jacob. Laban has been so unfair to Jacob that there is really nothing to say in response. Clearly, Jacob has been protected by God, and one cannot defy God. 
Still, Laban is never one to go down without some sort of parting shot, and makes the claim that maybe yes Jacob has done all that work, but the bottom line is he couldn’t be in this place without him. He is claiming to be the money behind Jacob’s success, but all of us reading this text know that Laban tried everything he could to make Jacob unsuccessful. 
Following the old adage, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” Laban suggests a covenant with Jacob. One can almost imagine Laban throwing up his arms and sighing as he says, “What can I do for my family?” One commentator noted that this is Laban making it seem as though Jacob has turned Laban’s daughters and grandchildren against him, which of course we know isn’t true, as the daughters were all too willing to leave him behind (Matthews). 
You will notice how many times the word “witness” comes up in this section of the passage. These men don’t trust each other at all, and there will be numerous things set up and named as reminders of the promise that was made. Covenants usually have something to remember the promise by, and in this situation, there is a stone pillar and a heap of rocks. These were meant to be monuments commemorating the promise made between Laban and Jacob. They also seem to serve as barriers for them not to cross, as we will see in a little bit. 
Two different monuments are set up and are given different names. These names are saying essentially the same thing— “heap of witness”—but Laban is naming one in Aramaic, and Jacob is naming his in Hebrew, which really spells out the different groups that are being formed here (Matthews). Even though Laban is Jacob’s uncle, he is a separate people now. The primary difference going forward now is who has a covenant with God. 
This is something that we do well to remember in our own lives. The only marker of identity that truly matters is your relationship to God. Just about all of you have had the chance to meet Roger from Togo. He is a pastor who grew up a child of a Voodoo priest in Togo Africa. While he speaks English very well, he grew up speaking French. Roger and I come from incredibly different backgrounds. We have, from an outside perspective, very little in common. I’m white; he’s black. I grew up in a financially secure, technologically advanced, loving Christian home, and he grew up with nearly none of those things as he was kicked out of his family when he converted. Outside measures would say that we shouldn’t be friends, but when we are together, it is like coming across a long-lost brother. The common unity there is Christ. There are other people in America who do the same job I do as pastor, but they aren’t truly following Christ. And while we may have grow up in the same country with similar experiences, those things don’t really matter. What matters is where we are going to spend eternity. 
The point I want you to take away from this section is be mindful of where you find your group identity. Football is fun, politics is, well, politics, but make sure that your group identity, whom you see as “your people” is grounded in Christ. 
God witnesses all that is done and will judge accordingly

Lets take a look at the substance of the covenant. Laban wants Jacob to promise that he isn’t going to oppress his daughters or marry additional women. This is ironic coming from the man who, apparently, spent up his daughters’ inheritances, and was the first one to make Jacob marry multiple wives in the first place. 
In the last part of verse 50, Laban invokes God as the witness. Since a heap of stones can’t really do anything to enforce the terms, he calls on God to witness what is being said here. Now, it appears that Laban isn’t talking about Jacob’s God, Yahweh. He doesn’t use that name, but sticks to the general word for “god.”Later on, when he says in verse 53, he is drawing a contrast between his gods and Abraham’s God. One commentator notices that Jacob swears by “The Fear of Isaac,” a rare title for God (that could also be translated “the Awesome”) (Belcher). This is probably referring to the effect that God has on other nations (including Laban, here!), and points out that Laban and Jacob are talking about different gods (Matthews and Belcher). This further underlines the separateness of these groups of people. 
The promise is made that neither party is going to cross the stones to harm one another, lest God judge. This is practically the only way to enforce everyone’s respective safety! 
After this, the covenant making ceremony wraps up. Laban and Jacob’s respective families eat a meal together signaling the ratifying of the agreement, and Laban kisses his kids and leaves. This all wraps a bow around the extended family of Abraham, as the story will proceed by focusing now exclusively on this branch of Abraham’s family tree. 
It is quite clear that God has indeed been a witness to the promises, and specifically His promises to Jacob. He has protected him all this time, defeating all of his enemies, even those who would threaten to undo him from his own house! 
So what are we to take from this? Has God made a promise like this to us? While the fate of nations doesn’t depend on our individual families like it did for Abraham and now Jacob, there is a promise of protection and ultimate rulership of our God over everyone else. 
I think that the best place to see God’s promise of protection for us is in Psalm 2. This short Psalm is a very powerful Psalm that ultimately points to Jesus, the “Anointed” in this passage. This whole Psalm serves as a warning to the kings and rulers of the world, which by extension means that every person in the world needs to listen up. The very first verse sets up the Psalm as a whole, namely, people are going to plot against God but it is all going to end as an empty nothing. No matter how they plan, all it can do is make God laugh. 
Near the end of the Psalm, there is a grim warning that this Anointed One (again, Jesus) is going to come and break all nations who will not serve Him. There’s that “Fear” of Isaac. The call goes out to be wise to make peace with Jesus while there is still time. 
There are a couple of reactions that we can have to this promise made to us. One, we can feel like Jesus is being kinda mean. Does he really have to smash the people that won’t submit? Yes. Rebellion against God really is that terrible. God has provided literally everything, and sinful rebellion spits in His face. This is especially true since this Anointed One died for the sins of the world. Hebrews 10:28–31 lays it out plainly, “Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” 
The second reaction to this sort of Psalm 2 promise is to be smug about it. We could look out at the world and go, “Yeah, you may be ahead now, but Jesus is going to smash you one day, boy!” That is the person that doesn’t understand how much they themselves deserve God’s wrath. This sort of doctrine shouldn’t make us proud but make us humble. God has chosen us to be a part of His covenant by nothing but sheer grace. It was sheer grace that Jacob was protected by God and Laban wasn’t. And it is by sheer grace that you are a believer this morning in Jesus. A Psalm 2 passage should lead us not to gloat but to plead. The Psalm itself pleads with the nations to kiss the Son. Make your peace with Him while you still can! God’s desire is for people to be saved, and if we are going to claim to be in His image, we should desire the same. 
So what is our takeaway this morning? You are a part of a wonderful people, the people of God. You are a member of that family by sheer grace and goodness of God, and now you are commanded to invite others to be a part of that family. Look to people outside the people of God as future brothers and sisters rather than just surface friends. Don’t let the fact that you have a deep relationship with someone prevent you from having the sometimes hard conversations about the gospel. Unless they are a believer in Jesus, they aren’t as close as you think with you. But you have the opportunity to bring them closer than ever before. Pray for those conversations to happen, and just sit back and witness God at work. 

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​Do you feel like you have to go through a lot for no apparent reason? I think all of us have felt like that at times in the various spheres of our life whether that is at home, work, church, or school. Maybe it feels like the boss never treats you fairly or your husband never notices all the work done around the house. The word that I think describes what life feels like at those times is “endures.” Have you ever dreamed in those times of enduring getting to make a speech like Jacob has here? You finally get to absolutely lay into those treating you unfairly with the family there to applaud when you’re done. Maybe you even had the chance to do that and didn’t even have to think of a much better answer in the shower three days later! Maybe you got to be free of that time of enduring like Jacob does at the end of this chapter. 
If we are honest, though, there will be repeating times of enduring. Most of life is not spent on the other end of a boundary preventing your enemies from returning. More often than not, life will feel like verses 38-42 than 55. What do we do in those times? 
Here, Jacob has something to teach us in how to endure well that will be in conversation with a couple other passages. Our main point today is: Live self-sacrificially so that others may not justly accuse you (1 Peter 2:13-25).

Live self-sacrificially so that others may not justly accuse you
We pick up in verse 36 with Laban sheepishly coming out of Rachel’s tent completely empty handed. Laban has come in ripping into Jacob with all kinds of accusations, and now he has to walk back in front of everyone without a shred of evidence that the accusations he’s leveled at Jacob are true. How embarrassing for Laban, and how unbelievably satisfying that must have been with Jacob. 
Jacob now can, righteously, lay into Laban for what he has done to him here and over the last twenty years. This is where Jacob can teach us something about how to live, and it doesn’t actually come from this speech. What Jacob can teach us is what happened in the twenty years before this speech. Jacob is only able to talk like this if he has truly been living a selfless life in working well for Laban. Jacob advances three main arguments in this speech based on how he has lived his life up to this point: the flocks prospered under him, he did so at great personal cost, and Laban has not been fair to him through it all at all. 
Jacob revisits extremely recent history in which he was accused as a thief and a liar in the verses immediately before our current passage. According to Laban, not only did Jacob steal the gods, but he is so untrustworthy to give them back that the only way to know what happened to the gods is to go through all his stuff like the TSA after finding white powder in your bag. 
After such a deep search pulls up nothing, Jacob moves back a few years to revisit other wrongs Laban has done to him. Jacob paints a picture of himself as the absolute epitome of a perfect shepherd, and assuming he is telling the truth (and there isn’t really a reason to doubt it in my mind), Laban has been massively unfair to a pretty great shepherd (Matthews).
Let’s look at how the now-not-scoundrel Jacob has lived these last few decades towards Laban. 
The flocks have been well cared for under Jacob. They haven’t miscarried, likely due to God’s blessing that Jacob carries. He hasn’t eaten from Laban’s flock, and anytime a wild animal did, he repaid Laban for it. To do that wasn’t a common practice of shepherds, but apparently this was something that was Laban’s idea. This is a harsh policy Laban enforces here (Matthews). To sum up, Laban hasn’t suffered ill gotten loss from Jacob.
Jacob has taken care of these flocks at great personal cost. While he has repaid any property loss, I think what he puts up with in the field is worse. The word used for “consumed” by heat and cold is the same word for “eat” in verse 38. In other words, he didn’t eat of the flock, but the field sure ate him! Hot, cold, and sleepless ate up Jacob for years! So not only has Jacob been a model employee, he has done so under very harsh working conditions. 
Through it all Laban has been unfair. Jacob has had to work for everything he has multiple times. He served 14 years for Rachel, and he worked for six years with what sounds like nearly constantly changing wages for the flocks. Finally, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, the only reason why Laban is treating him properly now is because God Himself has threatened him, citing Laban’s own words from 13 verses ago! So Jacob has been a model employee, under harsh conditions, all to serve an unfair boss! 
This has been an utterly devastating reply to Laban. Jacob has delivered the absolute knock out punch. But as I said at the beginning, this isn’t our focus. What is truly impressive is all that he did during those twenty years that allows him to make this speech. 
We have the New Testament command of what Jacob has demonstrated here in 1 Peter 2. He exemplifies what 1 Peter 2:18 says. 
Now, before we get to that passage, I want to make something clear. We are looking at the following directions assuming that there is no other righteous means of dealing with the oppressive person in your life. If you can get out from under oppressive people, by all means do so, but look at the hope God offers to those truly hard situations from which there is no escape. 
1 Peter 2:18–20, “Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.”
Here, Peter is calling Christians to submit where they must in government, employment, and marriage, but he has more to say than just put up with it. He has more to say than, “behave now so you can really sock it to them later.” No, look at verse 20, paraphrased, when you do good and suffer for it anyway, God notices and is pleased with you. Why? Because in that moment, you remind Him of His Son. Look at the rest of the passage:
“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls."
What is Peter saying here? Quickly, he is saying that enduring hardship for doing the right thing is the very life we have been called to because that was the life that Jesus, our example, lived for us. He was perfectly innocent yet died for ourcrimes to bring us healing and reconciliation with God. This means that in this passage, Jesus lived the life of Jacob so that the Labans of the world—namely, you and me—could be freed. So, fellow Laban, if Jesus can do all that for you, you can do that for the Laban’s in your life. 
But how do we do that? It is great to know that we have God’s smile, but how do I walk through that office door on Monday to hear my boss yell at me again? How do I continue to serve my family when it seems like everyone will just sit around until I do something? 
The key to this is in verse 23 of 1 Peter 2. What did Jesus do? He “continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” What does it mean to entrust your self to God? The word “entrusting” here means “handing over” or “deliver.” If you were to hand something over to a person, you are telling them that this is under their care now. You aren’t holding it anymore. When I got married to my lovely wife, as part of the ceremony, her dad placed her hand in mine. He pulled me close and said, “Take care of her.” Here he said what he was acting out in placing her hand in mine. Now, if he continued to hold on to Abby’s hand and not let go, that wouldn’t be handing her over to my care, would it? But he stepped back and let her little girl go. Even when I picked up and moved her three hours away to Brewton for my first call. I’m sure that wasn’t his favorite plan. But he had handed her over, and trusted me. 
When the time comes to endure, hand yourself, your life, your dreams, your ambitions, over to God. Remind yourself that He is a just judge Who has not lost track of you. He doesn’t have you in this situation for no reason. Let go what you think is the ideal of your life, and instead surrender to the plan that God has for you. I know that is hard to hear. It is so hard to be convinced that we don’t know what is best for us. It starts when we are children, and it continues straight through to adulthood. Instead, hand yourself over to God. 
So how does this happen walking through the office door, through the laundry room door? The first is acknowledging the situation, even this one, comes from your gracious Father. Give to Him what your dream was for this situation, offer it as a sacrifice to Him, saying, “Lord, my dream for this situation was very different, but help me to accept what you have for me here. I hand myself over to you for help in this situation.” And then get to work, not for the oppressor, but for God. Did you notice a little phrase in verse 19? “For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.” In other words, your service is done to Him. In every job, your ultimate authority is God, so if you find it so hard to work for the people in your life, don’t work for them. Instead, work for Jesus in this hard field, knowing that God’s grace smiles on you even now, and is preparing a place where this sort of oppressive work will never happen again. You’ll get promoted one day, and get to work face to face, and side by literal side with your Savior. 
Now, again, if there is a righteous way to escape earthly oppression, do it! Jesus even said of preaching the gospel, if you are persecuted in one city, flee to the next (Matthew 10:23)! Jesus isn’t asking you to intentionally seek out unjust oppression for yourself. Because the fallen world that it is, trouble will find you soon enough if you are obedient to what God says. 
But if you can’t, hand yourself over to God and be at peace. You don’t have to remind yourself all the time of how unfair things are. Instead, entrust yourself to the God who treats all fairly, even you, even in that situation. 

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How do we get rid of fear? I’m not just talking about fear of monsters in the closet (though that applies as well), but fears that are evergreen: our health, our grades, our friends, our finances, our children, our pain. How do we get rid of fear? Believe it or not, the goal actually isn’t to get rid of fear. Fear is a good thing, when it is directed properly. There is only one place— one Person—to direct our fear towards, God. 
Why am I saying it that way? Wouldn’t it be better to say, “Trust in God”? Trusting in God is certainly good, but if we are going to faithfully use our fear, directing it where it needs to go, we need something additional than trust. You see, we trust things all the time. We trust our car’s brakes, but how many of you stand in your driveway in loving awe of your brakes, stunned at their ability to stop a multi ton vehicle? How many of you fall to your knees in reverent worship before your wheel wells? Unless you’re an engineer this morning, probably none of you. And the reason that you don’t is that brakes occupy a very small portion of your life. If they fail, there are numerous other systems to make up for them. 
In contrast, you should be in awe, in reverent worship, and yes, a little bit of terror, of God. He makes and continues to sustain everything before your eyes. He is so big. He measures the universe—the UNIVERSE— with His hand. He doesn’t even need both hands. Have you sat with that? Have you dared meditate on the raw power of God? Who do you think you are to not be at least a little unsettled by a Being with that kind of power? Now, yes in His mercy He doesn’t destroy us, but that is literally the only thing holding Him back. Nothing can stop God. 
When we grasp something like that, the rest of the things that we fear fall into place. That is faithful fearing, but let’s see how this might play out in real life by looking at our text this morning. We are going to walk away with one point: Fear of God doesn’t let us fear anything else

Fear of God Doesn’t Let Us Fear Anything Else
Refreshing where we are in the story, Jacob has left secretly from Laban’s house to head back to the promised land. Laban, being a man with eyes, notices this and gives chase. After a little over four hundred or so mile jaunt, Laban has caught up with Jacob, and in verse 26 Laban (along with other members of his household) confront Jacob. 
Ah, family confrontations. We’ve all experienced this to one degree or another, haven’t we? So much is at risk. Some families actually dread get togethers because they know what is coming. The cutting words, the guilt trips, the bringing up of old hurts real or imagined fill us with dread, do they not? 
So how does this play out in the Bible? Laban launches into a monologue titled “Jacob Stinks,” and the family is here to hear it. He starts out with all kinds of wild accusations, almost none of them true: “You lied to me and dragged my daughters away like they were prisoners of war! If you had just told me you wanted to leave, I would have gladly sent you with snacks, well wishes—I would have written songs for you! But you haul off and leave without so much as letting me kiss my kids goodbye, you fool! I oughta knock you out for what you’ve done!” And Laban’s sons are all standing there, arms folded, nodding along, as a tangible proof that Laban really could do what he threatens here (v. 25 “kinsmen”) (Matthews). He’s come prepared. He’s an actual threat. 
Sound familiar? The things that scare you are not fake. Health problems are real and can show up at any time. Friends can totally betray you. It happens every day. Jobs are lost and money gets used up. This is fallen earth, not heaven. Things will never be ideal for long. The things you fear are as real as Jacob’s super angry father in law with an axe to grind.
But there is one more piece of information that will change everything for Jacob and us. In this moment, halfway into verse 29, Jacob doesn’t know what Laban and we know: God has already moved. God was way ahead of this. He came to Laban already and said, “You better not harm Jacob.” Jacob may be scared of Laban (v. 31, Phillips, 227), but guess who Laban is scared of? God. Oh, Laban wants to harm Jacob, but he won’t because God told Him not to. 
Now, you may say, “Well, that’s wise of Laban, but my family isn’t scared of God at all. They don’t even know who He is.” You could apply this same logic to nuclear war or your MRI results. Those things don’t even have emotions, how is this verse comforting to me? 
Well, all of those things (like Laban) are controlled by God. God is controlling Laban here, keeping him at bay. Now Jacob didn’t know that until just now, and whether you realize or not, all those things that you fear are being controlled by God, too. God is way bigger than Laban and his kinsmen. God is way bigger than whatever it is that you fear. That should keep things in context. 
But now the story is about to turn. Laban throws one more accusation that comes way out of left field for Jacob: he stole Laban’s gods. Jacob answers the first set of accusations that he left the way that he did because he was afraid of what Laban would do (the same word for fear that Adam uses running from God in the Garden). Jacob, just like Abraham and Isaac, was afraid that a local chieftain would steal his wives. We just have to make that same mistake one more time, but Jacob isn’t really focused on that just yet. He feels that he really has the upper hand here when it comes to the stealing the gods thing. He knows—or thinks that he knows—that no one stole anyone’s gods. In fact, he is so sure of this that he starts puffing out his chest a little, too. Laban isn’t the only one that can think up a good threat. Jacob is so sure that no one stole the gods, that he will say, “Anyone who has your silly gods will be punished with death.” Whoa! Who’s the big man, now, Laban? The gangster glasses slide over Jacob’s eyes. He’s confident in what he knows. 
And that nearly kills Rachel. How ironic! The one thing he feared, losing his wives, he almost caused by putting stock in his ability to threaten rather than in God. Don’t be confident in anything but God. 
Let’s pick up the drama in verse 33. Can you imagine what must have been going through Rachel’s head in this moment? She is the only one who knows that she stole the gods, and now her dad is going tent by tent looking through everything. The author is holding tension for us as we go one by one. 
Finally we get to Rachel’s tent. We are told exactly where the idols are, under the camel saddle, which Rachel is currently sitting on. Laban is feeling all around the tent (the same sense that Isaac was fooled with earlier), but he can’t find them. It seems as if there is only one place left to look, and that is under Rachel who hasn’t moved. It looks like the jig is up, but Rachel has one last trick up her sleeve. She pretends that she is on her cycle, and thus can’t stand up. It would have been the proper thing for her to do just by her father entering the tent, but she lies to him by pretending to respect him. She apologizes that she can’t show the expected respect, but she lying! That is some next level deception. 
Why does God let her do that? Well, one, God is merciful to sinners all the time, and this would hardly be the first time that someone in Abraham’s family lied. Two, this makes these household gods look so silly. They are dishonored multiple times. One, how pathetic is it for a god to be helplessly stolen? The worshiper having to rescue the god? How preposterous. Two, camels were considered unclean in Jewish conception, so these stolen gods are being hidden by an unclean animal. Disrespect on top of disrespect. Finally, if Rachel was telling the truth, their fate would have really rendered them unclean (Matthews). 
The only thing more laughable would be the person who believes in such gods. 
But we mustn’t laugh too hard. Laban is clearly going to great lengths to get his gods back because he sees them as truly valuable. What do you value? That question is answered by what you worry about. What increases your anxiety when it goes missing? What makes you angry when you lose it? To put it in line with our theme here, what do you fear? 
Show me the object of your fear, and I will show you what you worship. Remember our exercise at the start of our message today, thinking about how big our God is? Why don’t you fear Him more than whatever it is you do worship? 
What does it look like to fear God? There is a level of intimidation present in how big He is, but the majority of our emotional response to God is that of awe. Before you get there, though, you MUST wrestle with the mighty God who tells you, “Don’t fear those who can kill the body, but fear the one who is able to destroy the body AND the soul.” Jesus said that, and He is talking ultimately about Himself while looking at you. 
You have to start here, because if you don’t you will miss seeing the blazing glory of the cross. The same God who is able to destroy your body and soul and it be an act of justice had HIS body and soul destroyed for you! Your punishment was placed on Him! He got out of His seat in heaven to make room for you. And it wasn’t because you deserved it but precisely the opposite. 
And in so doing, Jesus rises from the grave, conquering death itself, redeeming a multitude from every nation, tribe, and tongue, kicking off the redemption of the entirety of the created cosmos, and promises to be your God, and you His people whom He will never leave nor forsake for all eternity, forever and ever, amen. Feel that? That’s the beginning of wisdom. That’s the fear of God. Awe, respect, love, and yes, maybe even a little terror. That’s what keeps your other fears in perspective. 
Don’t cling to little gods that can be hidden under soiled saddles. Gross. Instead, marvel, fall to your knees every morning that God is still your God. 
So when fear grips your heart, when that icy anxiety crawls over your chest, ask yourself these three questions: 1) Is the God of the universe in charge of this? The answer always being yes, move on to the second question, 2) “Did I get here because of my disobedience?” Maybe you are worried about not having enough money because you spent it all in greed. Maybe you are worried about a test going badly because you were lazy and didn’t study. Maybe this question doesn’t apply because you are worried about something like a health problem. But No matter what the answer is to that second question, the third question is, “Am I being obedient to Him now?” If you get yes, no, and yes, Then you have nothing to be afraid of. Fear God and await His deliverance. If you get no, yes, and no, then whatever you are fearing isn’t nearly as bad as your own disobedience and unbelief. Turn from that false god, and embrace the beauty that is the God on the universe. 
If your mind is so tormented, you can’t even get past question one, take a second. Breathe, and then turn over in your mind who it is you worship. Remember His power and His love for you and what the future will be. Yes, the pain may be so bad that you are actually doubting that God loves you. Maybe you do think that He has forsaken you. Not so. Jesus took that for you. And because of that, you are going to a world that has no crying or pain. That is a God worship worshiping. That is a God worth fearing.