Sermon Notes + Quotes:
Transcript:
We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel and we have some extra copies if you would like a paper copy to look at today. Raise your hand up, somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle. A couple here on this side. I think we’re good over on this side.
So we will be in the book of Genesis again, which we’re calling our study “In the Beginning”. Makes so much sense. First few words of the book itself pointing us back to the very, very, very beginning and answering some of the giant questions people have been asking forever. Where’d everything come from? Well, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and pretty much that’s everything. It includes the broad sweeping of everything from inanimate objects to creatures like ourselves. What does it mean to be human? That’s answered also in the book of Genesis and now we’re tracing really along with the storyline of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We’re at the storyline that focuses in on Jacob and if you’ll turn with me to Genesis chapter 29, when we left off last time, Jacob, whose name means “deceiver, heel grabber”. It’s as if he’s tripping people up. He has had a very rough start and is actually on the run now because he’s tricked and lied and stolen from his own family members and he is on the run because his brother Esau has been talking about wanting to kill him. His mother overheard it. Rebecca said, “Jacob, you got to take off, you got to run, go to Paddan Aram, which is where my family is from and you can hide out there for a while until this heat cools off and Esau no longer wants to kill you.” Along the way, as we learned last week, he’s literally just got the clothes on his back. He’s sleeping with a rock for a pillow.
We saw this last week and he has this dream and God visits him in this dream. And the dream is of a ladder in some of your English translations it’ll say, but the word is probably more like staircase. And what’s fascinating about this staircase is that angels are coming up and down on this staircase. And the language that’s in the chapter, if you read some of the commentaries and some of the experts in ancient Hebrew language, you see that where God is is actually beside him. Because you would typically think, “oh God’s up at the top and it’s up to us to climb up this ladder to get to…” And that’s religion. And the gospel is completely different from that. What’s fascinating is that God is actually beside him and speaks to him and reiterates the covenant, the same covenant that He had told Abraham and Isaac.
And I imagine Jacob sitting around the campfires with his dad Isaac and with his brother Esau there too, and with granddad Abraham there as well, heard the stories. And maybe even had embraced the reality of those stories and those appearances by God to Abraham and to Isaac. He knew of his family’s religion, he just didn’t know his family’s God yet. And here comes God in this dream and this is really a huge turning point in Jacob’s life. And so we start this morning, we pick up the story where he’s awakening from that dream. And chapter 29 begins this way: “Then Jacob went on his journey”. And I think in some of your translations it might say “he lifted up his feet” and it’s as if there’s just a skip in this step. How many of you went to church camp? Anybody go to church camp? And at the end of church camp you had that skip in your step when you left and you had this sense that, “Oh man, God has spoken to me, I’m really connected. I get it now. All that granddad and dad talked about, it makes so much sense to me.
Here comes God, He’s spoken to me.” And so you come back like I did for many, many years in a row as a camper in church camp, I came back on a church camp high. And the bad news was that while everybody that was with me on the camp, we were all renewed in our faith and all that sort of thing, but all the friends back home were expecting the old me, not the new me. And
often, maybe this was your experience too, but often church camp high fades after about two weeks’ time. That’s because you have to bring that back to the real world where things aren’t always as they ought to be. And that’s what we’re going to see happen here for Jacob. He went on his journey and he came to the land of the sons of the East, verse one says.
“He looked and saw a well in the field and behold three flocks of sheep were lying there beside it. For from that well they watered the flocks another stone on the mouth of the well was large.”
That’s live body detail that lets us know that’s going to become important. And you guys probably watch TV shows or movies and occasionally some little detail pops up that seems like ‘what’s he telling us that for?’ And you log it in your mind to go, ‘that’s going to come back and the rest of the story later, isn’t it?’ And that’s what happens here. It was a large stone.
“When all the flocks were gathered there they were then [the habit was] to roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep and put the stone back in its place on the mouth of the well. Jacob said to them, these shepherds that are there with these three flocks, ‘My brothers, where are you from?’”
And remember shepherds were kind of, these are the rough and tumble guys in a way of the time. These are the guys that are manly men outside sleeping with the sheep on the hillside, that sort of thing. And they said to him, “We’re from Haran.” I’m putting a little into it, I get it, a little bit of drama but it helps I think to understand how they might sound.
“And he said to them, ‘do you know Laban the son of Nahor?’” How many of you, when you meet somebody for the first time, you love to find someone in common that you know, it’s a bridge building way of connecting? And if those guys were gruff toward Jacob, he’s still on church camp high and he’s going, “Hey, what about Laban? You know him? He’s my uncle,” that kind of thing.
“‘And so do you know Laban, the son of Nahor?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, we know him.’” And that’s there they are. Okay. Yeah, we know him. And at this point it’s just them saying, yep, you know? It’s “yep”.
And so “then Jacob says to them, ‘Is it well with him?’ And they said, ‘It’s well’. Behold Rachel, his daughter’s coming in with a sheep. [For them, probably an everyday experience.] He said, ‘Behold it’s still high day, still afternoon. It’s not time for the livestock to be gathered or at the well there. Water the sheep and go pasture them. They ought to be out eating right now and bring them back a little bit later when it’s in the cool of the evening little or toward dusk’. And they said, ‘We cannot until all the flocks are gathered and they…’ [That’s interesting, circle that word] ‘… roll the stone from the mouth of the well, then we water the sheep.’”
And I don’t know about you, but I see these guys as like, “nah, not my job, not going to do it. Not going to do it ‘til everybody’s here.” And maybe in this particular case they’re waiting for Rachel to get there too because she’s a shepherdess and they might have Mr. Macho-type attitude toward a woman being involved. “Let’s wait here until she gets here and she can be a part of this whole thing, moving that big stone, that kind of thing.” And could be that. We cannot, until they roll the stone. We’re not going to roll it but they can.
Well, he was still speaking with them, “Rachel came with her father sheep for she was a shepherdess, came about. When Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother, this is Rebecca’s brother, and the sheep of Laban, his mother’s brother, that Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the flock of Laban, his mother’s brother.”
In other words, feats of strength inspired by pretty woman. That’s exactly what this is, okay? It just isn’t put in those terms because verse 11 says, “Then Jacob kissed Rachel and he lifted up his voice and he wept.” And it’s like, I mean, you can imagine this being yes.
Might not have been that, might have been more custom for the times. Might have been more of a they kiss on either side of the cheek, that kind of thing. Might’ve been kissed her hand, I don’t know. But I kind of think that he’s really captured by her and I think the rest of the story supports that. And so his heart is all a-flutter. He is on a church camp high and everything looks awesome right now because he’s also on a romance high right now, okay?
“Jacob told Rachel that he was a relative of her father and that he was Rebecca’s son and she ran and told her father.” So she’s getting excited here a little bit too. “Came about when Laban heard the news of Jacob, his sister’s son, that he ran to meet him and embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his house. Then he related to Laban all of these things.”
And this all sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? Just a few chapters earlier, back in chapter 24 when Abraham sends his servant, I think it’s Eliezer from chapter 15, not 100% sure, but I think so. And he sends Eliezer to that same area to find a wife for his son Isaac, Abraham does. And this same kind of strange thing happens where the servant meets the woman at the well and it turns out she becomes the wife. And it’s just interesting how much of this is repeating and at that, what’s different there though of course is that Eliezer showed up with 10 camels full of goodies and there’s no goodies here. Jacob in this story, guys, Jacob is penniless and also there’s another big difference. Eliezer in chapter 24, you see him praying constantly, repeatedly. In this story Jacob is penniless and he’s prayerless.
He’s on the spiritual high and you can be on the spiritual high and not be involved or engaged really with God. You’re still just going through the emotions of the whole thing and something hits you and that’s wonderful and might be part of the process of the arc and curve of your spiritual development. And I think probably that’s what’s happening here with Jacob. He’s still got some things to learn. So they relate everything to Laban.
Verse 14, “Laban said to him, ‘Surely you are my bone and my flesh.’” In other words we’re relatives. “And he stayed with him a month, Jacob did. Then Laban said to Jacob, ‘Because you are my relative, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me what shall your wages be?’” Now remember Jacob is a master manipulator, but in this chapter Jacob meets his match and he will be bested by Laban, the super master manipulator. Is there a video game called that? I’m not sure. Maybe there ought to be. Maybe, I’m not sure.
Laban had, so name your wages. Now the narrator jumps in to tell us exactly what Jacob values. “Now Laban had two daughters. The name of the older was Leah and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s name means weary,” And you’ll see why in a minute. “Rachel’s name means ewe.” (E-W-E) And Tony could tell you all about ewes, they’re lambs of some sort. And so their names are here and they’re the two daughters of Laban.
“And Leah’s eyes were weak,” it says in verse 17. We don’t really know exactly what that means. The commentators all sort of throw out little speculations. Either she had difficulty seeing herself and so she squinted a lot. Others think that perhaps the only thing beautiful about her because she’s compared to Rachel here, is that she has really pretty eyes. So there’s a lot of different speculation here, but Leah’s eyes were weak and Rachel was beautiful of form and face.
And so the contrast is between this total beauty of Rachel, she’s the younger one and Leah’s eyes being weak, whatever that may have meant to them in that time. And Jacob loved Rachel. So he said, “I will serve you…” This he’s talking to Laban. “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” So now we know what the wages are that Jacob’s interested in. Laban said, “It’s better that I give her to you than that I should give her to another man, stay with me.” And that’s kind of a soft yes, but it’s got a lot of manipulation in it and a lot of he’s going to take advantage of Jacob here in just a little bit. “Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seem to him but a few days because of his love for her.” Hey folks, true love knows no suffering, does it? Yes. And there’s just an interesting little… It’s seven years. You realize seven years? That’s a long time. Seven years is just unbelievably long amount of time unless you are in love like he was. In his seventies in love with Rachel. The first woman in his life is his first wife and so excited about her and he’s on his new spiritual high and, “everything in my life is new and fresh and exciting. Yeah, I can work seven years for him if I can have her. You betcha man.” Just seemed a couple years, few days because of his love for her.
Now at 84 years of age, roughly, verse 21, “Jacob says to Laban, ‘Give me my wife for my time is completed that I may go into her.’” And so his patience is out. “He served his seven years and Laban gathered all the men of the place and made a feast.” And that’s exactly what they did back then. In those days, they made a huge feast out of it. It was a weeklong celebration, their wedding ceremonies. “It came about on the evening that he took his daughter Leah and brought her to him and Jacob went into her.”
Remember veils? Lots of veils. No LED lighting inside the tent. No flashlights, it’s really dark. She’s covered in veils and let’s face it, this is a wedding celebration, a weeklong thing. And he’s probably pretty pickled. He’s probably drunk and probably had a lot to drink as he celebrated and was rejoicing in this new life he was about to embark upon.
“So Laban has this feast, came out in the evening, brought his daughter Leah and brought her to him. Jacob went into her. Laban also gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah as a maid. So it came about in the morning and behold it was Leah. And he said to Laban, ‘What is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served with you? Why then have you deceived me?’” He’s sober now. He’s able to see in the daylight who it is that he slept with last night and now he runs out and is shocked that someone would deceive another person.
Wait a minute, hold it, shocked that someone would deceive another person? Shocked that someone under darkness when nobody can see, like what he did with Isaac, his father who couldn’t see. Stealing a lifelong treasure in a way. This is a pretty amazing, sort of drinking your own medicine moment, isn’t it really?
And so Laban had given Zilpah to his daughter Leah as a maid. So she’s there as well and Jacob is just completely shocked. Verse 26, Laban said, “It is not the practice in our place to marry off the younger before the first born.” And that term surely would’ve registered in Jacob, the second born’s heart, the second born who stole the first born’s blessing and the first born’s birthright. And here in our pagan country, here in our area where we live, we don’t dismiss those family traditions like you might have, is what I think you ought to be hearing.
“Complete the bridal week of this one and we will give you the other also for the service which you shall serve for me another seven years.”
Wow. Nobody likes having to take a little of their own medicine, do we? Do we ever? We never do, yeah.
“Jacob did so and he completed her week and gave him his daughter Rachel as his wife.” So he’s literally taking on two wives in after working seven years, but he’s taking on two wives who are sisters and he’s taking them on in eight days’ time. “Laban also gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maid.” And by the way, all the laws of God, the statutes and all of the regulations, all of that’s going to come later. So none of that is in place now, so you’re scratching your head going, “Wait, is this the Bible endorsing polygamy?” No it’s not. It’s just the Bible describing a pre-law experience that was happening in some cultures that are way foreign to us in so many ways. So you need not get crazy and upset about it.
“Laban also gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maid. Jacob went into Rachel also, and indeed he loved Rachel more than Leah. He served with Laban for another seven years.” And by the way, he loved Rachel more than Leah. He’s showing favoritism, and didn’t we point out before that with Isaac and Rebecca? One of the problems for parents, for those two parents anyway, was the showing of favoritism. Rebecca loved Jacob, Isaac loved Esau, was
pointed out to us in the chapter. And it’s not there for nothing, it’s there to remind us that favoritism is going to lead to chaos and conflict and division in the family. “So he goes and he now has Rachel as his wife as well. The Lord saw that Leah was unloved”, verse 31.
And by the way, the Lord, the God of the Bible is drawn to those who feel unloved. The Lord is drawn to the brokenhearted, the Lord is drawn to the lonely. So if that’s you in any way, shape and form, watch how God just saw that she was unloved and He opened her womb. “But Rachel was barren,” and so Rachel now has the same status that Rebecca had and that Sarah before her had and now we see that in Rachel. But watch what happens here. This is just an amazing and it moves really fast. So stay with me on this and I’ll try to read through. “Leah conceived and bore [in verse 32] a son and named him Reuben, which means “to see”. And for she said, ‘Because the Lord has seen my affliction, surely now my husband will love me.’ Then she conceived again and bore a son and said, “Because the Lord has…”
And by the way, nine months at least minimum, a couple more than that probably have passed. This is how fast this is going. So Ruben is born, she conceived again and bore a son and said, “Because the Lord has heard that I am unloved. Therefore, he named this one Simeon, which means “hearing”. She conceived again and bore a son and said, ‘Now this time my husband will become attached to me because I have born him three sons.’ Therefore he was named Levi, which has the meaning of “attachment”. And she conceived again and bore a son and said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’” Interesting, she doesn’t say a thing about Jacob or my husband here. That’s fascinating to me.
Every one of these people in this story, they’re in process. They’re moving or growing, I hope, in faith and they’re not just adrift. “Therefore she named him Judah, then she stopped bearing. And Judah means “to praise”.
This is the line through which, or Judah’s line will be, the line through which King David will come and later Jesus, God’s Messiah. From Leah, the one who was unloved, the one who dad had to manipulate to, sort of, make things happen for her so she could have a husband and to have children mean so much to her. Now she’s got four sons. That’s like a carload of kids right there. I imagine. Think of your camel, loading up the camel every day with these kids and trying to get them to whatever their worship experience would’ve been. Could be really crazy, right?
Well, “Rachel saw that she bore no children to Jacob. She became jealous of her sister and she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children or else I die.’” And there’s envy and there’s jealousy here. And sometimes our suffering separates us, not only from God because we get angry at Him, but also from others. Even separates us from ourselves. She actually thinks that her entire sense of value and the meaning of her life and everything is wrapped up in what she’s seeing another get. But it’s separating her from Leah too. And one of the things I love about the church and we keep driving it home here at The Village Chapel is that when we come together, we’re a bunch of people who God is redeeming and rescuing. And what brings us together, of course, is our response to this redeeming God. Because we know that each one of us I see in you, see in me,
that the Lord is at work and He’s doing the kind of redemption and transformation that will bring Him glory.
And when we get our eyes onto Jesus and focus on Him, what’s bugging me? What’s bugging you? What’s lacking in your life? What’s lacking in my life doesn’t become the center for me, but actually I run to Him because we run to Him and I need to hear you sing and I need to see you serve and I need to see you struggling the same way I struggle with some of this temporal stuff that I value too much sometimes. So that we can see in one another the gospel is at work and that God is glorifying Himself even in our suffering, even in the stuff that we weep over, even in the stuff that’s really tough in our lives, but for Rachel right now it’s become a competition between she and Leah. She saw that she bore no children to Jacob, she became jealous and she goes to Jacob and says, “Give me children or else I’ll die.” Jacob’s anger burned against Rachel. He gets mad. He responds angrily, “Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” And this is just so brutal that he would say this.
Yeah, he probably filled it in with I’ve already had four children with Leah so it’s not me. And oh, just you see yeah, is it right that God’s in charge of life? That’s true. That’s right. Is it right to lob a grenade like that back at her? No. She said, “Here’s my maid Bilhah, go into her that she may
bear on my knees.” And this is just a way that back in that culture the servant belonged to Rachel and Rachel’s going to offer just like Sarah did with Hagar, offer the servant to her husband. Bear on my knees means the child will become as if it were Jacob and Rachel’s child. That through her I too may have children. So she gave him her maid Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob went into her. Bilhah conceived and bore a son then Rachel said, “God has vindicated me and has indeed heard my voice and has given me a son.” Therefore she named him Dan, which means “he has vindicated me”. It’s interesting the meaning of all of these names. It’s a fascinating study if you want to go home and study them all and put them all together and kind of see the narrative there.
“Rachel has made Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. So Rachel said, ‘With mighty wrestlings, I’ve wrestled with my sister and I [notice the competition] and I have indeed prevailed.’” In other words, “I have beat her”. And she named him Naphtali which means “my struggle”.
“Then when Leah saw that she had stopped bearing, she took her maid Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife.”
“Okay, I can do the same thing!” And notice Jacob’s not complaining about any of this all along the way.
“And Leah’s maid Zilpah bore Jacob a son. Leah said, ‘How fortunate.’ So she named him Gad, it means “fortunate”. Leah has maid Zilpah bore Jacob a second son then Leah said, ‘Happy am I.’” This is number eight. This is the Brady Bunch here. I mean this is just amazing. This is a whole truckload of people. “For women will call me happy so she named him Asher, which means “how happy am I”.
“Now in the days of wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes.” Remember Ruben is probably grown up now he’s probably teenage and he’s the first born to Leah and Jacob. “Went out and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel says to Leah, ‘Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.’” And this was back in that time a plant with the roots of it they would eat, and it was the kind of thing where they thought that that either had an aphrodisiac quality to it or that it increased the possibility of fertility. Okay, so that’s just one of those kinds of things and so it’s try this natural sort of thing and see if this doesn’t work. “And she said, ‘Give me some of your mandrakes,’ she says to Leah. But she said to her, ‘Is that a small matter for you to take my husband? Why don’t you take my son’s mandrakes also?’” So the two sisters are arguing here and negotiating. “Rachel says, ‘Therefore he may lie with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.’” So Rachel’s deal is, I’ll take the mandrakes you get the man tonight, but the mandrakes are going to serve me and my purposes at some point, right?
“Jacob came in from the field in the evening, then Leah went out to meet him and said, ‘You must come in to me for I have surely hired you with my son’s mandrakes.’” It’s like the basket of vegetables and fruit. That’s your prize pal and you must come into me, all right? “So he lay with her that night.” Again, Jacob’s going along with all of this, right? “And God gave heed to Leah…” Look at the God of the Bible. In spite of all of this manipulation and foolishness and it’s this sort of magic superstitious stuff that everybody’s doing, God is still engaged and still crafting the entire big narrative, isn’tHe? I love this about Him. “He gave heed to Leah and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. And Leah said, ‘God has given me my wages.’” We all get a little self righteous, don’t we when we see something go our way? “‘Because I gave my maid to my husband, so she named him Issachar, which sounds like the Hebrew word for “reward”. Leah conceived again and bore sixth son to Jacob.” And remember this is the fountain head of the 12 tribes of Israel unfolding here right before our eyes. Man, this is awesome.
“And then Leah said, ‘God has endowed me with a good gift now my husband will dwell with me.’” And again, she’s back to longing for the intimacy with her husband and the love from her husband that she’s not getting. “‘Now, my husband will dwell with me because I have born him six sons’, so she named him Zebulun, which means “honor”. Afterwards she bore a daughter and named her Dinah. And then God, here’s God again, remembered Rachel. And God gave heed to her and opened her womb. So she conceived and bore a son and said, ‘God has taken away my reproach,’ and she named him Joseph saying, ‘may the Lord give me another son.’” And we’ll stop there. There’s so much more to this story, but I don’t have time to read the rest of it as it runs but we’ll pick up next week there and I hope you’ll read ahead as we do. There are some great lessons here, though, and the first one that I want to point out is that we simply cannot shake the longing for something that will make our lives meaningful. And that’s a timeless truth.
You see that in every one of these characters, even all the way back into the garden, but here especially we see this. Jacob clicking along, lifted up his heels, rolling on his church camp high, whatever, his dream that he had. He’s gone from being the greedy schemer to the gospel
dreamer in a way, the hope of those promises that God made to him and that prayer and the way they resonated with him because he had heard those from around that campfire. That God had promised a progeny and a place, a land, a place, the promised land to his people. And a progeny, a number of descendants that was greater than the number of stars in the sky or the number of grains of sand at the seashore. But we have this longing, don’t we? All of us. And here we see this even surfacing in the guy who is a spiritual high. We see it surfacing in the older daughter who is feeling unloved and rejected and unwanted. We see it even in Laban who I think is the master manipulator of all where Jacob has met his match.
We see that he’s longing for something as well, and Rachel is as well and you know what? I am too and so are you. We’re all longing for something that will make our lives meaningful, give us significance, give us a sense of security. And so we are just like them as well. However, for a lot of people in the world in which we live right now, and for some of the people that we’ll read about in the Old Testament as well, the longing, that chronic dissatisfaction with the way things are, that in being in pursuit of something finite that they think will be the thing always just ends in some kind of frustration. Or in some way, in some cases it ends in self-destruction. Or in some cases it ends in destruction of others because we’re in pursuit of the wrong thing that we think will satisfy us. We think will make our lives meaningful. Jacob thought Rachel, a beautiful wife could be his savior in the middle of this story, even though he is on the camp high, but all of a sudden he sees her and it’s like…
And this is what happens when people fall in love, right? I mean, have you seen your friends when they first fall in love? Some of your friends that didn’t even think about ironing their shirt or pants and all of a sudden somebody enters their life and they start ironing their clothes or brushing their teeth or combing their hair, and it makes sense. We all go nuts when we get in romance mode, don’t we? We’re insane. We’re just crazy. And he’s kind of like that too. He gets derailed from his focus on God. As I say, he’s penniless, but through this section he’s also prayerless. And while we may be, some of us here may be from time to time the former, we never have to be the latter. Never have to be prayerless. Why? Well, because the whole point of Bethel in the previous chapter was that God said to him in I think it’s in verse 15, “I will be with you.” And after all the other promises about the progeny and the place, the land and the descendants and all that stuff, none of that really matters without the ‘I will be with you’. It’s the presence that matters the most.
And see, we forget that and so we turn to something else that we think will satisfy us. And the Bible teaches us very clearly that God has placed eternity in our hearts. He’s designed us with this chronic longing for him and nothing else will satisfy us. Nothing at all. You guys are familiar with this quote, but I love to come back to it, “If I find to myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” So important. What are you longing for? What is it that you think will make all the difference if I just add that? And so often I think what that does is it exposes for us and it might be a good thing, but it exposes for us something that’s taken first place in our lives. Maybe good things, but if we see it start to separate us from others, if we see ourselves getting angry at God over some
outcome that was undesirable or wasn’t the way we wanted it to be, we have to see ourselves in this chapter as well.
God is the only savior. God has chosen to send His Messiah through the line of the rejected one Leah, which I love that. I love His reversals. I love the paradoxes of the story of redemption as it unfolds through the scripture. Secondly, we can grow when we’re wrong, especially when it’s in an area of our own sin. This is Jacob’s lesson, all right? Nothing like knowing both sides of our own tendencies. We know the pull of its siren song and the brokenness of having caved into it. And I think Jacob is learning here, I really do. I see him on the move a little bit and I’ve had the church camp high up, a bunch of us have anyway. And at the same time, I think he’s going to learn in ways that he could never have imagined, in ways that a class where somebody’s talking about. It could never really teach you, but the experience of being manipulated, the experience of being taken advantage of, the experience of having to suffer for seven years, no 14 years, and it’s actually going to turn out to be more than that, but all of that in Jacob’s life is going to shape and mold him spiritually.
It might have turned him bitter, but I think it’s going to turn him better if we keep watching as the story unfolds. I think we should all take a more humble posture, especially as we look back through history at these people. It’s so easy to say, ‘oh, we’re sophisticated’. ‘We would never’. I mean, look, this is modern western culture America. We would never treat women like that, value them based on their beauty. Right! We would never make a billion dollars propping up some one image of the perfect female, would we? We’re not as sophisticated as we think. And that human tendency is still there, and I think we can learn. It’s good for us to learn some of these things. Augustine said,
“My sin was this. I looked for pleasure, beauty, truth not in God, but in myself and in His other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.”
–Augustine
We need to sometimes look at the fruit. What is it we’re in pursuit of? Let’s look at the fruit that’s on the other side of that. Is it possible it will lead to that? Is it possible it will divide us from others?
David Brooks, some of you know of this New York Times writer. He’s a man of faith now, this book The Second Mountain is interesting. I really enjoyed it.
“The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die….”
And I think Jacob’s on the curve of doing that.
“…Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered.”
–David Brooks, The Second Mountain
And even though all these people in this chapter are world famous, we’ve all heard of most of these folks because of their status in the Bible and being in these stories have been told for so long, but none of them are the hero of the Bible. As a matter of fact, they’re the mirror so that we can see the weakness that we have and sometimes just identify with their sufferings, some of us and their longings like this because we can learn as we go through some of these things. But just like everyone else in this story, it’s something that takes time. And so here’s what I love as a pastor of a church that’s about to celebrate 20 years.
I love watching this fellowship of people learn to love each other well because of the grace of God at work in their lives. Along the way, there have been folk who couldn’t at some point they’d had enough or whatever, and this is happening in churches all around the world right now. But for one reason or another, they just could no longer endure the weight or the pressure of what it means to be in a fellowship of fellow repenting sinners. And they might say, ‘oh, it’s just this intellectual thing and so you can’t answer the question, why does a good God, a all powerful God allow pain and suffering? And since you can’t answer that, I’m out. No.’ And it’s not just the whole, ‘I don’t think the Christianity thing is it or the gospel is it, or that evangelicalism is all filled with a bunch of people that are just haters and bigots and all that sort’. I don’t think that’s it because all of those people that bolt they don’t stop believing, they just choose to believe something else. It’s just an adaptation of something.
And I’m not saying that if you don’t come here you’re not a Christian, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying what I like to see here is that people who might not normally sit together or might not normally like each other actually are loving one another well because of the gospel. And that’s to the praise and glory not of the people, not of us, that’s to the praise and glory of our God who is the only one that can change our hearts. And sometimes He does this in really funny ways like with mandrakes and things, little arguments over stuff. And sometimes though He also does it by taking a long time to accomplish something I want Him to accomplish today. And in some cases it’s going to be true. I mean, I might get to the end of my life, close my eyes and pass on to the next life. And some of the things I wanted may never have been realized in this life, but He’s still God and He’s still holding me fast whether I hold to Him or not. And that’s why we’ll close up with this little last point here. “Jesus is the Savior you’ve always wanted and always needed.
“Here’s the gospel…”
Keller says,
“…God did not save us in spite of the weakness that He experienced as a human being, but through it. And you don’t actually get that salvation into your life through strength; it is only for those who admit they are weak.”
–Tim Keller
See the beginning of the gospel and the beginning of you becoming a Christian, the beginning of Jacob coming to not just believe the religion of Isaac and Abraham, but actually to know the God of Isaac and Abraham was because God came to him. And on the run, running on empty, God revealed Himself to Jacob. And here through the next 14 years of hard labor and all that sort of thing to finally get to marry the woman that he really wants to marry, God is teaching him things all along the way. And again, we’ll see some really amazing God-glorifying things that happen in the upcoming weeks. I’ll close with this quote from Richard Bauckham. Let me see, it starts here, “In a life with God, His guidance, provision, and protection are important, as Jacob and the Psalmist knew,” Dig into this folks. “But in all such experiences, the center and source is God’s presence ‘with’ us.”
It’s really important. “To discover that God is ‘with’ us is probably the most important discovery anyone can make, for, once made, it colors all of life’s experiences.” Whether there are positive experiences or negative experiences, whether it’s you having to be patient and wait, or whether it’s you being told no by God. In any case, it’s His presence with us that really matters. And as we get deeper into Genesis, the story of Joseph is all about and the Lord was with him. It’s
repeated over and over again. And so let’s continue to lock into that. And I love that when we say ‘goodbye’, we’re saying go with God. Essentially, if you study the origin of that word goodbye, it’s ‘go with God’. The modern variation on it, Bauckham points out, with Star Wars may the force be with you. But with the Bible, what we have is ‘may God be with you’, and may you be with him. Amen. Let’s pray.
Thank you, Lord, for breaking through the darkness. Thank you for coming after us when we were running away from you. Thank you for being with us while we wait, being ‘with’ us, you being enough for us Lord when all other things have failed us. All the other things that have charmed us, Lord, when those have failed us in some way or another or frustrated us or proved their vacuity and their inability to actually satisfy us. Lord, may we find our rest in You and in Your sovereignty as you hold your sons and daughters fast. In Your sovereign grace and love we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen and amen.
(Edited for Reading)
