Laban again

Good morning. We're going to proceed with this passage here that Wayne read the intro for us for. And as we do that, I think we're going to find this is a chapter that moves quickly. It starts with Jacob entering this home area where his extended family is from. And by the end of the chapter, he will have gotten married two times and worked for 14 years. And on top of that, had several kids. So anyway, this is going to be a quick chapter in terms of the speed at which it goes. It begins with Jacob having completed his 550 mile journey in the homeland of Abraham's family, his extended family.

One of the things we've noticed as we've gone along is that this area gets called different things. And at first you might think that's a little puzzling. As a matter of fact, a new term gets introduced today for that area. It's the Land of the Sons of the East. And you might say, well, why the different names? Well, let me give you an example from this area.

Suppose that you lived in Lakewood and you're telling, Somebody who doesn't know where you live that may be from some other part of the country Where do you live? Oh, I live in Lakewood. Where's that? Oh, it's near Denver. Okay, Denver. I recognize so now you got two names, okay now somebody else you're talking to them and They say well, where's that geographically? Oh, that's kind of the Front Range area, you know in Central, Colorado. Oh, okay. I know where that is. I Or somebody else talking to it may be in the sports realm. Oh, that's the home of the Broncos. But anyway, several different names may crop up. It's not intended to be confusing. But just like here, you might refer to it in several different ways depending on who you're talking to.

Now, Jacob meets Rachel, who is his wife-to-be, at Genesis' frequent place for both drama and romance. And that's the well. And of course that's where Courtney has drama and romance too. Anyway, by deception here, Jacob works for Laban for seven years only to discover too late, about a day too late, in the wedding sweet switch, that he had actually married Rachel's sister Leah. And eight days later, wow, he marries Rachel. That's not something I'd want to volunteer for. Okay. Jacob works for Laban then seven years more. That's kind of the quick summary to pay off his debt for Rachel.

Meanwhile, Jacob and his now two wives find themselves in this powerful tension, and it doesn't end with this chapter, of jealousy, longing for love, and for children. And we're going to be looking at that, of course, the next few weeks. So the themes of this chapter include God is being faithful to what he's promised. That's what we studied in chapter 28.

Promise to Jacob there at Bethel, which was still in the land that the Lord had promised to Abraham and to Isaac and now to Jacob. Jacob also, as we'll see in this chapter, is faced with what it's like to be on the receiving end of deception. Jacob was a manipulator and a deceiver, even in a collusion and cooperation in that deception with his mother, against his father, and against Jacob's brother Esau. Jacob's going to be on the receiving end and see what that feels like when you're the one getting the deception.

Now, here's how it starts. The beginning of the chapter, going through a little more detail, goes like this. Jacob arrives here at the homeland of Abraham's family, his forefathers and extended family being there. He finds that the flocks are being gathered there and talks with the men there at the well.

They aren't removing the cover just yet. Sometimes that gets portrayed in movies and things of that sort as some sort of a big confrontation. I think that's probably doubtful. If you read the passage, you don't get the idea that there's some big confrontation between Jacob and the ones that are there. It's just that they don't take the cover off the well until everybody is gathered with their sheep. The picture there is not one of confrontation of Jacob and the men, so much as he just happens to talk to them and his wife-to-be, Rachel, the shepherdess, isn't there yet.

Well, she arrives. and he removes the stone cover. Now, here again is an area where we need to correct a portrayal. Sometimes it's looked upon as Jacob's coming here and he's Mr. Steroids here just coming, removing this huge stone. I think that's probably a mistake and Nancy's grossed out. Okay. He kisses her and weeps. I doubt this is, again, one of these Hollywood kisses, an Oklahoma hello or anything like that.

But this is more of a greeting, as one would with family, and is obviously overwhelmed with emotion over this. Now, Laban, his uncle basically, his mother's brother, On hearing the news, comes to greet Jacob and greets him with this warm welcome, actually a kiss as well.

And having him stay at first as a guest of the family and after about a month goes by, he says, well, let's make some kind of permanent arrangements here. You're just kind of on here as a sort of a volunteer and we'd like to do something a little more permanent. So how about if I make arrangements to have you work for one of my daughters for seven years, right?

And so that's the arrangement that he makes. He thinks he's making the arrangement for Rachel. That's what he thinks. And that's motivating him. He's driven. And the seven years seems to pass quickly because after all, he's marrying Rachel. Right? Okay.

Now, Rachel's sister Leah, however, as described in the passage, doesn't have sparkly eyes. Some of the different translations talk about weak eyes, tender eyes, things like that. The reason I think sparkly eyes is more of the idea, in other words, just kind of dull-eyed, is in contrast to Rachel, who was beautiful in appearance. In other words, it's more of an appearance thing.

And so that comes clear in verse 17 there in the passage. Now, here's Jacob thinking for these seven years, well, I'm working for Rachel. Yes! All right? He's liking this. He worked through those seven years. They seem to pass quickly. The passage even says so. It just seems like, zoom, the time is gone.

Now, those weddings, frequently we'll think of the women in the Middle East wearing veils all the time, and that may be among some of the cultures now. In those days, it was not the custom, except at a wedding. And so now, here's the wedding, and the bride comes with this veil. Her face is covered. The groom doesn't know any different. As far as Jacob's concerned, this is his beloved Rachel. This is the one. Yes! He likes this. All right.

So the bride's face isn't seen during the whole ceremony, however long that takes. And then the bride and groom consummate this wedding in basically darkness. Apparently this is nighttime. And by the way, this sort of thing happens still in some cultures in our world now. I heard recently of a modern-day man from India where the marriages were arranged and he didn't actually get to see his bride until they'd been married for three days. So, in fact, he hadn't met her before. So, sometimes these surprises can happen in that kind of an arranged marriage where the wedding takes place with veils and then the consummation takes place in darkness.

Basically, it was the next morning and Jacob's demanding an answer from Laban. Why? The first thing that's happened, he is shocked. Whoa! This is God's attention. And that's the first response, he's in shock. Very quickly it turns to, I'm ticked. I'm not only shocked, but I am ticked.

I better have a really good answer for this. As a matter of fact, no answer is going to be good. I just worked seven years for the wrong gal. There's some serious mistake here. Oh, well, so Laban, oh, you just don't understand. We have a custom. Now, what's interesting is Laban presents we have this tradition or this custom. Never marry off the younger one first, always the older. What's interesting, archaeologists have been sorting through the records of that time and we actually have quite a bit. I mean, thousands. of written records of the culture that day. They have yet to find any evidence of any such custom.

So Laban is really pulling the wool over his eyes after pulling the veil over her eyes. Anyway, so Laban offered to Jacob to marry off Rachel too. As a matter of fact, because I'm sure Jacob was pretty steamed about this, he says, let's just get over this wedding week and you can marry her just a week from now. So now he's going to marry Rachel and have two brides in just about a week. Now, Jacob would have to work for Laban now. This isn't working for the bride, this is working to catch up with the bride, so he's in debt. So now he's got two wives.

Think of this. Seven more years. Count them. How do you do that? Anyway, seven more years. So he's got to work this whole time. Quite a bit. Quite a deal. We point out, and this is the bottom of page one of your handout, this is one of those famous chiasms. What is it? It is essentially a mirror image in written form in this little arrangement here for the weddings and the wives. And so it starts off with Jacob making a payment for his wife, seven years of work. And it ends up with Jacob making a payment for his other wife, Rachel, with seven years of work. All right.

Now, it says there Leah was not loved. And literally, the Hebrew means hated. Can you imagine that? Hated. But she did bear Jacob's sons, first Reuben, then Simeon, then Levi, and Judah. Those four. At first hoping, and we'll look into the details of that, that bearing Jacob a son would finally earn his love and endear her to him. For chapter 29, the one we're studying this week, in the beginning of chapter 30, that we'll get into next week, Rachel, though loved by Jacob, remains totally childless. at least through that time. This two wives in a week, a little bit more, but close enough, is about to become a whole lot more convoluted, as we'll soon see.

Here's Genesis 29-32 with Reuben's birth, and Leah says this, Because the Lord has seen my affliction, surely now my husband will love me. So here is Leah saying this on the birth of her son Reuben. The next one, Simeon, because the Lord has heard that I am unloved, he has therefore given me this son also. Genesis 29, 34, with Levi's birth, now this time my husband will become attached to me because I have born him three sons.

And finally, with Judah's birth, this time I will praise the Lord. You have on a supplemental handout, it's a half-page slide there, that starts off like this, the Genesis 29 marriages and births leave things with this date. Jacob is married to Leah and Rachel, and only Leah at the end of chapter 29 has these four sons. The entire slide, as you have it, looks like this. And it shows all the sons that we'll see here in the next chapter or so.

And also some of the key players later on in scripture who are descended from them. We have Moses and Aaron and the priests and Levites that we find in the rest of scripture. We have from Judah, King David all the way down to Christ himself descended from this Judah that's born here. as described and told to us in chapter 29. And then we have over later, not in this chapter, Benjamin, who is the one King Saul is descended from. And by the way, I would add to that, Paul, the apostle, was of the tribe of Benjamin as well.

So here we have the picture in chapter 29. Here is Jacob married to Leah and Rachel, working away, catching up with as a debt with Rachel, the one he wanted in the first place, and the birth of these four sons. Now I'd like us to kind of step through this again and kind of look at what are some of the spiritual lessons and questions that come out of this chapter.

One of the things that we brought up briefly before is the Lord faces Jacob with the consequences of deception. Jacob, you've been a deceiver. As a matter of fact, you've cooperated, colluded, conspired with your mother to deceive your father. You've manipulated and deceived all the way along.

Now, let me let you find out what that feels like. He's going to put him on the receiving end of deception. How do you like it? How does it fit? Jacob is going to also find out that the consequences of deception last a long time. They can last for many years, even, as we'll see, for generations.

Another thing that comes out of this is family favoritism. Family favoritism has a price. One of the things we pointed out when we were going through the account with Isaac and Rebekah is they each picked a favorite. Isaac would pick a favorite in Esau and Rebekah would pick a favorite in Jacob. And essentially the favoritism between the mother and the father ended up tearing the sons apart even to the point where Esau was planning on killing Jacob. Jacob would discover that same truth by treating differently two sisters, each his wife. He would see that same truth now in his own situation. What is that like? What does that turn into when I feed the division within the family, playing favorites?

One of the things that's interesting, God did not move to prohibit the polygyny. Polygamy is the term we use that's general. It means multiple spouses, but it doesn't mean specifically male or female. Polygyny is multiple wives, which is really what they specifically practice. He didn't prohibit it here, and even under the Jews with the Law of Moses, it wasn't prohibited. But the one man and one wife pattern is something that was God's intent at the outset and is revealed clearly for us now.

On the supplement you have here again, Moses in Genesis 2.24 there, for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. It speaks there of a man and his wife, singular. That appears to be the intent. There wasn't Adam and Eve and several others. It was Adam and Eve period.

Jesus in Matthew 19 makes reference that the one who marries another woman, and of course this is in the context of answering a question, commits adultery. Paul specifically spells out the qualifications of elders and deacons. saying that they must be the husband of one wife, and it's a requirement of character by the grammar of that passage, or the wife of one man in the case of which widow is qualified to receive help. It's a one woman kind of man or a one man kind of woman, depending on the passage there.

1 Corinthians 7.2 And Ephesians 5.33 are also passages you could look at where Paul explicitly spells out, one man, one wife. So the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that that's what God's intent is. Another thing that comes out in the New Testament here is for a husband to love his wife.

Leah longed to be truly loved. Did you get that out of the verses that were read? Oh, she longed for it. She was even willing to have him love her based on, well, at least I had sons for him. Even conditionally, she would be happy for that. if he would just love her. She longed to be loved.

Matter of fact, I'm going to pause it here for a question because I want you to think about three questions. First thing to think through here is between Leah and Rachel over these next few weeks, including today, which one appears to be more spiritually minded? That's not in your handout, but I'd like you to think about that today and the next couple of weeks. Which one between Leah and Rachel appears to be more spiritually minded based on what we can read in the text?

So keep that question in mind. The next question is, at any time does Jacob ever display unconditional love to his wives, any of them. And the third one is, do you see Jacob passing on spiritual truth and wisdom to his wives? Those three things, okay? So, remember those. Let's continue to look for those, okay, in the weeks ahead. We'll start looking at it today, but I want you to think about those things, because I think Scripture starts laying those things out, and they're very important questions. Here is Leah willing to settle even for being loved for something she did. She repeatedly says it. Bearing Jacob's sons when Rachel didn't. She longed to be loved. She longed to be loved.

We've offered some seminars for married folks here just this year beginning in April. I think about four of them we've done actually. And one of the things that we've told the guys in those seminars is, guys, and the women are listening, by the way, okay? Guys, aim to have your wife be wondering at how you love her so, marveling at it, okay?

That's something we're not going to see here, very sadly. Leah, who would have child after child, bearing sons, you know, I'm giving them kids. If only he would love me. Even if he would love me because, at least that would be better than the way it is now. Unfulfilled. The question that a woman is asking all the time. about her husband. Does he love me? Does he love me? Does he love me? Does he love me? She longs to answer that with a yes. She longs even more to answer it with a resounding yes. How much even better for her to be able to answer it with a, how can he love me so?

Leah didn't come close to any of that. She had sons. hoping that that would at least earn a because of love. So far in this chapter, we're not seeing it. Even Rachel, Jacob loved romantically and with his affection, did not receive unconditional love so far as we can tell in this chapter.

You notice that? And we'll see that even more. The New Testament letters call for the husband repeatedly to unconditionally love his wife. Here are the passages in Ephesians 5. He says it explicitly as a command three times and there's actually a fourth time where it's not a command but a description.

Husbands, love your wives, and that's an imperative, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. And verse 33, each individual among you is also to love his own wife even as himself. He is emphatic. He's grabbing the men by the collar, hitting them nose to nose, and saying, yeah, I mean you. You must love your wife even as yourself, as Christ loved the church.

In Colossians, he just says it briefly, husbands love your wives. But the same message. 1 Peter 3, he doesn't use the word love, but he puts it this way. This is what that love looks like. Husbands. Husbands in the same way. Live with your wives in an understanding way.

Did Jacob understand this woman, Leah, longs to be loved? Her heart just is begging for that love. She would do anything if only she were loved. Leah was unfulfilled in her marriage, but she did learn, and you can tell it in this passage, some spiritual lessons. What's interesting is Leah's comments, and they're recorded for us here at each birth, generally involved her relationship with the Lord. Isn't that interesting? The relationship with the Lord was the basis for each comment, at least at some level.

She saw the Lord as seeing and hearing and being responsive. Do you notice that? The Lord sees, the Lord hears, the Lord responds. She was looking for the Lord's interaction. That's really phenomenal. Here's a woman. Her heart just cries to have her husband love her. At least he'll love me for bearing sons for him. Her heart cries for that. But in the midst of that, She keeps her focus on the Lord.

In the midst of that, what I see is actually some spiritual growth in that woman, in the midst of the trial, in the midst of the unfulfillment. She eventually, as far as we can tell, it appears that she even gave up hoping to earn Jacob's love. And just praise the Lord.

This didn't justify Jacob's lack of love for his wife, but it did show that Leah was learning some spiritual lessons. Was what Jacob was not doing in her life good? No, it wasn't good. It was not good at all. But it did appear that she was keeping her eyes on the Lord and learning. And that is good.

Each of them, Jacob, Leah, Rachel, had some sense in which they were unfulfilled. Each of the two women, as we'll see in this and next week's passage, went through a period of being unfulfilled, and each went through a time of barrenness. Initially, the one he didn't love would bear the children, And the one he did love would be barren, would bear no children. There's no question lack of fulfillment, especially a fulfillment of something so basic in our lives and our hearts can be very painful.

You can read it in what Leah says. It's brief, but something is recorded at each birth. You can see that and see the pain in her heart. Those times of lack of fulfillment, and all three of them went through some kind of lack of fulfillment, can be indeed painful, sometimes very much so. But the Lord does have His purpose in it. And that's one thing.

As we look at this, should Jacob have loved Leah? Did Leah long for that love from her husband? Yeah. Yeah. But the Lord had his purpose in it, and the Lord used it nonetheless, even if Jacob did the wrong thing. The Lord has his purpose in those times, whether we're being disciplined, that is, whether we need a correction from the situation we're in, or whether that's a trial that we've been appointed to. Either one, the Lord has his purpose in those things, doesn't he?

Being married is not the answer. Being single is not the answer either. Nancy and I have counseled with a number of different couples in a number of different circumstances. And one of the things that we found is that there are those who will sit down with us and say, oh, I wish I was married. And there are those who sit down with us and say, oh, I wish I wasn't married. And it's funny, neither state by itself is the answer.

We're each, as scripture lays out clearly in the New Testament, we have the passages here in Matthew and 1 Corinthians, we're each gifted, and we may be gifted in different ways at different stages in life, but we're each gifted with singleness or marriage as the Lord's choice for us.

And the ultimate fulfillment, however, is to be found in the Lord. Even for those who are married, what does Paul do? He says, as to the Lord. He makes the relationship with the Lord the reference point for the marriage. Ultimate fulfillment is in the Lord and with Him, not just in an earthly status.

Not just in the answer, oh, I wish I was married and oh, I wish I was single. Oh, I wish I wasn't married. Both godly marriage and godly singleness are to be fulfilled in the Lord first of all. Going to the Lord is not the answer for your marriage, ultimately. It's going to the Lord is the answer, no matter what state you're in. Now, don't get me wrong there. Certainly, our marriages need to have relationship with the Lord. But what's first is relationship with the Lord.

The entire extended family, as we see here, had problems with truth and or love. Laban, Jacob, Leah and Rachel, each had a problem with truth and or love, one or the other. A deficiency in giving or receiving, in either truth or love or both, that's going to be a problem for us even here in the body of Holly Hills. Giving and receiving of love and truth.

Those are key things. We have a minimum daily requirement. It's God's intent that there be reality in both of these. These are not to be looked upon as something that we choose from. They're not at odds where we have love and truth. Between the two, I'll pick one. That's not God's intent. God's intent is that they go together. We have a few passages, and this is on the supplement page for your handout. Here in 1 Corinthians 13, often read, where you put the truth together, love rejoices with the truth is one of the things that comes out of that chapter.

Ephesians 4.15, speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in all aspects unto Him who is the head, even Christ. That set of words literally means truthing in love. The word speaking is a way of trying to put it into English because it's actually truthing in love. Truth in action in love. That's what Paul is telling us.

1 Peter 1.22, since we haven't In obedience to the truth, purify your souls for a sincere love of the brother. In obedience to the truth, you have purified your souls for what? For a sincere love of the brother. Truth and love are connected.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage here, we realize we're just opening the door to some very big questions. questions that have to do with our own lives, whether we're single or married, questions that have to do with our lives no matter what age we're at, questions that are extremely relevant and in fact impact every single one of us. And Lord, we're thankful that you lay out here in a very real way answers because you do love us in the truth. I just thank you for what you've laid out and what you're going to continue to lay out in the weeks ahead. In Jesus name, Amen.