Who Should I Trust? Genesis 31:1-16

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As you go through life, you learn the importance of having trustworthy people by your side.
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You marry someone you hope you can trust over the long haul. You make friends with someone who will have your back and stand by you through thick and thin.
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You put your money in a bank that you hope won't take advantage of you. You send your children to schools hoping you can trust their teachers.
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You hire a carpenter hoping that he will build a house that will stand for many, many years. You see a doctor who you hope will give you an accurate diagnosis of your health.
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You join a church that you hope teaches sound doctrine and will lead you into a deeper relationship with the
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Lord. Our great desire is to put our trust in those who are trustworthy.
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But, as we know, people and organizations fall short. You can't always trust.
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That's the world we live in. Too often, people prove themselves to be untrustworthy. But what is refreshing is that there is one who is always trustworthy.
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There is one who never breaks a promise and always stands by you. And we know who this is.
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The Lord always proves himself to be reliable. And as you walk with him long enough, you see this over and over again.
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This morning, as we continue our sermon series through Genesis, we are going to see the Lord's trustworthiness measured in contrast to the untrustworthiness of Jacob's father -in -law,
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Laban. We're going to see quite a stark contrast. What we will see is that Jacob came and learned the
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Lord's trustworthiness over a long period of time. And he learned also the untrustworthiness of his father -in -law,
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Laban, over that period of time as well. So, as always, I encourage you to turn in a
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Bible with me to Genesis 31. We're going to be looking at verses 1 -16. If you're using a red
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Bible in the pews, it's on page 30. This sermon is titled, Who Should I Trust?
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Who Should I Trust? And our big idea, our proposition, is the
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Lord is to be trusted over all others. We're going to see two reasons why.
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The first reason he is to be trusted above all others is the Lord proves his reliability over and over again.
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He proves his reliability over and over again. And we'll see this in verses 1 -5.
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But before we jump into our text this morning, let me give you a little recap of last week's sermon.
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We saw the story of Laban's deceit of Jacob. Jacob told his father -in -law,
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Laban, that he wanted to return home to the land of Canaan with his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and their twelve children.
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While living in the region of Padan Aram, which was hundreds of miles north of the land of promise,
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Jacob had eleven sons and one daughter through Leah and Rachel and their two servant women.
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And it was time to return home to the place the Lord promised to them, the place where they belonged.
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But Laban did not want Jacob to leave because he knew his prosperity came because of Jacob.
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Laban said in chapter 30, verse 27, that the Lord told him that he had become prosperous because of Jacob.
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Laban said he knew this. And Genesis 12 -3 told us that the nations would be blessed through Abraham and his offspring and Laban had benefited from this.
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So Laban knew this was no mystery why he became so prosperous. It was Jacob's presence with him and the
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Lord blessed Laban because of his association with God's man. Laban's pressure on Jacob caused
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Jacob to stay on the condition that he could have his own flock. Up to this point, he just looked after Laban's and now he wanted his in order to better take care of his large family.
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So Jacob told Laban that he would keep the abnormal flock and Laban could keep the normal flock, which would be more.
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So it sounded like a good deal. While Laban said he agreed to the deal, he had no plans on keeping it.
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He was greedy and wanted his own. He wanted everything. He wouldn't even give a little bit to Jacob.
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So what Laban did is he took the abnormal herd from Jacob so that he was stuck with the normal sheep that would only produce a few abnormal flock.
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And so Jacob's herd would be very little. Jacob trusted the Lord through this by believing the
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Lord's word that many abnormal sheep would be produced from the normal flock, which really defied the laws of genetics, but was a possibility.
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And this is what happened. He trusted the Lord and through wisdom, through exercising his wisdom in zoology,
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Jacob prospered his flock to the point where he had a ton of abnormal sheep.
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So from this narrative, we pulled out three faith lessons. The first lesson is to act honestly at all times and not to be like Laban in that way.
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The second faith lesson we saw was to trust the Lord always, even when the picture in life is blurry. The Lord will carry you through those times when you don't know what to do at first.
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The third faith lesson is to exercise wisdom in all areas of our life. The Lord wants us to learn things and use that knowledge rightly.
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We saw that deeds are very important for believers. We receive entrance into heaven through our faith in Christ alone.
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But at the future judgment, works matter since the Lord will give rewards based on your faithfulness in this life.
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Now this leads us to our text today. After years of working to attain his wives and after working six more years, after Laban convinced him to stay, things come to a head when word gets out about Jacob's success in prospering his flock.
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So let's look at verses 1 through 3 of chapter 31. Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying,
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Jacob has taken all that was our father's and from what was our father's, he has gained all this wealth.
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And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before. Then the Lord said to Jacob, return to the land of your father's and to your kindred and I will be with you.
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So after six years of building up his flock, as Jacob trusted the Lord and exercised wisdom, word got out about his success to Laban's sons.
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And of course, this would have reached Laban. And in the minds of Laban's sons, what is rightly Jacob's, they believe belongs to their father.
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They are essentially saying that Jacob stole this from him when actually it was the opposite. Verse 2 also says that Laban did not regard him with favor as he did before.
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We know why. Once Jacob took ownership of a large flock, Laban became jealous.
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Laban once favored Jacob because he knew he was blessed because of his presence. Now Jacob is wealthy and Laban looks on him with disfavor.
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The Lord, of course, who knows all the details of life, looks on and tells Jacob that this toxic environment means it's now time for you to leave.
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This is remarkable as we think about this. The Lord sent Jacob to this region hundreds of miles from home for Jacob to find a wife from there.
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And in the Lord's providence, he had Jacob stay for 20 years. But now in his providence, he's leading him away.
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It's deeply fascinating how the Lord's ways are not our ways. The story he writes is sometimes different from what we expect.
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Jacob never would have thought he would have been in Haran for 20 years.
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He thought he was going there to find a wife and then come home. But the Lord willed this. And now he's sending him back.
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The Lord tells Jacob to leave to go to his homeland. And as we follow the narrative of Genesis, we know that Jacob was not going to stay in this region forever.
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The Lord promised Jacob that he and his offspring would have the land of Canaan forever.
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So the Lord tells him to go back to the land of his fathers. And notice the words at the end of verse three, the
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Lord tells Jacob, I will be with you. What better words to hear than that?
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As we travel down the path of the life of faith, there are scary roads that he leads us down.
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But the promise that all believers can always carry with them is that the Lord is by our side.
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This is why people love Psalm 23, right? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.
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He leads me beside still waters. His rod and his staff, they comfort me because the
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Lord's presence is with you. And before Israel finally took possession of the land of Canaan during the time of Joshua, the
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Lord told Israel, be strong and courageous. Do not be in fear or in dread of them, for it is the
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Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
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Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 28, 20, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
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What comforting and encouraging words scripture gives us about God's constant presence with us, guaranteeing our success.
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Imagine the Lord whispering in your ears, you're going to be all right, things are going to be okay, because I'll get you through.
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And the Lord's not literally going to hear, you're not going to hear a literal audible voice, probably not.
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But when you read the words of scripture, these words are his words. And so that's essentially what he's doing.
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And the Lord not only promises to be with us on the journey, he also promises to bring us to the finish line. Philippians 1, 6, he who began a good work in you will carry to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.
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In my favorite John 10, 27 and 28, Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.
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I give them eternal life and they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out of my hand.
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He's with you always. And the story ends well. Sometime in the past year,
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Brandon and I were over at Gordy and Barb's house and Gordy built
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Barb this beautiful cabin, cottage, whatever you want to call it, the trail leads out there.
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It's back in the woods and Barb goes there to read and write and have quiet time with the Lord. And there's a little sign in there that says,
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I'll spoil the ending. It ends well. It says something along those lines. And I think it was even like a secular place you bought it from.
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But for a Christian, this is true. I'll spoil the ending. It ends well. So just the Lord's going to stand by you.
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He's going to persevere you and realize his presence is always with you. And this brings us great comfort.
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And as Jacob was facing this scary road in his life, his father -in -law was a powerful man and he did not like what
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Jacob was doing. When he heard these words from God of his constant presence, these words would have instilled comfort and courage in Jacob.
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And as Jacob heard these words from the Lord, he acted in faith, trusting what the Lord said.
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So he calls his wives to tell them in verses four and five. So Jacob sent and called
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Rachel and Leah into the field where his flock was and said to them, I see that your father does not regard me with favor as he did before.
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But the God of my father has been with me. So Jacob called
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Rachel and Leah out into the field where no one else would hear them. And he said, we need to get out of here.
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He told them that his, he told them that their father did not regard him with favor as he did before.
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And Jacob tells them while his father does not favor him, the Lord does favor him and promises to always be with him.
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And you can see what Jacob is doing here. He wants to show them that God can be trusted, but their father cannot be.
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God wants them to leave, but Laban wants them to stay. And Jacob is staying, or sorry, is saying, let's listen to the
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Lord and not your father's wishes for us to stay. We saw Laban wanted them to stay in the text last week, and we are going to see that again later on in this narrative in chapter 31.
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And his reasons for them staying are selfish. He wants to prosper.
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He wants, he doesn't want his family to go anywhere too. So Jacob is trying to win his wives over to following the
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Lord's will and not their father's. Jacob is building up a case for the
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Lord, saying how trustworthy he is. At the end of verse five, he says that the
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Lord has been with me. What he's referring to is the Lord's presence with him since Jacob's ladder.
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That famous story. You remember back to that sermon in chapter 28, where the
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Lord appeared to Jacob in a dream as he was traveling to this region to find a wife. In this dream, angels were ascending and descending on this ladder as Jacob was having this conversation with the
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Lord at the bottom of the ladder. And what the Lord told him, he said, behold,
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I am with you and I will keep you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done what
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I have promised you. So now put yourself in Jacob's shoes here.
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He's reflecting back to 20 years ago when he was traveling to this region.
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There was so much uncertainty. He did not know what was going to happen. He may have had doubts that this was going to be a failed journey, but now he knows how things turned out and he knows that the
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Lord is trustworthy. He has 20 years of evidence to say this with confidence.
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The Lord providentially led him to this region. He ran into relatives of his soon -to -be wives.
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He married Leah and Rachel, but the deal was that he had to work for their father -in -law for 14 years.
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And in that time, the Lord blessed Jacob by giving him a total of 12 offspring. And during this whole time, the
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Lord has protected Jacob from the deceptive and cruel Laban.
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Jacob sees clearly the Lord's guiding and protecting hand in his life over the years, over the last 20 years.
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Now in church history, the apostle John, he was the last living apostle.
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He had a man who he discipled named Polycarp from the early church.
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He was brought to trial by the Roman authorities to denounce his faith in Christ. And here is how he answered them.
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Remember, if he says, I denounce it, he lives. If he says, I don't, he dies. This is what he said, 86 years
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I have served him and he has done me no wrong. And so Polycarp, as you guess, was killed for his faith in Christ.
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And he went into the loving arms of his savior, knowing that the
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Lord proved himself reliable over his entire life as he walked with him. And he knew the Lord would take him to be with him once he died.
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And about 2000 years before Polycarp lived, Jacob, who knew about the trustworthiness of the
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Lord because he experienced his trustworthiness firsthand. Everyone here today who belongs to the
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Lord knows this about God. If you've walked with him for any number of years, this is the first reason why the
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Lord is always to be trusted. The Lord proves himself reliable over and over again.
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The second reason why the Lord is always to be trusted, in contrast, is that sinful humans prove their unreliability over and over again.
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So verses 6 through 16. While Jacob is showing his wives that the
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Lord is trustworthy, now he's going to contrast to them the unreliability of their father Laban.
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Verses 6 and 7. You know that I have served your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times.
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But God did not permit him to harm me. So Jacob shows
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Rachel and Leah the bad character of their father. He explains to them that their father has continually cheated him by changing his wages ten times.
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Now Jacob says ten times Laban has deceived him on his wages, but the narrative in Genesis only highlights two of these acts of deceit.
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Laban deceived Jacob by giving him Leah to be his wife and not Rachel. That's how he ended up with two wives and not one.
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And the woman, because Rachel was the one he wanted to be with, so he had to work seven years for the wife he thought he was going to get, and then he had to work seven years for the one he really wanted.
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And the other example we saw last Sunday is how Laban deceived Jacob by taking in the flock that was his so that his flock would be strong and Jacob's weak.
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So, here's two examples, and Jacob is saying this has happened eight other times.
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He was keeping a tally here, ten times your father has cheated me. So we can see that Laban is an evil man and not worth trusting.
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He has a continual pattern of unreliability. Every person on planet earth has proved unreliable at one point or another.
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However, we are all sinners who have fallen short in this area and all other areas.
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And as we think of the unreliability of sinful humans, it causes us to be that much more grateful for the steady, unshakable reliability of God.
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You ever have that? You're like, man, I'm so glad that God's not this way. If you ever have those moments where someone proves to be so untrustworthy.
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And when we talk about humans, this doesn't mean that every human is untrustworthy. It doesn't mean we shouldn't trust anyone.
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That's unhealthy. How horrible of a world it would be if that were the case. The people you can trust the most are believers who are indwelt by the
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Holy Spirit. True believers are the ones who are looking out for your best interests because they are looking out for the
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Lord's best interests. And this room is full of people that I trust. But as we look at our lives, we have people whom we can trust and others we can't because they have proved themselves mostly untrustworthy.
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Many unbelievers you come across will prove themselves untrustworthy because they live for their own selfish desires.
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It's all about what can I get out of it? How is this going to help me? Now, Philippians 2, 3 and 4 explains that unbelievers live to look out for themselves and not others.
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Now, occasionally you'll meet an unbeliever that you can trust, and this is so because the
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Lord pours out His common grace on some unbelievers more than others. Sometimes maybe you have a neighbor who's not a believer, but you go away on vacation and you trust them to feed your animals or look after the house, and that's legitimate.
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But as we know, the world we live in, there's so many people you can't trust. And you may wonder, why did
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Leah and Rachel need to be persuaded that their father was a wicked man? You might be thinking, well, duh, have you seen his life?
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Didn't they already know this? As we think about this, we can relate to this. Those whom we are closest to, whether family or friends, we can think of in too much of a positive light to the point where we forget about their flaws.
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I was having a conversation about this with my old pastor back home, about this just a couple weeks ago.
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We mentioned that we can paint someone in too positive a light and recommend him or her to a position where they're not the best fit.
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I did this. This is a confession here. I did this not too long ago, and I'll leave out the details to protect the parties involved, but to be vague,
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I recommended a friend of mine to a position that he should not have been in, and it caused many problems.
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I let my friendship blind my objectivity, and thankfully both parties have moved on and things are much better, but I should have been wiser and said, you know, this probably isn't the best person for this position.
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Leah and Rachel wanted to think the best of their father. He's their dad. But Jacob is rightly showing them why he should not be listened to as he talks to them in private about this.
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And let me stress that we need to treat people with care when we talk about them in private.
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If you have a problem with someone, go talk to that person. That's what Scripture tells us to do. Matthew 18, 15 instructs us that way.
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In most cases, you should talk to the person you have a problem with. Now, in this case, the
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Lord is telling them to leave without talking to Laban. This is a unique case because Laban would have kept them there.
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They couldn't just go say, oh, you know, we have a problem with you, Laban. You've cheated me 10 times, and I hope we can resolve this.
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The Lord knew that Laban was going to try to keep them there, so he's saying, nope, you need to go. So this is a unique case here.
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But I'll say this kind of as a side note. We should not gossip about people in private. We should not slander people.
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We should treat people with care, always thinking of their best interests. If what you're saying is somehow raising you up or bringing them down, then don't say anything about that person.
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We should bite our tongue far more than we do. And it's true. I think what tears apart churches more than anything is gossip, more than any other sin.
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And so we should always be saying positive things about one another in private. And if you have a problem, go talk to the person.
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Because problems will arise. It's inevitable. And that's the way, as a church and as Christians, we need to handle issues with other people.
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That's a side note. But back to our point here. In verses, now in verses 8 through 13,
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Jacob explains to Rachel and Leah how the Lord prospered his flock.
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Okay, so he's telling them how unreliable Laban is, and now he's going to talk about how the Lord has blessed him. So let's read these verses, 8 through 13.
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So he's arguing the case that the Lord is trustworthy and Laban is not. Verse 8.
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If he said, the spotted shall be your wages, then all the flock were spotted. And if he said, the striped shall be your wages, then all the flock were striped, just as the
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Lord had said. Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me. In the breeding season of the flock,
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I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted, and modeled.
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Then the angel of God said to me in a dream, Jacob, and I said, here I am. And he said, lift up your eyes and see all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and modeled.
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For I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me.
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Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred. So what
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Jacob is saying in these, in verse eight, is that according to the deal, Laban said that the spotted shall be your wages and the
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Lord made it so that the flock came out spotted. Okay. He's proving himself reliable. But of course,
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Laban thought they would come out the normal color and would be his. But in verse nine, Jacob tells
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Leah and Rachel, the Lord has made it so that this livestock is mine and not yours and not your father's.
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Now in verse 10, Jacob goes back to how this came about. And I explained this last Sunday, but we see it here again.
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Jacob had a dream that showed him that these normal colored flock would come out abnormal. And in verse, in verses 11 and 12,
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Jacob tells Leah and Rachel that the angel of God explained to him why this would be. The Lord saw that Laban stole his flock and mistreated him.
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So therefore the Lord is going to take care of Jacob by prospering his flock. So this is what led
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Jacob to respond in faith by putting the peeled white sticks so that the abnormal sheep will be the ones that would multiply and not the normal flock that would be
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Laban's. And Jacob's action showed that he trusted the Lord was going to multiply his flock.
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And in verse 13, in the dream, the Lord reminded Jacob of a dream that he had 20 years ago as he was traveling to the north.
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And what he's saying is that I promised that I would be with you.
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You made a vow to me there and I have proved my trustworthiness to you because I promised to take you to this land.
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I promised that I would be with you and then take you back to the land of your father. So what we have seen up to this point is that Jacob has been making a case to Leah and Rachel who would be blinded.
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Right? He's their father. They're blinded. They think he's better than he is. And he's saying we need to trust the
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Lord and not your sinful father. How poor opposite the
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Lord and Laban are and how easy of a case this was for him to make.
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And what we're about to see is that Leah and Rachel are thankfully persuaded. And this is how they respond to Jacob in verses 14 through 16.
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Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father's house?
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Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us and has indeed devoured our money.
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All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children now then, whatever
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God has said to you, do. So we see that Leah and Rachel are agreeing with him here saying, you know what?
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You're right. They're no longer blinded by the positive light they have painted their father.
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They asked the question in verse 14, has our father left us anything? Our husband
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Jacob worked for years for our father and what he has rightly attained our father now wants to take from us.
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And in verse 15, they say that he's treated us like we are foreigners, even though we're his children. And when the text says that Laban sold
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Leah and Rachel, what this is referring to is the fact that Jacob had to work for their father in order to take them as wives.
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And not only has he left them with no flocks, he's also left them with no money. What a great guy.
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In verse 16, Leah and Rachel explained that all the wealth they have acquired through the Lord rightly belongs to Jacob, them and their children.
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And Laban has no right to take their wealth as his possession. After saying all of this, what they say to Jacob is that we trust
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God and not our father Laban. So after Jacob makes the case to Leah and Rachel for God's trustworthiness, they make the right choice and choose the
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Lord's path. And they say at the end of verse 16, whatever God has said to you, do.
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So based on trusting God over sinful Laban, they plan to leave this region,
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Padan Aram, and return to where they belong, the land of Canaan, the land of promise.
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And how many times in our life are we met with a situation where we are to trust
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God and not others, what other people are saying? People might be telling you one thing to do, and God is telling you something else.
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People might say following God's path is too risky, or following God's path is not the fun way.
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The sinful path is the happy path. And these are lies. There are people out there who are not looking out for your best interests, and those are the people you don't listen to.
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You listen to the Lord's way, right? That's why we need to know the Word of God, right?
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He tells us what His way is. That's why we need to make friends with wise people and not the wrong people.
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Proverbs talks about how you can tell a righteous person from an unrighteous person just by the people they hang out with, and that's so true.
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We need to go the Lord's way and not listen to sinful man when they're telling us the wrong thing, because remember, they want to get something out of us.
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Laban just wants them to stay here because he wants something out of us. He doesn't care for his family the way he should.
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So as we see here, the Lord is always to be trusted. The second reason why is that sinful humans prove their unreliability over and over again, and we see clearly here the contrast between sinful humanity,
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Laban being the example here, and the reliability of the Lord. The contrast could not be greater as the
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Lord always proves Himself reliable. So we've seen here in this sermon today, the
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Lord is always to be trusted. We've seen two reasons why the Lord is always reliable and sinful humans constantly always prove their unreliability.
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So Jacob, through his experience with the Lord, through a period of 20 years, knew this and he laid this out to Leah and Rachel, and they saw this to be true.
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And you may be here today, but have walked with the Lord for a few years. You may be here today and have walked with the
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Lord for 50 years. And what I want to do, what I want you to do is I want to encourage you to reflect this morning on the
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Lord's trustworthiness through your faith journey, not only today, but continually. You can look back and say the
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Lord has been faithful. The Lord has been trustworthy. He's proved Himself reliable through my journey, and how much more
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I should trust Him in the days ahead and worship Him for this. Worship Him for this aspect of His greatness, that He always keeps
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His promises, that He always is by your side. And if you're here today and you've never trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, understand that if you sincerely believe in Him, He will forgive all of your transgressions and give you eternal life.
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And He will always walk with you in your journey through life. It is a beautiful reality that the
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Lord proves Himself 100 % trustworthy to His people. And so if you're here today and you believe, you can be encouraged by this and praise
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Him for this and live by this each day. And if you don't know Him, would you trust in Him today and have this?
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We invite you to believe in Him. As the chorus of the famous hymn goes, "'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, how
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I've proved Him o 'er and o 'er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, O for grace to trust
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Him more." And may we trust Him more than we do. May we praise
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Him and thank Him for His steady, unshakable reliability. Now next week, we will see the narrative where Jacob, Leah, Rachel, and their children leave this region to return home to the land of promise.
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And what we're going to see is that Laban is on their trail, trying to track them down. Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, as we wrap up this sermon, I just want to say thank you,
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Lord, that you are a trustworthy God. We offer you praise for your constant, steady, unshakable reliability.
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And when we see, Lord, the untrustworthiness of many in this world, and frankly,
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Lord, if we have proved ourselves untrustworthy too many times, what a great reminder,
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Lord, that you are not that way. And what a wonderful reality that is, and what a great comfort,
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Lord, it is to know who you are and your ways. And may we live by that as a church.