God's Goodness on Display Genesis 29:31-35

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As you go through life's journey, what you learn is that life is full of high points and low points.
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You have moments where you feel like you are on top of the world. You get an A on an exam, marrying the love of your life, having a child, having a very productive year of work.
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You're in good health. Life is full of happy moments. But you also have moments where you feel like you hit rock bottom.
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You failed a big exam. A relationship that you wanted to work out did not.
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Your work year was frustrating and unproductive. You have a health crisis that brings you down.
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You are treated with disrespect, and it hurts. God's people do have low points in their journey through the life of faith here on earth.
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What you learn is that it's not always smooth sailing on the road to heaven. Acts 14 .22
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says, Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul himself reached such a difficult period in his life that you could describe it as a rock -bottom experience.
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He wrote to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians 1 .8, We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia.
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We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.
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Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.
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So when those rock -bottom moments come, we should not be surprised, but to trust the
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Lord through them. You may wonder, why does
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God let us go through periods of misery? There are several answers to this, but our focus today, as we look at our text in Genesis, will be one of them.
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The first one we just saw, of course, is that the Lord wants you to trust him through it, and he does something in you through that rock -bottom experience.
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But the focus today is that we are going to see that we experience God's loving care for us as we face those rock -bottom moments.
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His special presence is always there with believers, but this presence is felt especially in a very sweet way when we suffer.
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Today, as we continue our sermon series through Genesis, we are going to see one of Jacob's wives in the midst of suffering.
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What we are going to see is that our great Lord is merciful to her as she faces misery in her life.
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I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Genesis 29. We are going to be looking at the last five verses of this chapter, verses 31 through 35.
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And this sermon is titled, God's Goodness on Display. And the sermon we are going to be looking at today is a large sermon.
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So we are going to do point one today, and then the last two points two
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Sundays from today. So two weeks. Next Sunday, Rob will be here preaching from John 6.
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But we are going to see the Lord's goodness on display today. And that's our big idea, our proposition.
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The Lord's goodness is always shown in the lives of His people. We are going to see three examples in this text.
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The first today. And that is that He is compassionate to His suffering children.
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He is compassionate to His suffering children. Two weeks ago, the last sermon in our sermon series, as we took a brief break last week for Christmas, we saw
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God's handiwork in the life of His people. Specifically, how the Lord led Jacob to find his future wife.
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What we saw is that the Lord's guiding hand is seen in the lives of His people. In that text,
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God did this by leading Jacob to the right destination and using circumstances to discipline him.
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The application for us is that the Lord leads us to the right destinations. As we give our lives over to Him, He establishes our steps.
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In this way, our life becomes a work of art that He weaves together for His good purposes.
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The other application we saw is the Lord's discipline to His children for their good. God had
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Jacob a deceiver experience what it is like to be deceived so that in the future, he would no longer practice deception.
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When we come to faith in Christ, we have a long way to go to get where the
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Lord wants us to be. To move us from our old sinful ways to holy living, the
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Lord must discipline us. This can be an experience that is painful and it's an experience that every believer faces.
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But even though it is a painful experience, Hebrews 12 told us, as we saw two weeks ago, that it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
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The Lord works in our lives in this way to make us more like Him. This brings us to our text today.
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Two weeks ago, we saw Laban's deception by giving Leah to Jacob in marriage instead of Rachel.
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The woman that Jacob preferred, the result was that Jacob married both
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Leah and Rachel. But Jacob loved Rachel and not
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Leah. This would lead to tension between these two sisters and Leah was left in the position of feeling unloved by her husband.
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As the Lord looked at the situation, He showed compassion to Leah. Let's look at verse 31 of chapter 29.
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When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, He opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.
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So we see here the Lord closely following the details of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah's life.
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By the way, the Lord always follows closely the details of our lives. He knows what's going on and acts accordingly as we go through our days on earth.
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And as the Lord looks on at the situation, He pities Leah. Verse 31 says that Leah was hated.
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Now the Hebrew word for hated does not necessarily mean that Jacob had animosity toward Rachel in our modern understanding.
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We can think of hate only in the sense of you want the worst to happen to someone.
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My mom once told me, I remember when I was a child, I asked her, what does hate mean? And she told me, it means you want someone to die.
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And that's pretty accurate. But the word hate can also mean lack of love.
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There are people in our lives that we don't have affection for, but we don't hate them in the strongest sense of the word.
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It would be more accurate to say indifference. Jacob had indifference toward Leah.
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While Jacob lacks affection toward Leah, he loves Rachel tremendously.
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You can imagine how miserable this would have been for Leah. She was stuck in a marriage where the other woman was the favored one, and she was forgotten.
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This difficult position for Leah leads the Lord to look on her with compassion. He shows compassion by blessing her.
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So Leah bears a child in verse 32. Verse 32 says,
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Leah realizes the
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Lord is the one who has shown compassion to her by opening her womb before he would open the womb of the favored wife.
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As she says, God looked upon her affliction. The first child that Leah gives birth to is named
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Reuben. What you're going to notice throughout this narrative is that the names sound like another word in the
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Hebrew language. To describe what the mother was thinking at the birth,
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Reuben's name sounds like the Hebrew words see a son.
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Because, of course, this is her first son. Now the fact that Leah has conceived and bore a child for Jacob makes her think that Jacob will now love her.
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As we read this, we should have great sympathy for Leah. She desires for her husband to love her, and he does not.
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And the Lord notices that and shows his compassion to her. And the
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Lord not only blesses her the first time, but he also blesses her again. Verse 33.
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The second son that Leah bore, she names Simeon. Simeon sounds like the Hebrew word for heard.
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And what she means by this is the Lord heard her distress and looked on her distress and not only gave her one son, but gave her two sons.
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And Leah, as verse 33 just told us, continues to believe that her ability to bear children will cause
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Jacob to start to love her. This is what she says upon bearing a third child in verse 34.
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Again, she conceived and bore a son and said, Now this time my husband will be attached to me because I have borne him three sons.
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Therefore, his name was called Levi. She believes that having this child will lead
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Jacob to finally be attached to her. And this desire to be attached leads her to name the third son
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Levi, which in Hebrew is close to sounding like the word attached.
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Now the Lord is not done showing compassion to Leah. He causes her to conceive once again in verse 35.
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And she conceived again and bore a son and said, This time I will praise the
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Lord. Therefore, she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.
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So Leah conceives once again and bears another child and names him Judah. Judah sounds like the
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Hebrew word for praise. As we already saw in verse 32,
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Leah knows the one who is being kind to her. The Lord is the one who is enabling her to have children.
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What we see in verse 35 is that she praises the Lord for his kindness to her. Throughout bearing these children, she recognizes that God was the cause of blessing, of having a child.
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And now this leads her to erupt in praise. And of course in our world, with all the modern advancements in technology, what we must understand is that life only happens when
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God gives it. God is the giver of life.
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He is the one who gives the spark of life and makes things work. He makes the body work.
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No science could ever do that. Or could it ever do it on its own?
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And this praise that Leah gives to the Lord is a wonderful application for us.
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Do you praise and thank the Lord for the blessings in your life? Whether it be your employment, your spouse, your children, your home, your health, and most of all, you're standing with God in Christ.
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We should be in the habit of doing this daily. Psalm 48 .1 says,
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Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. 1
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Thessalonians 5 .17 says, To give thanks in all circumstances. Do you pray,
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Thank you Lord for bringing me from darkness to light? As a believer in Christ, the position you are in is so glorious and your future could not be brighter.
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You are one heartbeat away from entering the presence of God where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.
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Do you praise the Lord in your walk with Him? We must do this daily.
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In our text, Leah praises the
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Lord for the earthly blessing of giving her four children. And we should do the same for our earthly blessings.
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But don't stop there. We should also, as I mentioned, thank and praise the Lord for our spiritual blessings in Christ.
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It is wise to praise the Lord for specific aspects of His greatness.
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We experience His greatness every single day.
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This is why in our prayer and praise time, what we do is we offer prayers of praise, prayers of adoration.
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We highlight something great about the greatest one there is. And in our text,
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Leah is specifically praising the Lord for the greatness of His mercy. The word mercy shows up throughout
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Scripture. It is an important attribute of God that we experience every day.
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One definition of mercy in Scripture relates to salvation. This is how
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Titus 3 through 5 uses it. When Paul wrote how God shows mercy to us in saving us, this is what he wrote.
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We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
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But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,
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He saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the
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Holy Spirit. Some theologians define mercy interchangeably with the word grace.
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So they would say God shows us grace and mercy by saving us. And so they see those words as a synonym.
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Two words meaning the same idea. While mercy and grace are interrelated, they are not quite the same.
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The best definition I have heard is from one of my professors in seminary. He said, listen closely here and maybe write this down, mercy is that God does not give us what we deserve.
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We deserve His punishment. He does not give us punishment. Grace is
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God gives you what you do not deserve. Eternal life. Spiritual blessings in Christ. So one is
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He doesn't give you what you deserve. The other is He gives you what you do not deserve. So scripture uses mercy in reference to our salvation.
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That's one of the ways it uses that word. However, that's not the only way that mercy is used.
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Theologian Wayne Grudem defines this aspect of God's mercy, another aspect, as God's goodness toward those in misery and distress.
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God, through His compassion, helps those who are suffering. Let me give you a few examples of this in scripture.
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In 2 Samuel 24 -14, King David, while facing suffering, said this, he said,
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I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord for His mercy is great.
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So King David, a man of God, knew the mercy of God and he said, let us fall into His hands for His mercy is great.
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Another example comes from Jesus' ministry when two blind men followed Him and said in Matthew 9 -27,
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Then Jesus opened their eyes and gave them sight. So He was compassionate and He showed mercy to them.
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The Lord is in the business of providing help when His people face suffering. Of course, some suffering is caused by our own sin.
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And of course, we need to repent and the Lord forgives us of that. But some suffering is just God ordained in a fallen world for our good.
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And in those times, God is very much compassionate to His people.
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And we see the Lord providing help to Leah in this text.
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She is in a miserable position of having a husband who cares nothing for her. And God chooses for her to bear children and not the favored wife,
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Rachel. Rachel would experience this later as we shall see. As we see that we serve a compassionate
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God, what we need to ask our question, the question is, what suffering are you facing right now?
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And you may have come in here today suffering in some way. It may be health, it may be depression or anxiety, loneliness, relational difficulty.
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A loved one may be suffering and that causes you to suffer. And let me say one thing about the anxiety one.
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Anxiety is sinful because we're not trusting the Lord. There might be a tad bit of anxiety we can have where it's not sinful.
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And same thing with depression. There's a kind of depression where it can be suffering and not sinful.
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And we have to understand what that is when we're facing it. But the Lord is kind to those who are suffering.
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And sometimes when we face suffering, we may wonder if we are the only one who is suffering. The truth is, everyone suffers.
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The good news for believers is that their suffering is not a waste.
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It's designed for their good. He does something in you through it and he shows his power to carry you through.
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He is glorified through your battles. Psalm 34, 18 -19 says,
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The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
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Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
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That is a precious, precious verse to hold on to if you are facing suffering.
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He's near to you. He's near to the brokenhearted. He saves the crushed in spirit. And every believer who has walked with the
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Lord long enough knows how ready the Lord is to help when his people hit a low point in life.
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He is ready and willing to act on your behalf. And I know this because I've experienced it.
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Eight years ago, it was November of 2010, that was back when
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I was a sales rep for a running shoe company, and I was going through a very difficult time in my life for several reasons, and one of the reasons was it was health.
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I was having some really bad tension headaches, and I was on this trip. I didn't really want to be on it.
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It was a very godless environment, and as I was on this trip and suffering with these tension headaches,
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I would describe my experience as a rock -bottom experience. I despaired, as Paul said.
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I despaired of life itself. I wondered, how am I going to get through this? How am
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I going to make it? And you know what? The Lord was merciful. He was compassionate to me.
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He dragged me through. I don't even know how, but he did. And I'm so grateful that he did that in my life.
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The Lord loves to deliver his people from adversity.
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I heard a pastor, another pastor, say a while back that every trial is temporary for the believer.
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Every trial is temporary for the believer. When you can see the finish line, you can make it.
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Some of you know, I was a distance runner. I still am, but when I used to be a competitive runner, one thing
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I would be able to do is hold on to the end, because the finish line is coming. And once you cross that line, you can collapse and rest.
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Every trial is temporary. And the Lord's plan for your life in this world is to let you suffer some for your good, and he compassionately relieves that suffering in ways that he sees fit.
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We don't always know how he's going to relieve that suffering. It might not be taking it away. It might be some other way, but it might be taking the suffering completely away.
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In my case, for example, with my tension headaches, I still have tension to this day to a certain extent, but he lessened it a lot, and I've learned to live with it where it's really not a big deal at all.
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So even though our suffering is temporary, in the big picture, this is the beautiful news, the
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Lord will relieve your suffering forever. There's a day coming when all of your suffering as a follower of Jesus Christ will be over.
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Revelation 24 .1 says, That's a beautiful, beautiful promise that in the future, all suffering will be gone as the
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Lord finally, once and for all, delivers us from it. So in our text, the
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Lord temporarily relieved Leah's suffering by opening her womb and putting her in a favored position.
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The Lord's goodness is always shown in the lives of his people. The first example how is that he is compassionate to his suffering children.
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So that's the first way, or the first example how the Lord is compassionate to his people as we've seen it play out in the life of Leah and it plays out in all lives of the people of God as they go through their journey through the life of faith.
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And the second and third examples, as I mentioned in the introduction, we are going to see in two weeks, two
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Sundays from today. Next Sunday, as I already mentioned, Rob will be preaching through John chapter 6.
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He's doing kind of a little mini -servant series through John. As I'm going through Genesis, he's going through John.
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So you get a taste of the New Testament. And so I know as you listen to Rob next week, you will be blessed by that.
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But as we wrap up this sermon, let's close in prayer. Father in Heaven, I do thank you,
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Lord. What a precious truth of Scripture that you are compassionate and merciful to your children.
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This is a truth we can hold on to forever. And we should praise you for it and thank you in our lives for all of the ways that you relieve our suffering and our misery.
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And Lord, the primary way that you comfort us is by giving yourself to us. For you are the
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God of all comfort. And we are greatly comforted by you.
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And so Lord, I pray that the people of Eureka Baptist would embrace this beautiful truth that we've seen from your
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Holy Word today in Genesis 29, 31 -35. In Jesus' name,