Myth of the Self Made Man

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Don Filcek; Genesis 30 Myth of the Self Made Man

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.
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This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the
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Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.
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Here's Pastor Don. If you can find your seats, that would be great. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the Lead Pastor here, and I just want to start off by saying welcome.
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I'm glad you've joined us together here for our second service here in the Lader Elementary School. Be sure to fill out the connection card you received when you walked in.
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There's a black box back here on this table under the clock, and you can turn in any connection card that you fill in.
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Remember that if it's your first time filling in one of those connection cards and sharing your information with us, then please take a free coffee mug there, just our way of saying thanks for joining us.
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And then we are looking for feedback as we've moved to the schools, and we've had, you know, the crews are setting up and all of that stuff.
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And if there's something that maybe you feel like we've left out or something that you'd like to share with us about that, you can put that on that connection card as well.
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And any encouragement about that, too, would be helpful. What is working would be good. So be sure to interact with us on that.
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And any offerings you would choose to give this morning, an envelope has been provided for you. Again, those go in the same black box back there.
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And remember that we are planning on being in the schools indefinitely until we're able to build our own building.
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And so if anything that's marked expansion fund is going to go towards a fund that eventually will be used to build a building on the property that we purchased up here on McGillan.
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And so anything marked that way will go in that direction. If you're not going to use that envelope, though, please recycle that.
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There's a place to recycle it right next to that black box. With all that out of the way, this morning we're going to be digging into Genesis chapter 30.
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And at the outset, I want to remind everybody that God promised to bless Jacob.
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Now, for all to what appears to our eyes as we're going to read through this text, Jacob seems to be the main character.
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And we know that we're following his life, really moving forward in the book of Genesis to a large degree.
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And we've been talking about him for a couple of weeks now as we're marching through this book. But remember that whenever you're reading scripture, there's a main character that whether he's mentioned or not is always there, right?
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And it's God. God is always there and he is one of the main characters in this text as we're moving forward.
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But God chooses to use his people to tell his story. He chooses to use people like Jacob.
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God chooses to use the swindler and cheater to tell his story to us here where we live in 2014.
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And the fact that he uses this cheater and the swindler tells us both something about us as well as something about our
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God. God has only broken people to use and I'm sure you've heard me say that before.
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What does it say about us? Us personally? Consider this.
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What if God used you to tell his story? What if he recorded down for the pages of people to read centuries from now your life, your experiences, the things of your walk with God?
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What if he was still recording scripture and he was writing about your life? We know that God only has broken people to use and yet if you think about that, would there be any embarrassment there?
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If your life was laid bare by the pen of God to centuries from now, would there be, there might be some cause for some of us to blush?
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If our story, if our lives were laid bare and open to the eyes of others. How many of you just kind of, like that kind of gives you the chills the thought like God might like expose all of those things and use you as an illustration.
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And that's what we're dealing with with Jacob here. Jacob is used as an illustration for all of us to learn from, to see, to grow in our walk with God here.
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Also, we get to see a God who chooses to use us though. And so that's the second thing that we see in the life of Jacob as we're going through this.
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The fact is he hasn't given up on the human race. How many of you are grateful for that? He has not given up on us, but he is still telling his story through us and he chose to reveal himself in real history through real people and through real messes like Jacob.
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God is going to build up his people through a sibling rivalry here in our text, a pretty messy rivalry.
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He is going to fulfill his promise of abundant blessing through a messed -up family and then also he's going to increase the wealth of Jacob despite some sketchy attempts on Jacob's part to get ahead himself.
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Jacob's life is not all easy street. You saw some of that last week and we're gonna dive in and see more of that.
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He has a life of toil. He has a life of family upheaval, but in the midst of all that messy life, God is indeed with Jacob and this makes
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Jacob's life a great example for us of what life looks like on a fallen planet with God.
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So let's open up to Genesis chapter 30. If you're not already there, you can use your Bible app, use your own Bible or there's
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Bibles on the table back there if anybody needs to get up and grab one of those. I do want you to have a Bible with you so that you can kind of follow along, see what the text has to say to us and then remember that if you don't have a copy of the
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Bible, you can take that one home with you if you would like, but having the Bible open in front of you is beneficial and helpful.
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Follow along Genesis chapter 30 in its entirety. When Rachel saw that she bore
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Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, give me children or I shall die.
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Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel and he said, am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?
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Then she said, here is my servant Bilhah. Go into her so that she may give birth on my behalf, that even
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I may have children through her. So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife and Jacob went into her and Bilhah conceived and bore
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Jacob a son. Then Rachel said, God has judged me and has also heard my voice and given me a son.
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Therefore she called his name Dan. Rachel's servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son.
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Then Rachel said, with mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed. So she called his name
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Naphtali. When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant
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Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. And Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son.
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And Leah said, good fortune has come. So she called his name Gad. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son.
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And Leah said, happy am I, for women have called me happy. So she called his name Asher.
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In the days of wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother
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Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes. But she said to her, is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband?
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Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? Rachel said, then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes.
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When Jacob came in from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, you must come in to me for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes.
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So he lay with her that night. And God listened to Leah and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. Leah said,
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God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband. So she called his name Issachar. And Leah conceived again and she bore
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Jacob a sixth son. Then Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my husband will honor me because I have borne him six sons.
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So she called his name Zebulun. Afterward she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah. Then God remembered
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Rachel and God listened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach.
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And she called his name Joseph saying, may the Lord add to me another son.
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As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, send me away that I may go to my own home and country.
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Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you that I may go for you know the service that I have given you.
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But Laban said to him, if I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you.
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Name your wages and I will give it. Jacob said to him, you yourself know how I have served you and how your livestock has fared with me.
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For you had little before I came and it has increased abundantly and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned.
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But now when shall I provide for my own household also?
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He said, what shall I give you? Jacob said, you shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me
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I will again pasture your flocks and keep it. Let me pass through all your flock today removing from it any speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb and the spotted and speckled among the goats and they shall be my wages.
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So my honesty will answer for me. When you come to look into my wages with you everyone that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs if found with me shall be counted stolen.
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Laban said, good let it be as you have said. But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted.
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Everyone that had white on it and every lamb that was black and put them in charge of his sons. And he set a distance of three days journey between himself and Jacob and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban's flock.
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Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees and peeled white streaks in them exposing the white of the sticks.
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He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is the watering places where the flocks came to drink.
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And since they bred when they came to drink the flocks bred in front of the sticks so that the brought so the flocks brought forth stripes speckled and spotted.
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And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flock toward the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban.
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He put his own droves apart and did not put them with Laban's flock. Whenever the stronger of the flocks were breeding
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Jacob would lay the sticks in the trough before the eyes of the flock that they might breed among the sticks.
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But for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban's and the stronger
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Jacob's. Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.
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Let's pray as the band comes to lead us. Father we read this text and there's,
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I'm sure it's a text that some of us have read many times and yet as far as encountering application in it, how we apply this to our life can be a bit sketchy and strange and Father we believe that this is your revealed word and I pray that you would open our eyes to the reality of people and people trying to make your promises come true and how often we live our lives in that way and there are a lot of parallels between the people in this in this text in ancient times and the way that we live our lives today.
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And so Father as we draw out those parallels and we recognize the way that we try in our own efforts and in our own strength to be self -made men and self -made women and try to do it on our way and in our terms and there you are the one who blesses, the one who keeps his promises, the one who is faithful and you are the one that is worthy of our gratitude.
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You are the one that is worthy of our thanks and all ultimately belongs to you.
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So Father I pray that even as we have an opportunity to reflect that in song now to sing before you
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Father that we would lift up our voices not like a perfect choir with everybody in pitch and harmony but Father as a people who are moved in our hearts and worship you with enthusiasm and joy because you really are worth it.
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You really are awesome. You really are glorious. You are majestic and you are the one who is accomplishing your will here in our midst.
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Let us praise you with joy this morning in Jesus name. Amen. Thanks a lot to Josh and Heidi for leading in worship and just encourage you to keep your
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Bibles open to Genesis chapter 30 as we move through. Be sure to get comfortable. Remember I know that the chairs might not be the most comfortable you've ever sat in if you need to get up and stand in the back and stretch out or whatever.
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I do also need to make mention that I think there's been some confusion. If you walk out of here the sign wasn't pointing this way last week. The bathrooms are that way.
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Men's upstairs, women's downstairs. So they're labeled down that way but we want you to use those restrooms that are on that end of the hallway.
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The ones that are down here are for children only and they're back by the children's area. So just to clarify that if you need to use a restroom head that way.
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We left Jacob last week and he had been tricked into marrying two sisters.
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A dirty trick that his father -in -law pulled on him. He was in love with Rachel the younger but Rachel's father
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Laban gave his oldest daughter Leah to marry Jacob after a drinking party on the first night of his wedding.
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He thought he was marrying Rachel and woke up in the morning and found Leah there with him in the tent.
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Not not a great surprise. Jacob loved Leah or loved Rachel but not
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Leah and so God heard Leah's sorrow and frustration and he opened her womb according to the text and he blessed her with four sons and we read the accounting and talked through the accounting of the birth of those first four sons and then we come to verse 1 of chapter 30.
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And we find out right away that Rachel did not conceive and had no children and she envied her sister.
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Now how many of you have a really good understanding of the word envy? Like you just you have a good dictionary definition that most of us have some knowledge of what that word means but then when you put that word in contrast to the word covet can you can you describe to me the difference between coveting and envying?
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Envy is a particularly sinister word a particularly evil word not that coveting is like good but envy is sinister.
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So if I contrast those two words I think it'll make clear what Rachel is feeling in her heart and what's going on with her.
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If you covet something you simply want what somebody else has now that could be said of her here, but it's not said of her it's said that she envies.
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So are you are you tracking with me you you see this the nice TV that somebody else owns you see their car you see something that they have and you want that too.
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Coveting is something that's focused on the self wanting good things. Now how many of you say okay, wait a minute if coveting is primarily just focused on wanting more good things for myself.
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Does that sound like a way of life in America? We are a covetous nation.
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We are a covetous people always wanting more always wanting what other people have. The thing that makes it interesting in America is particularly our ability to obtain what we want, right?
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It's called credit cards. It's called getting a loan. I mean, honestly, isn't that a big problem in our culture? We see we want we go we buy we obtain even if we can't afford it.
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And so that's a major problem. So coveting is that it's about self -centeredness about wanting more not being satisfied with what
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I have. Envy is a different animal. Envy is focused on the other not on self not a desire to have but it is an animosity towards the other person who has.
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So let me contrast this in a in using an illustration. If you covet somebody's TV you work and do you you want to obtain it?
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You want what they have and so you might go out and buy it on credit or buy it in a way that you can't afford it or whatever, but you get it anyways.
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But to envy someone for their TV is to want to take a sledgehammer to it. To their
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TV. You don't want them to have the good thing that they have. Are you understanding the difference between coveting and envy now?
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One wants to do harm to the other the other just wants to obtain for themselves. And certainly I'm not saying that okay so coveting is better, but I'm just trying to point out to you.
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I'm trying to point out to you what the depth of Rachel's frustration and animosity is here towards her sister.
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She is angry and she does not like the good that her sister has.
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When Sarah her there the grandmother in this situation, so Jacob, Jacob his grandmother was
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Sarah. She couldn't conceive. What did she do in our text a long time ago? I'd be surprised if you remembered, but you might have a guess.
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She she prayed. She prayed when she couldn't conceive.
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Later in the Old Testament we're gonna see multiple examples of women who could not conceive. There seems to be a lot of issues with barrenness that come up in the people of God and we see in the
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Old Testament later Hannah the mother of Samuel she cannot conceive. She goes to the temple and she prays.
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When Rachel cannot conceive she goes to her husband and whines dramatically. That's her
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MO. And we will see some significant indications by the way in case you're wondering I don't want to be too,
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I don't want to be perceived to be too hard on Rachel. We'll see next week that she didn't have a particularly robust relationship with God.
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As a matter of fact we're gonna see her steal some idols from her father's household to go and keep with her to worship for herself.
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And so we see that she had a streak of idolatry in her heart. So she says to her husband,
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Give me children or I'll die. Can you imagine that kind of conversation?
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Can you imagine that happening in a family situation? Anybody agreeing with me that that's a pretty dramatic statement?
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Give me children or I'm gonna die. But that shows the depth of despair that Rachel is feeling.
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How many of you have ever felt an inner emotion that felt like it was going to kill you?
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You actually thought is this the end? I mean, it's not like you're literally going I mean, I think I'm going to die, but it just hurts, right?
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Have you ever experienced that almost physical pain associated with heartache? And that's where Rachel is.
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She felt rejected by God and most likely she was rejected by others. Who knows what torment she may have received from Leah?
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Have you ever considered that? It doesn't say it in the text and I don't want to overstate that or make a major point on that.
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But I would imagine that there might have been some conversations with Leah and her four children, her four sons and her sister who had the love of her husband, but no children.
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There might have been a little bit going on there. But Jacob was not in the place of God. It's not up to him to give her children and he acknowledges that and he he can't give her children.
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Only God can do that. Is that a pretty decent response from Jacob? Is he rational and reasonable?
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Yeah, he's like, I can't give you children and he gets angry with his sweetheart over this conversation.
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He loves Rachel, right? We know that. The text has said that over and over again. He loves her. But how many of you have ever been angry at somebody you love?
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A couple times. Those of you in the... let's try that again because I mean I see a lot of married couples in here that did not raise your hand.
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How many of you have ever been angry with somebody that you love? Okay. Thank you. You're awake. Get the blood pumping here. I know that you have.
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And Jacob faces all kinds of family conflict, not just from those he's frustrated with and not just from those he, you know, the situations that have been foisted up on him, but even those that he loves are a source of conflict in his life.
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Rachel follows then the social custom of giving a maidservant as a surrogate mother in the case of barrenness.
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This is a strange thing to our eyes, certainly a strange thing for us to consider and contemplate, but it's very common in ancient times.
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As a matter of fact, some of the most ancient documents that we have, the Newsy tablets that date like a few millennia before Christ, account for this type of family interaction where a maidservant could be given to the man of the household to produce offspring for a barren wife.
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And this was as strange as it seems in our modern culture. It wasn't that rare in these times for this to happen.
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So Bilhah, and this is important because the word, there's a couple of different words that could be used in the Hebrew language. How many of you ever heard the word concubine?
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That's a different word. We don't use that very often. And then there's the word wife and those are two different Hebrew words.
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Bilhah here becomes Jacob's third wife. There's a, they could have chosen the word concubine.
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That's not the case. She is actually becomes part of the family and she conceives on behalf of Rachel.
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These children are born to Bilhah, but are adopted by and credited to Rachel. She is the one who gets to name them and that indicates that they are indeed her children.
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They belong to Rachel even though Bilhah has them. She names the first Dan, which in the
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ESV is translated judgment, but might make better sense if you understand judgment in the sense of vindication.
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So she names her first son Vindication because the Lord had vindicated her with the birth of this child.
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The second son born through Bilhah is named Naphtali, which means wrestling. Rachel feels like she has had a mighty wrestle fest with her sister.
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Now, this isn't like WrestleMania, you know, it's not coming off the top ropes kind of, you know, picture that. That's not what's going on here.
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But it's obvious that Rachel has perceived a level of competition with her sister. You see that in the text?
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She's making a competition out of it. I've wrestled with mighty wrestlings with my sister and I have prevailed.
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What Rachel wants, I've got to point this out, what Rachel wants is children. What Leah wants is the love of Jacob.
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Notice that each one has what the other wants. You see that in the text? How often in life do we want what the other person has?
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Rather than each counting our own blessings, we look around and we want the blessings of others.
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But how many of you would raise your hand and say, I already have more than I deserve? Just being honest.
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I already have more than I deserve. We would do well to thank
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God for the good things he has given us rather than complaining and then comparing our blessings to the blessings of others.
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It's ironic that Rachel makes it a contest and thinks she's prevailing. Okay. Do the numbers, do the math.
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Because now Leah gives her maidservant as a wife to Jacob and she conceives two children as well. The first is named
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Gad, which means good fortune. She says God has shined fortune on me and he shined his face on me and good fortune.
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And that brings the score. I mean, we might as well keep score, right? Because Rachel wants us to.
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The score is five to two in favor of Leah. The second, she names Asher, meaning happy, happiness.
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And others identified Leah. This is key because it's one thing to call yourself happy, but if others see you and perceive you as happy, that means that there's probably something, you're a little bit lighter.
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You've got a swing in your step, right? I mean, if how many of you, I mean, it would be known around the workplace as somebody who's happy.
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We ought to be known that way to some degree, right? And yet she is named, she names the son happy because others have identified her that way.
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Most of the competition, the competitive spirit that we see in the text, by the way, is, it is given to Rachel.
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It is hers to own. She is the one who is credited in the text with envy. She names her children with particular mention of her battle with her sister.
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While Leah is shown in the realm of offspring and reproduction to be a fairly happy person, of course, it's easier to be happy and calm when things are going in your favor, right?
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How many of you enjoy, enjoy the game when you're winning? Anybody? It's not,
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I mean, my wife would testify that I'm much more fun to play a board game with when I'm winning. Sometimes she says when
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I win, well, I let you so that we both have fun. Which we know isn't true.
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Of course, I won. What would you expect? I'm gonna get myself into trouble here.
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But we're gonna see that it certainly, Leah is, is happy when it comes to offspring.
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She's, she's, she's having sons, which in that culture was a big deal. And of course that, I mean, part of it is the agricultural society of being able to work on the farm and, and take care of the sheep and tend to all of those things.
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And to have sons was to, was to have good labor in the household. But Leah has a raw nerve too, and it's gonna get struck here in a moment.
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Verse 15. And really in verses 4 through 16, we get a bizarre section of the story that seems a bit out of place.
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Verses 4 through 16, there's a couple of bizarre things in this text that we've got to just deal with head -on. Reuben is the oldest of this, of the children of Leah.
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And he's somewhere between 6 and 10 years old at the time of this accounting in verses 4 through 16.
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He's out in the field and he stumbles upon some rare and valuable mandrakes. A mandrake is a plant.
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Mandrakes have always held a place in superstition. They've always had some notion of superstition, witchcraft, bizarre traditions.
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They appear in the Harry Potter series, you know, that kind of thing. And all down through the centuries, mandrakes have had a superstition about them.
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The major reason, so you kind of go, why does, how does superstition get attached to a plant? If you pull one of them up by the roots, you'd see, because it looks like a person.
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Okay, so you pull it up and it's like a carrot. But picture a carrot with two legs and two arms. Okay, so when you pull it up, it looks like a, looks like a body, like that.
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So then you kind of go, oh, that's weird. And so people back in the day, that's strange, that looks human, that's unnatural.
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And so they all got kinds of superstition about it and things like that. Now, the other thing, so now you take its form and you go, that's creepy, and then you eat it and it's a narcotic.
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So then it does all kinds of loopy things to you when you eat it. And so it actually, if you ate the whole root, it could kill you.
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So there's all kinds of things like that that would happen. And it was used for millennia in medicines and ointments and it produces berries that can be eaten.
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So it's like a carrot, like the carrot top, but it produces berries on top of it and stuff like that. According to most ancient records, the number one property of mandrakes, the number one thought about mandrakes was fertility, that it would produce fertility.
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Now, no documentation that that's actually the case, but it was all the superstition and all of that. And can you see all of a sudden now, why would mandrakes occur in the middle of this text?
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What is the primary issue that's being discussed and talked about is the birth of kids and all of that stuff. And now
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Rachel, I mean Leah, Leah's son finds some mandrakes. So that's the reason that it's significant in this text.
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Rachel, and this is key, Rachel politely asks her sister for the mandrakes.
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It makes me wonder if there was all of this animosity and it's boiling under the surface, or if at times it exploded and at times it was okay, and if there were times that were good between Leah and Rachel, and then there were other times where it just kind of blew up and, you know, there's kind of this back and forth.
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But she asks politely. She's been infertile and she wants to have a child. And of course, mandrakes are going to do that for her in her mind.
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Leah's retort, though, shows that simmering just below the surface in her heart is the notion that Rachel has stolen her husband.
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Oh sure, sure Rachel, steal my husband and now you want to steal my mandrakes too. That's what the text tells us is
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Leah's response to her. These guys behaving well? They're not working together,
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I can tell you that. There's all this, you know, back and forth and like I said, it's just brewing under the surface. Now that's really an unfair statement from Leah, isn't it?
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That Rachel stole, I mean, who stole whose husband and how did that all come down? And we talked about that last week.
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And really, isn't it their father Laban that's to blame for their plight and their situation? Isn't he really the one who did poorly and put them in this situation to begin with?
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So the sisters strike a deal, a strange deal. Rachel gets the superstitious fertility plant in exchange for Leah getting a night with Jacob.
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This indicates that Jacob was no longer even sleeping with Leah and so she has to buy a night with her husband.
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So Jacob gets home after a long day of work out in the field. Leah confronts him with an obligation.
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Let's just, we'll leave it there. Let's call it an obligation, okay? She has hired him for the night and she hired him pretty cheap too.
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He was, he was pretty cheap. Just some mandrakes. But there's an irony in this word being used for Jacob and it's not by accident that the word, the word is used higher.
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He was hired for the night because Jacob is always for hire. That's part of the plight of Jacob's life.
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Laban hired him and used him to gain wealth and to build Laban's own wealth on the shoulders of Jacob.
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Now we see indications that even within his household he is a commodity for hire. Before anybody gets the idea that Jacob has a good arrangement, four wives fighting over him, this is, this is not a good arrangement.
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You got to read the story again if you walk away with that kind of an understanding of what's going on here in the text. He's Laban's servant and never quite welcomed into the family.
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He is an employee of his wives and the only one he truly has loved is demanding that he provide her a child and he can't.
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Can you, I mean, can you feel Jacob's situation? Does that, does that sound exciting? Does that sound good? Does that sound, he's, he's not a happy man.
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As a matter of fact, I just read something in my own quiet time this morning that's not in my notes here. But later on, and I'm going to steal a little bit of thunder from way forward in the book of Genesis, he's going to be standing, an old man at 130 years in front of the throne of Pharaoh and he's going to say this statement, many and evil have been the days of my sojournings on this earth.
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That's Jacob. He says that to Pharaoh. 130 years have I walked and many and evil have been my days.
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He has a rough life. Would you agree with me on that, for him to make that statement? Now, that's not giving credit where credit is due.
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Jacob doesn't have, he's not saying that in the spirit of God with gratitude and thankfulness for what God has done.
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But that's his testimony. That's what he has to say about it. That night
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Leah conceives. Jacob obviously fulfills his obligation of hire. She conceives and she names her son reward or wages.
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The ESV, I think, uses the word wages, right? Because she thinks God has rewarded her for giving her servant to Jacob.
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Now, I'm not sure that God indeed was rewarding her for this, that he was like, oh, you can have a child now because you gave your servant.
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Throughout this text is people thinking they are causing things to happen while behind the scenes, God is doing what
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God wants to do. God listened to the prayers of Leah, but nothing indicates that he rewarded her for giving her maid servant to Jacob.
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So Issachar is born and his name appears in the psalm that we often turn to when we think about children.
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Children are a blessing from the Lord. Psalm 127 verse 3 has the name Issachar right in it.
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It says this, sons are a heritage from Yahweh or sons are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is an
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Issachar, a reward. The fruit of the womb is a reward.
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And that word, that very name appears in that psalm. Leah then goes on to say in passing that Leah has a daughter named
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Dinah. Often in these recordings of ancestry, we don't see a lot of women.
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But here we see Dinah and that's because she's going to factor into a story that I'm not looking forward to preaching in a few weeks.
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Those of you who know the story, but we'll get there and we're going to go through it because I'm committed to the word of God. But Dinah is mentioned here by name, her birth to Leah, and the score, just to clarify in case you're having a struggle keeping the numbers together, the score is now eight to two,
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Leah. Were you already keeping score? Are you trying to figure that out? Eight to two. And Leah conceived again and gives birth to Zebulun, meaning honor.
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Leah has born six sons herself and her maidservant too, bringing the score when you count
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Dinah to nine to two. And this is a good time to check in on Jacob just for a second here.
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He has four wives, 11 kids, and it's time to spring for the minibus.
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Okay, it's time. I mean, he's outgrown the suburban. He's gone through the minivan phase. He went on to the suburban.
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He advanced from the suburban to the conversion van, you know, the big, and then to the 15 -seater.
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And now he's gone to the minibus and we'll see when he eventually gets, if he's going to ever get to the full -size school bus.
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But the Partridge family vehicle, three of you understood what
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I was talking about when I said that. The rest of you, you're going to have to go just Google it. You know, you get it.
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One more child comes along to make it 12 in our text. Verse 22 indicates that God remembered
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Rachel and she finally conceives and bore a son named
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Jacob. Yeah, sorry. Son named Joseph. Thank you. Not Jacob Jr.,
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but Joseph. Sorry. Notice the absence of any mandrakes in this text.
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Wasn't the mandrakes. Now that she ate the mandrakes and gave birth, what was the cause of her conception?
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God remembered her. It's not the plans of Rachel to conceive with folk medicine that wins the day, but it is the timing of God that brings about conception.
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God doesn't forget. And so when we see that it says God remembered Rachel, it's not that he forgot her.
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But whenever God is shown to remember, it means his attention is given in a specific and tangible way to an individual or a group of people.
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And by the way, God's remembering. When God remembers somebody, it's not always good. Sometimes God remembers the sins of a group of people or a person.
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In those cases, remembering results in judgment. Blessed is the person whose sins are remembered no more.
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That God would not remember your sins, that he would not pay special attention to your sins.
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And the only way that God forgets the sins of an individual is through them being paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross.
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But Rachel is remembered and God hears the desire of her heart. And in her naming of Joseph, she shows, are you ready for this?
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What has she been longing for all along? To give birth to a child, right? That's her number one heart in life.
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And now the time has come and she shows a lack of satisfaction. Leah is naming the children with names like,
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I will praise the Lord and happiness and good fortune. While Rachel names her children, vindication, wrestling, and give me another.
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That's what Joseph means. Joseph doesn't mean add like I've added one.
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Joseph means add another, give me more, God, give me more.
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She wants another son. And at the birth of Joseph, she's already asking, give me one more.
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She names him that. And in the words of that theologically oriented 1990s band, all that she wants is another baby.
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Ace of base. Some of you are gonna be singing that the rest of the day now that I said it, right?
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Not super theologically oriented. Again, some of you're gonna have to Google that one too. But yeah,
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I had to throw that in there. That's all she wants. But God's gonna hear her prayer here.
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Her desire, her naming of her son is in essence a naming prayer. It's give me another.
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And I don't mean to indicate that it's a demand. I don't know the exact notion of it.
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How much was it? Was it just a request versus a demand or anything? But it's gonna be answered. And it's gonna be answered in pain and difficulty.
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It's gonna be answered in a devastating way in a few chapters. We know
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Joseph will factor big time into the rest of Genesis. And so you're kind of gonna go follow Joseph here, and you're gonna see a lot about Joseph and moving on through chapters 40 and on and all kinds of stuff going on there with Joseph.
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But don't be confused. I think even as a child, I was often confused. Like, okay, Jesus comes from Joseph, right?
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Jesus comes from the line of... Anybody else have that kind of notion? Because how many of you know, Joseph figures pretty prominently at the end of this book.
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But it's Judah, the fourth born child of Leah. Kind of nondescript.
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I want you to keep your eyes on him as we go through Genesis. I want to keep... There's some stories in here that are specifically there because Judah is the one in the line of Jesus.
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And he behaves poorly in a lot of this. And there are stories told just to show that he's a slouch.
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Just that he messes up. That's why some of these stories exist here. Judah is the one through whom the promised blessing will come.
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The one who will bless all the nations come through him. But verse 25 signals a shift. The first half of Genesis 30 was focused on God building up the offspring of Jacob.
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God is keeping his promise to expand his people. And now the rest of Genesis 30 is concerned with the expansion of the material blessing of Jacob.
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So we're seeing two components of the promise that God gave to Jacob at Bethel.
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He said, I'm going to give you offspring and I'm going to multiply them into a great nation. Anybody doubting whether or not
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Jacob has received a lot of offspring? He's got some offspring. And they're going to continue to multiply and become a great nation.
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But he also has this material component. He says, I'm going to give you wealth.
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I'm going to give you all the food that you need. I'm going to clothe you well. And so that's coming.
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At the birth of Joseph, Jacob dearly loved Rachel. And she has finally conceived and he is now fully in the clear of Laban.
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And he's ready to go home to his own home and to his own people. God has promised offspring and he's promised that he would return.
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But God also promised great provision to Jacob. And so he's not ready to return Jacob to the land with nothing yet.
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And so Jacob has served Laban intensely. And Laban has used divination according to the text to determine that the reason he has been successful the reason that Laban's flocks have increased is because Jacob is there with him.
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Laban's wealth has increased abundantly during the 14 years of labor. Jacob got two wives out of the deal.
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He got a house full of kids out of the deal. But he has not realized material blessing from his labor.
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The sheep all still belong to Laban. And Laban has liked this relationship.
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Can you imagine why? He's kind of thought this was a good arrangement. I'm like an owner who knows that his business has grown on the shoulders of a great manager.
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Laban is not eager to lose that manager even if it means increasing his wages. So they sit down and have that talk.
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That what can I give you to stay here talk? And Jacob sets up a simple plan.
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Not an unreasonable plan. He'll get all the sheep that are not completely white and all the goats that are not completely black.
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Under normal circumstances, this would not be a huge request. The average wage of a shepherd was about 20 % of the flock.
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And this would probably be less than that just according to statistics. Laban enthusiastically agrees to that.
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He says, sure, yeah, that sounds great. So in verse 34, he agrees to it and then immediately proceeds in verse 35, look at the text, to cheat him.
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Great job, Laban. That guy is a piece of work. He immediately sets out and removes all of the mottled and speckled and off -color sheep and goats from his flocks and gives them to his sons so that Jacob doesn't get them.
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So now Jacob is left with all black goats and all white sheep with the hopes of having some that are speckled and spotted to be able to take for his own.
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Laban then sets a three -day journey between he and Jacob, giving him room to pasture his flocks. And verses 37 through 42 are more than just a little sketchy to the modern ear.
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If you've studied anything to do with genetics, it starts to get a little bit squirrely here, okay? If you haven't studied genetics, it still gets pretty squirrely here.
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Now, selective breeding of the stronger makes sense and you see that in verses 41 and 42.
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So that part makes sense, that you would breed the stronger with the stronger and get stronger. And so we get that and that makes sense.
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But having the sheep look at speckled branches while mating, that's just downright strange to the modern ear.
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Anybody been around a farm? Anybody know how any of this stuff works? You have that talk with your parents or anything?
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This is not the way that this works, okay? But I want to point out, this text is not a lesson in genetics.
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It is a lesson in Jacob's scheming and plotting. He thought he was tricking
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Laban, but even in his faulty understanding of how genetics works, the God who met him at Bethel and promised to always be with him, makes him prosper despite his faulty understanding.
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Jacob's elaborate plan to grow a healthy, hearty, strong flock isn't what gives him massive wealth.
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Yahweh, the Lord gives him massive flocks and wealth.
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How often is God blessing us despite ourselves? How often do we credit our wit, our schemes, our well -laid plans, when all along it is
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God doing his thing to get stuff done? I actually, when
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I sent my sermon out at this point, I write it on Wednesday, a rough draft, and I send it out to several people and I wanted an illustration in here.
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And so I sent it out to everybody. I wanted to get some feedback. Hey, can you illustrate this for me? Can you think anything where someone is thinking that they're getting it done and actually the credit really ought to go to somebody else and some of your wheels are spinning right now.
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But then I sent it out in the morning and then I came home for lunch and it was a snow day again, right?
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Anybody remember that, this Wednesday? And so my kids are there and I had lunch with the family and stuff and there was this awesome basket of delicious blueberry muffins.
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I mean, good blueberry muffins. And I took a bite of one of them.
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It's just so delicious. I was like, oh, thank you. You know, this is really good. And Leah is just beaming. I made them, daddy.
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And Linda said, there's your illustration because she stirred them. You get it?
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You get it? Like, I mean, but Leah, you know, oh, thanks, Leah. These are great muffins. These are awesome.
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Way to go. You know, good job. And Linda knew that the credit really went to her. But are you getting what
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I'm saying in that? I mean, can you see that illustration of how we're just there like the kids that are putting the, you know, okay, yeah, sure.
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Help me and pour the chocolate chips in. But we've got the recipe and that's like God, right?
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I mean, we're here and we're thinking we're doing stuff and we're getting it done. And boy, we're putting the recipe together and we've got it all.
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And boy, we've just put... If we really step back and see what's happening in the big scope of this world, it's
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God. It's God getting it done. And the credit, the credit goes to him, right?
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Shouldn't it? Shouldn't the credit for those things go to him? The expansion of this flock is not on the shoulders of Jacob.
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It's not his scheming. God greatly increased the flocks of Jacob so much that he was able to obtain servants and camels and donkeys with the proceeds of his business.
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And at the risk of stealing my own thunder, I need to point out that I'm not just guessing this, by the way, by the end of chapter 30, you might be going,
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Don, I don't see that. It looks an awful lot like Jacob got this done. And where are you seeing any credit go to God? And I'm stealing my own thunder from the start of next week.
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I can't really cover that without getting into Jacob leaving Laban, which is really the point of next week. But at the very beginning of chapter 31,
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God comes to Jacob in a dream and says outright, I made those flocks yield speckled and spotted lambs and goats.
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That was me. He's going to take the credit for it. God says, you thought you were doing all this? That's me.
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I was the one blessing you behind the scenes. So in this text, we see the expanded blessings of God on Jacob.
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His family increases, of course, not without heartache and difficulty, but he is indeed blessed with a lot of sons.
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And the expansion of his family is a direct fulfillment of the promise that God gave him at Bethel. And God had promised equally to Jacob at Bethel that he would give him great wealth and sustain him.
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Sustain him with food, sustain him with clothes. And by the end of our text, Jacob is independently wealthy. Has God come through?
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He has. But how many of you think that if you were in Jacob's shoes, if you had lived through this 20 some years of exploitation by Laban and this frustrating scenario with his wives bickering back and forth and fighting over fertility and things like that, how many of you might struggle to see the hand of God in the mess?
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If you're really, your shoes on the ground, you're Jacob, you're living his life.
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How many of you might just think, where are you, God? Where are you in this? From the 10 ,000 -foot view that we have looking down on this scenario, can we kind of look at it and go, oh,
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I see God's hand all over in this. This is really cool, this is really sweet. And we see God blessing Jacob and we know how the story's gonna go along and he's gonna return to the promised land and all that.
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And having that perspective helps, doesn't it? But when you're down in the trenches, it doesn't feel that way, does it?
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It's at any wonder that Jacob is still wrestling with God all the way through this text.
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We're gonna see him wrestling with God in the future too. I think, in part, the work down in the trenches, the hard work that we do sometimes gets in the way of our ability to see the big picture of what
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God is doing. Sometimes it's our hard work that's in the way. This text is full of people thinking that their life is completely up to them and doing the things that they think they need to do to accomplish it.
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From the beginning, Rachel suggests that her husband should give her a child. Rachel thinks that mandrakes are gonna help her conceive.
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Leah accuses her sister of stealing her husband. Jacob is working hard in the field getting it done and he's scheming to get white sheep and black goats to give birth to speckled sheep and speckled goats.
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Everyone is doing their thing to get what they want out of life.
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Sound familiar? Everybody doing their own thing, trying to get what they can out of life.
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We find out next week that it, again, it took a special dream from God to reveal to Jacob that these things were a blessing from his hand.
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And what would it look like if God were to appear to us in a dream and let us know how he has been working in each one of our lives to accomplish his will.
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Where we thought we were doing it, he says, well, breaks on for a second. All you did was stir.
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All you did was stir. I'm the one, I'm the one with the recipe. I put,
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I'm the one who got all the ingredients together. I'm the one who is doing this stuff. How often in the midst of the mundane routines of life do we forget to lift our eyes up to our maker and give thanks to him?
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And so there's four quick applications I want to highlight for us this morning as we conclude and go to communion.
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If you're taking notes, you can jot these down. The first is from the very beginning of the text, and that is that envy produces heartache.
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I want us to think that through. The only way to overcome envy is gratitude.
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It is hard to envy what others have if we are thankful for the things that we do have.
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If you find a spirit of envy or coveting within you, if you want what others have or further, you want others to not have good things,
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I would suggest to you that maybe a good step for you this week would be to write out a list of the blessings that you do have.
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Carry that around with you for regular review. Contemplate and consider the rich depth of blessings that God has given to you.
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The second application, stop giving yourself so much credit. Stop giving yourself so much credit.
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A part of a life of gratitude is starting with the reality that we have not really done this.
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Nothing that we have obtained or achieved has happened without outside help. You agree with that?
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No promotion has been accomplished without breathing his air.
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No gold medal has ever been won without using the body he has given.
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He's loaned it. No degree has been granted without the knowledge that he has infused in this world.
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So stop giving yourself so much credit, but then the third application is, start giving
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God the credit. Honor him. Not just a token shout out to the big guys you receive your
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Grammy or your Emmy or your promotion or your degree or your gold medal or your paycheck.
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Let me bring that down a little bit. But a routine moment -by -moment recognition that it is all from him.
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And it's not all just from him, but it's all for him and it's all returning to him.
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Give honor to God and give him the credit. And lastly, let me say this.
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And I think we all know this in our hearts. You can have wealth and success and be miserable. You can have success in this earth.
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You can have all the friends. You can have five bazillion friends on Facebook. You can have, you know, the accolades of all of the people in your community that think that you're awesome.
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You can win the lottery. You can have all of this stuff and be miserable. But if you truly realize the wealth that you have in Christ, then nobody can make you miserable.
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If you have come to Christ in humility, come to Jesus saying, I'm a mess and I cannot fix this train wreck of my life.
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I can't fix it on my own. If you've come to him and said that, then he has taken your sinful pile of mess in exchange for his righteousness.
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And those in Christ are now declared righteous and holy and have an eternal promise from God that we will be welcomed on a new earth with him forever.
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And so as we come to communion this morning, let's remember that the greatest blessing comes from the son of God who gave himself for us.
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Not a blessing of a lot of offspring, not a blessing of material wealth, but a blessing of hope for a future eternity with him.
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And it comes from the son of God who died for us. People try all kinds of things to save themselves.
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People try all kinds of things to make the promises of God come true. And in this ancient text, we see some of their methods.
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We see some of the things that they were doing to try to accomplish these things that God wanted to do in them and through them.
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We saw mandrakes and selective breeding and making demands and hiring husbands and giving of maidservants and all of these kinds of things.
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And in our modern day, it could look like things like trying to obtain the promises of God by giving to the poor and attending church and following a list of rules.
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Does that sound like a good list? Does that sound like some good things? Doing these things is not particularly bad.
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Going to church, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. Giving to the poor, awesome, good, yes.
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Following lists of rules, being law -abiding citizens and doing good, yes, that sounds good.
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But if you think He's going to bless you because you go to church, because you give to the poor, because you work longer hours at work, you're going to be disappointed.
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He blesses those who come to Him based on His free gift. You see, the human problem is sin and the solution to the human problem is the cross.
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The solution is never work harder. Do you hear me clearly? Do you hear me clearly? Hello? Are you hearing that?
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The solution is not, the human problem is sin and the solution is never work harder.
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The solution is the cross of Christ. That is the solution where He died for us and it is grace and grace alone.
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We can try all of these things. We can try all, you can invent stuff to try to do to please
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God. Not just the list of these few things that I've put out here. God is the one who made the promise and God is the one who made the way.
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And the only pathway to the blessings of God is through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. So go to the tables.
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There are four tables set up and as you go to those tables, take communion if you have asked
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Jesus to save you from your sins. And remember as you take that bread that reminds us of His body that was broken for us and as you take the juice, the cup to remember
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His blood that was shed for us, remember the awesome, glorious sacrifice that is the pathway to ultimate blessing.
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Not just the blessings of this earth, not wealth on this earth, not all of those things that you can tune in on the radio and hear that somebody wants to tell you that God is promising to you.
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His own son dies on the cross and we expect Him to give us a bunch of bling. In the midst of suffering, in the midst of difficult, real, raw, painful life,
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God still blesses us with hope. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the blessings of Jesus Christ.
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I thank you that you have provided a way. I confess that there is absolutely no way that I could have saved myself, that I could do enough good, that I could merit your favor and work hard enough to get rid of my sin.
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I rejoice in the cross of Christ. Father, I pray that you would change us all in this room from self -made men and self -made women to those who bow our knee before you and recognize the glory of a life submitted to you, recognizing that the hope of our salvation is completely and squarely on your shoulders.
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And Father, if there's anybody here who has not recognized salvation in Jesus Christ, I pray that you would give them the boldness to come and talk with me.
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Father, that we could walk through and work through what it means to have a relationship with you through Jesus Christ, your son.
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And Father, as we have an opportunity to remember his sacrifice for us, Father, I pray that you would be honored and glorified in our remembering as we go to the table and we think of his body that was broken for us and his blood that was shed for us.
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What an awesome and costly sacrifice that we are unworthy of. I thank you for your love in Jesus' name, amen.