Book of Genesis - Ch. 30, Vs. 26-43 (04/24/2016)

hissing sound at the end. Now hush. Anybody know what that means?

Laughter Well, that's what I thought it meant. I know where you got some

I know where you got some uh, oh, me too.

I'm going to read them because not everybody not everybody has their phones. This is the blue letter definition.

The blue letter Bible definition. Definition number one. To practice divination.

To divine. To observe signs. To learn by experience.

That's kind of what we're thinking. To diligently observe. We kind of think that one too. To practice fortune telling.

To take as an omen. Seven definitions, five of them deal with the occult.

That's not at all what I was expecting. I wouldn't even have looked.

That was just so obvious to me that I knew what it meant that I would not have even looked. And I didn't look.

I'm 70 years old and I've never looked before. I was thinking something similar to what we might mean.

Like maybe compare this event to similar events in other circumstances and learn by them.

That's what I thought it meant. It never occurred to me to suspect some sort of demonic connection.

Well, what does the scripture say about demonic connections? Let's bounce to I want to try this one by myself since Marianne is not here to help me.

Deuteronomy. Is that close? Close enough. You know where I am.

Eighteen, nine. There's some words I can't say. And that's one of them. And I look at it and it makes me want to say the wrong thing.

So here's what it says there. I'll avoid saying that as much as I can. When thou art come into the land which the

Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.

There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or daughter pass through the fire or that uses divination.

Or an observer of the times or an enchanter or a witch or a charmer or a consulter with familiar spirits or a wizard or a necromancer.

That is contact with the dead. I'll give you what the definitions are in just a second.

For all of these things are an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the

Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Now he's talking about the children of Israel as they're getting ready to go into the land of Canaan at the time of Moses.

Actually the time of Joshua, really. Nine detestable practices that the

Canaanites were doing are listed in these verses. Sacrificing the children in the fire.

Yes, that's the main thing. I'm now going to go to Deuteronomy 12, 31.

Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God, for every abomination to the

Lord which he hateth have they done unto their gods. For even their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods.

So they were offering their children as sacrifices to God. Burning them at the altar.

The particular practice they're talking about is they would have a heated altar of Baal and they would lay the baby on the arms of the

God and he would devour them and they would obtain favor with the gods by that activity.

That is despicable. Who in the world would do that? I can't imagine anybody doing it.

That is the most awful thing I can think about. Almost. At least that baby got to live until it was born.

We offer our babies not we on the altar of convenience even earlier.

I don't want to stay there. This one seems a little bit different than the other nine to me.

Offering their sons and daughters as burnt offering to the gods. There might be a connection. The thing we know for sure is all of these activities are vile and they are demonic.

You can't do any of these things without being demonic. Witchcraft.

The number two item on the list. Seeking to determine the will of the gods by examining and interpreting omens.

Three. Soothsaying. Attempting to control the future through power given by evil spirits.

These are the things that he is talking about. Four. Interpreting omens. Telling the future based on signs.

Five. Sorcery. Inducing magical effects by drugs or some other potion.

That's something that's swirling around in the world today too. Conjuring spells.

Binding other people by magical mutterings. Being a medium. One who supposedly communicates with the dead but is actually communicating with demons.

Eight. Being a spiritualist. One who has an intimate acquaintance with the demonic spiritual world.

And nine. Necromania. Calling up the dead.

Investigating or seeking information from the dead. These evil practices were the reason that the

Lord was going to drive the Canaanites out of the land. You look around today and I don't see all of those in great abundance but you see pockets of all of those today.

There are places that you can go where people are actually worshipping the devil.

There are places you can go where they attempt to communicate with the spirits by drugs.

Yes sir? And it starts out it starts out with something so superficially simple and innocent like the

Harry Potter series. I mean I know a lot of good Christian people who love the

Harry Potter series. But this doesn't stay there.

And that's the way the demonics work. It doesn't stay there. It gets worse and worse and worse and worse.

Okay, Laban. Remember Laban? Laban is apparently immersed in the occult.

He claims that he was through some of these practices through experience remember that he became aware that whatever good fortune he had is the result of his proximity to Jacob.

And that the Lord has blessed him because of Jacob. Does God ever allow knowledge to be acquired by demonic means?

Well we kind of want to say no but here's an example of a yes. Laban acquired his knowledge by demonic means.

Saul called on I think it was Samuel wasn't it? Saul called on Samuel to call

Saul Saul called on a witch to bring back Samuel to tell him his future. No, no, no.

This is the other Saul. This is Saul the king. Saul the king in his later days asked a witch to call back

Samuel to tell him the outcome of the upcoming battle with the Philistines and he said basically he said you and all your sons are going to die.

And they did. Well Saul chewed him out I'm sorry?

Samuel. Yes, yes Samuel did. But there is a reality to the demonic world.

And we're so sophisticated at least I am. I guess you guys are sophisticated too.

We think we got all the answers and we don't think there's any real thing to this demonic world.

Well there's a real good spiritual world and there's a real demonic spiritual world.

And that's something that we've got to be aware of. It is a dangerous world that we're living in and we fail to even realize that it's out there.

So it's certainly something to be on guard against today. So back to Laban.

Being aware that his prosperity is due to the proximity of Jacob, he does all he can to keep

Jacob nearby. So here he goes. And he said, appoint me by wages and I will give it.

Now remember he's just come to Laban. Jacob had just come to Laban and said I need to go.

I want to take my wife and children with me. I'm going to take nothing else. Laban says, if you'll stay,

I'll pay you. So Jacob begins his answer.

By repeating Laban's admission that his blessings were indeed the result of the

Lord's desire to bless Jacob. We talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago.

Is there ever a case where a non -Christian gains an advantage by being in the vicinity of a

Christian? We see that all the time. Blessings pour on, like the nation, like our nation, because there are, or at least have been in the past, a

Christian basis to our government. And so we're blessed and so are the non -Christians that are here, blessed by being here.

Indeed, there is a the un -Christian can receive the blessings because of their proximity to the

Christians. And he continues. And he said unto him,

Thou knowest how I have served thee, and how thy cattle was with me. For it was little which thou hadest before I came, and it is now increased to a multitude.

And the Lord hath blessed thee since my coming, and now when shall I provide for my own house also?

So Jacob is reminding Laban how much his wealth has increased since he's been around and suggests that now it's time for him to take care of his own family.

I mean, after all, I've served by 14 years for my wife's. I don't want any of the increase that I have left you with.

I just want to take my wife and my children and go and start providing for me. Laban is thinking,

I don't want you out of my sight, out of my presence, because when you go, my blessings are going to go also. And so Laban responds,

What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shall not give me anything if thou will do this for me.

If thou will do this for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock. Now here's an interesting twist.

Jacob has all of his life from his mother and his attempting to scheme and trick

Isaac all the way through he's been trying to manipulate the world and define his own outcome.

Now he apparently is relying on the Lord to provide. He says, Just let me go and let my wife go and the

Lord will take care of me. That's what he's telling Laban. And Laban says, I know that, but I want you here so he'll take care of me too.

I thought, perhaps Jacob has finally come to realize that everything is in God's hands anyhow.

Hmm? Not quite. Well, everything is in God's hands.

But this story is far from over. Jacob wanted nothing except to be in a position for God to bless him.

So he says, I will pass through all thy flock today, removing from fence all the speckled and spotted cattle and all the brown cattle from among the sheep and the spotted and speckled from among the goats, and of such shall be my hire.

So my righteous answer for me in the time to come when it shall come for my hire before thy face, every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and brown amongst the sheep shall be counted as stolen with me.

That is to say, any of these that are in the flock that's not brown and speckled in my flock that's not brown and speckled, they're yours.

Behold, it would be according to thy word. So he's saying he's willing to stay but he doesn't want to be further indebted to Laban.

So he offers a plan that Laban that could bless Laban that could bless him while costing

Laban nothing. He would continue to care for Laban's animals as he had been doing and his pay would consist of animals that had not yet been born, plus the speckled and brown ones that were out there then, which are less desirable to Laban because of their markings and the color and only those animals born speckled, spotted, striped, or abnormally colored would belong to Jacob and there weren't many of those yet.

Evidently most of the animals in Laban's possession, most of the sheep were white, most of the goats were black, and most of the cattle were brown.

So Jacob was the only one to get to keep the ones that are not white, not black, or not brown for the various categories.

I don't know that he even thought about that. Oh, you're talking about why the white were preferred?

Because you could dye the white but not the... That makes perfect sense. I hadn't even thought about that. If you're going to use the wool and you're going to make it the color you want it to be, it would be best to start with white wool.

Yeah, that makes just a lot of sense. I didn't even think about that. Okay, so here's what goes on.

And he removed that day the he -goats that were ring -striped and spotted and all the she -goats that were speckled and spotted and every one that had some white in it and all the brown amongst the sheep and gave them to the hands of his son.

Now that is Laban did that and these are the ones that are going to belong to Jacob and are going to pollute the herd if they stay.

Because we know if the speckled stuff is there, then they have a better opportunity to breed back into that and create more of that.

So he took those and sent them three days away between himself and Jacob.

And Jacob fed the rest of the flock. Only the spotted abnormal offspring born in the future to the normally colored cattle would be his.

Now see, I've misread that before. He's not going to get any of this first bunch of cattle that were separated out.

They still belong to Laban. He doesn't get those. He only gets the speckled and spotted ones that are born in the white herd and in the brown cattle herd and the black goat herd.

All of the previous speckled ones are gone and are three days away. So all he's got is all white, all black, and all brown.

And only the speckled spotted, green striped, and odd ones does he get.

So right now he owns nothing. Laban's sons have one speckled herd. Joseph is taking care of the white herd.

And only those that are abnormally colored will he get. And Laban says, hey, there's not going to be many of those.

So he's all happy. To make sure Jacob didn't cheat, Laban separated the abnormal sheep that belonged to him three days journey from the white ones that were under Jacob's care.

Now, Jacob by agreeing to this deal put himself entirely in God's hands.

He's only going to get the sheep that are born abnormally colored. Only the

Lord could determine what animals would belong to Jacob. And then just suddenly, just like we all do, we make our commitment to the

Lord. We set out our plan, and then like two seconds later, we backslide.

So here goes Jacob. No sooner than he had committed his future entirely into God's hand that he decided he needs to help

God out. Because he wants to get his sheep out of this deal. Usually, that kind of decision leads to disaster.

But so far as I can tell, there's no negative consequences here. Do I think

God told Jacob to put everything in his hands, or that God told Jacob to do what he's going to do going forward?

As I read forward, I got the impression that maybe God did. That maybe

God did tell him to do what he's going to do. But I'm going to ask you a question at the end that's going to reflect a different response.

So Jacob took him rods of green poplar and of the hazel and the chestnut tree, and he peeled white stripes in them, and made the white appear, which was in the rods.

And he set the rods which he had peeled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs before the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.

And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle, ring -striped, speckled, and spotted.

Alright. Is that superstition that he's doing? Is that good animal husbandry?

Or is that an answer to doing what God told him to do?

I kind of think it's an answer to what God told him to do, but that doesn't mean if we do that, that's going to happen for us, because God didn't tell us to do that.

Some commentators suggested that Jacob knew more about animal husbandry than we do today.

That he knew that there were certain stimulants in these rods that when released would cause the animals to be born off color.

I'm not going to debate with that. I'm not going to even consider it. I am too sophisticated for that.

I told you I was sophisticated. I know that all the color is genetically determined anyhow.

But I may be wrong. But what I want to ask is this. Did the ring -striped animals, the off -colored animals, did they appear because of the rods or because that's what

God wanted? The rods, if the rods had anything to do with it, they had the same thing to do with it as the rod that Aaron threw on the ground that turned into a snake.

Not because the rod had some sort of magical power or that Moses did, but that God did.

And God made the rod turn into a snake. You've got to be careful. The...

Absolutely. And if he really did have greater understanding of the animal husband than we did, he would have known that that's not what...

that wouldn't make the animals off -color unless God made it. So that would be a reinforcement of the previous thing.

And Jacob did separate the lambs. And he set the faces of the flock toward the ring -striped and all the brown in the flock of Laban.

And he put his own flocks by themselves and put them not unto Laban's cattle.

And he came to pass whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, and that they may conceive among the rods.

But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in. So the feebler cattle belonged to Laban and the stronger to Jacob.

And the man increased exceedingly and had much cattle and maidservants and midservants and camels and asses.

Now... I can check here. I've got plenty of time. The man increased exceedingly.

In the ancient Hebrews that said the man burst out exceedingly.

God blessed Jacob. Okay. Jacob did obey what

God told him to do. And so is that the reason that...

Is Jacob's obedience the reason that God blessed him? Okay. The Bible says obedience is better than sacrifice.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that if you're obedient, God's going to bless you with the things that you want. It was not because Jacob was especially obedient.

He might have had this one example of obedience in his entire life. But it was because of the promise that God made to Jacob back when he was leaving the land of Canaan.

When he took his rest on the stone at Bethel and saw the ladder back in verse...

Chapter 28. 13 if you want to go there. 28, 13. And behold, the

Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the

God of Isaac. The land were on thy liest. To thee I will give it, and to thy seed.

And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south.

And in thee, and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold,

I am with thee, and I will keep thee in places and whither thou goest, and bring thee again to this land.

For I will not leave thee until I have done all that which

I have spoken unto thee of. And to the covenant made to Jacob.

In the same way, blessing comes to us not because we're great or good, but because of the covenant that God made with us.

What covenant did he make with us? Now, we kind of are adopted into the

Abrahamic covenant, but there's a covenant that God made with us that's even more special than the Abrahamic covenant. And that's the covenant that God made with us through Jesus.

And the promises that he has given us in his word.

Those things that the blessings that we have that come from the Lord come not because we're good or great, but because of the promises that God made to us through Jesus Christ.

Okay, but is there anything valuable to learn about Jacob's activity?

I found this in one of my commentaries, and I forgot to note it, so I don't know which one it is.

We may note Jacob's principles for prosperity. So here we go.

What principles does Jacob have for prosperity? Principle number one.

Don't make wealth your goal. I mean, it's good to have wealth, but that shouldn't be your goal.

What should be your goal? To live a life that reflects

Christ. That should be your goal. In verse 30, in verse 25 of chapter 30, and it came to pass when

Jacob had born Joseph that Jacob said unto Laban, Send me away to my own place, to my country.

Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served thee. Let me go for thou knowest my service which

I have done thee. Jacob asked for nothing except his wife and his children for whom he had already completed his bargain.

So he didn't make wealth his goal.

Don't be afraid to work for others and try to increase their wealth before or as you work to increase your own.

Verse 27 And Laban said unto him, I pray thee, if thou find favour in thine eyes, tarry, for I have learned by experience that the

Lord hath blessed thee for my sake. So he wasn't afraid to work to improve the fortunes of Laban.

Right now he's coming out of it with no fortune at all. If he left when he asked to leave he would have left with his wife with his two wives and his two concubines and his eleven children.

That he finally left it'll be six more years. We'll pick that up in a verse later.

So he will have totally spent twenty years with Laban. His mother thought he'd be back in a week or so.

He did too. No you're not.

So we often view Jacob as a scoundrel and in a lot of ways he was.

But you know the Lord changed his name. It changed his name from Jacob to Israel.

So he has some good to his character as well as some scoundrelness.

Principle three. Work hard. Dedicating yourself to your employer's success.

Now here's where I got it. In verse 31, 38 after he has left and after Laban has come back for him we'll get to that next time.

He says to Laban this. These twenty years that's where the other six came from.

These twenty years I have been with thee. Now you think he was faithful before. Wait till you hear this.

Thy ewes and thy she -goats have not cast their young. The rams of the flock have

I not eaten. That which was torn of the beast I brought not. I brought not unto thee.

But I bear the loss of it. If an animal destroyed one of his an animal destroyed one of his he took the loss.

Of my hand didst thou require it. Whether stolen by day or stolen by night.

Thus I was in the day the drought consumed me. The frost by night.

My sleep departed from me. From mine eyes. Thus have I been twenty years in thy house.

I have served thee fourteen years for my two daughters for thy two daughters and six years for thy cattle.

And thou hast changed my wages ten times. So not only is he seemingly doing all this work but Laban keeps changing the terms of the agreement.

And except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac had been with me.

Surely thou hadst sent me away empty. You would have sent me away without my goods, without my wife, without my children.

But God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked thee yesternight.

So he was in spite of all of the turmoil willing to work to increase the wealth of his employer.

And then finally trust God. And he said,

What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shalt give me Thou shalt not give me anything.

If thou will do this one thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock. I will pass through and it goes through and tells what it would do.

So what was he relying on? He was relying on God to do the things that he had promised him he would do.

Any other comments? As I went through this passage,

I was struck by two things. Number one, I was struck by the fact, in my mind,

I always wanted to kind of view Jacob as a scoundrel. But there was a lot more to him than that.

You have to come out viewing Jacob as a godly man, but a godly man like the rest of us.

A godly man that's pronged to error. As the song says, pronged to wonder.

Jacob was pronged to wonder. The other thing that I came away with was this prevalence of the demonic spiritual world.

Something that we don't I think put enough time guarding ourselves against.

We don't need to be dabbling with it at all. We need to be concerned when people that we know and care about are dabbling with it.

Because what starts out innocently or what they think is innocently gross.

I'm not saying you should disown your child if they're doing Harry Potter books.

But be aware that things grow. Anybody else got anything?

It's against Christ that you'll ever see the magic and the good magic and the bad magic and the witches and the spells.

It's a subtle open door. And it's designed to the children.

True. Most gracious heavenly father, thank you for this day.

Thank you for all the many blessings. Thank you for having for us a knowledge and an understanding of your spiritual world.

Thank you for letting us know that in the end we will wind up with you in a place far better than we can even imagine.

Thank you for making us aware of the things that afflict us in the world.

Thank you for giving us your Holy Spirit to guide us, to steer us away from things that we don't need to do.

Bless us and keep us. Go forward with us today. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. That's right.

All right. Good morning. Let's go ahead and get started this morning. Do we have any praises this morning or any prayer requests?

Yes ma 'am. Okay. From where? Okay. All right.

Pray for Jeffrey also. He's traveling. Okay. Good. Pray for Jeffrey. He travels back to Minnesota.

I have a friend of mine that his name is Greg Bryant. And he has been had surgery about a week and a half ago.

He has not woke up yet. And part of it was they had him sedated for a while because they were afraid his main artery was separated.

And so they're trying to figure out what's going on with him. So pray for him. His name is

Greg Bryant. He lives in Pensacola, Florida. Okay.

His name is Ray? Okay. Anything else this morning?

Yes ma 'am. Okay. We'll definitely do that.

We need you. We need your eyes. So, all righty. Let's go ahead and pray this morning.