“Deceiving the Deceiver!” – FBC Morning Light (1/10/2024)

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. Today, in our chronological Bible reading program, we're reading through Genesis 29 through 31, just staying in Genesis today.

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Again, remind you, you can check that Bible reading plan at faithbaptisterling .com,

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go to the tab articles and devotions, and underneath that is the 2024 Bible reading plan.

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This plan follows the ESV chronological Bible, and it's very helpful if you actually have that Bible and then you're not having to jump back and forth in your

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Bible. Well, anyway, today, Genesis 29 to 31. We're in the thick of the story of Jacob, and one of the key themes that runs through the life of Jacob is the theme of deception.

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The whole theme of deception, if you will, begins in Jacob's relationship with his brother

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Esau. We saw this in our previous reading, where Jacob deceives his father and steals the birthright from Esau.

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Then his mom helps him deceive Jacob, and his mom deceives

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Jacob, Rebecca, deceives Jacob...I mean, sorry, Isaac, in telling him that,

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I want Jacob to go away from here and find a bride somewhere else, because I can't stand these

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Canaanite women, and what she's really doing is protecting him from Esau, who wants to kill him, and so on.

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So you're gonna see the theme of deception run throughout the story of Jacob, and it shows up here, where, you know, normally

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Jacob is the deceiver, and those who are tied to Jacob are the deceivers.

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But in today's passage, Jacob, the deceiver, is deceived. The way this happens is that he gets to the home of Rebecca, the territory, the land of Rebecca, meets

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Rachel, this young woman that he becomes enamored of, and Laban is responsible for the care of Rachel, and so he appeals to Laban to marry

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Rachel, says, I'll do it for seven years, I'll work for you for seven years as a bride price in order to gain the right to marry

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Rachel. And Laban says, okay, that's a deal, done deal. So, Jacob works for Laban for seven years, and when seven years are up, he goes to Laban and says, it's time for me to marry your daughter, and I want to marry

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Rachel now. And Laban says, okay, that's right, your seven years are up. So they have the big wedding feast, and the custom was that in the night of the wedding, when it's time for the bride and the groom to spend the night together, she comes to the chamber veiled in darkness, and they spend the night together.

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And that's what happened. The bride comes to Jacob under the cloak of darkness with a veil over her face.

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They spend the night together, and when Jacob gets up in the morning, the veil is not on the face, and he finds out it's not

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Rachel, it's Leah. Laban has deceived him. Now, this is to Laban's advantage to get rid of daughters.

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This sounds terribly sexist in our generation, in our day, but the reality was in that time and place, in that culture, that the father is responsible for the care of his daughters until they are married off.

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And when they're married off, then the husband becomes responsible for the care and the provision for his wife.

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So as long as the father has these marriageable age daughters in the home, he's got to provide for them, he's got to protect and take care of them and meet their needs.

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So it's to his advantage to marry off his daughters as soon as they're marriageable. So he deceives

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Jacob by giving Leah to him in marriage, and now he's stuck with her. And he goes to complain about this, and Laban says, well, you know, it's our custom not to give out the younger before the older one is married, and so forth.

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And so Jacob is stuck, he's stuck with Leah.

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He ends up having to work another seven years for Laban to get Rachel as a second wife, and that life just becomes more and more complicated because of the deception.

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So there are many things, many, many, many things that can be learned from all of this, but one of them is that the person who is a deceiver, who makes his way in the world by deceiving and manipulating to get what he wants, will find that he becomes the recipient of the same kind of action.

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He himself ends up being manipulated and used and taken advantage of for someone else, on the part of somebody else.

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So this challenges us to be people of integrity.

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And Father, may we be so. I pray that we would not follow the course of Jacob feeling like he needed to use people and manipulate situations in order to fulfill the promise that you had made to him years earlier.

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Help us, Father, to be people of integrity. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your