Genesis #35 - Unlikely Grace #7 - "A Message Out of the Mess" (Genesis 29:31-30:24)

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A sermon series for the last few weeks that we've called Unlikely Grace, God's Grace in the
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Lives of Imperfect People. And this morning, as I said earlier, if you have a
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Bible, and I hope you do, hope you have it at Genesis chapter 29, Genesis and chapter 29.
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We're going to actually look at a very lengthy text this morning, really chapter 29, the end, and almost half of chapter 30.
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We're not going to read the whole thing, however. We'll just read the first five or six verses to get us started. So Genesis chapter 29, reading from verse 31 to 35 in the
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Bibles that we give away, that's on page 24. Page 24, Genesis chapter 29 from verse 31 through to 35.
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If you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me out of reverence for God's word as we read this portion of his word?
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We do this because we want to demonstrate, even with our bodies, that we are honoring the word of God as exactly that, the very word of God.
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So Genesis chapter 29, beginning in verse 31 through to verse 35.
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Brothers and sisters, these are God's words. When Yahweh saw that Leah was neglected, he opened her womb, but Rachel was unable to conceive.
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Leah conceived, gave birth to a son, and named him Reuben. For she said,
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Yahweh has seen my affliction, surely my husband will love me now. She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said,
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Yahweh has heard that I am neglected and has given me this son also. So she named him
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Simeon. She conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said, at last my husband will become attached to me, for I have born three sons for him.
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Therefore he was named Levi. And she conceived again, gave birth to a son, and said, this time
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I will praise Yahweh. Therefore she named him
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Judah. Then Leah stopped having children. Pray that God will bless that reading of his word and give us understanding as we study it.
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Let's ask for the Spirit's help, and we will launch into this passage this morning. Let's pray together. My Heavenly Father, we ask that as we come to a portion of your word that on the surface, it's a little difficult to get our arms around and to figure out what's going on.
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Pray that you would give help, that your Spirit would do the work of shining light upon the
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Scriptures so that we can understand the things that are here for us. Pray that you would open our eyes, that we would see wonderful things out of your
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Lord. Father, we make it a habit to pray for other area churches, and this morning we take a moment to pray for Bear Creek Church back in Medford.
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Thank you for them and all that you are doing in their midst. Pray for Pastors Brian and Bill, their staff pastors, as they seek to lead that fellowship.
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Pray for Pastor Brian as he is preaching through Accent, for Bill who's preaching this morning from First Peter. Pray that the ministry of the word would have its full effect there, that you would build up that congregation, you would strengthen that congregation, and that all who gather would gather knowing your blessing.
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We pray that for them, and we pray that for ourselves even now as we come to your word, and we ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen. Please be seated. I think we can all be in agreement when
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I say that life is messy. I've used that phrase quite a bit in our study through the lives of Isaac and Jacob because it's true.
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We all know it. I mean, if you live, you just have to live long enough on planet earth to that life is not always clean, pristine, and straightforward.
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Life is genuinely, unquestionably, and at times, frankly, confusingly messy.
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Sometimes it's messy because we make it messy by our sin and our bad decisions.
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Sometimes it's the choices and decisions of others that make life difficult.
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But whatever the reason, we all know by experience that life is messy.
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And few texts in the Bible, I think, give us as clear a picture of just how messy life is, like the passage that is before us this morning.
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I'll have to admit to you that as I've sat with this text this week, the messiness of the text has at points had me scratching my head and just stare at the page, just wondering, what on earth am
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I supposed to say about this? This is not one of those flannel graph parts of the
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Bible. You know what I mean when I say that? If you grew up in church like I did, sat in Sunday school, you may remember flannel graphs.
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In our church, they were always red. Some churches have them as green. But these little flannel graphs that you put little images on and those little pictures, you could act out biblical stories with.
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Now, I talk about flannel graph parts of the Bible because it was usually the big stories in the Bible.
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It was always the ones that were somewhat age -appropriate for children, or at least were made age -appropriate for children.
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Those, you know, they were nice, clean, fun stories that you could tell kids with minimal explanation required.
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Yeah, this ain't that. I wish it were, but it's not. This passage is quite frankly a mess.
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But within all of the craziness that we're about to behold in this passage, I think there is actually a message for us.
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I think there is something that God is attempting to, not attempting, but God is going to teach us from this passage.
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That's why I've given this message, the title this morning, a message out of the mess. A message out of the mess.
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Because by the time we're done, we're going to end up with a very messy situation. Let me just give you the big picture up front, and then we'll kind of build up as we go.
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By the time that we're going to be done, there will be 11 kids, four different women, and a lot of bad blood.
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As I said, this is not one of those flannelgraft parts of your Bible. This is messy, like very few places in the
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Bible is. But even in the messiness, God is at work.
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In fact, God is always at work, even, or dare I say especially, when things look like he's not at work.
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In fact, that kind of leads me to my big idea for this message. It's my habit, as you guys know who are regulars, to have a simple one -sentence statement about the message.
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Here's my big idea for this morning. That even in the messiness of life, God is always at work in the lives of his people.
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Even in the messiness of life, God is always at work in the lives of his people.
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For the rest of our time this morning, as we think about this reality, that even in the messiness of life,
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God is always at work in his people.
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For the rest of our time this morning, I want to consider five scenes of the messiness of life that come to us in this passage.
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Five scenes, and how they call us to remember that God is sovereignly working in that mess.
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Because as we march our way through this passage, like I said, it's a messy passage. There's a lot going on that really shouldn't be going on.
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And yet, even in all of this, God is quietly but sovereignly at work through it all.
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So, five scenes. By the way, I've got a lot of text to cover this morning, so I'm going to do a lot of summarizing and hopefully do this quickly.
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So, I have to fly through this.
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If you still have questions, I'll be at the back door at the end of the service. Come see me and we'll do our best. But five scenes, a lot to cover, so let me jump straight in.
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Beloved, consider with me first of all the fact that God is sovereign over unfair favoritism.
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God is sovereign over unfair favoritism. Verses 31 to 35 of chapter 20.
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So, here we are in Genesis 29. This narrative opens up. If you remember, we ended with Jacob finding himself in an unintended plural marriage.
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He wanted to marry one girl and ended up having to marry two of them. If you look at verse 30,
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Genesis 29 verse 30, we have this sad statement that's made right in the middle of that verse there that indeed he loved
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Rachel, he being Jacob, loved Rachel more than Leah. Well, as you come to verse 31, not much has changed.
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So, verse 31, when Yahweh saw that Leah was neglected, let's stop there for a moment.
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Leah is painted, at least in these opening verses, in a rather sympathetic light. In fact, that word that's translated neglected here, neglected is actually a very soft way to translate this because the word actually means to hate someone or to hate something.
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In fact, if you've got the, anyone who's got the English Standard Version in front of them, it translates that word not as Leah being neglected but as her being hated.
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And granted, it is being used in a more relative sense here that she is loved less than Rachel.
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It's still not what, think about this, it's not what a wife really wants to hear from her husband. Does she?
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I mean, let's think about this for a moment. Did Leah ask to be here? Last week, I wasn't too sure, but the more
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I've studied this passage, I'm like, no, I actually don't think she intended to be here at all. Unfortunately, she's been made a pawn in the very cruel games of her father.
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She now finds herself in a marriage with a man who does not love her. And here she is, neglected by those closest to her, her father and her husband.
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But the beautiful thing about this passage is that she's not neglected by God. Because the text says, when
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Yahweh saw that Leah was neglected,
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God, who is by his nature pure justice, sees this injustice and acts according to his own blessed nature.
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You see, though Rachel is Jacob's favored wife, the one that he loves, Leah is favored by God, and she is favored by God with four kids.
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Now, I'm going to do my best to make sure we can all track who is having what kid, because there's a lot of kids about to be born here.
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So my advice to you would be to, if you're taking notes, just let's just number them as we go. I'll do my best to try and help you with that.
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But in verse 32, we get child number one, child number one, and his name is Reuben. Reuben, Reuben simply means see a son.
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Leah acknowledges the faithfulness of God in seeing her plight. And by not just giving her a child, but you have to remember, this is the ancient
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Near East, sons, especially firstborn sons, were a big deal.
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And so here she is with a firstborn son. So verse 32 says, she named him
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Reuben before she said, Yahweh has seen my affliction, surely my husband will love me now.
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You see the faithfulness of God, but you also see the pain of this moment for Leah. In fact, our
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English translation puts the word now at the end of the sentence, but actually in the Hebrews at the beginning, she's essentially saying, now my husband will love me, which is tragic as it goes.
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But in verse 33, there's another moment of joy as she conceives once again. And now she has child number two. So child number one is
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Reuben, who has the name that means see a son. Child number two, Simeon, literally
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Shimon, which means he has heard in verse 33. And again, it's just a simple acknowledgement that though her plight is awful,
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God was within earshot, that God had not abandoned her. And so she names his son
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Simeon. He has heard. Verse 34, child number three, she gives birth to a child called
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Levi. Levi means attached or joined to. Again, you have to think about this.
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The author of Genesis is the technical term for this. He's telescoping. He's kind of making big events look really small.
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But if we allow for the standard 40 weeks of pregnancy, this is already about a year and a half.
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And now she's had three sons in very quick succession. You're meant to pick up on that.
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This is not normal. This is a little bit unusual here. That's entirely the point.
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The fact that she has had three sons for her husband would be nothing to sneeze at.
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For her to have given three sons to Jacob would surely create a bond now between her and Jacob.
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That seems to be her expectation with naming Levi, Levi. And it seems as though that maybe she was onto something because verse 35, you have child number four.
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So I'll be keeping track. This is boy number four. And this time, there's no mention of her being neglected, no mention of her being unloved.
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Because verse 35 says, and she conceived again, gave birth to a son and this time and said, this time
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I will praise Yahweh. Therefore, she named him Judah.
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Simply just means from the word to praise. Again, this child is significant because there's no mention of her seeming plight.
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It may be at this point, Jacob is starting to warm to her some, but more importantly,
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I think the author puts a spotlight on Judah because Judah is going to play a very important role in the
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Bible storyline as a whole. I'll come back to that later. So I won't plant myself there for too long, but can you see how even in the face of the unfairness of Jacob's favoritism,
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God is sovereignly working to bring his purposes about? Jacob's conduct is very clearly wrong.
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And yet God is faithful, even in the face of such clear injustice. Beloved, the reality is that man might and will play favorites, unfortunately, but for the good of his people and for the sake of his sovereign purpose,
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God will happily override that favoritism. Unfair favoritism can't fight against the sovereign will and way of God.
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God is sovereign over it, but not only is he sovereign over unfair favoritism, second scene in our text,
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God is sovereign over bitter envy and jealousy. God is sovereign over bitter envy and jealousy.
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As we come to chapter 30, so if you're keeping count, Leah has had four kids, four boys, and Rachel has none.
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Again, for the younger, less desired sister to have upstaged her like this, there's a sense in which almost
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Rachel feels as though this cannot stand. And so as you come to chapter 30 verse 1, look at that text with me, it says, when
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Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she envied her sister.
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Envy is an ugly thing. The desire to have what someone else has and wishing that they did not have it.
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It's an ugly thing. And what begins as an internal case of, what do we say, the green -eyed monster?
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What begins as an internal case of that soon finds a voice, because look at the end of the verse.
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So she goes to Jacob and she says, give me sons or I will die.
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I feel for Jacob in this moment. Rachel's frustrations seem to have boiled over and it seems to manifest the original language, seems to suggest that this is a, not just a one -time thing she says, like she is on his case about this.
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And it's persistent enough for Jacob to get visibly annoyed by it. Because look at verse 2,
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Jacob became angry with Rachel and said, am I in the place of God? He has withheld offspring from you.
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Now let's pause for a moment here. Rachel was not wrong, excuse me, to nag her husband in this way.
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I think we, let's not let her off the hook here. She's wrong to do so.
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Especially since the text is very clear. He's not the problem. But can we also say, two things can be true at the same time.
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Rachel is wrong, but Jacob also displays a shocking lack of care for Rachel, who is clearly hurting in this moment.
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Whether her hurt is legitimate or not, the answer is not to essentially blame shift and minimize in this moment.
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I mean, he's right. He's not in the place of God to give her children, but he's not being particularly sensitive in this moment.
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Since Rachel perceives that Jacob can't or maybe won't do anything, well, Rachel decides to employ a time -tested but very bad strategy.
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Verse 3, then she said, here is my maid Bilhah. Go sleep with her and she will bear children for me.
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Literally, the Hebrew uses an idiom here, bear children on my knees. In other words, she'll have the children and then place the child on my knees for me to raise.
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And she'll bear children for me so that through her, I too can build a family.
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Now, haven't we heard this before? If you're not familiar with Genesis, Jacob's great -grandma did this.
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Her name was Sarah. Genesis chapter 16. She wanted a child.
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In fact, she had a promise from God that she was going to have a child, but the promise took too long. So she decided to take matters into her own hands.
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Abraham, honey, this child is not coming. How about I give you my slave
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Hagar? I won't overstay this point.
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Preach the whole seminar on Genesis chapter 16. You can find it on our website. But you just have to remember just how problematic the last time this happened was.
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Apparently, Jacob is open to this idea. And so it happens and Bilhub will give birth to two sons.
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So if you're keeping track, child number five. And again, a boy. So verses four through six gives birth to a son called
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Dan. Dan means to be vindicated or judged in favor of.
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This is a pretty tragic perspective from Rachel when you actually trace it out. She uses this language of being vindicated as though I'm the proper wife.
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I'm the wife that he really loves. And now here is this child who basically judges in my favor the reality that I am indeed the good wife.
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I'm the head wife in charge and here's the proof. And that perspective is only confirmed by the second child that Bilhub has.
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So verses seven and eight, she gives birth to a child called Naphtali.
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So this is child number six. A child called Naphtali. Naphtali means my wrestling or my struggle.
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And look at what she says. Verse eight. In my wrestlings with God, I have wrestled with my sister in one.
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Rachel views her life essentially as a wrestling match with two opponents. Her sister
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Leah, I mean, wrong. But there's a twisted logic to this.
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She's the other woman, so to speak. I mean, technically Rachel's the other woman, but we won't get into all of those technicalities for now.
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But she views her sister Leah as the opponent. But did you catch that the text says, in my wrestlings with God, I have wrestled with my sister in one.
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Not only is she at war with her sister, she has found herself in the place in her heart where she views herself as being at war with God himself.
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She has become so embittered by the events of her life that she comes to view
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God as an opponent to be beaten. She essentially says, I fought
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God and I won. Bitter envy and jealousy has completely clouded
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Rachel's perspective. It's clouded her perspective of herself. It's clouded her perspective of her own sister.
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And worst of all, it's clouded her very perspective of God himself.
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And if I can pause for a moment and bring it home, the difficulties and the messiness of life can lead us to a place where we find ourselves completely engulfed by this kind of bitter envy and jealousy.
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In fact, the New Testament warns us about this danger. You don't need to turn there, but if you're taking notes, you can write it down. James chapter 3 verses 13 and 14.
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James 3, 13 and 14. James says, who is wise among you? By his good conduct, he should show that his works are done in the gentleness that comes from wisdom.
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Verse 14. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, don't boast and deny the truth.
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What's James getting out with these couple of verses? Very simple. That undealt with bitter envy and selfish ambition can lead to a denial of reality itself.
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That if we are not careful, we can find ourselves essentially warping reality because we are not getting something we think we are owed.
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Rachel is very clearly not handling this situation well. It's led her to make a decision that will only weaken her marriage.
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But yet, even with a perspective that is flooded with cynicism and bitter envy and jealousy, again,
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God is at work. Two more sons have been added to Jacob, which is amazing because only
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God can and does make sense of this kind of drama. Drama of even the most biblical of proportions.
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God is sovereign over unfair favoritism. He's sovereign over bitter envy and jealousy.
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Point number three. Third scene in our passage as we seek the message that's in this mess of a story.
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God is sovereign over worldly compromise. God is sovereign over worldly compromise.
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As we come to verse nine, the narrative shifts back to Leah.
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Some time has passed. And as time has passed, that initial, you get the sense for when we first met
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Leah in the opening verses of our text, that there's a faith in God here. That though she is unloved by her husband and ill -treated by her sister, that she still trusts in God.
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Well, it would seem that the passage of time has caused Leah's faith and trust to take something of a hit.
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With the absence of children, she essentially says, look, I can't beat my sister here, but I can adopt the same tactic of my sister.
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So verse nine, when Leah saw that she stopped having children, she took her slave Zilpah. So now we've got a fourth woman introduced into this mix.
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Two sisters, and now two slave wives. When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her slave
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Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. This is a compromise on his part, on her part, excuse me, and not a very good one.
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And I tag this point as worldly compromise because she should know better. Rachel, let me just give you a bit of a spoiler for the rest of the session.
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Rachel, not until near the end, is going to demonstrate very little, if any, perspective about God on any of this.
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But Leah, as far as this text lets us to understand, she knows better. This is a compromise on her part, and not only is it a compromise, it's not a very good one.
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Leah has exchanged a faith -driven, trust -driven perspective of God for a pragmatic one.
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And so she has two children through her slave. So now, if you're keeping notes, Leah has had how many?
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Four, well done. And then Rachel's slave has had how many? Two, so we're at six.
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And now Rachel's, no Leah's slave, excuse me, is about to have two.
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So child number seven, child is called Gad, G -A -D. Gad, Gad means good fortune or luck.
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Again, do you know that God is absent from this passage? Look at verse 11. Then Leah said, what good fortune, or literally good fortune has come.
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And she named him Gad. No mention of God, this is just good luck. Child number eight is born in verses 12 and 13.
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His name is Asher. Great name, I have a nephew who's called Asher. Asher means happy.
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Nice name, not so nice motivation. Why does she call the child Asher, happy?
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Verse 13, I am happy that the women will call me happy. It's not happiness that a child has been born.
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It's not happiness that, okay, this will do good for my relationship with my husband. No, it's the other people out there will call me happy.
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If we could pause for a moment, what's with Leah? What's going on here? How has her perspective so radically shifted from where it was to where we are now?
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Can I put it to you that what's happened here is she has adapted her thinking to the situation rather than letting the goodness of God dictate her response to the situation.
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The situation got bad from her perspective. So what does she do?
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Rather than trust the goodness of God who was faithful in time past, she decides, I'm going to take matters into my own hands and I'm going to adopt the practice of the world around me.
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The idea of giving your slave to your husband was unfortunately very common in the ancient
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Near East because infertility was viewed as such a shameful thing. She's essentially adopted a worldly perspective when she has no need to.
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But just in case we get tempted or you get tempted to sit in judgment of Leah, can
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I put it to you that this is a danger even the most faithful Christian can be prone to? Excuse me.
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Even the most faithful Christian can fall under the temptation to adopt the thinking, the values, the methods of the world system around us.
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If care is not taken and we are not diligent, we can find ourselves rather than responding to the situations of life around us with a knowledge of the goodness and the sovereignty and the care of God.
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We can find ourselves rather than living in light of that. We can find ourselves allowing the situations of life around us to mold and to shape the way in which we respond.
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That's where the Bible goes out of his way to warn us. Again, you don't need to turn there, but I'll read it. First John chapter two, verse 15.
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The Bible tells us, do not love the world or the things in the world.
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If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. And by the way, when the
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Bible says not to love the world, it doesn't mean don't love the people in the world. It doesn't mean don't be nice. It doesn't mean that we basically view every non -Christian as the hostile enemy necessarily.
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It's talking about the world system, this system of principles and operating ideas that the world functions in, in opposition to God.
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And the Bible says of that system, you are not called to love it. Why? Because if you start to love this world system, you will start to adopt its values as your own.
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And that's one reason that we daily have to guard against the siren song of worldly thinking as God's people.
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We need to bathe ourselves in the word of God, allow the word of God, as it were, to do the work that Romans 12 talks about, where it says that we aren't conformed to this world, but we're transformed by the renewing of our minds.
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We have to be careful against this because worldly compromise can be a danger for us every bit as much as it was for Leah in this moment.
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But again, even with the backwards thinking of Leah in this moment, God is still at work because now two more sons have been added to Jacob's family.
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Two more sons through whom the nation of Israel will ultimately be built. God is sovereign over unfair favoritism, over bitter envy and jealousy, over worldly compromise.
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He's even sovereign over scheming and rivalry. What is sovereign point number four? Over scheming and rivalry.
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The story takes yet another turn. If you want to come back to me to Genesis chapter 30. The story takes another turn in verse 14.
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So verse 14, excuse me, Reuben went out during the wheat harvest.
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So again, more time has passed and found some mandrakes in the field.
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Now, if you'd like me to pause for a moment, you have no idea what a mandrake is. I did not prior to this week.
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I actually included in the study guide a picture of a mandrake. By the way, I did notice that in the
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Harry Potter movies, there is the appearance of a mandrake. That's a different kind of mandrake. I knew someone was going to bring that up.
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So let me just kill that right now. It's not the same one. The type that's mentioned in the
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Bible is kind of in the tomato family. It has that look to it. So it was the kind of thing that thrives in that environment for some reason.
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So it says that he goes out during the wheat harvest and he finds some mandrakes in the field. When he brought them to his mother,
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Leah, Rachel asked, give me some of your son's mandrakes. Now let's pause for a moment. Mandrakes are not a big deal in this day and age, but in the ancient world, they were a very big deal because they were perceived to have, and this is alleged, no one's actually proven this, but they were perceived to have aphrodisiac and fertility properties.
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In fact, the ancient Greeks referred to them as love apples because of their famed abilities.
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And so Leah now has this really desirable, really precious fruit.
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Rachel knows that she has it though and realizes that she might be able to make this work to her advantage.
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I mean, after all, she's at war with her sister, allegedly. And after all, what was fair in love and war, right?
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So she sees an opening and she kind of makes her gambits. Look at verse 15. So verse 14, she says, please give me some of your son's mandrakes, verse 15.
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But Leah replied to her, isn't it enough that you have taken my husband? Now you also want to take my son's mandrakes?
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Okay. Well then, Rachel said, verse 15, he can sleep with you tonight in exchange for your son's
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Again, there's a tiny part of me that feels for Jacob in this moment.
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Both of these sisters have basically reduced their husband to a piece of meat. Then again, like I said, there's a tiny part, but there's another part of me that says, remember what we saw last time?
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Jacob is a man who's kind of driven by his lust. Is there a part of Jacob that probably enjoys all of this female attention in this moment?
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Who knows? I mean, he hasn't exactly shown us a ton in the realm of self -control up to this point, but again, we ultimately don't know.
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What we do know is this marriage isn't much of a marriage right now.
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In fact, as one writer put it, the sisters' bitter rivalry has cheapened the marital relationship to the point where Jacob's one -flesh intimacy with his wife has become a commodity to be traded for a food item.
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Well, Leah and Rachel strike a deal, and for the night, Jacob is now
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Leah's. And the child results, so if you're keeping count, child number, well done, number nine.
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I do not blame you if you're getting lost. There's a lot of kids at this point. Child number nine, child's name is
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Issachar. Issachar means reward. And it's interesting, verse 17,
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God listened to Leah. I'll come back to that because even that's kind of astounding. God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore
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Jacob a fifth son. Leah said, this is where I think, again,
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Leah's perspective has become warped too. God has rewarded me for giving my slave to my husband, and she named him
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Issachar. No, I don't think
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God is rewarding your ingenuity in this moment, Leah. Another child is born, verses 19 and 20.
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Child number 10, his name is Zebulun. Zebulun means honored. Verse 21, you get the lone girl in this.
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It's been all boys all the time right now, but now here's a girl. Verse 21, no elaborate details are given outside of a name.
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She gives birth to a daughter, and the daughter's name is Dinah. Dinah shares the same root as the name for Dan, meaning judgment.
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We won't spend too long on Dinah because we're going to meet her in chapter 34 in way more detail, so I'm going to move it along for now.
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But again, I want to draw your attention to that phrase that I kind of just read in passing. Verse 17, God listened to Leah.
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Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. In the midst of all of this scheming and, excuse me, rivalry on everyone's parts, in the midst of all of this conniving and bartering that's taken place,
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God is still in full control of what's happening. None of this is lost on him.
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It's almost as though the text goes out of its way in a very subtle way to say the mandrakes weren't what produced a child.
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God did that. Yes, a full -blown rivalry has exploded, and the consequences just get weirder and weirder in its wake.
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Leah is now laboring under the assumption that her essential victory over her sister is being rewarded and honored, but it's not really a reward for her conniving and rivalry and scheming in this moment.
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No, God is the reason that these children are being born. Despite all the unfair favoritism, the bitter envy and jealousy of Rachel, the worldly compromise of Leah, the scheming and rivalry between the sisters,
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God is still in control. And in fact,
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God is so in control that, one more thing, he is sovereign over shame and disgrace.
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He's sovereign over shame and disgrace. Some time passes, and we finally get a hint of some change in Rachel as this bitter war between the sisters has unfolded.
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I wonder if you've been, in your notes, keeping track of this. So, Leah has had a number of children.
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The two slave wives have had a number of children. Who hasn't had a child of her own in this moment?
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Rachel hasn't. All of this wheeling and dealing, all of this moving and maneuvering, she still hasn't had a child of her own.
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Sure, the slave has had children for her, and they would be considered her children. But in a culture where infertility was considered something of a shame, it's not quite the same when it's not one of your own.
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There's almost a degree to which you can sort of, I'm not saying you can, but you can sort of understand why she goes as hard as she does.
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But the reality is that eventually, human ingenuity and human drive must recognize and submit to divine sovereignty.
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Kofi, where did you get that from? Well, look at verse 22. Text says,
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Then God remembered Rachel. He listened to her and opened her womb.
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Listening implies somebody spoke. At somewhere on this journey,
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Rachel has finally gotten the lesson. Again, Jacob was incredibly insensitive years earlier when he said, am
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I in the place of God to give you children? But he was right. The only person who was going to give
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Rachel children was not, it was not going to be Rachel, and it wasn't going to even be Jacob.
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It would only be God. And it seems as though finally she gets the message, and her grumbling and complaining and scheming gives way to prayer.
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She prays and God hears. And so child number 11, son number 11,
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I should say, is born. Child named Joseph. Joseph means he adds, because she says, you see it there, verse 24.
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May Yahweh add another son to me. And he will.
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We'll get to that story in its own time. But even with the shame and the disgrace of infertility,
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God is still sovereign even over that. She is not left to her shame, as it were.
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She is not left to try and deal with her shame by herself. God steps in and removes that shame.
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And it's a sad reality that it's taken this long. If we allow for these pregnancies to be somewhat close to each other, this is almost a decade of back and forth, of back and forth, of rivalry and scheming and bitter words and all kinds of wheeling and dealing.
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As always, no one comes off smelling of roses in this narrative.
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As messiness goes, this is a complete and utter mess.
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But again, God's sovereign purpose is being worked out. And that sovereign purpose is way above and beyond even the characters in this story.
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Because it's through Leah, who is the neglected wife, that a child is born whose name is
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Judah. Judah is the son through whom the promise of a kingdom, promises that were made way back to Abraham.
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He's the one through whom those promises will be fulfilled. And it's through him that one day, one of Judah's descendants would come.
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The one who ultimately will bring all of God's promises to fulfillment.
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And I put it to you that out of this mess comes not just a general message for our lives, but the greatest message of all.
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Because if this situation with all of its messiness did not happen, ultimately there would be no
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Messiah. Have you thought about this? God could have chosen a way less complicated and way less difficult route for all of this to happen.
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God could have stepped in and said, okay, yeah, this is the wife's arrangement. Yeah, I'm just going to dead die. Both of you are done. He's sovereign.
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He's more than capable of doing so. And yet he doesn't. He lets this situation with all of its messiness and all of its complication, he lets it just play out.
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God could have chosen a different route to get here. But can I put it to you that what other routes gives him all the glory than one that is as messy as this?
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How else would he derive all the glory for anything good that comes out of this, unless he's the only good player in any of this?
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And can I put it to you that in the messiness of your life, I trust that your lives are nowhere near as messy as any of this.
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I don't know. I don't know all of your individual stories. Maybe it is. But can I put it to you that even in the messiness of life, that even in the craziness of life,
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God's good and perfect will is being worked out. I don't know about you, but there are situations in my own life where I've sat there and thought,
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God, why did you allow it to go like this? This is not how
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I would have planned it. But point comes where I have to stop myself and say, you know what, it's not the way
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I would have planned it. And yet if it hadn't happened this way,
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I don't think God would have been as glorified. And that's the ultimate message that we get out of the mess of life.
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That even when life is messy and even when life is complicated, God is still in control.
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And Heavenly Father, we thank you that we do indeed have that comfort of knowing that you are in control. That there is nothing that happens in this world that happens outside of your sovereign will.
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That nothing is happening that catches you off guard. It catches us off guard, of course. But you are at work.
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You are bringing about your will in your way. Father, help us that we would submit to you first and foremost.
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Father, help us that we would not be so wrapped up with the way we think things should happen.
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That we are willing to bend the rules. That we are willing to do that which is not in our best interest.
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Father, help us that we would be a people who are always looking for the mess, the message, excuse me, in the mess of life.
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Father, may we be used in the lives of others who maybe are going through difficult times to remind them that despite what is happening to you, this is not the end of your story.
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Father, we thank you that through all of this we received a Savior. That through all of this mess came a
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Messiah. One who lived the life that we were unable to live of perfect obedience and who died the death that we so richly needed.
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Father, help us to live in light of that reality. We ask it in Jesus' name and for His sake.