The Fruit of the Wombs

Well, this morning we're completing chapter 29, beginning chapter 30, and we're continuing this theme in some ways of sanctification in Jacob's life.

Now, the matters we'll address this morning are more about Jacob's household, the fruitfulness of the four women within his household, and we'll spend some time walking through those verses, but we want to keep in mind this larger issue, this larger theme of God untwisting the twister

Jacob. Remember, Jacob came out as the heel grasper, the twister, a play on his name, and God is doing

His work of sanctification in Jacob's life. He is untwisting the twisted ways of Jacob, as He does faithfully in all of His people's lives.

He brings about both blessing and trial in order to make His people holy, in other words, in order to sanctify them, to cleanse them not only from the guilt of sin, not even from the power of sin, but also from the consequences of sin.

And certainly, Jacob is walking toward the blessing of God. It is necessary for him to be sanctified, relieved of the consequences of his sinfulness, in order for him to receive the blessing of God.

But as we'll see, Jacob's household is imploding between chapters 29 and 30, even as it's burgeoning.

It's both growing and corroding. In terms of the relationships, there's sin at almost every level and almost in every interaction, and yet there's fruitfulness.

There's a sign of God blessing and building up the house of Jacob, even as He had promised.

So last week, we considered the two seven -year stints that Jacob served under Laban.

And as we take up verses 31 and following, we see the struggle now between his two brides, between Leah and Rachel.

And as we see the growth of his household, we recognize their struggle within it. And we recognize their struggle even with the

Lord, specifically Rachel. And we think, of course, of Jacob being set up for his struggle with the

Lord. And all of this struggle within the house, within his life, all of this struggle is being used by God to shape

Jacob into the man who would be the father of the nation of Israel.

A .W. Pink, great, great exposition of Genesis, gleanings from Genesis.

He says this. It is shown again and again in the inspired narrative how

Jacob has reaped what he has sown. Yet it must be borne in mind that in dealing retributively with Jacob, God is not acting in wrath, but rather in love, holy love.

It is true, for divine love is never exercised at the expense of holiness.

Thus, in what appears to be the retribution of God, we find

God speaking to the patriarch's conscience and heart. So what we're reading about as we make our way through chapter 29, and especially next week, we're going to see

God speaking to the conscience and the heart of Jacob. Well, we come into verse 31 and following off the heels of two weddings, two weddings within one week.

You know how exhausting wedding prep is. Can you imagine how exhausting those two weeks would have been?

And of course, it completely disrupted what God intended for marriage to be. We can only imagine how devastated

Rachel felt when she was marched in front of Jacob, arranged and contracted like cattle under Laban, and this week -long festivity that she had spent seven years daydreaming about now became this rather forced interaction, and they're trying to smile and salvage something out of this ceremony through the bitterness and the tears, and Leah, of course, off to the side, her heart aching knowing that she's been wed to a man that does not love her, that does not care for her.

She practically is a servant within the household of Jacob. It's a cold, dull, lifeless marriage, and yet it's been the dark cloud in the marriage of Rachel and Jacob, and so we see

Laban introducing division and heartache into everyone else's lives, a good application we didn't get to last week,

I was thinking about it this week. It's like, here's a really good application for last week's sermon. Don't be a Laban in someone else's life.

Do your best to not be a Laban to other people. Introducing division, sowing heartbreak, introducing grief, being a means of grief to other people.

Laban sold his daughters with no thought of their affections, their feelings, their long -term or future happiness.

He threw away this relationship, not only with his nephew, but with his daughters. From here on out, they will identify themselves as the wives of Jacob.

They will not connect themselves intellectually to their father. He treated them like property, and so, like property, they will have nothing to do with him now that they've been, quote unquote, sold.

And of course, we understand why later in Leviticus 18, God forbids his people to marry two sisters within each other's lifetime.

This is the outflow of chapters 29 through 30. Keep in mind the larger cycle of Jacob and this sort of meta -theme of sibling rivalry.

The Jacob cycle will come all the way to the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau. So the Jacob cycle begins with sibling rivalry and it ends with sibling reconciliation.

And that situates chapters 29 and 30 within this larger framework. But the shape of this rivalry takes place in the midst of childbearing.

And that takes us to verse 31. When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

This is the description of the next paragraph and the first paragraph of the chapter to come.

When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, a more literal translation, she was hated.

Hated, arguably, can mean loved or loved in a different way, loved less, akin to Jesus teaching that his disciples must hate even their parents compared to their love of God.

So we can use this as comparative love. Compared to the way that Jacob loved

Rachel, he practically hated or unloved Leah. Either way, we see this sense of coldness, distance.

We'll see it not only here, we'll see it in the way that Leah names the first three children that she bears.

We'll see it later in the way she has to negotiate with Rachel in the field. So here's the first statement, summary statement,

Leah was unloved by Jacob. But God is seeing this.

We're reminded of Beerlehai Roy, where God saw another unloved woman, heavy with child,

Hagar. God sees Leah. And so he blesses her.

He opens her womb. Rachel is barren. It does not say that God closed her womb.

He opened and he closed. He just says Rachel was barren. This was the state for Rachel.

She was barren. So Leah conceived and bore a son. She called his name Reuben. She said this, the

Lord assuredly looked on my affliction. So we have the divine commentary, the

Lord saw, and then we have the experience of that. The Lord looked. The Lord looked and he saw my affliction.

Now therefore, here's where we get to sort of the heartache, my husband will love me. See, it's not enough that the

Lord saw and that will satiate me. Maybe now I can have what I really want, which isn't even necessarily this son,

Reuben. It's actually what this son could bring about, my husband's affection. Maybe now

I can get what I really want, my husband to love me. We'll see the polar opposite with Rachel, who has her husband's affection and what she really wants is a son.

And so these two sisters have a rivalry. They each have what the other wants. Then she conceived again,

Leah bore a son and said, because the Lord has heard that I am unloved. Again, divine commentary saw that Leah was unloved and the experience, the

Lord has heard I'm unloved. He's therefore given me this son also. And she called his name

Simeon. She conceived and bore again and said, now this time my husband will become attached to me because I've borne him three sons.

You see, you think of three, roughly nine month cycles, the time for nursing in between.

This is years going by and she's still clinging to this desperate hope for her husband to love her.

Maybe this will be the time. Maybe this will be the son. How many more children must I bear before Jacob looks at me just a little bit differently before he wants to spend the night with me rather than with my sister.

Therefore his name was called Levi and she conceived again and she bore a son. And with this, perhaps there's a change in tone.

Now she says, now I will praise the Lord. And there's no mention of her husband or her husband's affection.

In fact, at this point when she bears Judah, there seems to be a contentedness within her life.

Now she will praise the Lord. Now perhaps she's so busy, torn around, cleaning up applesauce and spilled milk and scrubbing goldfish crumbs out of the minivan.

Now that she's doing all that, she's too busy to be concerned about Jacob, that lump who always sits on the couch.

I've got enough to deal with. Now I will praise the Lord. We can see the pain of Leah in the first three sons' names.

It's clear that she's been haunted by this lack of affection. She's married to a man that does not love her.

There's coldness within her marriage and yet she experiences vicariously what it could be like whenever he sees the way that Jacob looks at Rachel.

Whenever he sees the way that they dwell together, they laugh together, they spend time together. Everything that her heart longs for, she sees in her sister's life.

And everything that her sister longs for, she sees in Leah's life. She has these boys, she has the carrier and maybe the dual backpack and she's pushing the stroller around and Rachel has to sometimes turn aside to weep.

Sometimes unexpectedly, for unknown reasons, it's hard to control the pain of being barren and seeing burgeoning life in her sister's tent.

Tension festers, jealousy floods the relationship between these siblings. Leah has boys,

Rachel has love, and neither are content. Now what is written between the lines here in this little description of the sons that are born to Leah?

Well written between the lines here, and we'll see it again, is Jacob's neglect. Jacob didn't want this marriage, but he took this marriage.

And we see this cold charity toward Leah. I love that phrase, cold charity.

It's not that he was intending to be cruel, but he couldn't hide, he couldn't keep that coldness, that coolness, that distance out of his interactions with Leah.

It was all too detectable. I take that phrase from Calvin. Calvin said, sort of applying this, he said, many think they fulfill their duty, that is the duty to love neighbor, if they don't break out into mortal hatred.

Of course I'm loving my neighbor, I'm not actively hating them. So I'm very loving, I've got nothing against them.

He says, see here in the Holy Scriptures that those as hated, we see those as hated who are not sufficiently loved.

And we know that men were created for this end, that they should love one another.

Therefore no one will be counted guiltless of the crime of hatred before God, but he who embraces his neighbor with love.

Not only will a secret displeasure be accounted as hatred, but even a neglect and that cold charity which is reigning in the world.

That's a marvelous application. We have not loved our neighbor when we've done our best to repress our secret displeasure.

We haven't done it until we've actually embraced our neighbor in love. He says, even neglect is accounted by the

Spirit of God as hatred. And it's a cold charity. I've got nothing against them,

I wish them well. Calvin says that's a cold charity, that's a cold charity, that's not love.

Leah felt unloved, and yet she was loved of God.

We almost want to take her by her shoulders and look into her weak eyes, whatever that saying meant, and say, don't you see that you're loved of God?

Look at how he's blessed you. Look what he's brought into your life.

You know, your husband's going to grow old and he's going to pass, but your sons are going to live on, and they're going to bear your name, and you have influence upon them.

Look at how God has blessed you. We see God's love for Leah, don't we?

Though she is an unloved wife, she bears Levi, who have that distinction in Israel's corporate identity of being the very priesthood of God, those being of the

Levites. And then when she finally praises the Lord and is contented to know that the

Lord has blessed her, she does so with Judah, and it's from the line of Judah that the seed promised to Eve will descend.

It's the line of Judah who will conquer the kingdom of the serpent when he's stretched upon the cross.

And so the Lord loves this unloved Leah. And so that really is the first section, the fruit of Leah's womb.

Secondly, we see the fruit of Bilhah's womb. We read beginning in verse 1 of chapter 30, when

Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and she said to Jacob, give me children or else

I die. And so we're struck again with this familiar theme of barrenness.

All of the patriarch's wives experienced, meaning wives in the sense of the intended well -loved wives, all of them experienced barrenness initially,

Sarah, Rebecca, and now Rachel. There's no natural way for Rachel to have children, she's barren.

Just as Sarah, just as Rebecca, before her, so she's crying out of desperation.

She's also crying out not only out of a sort of self -pity, but out of a jealous rage.

Please notice, Rachel envied her sister and therefore she said to Jacob, give me children or else

I die. We've seen this kind of outburst before in the midst of sibling rivalry, in a desire for a blessing.

It was when Esau cried out, give me soup or else I die, essentially.

It's an irrational kind of outburst. Here Rachel has this irrational grief fueled by jealous rage against her sister and she says if I don't have a son,

I'm going to die. If I can't somehow have this blessing that I'm craving for,

I'm going to die. Which as we move forward in the narrative has sort of a tragic echo to it because when she does bear

Benjamin, she will die. When God gives her that son, she'll die. But we see the sin of jealousy now spilling over into her marriage and we can't imagine as we begin verse 2 that this was the first exchange along these lines.

I don't automatically assume that Jacob was a complete oath and just had no idea how to sympathize with his wife.

I can actually picture times and ways over those years where Jacob would have said,

Rachel, am I not worth ten sons to you? You know how much I love you. Let's wait upon the

Lord. But as he saw that envy, that rage, that spite, the irrationality behind it, he must have gotten frustrated, sinfully frustrated.

And we have this sort of snapping, biting exchange. Verse 2, Jacob's anger was roused against Rachel.

He said, am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? We saw

Jacob being cold to Leah between the lines, but here we have him being very cold toward Rachel and it's stated plainly.

He was angry with his wife. Despite her sins and her jealousy and her issues, he should have known something of what she was experiencing in terms of sibling rivalry and jealousy.

And I hope it felt like daggers when he said, you know, what's wrong with you? Why can't you see the Lord's hand in this? Why aren't you trusting

God? I hope that would have pierced him through his conscience. Why couldn't I have trusted

God? Why couldn't I have been content with the station of God's providence? Why shouldn't I have waited on him to bless me in his way, in his time, according to his promise?

Why did I take things into my own hands? Why was I fueled by a jealous rage against my brother?

And it's tragic because we start to see the effects of sin within the marital relationship, don't we? The only other time we've seen

Jacob and Rachel interact, we've seen them together in the events of the wedding, but the only time we've seen them interact is back in chapter 29.

And it's like right out of a Hallmark movie. It's a rom -com, you know, pulling stones and there's, you know, canned laughter and it's just a very sweetheart experience.

But look at this now. There's this distance. Now they're not in unison at all, there's this coldness.

Rachel's not even concerned about Jacob at all. She's consumed by her desire to compete with her sister, to have what she wants, which

Jacob is really not part of that equation. And Jacob perhaps feeling that.

Am I God? What do you want me to… There's nothing I can do. And so that sense of loss has now made them angry with each other.

Now Jacob exclaims a truth. This is a biblical truth, isn't it? God gives and God withholds the fruit of the womb.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. He gives and He takes. He gives and He withholds. This is the domain of the

Lord. We may have more sophisticated ways to think about this, to identify and categorize it, but the medical realities do not take away the theological reality underneath at all.

The Lord gives, the Lord takes. The Lord opens, the Lord closes. Jacob knows, and he's right, that it's

God alone who opens the womb. Jacob knows that He is not God and that they're walking in the midst of the providence of God, but Jacob does not trust

God either. We can see he's reacting out of anger. We don't see him dropping to his knees like his father

Isaac and praying that God would move and then watching as God answered that plea and that prayer in the life of his wife.

We saw the same thing with Sarah when he pleaded with God. We don't read that here.

Jacob has a biblical truth, but he's communicating it in an unbiblical way. Rather than coming alongside his wife, sympathizing with her struggle, we see him reacting angrily against her, even as she's reacting angrily against her sister.

So he rebukes her. It's a cold rebuke. It's a cold rebuke.

And she said, verse 3, here's my maid Bilhah. Go into her.

She will bear a child on my knees that I may have children by her. And she gave him

Bilhah, her maid, as a wife, and Jacob went into her. This is just deja vu in the worst way.

This is Sarah passing off Hagar so that through Hagar she could somehow claim credit of progeny.

The words are echoed, lifted right out of Genesis 16, that she may bear children on my behalf.

That's the idiom, bear children on my knees. The equivalent today would be surrogate parents, surrogacy.

Of course, they didn't have any technologically advanced way to do surrogacy in the ancient world.

You actually had to cohabitate with the maid. And just like Sarah, Rachel is pressed into her plight with a distrust of God.

It is her lapse of faith in God that causes her to introduce the maid, to be embraced by Jacob.

And Jacob's lack of faith, like Abraham, is to passively go along with this. He had just been calling her out on the providence of God, am

I God? And she says, well, then go into my maid. Where's that sense of God's providence now?

Jacob says, oh, if you insist. He adds sin to sin. Despite her husband's rebuke,

Rachel decided to take matters into her own hands just like Sarah, even though Rachel surely knew about Sarah and about Hagar and about the legacy that that created between the offspring of Ishmael and the offspring of her husband.

She tosses all of that aside. She's consumed by jealousy and desire.

She would rather put her husband in the arms of another woman than trust

God. Boy, jealousy is a powerful thing. And Bilhah conceived, bore

Jacob a son. Rachel sees this as a positive development. God has judged my case, she pronounces.

He's heard my voice. He's given me a son. If only she knew Sarah's story a little better.

She called his name Dan. And Rachel's maid Bilhah conceived again and bore

Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, with great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister. Yeah, that's the issue.

I'm not wrestling with God in the midst of my apparent barrenness, wrestling by faith year by year, month by month as there's just a single blue line.

As I'm taking pictures and, you know, making it, you know, do you see a shadow there? Is that a shadow?

She's not wrestling with God about this because that's not the issue. She's wrestling with her sister. This child's all about her sister.

It's all about the perceived blessing of God upon her sister. And she says so arrogantly,

I've prevailed. I've prevailed. I've given my husband over to Bilhah.

I've introduced this whole dilemma in my marriage. We have no idea if there was the kind of cruelty and disdain that we read of with Hagar and Sarah.

Maybe Bilhah, like Hagar, began to arrogantly walk her way around the house. Now she had born children to Jacob.

She called his name Naphtali. What a sad view of life. What a sad view of children.

Weapons in my quiver to be used against my sibling. See, I am more successful. See, see,

I am blessed. See, I did find a way after all. Rachel saw everything in terms of this rivalry with Leah.

And that's how blinding jealousy can be. Sinful ambition in life blinds you.

A root of bitterness in your walk with the Lord will blind you. You'll do the most foolish, consequential, damaging things in your life as a result of that.

And so beware lest a root of bitterness spring up within. It defiles many.

Not only do we have this pronouncement of her wrestling against her sister, but we also have this sort of narrative setup of where Jacob's going to wrestle with God.

You see again this power of jealousy. The Apostle James, he says, where do wars and fights come from?

You know, the King James, you just, you gotta say it, right? We'll read New King, but whence come, whence come wars, fightings from among you?

Do they not come from your desires for pleasure, that war in your members? You lust and you do not have.

You murder and you covet and you cannot obtain. There's a summary statement of Rachel's life. She hates her sister.

She wrestles against her. She murders her sister, according to Matthew 6.

She covets, but she cannot obtain. She fights and she wars. She has, but she does not ask.

She has, but she's spending it on her flesh, which begs the question, brothers and sisters, what are our ambitions driving us to do in a similarly foolish and consequential way?

Well, we can all name things that we want and we do not have, the things that we covet and cannot obtain, and it could be a relationship.

It could literally be right off the page to have children. It could be to be in a different relationship, to have a different career path, to have a different setup or provision.

Whatever it can be, do we recognize the hand of God's providence? Are we willing to submit and walk in God's blessing according to God's time, or are we going to take matters into our own hands and watch as the households are imploding?

So we have the fruit of Leah's womb, the fruit of Bilhah's womb, and now the fruit of Zilpah's womb.

Genesis 30, beginning in verse 9. When Leah saw that she had stopped bearing, she took Zilpah, her maid, and gave her to Jacob as a wife.

She's mirroring her sister's sin. Oh, well, you're going to do that? Well, I'm going to do this. And Leah's maid,

Zilpah, bore Jacob a son, and Leah said, a troop comes. This is just boasting.

You know, I've got an army I'm building over here. She called his name Gad. And Leah's maid,

Zilpah, bore Jacob a second son, and Leah said, I'm happy. My daughters are going to call me blessed, and she called his name

Asher. That statement, happy, is to me one of the most artificial statements in this whole exchange.

I'm really happy now. I'm so happy that I've given my maid over to Jacob's embrace.

I've introduced now that same disorder and potential destruction into my own marriage. And so this rivalry has become a sinful mirror, the same distrust of God, the same forceful surrogacy.

I mean, there's abuse at unimaginable levels involved in this. And then she just claims,

I'm so happy now. I'm happy. Daughters will call me blessed. In the context of misery, she says,

I'm so happy. She's made her life a train wreck, and she's so happy. Isn't she happy?

Clearly, she's happy. Back to the old ways. Where was that contentment she felt when

Judah came along, and she says, now I praise the Lord? When she saw Bilhah giving offspring in her sister's name, all of a sudden she said, no,

I can't be content anymore. I've got to keep my sister back. Pretty soon she'll have the same amount of sons that I do through Bilhah.

Zilpah, you're going to have to help me out. Where was that contentment she felt when she said, now

I praise the Lord? It's gone. Blinded by jealousy. Fourth, we see the fruit of Leah's womb again, and here we have this interesting exchange that takes place in the field.

This is taking place over a seven -year span, if you can picture this commotion.

We read, beginning in verse 14, now Reuben went in the days of the wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field.

That would be a rare plant to find, and so this was quite an event. Brought them to his mother,

Leah. And Rachel said to Leah, please, give me some of your son's mandrakes.

And Leah said to Rachel, is it a small matter that you've taken away my husband?

Would you take away my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, therefore, he will lie with you tonight for your son's mandrakes.

Do you see what's going on here before we get to mandrakes? Here's mandrakes, and we're going to explain the significance of that in a moment.

And Leah's son says, you know, mom, mom, look what I found. And she's thinking, well, this is excellent. Rachel, right, who has not have children of her own yet, she's saying, please, please,

I need some of those. Please, please share those with me. And Leah says, you know, what kind of gall do you have?

You've taken my husband away. You've taken Jacob away from me. And now you're going to take even my son's mandrakes?

And so Rachel then makes this offer. She says, he will lie with you tonight for your son's mandrakes.

So here's the second bit of evidence that Leah was unloved. Jacob spent every night with Rachel, the woman that he loved.

Leah was in her tent with all these pack and plays and soothing machines going.

All sorts of crying, and there's Rachel and Jacob in their little honeymoon suite.

And so here's the barter. I'll make sure that Jacob goes in with you. Just give me those mandrakes.

This is all that Leah wanted, right? Jacob's affection. And so that's the trade.

Mandrakes for a night with her husband. The Warring Sisters have this negotiation, and that leads to the significance of the mandrakes.

Literally, they're love fruits. That would be actually a gloss on the word mandrake. It's a plant that has these bluish flowers in the winter, and in the summer it grows sort of this plum -sized fruit, this yellowish fruit.

And it was known throughout the ancient world as an aphrodisiac. So something that would put you in the mood, so to speak.

Romans had plenty of aphrodisiacs, whether they were true or not, but this one seems to have been widespread. Not only at this period in ancient history, but even for millennia to come.

And we see this in the Song of the Shulamites, Song of Solomon 7, 11, and 12. Come, my beloved, let us go forth to the field.

Let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards. Let us see if the vine has budded. Whether the grape blossoms are open, the pomegranates are in bloom.

If you know Song of Solomon, he's not actually talking about agriculture. There I will give you my love.

The mandrakes give off a fragrance. At our gate are pleasant fruits, all manner, new and old.

I've laid them up for you, my beloved. So here you get that sense of this mandrake being the sort of entree to intimacy.

And the idea is, if it had that kind of effect, as far as marital intimacy, it could also have, perhaps, an impact on fertility.

And so you would use an aphrodisiac in the ancient world in the hopes of gaining fertility. And that seems to be on Rachel's mind.

If I can get a hold of these mandrakes, maybe somehow this will actually lead to me bearing a son.

Maybe this is the fertility drug I need. It's interesting that she has the mandrakes, and she goes on for many more years without a child.

It was not what she needed. What she needed was to trust in the Lord. We're not surprised to find

Rachel having, perhaps, superstitious attachment. She's not going to CVS and saying,

I have a prescription for mandrakes, right? There seems to be some, perhaps, ritual significance to the mandrakes here.

We see that in chapter 31. Rachel has an attachment to the household gods. There's still something of pagan superstition clinging to her.

She's learned of the Lord, learned how to beseech the Lord, but there still seems to be some area of compromise in her life, especially when it comes to this hope of fertility.

Which rings true for almost all of Israelite history. They know of the

Lord, they walk with the Lord, they beseech the Lord, but when it comes to the need for fertility, whether in the field or in the tent, they tend to build bales and ashtoreths.

They tend to turn to pagan superstition, pagan means. The goddess Aphrodite, we get the word aphrodisiac from.

She was known as the Lady of the Mandrake for a reason. When Jacob came out in the field in the evening,

Leah went out to meet him, this is verse 16, and she said, you must come in to me. I've surely hired you with my son's mandrakes, and he lay with her that night.

So now Jacob's the one being traded like cattle. Laban traded his daughters like cattle in these wedding contracts to try to secure more labor from Jacob, and now

Jacob is being sold between these sisters as ammunition in their rivalry.

Well, you take him, no, it's my turn. No, you get him now, well, let's trade for him. Well, where's that sense of love that Leah had?

It seems that no longer is she even that interested in Jacob. It seems like she's more interested in spiting

Rachel. They're buying and selling. This is not what marriage is intended to be.

This is not what marital intimacy is intended to be. This is not what progeny from marital intimacy is intended to be.

What is meant to be mysterious, deeply enigmatic, some of the most profound experiences in human life becomes something very cheap.

Sell it for fruit. Your turn, my turn, and that's what happens with sin, isn't it?

Human life is devalued. Human experience is cheapened. Things that are mysterious and imbued with a sense of the divine become something marginal, something vulgar.

And we see that even in the marriage bed of Jacob with Rachel and Leah. The dehumanizing effect of sin.

We're surrounded in our world today with the dehumanizing effects of sin. Is there anything sacred?

You read about it and you go, is there nothing sacred? Is there nothing sacred? We send our children off to schools, atheist training centers to say, you're nothing but highly evolved protoplasm.

You're very sophisticated pieces of meat, and then we're amazed that there's nothing sacred about human relationships or human intimacy.

God listens to Leah, verse 17, that perhaps is the most shocking thing.

In the midst of this sinful, jealous rivalry, God is still blessing and giving children.

That children are not the automatic sign of God's blessing being upon the holy.

God is listening to Leah, and he's blessing Leah. She conceives and she bears

Jacob a fifth son. Leah said, God has given me my wages. What a completely twisted way to think of this whole situation.

I somehow earned this. I negotiated, I made it work, and now I've earned this son.

I've given my maid to my husband. Isn't this great? She called his name Issachar.

And Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son. And Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment.

I am made abundant by God. Now my husband will dwell with me. I've born him six sons.

And she called his name Zebulun. So what's still driving Leah? Now he'll be mine.

Now I'll be able to gloat over Rachel, all for a bowl of soup, all for mandrakes in the field.

We have the mirror image of the sibling rivalry. And then afterward, verse 21, she bore a daughter and called her name

Dinah. We have a setup here for chapter 34. We're introduced early on to this tragic character,

Dinah. Fifth and last, as we come to the end of our passage, beginning in verse nine, we have the fruit of Rachel's womb.

So we began with the fruit of Leah's womb, and then through Bilhah and Zilpah, and then

Leah again with the fifth and sixth sons. And now finally, at last, we come to the fruit of Rachel's womb.

We read, verse 22, then God remembered Rachel. And that verb remembered is so significant.

It's not seeing, it's not hearing, it doesn't belong to Hagar, it doesn't belong to Bilhah, it belongs to Rachel.

God remembered her. This is a covenantal action, a covenantal activity.

And the way that God had remembered his promise to Abraham and made Sarah fruitful, and the way that God remembered his promise to Eve and rolled back the floodwaters from the earth when he remembered

Noah, God remembers Rachel. He listened to her, he opened her womb, and she conceived, and she bore a son.

And she said, God has taken away my repose. She's thinking clearly, she's thinking rightly.

She called his name Joseph. And then she said, the Lord will add to me another son.

And she sort of prophesied with this son, not only has he taken away my reproach,

I will be fruitful again. He's undone that barrenness. Now I will be like a field, this will repeat.

And so we come at the very end of our passage, the birth of the long -awaited son. We of course see

God filling up the household of Jacob, setting up the progeny that would become the nation of Israel according to its tribes, and yet there's also this dynamic of waiting by faith, like Abraham with Rachel, to bring that long -awaited seed, that long -awaited seed of promise.

Now we know that the seed of promise is not Joseph, but it's setting up the fact that the last almost half of Genesis will be the

Joseph cycle. And with the birth of Joseph, it's almost like you want the confetti cannons to blast off all these years.

And she finally has a boy, and I think she experiences something of the contentment that Leah felt all too short when

Judah was born. We see that because she doesn't say, I will name him because the mandrakes finally worked.

No, she says, God has taken away my reproach. God is the one who's answered.

God is the one who has done this thing. Walter Brugeman, sort of a summary of this.

I think this is just absolutely beautiful. The stress of the entire narrative from Genesis 29 -31 up to where we just read is the movement from barrenness to conception and birth.

That movement is never accomplished by human activity. It comes by the faithful, inexplicable remembrance of God.

For bereft Israel, remember Moses is writing to Israel. For bereft Israel, God's remembering is the only source of hope.

It is the ground for the exiles in Isaiah 49. Other than this faithful, if we could put, covenantal memory of God, there's no reason for an heir to be expected.

There's no reason for a hope of a future that will be sure, but God remembers. And that remembering is the very heart of the gospel.

That is so, so profoundly true. That God remembering even here in the tent of Rachel, at the very end of that seven years, even that is

God remembering the gospel promise he had made in Genesis 3 -15. Brugeman says it will not be explained.

It can only be affirmed. In other words, we can't explain why God will remember in light of what we see erupting between them and in their household, all the sin, outbursts of wrath, jealousy, defilement, superstition, lack of faith.

And yet God hears. God remembers. God answers. God blesses. He says we can't explain it.

We can only affirm it. There it is. We can only celebrate it, he said. Celebrate it.

We can only rely upon it. So as we close, three questions to make sure we see the significance of what we're reading.

First question, how does this fit into Jacob's story, the larger story of Jacob?

Well, the beginning we're told that the Lord saw that Leah was in love.

The Lord heard that Leah was in love. He opened Leah's womb. And at the end, the

Lord remembers Rachel and he opens Rachel's womb. So God is the main actor between the household of Jacob being filled, between the

Lord opening the womb not only of Rachel, but also of Leah. And then in the middle of this, we see this sibling rivalry and it mirrors the rivalry of Esau and Jacob, struggling against the sibling for the blessing, a blessing that's perhaps taken for granted and one that's desperately sought.

Give me this or I die. Second question, how does this then fit into the larger story of Genesis?

Even just within Jacob's story, but moving forward. Well, on the back of your song sheet, not the bulletin, but that other sheet,

I printed out a little chiasm for you. So chiasm, this is a fancy way of kind of saying an

X. I don't know why it's called a chiasm, but it's a way of organizing literary structures.

And so you'll notice that there's corresponding letters. There's A, and then you'll see A with the apostrophe,

B down with BC, and you'll see where it goes. It all goes toward a certain letter that is not repeated.

And when you have a chiastic structure and narrative, the piece that is not repeated is the piece that is emphatic or that is significant.

And so when we're looking at Jacob's life from chapter 27 up to 33, which we haven't gotten to, we can see just how significant the end of 29 and the beginning of chapter 30 are.

We begin with Jacob stealing Esau's blessing, 27. And at the very end of the cycle, chapter 33, this is going to find its fulfillment, it's denouement.

Jacob reconciled to Esau. So those are the As. In chapter 28, we saw

Jacob encountering God at Bethel. The corresponding B in chapter 32,

Jacob encounters God at Penuo. The Cs, Laban deceives. In chapter 29,

Laban is deceived, as we'll see in the next chapter. And then the hinge, the structurally significant event.

God gives Jacob a household. So the chiasm, seeing the literary structure in this way, shows

God had made a promise to Jacob, a promise that was given even before these twins were born because it was a promise that was given to Abraham, that there would be a seed born unto him, a nation that would be mighty, and it would be a blessing to all of the nations of the world.

And we have that promise affirmed to Jacob even at Bethel in chapter 28. I put that verse there.

I am the Lord God of Abraham, your father, the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie.

I give to you and your descendants. Also, your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.

And in you and in your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So what is God doing in that D line, in that apex of this chiasm?

What is he doing in the passage we have before us? He is giving Jacob a seed in fulfillment of his promise.

He is blessing Jacob so that Jacob will be a blessing. But as we see in our passage, this blessing does not come without struggle.

And we can take that as a paradigm for the Christian life. Blessing rarely comes without struggle.

The struggle between Rachel and Leah, the struggle between Jacob and Rachel, the struggle between Jacob and Leah, the struggle between all three of them and Laban, there's struggle at every intersection.

And ultimately we'll see the struggle between Jacob and God as the pretext for the reconciliation between Jacob and Esau, the very beginning of Jacob's story.

When Jacob can say, seeing him was like seeing the face of God, to be reconciled to my brother.

What we see here in our passage, ultimately are, we'll say 11 sons, but for the sake of completion, the 12 sons,

Benjamin's coming. 12 sons born to Leah and Rachel. And of course, the climatic moment in this episode is the birth of Joseph, the long awaited son born unto

Rachel. And it's not just important because it sets up the last narrative cycle of Genesis, but it's also important typologically.

We recognize that we're meant to key in to the significance of Joseph, this long awaited son, who's born into sibling rivalry.

His brothers hate him, want to treat him as a slave. The one Philippians 2 says became a slave for our sake.

And Joseph is the man that God has appointed, that he would deliver his people from inevitable death.

He's the beloved son, the son that is left for dead, abused, who rises, as it were, out of the dead in order to save his people, in order to provide for them that they will not perish, that they might eat everlasting.

And what was meant for evil against him, God meant for good. What was evil upon him,

God meant for good, God meant to bless. What was the most unimaginable evil to the greater

Joseph was meant to be the very blessing of Abraham upon the nations of the world.

And so this connects us to the biggest story of redemption. We recognize that the struggle between Leah and Rachel is the struggle between the offspring of Eve and the offspring of the serpent.

We know that this promise has to be fulfilled and it's going to come typologically through Joseph.

It's going to be one like Joseph, and yet biologically through Judah. And as we trace the offspring of Judah, we come to the birth of David, the king, who establishes the kingdom of God, whose son builds the house of God's worship.

And it's David's greater son, the one whom David called Lord, that descends as the lion of Judah, the one through whom all the nations of the earth are blessed.

So that's the biggest span of what we're reading. It's God's faithfulness to the covenant that he had made.

The development of Genesis 3 .15, even here in this cobbled, dysfunctional tent of Jacob.

And there's a lot that we don't get. Mandrakes, bride prices, all sorts of weird customs, cultural, not only historical distance makes this so hard to relate to in many ways.

And yet as we read these things, we read of the jealousy, we read of the struggle, we read of the passivity, we read of the distance, it's all too familiar, isn't it?

Jealousy and rivalry between siblings, a feeling of being unloved, a desire for love, a desire to use blessing in order to spite or compare or boast, difficulty in marriage, suffering, trial or loss that creates distance, even animosity, victim blaming.

That's all too familiar to our experience, isn't it? Leah was questioning whether she was loved. She certainly didn't feel very desired.

Treated like cattle by her father, treated like cattle by her husband. All she had going for her was that she was a little better in her eyes than her sister.

That's all that she cared about. And yet God loved her and he gave her sons, and out of this broken household comes the one who builds the household of God.

And clearly Rachel's questioning whether she's valuable. I can't even bring a son to my husband. And there must have been some sentiment deep within her that said

I feel like I'm gonna die if I don't have a son. Give me children lest I die. Good thing she wasn't

Henry VIII's wife. Give me children or you die would be Henry VIII. But she felt the opposite, give me children or I die.

So she didn't feel very valued and yet she was beloved of God. He made her walk through that trial and then he remembered her.

These sisters are filled with discontentment. That discontentment leads to jealousy and envy, wars and fighting.

They create sort of a cold war with their own children. Rather than having children as a blessing of God to be stewarded, that they might be arrows for the next generation, a testimony for the way and truth of God, a blessing to be enjoyed and delighted in through all the seasons and even in old age being surrounded by olive plants and their strength and beauty.

Rather than viewing children in that way in that very God honoring, God given way, they treat children like nuclear warheads in the

Cold War. They keep proliferating to gain the edge. Rather than gifts of God, they use them as weapons to spite each other.

And then Jacob seems completely aloof to their misery. He passively goes into their maids when they're fighting, when their jealousy is enraged enough to cause him to do so.

He just goes along with it. We don't see Jacob really addressing their pain. He's completely dull to the effects of jealousy within his tents.

He really does come off in many ways as a buffoon, at least later on in the story. This is only a seven year span.

Where is the moral leadership of Jacob? Why can't he sit his wives down and say, this can't go on.

This can't go on. What are you, what are we doing? What impact are we having on our children?

This can't go on. Where does he convict them of their jealousy rather than just go along with it?

You can picture Jacob taking the opportunity to just go along to keep the peace as a passive husband always does.

Well, my sister said, blah, blah, blah, blah. Tell me about it. She's crazy, you know. And then he goes to the other tent, says the exact same thing about the other sister.

Completely passive, indifferent to their misery, willing to take all of the consequence, the thorns and the thistles of their sin into his family life.

Husbands, we cannot be this way. We cannot be this way. We need to be the kind of man that will not passively go along with sin or jealousy or rivalry or envy.

Pulling splinters out of our eyes, but doing so in order that we might sit down with our wives and say, honey,

I love you and I know you're venting and I know you want me to go along with you and say all the things and affirm you, but you're not thinking rightly.

We need husbands that are willing to sleep on the couch for the cause of God and truth. I don't think

Jacob was willing to do that. Of course, we're not saying husbands are perfect and perfectly discerning, but it's all too easy for a wife to batter and manipulate her husband to be passive so that he'll affirm how she feels about other people, other relationships.

And when the husband sees the issue, sees it's deteriorating, knows that this is only gonna get worse and there's only gonna be more consequences, to give into passivity there is to dishonor

God and to really, in a most spiteful way, allow your wife to enter into sin and to have ongoing consequences of sin.

There's no worse way to unlove your wife than that. Jacob's household is in complete disarray.

We ought to look at this passage and examine ourselves. Where are we passive towards sin? Where do we not guard against envy, rivalry?

Where is there coldness or distance that we need to lay hold of and examine and get to the bottom of? And maybe it's been festering for so long that we need help to do that.

But here's the encouragement. There is an encouragement in this passage. Jacob's household is in complete disarray.

There's dysfunction and envy and wrath and it's just, it's not a good situation at all.

And yet, as is almost the phrase you have to keep in mind throughout the lives of the patriarchs, and yet, and despite all that,

God is blessing them and God is working out his perfect plan in their lives. Jacob's household is in complete dysfunction.

There needs to be repentance, earnestness, transparency. You feel like they need like 18 counselors to come in and do sort of a three -month, you know, back -to -basics bootcamp?

This thing is knotted in all sorts of horrific ways and it's only been seven years and it's not gonna get prettier. And yet,

God is graciously blessing Jacob, building up the household of Jacob, giving Jacob the promises, piece by piece, child by child, step by step, year by year.

The promise he had made to Abraham, he is keeping even to Jacob. Even while each sister is going about seeking their own desire in their own way, discounting the blessing of God, making it all about their rage toward each other, even as Jacob is completely passive and allowing these things to be, shows no spine, no conviction in his leadership as a man of God or heir of the promise.

Nevertheless, in all of that foolish sin and stubborn rebellion, God is blessing his people, bringing about his ultimate desire for their lives, which means behind all of their family's strife, behind all of the difficulties of daily life, the feelings of pressure, jealousy, wrath, frustration, exhaustion, hopes, and letdowns, curveballs, sicknesses,

God was working out his plan of redemption. When you repent of your sins and you place your trust in Jesus, this is the experience you have.

It's the and yet experience. It's the despite all this experience. You know that God's blessing is on you, you know that he's filling your life with his good presence.

You see that as you're facing trials and temptations of various kinds, you're tempted to trust in your own self -ability, your own self -sufficiency.

You turn after idols that promise an easier way, a shortcut to God's blessing, and yet even as you stumble, fall, and are dragged back out of those things, you see that God is keeping his promise, working his plan out in your life.

And so we find ourselves in the very place of Jacob. We are Jacob, we are Leah, we are

Rachel. Behind all the family strife, the difficulties of daily life,

God working his plan out in our lives, and whether we see it or not in that day -to -day battle, the

Lion of Judah is coming. And if only we could go back in those pages and turn their heads away from the waves of the struggles of the day and just say, just look at what

God is doing. Just time out, take a step back.

Do you not know where you are in God's purpose? Do you not see what comes out of this? The promise seed is coming through you.

Take heart, repent, cleanse yourselves. Put these things off, look at what

God is doing. And if we wanna do it for them, then we ought to do it for ourselves.

Take a step back. What is God working out of our lives? Why is he doing it?

What is this all for? It seems so inconsequential. It doesn't really seem to be anything but just the heaves and haws of life, the ebbs and flows of family pressures.

But that's never the Lord's way. The Lion of Judah is coming. I'll close with this.

This is a complete turn away from everything I just said, and I have no place to fit it. I just don't wanna pass it by, it's too amazing.

We'll take this as sort of the altar call, as it were. This is

A .W. Pink. You know, spiritualizing, I think, more than I would, but the point stands.

He says, others before us have written much upon the 12 patriarchs, the typical significance of their names, meaning that they're types of the true

Israel of God, right? And that much is certainly true. And not only that, but the order in which they are mentioned.

It has been pointed out how the gospel and the history of a sinner saved by grace is here found in a veiled form.

Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, means see, a son. You know, behold, a son.

This is just what God says to us through the gospel. See, behold, a son, a son of love.

Behold the Lamb of God. And then comes Simeon, whose name means hearing. God has heard.

And this points to the receiving of that gospel by faith, for faith comes by hearing, and the promise is hear, and your soul shall be saved.

Next in order is Levi, whose name means joined. And it tells of that blessed union which the

Holy Spirit makes with us and the Son through the hearing of the word. And then

Judah, which means praise, right? Now I praise the Lord. We have manifested the divine life in the believer when we praise the

Lord for what he's given. And that is shown in our joyous gratitude for the grace which are ours in Christ.

Then comes Dan, which means, did you know this guy is judgment? Several Dan's here.

Dan means judgment. And this tells of how the believer uncompromisingly passes a sentence upon himself, not only for what he has done, but because of what he is.

And he reckons himself judged by God, dead to his sin.

Naphtali means wrestling, and it speaks of that earnestness in prayer, which is the very breath of this new life in God.

And next comes Gad, which means troop or company, speaking of the believer now fellowshipping with the

Lord's people. And then Jacob's eighth son announces the effect of Christian fellowship, because Asher means happy.

Issachar means hire, and it speaks of service. And then

Zebulun, which signifies dwelling, reminds us that we are to hold, occupy until Christ returns.

And then Joseph, which means adding, addition, tells of the reward which he will bestow on those who have served diligently and occupied faithfully.

And then Benjamin, the last of Jacob's sons means the son of my right hand, and it speaks directly of Christ.

And so the circle ends where it begins, with our blessed Lord, the first and the last, amen.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that your plan has worked out in our lives despite us.

We see the consequences of sin in us, around us, through us, and yet your grace is always at work.

And your promise is sure, it does not let us go. It fulfills, even in the midst of this dysfunction and rebellion and stubbornness, so many things left undone, unbuilt, unsewn.

And yet your grace is tenderly at work, bearing, long -suffering, upholding, persevering.

We see in Leah and Rachel in this passage a mirror of Jacob and Esau, and we see in that Lord just a mirror of us all.

We see our experience in their lives and in their relationships. Lord, deliver us. Help us to cast away those feelings, those experiences, those perceptions that so easily entangle and defile us.

Let us have the mind of Christ. Let us know from him what it is to truly love.

Not just to put up with, but to actually love. Not just to have an indifference or a cold charity, but to actually love the way that you love us.

These things we ask in your son's name. Well, now's our time for interaction.

So this is a time that we invite the men here to share, reflect, add, emphasize, even take away if necessary.

But it's all meant to edify the body. Brother. I'm thinking a lot about the whole we need

Christian husbands to sleep on the couch. Those things you, as soon as you say it, you're like, hmm, that maybe isn't what

I wanted to say. Yeah, yeah. No, my wife just threw me a compliment.

I thought you were gonna say my wife just threw me on the couch last night. No, no, she threw me a compliment, but I'm just thinking about it, and she says, oh, you do a good job at when there's issues and we catch ourselves bickering or whatever trying to figure out a solution to the issue.

And it made me think, I know you and I had a conversation of why I hate that cartoon, Daniel Tiger, and you have this character who frequently is taking temper tantrums or clearly just sitting, and instead of addressing the sin, they come up with a catchy song or something like when you feel this way, let's whatever, not address the sin of selfishness or disobedience or whatever, let's go dance.

And so, that's hard. It's hard to address, I've been reading through the

Proverbs a lot, and it reminds me of how our words specifically, the tongue is capable of building up and tearing down, and it's easier to not address those things.

So I'm just thinking a lot about that, and I wanna be somebody who, we know that out from the mouth is what reveals what's within the heart, and God cares about the condition of the heart, and I feel especially responsible as the husband and the head of our little household to make sure that I'm mindful of that not only with myself, but with my wife and with my children, and I don't want perfectly obedient little soldiers,

I want a wife and a child and myself to have a heart for the Lord and the things that he cares about, so.

Amen, thank you. Yeah, just to build on that, kinda three points as far as applying it to husbands, maybe.

I think passivity is sort of the original sin of Adam as far as being a husband goes, right, and so that's reflected amply through us all.

As Christian husbands, I think we see that more clearly. In the world, maybe one out of 100 men is not passive, but just entirely overbearing.

Obsessed with controlling every little thing, and wife almost wishes he was passive. It's like,

I kinda wish you were like that. I'd say in our circles that that might be more like one in 10.

Trying to get things in order, and so it's kinda like, but passivity often will still erupt, and the overbearing will come out in only certain areas that are actually of concern to that husband.

Overbearing about the things that matter to him, and then completely passive about the things that don't, which almost always are the things that actually matter the most to God.

So he can be neurotically overbearing about the things that might make his life uncomfortable, you know, or whatnot.

How he wants things done, but then when it comes to certain things that we know are priorities for God, the husband would be completely passive there, and it doesn't take a young husband long to build a radar detection system for how can

I keep the peace versus, you know, what's right, and this is part of how God tests and sanctifies us as men, you know, we have these relationships with our wives, and they have an emotional intensity and an emotional intelligence that men usually lack.

You say, you know, how do you think Bill is doing? Oh, he's doing good. Well, how do you know that?

I went up to him, and I said, how you doing, Bill? And he said, good, and I was like, good, and we walked away, and I was just like, well, you know, that would not happen.

Men are, you know, Neanderthals when it comes to relational reciprocity, but with that great, positive virtue of being very emotionally intense and bound and sensitive to relationships and lives, there is this prospect that women will really struggle in this area, and the worst thing we can do to counteract that sin is to go into our sin of being entirely passive and going, yeah,

I agree with you. That's the worst thing we can do, and so there is an application to say,

Jacob seems like a brute. He was angry at Rachel when she was, you know, that's there, but I'm more interested in addressing

Jacob's sort of passivity in the way that he enabled his household to be in shambles. That doesn't give men a pass.

It doesn't make them, you know, neutral party at all. I just think, in some ways, our passivity gives us some leverage to be able to address these kinds of issues in relationships in the home, and it's really important.

It's really important. That root of bitterness, it defiles many. Even the passive husband will be defiled by it.

Mike was eyeing the mic, so I grabbed it before him. You know, there's so much in this.

Thank you, Ross. I did wanna, one of the things that I was thinking about, and you reminded me of it when you shared

Calvin's, it's about what you guys are talking about, but about Calvin's quote there, that cold charity is not love, right?

You know, I think it's important for us as men and women to really think about that, not in this narrative, but in our own narratives, in our own lives.

You know, for me, he says it much better than I would ever say it. Like, I see this tendency, and I guess you'd call it passivity, but like, to be neutral, to be inactive, which is passive, and thinking that that is really love.

I mean, how do you fool yourself that badly when you have a savior like Christ, whose love is demonstrated by action, sacrifice, humility, self -sacrifice, and then we dwindle it down to passivity or neutrality, like, okay,

I'm just not gonna, no. Indifferent. Well, it's gonna be like, I'm just gonna control, I'm gonna have self -control and not say what my flesh wants me to say or do.

I'm just not gonna do anything. I'm just gonna kind of go along. I'm just not gonna do anything. I'm gonna call that love, and I'm actually gonna call it love, which is really like, it's a good start, maybe, to have some restraint, right?

But it clearly isn't the love that God has for us. It clearly is a

Jacob type of love, and a love, you know, his wives as well. It's a

Jacob type of love, and who wants to be defined by that? Although, if you look at your own life, your own narrative, and your own marriage and family, right, you certainly, certainly, in and of ourselves, right, if we're not near to Christ, we all wanna live that way.

We all wanna live that way. You know, and it is, frankly, it is sin, right?

This type of passivity, this type of neutrality, or cold charity, as Calvin says, right?

It is cold, the word there is cold, right? That's to be emphasized in describing the charity, which is no charity at all, right?

And boy, and you know, we're gonna partake of this meal now, and this meal, you know,

Christ did nothing like that. Nothing like that, he didn't sit passively on the side and say, well, if he did, we would have all been judged rightly, and everyone would go to hell.

You know, that's what passivity brings, right? Instead, we have a

Savior who was, and his Father, and the Holy Spirit, who were actively loving, sacrificially, right?

Sacrificially loving their bride, right, his bride, right? The one who didn't deserve it, the one who was in the midst of sin, right?

Just like this paragraph shows us, the great thing that we're seeing in this passage is

God's grace despite all of that's going on. And then for us to, at the end of it, we've got a

Savior through the line of Judah, as you said, right? Because of God's grace, many would say, well, you know, that was

Leah, and that was Jacob, you know, procreating, right? No, no, all the ways that that happened, really, we're not right, but God saves all of this by his grace, and then in the meantime, as you said, you know, this covenant continues for us.

We're in the same place as them. We're in the same place. The things that make daily life difficult, and where we see sin creeping out, we need to keep in mind what

God is doing, and the fact that, just like they were waiting for the Lion Judah to come, as he did 2 ,000 years ago, we're waiting for him to come at the very end, and so we need to live lives of faith and sanctification in the same way.

Amen, and don't be passive. Love, sacrifice, and if your life is so full of things that you feel like you've got no choice but to be passive, because you have so many things that you need to do, repent, and let's encourage one another to thin the things out in our lives that we can focus on.

That way, we can love, not coldly, but love, not in a Jacob way, but love in a

Christ -like way. Amen, amen. My wife just pointed out the church of Laodicea.

The Lord said, I wish you were either hot or cold, and since you're not, I'm gonna spit you out of my mouth. It kind of ties in with that.

We know a couple from a church that we used to go to, and the husband was always just kind of like, you couldn't get an emotion out of the guy.

He was just passive all the time, and this woman ended up just, she won't leave the house now.

She's just like over the, she's afraid to leave the house, and it's almost like you see the fruit of that passivity.

You just can't get a reaction out of him, and that's sort of like a consequence of that passivity.

It's just drove her over the edge, and she just is afraid of everything now. She feels like she's constantly under judgment and just condemned, and she's been a believer for a lot of years, and it's just, it's true.

It's like, it'll drive you crazy. Drive you crazy, great, great application.

I just, just as a side note, I find this whole thing interesting because it's interesting the way the

Lord, you can see the sovereignty of God where he gave Leah Judah, so she was the unloved wife, but she got

Judah, who was the line of the Messiah, and then further, Judah has

Tamar, which is his daughter -in -law, and that's in the line of the Messiah, and it just always amazes me how he takes all this.

You know, you couldn't make this up. I mean, you could not make this story up because if somebody made this up, they wouldn't have anything like that in this whole narrative, and it's just an awesome, awesome section of Scripture, and I appreciate the way that you taught it.