God's Goodness on Display Genesis 30:1-24

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Lately, in my own personal Bible reading time, I've been reading through Proverbs.
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Like all books of the Bible, Proverbs is both life -giving and fascinating.
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It tells the key to living a life that's going to end well. Proverbs, like other places in Scripture, describes life as two paths.
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But what's interesting about Proverbs is that it presents it in the way of the path of the wise versus the path of the foolish.
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Wise people are those who follow the Lord's way, while the foolish forsake the Lord's way and go down their own path.
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Proverbs 25 .20 says these sobering words about the foolish. The evil man has no future.
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The lamp of the wicked will be put out. Proverbs 16 .18 describes it in even more darker details.
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Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
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On the other hand, the wise are much different from the foolish. The wise fear the
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Lord and trust Him with their path. The most well -known passage in Proverbs is the most well -known for a reason, and maybe you know this verse,
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Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
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In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. And these verses here, they're the most well -known for a reason.
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The wise are those who pursue the Lord and seek Him for guidance. They do not go their own way like the foolish, but go
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His way. The path of the foolish is a confusing and difficult one.
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You could ask random people on the streets and say, what gets you out of bed in the morning?
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And they might not know why. What's the purpose of living life?
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Theologian J .I. Packer said these words about the foolish path. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business for those who do not know about God.
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Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.
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This way you can waste your life and lose your soul. This is the experience of many in our world today.
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This might be your experience today. People's lives have no compass and their life is a mess.
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But, the way to live an abundant, pleasant, fulfilling life that ends in glory is no mystery.
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Scripture has told us this path. Proverbs has told us the path of wisdom.
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And the other 65 books of the Bible tell the same direction. Solomon, who also wrote
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Proverbs, wrote in another book in Ecclesiastes 12 -13, Fear God and keep
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His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. To take this wise path, things will go well with you.
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Who of us does not want things to go well with us? Now this morning, as we continue our sermon series through Genesis, we are going to see two examples of God's goodness on display.
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We saw the first one two Sundays ago. We saw the Lord's goodness in His compassion toward Leah in her misery.
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And He is also merciful to us when we face our low points in life. The two examples of the
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Lord's goodness that we will see today will show that life works the way it should when
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God is the captain of your life. So I encourage you to turn with me in a
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Bible to Genesis 30. We'll be looking at verses 1 -24. And if you're using a red
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Bible in the pews, it's on pages 28 and 29. So to remind you, two
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Sundays ago, the proposition, and this is one big sermon, the proposition is the
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Lord's goodness is always shown in the lives of His people. And the first example of that is that He is compassionate to His suffering children.
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And we saw how the Lord was compassionate toward Leah by giving her the ability to bear children.
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While Rachel, the favored woman, could not. So the
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Lord's goodness is always shown in the lives of His people. And the second example is that He is the giver of life and purpose.
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We'll see this in verses 1 -13 of chapter 30. As the Lord has shown compassion toward Leah, as we saw two
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Sundays ago, Rachel becomes jealous. If you can remember, back in chapter 29, verse 17, the narrator
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Moses gave the description of the appearances of the two sisters. He said that Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance.
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Rachel's appearance has probably given her the favored position throughout her life between these two sisters.
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And as we saw in 29 -18, Jacob loved Rachel over Leah because Rachel was more attractive.
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So Rachel is not used to being passed over for another. But this is precisely what the
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Lord has done in our text. Up to this point, He has blessed Leah by giving her children, but not
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Rachel. As Rachel looks on at these four children that Leah has given birth to, she becomes very jealous.
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So let's look at verse 1. When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister.
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She said to Jacob, Give me children, or I shall die.
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So we see here, Rachel envies her sister. To envy someone is to wish you had what someone else had.
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When men see someone driving down the road with a Lamborghini, feelings of envy can come up in your heart.
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You might say, I want that possession. That's what we call envy if you entertain that thought.
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In our text, Rachel has committed this sin. Her envy leads her to get angry, and she tells her husband
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Jacob, Give me children, or I shall die. What we see here is that Rachel finds her identity and her ability to have children.
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She wonders if life is worth living if she can't fulfill this purpose. This is a clear application for us.
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We should never find our identity in something earthly, like what
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Rachel is doing here. Your life may not turn out the way you thought, and where you once found purpose may be taken from you.
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And if this be the case, realize that as a Christian, your identity has always been in Jesus Christ.
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Your life has been guided by Him for His good purposes. The purpose of your life is to know and to enjoy
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Him. Whatever road He takes us down, we must trust Him. We were singing that song today.
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Your identity in Jesus Christ. My worth is not in what I own, or anything else.
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My worth is in Him. And when you live your life that way, you're invincible.
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When you understand that, you're invincible, because no matter what happens to you, your identity doesn't change.
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It's with Christ. So what gets you out of bed in the morning? It should be your relationship with Him.
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And if something is taken from you that you have found joy in, realize that the source of your joy is not whatever may be a big part of your life.
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It's not your ultimate source of joy, but your source of joy is
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Christ. He is your identity, and the captain of your life. The Lord knows what
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He is doing and where He is taking you. This is what Rachel should have realized. She should have said,
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I am going to trust the Lord through this. And if you plan to give me children, great.
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And if not, my purpose for living has not been lost. Now as you might expect,
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Jacob is not happy about Rachel's demand to give him children. This is what he says. Jacob's anger, in verse 2, was kindled against Rachel.
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And he said, am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?
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You can see why Rachel is upset at Jacob. Jacob has been having no problem having children with Leah, but with Rachel, they have been unable to conceive a child.
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In verse 2, Jacob's theology is right. He says that God is the giver of life, not me.
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And as we look at the world we live in, what we must understand is that God is the author of life.
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As Job says in Job 1 .21, He gives and He takes away. The Lord is the main cause of all life on planet
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Earth right now. The reason you're breathing right now is because God is sustaining you. And He's the one who gave you that life.
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This is something that the secular world does not understand. What gives the spark of life in a cell?
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Cells only know what to do because God programmed them that way. Otherwise, nothing would happen and none of us would be here.
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One clear point this text is emphasizing is that God is the giver of life.
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And He's the giver of purpose. The application for us in this is worship
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God for His power in giving life. Leah praised God in verse 35 for this, and we should do the same.
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We should also tell others that God is the giver of life and offer Him the praise that He is due. I remember when we were in the hospital for Aletheia's birth in the fall of 2016,
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I couldn't believe how many times I heard them say, well, let's let nature do its work. Nature do its work.
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Let's not even acknowledge the elephant in the room here. God is the elephant in the room. And it really irked me when
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I heard them say that. I want to hear a nurse say, let's let God's processes do
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His work. Let's give honor to the One who is due.
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You watch the weather at night. Let's see what Mother Nature gives us. There's no such thing as Mother Nature.
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There's nature, right? But God is the author of nature. He sets up the processes to work the way they're supposed to work.
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We must understand that. I don't know how people can go through their day and think everything just happens by some mysterious way that things just happen to work the way they do.
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And it's so much easier just to realize God is the One who's doing all this. Now as Rachel looks at her situation out of desperation,
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Rachel decides to go to plan B so that she can have a child. Verse 3,
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Then she said, Here is my servant Bilhah. Go into her, so that she may give birth on my behalf, that even
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I may have children through her. You're probably seeing a few things here.
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First of all, this is bizarre, which it is. And you're probably also asking the question, haven't we seen this before?
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And the answer is yes, we have. In Genesis 16, when Sarah, Abraham's wife, was unable to bear children, she gave her servant
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Hagar to Abraham so that she could have a child through Hagar because she was having trouble having children.
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This is a common practice at this point in history in the ancient Near East. If the main wife was unable to conceive, she would give the servant to be her husband's wife so that they could have children.
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But this child would technically be the first wife's child. In the case of Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah did not claim
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Ishmael because of her animosity toward both of them. But in most cases, the first wife would be the mother of the child like what we're seeing in this text.
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So verses 4 and 5, as we're about to read, detail the giving of the servant woman
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Bilhah as a wife to Jacob in order to conceive a child. So let's look at that here. Verses 4 and 5.
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So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife and Jacob went into her and Bilhah conceived and bore
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Jacob a son. This goes without saying, but I'll say it anyways.
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The Lord does not approve of these actions. But as we've already seen in Genesis, the
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Lord uses the foolish actions of His people to accomplish His purposes for the offspring of Abraham.
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Remember the promises that God made to Abraham? We've seen them over and over again as we've gone through Genesis. One of the big promises is that He's going to have offspring.
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And it's coming about through strange means, but God is still making it happen. The Lord does not stick with them because they are good people.
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He stays with them because He has promised to be committed to them through Abraham.
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The Lord told Abraham that he would have many offspring. And sometimes this offspring came about through ways we might not understand why the
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Lord did it that way. But the outcome turns out good for Rachel in this instance.
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Much like Sarah long before this, the servant conceives and bears a child. Even though this child did not come out of Rachel's womb, she is still overjoyed that these children will essentially descend from her.
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So let's see Rachel's joy in verse 6. Rachel, like Leah and Jacob, recognizes that God is the giver of life.
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The only reason she has this child is because God has been gracious to give this child to her.
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Rachel names this child Dan. Dan sounds like the Hebrew word judged. If you can remember two
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Sundays ago, all these names she's giving sound like a Hebrew word. In this case, it's judged, and it means
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Dan. If you insert the synonym vindicated, the meaning comes out much more clearly.
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What Rachel is saying is the Lord has vindicated me. She says, Rachel did not stop with the first son.
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She had another child through her servant woman in verses 7 and 8. Rachel's servant,
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Bilhah, conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, So you can see here, this is a contest for Rachel.
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She's competitive. Sibling rivalry is nothing new. She names her second child through Bilhah, Naphtali, since it sounds like the
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Hebrew word for wrestling or wrestlings of God. So her sister Leah had four children and now through the servant woman, she has two.
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And as you read this, you might wonder, why is she bragging? Her sister has four children and she has two.
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And technically, they're not even her legitimate children. Almost two years ago,
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I crossed the border here and entered enemy territory. I'm a Vikings fan, okay?
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And this is like a Vikings fan bragging to a Packers fan. And it pains me to say this, but I'll say it anyways.
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You have four Super Bowls. We have none. And even though we had a better year than you, not much better, but a little bit better,
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I can't really brag too much, right? Not until we get to four and then we can start to have a conversation.
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But what Rachel is doing here is silly. She is saying she has wrestled and prevailed by having these children when in fact, her sister
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Leah has been more blessed in this area. Now the rivalry continues with Leah in verse 9.
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So Rachel has children through the servant woman Bilhah and as we just saw, she starts to feel good about herself.
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She's catching up. Leah has four children. Rachel has two. But what we have to see here is what the beginning of verse 9 said that Leah had ceased bearing children.
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So she reached a point where God closed her womb. And once again, we see that God is the giver of life and after having four children, the
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Lord stops Leah's ability, at least temporarily, from having children. And this prompts
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Leah to follow the pattern of Rachel. So she takes her servant
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Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. And as we are reading this, we must acknowledge that this is odd.
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As you look at this, you may wonder if stories like these minimize the credibility of the
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Bible in some way. What I want to submit to you right now is that actually quite the opposite is happening.
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God's writing of the Bible along with the human authors does not change the history to make us feel more comfortable as to leave out the bad stuff.
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Rather, it reports what happened through sinful humanity and shows how God worked through the mess to bring about His good purposes.
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And as we think about this, the Lord is using this competition of these sisters to bring more offspring.
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Remember the promise to Abraham? He's going to have as many offspring as the stars in the heavens. The nation of Israel would come from this line.
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And what we see here is that the ball is really getting rolling with this offspring. And the
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Lord uses a foolish competition to bring this about. Now in verse 10, we read that Zilpah has a child.
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Then Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. And Leah's response in verse 11 is this. And Leah said,
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Good fortune has come. So she called his name Gad. Continuing with the theme of naming their child after Hebrew words or Hebrew words that they sound like, she describes the occasion here.
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And what she says is that this sounds like the Hebrew words good fortune. You can tell that Leah does not have a sound grasp of theology.
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She believes that God gives life and by good fortune this child came.
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You notice that? It's either one or the other, but she's saying it's both, which is wrong. Now that Leah has seen that Zilpah gave birth once, she is not content to stop there.
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So verses 12 and 13, we see this continue. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. And Leah said,
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Happy am I, for women have called me happy. So she called his name Asher.
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As Leah once again experiences the gift of life from God through having a child, she can't contain her emotions.
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The sixth child of Leah leads her to be overjoyed and this causes her to exclaim,
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Happy I am. And others called her happy after seeing her joy, after having all these children.
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So Leah names this son Asher, which sounds like the Hebrew word happy. So you see here, the
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Lord's goodness is always shown in the lives of His people. And the second example how is that He is the giver of life and purpose.
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And we must understand that. If you're here today, He's giving you life. He hasn't just given you life,
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He's given you purpose. And living life by following Him is that purpose.
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Now the third example and final example here of the Lord's goodness shown in the lives of His people is that He honors desires that accord with His will.
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He honors desires that accord with His will. We'll see this in verses 14 -24. So now at this point in the narrative,
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Leah has six children and Rachel has two. So that's eight total children. What we have to remember is that Rachel has yet to bear any children on her own.
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Her two sons came from her servant Vilha. To this point, Leah's had four sons on her own and two sons through her servant
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Zilpah. But as we have already seen in this narrative, this is a competition between these two sisters.
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The Lord is using their desire to have children to fulfill the promise to Abraham that many offspring would come from this line.
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And what we are about to see from Rachel and Leah is their desire to continue to produce offspring is a good desire.
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But the way about which they did it is the wrong way. So let's read verses 14 -15.
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In the days of wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother
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Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Please give me some of your sons' mandrakes.
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But she said to her, Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband?
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Would you take away my sons' mandrakes also? Rachel said, Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your sons' mandrakes.
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So wheat harvest arrived and Leah's son Reuben came from the field. As he is out in the field, in the midst of the wheat are mandrakes.
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Remember, Leah is the only one at this point who has had biological children of her own. And mandrakes here, they were the root of a specific plant.
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At this point in history, many believe that this plant helped female fertility. The text does not explicitly tell us this, but it seems pretty obvious that Rachel and Leah believe this superstition to be true.
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I've already mentioned that their understanding of God and His world was not strong.
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So you can see why they would have some false beliefs mixed in with their true beliefs about the Lord, which, by the way, is very common in Christianity today.
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People believe some false things and then some true things. And, of course, we want to just believe the truth and remove the false things from our head.
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So when Rachel sees Leah with the mandrakes, she sees this as an opportunity for her to get pregnant.
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In order to do this, she makes a deal with Leah. You give me the mandrakes and I will give you to Jacob.
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What this tells us is that after Leah ceased bearing children to Jacob, as we've already seen in our text, for whatever reason, they were unable to come together and have physical intimacy.
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So this offer by Rachel would have been attractive to get this back in order to bear children again.
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So at this point, Rachel would have been the primary wife and Leah is trying to get back on her husband's good graces.
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And if you notice here, in this offer, Leah would still have some mandrakes, so therefore, in her mind, her fertility, which had ceased, would be back.
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And later on, Rachel, because of the superstition of the mandrakes, would be able to bear children as well.
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So we see here that Rachel has been the one with the conjugal rights, but now this is going to be transferred to Leah, at least for a night.
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So Leah likes this deal since it puts her in a position where she believes she will conceive again.
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So let's see how Leah explains to Jacob that they are to come together again. Verse 16,
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When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, You must come in to me, for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes.
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So he lay with her that night. So Jacob comes from the field and Leah goes out to meet him believing that she will finally be able to conceive children again.
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Leah says quite directly to Jacob, We can now have physical intimacy again because of the deal that she made with Rachel.
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Verses 17 and 18 tell us that God honored this desire from Leah to again be able to bear children again.
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He doesn't like the way they did it, but he's going to honor the kernel of the desire. Let's see verses 17 and 18.
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And God listened to Leah and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. Leah said,
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God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband. So she called his name
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Issachar. So by giving the mandrakes this magical plant to Rachel and being able to lie with Jacob again leads
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Leah to believe that this was a guarantee that these plants would magically make her fertile. Now we know that the mandrakes did not have any magical power to cause
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Leah to bear children again. What's interesting is that in ancient times, superstition was popular and in present times, superstition is popular.
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How many times do you hear someone say, knock on wood, believing that someone knocking on wood will prevent something bad from happening?
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Or if the stars align, then things will go right. That's not Christianity.
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That's worldly philosophy. That's superstition. You see in baseball players, sometimes you see pitchers walking towards the dugout.
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They don't step on the line because they think if I step on the line, the next inning I'm going to give up five runs.
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That's superstition. It's imaginary. It's not real. And Christians, of all people, should be people who avoid superstition.
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And the reason is because as Christians, we are truth tellers. We tell the truth. We don't want to believe something that's false.
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We want to believe everything that's true that comes from God in His world. And by saying that a superstition is true, what we're saying is that God is not in control of everything when
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Scripture tells us that He is. And so, as a church, that's something we must do. Try to remove any beliefs of superstition or even from our vocabulary.
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So in our text, even though the timing might indicate that the Mandrakes were the result of Leah's fertility, the author
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Moses makes it clear that God was responsible for causing her to conceive.
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Leah names her fifth son Isaacar since it sounds like the Hebrew word for wages. Through giving to Rachel Mandrake, she was able to come into Jacob again.
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And so that's why his name is called that. Can you imagine Isaacar? So why is your name
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Isaacar? That'd be kind of an odd explanation to give. Then later on,
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Leah had two more children in verses 19 -21. And Leah conceived again and she bore
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Jacob a sixth son. Then Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my husband will honor me because I have borne him six sons.
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So she called his name Zebulun. Afterward, she bore a daughter and called her name
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Dinah. So we're seeing the names here. These are the twelve tribes of Israel.
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They were named after the son and the offspring that descended from that son.
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The sixth son leads Leah to say that the Lord has greatly blessed her. She believes the Lord has brought her to a level where her husband has to love her.
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She has bore six sons and two through her servant Zilpah. And she names this final son
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Zebulun, which sounds like the Hebrew word for honor. And to put a cherry on the top, she even has a daughter and names her
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Dinah. What we have just seen is that the Lord greatly honors the desire of Leah to bear children.
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This desire was a good desire even if at the time her competitiveness with her sister was dominating her thoughts.
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But the desire for Leah to have children is still holy nonetheless and that the Lord wanted her to have children.
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Leah would have known the promises that God made to Abraham that they would have offspring as many as the stars in the heavens or the sand on the seashore.
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And since her desire lined up with God's desire, the Lord blessed her by giving her many children. Do you see what
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I'm getting at here? Their desires, at least in some sense, lined up with God's desire for them and He answered.
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And the Lord did not just honor Leah by giving her children, He also honored Rachel's great desire to have offspring.
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So at this point, Rachel has had no biological offspring. And now the Lord is going to bless her in this way.
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Verses 22 -24, Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.
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She conceived and bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach. And she called his name
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Joseph, saying, May the Lord add to me another son.
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So Rachel finally has a biological son and she names him Joseph. And by the way,
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Joseph is the most well -known son that came from Jacob, which is interesting.
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And he was the second -to -last son. And she says a prayer here,
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May he add. So that's why he's named Joseph. That phrase, may he add, means
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Joseph. And later on, Benjamin would be born. He'd be the final son.
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And so this desire that she has would be answered later on. And the text makes clear that God does not forget about His people.
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As we see in verse 22, God remembered Rachel. You might be coming here today and you might think, does
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God even care about my life? And the answer is, yes, He does.
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God never forgets about His children. He's intimately involved in all the details of your life.
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We've seen that throughout Genesis. And we see it right here. The text makes clear that God does not forget about His people.
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In Genesis 8 -1, when Noah and his family were in the ark, the narrator Moses noted that God remembered
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Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. So God doesn't just remember
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His people. He remembers the animals that He takes care of as well. Jesus said that, right?
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The birds of the air don't wonder where their food is going to come from. The grass of the field is taken care of.
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And how much more value are you than those things? Leah desired to have children and God honored that desire.
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And Rachel desired to have children and God honored that as well. Now as we look at this third point, we do not want to follow the sins of Leah and Rachel as they wanted to one -up the other in earning
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Jacob's favor. However, their desire still had a kernel of holiness to it in that their desires lined up with God's desires for them.
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This is kind of a reminder for us. Sometimes our desires aren't completely holy. There might be some in there. And God wants to honor the holy aspect of it, of course.
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And that's why He gives children here. The Lord remembered the promises that He made to Abraham long ago.
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And from this competition would come the twelve tribes of Israel. So we can see the lesson for us in this.
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Do your desires line up with God's desires for you? How does this happen?
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Psalm 37 .4 tells us, Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
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Oftentimes people quote that verse. They say, He will give you the desires of your heart. But they don't say the first part. Delight yourself in the
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Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. So what this verse is saying is that once you submit your life fully to the
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Lord and find your greatest joy in knowing Him and living for Him, then His desires become your desires.
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Have you experienced this? You do things you would not have done before you knew
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Christ or when you were not following Him so closely. I remember when I was in high school, senior year, my
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English teacher had us write down where are you going to be in five years? Where are you going to be in ten years? And I want to get a copy of that to see how wrong
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I was. Because I remember I said something about I just wanted to have a family.
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I wanted to have a nice job. I just wanted a nice comfortable life where everything was so easy. And it didn't turn out that way.
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God had different plans for me. And it's interesting because what happened in my life, and maybe you've experienced this as well, is that the
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Lord changed my desires to where they lined up with His desires so that when I prayed for things,
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I would see Him answer in different ways because the Lord was pleased with that.
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And as you go deeper with the Lord, He shows you what that looks like. When His desires become your great desires, you will see the
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Lord's hand clearly in your life as you see His activity. And as you pray to Him, He answers those prayers because your life is in accord with His will.
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And that's what Jesus means when He says in John 16, 23, whatever you ask the Father in My name,
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He will give it to you. Because sometimes we look at that person and we say, really? If your desires are
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His desires, yes. So this is a good examination of our hearts, right?
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When we pray, are we praying with a holy desire? Is His will for our life what we want?
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And if it is, then you're going to see really a great change and great things happen.
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So the Lord's goodness is always shown in the lives of His people. And the third example of how is that He honors the desires that accord with His will.
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So to recap the last two Sundays here, our big idea is that the Lord's goodness was shown. We've seen the
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Lord's character shown in this text. And we've seen that He was compassionate to Leah. So He's compassionate to His suffering children.
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He's the giver of life and purpose. And He honors desires that accord with His will. And as we've gone through this sermon series through Genesis, we have seen the attributes of God on full display.
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One of the books that I recommend on the reading list, there's a few books on there.
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One of them is The Knowledge of the Holy by A .W. Tozer. And he talks about the attributes of God. And what's interesting is that when you read the
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Bible, you see these different attributes of God come out. His grace, His mercy,
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His love, His power, His omniscience, His omnipresence. You can just go down the list.
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And you praise God when you see those. And we've seen today the Lord's goodness in the lives of His people through His interaction with Leah and Rachel.
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And for everyone in this room who knows Christ, we know this to be true. The Lord helps us when we are in distress.
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He is the reason to live. He gives life. And once we are alive, He gives us purpose in life.
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And once you come to know Him, you realize how life is empty without Him. And lastly, the
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Lord honors the desires of His people when they line up with His will. And when you seek the
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Lord for guidance, He is ready to answer and guide you as His desires are your desires.
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So that concludes this two -Sunday sermon. And next week, we are going to see the
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Lord's continued blessing on His chosen man, Jacob. So we'll see
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Jacob's prosperity. So let's pray together. Father in Heaven, I thank
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You for Your Word. I thank You for the promises of Scripture, Lord, that Your Word does not come back void, but it accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent out.
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And Lord, the Holy Spirit, I know, is going to meet each one here today in the application for that person's life.
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And I pray, Lord, that the seed planted today would take root in the hearts of the people.
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For some, Lord, it will be growing. They'll know more about You and Your ways. And that will be growth.
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For others, it will be salvation. That for the first time, they'll have true purpose in their life as they follow
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You. So I pray, Lord, for both of those to happen. So Lord, I give
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You thanks for the Word of God and the power that it has to truly change lives.