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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Genesis 31:14-55
Well, that was an extensive reading this morning and for the most part, very well done. What Laban named the heap of stones, could have used a little work perhaps, only Tony really nailed the pronunciation on that one.
But Aramean is a very difficult language, it's not Western Semitic, it doesn't roll off the tongue. Well, this morning we look to complete chapter 31. Last week we considered the speckled blessings of the Lord and we talked about how often the blessings of God and the lives of His people are speckled, streaked and spotted.
They don't initially look like the kinds of things that are intended for our good, for our benefit, for our growth. But just as we saw Jacob's flocks increase and bring abundance and even bring assurance to Jacob that God was with him, so often in the Christian's life, speckled blessings have the same effect.
This chapter began with the hostility of Laban's sons. While Jacob is increasing, they are dwindling, they're watching the inheritance that should be coming to them, waste away as it travels, makes its way downstream toward Jacob.
And now even Laban's countenance has fallen toward Jacob and the cue is clear, it's time.
To go.
We're reminded that even six years earlier, when Jacob had completed his 14th year of service to Laban, had now officially paid off the dowry for both Rachel and Leah, that he said, I want to return home, I want to have something for myself.
And so for six years, this desire to return to what he calls my country has been growing in Jacob's heart. He has a desire to head back to Canaan. And God has now even prompted Jacob. Where we left him last week was out in the field, standing mid-sentence as it were, explaining his dream to Rachel and Leah.
And we'll pick up there in verse 11. The angel of God spoke in a dream saying, Jacob, and I said, here I am. He said, lift your eyes now and see all the rams which leap on the flocks are streaked, speckled, and gray-spotted, for I've seen all that Laban is doing to you.
I am the God of Bethel. Very enigmatic. He's saying, do you remember the vow you made to me at Bethel? Do you remember what I promised to you? I have fulfilled all that I promised to you, I've provided for you, protected you, I've given you increase, and now it's time for you to fulfill your vow to me.
You'll obey what I command. It's time now. Arise, get out of this land, return to the land of your family. Jacob had been weathering the storm now for six years. He was not led by prosperity. He was not led by trial.
He was both grieved but also blessed, and yet neither blessing nor trial ultimately moved him. He was not moved until God gave him revelation. Perhaps he was prepared to leave at many different points when it was really difficult or when Laban had changed the wage for the eighth or ninth or even tenth time, but Jacob was patient.
Jacob was also afraid, afraid of confronting Laban and also afraid to inevitably confront Esau. This is hovering over the entire chapter. Then we read verse 14, Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, he's explained the vision to them.
Is there still any portion or inheritance for us in our father's house? Are we not considered strangers by him? He sold us. He's completely consumed our money, and all these riches which God has taken from our father are really ours and our children's.
You see the division that Laban had introduced with his own daughters. Please keep that in mind as we make our way through the rest of the chapter. They feel no loyalty to him. He said, he treated us like cattle.
You're not the only one who was deceived. You're not the only one that was used. He sold us, and what actually belongs to us, he spent on himself. He only ever served himself with our relationships, with our futures, and so they have complaints of their own on top of the complaints of Jacob.
He's completely consumed our money. Literally in the Hebrew, devouring, he devoured our money. It's emphatic. The precise nature of this complaint is not entirely clear. It could be a reference to the dowry.
All that Jacob had worked for 14 years to provide, that's all been spent away. Instead of him building up a dowry that would in some sense be a protection for them, something that would belong to them, Laban spent it on himself.
That's possible. It's also possible to understand it as all that belonged to Jacob has been cheated away from him by Laban, and if you cheat Jacob, you cheat Jacob's wives. Verse 16, perhaps the greatest godly advice a woman could give, whatever God has said to you, do it.
That's a great little line to say to your husband whenever he comes to you with some impulse, some concern, some word, and you feel like God's doing this in your life, just good to hear, take Genesis 31, 16 to heart.
Whatever God has said to you, husband, do it. Whatever God has said to you, do it, and we'll be circling back to this thematically. Jacob, as we see beginning in verse 17, is doing what God had said to him.
Arise, get out of the country, and leave. Verse 17, Jacob rose, set his sons and his wives on camels, and carried away all of his livestock, all of his possessions which he had gained, all his acquired livestock which he had gained.
Do you get the emphasis there? Livestock, possessions, gain, acquired livestock, gain. This is how much God has blessed him. This is more than a U-Haul. This is not loading up a 20-foot box truck. This is quite a move.
God has abundantly blessed him over the course of these six years, and now he loads up everything that belongs to him, and he prepares to return to his father, Isaac, in the land of Canaan. Every word here is significant for us.
He's preparing to enter into the land of Canaan, to return to the inheritance of his father. When Moses is writing this, Israel is on the precipice of returning to the land of Canaan, to the inheritance of their forefathers.
Now if all we had was the description of verse 17, and we could stop there, and then move on, it would be great. It would be fantastic. But as we've said, Jacob is afraid. He's afraid to go. He's afraid to stay.
He's afraid to confront Laban with what God has told him he must do. And so he obeys what God says to him, but in a less than honorable way. He sneaks away. He doesn't deal with Laban head on. He doesn't confront his fear.
And just like Isaac, and just like Abraham, God is now going to have to intervene to deal with the mess that this creates, because he only half obeys what God had told him to do. Remember, with Abraham and with Isaac, there was a command to go.
There was a revelation to go. And yet, in going, they didn't truly trust God. So in obeying, there was a lack of trust. And then God intervenes to nevertheless protect his promises. Jacob's loading up his family.
He's got a fleet of U-Hauls open. The boxes are being wrapped, moving blankets on the dresser drawers. He's loading up his wives, all four of them, perhaps his maidservants. He's got toddlers through adolescence, if you figure six years plus seven years, so you've gotten perhaps infants all the way up to that awkward 12, 13-year-old age.
Sorry, 12, 13-year-olds, it's an awkward age. He's loading them up on camels. Remember, this is sort of the Corvettes of the ancient world. So here's this fleet of Corvettes and all of these animals in his train.
How many animals? Well, we don't have a record, but if we turn to the next chapter, we see the gift that he gives to Esau, and it's supposed to be a very elaborate gift. But remember, this isn't everything that he owns.
This is just part of what he owns. Chapter 32, 200 female goats, 20 male goats, 200 ewes, 20 rams, 30 female camels with their young, 40 cows, 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys, 10 male donkeys, over 560 animals, and that's just the gift.
So this is quite a move. This is quite a train. This is like the town of Hubbardston making its way south toward Canaan. These of course are all emblems of God's blessing, emblems really of God's protection.
These are the things that should have steeled his heart and his resolve. Look at how God has blessed me. Will he not protect me? I can boldly go and confront Laban and say, I have fulfilled my service.
It's time for me to depart. Say goodbye to your daughters. Say goodbye to your grandchildren. It's time for me to leave. But rather than looking at how God had blessed him, rather than taking the time to reflect on how God has guided and prepared his way, he turns himself over to fear, just like Isaac, just like Abraham.
Though God has shown him supernatural, providential protection and provision, he gives in to this fleshly fear. And so he's on the run. He times it, verse 19, when Laban had gone to shear his sheep, which is actually quite an event.
This would have been something that would have taken perhaps several days to accomplish, and it would have been spread out wherever the flocks were found, and it would have been really a community effort, Laban with his brethren.
This is not like the kilt makers in the highlands of Scotland where it was sort of a man-to-sheep.
Job.
And then we read another complicating factor, Rachel stole the household idols that were her father's. Household idols here, sometimes you'll read a translation where they just transliterate the Hebrew, terephim.
It appears throughout the Old Testament. For instance, King David's wife, Michal, she has terephim, and so this household idol seems to be common, especially in this part and at this time. Why did she steal them?
We're not given an explicit reason. We can only speculate. There's several possibilities that have been expressed. Perhaps it was because these idols, these statues, they served almost like a deed to property.
In other words, a pledge or an emblem of the inheritance. And so the idea was she's taking the inheritance that would have belonged to Laban's children. These things are ours. These things are our children's.
I find that unlikely, but it's a possibility. Another possibility, perhaps Rachel stole the terephim simply to get back at her father. He robbed us. We're going to rob him. He dishonored us. We're going to dishonor him, sort of a tat for tat.
Again, possible, unlikely in my mind. According to rabbinical tradition, Rachel took the terephim because she wanted to keep her father from idolatry. She had come to believe in the God who was blessing Jacob.
She became a follower of Yahweh. And so she wants Laban to follow after the God of Yahweh and she's taking away, as it were, destroying the idols within her father's household. Again, that's possible.
It's also possible, and perhaps this is the most likely, she did not want her father to engage these idols, which often terephim are connected to soothsaying or oracle revelation. And it seems to be the idea was in her concern, in her fear of running away, she thought, I should take these lest my father consult them and find out where we're going and catch up with us.
And so there's some perhaps superstition here. What we must say is that she shows utter contempt for these idols. She shows utter disdain for them, and we'll get to that in a few verses. So Rachel has stolen the terephim, the household idols from Laban.
Verse 20, Jacob stole away, unknown to Laban the Syrian, and that he did not tell him he intended to flee. Jacob stole away. It's a very interesting expression here. It's literally Jacob stole the heart of Laban.
And it's used as an idiom to parallel Rachel stole his gods. Jacob stole his heart. Verse 21, he fled with all that he had. He arose and crossed the river and headed toward the mountains of Gilead. Notice Laban the Syrian.
When Jacob had arrived, he said, you are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. You know, we're kinsmen. And look at the separation here. Laban the Syrian. He's not the Canaanite. He's not the one who will go on to inherit the land.
He's a Syrian, an Aramaean. We're going to see that again in how they use different names in different languages to note the same place, the same pillar of covenant. We have Rachel stealing Laban's gods, Jacob stealing Laban's heart.
I don't think that's meant to be, you know, his heart, his girls. It's like my possessions, that's his heart. This is sort of a Bonnie and Clyde effort. This has not put Rachel and Jacob in good light.
God had told Jacob to go. God had blessed him with provision, promised him safe passage. I will protect you. But Jacob gave in to fear. Jacob, as it were, slithered away. He lacked confidence in God. He was distrusting the promise of God, just like Isaac, just like Abraham.
He turned back to his own wisdom, his own ability. And so though he was obeying God's command to leave, he was not trusting. He was not trusting. Donald Gray Barnhouse, the great preacher of 10th Prez a few generations ago.
Jacob could have announced his departure and gone in the glory of an army with banners, but fear made it impossible to reap that blessing. And so he snuck away, following the will of God, rather than departing in triumph.
He's on the run. He's a fugitive, as it were. It didn't have to be this way. He made it this way. And this is important as we head into chapter 32. Jacob shows that when it comes down to it, he's afraid.
He's afraid to confront these difficult relationships, difficult people where there's been injustice, where wrong has been done, and he doesn't want to go and stir the pot. And so he sneaks away, and God won't let him sneak away.
This is necessary to prepare him for that encounter with Esau. He's leaving Haran in Padim Aram. I wish I could have printed out a map. It's such a far journey. If you're kind of down in the southwestern part below the Dead Sea, where Beersheba would have been, even all the way up past the Dead Sea, even to the Sea of Galilee, it's relatively short span.
Almost twice as long as that is where he is in Haran. It's a massive journey. He's coming south, almost parallel to where the Sea of Galilee is, and we're going to come to the river Jabbok. And that's where the mountains of Gilead are, Ramoth Gilead, which becomes very significant later in the Old Testament.
It's a 300-mile journey, a massive undertaking. We read, beginning in verse 22, Laban was told on the third day that Jacob had fled. Remember that they had separated by several days' journey, their flock.
So it makes sense that he doesn't hear for several days. Verse 23, he took his brethren with him. He gathered the tribe, he gathered the boys, they're on the hunt. He pursued him for a seven days' journey and overtook him in the mountains of Gilead.
Now this pursuit, this is not the pursuit of a grandfather. It's I just want to say goodbye. Can't I just say goodbye, one last hug, a few more kisses? This is not, what about my animals? We need to make sure that this is all done properly.
This is a pursuit of vengeance. And we'll see as much, not initially in the way Laban approaches Jacob, but by what he confesses when God confronts him in a dream. It seems that even Laban is so caught in his web of self-deception that he's not able to discern his motives.
Laban pursues him 300 miles. He pursues him with this band of mercenaries that he's put together. Night by night, finding place to water their animals sleeping under the stars, and he's fueled by this desire for revenge.
He won't let up. I can imagine that Jacob, after a 10-day journey, seven days plus the three initial days that it took for Laban to find out, that he had been hauling it, maybe pushing 30 to 40 miles a day.
He was on the run, and he probably figured, if I can just get far enough, Laban's going to give up. He's going to be stretching himself too thin. I'm not worth all that effort. But revenge just makes you irrational.
Laban will spend himself to the bone if he can exercise vengeance against Jacob. So he's motivated out of this hatred, out of this desire to have revenge. His single-minded resentment is glowing off of the page.
And then it's almost this dramatic moment when he overtakes him, meaning he's finally caught up to him. He's actually gone out ahead of him to kind of say, you can stop just there. A confrontation is going to take place.
And of course, they are lined up, as it were, opposite one another. We look at verse 25. We're going to come back to verse 24, but look at verse 25. Laban overtook Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the mountains, and Laban with his brethren pitched in the mountains of Gilead.
They're lining up like armies, about to have the decisive battle. But what happens in verse 24? God intervenes. God comes to Laban. The Syrian. Again, that emphasis. We haven't seen it with Laban until now.
It's setting up the trajectory of who belongs where. God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night and said to him, be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad. In Hebrew, literally, watch yourself.
Watch yourself. Be on guard that you don't do anything wrong. Be very mindful and very careful lest you speak good or evil to Jacob. Most likely, it's hard to necessarily understand, most likely it's saying don't curse him, but neither flatter him and bless him.
Don't approach him as you typically would, as a trickster, looking to bless and flatter and manipulate. Don't do that. But you better not rebuke. You better not curse. That's God's warning to Laban. In other words, he's saying leave him be.
Speak neither good nor evil. Don't try to be his friend and don't be his enemy. And so most likely the word here is, it's a warning against some sort of formal pronouncement of either blessing or curse.
He's not allowing Laban to manipulate the situation, and that's the divine warning that comes to Laban. And that preludes verse 25, where now they're lined up like armies, as it were, in the mountains of Gilead.
Laban's got his brethren with him, his whole clan with him. He's got military superiority. And yet God was sovereignly protecting Jacob. He doesn't have, you know, his boys aren't able to go to bat for him.
Maybe he has some armor on his, you know, 13-year-old. They're kind of getting ready for battle. But Laban clearly has the upper hand, if it weren't for God's intervention. This brings us back to Genesis 12, Genesis 20 with Abraham, Genesis 26 with Isaac.
You can picture the scene almost on that very morning, Jacob not knowing that God had intervened by night, the dread he would have felt when he saw Laban and this band ahead of him, knowing what they're capable of.
And he's going to say as much, I thought you would take my wives from me by force. That would have been a night of no sleep in the tent of Jacob. What he tried to sneak away from, what he tried to run away from, that confrontation that he hoped would never have to take place is now staring at him.
And as they approach each other to meet, and Laban, as we'll see, begins to share what had happened to him in that night when God intervened by a dream, how instantly Jacob would have been struck by the protection of God.
Knowing that he had obeyed God, it was time to return, but he did it in the old way. He did it in a twisting, deceitful, sneaky way. He didn't do it out of trust for God. And just like Isaac, just like Abraham, he would have been humbled.
And I think we can even see the evidence of that in how he speaks through the remainder of this chapter. In this encounter, he learned just how powerful God was, how as fiercely devoted to vengeance as Laban may have been, pursuing him for 300 miles, God was far more fiercely devoted to protecting and blessing Jacob.
And so it is with his people. Now think about this. If Jacob had not left Haran, and God just intervened, and before Jacob even left, God came to Laban in a dream and said, let him go, you know, don't bless him, don't curse him, just let him go.
Jacob would have never had this experience of the divine grace that was following him. Even in his dishonorable ways of relying on the flesh again, he would have never seen that he didn't have to fear man, that he could trust in God as his shield and his refuge.
He would have never received this lesson that was vital for him to learn as he was approaching Esau. And he hasn't even fully learned the lesson yet. Jacob would never have known just what God's protection looked like if this encounter had not happened in this way.
God, as it were, allowed Laban to catch him. We don't read the providence as, why didn't God just turn Laban back? It was important that God allowed Laban to overtake Jacob so that in intervening, Jacob would see the presence and power of God in his life.
And so just like God protected Abraham, if you touch Sarah, you're a dead man. That's essentially what he says to Laban. He's with me. You better not touch him. Watch yourself. And you take a big step back, remembering the context, Israel re-entering Canaan, this lesson that Moses is hoping will sink into their hearts so that they will walk not only in a broad, generic, ambiguous obedience, but that they would trust God.
Trust Him.
When those two spies come back and they say, we can trust in God,.
Look what He's done.
This journey is foreshadowing Israel and their exodus out of Egypt. What do we have when we read chapter 31? Jacob and the tribes, as it were, in seed form, departing because God calls them out of that land.
And He wants them to come and worship Him in the land of Canaan. And so they plunder their adversary, as it were. They take all the wealth of that foreign land. They even take, as it were, the gods away.
And they have this slow-moving procession, taking them closer and closer to that land of their deliverance and promise. And yet the enemy comes with ferocity and vengeance and overtakes them, cutting them off at the pass.
And God miraculously intervening to deliver and protect His people. What are we reading? Is it Exodus or Genesis 31? Well, that's the point. And so as Israel stands at the borders of Canaan and they're reading these things, they're meant to rehearse.
God has done this. God has done this. God will do this again. This is the same guide and protector who is leading us into the promised land today. Maybe you've experienced this in a smaller way. Maybe not in a national, theocratic way, but in a small way, personally, even in your own life.
You've been through some horrific experience. Something has overtaken you, and yet you've seen the way that God has intervened to show you His presence and His care and concern for you, His power to gird you up and take you on that journey another step.
This is how God works in the lives of His people, whether it's an individual here this morning or a whole nation many thousands of years ago. God is at work in the lives of His people. And just like His people, just like Jacob, and just like Israel at the borders, we're so slow of heart to believe all that God has promised.
Well, we come to the encounter beginning in verse 26. Laban says to Jacob,.
What have you done?
Doesn't that just grit your teeth?
What have I done?
What have you done to me? For 20 years, what have you done to me? But Laban says to Jacob, what have you done? You've stolen away, unknown to me, stolen my heart, unknown to me, carried away my daughters like captives taken with the sword.
That's not his wise perspective. He wants that to be true.
He wants a daddy, daddy.
Oh, please deliver us from this evil husband, Jacob. How do they view it? Captives to the sword? He's the one that treats us like cattle. He's the one that uses and manipulates us. We were more than willing to go.
Why did you flee away secretly, he says. Steal away from me, not tell me. I might have sent you away with joy and songs, timbrel and harp. Would he really have done that? Here's the Mad Max posse, and they've all got baseball bats and axes.
Does it look like he wanted to send them off with joy and timbrel and song? And the fact that Jacob says in verse 31, I was afraid, it tells you everything we need to know. The fact that God had to warn him, you better not touch him.
It tells us everything we need to know. Laban is so deceitful and manipulative that he's not able, I mean this genuinely, I don't think he's able to discern his motives. I don't think he's capable of rightly reflecting on himself, on why he does things and how he treats people.
I think the way that he speaks in the remainder of this chapter, he almost really thinks it's true. And so there's this very pathetic image and example that is set before us in the life of a manipulator, in the life of Laban.
And frankly, Jacob would be no different if it were not for the grace of God in his life. Not only is he completely delusional about his relationship to his daughters,.
About the way that he's treated Jacob.
And what's warranted Jacob running away, he's also delusional about what he would want to do. You did not allow me to kiss my sons and my daughters. You've done foolishly. And now here comes some truth.
It's in my power to do you harm. By the way, that's why I traveled 300 miles. But the God of your father spoke to me last night saying be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad. And now you've surely gone because you greatly long for your father's house but, and here's the charge, why did you steal my gods?
And Jacob answered, because I was afraid. I said perhaps you would take your daughters from me by force. The evidence would seem to indicate that was the case. But then Jacob is indignant. I did not steal gods from you.
That's the charge. And he's about to really dishonor Jacob by saying I don't take your word. I don't take you at face value. I'm a schemer. I can smell a schemer and I'm bound to find them as I search your possessions.
Of course, Jacob is indignant. With whomever you find your gods, do not let him live. Talk about a gulp moment for Rachel. Can you imagine how her heart would have started pounding in her chest? Jacob, of course, is innocent.
He's saying you can look wherever you'd like. I have nothing to hide. In the presence of our brethren, identify what I have of yours and take it with you. And we have the narrative comment, Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them.
And so Laban begins his furious pursuit. He goes into Jacob's tent, into Leah's tent, into the two maids' tents. Now that's just the description. You can picture what it would have looked like. An hour, two hours, opening up shoe boxes, dumping things out, going through the billfold, looking at the wallet, patting down his pockets, sneakers get emptied.
He was erratic. He was convinced he'd find those teraphim. Then he went out of Leah's tent and entered into Rachel's tent. Now he's getting a little warmer,.
A little closer.
Rachel, perhaps, is looking a little nervous. Sweat's coming down her forehead. Rachel, we read, verse 34, had taken the household idols and put them in the camel's saddle and sat on them. Now here's where we're getting a little closer to the contempt she shows for these idols.
She doesn't think they have any real divine significance. Otherwise, she would not sit on them. The camel's saddle most likely would have been a woven basket that you also could use for storage. Laban doesn't seem surprised by this at all.
He expects to be able to look in this saddle-like container. And of course, we have to keep in mind in the ancient Near East, if you steal something associated with a temple or divine cultic use, that's a capital offense.
You get killed for that.
Verse 34,.
Laban searched all about the tent, but did not find them. Have you had an experience like that? Searching all about, and I had, this was some weeks ago. My phone has a little compartment that opens up in my driver's license and debit card, and all my major cards are there.
And one of my girls opened up that little compartment, and I didn't know it until one day I looked and it was empty. And I sympathize with Laban.
I looked everywhere,.
Humanly conceivable to look. Lampshades, couch cushions, cabinet drawers,.
The refrigerator.
I'm like, where could these cards be? And I could not find them. I didn't check the camel's saddle, but I could not find them. I sympathize with Laban. He's frustrated. He's angry. He's spent. There's one place left to look.
Verse 35, she said to her father, let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise before you. The manner of women is with me. And he searched, but did not find the household idol. So Rachel had the manner of women.
We all understand what that is a euphemism for. And of course we understand the law later codified the ceremonial uncleanness of menstruation, Leviticus 15. Now just because it was later codified doesn't mean that the same issue of ritual impurity was at play here.
It certainly was. This would have been true across ancient Near Eastern culture, and even all the way through even in Western culture.
Still we have the echo of that.
Menstruation brought ritual impurity. So the idea was let me not dishonor or make you as it were ceremonially unclean. Let me not rise before you. The way of women is upon me. And of course this is showing the contempt for idols.
We have no reason to think that she's making this up. It may well have been the case. And it shows either way just by her act of sitting upon them the contempt she has for these idols. And so just like Genesis 27 we have a child deceiving the father.
So here's another literary mirror. Then we have this contrast that we're not meant to miss and the Israelites are not meant to miss it. We have gods that can be hidden, gods that can be sat on, gods that are carved and sit on a shelf, gods that cause Laban to furiously search through the trunks and chests of the tent.
And these are no gods at all. It's laughable. It's Isaiah 42. It's just like this is a joke.
Do you have God?
A famous sermon by W .A. Criswell, the old Texas preacher. Can your gods be stolen? What kind of god is that? Someone can steal your god. Is that a god worthy of your service and worship? Is that really a powerful god?
If your god can be stolen, the Israelites are meant to kind of mock their Canaanite and pagan neighbors. Yeah, you're serving statues and you're all very worried and bent out of shape when your little statue goes missing.
And by the way, you're the one that actually made the statue that you're bowing down in worship. You took it just like Isaiah 46, right? You took a piece of it, you burnt it, you cooked on it. And then whatever that little third piece of that log was left, that was the god that you created to worship.
This is foolishness. You're meant to mock this. Can your god be stolen? But then we're also meant to see a larger truth to idolatry and idol worship in the Old Testament as it relates to us. We see Laban completely bent out of shape, frustrated, irrational, looking for these little statuettes and we mock, we go, that's so ridiculous.
But our idols have the same power over us. And when they're threatened, we get all bent out of shape and frustrated. And it's good to be aware of what has that power in your life. What causes you to go upside down, to act erratic and even irrational because it has a grip on you.
It offers you security, meaning. It promises you blessing and protection. It may not be a statuette, but it is still an idol. Verse 36, Jacob became indignant. See, I told you. You accused me of lying to your face, scheming just like you.
And now he's going to let Laban have it. If he snuck away because he was afraid of the confrontation, now he's emboldened. He's seen how God has protected him and what Laban said about coming by dream at night.
And now Jacob's going to unload what's been building, not just on this 300 mile journey, but actually what's been building for 20 years. He was angry. I think this is a righteous anger. I don't think this is necessarily sinful, Jacob.
He doesn't make the cattail whip and flip over tables. But I think this is righteous anger. He rebukes Laban. Laban needed to be rebuked. Jacob answered and said to Laban, what is my trespass? What is my sin?
Why have you so hotly pursued me?
Why did you come screaming like an F1 300 miles to overtake me? What was your intention? What sin have I done? Did you not look through the tent and see that I have not wronged you in any way? Although you searched all of my things, what part of your household things have you found?
Everything I have, I worked for against what you've done to me. Set it here before my brethren, your brethren. Let's gather witnesses around. Let them judge between us both. Who is in the right here, Laban?
These 20 years I've been with you. Your ewes, your female goats, they've not miscarried their young. In other words, I've been diligent to care for them. I have not let them dwindle away and waste away.
I've done everything I can to protect, nourish, and strengthen. I've not eaten the rams of your flock. That which I perhaps had privilege to do, I refused. That which was torn by beasts, I did not bring to you.
Out of my own expense, anything that, even if it wasn't necessarily my fault, I covered it. I went that extra mile. I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether it was stolen by night or by day.
So this is kind of him unloading. We're going to get back to it in verse 40. Jacob is taking Laban to task. And really, this is his rebuke, and it's also God's vindication of Jacob. Here, I think we're meant to reflect, this is a very different Jacob.
We're meant to say that these 20 years, God has been doing not just work on Jacob's behalf among the flocks, he's been doing work on Jacob. What is my sin, he said. We're going to come back to that. Please just notice that.
What is my sin?
God's grace has been so operative in Jacob's life that he has this contempt for sin. He's learned how to live in integrity, and yeah, he was weak. He snuck away. It was less than honorable. His fear overtook him, but look at how he's being vindicated here.
What wrong have I done? What is my sin? That's of concern to him now. This is not the Jacob we met in chapter 28 and chapter 29. He wasn't thinking in these ways. He wasn't concerned about his sin. He had no thought of integrity or uprightness, but here, even as he enters the mountainscape of Gilead, he's concerned to walk uprightly.
He's concerned that God would vindicate him. He wants to make sure that when he returns to Canaan, he has no debt unpaid to Laban. I've done everything to fulfill, even more. I've done everything in integrity.
I have no debt to you. And hovering behind this is the fact that he has a debt to Esau. He has a debt to Esau. He can look Laban square in the eyes because of 20 years of God's grace and say, what is my sin?
God has vindicated me. Let others judge, but he can't look Esau in the eye and say those same things. There I was, verse 40. In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and sleep departed from my eyes.
Oh boy, I can sympathize with that. I've been in your house for 20 years. I served you 14 years for your two daughters,.
Six years for your flock.
You've changed my wages 10 times unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham, the fear of Isaac, has been with me. Surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed, but God has seen my affliction.
He's seen the labor of my hands, and he rebuked you last time.
Preach it, Jacob.
He's owning himself. He's owning spiritual prerogatives, spiritual leadership for his family. Everything that he should have done before he left Haran, he does here and now, and it's because he recognizes that God has protected him.
God has seen his affliction. That's why God intervened. He recognizes that God has been true to his promise to Abraham and the fear of Isaac. I wonder if he said that with a tinge of regret. He wasn't God-fearing.
He was Laban-fearing. That's why he snuck away. And now he wants to follow after the fear of Isaac, and we're going to see that again when he makes his vow at the pillar. This is a validation of Jacob's experience of God's grace.
The fact that God had revealed it was he who was blessing Jacob, not Jacob scheming or manipulating like Laban. So God, as it were, is deciding the righteousness of these two. He's been inviting, brethren, come in, judge between us.
And it's like God has already judged. He rebuked you last night, Laban, because he's found you unrighteous. And he's found me to have integrity. I've been vindicated. Jacob begins to realize how God has been shepherding him.
It's the power of integrity. Having integrity, having righteousness in your life, it doesn't necessarily make you arrogant. It doesn't think, I did this all in my power. We don't get that from Jacob. He can say, look at me.
I have integrity. I've done rightly before your eyes. I've borne the loss of things that weren't even my fault. But that doesn't make him smug or arrogant or self-righteous. Out of the same mouth, he can say, it was God.
It was God who's judged.
It was God who acted.
It was God who blessed, provided, and protected. That's the power of righteousness. There's a holy boldness that comes from it. Listen, if you're living in integrity, there's times when you're going to have to come alongside people, and you're going to have to sympathize with them in their sin, in their struggle, in their weakness.
You have to come alongside them. You have to see in a mirror, as it were, your own sins, your own struggles and weaknesses, areas that you also need to plea for the Lord to have grace, and maybe you need help.
But there's other times where you don't need to treat people in that way. It would have been the worst thing that Jacob could have done if he just said, you know, Laban, I struggle a lot too, you know, and sometimes I probably, you know, and just try to get down on Laban's level.
That is not fitting for this confrontation. There's times as a Christian when you've been walking uprightly, it's not fitting to confront people in that way. I hope God gives us the wisdom to know when it's appropriate and when it's not.
There's times to let your integrity be a rebuke. Say, God, judge between you and me. Look at your life. But when you do that, when you have that uprightness, it ought to come like Jacob with this amazement that God has been the one who's cared for you.
And I think we see that hovering behind Jacob's words. It's like Psalm 139. You searched me. You know me. You know when I sit. You know when I rise. You know when I sneak away because Laban is shearing sheep.
My thoughts, these six years, these 14 years behind that, you know them from afar. When I came out frustrated, slogging, struggling under the manipulation of Laban. When I came in lying down restless because of how I was being manipulated, fearful because I felt stuck.
I didn't want to stay, but I didn't want to go. Before a word was on my tongue,.
You knew it.
You hemmed me in behind before. You laid your hand upon me. I think Jacob would have felt like that. God had rebuked Laban because of Jacob's affliction. God saw it. And we have this exhortation in 1 Peter 2 that's the same.
Be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but to the harsh, to the Laban. Why? Well, this is commendable. If because of your conscience toward God, you endure grief and you suffer wrongfully.
What credit is it if when you're beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? You're just getting what you sowed. A man reaps what he sows. It's no credit to you. It's just the way that life goes. But when you do good and you suffer, when you out of your flock replace that which was torn by a beast, when something's stolen by day or by night, you own that.
When your wages change ten times, you roll with those punches. When you suffer injustice or even persecution and hostility, when you do good and suffer and you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.
And this is to what you were called. Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example to follow in His steps. When He was reviled, He didn't revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten. He committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.
That's just a perfect parallel to this. Jacob is saying, God has righteously judged between you and I. I bore it patiently. I suffered under you, Laban, but God has judged righteously. God has seen my affliction.
There's only a few places that occurs. We have it here in verse 42. We have it again in Exodus 3. God heard the affliction of His people. This is enigmatic for Israel. The going may be tough. It will be difficult as you enter the land, but don't think that God is absent.
God hears the afflictions of His people. And so Laban finally responds to all of this. He answers and says to Jacob, he almost doubles down in his arrogance, these daughters are my daughters. These children are my children.
He's speaking of his grandchildren. This flock is my flock. That wasn't the agreement they had. All that you see is mine. But what can I do this day to these my daughters or to their children whom they've born?
It's almost like this is really mine. I have the power. I'm going to let you have it. Let's make a covenant. He's so deluded. He's taken nothing out of everything.
That's happened for the past six years.
Come, let us make a covenant, you and I. Let it be a witness between you and me. Do you notice that Laban has no response to everything that was just unloaded? He doesn't explain it away. He doesn't go, yeah, but you've got your things too.
There's none of that. He's just like, let's make a covenant. Change of subject. Let's just make a covenant, which is as much as saying you are right.
You are right.
I cannot say anything against that, so let's just make a covenant. And we're going to unpack other reasons, other motives he has. Notice he still has this arrogant view. Everything actually belongs to me.
It's mine. Out of the kindness of my heart, I might give it to you. But in reality, there's nothing he can do. God is the one who's blessed Jacob. Laban can't undo that. And Laban recognizes that Jacob saw right through his schemes.
Those little flimsy excuses, they were really just superficial covers for wage changes. He had wronged Jacob, and Laban knows that. He had wronged Jacob in accusing him of stealing his gods, and he could not come up with them.
He had wronged Jacob. And so they create this covenant. Laban's really conceding that Jacob is vindicated. Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. Verse 45, it's almost like Jacob can't build it fast enough.
It's like Supermarket Sweep. Get those stones.
We've got to deal with this.
I want Laban out of my life. I want an agreement in stone with witnesses. I want to nail this twister to the board. And so he says to his brethren, gather stones. And they took stones, made a heap, and they ate there on the heap.
Awkward meal, huh? Awkward meal. But it's what you do when you make a covenant. You eat a meal. Laban called it Yigar Sahadutah. Jacob called it Gilead. Two different languages, two different allotments, two different inheritances, two different peoples.
That's all emphatic here in chapter 31. Jacob takes the stone. He sets up the heap. He memorializes, as it were, this place of covenant. We've seen this again as he was leaving. And he set up the pillar at Bethel.
And now as he's returning, he sets up this pillar as a sign of the agreement with Laban. He doesn't want to deal with Laban anymore. He sets up the pile. It really means the same thing. A pile or a heap of witness, whether you're using Aramaic or Hebrew.
Technically, this isn't Hebrew yet. It's West Semitic. But it becomes Hebrew. And it's very close. The pile of witness. Jacob now has a pile at Bethel and a pile here in the mountains of Gilead. Laban said, this heap is a witness between you and me this day.
Therefore, the name was called Gilead, which means witness. Also, Mitzpah, because he said, may the Lord watch between you and me when we are absent one from another. Mitzpah literally means watchpost.
May God watch us.
God being like a sentry guarding. Now, this is showing something of Laban's concern. He has wronged Jacob. And he's probably convinced that Jacob might cross over and get revenge. He had come on this 300-mile journey to exercise vengeance on Jacob.
But now the complaint's been laid out and Jacob's been shown to be right. Laban might fear, he's going to come have vengeance on me. And so he sets up this pillar. This is a watchpost. If you come after me, your God's going to get you.
You almost see now the vulnerability, the fear that Laban has. At the beginning, Jacob was rushing out sneakily because he was afraid of Laban. But now here, Laban is afraid of Jacob. It's a reversal.
Jacob really didn't need this treaty. Laban's the one who proposed it. Laban is the one that's afraid. Especially if he cannot find his household gods, he must really be afraid. Maybe he felt that that was protection for him.
You're familiar of the Korean Peninsula, the division after the war between North and South Korea and that demilitarized parallel, the 38th parallel, and the tension at that border. This is sort of like the 38th parallel in Gilead between Laban and what belongs to Laban and Jacob and what belongs to Jacob.
It's kind of like you don't come over here, I don't go over there, and this is how it's going to be. If you do wrong, God will see it. God will punish. Verse 50, if you afflict my daughters, if you take other wives besides my daughters, although no man is with us, see, God is witness between you and me.
Where is Laban pulling this from? He's saying, you better not mistreat my daughters. The daughters were saying, Laban is the one who mistreats them. Laban, I really think, thinks this is true of himself.
I'm such a caring father. Look how I'm looking out for my girls. You better not mistreat them. Jacob doesn't respond, but it's almost like, are you kidding me? Do you know how they feel about you, Laban?
But he holds his silence. Does Laban really value the family structure so much? Is he really concerned about the futures of his daughters? Has he ever shown concern about their marriage or their marital health?
He's the one who made a wreck of their marriage. He's the one that compromised their future potential by manipulating for his own gain. So if all we had was this torn piece of paper of chapter 32 and we're reading it, we might think Laban is the sweetest father on earth.
I might have sent you away with songs and I just wanted to kiss my daughters and you better not mistreat them. We might just go, wow, this guy's amazing, Jacob. Oh, Jacob's horrible. Like a son-in-law, nightmare son-in-law.
And I really think Laban feels this way. I really think he feels this way. He thinks he's a good father. He thinks he's caring. He thinks he's been wronged. He thinks Jacob is just this difficult son-in-law.
People that are caught up in these sins of manipulation, cold-heartedness, stubbornness, arrogance, pride, they can't discern themselves. They can't reflect upon themselves morally anymore. They just don't see it.
They don't have the mirror of the word that we look into. And I think, sadly, Laban's not putting this on. I really think he feels genuine in this moment. He doesn't even really know how his daughters feel about him.
Jacob has shown no indication of mistreating his wives. He was the one in the field telling them everything, hoping to gain their confidence and support in this sudden journey. Laban was the one who mistreated Rachel and Leah, misused them, treated them like cattle.
They felt it. It couldn't be hidden. And so then Laban says to Jacob, verse 51, here's this heap, here's this pillar, which I've placed between you and me. This heap is a witness. This pillar is a witness.
I will not pass by this heap to you, and you will not pass beyond this heap and this pillar to me for harm. They're not saying there can't be visits, although I don't think there's going to be any visits.
It just means you can't come with the intent to harm. The God of Abraham, the God of Nahor, and the God of their father judge between us. It's interesting that Laban includes the God of Nahor. We've already seen evidence that he's a polytheist, as would be common even for the Israelites.
They often had household gods or other gods they were worshipping alongside Yahweh. They worshipped Baals or Ashtoreths. And so he's saying the God of Nahor, we have no indication that necessarily he has the same God in view, meaning Yahweh, the God of Abraham and Nahor.
It seems that God revealed himself divinely to Terah and Abraham. We have no evidence to think that Nahor was somehow in this line of Yahweh revelation. He called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans. And we see the significance of that contrast with Jacob.
He doesn't swear by his father's God and the God of Nahor. No, he swears by the fear of his father Isaac. And so here again, Yahweh is called the fear, the prad, the reverence, the fear of Isaac. John Calvin, just to return to this point, not passing by, John Calvin says, wicked men always judge others from their own disposition.
Wicked men always judge others from their own disposition. If you have an intent to use someone, you assume someone has an intent to use you. If you have a grievance and irritation with someone, you assume they have a grievance and irritation with you.
This is not the way a Christian thinks. This is not the way that we approach relationships.
And people.
We don't allow our own motives to become reflective of the motives we impugn or assign to others. It's sad when there's these deep-seated conflicts in the lives of God's people. It's sad, even with someone like Laban.
It's sad that the family's splintering apart in this way, in the mountains of Gilead. It's sad that these 11 grandsons and this granddaughter Dinah are not going to be able to have this relationship with Laban that they should have, that they would want to have, that maybe even Laban would want to have, but his sins have made it impossible.
His sins have broken down the possibility of having this kind of relationship, not only with his grandchildren, but even with his own daughters. They respect him. They show reverence to him. Let it please my father that I not rise before him.
They show reverence, but in the field we actually see how they feel. We actually see their heart regard for their father, and Laban is oblivious to it all. He's so self-consumed. He's so hard-hearted.
When Scripture says, if it's possible, as much as it lies with you, live at peace with all men, I don't think we realize the significance of that, the consequences of that. If it's possible, live at peace.
Is there some potential root of bitterness? Pluck it up. Don't let it grow. Don't let it grow for a day. Don't risk that. These things grow, and the root of bitterness begins to defile so many. And there was a point in time when it would have been so easy to nip it in the bud, to say, no, we're going to do something differently.
We're going to change the approach. I'm going to relate to this person. I'm going to stop assuming.
No.
If it's possible, if it lies with you, live at peace. Do the things that make for peace. Blessed are the peacemakers. They're the ones that are called the sons of God. Well, significantly, stones enter again into the Jacob narrative.
When Jacob, of course, camped at Bethel and received that vision of the angel of the Lord, he set up a pillar, Genesis 28, 18. Even when he came to Haran, he moved that massive wellstone. And here, again, this pillar of commemoration to the Lord is a sign, almost a milestone, a turning of the chapter in Jacob's life.
This has been a 20-year-long chapter of God's work in the life of the twister, Jacob. And it closes this chapter, as it were, with verse 54. He offers a sacrifice on the mountain. This would have been true of making a covenant.
But there's something heartfelt, something full of gratitude and maybe even wonder and excitement in this sacrificial offering to the Lord. And we close this verse, this chapter, with verse 55. Early in the morning, Laban arose and kissed his sons and daughters and blessed them.
And Laban departed and returned to his place. And so it was for Laban. He won't enter into our narrative in any significant way again. You can almost picture the scene. Laban rises in the morning. He kisses his sons and his daughters.
And he blesses them. He gathers his grandchildren around. He hugs them. He kisses them. This would have been something cultural. It doesn't mean it was disingenuine. But it just means it was also cultural to depart in this way.
And again, we think Laban has this view of himself that he's a really pious man. He wanted to send off his daughters and his grandchildren. He kissed them. He blessed them. He has this distorted view of himself.
And I hope you see the significance of that. You see the importance of God-led and God-fed self-reflection. That God leads you to see ways that you've been, ways that you are, and that God is feeding you, convicting you, showing you ways that you must change, bringing you into circumstances and relationships to help you grow in these very ways.
You need to have that self-reflection if you want to have meaningful blessings in your life. Laban could have thought, I'm a blessed man. Look at my daughters. They're married off. Look at my grandchildren.
Those blessings are hollow. They're hollow blessings. Because he never took the time to reflect on his sinfulness. We see the selfish, superficial ways. We think of him blessing his daughters and his grandchildren, thinking this is so important, and so significant and symbolic.
This is going to be something that stays with them. And in their heart, it's just hollow. It means so little. He thinks he has this huge impact, and there's almost no impact at all. His blessings are hollow.
His kisses are empty. His daughters, they have reverence, but they don't have a regard for him. They don't have a desire to return and be with him. This is such a sad legacy. And we've been following Jacob's growth for 20 years.
We've also been following Laban's really lack of growth for 20 years. And this is the fruit of it. This is the last we really hear of Laban in all of Scripture. It's the end of him. It's a sad way to end this man's life, as far as the narrative is concerned.
That's the extent of his influence. He leaves with his daughters going, he treated us like cattle. We have no regard for him. That's how he ends. That's the end of his influence and his legacy. And Jacob almost needs to be freed from Laban.
Take it to heart, brothers and sisters. We must reflect on ourselves as God leads us. And in light of what God is showing us about ourselves, we look at the circumstances and the relationships we have, and we see them as opportunities to grow.
We don't harden our hearts. We don't deceive ourselves. We don't try to justify our actions and behavior. We humble ourselves and say, help me to be more like my Savior. Help me. Well, as we come to a close, I'll try to be brief with this.
I'm going to have to pass over so much. But at least let me make three points. And the first point is just returning to that great and godly advice from Jacob's wives. Whatever God has said to you, do it.
And that requires, I think, really three things. The first thing, in order for you to do whatever God has said to you, the first thing is you must know what God has said to you. You must know what God has said to you.
Now, He doesn't come to us necessarily in a night vision or in a dream. We don't have perhaps something we'd want, a supernatural impulse or revelation that floats like manna down from heaven. But we have something far more sturdy, far more solid, and we ought to be thankful because we have it at our disposal.
Whenever we seek to open its covers, we have God's Word. And therefore, we have what God is saying to us through His Word. And it's not up to our own fleshly devices, but it's a living Word directed to us, to our hearts, by His Spirit.
Jacob, of course, needed to know what God was saying to him. He needed to know that God said, it's time for you to go. He knew that God said it's time to go. He obeyed God in what He said, it's time to go.
But he did not obey God in the way he should have. He did not know what God had been teaching him for these 20 years, that it was time to confront and trust, that it wasn't enough to obey in a sneaky, self-willed kind of way.
He needed to trust and obey. He did some things right. When God was blessing him, he didn't use that as an anchor to stay. When the trial was hard and Laban was cruel, he didn't use that as an opportunity to leave.
He waited for God to say, it's time to go. That's right. Second, he approached his wives. He looked for confirmation of what God had told him to do. This is the situation here. Will you come with me? Do you see what I'm seeing?
Do you see why? Are we unified in this? Are we on the same page? That's following Proverbs 11 .14, 15 .22. There's safety in a multitude of counselors. Jacob's doing that right. But when he leaves, he's broadly obeying, but he's actually not trusting God.
So you must know what God has said to you, but in order to walk in what God has said to you, you must know the way in which God expects you to fulfill that command. And Jacob does not do that. God has to intervene to protect him.
So know what God has said to you. I have so much more to say on that.
Too bad.
Know what God has said to you. Second point. Do what God has said to you. Unfortunately, it's far too easy in the Christian life just to know what should be done and let it be undone. You can operate for a long time and get a lot of other things right and have a relatively good relationship with people in your home and with the Lord, and yet you know something that ought to be done and you leave it undone.
So it's not just knowing what God has said to you. It's actually doing what God has said to you. It wouldn't have been good if chapter 31 was God saying to Jacob, arise now and return to your land, and Jacob says, I know, I know.
He actually has to do it. And it's not good for us to say, I know, I know, but we all struggle and these things are hard. No, we actually have to do it.
Be doers of the Word.
Do it.
Not hearers only. Why? Because like Laban, you're self-deceived. You're self-deceived when you say, I know, I know, but don't we all struggle? This is not easy. I'm not there yet. Maybe in a few years.
If you know it, then do it. We're going to come back to that. Do what God has said to you. True obedience to what God has said to you, as the Puritan Thomas Adams said. True obedience does not have lead in its heels.
It doesn't drag its feet. It does what God says to do. Now of course it's not easy, and this whole chapter shows us that doing what God says for us to do.
Is not easy. Of course it's not easy.
We have to confront our flesh and our sinfulness, our pride, our stubbornness. We have to trust things that we're afraid of. Trust that God will lead us through them.
It's not easy.
God commands Jacob, arise and go, but he doesn't make it necessarily easy for Jacob to do that. He doesn't say, arise and go. Laban's going to die in his sleep tonight. I would have been like, okay, woohoo.
He doesn't make it easy.
It's actually difficult. There's a pursuit.
There's like a battle encampment across from him. But this leads to a covenant with Laban, and Jacob walks away with more assurance of protection than he could have had any other way. And of course this is a narrative setup.
Jacob is learning not to cut and run, and not to obey vaguely in a way that's still only half trusting what God said. God is helping Jacob to learn how to confront, how to face that hard thing of reconciliation that's going to inevitably happen when he returns home, and Esau's there waiting in the wings.
So please, you must never think obedience means that things are going to get easier and the path is going to be smooth. Sometimes trusting and obeying makes your life a lot more difficult, at least in the short run.
Blessings will follow. The Lord will show you that in due time. But so often, to trust and obey makes life more difficult. And we see that with Jacob. And so for that reason, when things fall apart, well, I've been trying to trust and obey, I'm doing it in a way I feel like I'm really on my knees, humbling myself, praying God, and everything's just falling apart.
Don't feel like that's a sign that somehow you're disobedient. Well, you're doing something wrong, otherwise this wouldn't be happening. No, not at all. God, it took six years for God to vindicate Jacob.
Every day, every week, every month, Jacob had to trust and obey and humble himself and serve and sacrifice and try to put away that bitterness and that resentment and not do cruelty unto cruelty or an eye for an eye.
It would have been hard. And it took six years for God to vindicate him. For Jesus, it took 33 years for God to vindicate him. 33 years of unimaginable cruelty and coldness and evil until God vindicated him.
God's ways with his people are so much more intricate than a simple cause and effect. Well, if you're trusting and obeying, it shouldn't be this way.
Well, if you're disobeying,.
No wonder it's this way. God's ways, God's presence in your life, it's so much more personal and intimate and intricate than that. But at the same time, and this is a really important balance to that, at the same time, the further you go in obedience, the longer you've been slogging along this thorny, narrow path of obedience, the more and more you understand about why you're on that path and what God is using it for.
And if you don't have that, then I think you need to sit down and pray or receive some counsel.
Because for six years,.
Jacob's not completely paralyzed and he's in the dark.
Six years at the start,.
Six years at the end. By the time God says, arise and go, Jacob's like, yeah, I'm getting it now. I can see why you've allowed all this to be happening. I'm struggling, but I'm also growing. I'm suffering, but I'm also gaining.
I get a sense this is all going somewhere. You almost didn't even have to say arise and go to the land. I knew this was coming. And the longer you're walking in uprightness on this path of obedience, the further you're able to understand what God is doing in your life, why he's allowed it to be this way, where he's leading and taking you.
And so when we say there's a step-by-step dependence upon him, of course we mean to emphasize that he doesn't reveal everything all at once. But that doesn't mean that the further you go down it, you can't look back and go, oh, I kind of get the direction.
And that's the point. And of course, there's no such thing as a genuine knowledge of God that doesn't show itself in obedience to his will. Everyone wants to know God. Everyone wants to know God. I've been having late night drunk texts with an old friend who wants to know God.
And he says, God is not real.
There is no God.
I wish there was.
I wish God was real.
I want to know God.
You will never know God.
If you refuse to obey him.
He will not reveal himself to people who refuse to glorify him. Even in that first act of obeying his call to humble themselves.
And turn to him.
That they might have hope in life. There can be no knowledge of God, no experience of his presence apart from some heart to say, yes, Lord, I do want your will. And I'm tired of my own way. I do want your presence.
I'm tired of feeling empty. I do want your grace. I'm tired of my sins and all the misery it's wrought in my life. Without that desire, that heart, there can be no knowledge of God. We live in a culture that would love to know God but refuses to obey him.
Sinclair Ferguson, he says, God does not give divine knowledge to those who have no desire to glorify him. And then third and last point, trust and obey. And I call this the reciprocity of influence. Not my phrase.
It's from Alexander McLaren. The reciprocity of influence. You think of something reciprocal. It self-feeds. It kind of loops back and forth. And that's how it is with trust and obedience. McLaren put this together.
He makes it negative and I'm going to just take the other side of that coin. McLaren, important lessons are given by these two alternating ideas of faith and unbelief. Alternating ideas. Belief, unbelief.
Obedience, disobedience. Disobedience is the root of unbelief. Did you hear that? Unbelief is not the root of disobedience. We don't start out as knowers. Scripture does not describe us primarily as minds that fill the world.
We are not reduced to knowers but lovers. And so a mental ascent, that root of unbelief, that doesn't, well I can't get there and so of course I'm going to start disobeying. No, no, no. Disobedience leads to unbelief.
Unbelief is the mother of further disobedience and now it's reciprocal. Disobedience leads to unbelief and now unbelief reciprocates by leading to more disobedience. Faith, on the other hand, is voluntary submission within a person's own power.
If faith is not exercised, the true cause lies deeper than any intellectual reason. It lies in a moral aversion. I do not delight to do your will. Actually, get far away from me. I'm quite happy doing what I want to do with my life,.
Not what you want me to do.
The moral aversion of the human will is the pride of independence which says, who is Lord over us? Why should we have to depend upon Jesus? But faith is submission and obedience and so faith becomes the mother to further obedience.
But unbelief leads on to a higher-handed rebellion. It's a dagger to me. This is all so fresh so I'm probably saying more than I should but it's easy to sometimes think, well, people only ever got their toes in the water of Christianity.
No wonder they're at this place now. They're not even reformed. That means something. They're not even reformed, of course. You know, they were going to this very loose, vague, life-coaching kind of church like, of course.
If only they had gotten to those five points. Then they would have persevered. We would get off shift at the supermarket at Shaw's. We worked till about 10 .30 and we'd go out to Denny's and we'd get buffalo chicken melts and we'd hash out theology all night.
Fascinating questions. We'd bring our Bibles and just start to wonder. Did you hear what Sproul said? I'm reading this now. And he started coming to church with me. I remember how excited I was.
When he was put forth to baptism.
I remember him singing hymns. The excitement in the Word. Defense of God's truth. The zeal. The discernment.
He knew the Word.
He could respond with Scriptures. And to see him now as a blasphemer. A hater of God.
Disobedience.
Leads to unbelief. He didn't stumble upon some intellectual argument that was just like, oh, I think I've been wrong all these years. He started giving his life over to disobedience. This is okay. At least just this.
Just for now. Maybe a little bit more. Maybe a little bit more. Now it's actually getting kind of hard to believe in God. In fact, I'm quite convinced that God is a lie. It's what McLaren calls a dreadful reciprocity.
Of influence.
The less one trusts, the more he disobeys. And the more he disobeys, the less he trusts. And when you're in that death spiral,.
You cannot stop it.
There's no brake pedals. The more you disobey, the more you refuse to believe. And the more you refuse to believe, the more you disobey, and you're in a death spiral. And though you once worshipped God with that pure water, now you have this salty, briny sludge that blasphemes God within a span of a decade.
You went from being baptized and feeling that God's presence was so powerful in your life that you could wish it apart and be with him, the lover of your soul, and you would gladly shed your blood for him.
And now you take that same precious name and you drag it through the filth of your life and you blaspheme it and.
Say, he is no God.
And you mock and laugh and.
Insult him. This.
Is the dreadful reciprocity.
No one is immune from it.
Calvinism won't save you.
We sing,.
We've been teaching our girls, trust and obey. I know I'm going long, but I'm sorry. We've been teaching them, trust and obey. And even I have to admit, it's kind of like before this week, you know, we got around the table and they're excited to sing and it's kind of like, oh, you know, I'd prefer some other hymns.
You know, we get some good Welsh hymns in there. It's like, you know, trust and obey, you know, for there's no other way. And it's cute to hear their little voices. And then just this week it struck.
Me, girls, you don't, you don't know how important it is. Trust and obey. There is.
No other way. You will not be saved. And it doesn't matter how far long you get. If you're not trusting.
And obeying, you won't be saved.
You ought to have no assurance if you're not trusting and obeying that there's any hope for you in Christ. You must trust and obey.
There is no other way. There's no other way.
When John writes in 1 John 2, 1, my little children, I write these things to you so that you do not.
Sin. He's not speaking.
Figuratively there. It's not some, like, metaphor. He doesn't go, but of course, you know, he's saying, I'm writing this to you so that you don't sin.
Your righteousness matters.
Your trust and obedience,.
It matters. Your soul is hanging on the balance of these.
Things. And it's only when you get that cemented in your life and you refuse to buckle or footnote or qualify that in any way that then you can go on to say, but.
If you do sin,.
Christ will redeem you from it. Don't you dare jump to that until you've cemented, you've fixed in your heart all of the spiritual and eternal weight of John saying, I write, I teach, you.
Have this in front of you so that you.
Will not sin. So that you can be like Jacob and say, what is my sin? I've been struggling to obey and trust and it hasn't been easy, but I have not sinned against you Laban. I have.
Not sinned against you. Whatever.
God has said to you,.
Whatever God has said to you,.
Do it. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for.
Your word. We thank you for your precious promises and your precious warnings. We thank you Lord that the obverse is true. That as we trust you, we will grow in our obedience and as we grow in our obedience, we'll trust you even more.
Guide us, we pray, in your son's name.
Amen. Well, now is our time.
For interaction. I realize we're quite late.
I do apologize for that. I'm sure.
It must have been. Yeah, we're not trending in a good direction with time management, so. But I won't be here next week. Brian Labogere.
Will be here, so you're.
Going to leave half an hour earlier.
Next week because he's very good with.
Time management. He's an old pro. I'm a greenhorn still, so we'll give him a pass. Thank you.
Brother. The question is, is it.
Trending in the right direction? Is there sanctification in this area? I'm speaking with regard to the length of the sermons. Jokingly. I was struck by the similarity between Laban and the description of the evil man in Psalm 36 in the first few verses.
The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flattereth himself in his own eyes until his iniquity be found to be hateful. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit he hath left off to be wise and to do good.
And it goes on. But it's just such a sobering stark example of the hardening that sin brings when we look at Laban. And it's at the end of the chapter it's almost, there's a sigh of relief. It's merciful that the curtain closes, you know, drops upon Laban and we don't see him anymore because he's become so hateful, really.
He's so blind to his sinfulness. I think we've all seen people who are in their latter decades of their lives who are in a similar situation.
And.
The opposite of that. Those who are much nearer to heaven than they were earlier in their lives. And I think that's probably one of the most telling evidences to me I think of the truth of the gospel.
Is the divergence between the godly man and the ungodly man that becomes evident in their later years. Thank you for your exhortation to take heed and fear.
Amen. Thank you for, yeah, I never considered that in Psalm 36. That's a biography of Laban.
It just boils it down to, you know, things that I can comprehend. Trust and obey.
Yeah, amen.
The songs we teach our children usually have their hand on the most profound parts of our faith.
You know, may whoever's found with these idols be dead or killed or whatever and his wife dying you know, just a few chapters later in childbirth. Like God almost holding him accountable to his words or judging his wife through her husband or anything like that.
Or just kind of coincidental. Well,.
We have to qualify the word coincidental.
And certainly.
It's certainly true that these were co-incidents, meaning they happened with this incident. Whether we ascribe significance to this or even when Rachel exclaimed, you know, give me children lest I die.
And then in having children she, trying to bear.
Joseph, she died. I don't think.
We can go beyond what the text says. I think it would have been understood to be a almost a legal defense or, you know, sort of formulaic expression. May this be done to me. You know, it's almost like an oath or a vow.
I've done nothing. And insofar as that's the case, Jacob saying, I'm without.
Guilt, that's certainly true. He's vindicated.
He never pronounces on behalf of Rachel, but it's also meant to highlight that there's work to be done in Rachel's life too. And there is that sort of Bonnie and Clyde moment where they both are stealing away from Laban.
And so we are meant to see, I think, a failure here. A compromise. A giving in to fear. And again, depending on how we understand the significance of her taking those household idols, was she afraid that he could use them to kind of.
Follow her? She doesn't seem.
To ascribe any divine significance to them personally. She sits on them. But what's the motive? If it was vengeance,.
Well, that's sin. If it was fear, well, that's sin. There's really no.
Healthy or good motive, unless you take the rabbis who are like, she was destroying the idols that he couldn't use them to worship. It's like, well, let's not give her too much credit, guys. Because the parallel is with Jacob, and this is a moment of failure.
This is a moment of compromise, and it's meant to echo Isaac and Abraham's failure in the way that God had to intervene in order to protect. But what Jacob says, I think, is first meant to vindicate himself and his innocence in the matter.
Second, I think it's meant.
To highlight the fact that.
Rachel is now in a dangerous predicament.
Because of.
Her action, and God's intervention even spares her. So, there's a couple different ways to look at it. I don't know that there's more that could be said on that. I wouldn't necessarily say that she's answering for her crime in.
Dying at childbirth.
But that's a very thoughtful question.