After 28, we finished
considering how Jacob deceived Isaac, his father, in
order to get the birthright.
And then he saw he was very upset
and wants to kill him.
We read in chapter 28, verse 1, And
so Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and
charged him and said to him, You shall
not take a wife from the daughters of
Canaan.
Arise, go to Hadanaram, to the house of
Bethuel, your mother's father, and from there take
to yourself a wife from the daughters of
Laban, your mother's brother.
May God Almighty bless you and make you
fruitful and multiply you, that you may become
a company of peoples.
May He also give you the blessing of
Abraham, to you and to your descendants with
you, that you may possess the land of
your surgeons, which God gave to Abraham.
And Isaac sent Jacob away to his brother
-in-law's house.
It says here, when Esau, verse 6, saw
that Isaac had blessed Jacob, he told him
to take a wife from his relatives, and
that Jacob had obeyed.
And Esau saw, verse 8, that his own
wives were not pleasing to his father.
But Esau went to Ishmael and married a
third time, besides the wives that he had.
Mahalak, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the
sister of Levioth.
We see here Esau, a person without any
conviction.
If it was venison that pleased his father,
he'd get him that.
If it was another type of wife, he'd
get him that.
Esau is the head of all those who
marry the type of wives that their fathers
want.
And there are a lot of believers like
that, who have no conviction.
They just choose the type of wives their
fathers recommend.
Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran.
And he came to a certain place and
spent the night there, because the sun had
set.
And there we see, of course, it's only
a geographical fact that the sun had set.
But it is also true of Jacob's life,
in one sense, that the sun had set
over his life.
The end.
He was going into a period of discipline
for the next twenty years.
It was like a period of darkness that
he was going to face.
And it's very significant that at the end
of this period, he comes out of it,
after twenty long years.
And when he comes out of it, it's
very interesting that it says in Genesis 32,
after his name has been changed to Israel,
in Genesis 32, verse 28, verse 31, it
says, Then the sun rose upon him.
Here was the sun setting, and there was
the sun rising.
And that was, it's not without purpose that
the Holy Spirit recorded it, because it was
something that was true in his life.
Isaac had blessed him, laid his hands on
him and blessed him.
But there was still so much in Jacob,
which was contrary to what God wanted him
to be, that he had to go through
twenty years of discipline before God could make
him what he wanted him to be.
And that teaches us something.
It's possible for some man of God to
lay his hands on us, and we can
receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit, perhaps,
or some gift.
And it can be just like Isaac laying
his hands on Jacob.
And of course, Jacob received a blessing.
There's no doubt about it.
And people do receive an anointing.
But yet the sun can set.
And if a person's not willing to be
disciplined by God, he can never come through
to becoming an Israel, even if some man
of God has laid hands on his head.
Well, that's one thing we learn.
The wonderful thing here we see is God's
grace, that while he was sleeping there on
his journey to Bader Maram, he had a
dream, verse 12, and a ladder was set
up on the earth, with a stop reaching
to heaven, and behold, the angels of God
were ascending and descending on it.
And the Lord stood above it and said,
I am the Lord, the God of your
father, Abraham, the God of Isaac, the land
on which you lie.
I'll give it to you, to your descendants.
Your descendants will be like the dust of
the earth.
You'll spread out to the west, to the
east, to the north and south.
And you and your descendants, all the families
of the earth, will be blessed.
And I am with you and will keep
you wherever you go and will bring you
back to this land, for I will not
leave you until I've done what I've promised
for you, what I've promised you.
See, there we see how God's nature is
so different from ours.
If we saw the type of person Jacob
was, we'd just give up on him.
We'd say, he's such a crook, he's such
a deceiver, someone who can't trust me.
I'd have given him the birthright and he
used to go into all that deception in
order to get it.
But here we see something of the sovereignty
of God when he chooses someone, that he
doesn't let him go.
He works on him.
He had a purpose for Jacob.
And even though Jacob was not yet all
that he was to be, yet God had
hope for him.
That's a tremendous encouragement to us.
As we saw in an earlier study, God
calls himself a God of Jacob.
And finally, God's work on him succeeded.
That's a great encouragement to us, that what
God has begun, like Paul tells the Philippians,
I am sure that he who has begun
a good work in you will complete it.
It's a wonderful thing to be chosen by
God.
That's why the word of God says, first
of all, brothers and sisters, make your calling
and election sure.
It's a very important verse.
Make your calling and election sure.
That's what the New Testament exhorts us to
do.
In other words, make sure that you are
really one of God's chosen ones.
Remember what Jesus told his disciples?
You have not chosen me, but I have
chosen you.
And if we can have that certainty that
God has chosen me, many, many problems in
life are solved.
Many people, the only assurance they have is
that I have chosen the Lord.
That's good that you chose the Lord.
But it says, make your calling sure.
Make your election sure that God has chosen
you.
Say, how can I be sure of that?
The Holy Spirit will witness with our spirit
that we are God's chosen ones.
And I really come to see that that's
the reason why many people never seem to
make much progress, never seem to make much
headway in their life.
That's one of the reasons that they are
not too sure that God's chosen them, God's
elected them.
It doesn't matter what our weaknesses are.
If God's chosen us, he'll work on us.
Esau had weaknesses, but God never bothered about
him.
Jacob had weaknesses, but it was different.
He was chosen.
And God was going to work on him,
work on him, work on him.
And one day, he was transformed into an
Israel.
And that's the hope we have.
Not everyone, but those who are diligent to
make their calling and election sure.
Let's turn back to the epistle of Peter
in the New Testament, 2 Peter 1, verse
10.
Therefore, brethren, 2 Peter 1, 10, be all
the more diligent.
Be all the more diligent.
That means zealous, wholehearted.
To make certain.
To make certain about what?
Not that you've chosen the Lord, but that
he has called and chosen you.
Very important.
Are you diligent?
To make certain without a shadow of doubt.
That's the meaning of make certain.
That God Almighty has called and chosen me.
Because if you're not sure about that, you're
going to stumble.
As long as you practice these things, you'll
never stumble.
In this way, the entrance into the eternal
kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,
will be abundantly supplied to you.
And he says, I'm always ready to remind
you of these things.
Always ready to remind you.
Make certain that he has called you and
chosen you.
See, Peter could say that because he was
also a failure like Jacob at one time
in his life.
But because it was not just he who
had chosen the Lord, but the Lord had
chosen him, God made sure that Peter came
out all right as an apostle.
It's a wonderful thing.
Jacob and Esau may both be put underwater,
but Jacob will come out.
He won't drown while Esau drowns.
Because one's called.
It's like Israel and the Israelites and Egyptians
went through the Red Sea.
The Israelites came out and the Egyptians were
drowned.
Why?
Because the Israelites were called.
That's the thing.
Makes a tremendous difference if God's called you.
But those who take the Christian life casually,
play the fool with God and take it
so lightly, I really feel they can just
drift along, drift along, drift along and waste
their whole life and miss God's purpose completely.
So make certain that God's called you.
And I want to ask everyone here, are
you sure God's called you?
That God's chosen you?
If you're not, obey that exhortation in 2
Peter 1.10. It can make a world
of difference in your life.
That's the thing that made a world of
difference in Jacob's life.
It's the thing that made the difference between
Jacob and Esau.
If in the scriptures we had seen Jacob
as a very God-fearing upright man and
Esau as a downright crook, we could have
said, well, that was the reason for the
difference.
But we don't see Jacob like that.
In fact, we don't see Esau deceiving Jacob.
Is there any instance where Esau deceived Jacob?
No.
It was Jacob who deceived Esau.
And yet think that God's hand was upon
Jacob.
It's amazing.
The important thing is God's calling.
Make sure that He's called you.
And so even though this man who has
deceived his brother and deceived his father and
goes down, God doesn't let him go.
Because He sees in him, there's a lot
of guile in him, a lot of deception
in him.
God says, I've chosen him and I'm going
to do something in him.
And so He says, I'll bless you.
And He gives him this vision of this
ladder.
When he was asleep, it's almost as though
God were saying to him, I'm going to
do this for you and you won't have
to worry about it.
I will work on you.
I'll break you when the time comes.
And I will accomplish what I have planned
for your life.
When you turn to John's Gospel, chapter 1,
you see that Jesus spoke about this incident.
It's very interesting to see that passage in
John's chapter 1.
We read when Nathanael was told by Philip
that they had found the Messiah.
John 1.45, Philip found Nathanael and said,
We have found him of whom Moses and
the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth.
And Nathanael was a skeptic.
He couldn't believe it.
Can any good thing come out of Nazareth,
Philip said, come and see.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said
to him, Behold, we can say, a descendant
of Jacob, but one in whom there is
no guile like there was in Jacob.
This is a true Israel, not a Jacob.
Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no
Jacob.
We can read it like that.
Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no
Jacob.
And Nathanael said, how do you know me?
He said, I saw you under the fig
tree.
Rabbi, you are the son of God.
And Jesus answered, because I said I saw
you under the fig tree, do you believe
you shall see greater things than these?
What are you going to see?
I say to you, you shall see the
heavens open.
This is what Jacob saw.
And the angels of God ascending and descending
upon the Son of Man.
That's what Jacob saw in Genesis 28, 12.
This ladder going up to heaven and the
angels of God ascending and descending on him.
And concerning Nathanael, Jesus says, here is an
Israelite in whom there is no Jacob.
He is being transformed.
There is no guile in him.
And you will see that ladder, which is
Jesus.
Jesus himself explained there that that ladder was
the picture of himself.
Then we turn back to Genesis 28 and
we understand this.
It says here in Genesis 28, 12, it
was a ladder that was set on the
earth.
Genesis 28, 12.
It wasn't a ladder that came sort of
six feet above the earth and that people
had to jump on it to climb.
That's how I thought for many years, that
Jesus had come from heaven, but he hadn't
come right down to the level of my
flesh.
He sort of came with a flesh slightly
superior to mine.
I wasn't really able to even get to
the bottom rung of that ladder.
But we praise God that that ladder was
set on, right on the earth.
Right down to the bottom level.
He came in a flesh just like ours,
so that the first rung of the ladder
wouldn't be above us, that we couldn't get
onto it.
And the top of that ladder was reaching
heaven.
And the Lord, verse 13, stood above it.
Here is the one mediator between God and
man, the man Christ Jesus.
The man Christ Jesus.
People call him the God-man.
Very interesting, the Holy Spirit never thought of
that clever title that many believers have thought
of.
Clever believers cannot understand the truth.
1 Timothy 2.5 says, 4 and 5.
One mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus.
He's become a man completely.
The foot of the ladder is on the
earth, the top is up in heaven.
And that's the only way that we can
reach God.
Only one ladder.
He is the way up to the Father.
And further, we read here in verse 17,
where Jacob woke up, verse 16, and said,
Surely the Lord is in this place, and
I did not know it.
And he was afraid and said, How awesome
is this place!
This is none other than the house of
God.
And this is the gate of heaven.
He didn't realize how true it was that
that ladder was really the gate of heaven.
Like Jesus said, I am the way, no
man comes to the Father but by me.
But also, he says, this is the house
of God.
The church where Christ is seen in the
flesh.
And Jacob rose early in the morning and
took a stone that he had put under
his head and set it up as a
pillar, and poured oil on its top, and
he called the name of that place Bethel.
Bethel means the house of God.
The first picture that we have in the
Old Testament of the church as God's house
We saw the ark as the picture of
the church, but here is the first time
that we read of the house of God.
God's dwelling place.
And that is the place where he saw
the ladder with its feet down to the
earth.
Then Jacob made a vow.
And it's very interesting to see what Jacob
says in response to this fantastic revelation of
God, and the promise God made.
Of course, he says these wonderful things about
this being God's house and the gate of
heaven.
And God has told him that all the
families of the earth, verse 14, will be
blessed through you, and I will keep you
and I will bless you.
But Jacob responds to that in this way.
And it's very interesting to see and compare.
If God will be with me and will
keep me on this journey that I take,
and will give me food to eat and
garments to wear, and I return to my
father's house in safety, then the Lord will
be my God.
And the stone which I have set up
as a pillar will be God's house.
Of all the dollars given me, I will
surely give a tenth to thee.
Notice what Jacob is asking for.
He says, Lord, give me food to eat,
give me clothes to wear, protect me on
my journey, and bring me back to my
father's house safely, and I won't ask for
anything else.
And it's typical of multitudes of believers to
whom God says, I'll bless you with every
spiritual blessing in heavenly places, right, Jesus?
The God of peace will crush Satan under
your feet shortly, and you can be partakers
of the divine nature and all their prayers.
He says, Lord, just make sure I can
make both ends meet this month, make my
finances sufficient, help me to get that increment,
and Lord, help my children to get their
promotion in the classes, and Lord, a house
to live in, and good marriage partners for
my children.
Exactly like Jacob.
God calls them for something heavenly, and they
are only thinking in terms of the earth.
And if God will do that, yeah, I'll
give my tithe.
The first time that the tithe is mentioned
in the Bible, and it's very significant, that
it is mentioned by a man who made
a business transaction with God.
If God will bless me, I'll pay you
my tithe.
I've come across people like that today.
If God will bless my field, I'll pay
one-tenth of what I earn.
If all my fields prosper, I'll give ten
percent to God.
So Lord bless me.
And there are stupid preachers who are willing
to pray for such people, that God will
bless their fields so that they give ten
percent of their income to God.
The tithing as a business transaction.
Jacob was the first person who indulged in
that.
If God will do this for me, I'll
give my tithe to God.
But there's a warning there for us, that
when God calls us to something high, we
respond with something so low.
We must keep this in mind, because when
we come to that other place in Genesis
chapter thirty-two, where we can say this
is Jacob's first meeting with God.
And Genesis thirty-two was his second meeting
with God.
And in between those two meetings lay twenty
years.
And in those twenty years of discipline, God
broke him and humbled him.
And at the end of it, that man
comes out in Genesis thirty-two.
And it's very interesting when we come to
that chapter to see what he's asking God
for there.
He's not asking for food.
He's not asking for clothing.
He's not asking for protection.
You know what he says in Genesis thirty
-two?
Lord bless me.
I don't want anything else.
I want your blessing.
I want your power in my life.
And then you know that God has accomplished
a work in this man.
But he had to break him.
That's the time when he dislocated his hip
socket, so that he had to limp forever.
And we can see that Jacob was a
contrast to Isaac.
Isaac began so well and ended up, as
we saw, in a pretty pathetic spiritual condition.
Jacob was the opposite.
Jacob began so badly, but God did such
a work of breaking in him, that that
work was successful and he came out as
an Israel.
Abram's name was changed to Abraham.
Jacob's name was changed to Israel, when God
finally broke him.
And that is how we must look at
the next three chapters, three, four chapters, that
we are going to study.
It's going to be a study of how
God broke this deceiver, this schemer, this man
who thought, now my father has put his
latest hands on my head and I'll be
all right, and the sun had only set
on his life.
He was going through a period of darkness,
discipline, and because he humbled himself under God's
mighty hand during those twenty years, he came
out as a man of God.
And as we look at the circumstances he
went through, we can see that this is
the way God seeks to deal with us
too, to discipline us so that we can
come out finally as Israel, so that the
sun which has set over our life can
finally rise.
And so we read in Genesis 29, verse
1, Jacob went on his journey and came
to the land of the sons of the
east.
And he saw well in the field, he
finally reached Paranaram, Mesopotamia.
And there the stone of the mouth of
the well was large and all the flocks
were gathered there.
They would then roll the stone from the
mouth of the well and water the sheep.
They had a custom there that they wouldn't
water the sheep till all the flock of
all the shepherds had gathered together so that
nobody monopolized the place.
They would leave the well cover with the
stone until everybody's sheep had come.
And Jacob said to them, My brothers, where
are you from?
We are from Haran.
Do you know Laban?
And they said, We know him.
And he said to them, Is it well
with him?
They said, It is well.
And behold, Rachel, his daughter is coming with
the sheep.
You see, this reminds us of the time
when Abraham's servant also went to the same
place, Mesopotamia, looking for a bride for Isaac.
Now Jacob is also going to the same
place looking for a bride for Isaac.
But notice the different way these two people
went.
Abraham's servant, he went with prayer.
He said, Lord, guide me.
I want to meet the right person.
He sought for a sign from God.
He sought for the leading of God.
And when he got the answer, he worshipped
God.
You don't see anything of that in Jacob.
That was not even a descendant of Abraham.
He was Abraham's servant.
Jacob was the grandson of Abraham.
But see how he behaved.
He's not seeking God.
He saw Rachel.
And he got all excited because she was
good-looking.
And she was charming.
You know, that's what happens to a lot
of believers.
I can say it with children of Abraham.
But they behave worse than Abraham's servant when
they see a good-looking girl or a
charming one.
It says that Rachel was good-looking and
charming as we read in verse 17.
Rachel was beautiful of form and appearance, shining
and attractive.
And as soon as he saw her, he
didn't need to pray about it.
He knew straight away, this is it.
You see, this is Jacob.
Very, very ordinary believer.
And he said, verse 7, It is still
high day.
Isn't it time for the flock to be
gathered, water the sheep, and go and pasture
them?
They said, We cannot, until all the flocks
are gathered.
That's our custom here.
After all the flocks are gathered, then we
roll the stone from the mouth of the
well.
We water the sheep.
While he was still speaking with them, Rachel
came.
For she was a shepherdess and came about
when Jacob saw Rachel, a sheep of Laban,
his mother.
Jacob went up, and he forgot all about
the rules and regulations of that place and
just rolled away the stone and watered the
flock of Laban, his mother's brother.
This is 100% like believers.
That we forget about all rules and regulations
when it's a matter of our own convenience
and our relatives.
All principles are abandoned when it comes to
something that affects our convenience.
I've seen that.
Believers who are so sticky about rules and
regulations for other people, but when it touches
them, they are not so particular about the
same rules and regulations.
This is the guile and deception that there
is in the flesh.
Strict.
Very strictly strict towards other people according to
the letter of the law.
But when it comes to themselves, it can
be modified.
We say we follow the spirit of the
law now.
This is Jacob.
Never mind what the rules and regulations are.
Here it's, I've got to impress this girl,
and I've got to do something about it,
and he rolls the stone away and waters
the flock, and God all excited about her.
And he kissed Rachel, lifted up his voice
and wept.
And Jacob told Rachel that he was a
relative of her father.
And he was Rebekah's son.
And she ran and told her father.
So it came about when Laban heard the
news.
He ran to meet him and embraced him
and kissed him and brought him to the
house.
And Laban said, Surely you're my bone and
my flesh.
And he stayed with him for a month.
And then Laban said to Jacob, Because you're
my relative, should you therefore sell me for
nothing?
Tell me, what shall your wages be?
And Laban had two daughters.
The name of the older was Leah, and
the name of the younger was Rachel.
Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful
of form and face.
There was something unattractive about Leah's appearance.
Maybe she had a squint or something ugly
about her eyes anyway.
And Jacob loved Rachel because she was good
looking.
So he said, I'll serve you seven years
for your younger daughter Rachel.
And Laban said, It's better that I give
her to you than I should give her
to another man.
Stay with me.
It says here, Jacob served seven years for
Rachel and they seemed to him but a
few days because of his love for her.
There's a beautiful verse that tells us how
love can make drudgery light.
And if a man can love a girl
so much that seven years, multiply that by
365 and 2,500 days, was just like
a few days.
It was just like about seven or eight
days.
Seven years were like seven days.
Just as though it were a few days.
Because he loved her.
That's how it is when we serve the
Lord out of love.
Anything that we do for Him is never
a drudgery.
His commandments are not burdensome.
His service is never a drudgery.
No sacrifice will ever be considered a sacrifice
when we love the Lord.
No service will be inconvenient.
Nothing that we give we will ever feel
will be too much.
And we will not even remember what we
have done for the Lord where there is
love.
But when love disappears, seven days of work
can be like seven years we serve one
another.
I've come to see one thing.
If you serve your brothers just as brothers,
you'll always look for gratitude.
And after some time, it will become a
drudgery.
You can never enjoy for seven years serving
a brother.
But if you do your service as unto
the Lord and not as unto a brother,
that everything, even if it's done to a
brother, you say, that's not for him.
I'm doing it as unto the Lord.
Then there's never a looking for gratitude and
it's never drudgery.
It does not depend on how that brother
or sister behaves.
It only depends on whether we love the
Lord or not.
And seven years will be like a few
days.
Beautiful words.
And we can understand why the Lord told
the church in Ephesus, I have something against
you because you left your first love.
You still labor for me, but it's not
for that devotion like it was in those
days.
Then Jacob said to Laban after seven years,
Give me my wife when my time is
completed that I may go to her.
And Laban gathered all the men of the
place and made a feast and came about
in the evening.
This is a beautiful incident.
It's the one crook meeting with another crook.
We reap what we sow.
There's a beautiful verse in Proverbs 27 which
says, Iron sharpens iron.
So does one man sharpen another.
And here was the man who thought he
was the greatest crook in the world.
He discovered when he came to Mesopotamia there's
one greater than him.
And God in his discipline puts a Jacob
with a Laban.
One sharp fellow being put with another sharp
fellow.
That's how it is.
And if you find something peculiar about your
wife, remember, Jacob and Laban, God has given
you a wife because you were also that
type of person.
He has given you one like that to
sharpen you.
Of course, you don't think that.
You think you deserve somebody much better because
you are so spiritual, etc.
etc.
But God didn't think so.
God thought you were pretty carnal.
And that's why he gave you a carnal
wife.
Not to leave you in your carnalities.
You both humble yourselves.
You can both become spiritual.
But you got to get rid of those
high thoughts about yourself first.
You can say, I'm Jacob.
I'm the descendant of the promises of Abraham
and all that garbage.
But God says, I'm not surprised.
I'm not interested in all that high talk.
I'll put you with someone who will really
sharpen you now.
And so, what a lesson he learned.
And what a hard lesson that was.
It was pretty smart of Laban to have
the marriage feast late at night without any
lights.
So that finally when he went home with
his bride, he didn't even know who she
was.
Well, they didn't have a marriage like we
have these days.
They just had a feast.
And then that was it.
And in the evening, after the feast was
all over, he took his daughter Leah, and
Jacob was probably so tired that he just
went to sleep and woke up in the
morning to discover that it was not Rachel.
It was Leah who had been given to
him as a wife in the dark.
And it came about in the morning, verse
25, he discovers that it was Leah.
And he said, What is this you have
done to me?
Why have you deceived me?
And those words would ring in his ear.
His father asking him, Why have you deceived
me?
His brother asking him, Why have you deceived
me?
And now he has to ask somebody else.
Why have you deceived me?
Amazing how God arranges that we reap what
we sow.
People who are evil to others.
One day somebody is evil to them.
And they question why.
They just got to look back and think.
Children treat you badly.
Just look back and think how you treated
your parents.
You don't have to ask anything.
Don't complain against your children and all that.
Don't complain against your daughter-in-law.
Just ask yourself how you treated your mother
-in-law many years ago when you were
a daughter-in-law.
Don't complain against daughters-in-law.
It's easy to complain.
Easy to complain.
Jacob could have thought, I am so spiritual.
Why was he deceived?
Why are other people treating you that way?
You are reaping what you have sown.
Maybe you sowed it 30 years ago.
You are reaping it now.
You thought you were very smart, Jacob.
Now God has put you with somebody smarter
than you.
Fooled you.
Yeah, that's painful when we have to be
paid back in the same coin with which
we cheated others.
That is the discipline of God.
And at that time instead of rebelling saying,
why has God allowed this to happen to
me?
Humble yourself.
Say, Lord, I am pretty carnal.
That's why you see that you need to
put me into such a situation to sharpen
me and discipline me and humble me and
I will just humble myself under your hands.
I will not think that I deserve something
better.
And the same question I am asking somebody
else today, why is he treating me like
this?
Why is she treating me like this?
Let me just look back in time a
few years and I'll find somebody else maybe
asking that question.
Why did I treat that person like this?
It's the same thing being reaped against.
And then all I need to do is
humble myself.
That is why I say, be kind to
others.
Be good to others.
Don't deceive others in your younger days.
Humble yourself.
Honor your parents.
Respect them.
Put God first.
And then you'll reap that.
Because if you sow to the flesh, you
reap corruption.
If you sow to the spirit, you reap
eternal life.
It works the other way too.
If you sow good, you reap good as
well.
And so we see in verse 26, Laban
says, It's not the practice in our place
to marry off a young man before the
first month.
He could have told him that seven years
earlier.
I mean, it's very easy to justify our
deception by saying, you know, we just discovered
that there's a new rule which doesn't permit
that sort of thing.
It's so easy to justify the wrong that
we do with some rule or regulation that
we say we have discovered.
Very easy.
Laban, just as smart as Jacob.
However, he says, Complete the bridal week.
That means, after one week, you can marry
Rachel also.
But you'll have to serve me for another
seven years after that for her.
So, he, after one week, he married Rachel.
And now you have to work for seven
years again after that for her.
And, it says here that, of course, it
is obvious that Jacob loved Rachel more than
Leah.
In verse 31, When the Lord saw that
Leah was unloved or hated, the
Lord opened her womb.
But Rachel was barren.
It's a very interesting verse, a very interesting
principle in life, that God is usually on
the side of the underdog.
God is on the side of the person
who is despised and hated.
Here, God was watching.
This man, he's married two wives, and he's
showing so much partiality to the second one,
despising and hating the first one.
God says, all right, I'll bless her.
And I'll teach him a lesson.
Leah conceived and bore a son, named him
Reuben.
But she said, the Lord has seen my
affliction.
It's wonderful, brothers and sisters, when you are
despised and rejected by men and hated.
If it is for the Lord's sake, if
you have not done anything wrong, Leah didn't
do anything wrong.
It wasn't her fault that she wasn't good
looking.
It wasn't her fault that she has squint
eyes or some problem with her eyes.
She hadn't done anything wrong.
God saw that.
If you are despised and rejected because nothing
wrong with you, you can be sure that
God will come down on your side one
day.
Be very careful of taking sides with the
ones who are popular.
God is on the side of the one
who is criticized and despised and backbitten against.
And when you take sides with the backbiter,
you are usually taking sides against God.
Then she conceived again.
The Lord heard that I am unloved and
therefore gave me another son, Simeon.
She conceived a third son.
Now my husband will be attached to me
and he is called Levi.
She conceived and bore a third, fourth son.
Now I will praise the Lord.
She named him Judah.
Judah means praise.
Now that's wonderful how God blessed her with
four sons and with each son you can
imagine how Rachel became more and more envious.
It says in verse 30, verse 1, when
Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children,
she became jealous.
She said to Jacob, give me children or
else I die.
It's very difficult for two blood sisters to
get along together.
Very difficult.
One really needs to be highly spiritual because
there's always the possibility of envy and jealousy
from one sister to the other sister.
All can also be in the church, particularly
her blood sisters.
She has got more than me.
Whether it's children or property or gifts or
X, Y or Z.
Always is the same story from the beginning
of time.
But it's wonderful that we can work out
our salvation from jealousy.
All jealousy and envy is usually related to
some earthly thing or earthly honor.
Even jealousy of spiritual gifts is related to
earthly honor.
Always.
Think of anyone you've been jealous of or
envious of and ask yourself, isn't it for
some earthly honor that you're jealous of that
person or some material thing, some earthly matter.
Envy, jealousy, strife.
I don't know how many fights Rachel and
Leah had with each other.
She's upset because God blessed Leah.
Actually, she should have been upset with God
instead of getting upset with Leah.
And that's why when God made a law
in the Old Testament, of course, God permitted
people to marry more than one wife.
It wasn't His perfect will, but He permitted
a lot of things in the Old Testament
because their hearts were hard.
But one of the things He said in
Leviticus 18, verse 18, was that you mustn't
marry two sisters.
If you do finally end up marrying two
women, don't let them be sisters.
That was a specific law in the Old
Testament.
And Rachel was envious, jealous of her sister,
not because...
You see, envy doesn't come because we lack
something.
Listen to this carefully.
Jealousy comes because somebody else has got what
we don't have.
We may have plenty, but if the other
person has got more than us, there's still
jealousy.
If the other person's got less than us,
we are alright.
So you see, jealousy comes not because of
lack, but because another person's got more than
me.
If Leah also had no children, Rachel would
have been happy.
But she's got children, I don't have.
Be careful.
Be careful of that.
And she goes and gets upset with her
husband, and shakes up the anger, burns against
her, and says, do you think I'm God,
who's withheld you from the fruit of your
womb?
I think that's a good word for some
husbands to tell their wives when their wives
are upset about something.
Why are you complaining to me?
Go and complain to God.
God's the one who's done that.
So why answer?
The Bible says, answer a fool according to
his folly.
And when a woman behaves like a fool,
it's good to answer according to her folly
and tell her that, who you got to
complain against?
Against God?
That God's ordered your circumstances like this?
Humble yourself.
I really believe that some of us husbands
need to be a little bolder in giving
exhortations to our wives instead of treating them
like Maharanis and spoiling them.
It says, exhort one another to godliness.
Don't be a effeminate slave of your wife,
but a shepherd, a leader, who can exhort
her.
Am I God?
You have a complaint, you've got to go
to God.
You don't have to get upset like, since
Jacob's anger burns, we can get victory over
that, but we can give a loving exhortation.
Your complaint is against God.
Humble yourself.
God can provide our needs.
Why do we, why do you get jealous
about Leah?
Go to God.
So there is something, and we can ask,
why is it Rachel was so eager to
have children?
And when we look behind it, you see,
both Leah and Rachel knew that Jacob is
the man through whom all the blessing of
Abraham is going to come.
And it's going to come to the children.
And it's because they wanted that blessing for
their children.
And probably, in terms of earthly things, they
knew that this land is going to belong
to Jacob's feet, and so they wanted property
for their children in Canaan.
When the promises of God are fulfilled, it
was all related to material things.
I want some material things for my children,
and my sister must not get it only
for her children.
I must get it for my children too.
That was Rachel's complaint.
And if I don't have children, there won't
be any material land or property for me.
So I must have children.
So comes this strife and jealousy and conflict.
All related to material things.
See how true scripture is to life.
Material things, material things, material things.
I'll tell you something I've discovered.
Women fight much more about this than men.
Men also.
But I found that even many believers among
women never seem to be free from their
attachment to material things and to fight for
it.
I'll tell you something.
You're a really godly sister if you have
no interest in material things, and if you're
quite content with what God has given you,
and you're not jealous of anybody else.
You're quite happy with what you have.
You're certainly a godly sister, and I'd have
a lot of respect for you.
If you're really free so that you'll never,
never have a conflict, and that applies also
to honor in the church.
There can be sisters who are competing with
other sisters for honor.
That's also an earthly thing.
I want to be recognized as a leader
among the young sisters in all this garbage.
I can't be an elder brother in the
church, but I can be a leader of
the young sisters.
You are a Rachel who needs to be
disciplined and go through the darkness and come
out on the other side in the sunrise.
Humble yourself.
Be small in your own eyes.
Stop seeking all this earthly honor and getting
into conflict and strife and inner wrong attitudes
towards other people, and all the garbage with
which Satan tries to ruin people so that
they never make any progress.
And a lot of people in that condition,
they never progress in their Christian life because
they are in this type of inner competition.
Rachel versus Leah.
Who's going to have more?
Whose children are going to have more?
Get out of that race.
Be small in your own eyes and be
happy with God, what God's given you.
Godliness with contentment is great gain.
Never compare yourself or your children with other
people or their children.
That's the height of folly.
If you want to be a stupid godless
sister, do that.
But if you want to be a godly
sister, don't compare yourself with others or your
children with other people's children or your material
things with other people's material things.
Think of the story.
And so, the conflict begins and Jacob says,
go to God, and that's a good exhortation.
If you have a complaint, remember your complaint
is against God.
Why hasn't God given your children all those
things?
Go and complain to God.
God is almighty.
Don't complain about people.
And you see, Jacob is being disciplined.
He's being disciplined not only with a tough
employer, Laban was his employer, and also a
father-in-law.
He's also being disciplined by difficult wives, not
just one, but two.
Imagine.
This is how God breaks a man.
He doesn't break him in a Bible school.
God didn't send Jacob to a Bible school.
That is the way the devil fools people
today.
Send them to a Bible school.
No, this is the Bible school.
With your wife, with a difficult wife at
home.
With a difficult father-in-law.
With a difficult employer.
So that you're broken, broken, broken, broken, broken,
broken.
You humble yourself and say, Lord, I'm reaping
what I've sown.
I deserve this.
Because I had pretty high thoughts about my
spirituality.
And I see that you've given me exactly
what you felt I deserve.
And there's no mistake there.
Absolutely.
You just had to deflate my balloon a
little bit and bring me down to earth.
You brought me into this situation.
And I want to humble myself.
Humble yourself doesn't mean become a doormat and
let your wife trample over you.
That's not what I mean.
But accept the difficulties there and say, Lord,
now I've got to learn wisdom here.
I want to get sanctification.
I don't want to blame people or circumstances.
There is no circumstance that cannot be overcome
if we have faith in God.
God will never allow us to be tested
beyond our ability.
He disciplines us, but there will be a
purpose in it all.
And there you read in the rest of
the chapter about the children that Rachel and
Leah and Jacob married.
Their two servant maids as well had.
And there we have the list of how
the twelve sons and the one daughter, Dina,
mentioned in verse 21, Jacob's thirteen children, twelve
sons and one daughter, were born.
I want you to notice just one thing
here.
In the middle it says, In the days
of wheat harvest, verse 14, Reuben, that was
the eldest son of Leah, went and found
mandrakes in the field and brought them to
his mother, Leah.
We don't know exactly what these mandrakes are.
But whatever it is, Rachel said to Leah,
Give me some of your sons' mandrakes.
You see, she's always waiting for a chance
to pick up a quarrel with her sister.
Your son has found something.
I want it.
Well, you can go to the field and
pick it up yourself.
No?
And she said to her, Is it a
small matter for you to take my husband?
Would you take my son's mandrakes also?
You see, once you have a bug in
your head about some person, any little thing,
a mandrake may have been a small flower
or a little fruit, that's enough to pick
up a fight.
That's the point I wanted to make out
here.
If your attitude is not right to a
person, the fact that that person's son brought
her some flowers is enough to really bug
you and work you up and irritate you
till you get into another conflict with that
person over some flowers or some little fruit,
whatever it is.
That's why it's so important for us to
keep our heart attitude right.
Otherwise, my dear brother and sister, a small
flower is enough to make you pick up
a quarrel with someone.
It shows that the heart attitude was not
cleansed.
That's the thing.
And further, we read in verse 22, Finally
God had mercy on Rachel, and God gave
heat to her and opened her womb, so
she conceived more sons, and God's taken away
my reproach, and she named him Joseph, saying,
May the Lord give me another son.
It's very interesting to see in the scriptures
that Sarah, Abraham's wife, was barren, Rebekah, Isaac's
wife, was barren, and Rachel, Jacob's wife, was
barren.
And these are the first three healings mentioned
in scripture.
Healing, the first three mentioned in scripture are
all related to the opening of barren wombs.
And it came about when Rachel had borne
Joseph and Jacob's son to Laban, verse 25,
Send me away, that I may go to
my own place, to my own country.
Give me my wife and children, for whom
I have served you, and let me depart.
Laban knew that God had blessed him, prospered
him when Jacob was there.
It's amazing that God had his hand on
this man despite all his crookedness.
Laban said, If it pleases you, verse 27,
stay with me.
I've divined that the Lord has blessed me
on your account.
Name me your wages and I'll give it.
But Jacob said, Do you know how I've
served with you?
How your cattle have fared with me?
You had little before I came.
It has now increased to a multitude and
the Lord has blessed you wherever I've turned.
Now when shall I provide for my own
household also?
He said, What shall I give you?
Jacob said, You're not going to give me
anything.
If you'll do one thing for me, I'll
still keep your flock.
And here is Jacob and Laban matching their
shrewdness against each other.
One businessman making a transaction with another businessman.
He's still the businessman, Jacob, after all these.
The work is not complete.
He's had this difficult father-in-law, difficult
employer, difficult wife, but still he's not broken.
He's taking quite a bit of time.
And we read here that Jacob says, Let
me pass through your flock, verse 32, and
remove every speckled and spotted sheep, and every
black one among the lambs, the spotted and
speckled one, they shall be my wages.
So my honesty will answer for me later
when you come concerning my wages.
Everyone that's not speckled among the goats and
blacks and the lambs is found that they'll
be considered stolen.
And Laban said, Good.
See, I don't think Laban would have agreed
to that if the vast majority of the
sheep were speckled and brown.
He must have mentally calculated and said, Well,
there are not very many speckled and brown
ones.
Okay, he's a bit of a fool, this
Jacob, to pick on those ones.
And I'll take the bigger lot.
But he didn't realize this was another smart
businessman on the other side who'd got a
trick up his sleeve on how to multiply
the flocks.
And Laban agreed.
So Jacob removed the striped and spotted male
goats and all the speckled and spotted female
goats, everyone with white in it.
And he put a distance of three days
during verse 36, and Jacob fed the rest
of Laban's flocks.
And here's a little trick that Jacob tried.
I don't know exactly how this works, but
scripture says it worked, and in some way
it did.
It took fresh rods of poplar and almond
and plain trees and peeled white stripes from
them with 37, exposing the white in the
rods.
And he set the rods, which he had
peeled in front of the flocks, so that
when they conceived, they came to drink the
flocks conceived by the rods, and the flocks
brought forth stripes speckled and spotted.
And Jacob separated the lambs and made the
flocks face toward the stripes and all the
black in the flock of Laban.
And he put his own herds apart.
And this is where you see his real
shrewdness, verse 41.
He says, Whenever the stronger of the flock
were made, that Jacob would place the rods
in the side of the flock in the
gutters.
But when the flock was feeble, verse 42,
he didn't put them in.
So the end result was the feebler flock
were Laban's, and the smarter, stronger were Jacob's.
And the man became exceedingly prosperous and had
large flocks of female and male servants and
camels and donkeys.
Do you see what type of man Jacob
was?
Till the very end, always saying, Where can
I make a fast buck?
Where can I make some profit here?
Something for myself, some gain by duping someone,
fooling my father, fooling my brother, fooling my
father-in-law.
Always, What can I gain out of all
this?
Which is the most profitable thing for me?
This, an acting so humble when he goes
to Laban and says, I'll just take these
speckled brown ones and he's got this trick
up his sleeve.
This is a man with tremendous amount of
guile.
One would think that God would just give
up on him, but he doesn't.
And that's why he hasn't given up on
us, dear brothers and sisters.
You see, I hope when you see Jacob,
you see a picture of yourself.
That's what I want to say in conclusion.
If you don't see a picture of yourself
in Jacob, I would exhort you to go
home and pray, Lord, give me light that
I might see myself.
Because I believe that's the first step to
salvation.
If you think you're quite humble and you're
not so shrewd and scheming, you're quite simple.
A lot of people like to think, I'm
a simple brother.
You're not, brother.
I've never met a simple brother yet.
The ones who look simple are more deceptive
usually than the ones who are openly deceptive.
Like they say in the world, still waters
run deep.
So, these quiet image types are pretty shrewd.
Jacob was also in the, one of the
vernacular translations, Genesis 25, said Jacob was a
sadhu.
He was a sadhu.
But see what is underneath that sadhu's skin.
Pretty shrewd schemer.
And God had to break him.
God has to break us.
And all the disciplines he takes us through
in our place of work and in our
home is to deliver us from this Jacob
in our flesh.
So that one day he can say about
us, in a new covenant sense, there is
a true Israelite who has power with God
and power with men in whom there is
no Jacob.
That is the 144,000 who stand on
Mount Zion in whose mouth was found no
guile.
So we praise the Lord for the working
of the Holy Spirit.
Day by day faithfully working with us.
And if we will see our needs and
cooperate with Him, God can do a quick
work.
It need not take 20 years.
It depends on how quickly we cooperate with
His working in our lives.