Turning The Tables Series

In these trying times in our lives, will our desperation drive our decisions or will we grow in our faith and be guided by God? We saw that because of God’s goodness and grace, even though Leah and Rachel were the battling brides, God accomplished what He set out to do in fulfilling His promises to bless the nations through this Abrahamic line.

Today, we will be reading Genesis 30 where Jacob seeks to leave Haran and go back to Canaan.

Genesis 30:25-43 ESV

25 As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. 26 Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, that I may go, for you know the service that I have given you.” 27 But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. 28 Name your wages, and I will give it.” 29 Jacob said to him, “You yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. 30 For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly, and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned. But now when shall I provide for my own household also?” 31 He said, “What shall I give you?” Jacob said, “You shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pasture your flock and keep it: 32 let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. 33 So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.” 34 Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.” 35 But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in the charge of his sons. 36 And he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban’s flock.

37 Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. 38 He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, 39 the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted. 40 And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and all the black in the flock of Laban. He put his own droves apart and did not put them with Laban’s flock. 41 Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock, that they might breed among the sticks, 42 but for the feebler of the flock he would not lay them there. So the feebler would be Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s. 43 Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.

What’s transpiring in this passage? :

? Jacob’s request to return home

? Laban’s reflexive response

? Jacob’s resourcefulness

So the first thing we see in the passage is:

1. Jacob’s request to return home

Jacob has served his time, he is free of any obligation and he knew it was time to go. In chapter 31 Jacob tells his wives that God had spoken to him several times in a dream and told him it was time to return to Canaan. However, Laban doesn’t want to lose him because he had come to realize that his prosperity wasn’t a divine reward for his own virtue but was due solely to the presence of Jacob in his home.” Laban was not a man of faith, his focus was on the financial benefit Jacob brought into his life.

As believers, we are called to be a blessing wherever we go and in whatever we do. Is your part of the world a better place because you’re in it? For example, Is your family a better family because you’re in it? Is the Chapel a better church because you’re a member? Is your workplace better because you work there? Is your school better because you’re a student there? Lord willing, our lives exude blessings.