Ted Engstrom and Edward Dayton, in a Christian Leadership Letter some time ago, talked about a young man who was appointed president of a bank. Intimidated by his new responsibilities, he nervously sought the advice of his gray-haired predecessor: “Sir, what has been the secret of your success?”
“The secret, young man, is two words: right decisions!” replied the older man.
“But how do you make right decisions?”
“One word: experience.”
“But how do you get experience?”
The old man smiled. “Two words: wrong decisions.” (Ted W. Engstrom and Edward R. Dayton, editors, “Murphy’s Law,” Christian Leadership Letter, February, 1981, p. 1; www.PreachingToday.com)
The secret of our success is not usually what we think it is. Often, true success comes from some a very surprising place. Would you like to know where that place is? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis 30, Genesis 30, where Jacob finds good success, but not in the place he expected.
Genesis 30:25-26 After Rachel gave birth to Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me on my way so I can go back to my own homeland. Give me my wives and children, for whom I have served you, and I will be on my way. You know how much work I’ve done for you.” (NIV)
That’s 14 years of labor.
Genesois 30:27 But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your eyes, please stay. I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you.” (NIV)
Laban wants Jacob to stay, because he knows Jacob is the reason for his success, so much so that Laban is willing to pay whatever Jacob asks.
Genesis 30:28 He added, “Name your wages, and I will pay them.” (NIV)
It’s the same thing Laban had said to Jacob 14 years earlier (Genesis 29:15). Then, Jacob asked for Rachel as his wages, but Laban tricked him and gave him Leah. Well, Jacob is not about to fall for that same trick again. So…
Genesis 30:29-30 Jacob said to him, “You know how I have worked for you and how your livestock has fared under my care. The little you had before I came has increased greatly, and the LORD has blessed you wherever I have been. But now, when may I do something for my own household?” (NIV)
Jacob has 2 wives, 2 concubines and 12 children. Now, he needs to provide for them all. So Laban asks…
Genesis 30:31-33 “What shall I give you?” he asked. “Don’t give me anything,” Jacob replied. “But if you will do this one thing for me, I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them: Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages. And my honesty will testify for me in the future, whenever you check on the wages you have paid me. Any goat in my possession that is not speckled or spotted, or any lamb that is not dark-colored, will be considered stolen.” (NIV)
Wealth in those days was measured in the number of domestic animals you owned, but Jacob is asking for the rarer kind, the speckled, spotted, or black sheep and goats. These are usually the rejects of the flock, but Jacob asks for these to prove his integrity with Laban. You see, they don’t trust each other, and this is a way to prevent any false accusations and insure that nobody is cheating.
Well, Laban can’t believe his ears! Jacob is offering to take the rejects of the flock, and there aren’t many of those. For practically nothing, Laban sees himself getting several more good years of quality labor from Jacob. It’s a deal he can’t refuse! So…
Genesis 30:34-36 Agreed,” said Laban. “Let it be as you have said.” That same day he removed all the male goats that were streaked or spotted, and all the speckled or spotted female goats (all that had white on them) and all the dark-colored lambs, and he placed them in the care of his sons. Then he put a three-day journey between himself and Jacob, while Jacob continued to tend the rest of Laban’s flocks. (NIV)
Laban is being very shrewd here. He doesn’t want Jacob getting too rich off this deal; so Laban gives Jacob’s animals to his own sons to care for, and he separates them. That way Jacob can’t mate his spotted animals with Laban’s white animals and get more spotted and speckled animals than the few he normally would.
Oh, Laban is a very shrewd man; but as we shall see, Jacob is even more shrewd. You see, Jacob doesn’t make this deal because he is stupid. He has a few tricks up his sleeve, and he is counting on this shrewd deal to get rich at Laban’s expense.
And that’s what some of us do. we count on our shrewd deals to get ahead. Oh, we may not be cheating anybody in particular, but there are times when we attribute our own success to our own cleverness.
An archaeologist was digging in the Negev Desert in Israel and came upon a sarcophagus containing a mummy. After examining it, he called the curator of a prestigious natural-history museum.
“I’ve just discovered the 3,000-year-old mummy of a man who died of heart failure!” the excited archaeologist exclaimed.
The curator replied, “Bring him in. We’ll check it out.”
A week later, the amazed curator called the archaeologist. “You were right about the mummy’s age and cause of death. How in the world did you know?” he asked.
The archaeologist replied, “Easy. There was a piece of paper in his hand that read, ‘10,000 shekels on Goliath.’” (Source unknown; submitted by Van Morris, Mt. Washington, Kentucky; www.PreachingToday.com)
Our schemes often fail, even if we think they’re a sure bet. So…
DON’T TRUST IN YOUR SHREWD DEALS.
Don’t depend on your own intelligence. Don’t rely on your own cleverness to get you ahead. Proverbs 3:5-6 makes it very clear: if you want your life to go smoother, “Lean not on your own understanding.”
Our own understanding says, “Don’t keep a promise or honor a bid if it’s going to hurt you,” but then people learn not to trust you anymore and you lose more business than you gain.
Our own understanding says, “Fudge the books a little to make the figures look better than they are,” but then your business fails like Enron and the banks that covered their bad loans with creative accounting schemes.
Our own understanding says, “Make sure people pay for their offenses against you; otherwise, they’ll walk all over you,” but then you become a bitter and embattled person that has no real friends.
Our own understanding says, “In hard times, don’t be generous, but keep as much money as you can so you have enough to take care of yourself,” but then you become stingy and hardened to people and no one is there to help you when you have a need.
Our own understanding says, “Ignore the sin in your friend’s life so you don’t hurt their feelings or the friendship,” but then your friend’s life is destroyed and you lose the friendship anyway when the whole situation blows up in your face.
Our own understanding says, “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and don’t expect God to help you if you don’t help yourself,” but then you become too proud to recognize your need for help until it’s too late.
Our own understanding tells us to do a lot of things that seem right, but in the end cause even greater hardship and pain. So if you want to truly succeed, don’t depend on your own intelligence. Don’t rely on your own cleverness to get you ahead. Don’t trust in your shrewd deals. And…
DON’T TRUST IN YOUR SPENT SCHEMES either.
Don’t waste your time with useless ploys. Don’t exhaust yourself with tricks that don’t work. That’s what jacob does. He wastes his time with a mating scheme that doesn’t work.
Genesis 30:37 Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. (NIV)
He is peeling strips of bark off of these logs so they have a striped appearance.
Genesis 30:38a Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. (NIV)
Jacob is employing a mating practice that makes no sense to us today. He is acting upon the common belief in his day that what a mother sees during her pregnancy will affect her offspring. For example, if she sees stripes during her pregnancy, she will bear striped offspring; and if she sees spots, she will bear offspring with spots.
Soon after I graduated from seminary and got started in pastoral ministry, Sandy (my wife) read a book about a pastor’s family that had immigrated to the United States from Sweden in the late 19th Century. The name of the book was Papa’s Wife, and in the book, Papa (the pastor) refused to let his wife sit in the back of the church when she was pregnant.
That’s because there were a couple of red-headed, mean-tempered boys in the church, and Papa was afraid that if his wife looked at those red-headed boys throughout the whole service, she would bear red-headed, mean-tempered children. So every time she got pregnant, Papa would make his wife sit in the front of the church. That way, in his mind, he could avoid having any red-headed children.
Well, since the discovery of genes and the rise of the whole field of genetics, we know that this notion is completely unfounded. What a woman looks at during her pregnancy has no effect on her offspring. Looking at red-heads does not produce red-headed children any more than looking at stripes produces striped offspring.
But Jacob doesn’t know that. He thinks he’s being clever when he peels strips of bark off the branches of poplar trees and puts them in front of the flocks. Look at what happens:
Genesis 30:38b-39 When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, 39 they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. (NIV)
Jacob’s scheme works! Or so it seems. But look at the text carefully.
Verse 39 says, “They mated in front of the branches, AND they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted.”
The Bible simply describes a sequence of events without assigning causality to that sequence. Just because two events happen one right after another does not necessarily mean the first event caused the second.
In fact, God is going to make it very clear to Jacob in the next chapter that it was not his scheme that made him rich. It was God Himself who did it (Genesis 31:10-13), but right now Jacob thinks he’s the one doing it.
Genesis 30:40-42 Jacob set apart the young of the flock by themselves, but made the rest face the streaked and dark-colored animals that belonged to Laban. Thus he made separate flocks for himself and did not put them with Laban’s animals. Whenever the stronger females were in heat, Jacob would place the branches in the troughs in front of the animals so they would mate near the branches, but if the animals were weak, he would not place them there. So the weak animals went to Laban and the strong ones to Jacob. (NIV)
The original Hebrew text says, “AND the weak animals went to Laban and the strong ones to Jacob.” Again, the text is simply describing a sequence of events not assigning causality.
Genesis 30:43 “In this way” – No, no! The original Hebrew text says, “AND the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and maidservants and menservants, and camels and donkeys.”
Jacob got rich NOT because of what Jacob did, oh no! Jacob got rich because GOD prospered him. Jacob’s scheme of peeling strips of bark off the branches of trees, of putting them in front of the strong females at the right time, of removing them when the weak females were in heat, all of that was a waste of time and effort.
All Jacob had to do was depend on the Lord, who had promised to take care of him more than 14 years before this (Genesis 28:13-15). Instead, all he did was create a lot of extra, unnecessary work for himself, which got frustrating at times, because Laban kept changing the terms of the deal, as we shall see in the next chapter (Genesis 31:7). Jacob trusted in an exhausting, useless scheme.
And sometimes we do the same thing. We think it’s our efforts that make a difference when it is God Himself who does the work. Now, don’t get me wrong. God never rewards laziness. We are always responsible for our own actions, but if we think that it’s our own hard work that produces the results, we’re only kidding ourselves like Jacob did.
James 1:17 makes it very clear: “EVERY good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father…” Our every success, our every blessing, our every achievement comes from God Himself, who delights in giving his children good things.
So stop exhausting yourself with useless schemes. Stop trying so hard to work all your complicated plans, and simply trust the Lord. Depend on Him to keep His Word to you, and you will enjoy your life a whole lot more.
In Actions Speak Louder Than Words, Herb Miller writes: Two Kentucky farmers who owned racing stables had developed a keen rivalry. One spring each of them entered a horse in a local steeplechase. Thinking that a professional rider might help him outdo his friend, one of the farmers engaged a crack jockey. The two horses were neck and neck with a large lead over the rest of the pack at the last fence, but suddenly both fell, unseating their riders.
The professional jockey remounted quickly and rode on to win the race. Returning triumphantly to the paddock, the jockey found the farmer who had hired him fuming with rage.
“What’s the matter?” the jockey asked. “I won, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yea,” roared the farmer. “You won all right, but you crossed the finish line on the wrong horse.”
In his hurry to remount after the fall, the jockey had jumped on his competitor’s horse. (Judy C. Knupke, Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, Leadership, Vol. 12, no. 4; www.PreachingToday.com)
A lot of people are getting on the wrong horse of their own self-effort, and they’re losing the race of life.
Our own self-effort cannot save us from sin. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Our own self effort cannot get us to heaven.
And our own self-effort cannot make us more holy and righteous here on this earth. In Galatians 3, Paul asks the question, “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” (Galatians 3:3). Our own human effort cannot get us to heaven. Our own human effort cannot make us better people here on earth.
And most certainly, our own self-effort cannot fix our mates or our children. 1 Peter 3 talks to wives about winning over their husbands “without words,” but by “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:1-4). You don’t win your husband by nagging, or dropping hints, or manipulating him into making the “right” decisions. No. You do it by living your life like God wants you to live it, trusting Him to get through to your husband.
You see, we think it’s our schemes that produce results when all along it is God doing the work. Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). So we must live our lives in daily dependence upon Him. Otherwise, we’re just uselessly expending our energy in a frustrating, wasted effort.
Pastor Lee Eclov, from Vernon Hills, Illinois, talks about his first visit to a health club was in the 1970s. His friend Frank had invited Lee to go with him, and when they arrived, they entered a room filled with weight machines.
Lee had never seen those things before in his life, so Frank explained that they would spend a few minutes on each machine, exercising all the various muscle groups as they went along. Frank called it “the circuit.”
Well, there was a muscle-bound guy in charge – “no nonsense, tight T-shirt,” Lee said. He walked the group through the use of each machine, and after his tour, Lee sat down at the first one, while a few other folks took their places at the other machines. The guy in charge called out, “Two minutes on each machine,” blew his whistle, and Lee started to pull down a set of handlebars attached to some weights.
Nothing.
He had just worked this machine a few minutes earlier, but this time nothing happened. The weight he was trying to lift didn’t budge an inch. He tried harder.
Still, nothing happened.
The T-shirt guy yelled at Lee—something like, “C’mon, you overweight daisy!” So, Lee redoubled his efforts, but nothing happened. Lee thought his shoulder was going to separate. He was “sweating like a coal miner,” he says, until he gave up in shame. He looked down at the machine in defeat.
At that point, his friend, Frank, came over to help him out. Frank looked the thing over and discovered that someone had pulled the pin on the proper weight. Lee had been trying to lift all the weights the machine had—something like 500 pounds! But that was it for Lee. He gave up. He walked out, because he was exhausted by all the useless effort. (Lee Eclov, Vernon Hills, Illinois; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s what it’s like trying to live our lives by our own self-effort. We think we can lift the weight by ourselves, so we keep trying harder, especially if somebody is yelling at us. We keep redoubling our efforts; but before long, we give up and walk out.
That’s what people are doing to their marriages. That’s what people are doing with religion. That’s what people are doing with life. A lot of people are checking out, because they are frustrated by their useless, wasted efforts.
There is a much better way to live, and that’s to let Jesus lift the weight for you. Depend on Him to take you to heaven. Depend on Him to make you a better person, and depend on Him to fix your family. Live your life in dependence upon Christ, and save yourself the frustration of trying to work out your own useless schemes.
For if you want true success in life, don’t depend on your shrewd deals, and don’t depend on your spent schemes. Instead, depend on the Lord. Trust Him with your life. Live in daily dependence upon Christ. Then you will discover His good, acceptable and perfect will for you!
Simply trusting every day,
Trusting through a stormy way;
Even when my faith is small,
Trusting Jesus – that is all. (Edgar P. Stites)
