Title: And You Think Your Family Is Messed Up! (Part II)
Text: Genesis 29:15-30
Thesis: God is at work in and through our lives despite our dysfunction.
Introduction
I have a method to reading the Denver Post every day. I separate the sections removing all the ads. I begin with the Editorial page then move to the front section making my way through the Denver and West, the Business and National News sections. I then move to the Living section turning to the last page where I read Ask Amy. (Then I read the comics and work the puzzles. Then I read the Sports section.)
Amy Dickinson of Ask Amy gets lots of head-shaking mail.
• Dear Amy: My daughter is almost 4 months old, and I feel as though my in-laws don’t love her as much as they do her male cousin who is 2…
• Dear Amy: My mother raised 12 children. None of us asked her to baby-sit our children, as we felt her work was done. My daughter-in-law has now asked me to watch her 2-month-old on a specific day because she has to work. I told her, “Yes, but when you are making money, I will charge you.” She sent me an email expressing her disbelief and letting me know her mother would never charge for to baby-sit.”
• Dear Amy: My older sister is getting married. Her fiancé and his family are a very Christian conservative family. I am gay so my sister sent me an email telling me she did not think I should attend her wedding. When my mother found out she was outraged and now my family will not attend my sister’s wedding.
A common thread in most Dear Amy letters is family dysfunction. There is an undercurrent of perceived personal slights, insults, the absence of moral character, perceived injustices and unfairness and the like. The saga of Jacob is one of dysfunction and unfairness.
Last week we saw: God is present and at work in our messed-upness ( I know. Not a word but you get the idea.) and culture does not deter God
A third take away is the often needed reminder that life is not always fair.
III. Life is not fair
When Jacob woke up in the morning, it was Leah! “What have you done to me?” Jacob raged at Laban. Genesis 29:25a
Seven years passed and having struck a deal for his arranged marriage to Rachel, Jacob reminded Laban of their agreement and Uncle Laban threw a big wedding feast after which it was apparently the custom of the father to deliver the bride to the groom’s tent for the consummation of the wedding.
So as Jacob waited expectantly in the darkness as Laban brought him his bride.
The next morning when Jacob woke up he was shocked to discover he had married the older sister, Leah, rather than Rachel. Jacob was obviously unhappy and raised a ruckus with his new father-in-law who informed him that culturally, the younger daughter could not be married before her older sister so essentially tradition trumped the details of the agreement. So to appease Jacob Laban suggested he work an additional 7 years for Rachel… however in this agreement he would receive Rachel as his bride up-front rather than at the end of 7 more years.
Life is not fair!
A. Life was not fair to Leah. She was not as pretty as her younger sister. Everyone could see it in her eyes. She was less desirable and would not fetch the dowry price of her younger, prettier sister. And then her humiliation had to have gone off the charts when Jacob was so disappointed and angry when he realized he had married her.
B. Life was unfair to Jacob. He had struck an honest bargain for Rachel’s hand not Leah’s. If he had known the custom was to marry off the older daughter first he would never have made that agreement. He would not have so gladly worked away 7 years of hard labor in anticipation waking up with Leah at his side.,
C. Life may be unfair to us as well… Some men are handsome and some men, not so much. Some women are beautiful and some women, not so much. Some people have higher IQs than others. Some people have more emotional intelligence than others… especially those who have higher IQs. Some people are athletes and some trip over their shoe laces.
I was amused to hear a young couple commenting about their family to the effect that they were raising a family of nerds. The stereotype of nerds and geeks implies shy, quirky, unattractive people who are social misfits. However they were simply saying they wanted their children to be inquisitive, creative, and well-adjusted individuals. Some parents love involving their children in athletics. Some parents are big into creating little “Honey Boo Boos” and future NFL Cheerleaders.
Some people earn more money than others who work just as hard. Some people get great breaks and others can’t catch a break to save their souls. Some people make good deals and others get ripped-off.
I read a column written by David Dayen in The Week (this week) that was originally published in The Fiscal Time on July 18, 2014. It was a very skillfully written sarcastic open letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the Department of Justice crackdown on banks that were largely responsible for the financial crisis resulting in the bursting mortgage market bubble. Dayen pointed out that the “key group missing in this settlement are the investors who were actually defrauded by the toxic mortgage securities… they are the primary victims.” Of the 7 billion dollar settlement - zip went to the people who actually lost their entire investments.
Life is not fair when the real victims get stiffed. Life is not fair to the American people when Congress is so dysfunctional the most pressing need is getting the president sued for abusing his executive power. Life is not fair when handcuffed people get their faces slammed into cement table tops. Life is not fair when staff and students suffer when school board members cannot play in the same sandbox. Life is not fair when children are used as pawns in custody battles.
Life is not fair. Jesus knew all about the unfairness in life. That is what all the turning the other cheek and going the second mile and loving your enemies and praying for those who hurt you is about. That is what the Scripture speaks to when it says, “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord.
Jacob could not undo his mess but ultimately we see that God was active and working over the years in and through that unfairness.
A fourth take away is to be reminded that God’s faithfulness does not preclude consequences.
IV. God’s presence and activity does not preclude consequences of our dysfunction
Jacob raged at Laban, “I worked seven years for Rachel! Why have you tricked me?” Genesis 29:25b
How ironic that it is Jacob would be shocked by his uncle’s deception.
It had been quite a few years but there was a day when Jacob cheated his own brother out of his birthright. There was a day when he and his mother colluded and connived and tricked the elderly and blind family patriarch, Isaac, into believing Jacob was his older brother Esau in order to get that blessing.
Life is full of little ironies.
• What goes around comes around.
• If you live by the sword you will die by the sword.
• He got his just deserts.
• The chickens have come home to roost.
• It’s poetic justice.
• He made his bed, let him sleep in it.
Another word of wisdom from the lips of Jesus would be,
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” Matthew 7:12
On the positive side, if you wish to be treated fairly, then treat others fairly.
And from the writing of Paul in Galatians 6:7ff, “Do not be misled, you cannot mock the justice of God. You will reap what you sow.”
So on the negative side, if you do not want to be a tricked, don’t be a trickster.
God is forgiving and can make good come of bad but we still live with the consequences of our actions.
A fifth sobering take away is the realization that innocent people suffer in dysfunctional situations.
V. Innocent people suffer in dysfunctional relationships
So Jacob slept with Rachel, too, and he loved her much more than Leah. Genesis 29:30
Jacob’s family eventually grew from his 2 wives, Leah and Rachel to include 2 surrogate wives, Bilhah and Zilpah and 13 children. That’s a lot of togetherness and the makings for a lot of tension.
I read an interesting story about a family, the Ledbetters. They like to spend time at home together just not in the same room. So they built a 3,600-square-foot house with special rooms for studying and sewing, separate sitting areas for each kid, and a master bedroom far from both. Then there's the escape room, where Mr. Ledbetter says, "Any family member can go to get away from the rest of us."
After two decades of pushing the open floor plan-where domestic life revolved around a big central space and exposed kitchens gave everyone a view of half the house-major builders and top architects are walling people off. They're touting one-person Internet alcoves, locked-door away rooms and his-and-her offices on opposite ends of the house. The new floor plans offer so much seclusion, they're "good for the dysfunctional family," says Gopal Ahluwahlia, director of research for the National Association of Home Builders.
The Mercer Island, Washington, industrial designer says his 7- and 11-year-old daughters fight less, because their new house gives them so many ways to avoid each other. "It just doesn't make sense for us to do everything together all the time," he says. (June Fletcher, "The Dysfunctional Family House," The Wall Street Journal (3-26-04), pp. W1, W8; submitted by Steve Eutsler, Springfield, Missouri)
The next piece of this story of dysfunction begins with God’s awareness of Leah’s hurtful and unfair circumstances. When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he enabled her to have children, but Rachel could not conceive. Genesis 29:31 It seems that God is attempting to balance the scales a bit in Leah’s favor.
However the following ongoing saga of competition between Leah and Rachel is a tale of dysfunction.
Just look at Birth Order of Jacob’s children:
Leah
• 29:32 – Reuben (“Now my husband will love me.”)
• 29:33 – Simeon (“The Lord saw I was unloved and gave me another son.”)
• 29:34 – Levi (“Surely this time my husband will love me.”)
• 29:35 – Judah
Bilhah (Surrogate for Rachel)
• 30:6 – Dan
• 30:8 – Naphtali (“I have struggled with my sister and now I am winning.”)
Zilpah (Surrogate for Leah)
• 30:11 – Gad
• 30:13 – Asher
(30:15 Leah swapped some geese to Rachel for privilege of sleeping with her husband.)
Leah
• 30:17 – Issachar
• 30:20 – Zebuluh
• 30:21 – Dinah (a daughter)
Rachel
• 30:35 - Joseph
Can you picture in your mind the dysfunction in this family? I don’t care what kind of culture it was… what we read here is dysfunction and a lot of people were hurt because of the way Laban and Jacob treated their families.
The hurtfulness of being the unloved wife and the pride in being the loved wife and the humiliation of being the surrogate shuffled in and out of the master’s tent for the purpose of bearing another heir.
Think of the 13 children witnessing the ongoing feud between the competing wives and the sense of being used as pawns to gain their father’s favor. And then there is little Dinah who interrupted the perfect string of boy babies.
Through all of this dysfunction God is at work in and through the messed-upness of this family. In Genesis 12 God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation. In Genesis 15 God told Abraham, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can.” Then God said, “That’s how many descendents you will have!”
When God appeared to Jacob in Genesis 28 God said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I am giving it to you and your descendants. Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants.”
If you turn in your bibles to Matthew 1 and read “The Ancestors of Jesus the Messiah you will see what God was doing.”
This is the record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham:
Abraham was the father of Isaac.
Isaac was the father of Jacob.
Jacob was the father of Judah… and 16 verses later we read,
“Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah.”
That is how God has blessed all the families of the earth through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all their descendants. God was at work generation after generation until the time was right and Jesus, the Messiah, the Lamb of God, the Savior of the Word, was born.
Conclusion
What does that mean for us?
A. No matter how convoluted and confusing circumstances may be and now matter how messed up our lives may be, God makes it all work. “All things work together for the good of those called according to his purposes.” Romans 8:28
B. No matter how convoluted and confusing circumstances may be and now matter how messed up our lives may be, God is at work in our personal formation. “I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ returns.” Philippians 1:6
Some of us have come from dysfunctional families and have been or are currently in dysfunctional relationships. Some of us are well acquainted with the experience of being messed-up and some of us feel really terrible about how our messed-upness and dysfunction has affected others. Some of us live with the realization that there is little if anything, that can be done about some of our brokenness. Life is not a children’s game where we get “do-overs.”
But this is what we do with our brokenness. We confess it to God and seek forgiveness for what needs forgiving. Then we ask God to continue to work in us and through us everyday… by simply praying and acting in obedience.
I invite you to pray with me in response to the message today:
“Lord, in all I think, say and do, guide me according to your will purposes that I may be Christ like in all my relationships. Amen.”
