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 your success is usually not what you 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 As soon as Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, that I may go to my own home and country. 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.” (ESV)
That’s 14 years of labor.
Genesis 30:27 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. (ESV)
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 Name your wages, and I will give it.” (ESV)
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 yourself know how I have served you, and how your livestock has fared with me. 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?” (ESV)
Jacob has 2 wives, 2 concubines and 12 children. Now, he needs to provide for them all. So Laban asks…
Genesis 30:31-33 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: 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. 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.” (ESV)
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 Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.” 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. And he set a distance of three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob pastured the rest of Laban’s flock. (ESV)
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 people do. They count on their shrewd deals to get ahead. Oh, they may not be cheating anybody in particular, but there are times when they attribute their own success to their 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, “Do not lean on your own understanding.”
Just this last November (2020), an Amazon delivery truck got stuck in a tunnel meant for golf carts at the Boulder Pointe Golf Club in Oxford, Michigan. The driver, who obviously didn’t know the area, said his GPS led him there. A tow truck eventually removed the delivery vehicle from the tunnel, and a supervisor from Amazon arrived with another vehicle to transport the driver and his packages where they needed to go. The driver was embarrassed, but otherwise fine. Bill Offer, a supervisor at the golf club, quipped, “He was between a rock and a hard place.” (Brandon Champion, “An Amazon driver took a wrong turn onto a golf course, then wedged his truck in a golf cart tunnel,” Oregon Live, 11-10-20; www.PreachingToday.com)
A lot of people are getting stuck in life, because they follow an internal GPS, which leads them astray. They lean on their own understanding, and it doesn’t work.
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 Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. (ESV)
He is peeling strips of bark off of these logs so they have a striped appearance.
Genesis 30:38a 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. (ESV)
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 And since they bred when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted.
Jacob’s scheme works! Or so it seems. The “so” in verse 39 is not there in the original Hebrew language. It literally says, “The flocks bred in front of the sticks AND the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted. The original language of 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 Jacob’s 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 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. 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, 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. (ESV)
The original Hebrew text says, “AND the feebler would be Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s.” Again, the text is simply describing a sequence of events not assigning causality.
Genesis 30:43 “Thus” – No, no! The original Hebrew text says, “AND the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkeys.” (ESV)
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 that’s what a lot of people do. They think it’s their efforts that make a difference when it is God Himself who does the work.
Now, don’t get me wrong. God never rewards laziness. Individuals are always responsible for our own actions, but if they think that it’s their own hard work that produces the results, they’re only kidding themselves like Jacob did.
James 1:17 makes it very clear: “EVERY good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” 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.
On June 8, 2017, a 32-year-old man in Alaska tried to cross a channel near Juneau in a “homemade watercraft.” More specifically, it was “an inflatable, duct-taped craft,” according to a local radio station. The man had a paddle and his dog, but no life jacket.
The weather was calm with 9 mph winds that day, Even so, a local Coast Guard crew had to rescue the man when his makeshift boat started to fill with water.
Having “deemed the craft unsafe,” they “transferred it, the man—and his dog—to [nearby] Douglas Harbor.”
Perhaps to guard against embarrassment, the news release "did not identify the man.” (Tripp J. Crouse, “Coast Guard Rescues Man and Dog in Gastineau Channel in Duct-Taped Inflatable,” KTOO, 6-08-17; www.PreachingToday.com)
A lot of people are like that man, trying to make progress in their own self-effort. It’s like they’re in a homemade, duct-taped craft, which is taking on water fast. Please, don’t do that to yourself. Stop exhausting yourself with useless schemes, and simply trust the Lord with your life.
For your own self-effort cannot save you from sin. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Your own self effort cannot get you to heaven.
And your own self-effort cannot make you more holy and righteous here on this earth. In Galatians 3, Paul asks the question, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3).
Your own flesh cannot get you to heaven. Your own human effort cannot make you a better person here on earth. And most certainly, your own self-effort cannot fix your mates or your children. 1 Peter 3 talks to wives about winning over their husbands “without a word,” but by “the imperishable 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.
People think it’s their own 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 live your life in daily dependence upon Him. Otherwise, you’re just uselessly expending your 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 your life by your own self-effort. You think you can lift the weight by yourself, so you keep trying harder, especially if somebody is yelling at you. You keep redoubling your efforts, but before long you 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 even if you have failed.
Matt Chandler once said, “The litmus test of whether or not you understand the gospel is what you do when you fail. Do you run from God and go try to clean yourself up a bit before you come back into the throne room, or do you approach the throne of grace with confidence? If you don't approach the throne of grace with confidence, you don't understand the gospel. You are most offensive to God when you come to him with all of your efforts, when you're still trying to earn what's freely given.” (Matt Chandler, from the sermon “Remembering Your Creator”; www. PreachingToday.com)
Please, don’t do that. Don’t come to God with all your efforts. Come to God with all your need. Approach the throne of grace with confidence in Him, and He will supply ALL your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus!
Prayer
Amazing grace shall always be my song of praise,
For it was grace that bought my liberty.
I do not know just why He came to love me so.
He looked beyond my fault and saw my need.
I shall forever lift mine eyes to Calvary,
To view the cross where Jesus died for me.
How marvelous the grace that caught my falling soul.
He looked beyond my fault and saw my need (Dottie Rambo).
