We continue our series, My Crazy Family, only it is the Tailgate edition. It gets even crazier today. Great things can come from broken families. Jacob is a complex character – he’s truly a piece of work. For much of his life, this much was true of Jacob – Jacob always put Jacob first in every area of his life. Jacob didn’t love people, instead he used people.
Jacob’s family life is almost continual strife. As great Jacob became, he will see him transform before our eyes in the weeks to come. From a scheming manipulator to a humbled man, Jacob transforms by the grace of God. Fresh off seeing a vision of angels ascending and descending a stairway from heaven, Jacob returns back to the land of his grandfather, Abraham. Fleeing for his life, he finds love. But we are seeing a work in progress and God is going to use the school of suffering to humble Jacob.
Today’s Scripture
“Then Laban said to Jacob, “Because you are my kinsman, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what shall your wages be?” Now 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 in form and appearance. Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” Laban said, “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her. Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made a feast. But in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her. (Laban gave his female servant Zilpah to his daughter Leah to be her servant.) And in the morning, behold, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” Laban said, “It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” Jacob did so, and completed her week. Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. (Laban gave his female servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her servant.) So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years. When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, “Because the LORD has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.” She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the LORD has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi. And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the LORD.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.” (Genesis 29:15–35)
The book of Genesis hovers over this family because this is the one family that God has chosen to change all humanity through. The first part of Genesis teaches how humanity spirals downward. But as you approach Genesis 12, the remainder of the book focuses on this family. God pours out tremendous blessing on this family. This family is the hope of the world.
There is a lot here and I won’t be able to touch on everything. This is the first time Jacob is away from home. Jacob spend twenty years working for his cheating uncle Laban – fourteen years for marry the love of his life and another six years to obtain a flock (Genesis 31:41).
If you think running a crossing pattern is tough and being “lit-up” by a lurking safety, you’ve never been married to two scheming sisters. Remember these words of wisdom: “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife” (Proverbs 21:9). If you were to place a steel guitar in the hands of Jacob, he would have pioneered Country and Western long before anyone founded Nashville. Long before George Straight and George Jones, Jacob feels the pain. Did you hear the one where Jacob and George Straight got together? You know George Straight’s “All my ex’es live in Texas,” right? Jacob says to George, “If only my mates had lived in different states then I wouldn’t have hives just thinking about my wives. I’ve learned that brides will always take different sides and that’s why your house should have only one spouse.”
1. Love at First Sight
This is one of the few love stories of the book of Genesis. Now, most of the marriages of this era were arranged marriages. So Jacob and Rachel’s meeting up is really unique. I didn’t read the account but earlier we witness Jacob move a stone that took remarkable strength. It was a superhuman feat for the stone was so heavy that it normally took many man to move it. Shepherds would often wait at the well in order for a group of them to show up. One look at the shepherdess Rachel and Jacob moves the stone all by himself. Yes, it was love at first sight. Do you remember when you first saw her (him)? My wife, Traci and I talk about it all the time – I would wear the same sweater because it was the only thing I kept back at my parents house (all my other clothes were at the dorm back in college). Yes, Jacob had made a superb entry.
1.1 Generational Echo
It is noteworthy to call your attention to the place where Jacob meets Rachel. This is the very same place where his grandfather’s servant found his mother. By meeting his future wife at the well, Genesis wants you to hear “Generational Echo,” or the “how” behind his father and mother coming together. You should note where Jacob happens to find a wife as well – the very place where his mother was found by his grandfather. Unlike his brother, Esau, he is choosing his life partner with some consideration and care.
1.2 Strife
Yet, just before their love story heats up, Jacob experiences sibling rivalry all over again, only now it’s through his wives. “So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years” (Genesis 29:30). Just as he grasped the heels of old brother Esau, now he’s married to two sisters who will play “monkey in the middle” with their husband in the years to come. Leah, the older and unwanted sister, and Rachel, the beautiful and desired wife.
There was something about the sister’s eyes that drew Jacob’s attention to Rachel. It is noteworthy to quote one of Aubrey Hepburn’s favorite sayings here: “The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.” Remember, these girls might be wearing veils so all Jacob could have seen was their eyes. Whatever it was, Rachel was gorgeous by comparison: “Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance” (Genesis 29:17b). By comparison, Leah was the girl nobody wanted.
1.3 Divorce and Remarriage
What was polygamy in this day often works as divorce and remarriage in our day. Many of you have experienced much of the same thing only you have been married and divorced. You know it better than anyone, the kind of rivalry, jealousy, and envy that goes on between ex’es. Marriage is hard. I invite you to say this with conviction, “Marriage is Hard.” Have you heard this said before, “Love shouldn’t be this hard. Marriage shouldn’t be this hard.” Why do we believe this? If you have a dream to be a Marine and you are in boot camp, do you say, “Boot camp shouldn’t be this hard”? If you have a dream to play in the Super Bowl and you’re going through “two-a-days,” do you say, “Football shouldn’t be this hard”? If you have a dream to be lawyer and work for justice and you’re going through law school, do you say, “Law school shouldn’t be this hard”? Good marriages are harder to achieve in our day than any career achievement. Why would it be easy to love someone else for lifetime given what the Bible teaches about the selfish sinfulness of each of us? Marriage brings you into an intense closeness with someone else like no other relationship does.
Look at Jacob, Rachel, and Leah for a moment and tell me that they don’t need to change? They need to change when they first meet and they need to experience radical change years after they marry. The myth of the modern “soul mate” that fits me perfectly is an illusion. Your soul mate doesn’t exist. Your perfectly compatible person doesn’t exist. Why should selfish and immature people suddenly become angels when they say, “I Do”? Everyone is incompatible for we are selfish sinners. Again, marriage is hard. Marriage is a marathon (not the 100-yard dash) where we learn to forgive, correct, and show compassion to one another.
2. The Deceiver is Deceived
Now, people stumble over Jacob’s life. People see all the wrong things Jacob did and conclude God is “ok” with all of this. But watch the prophet Hosea reads Jacob’s life (he came around 1,000 years after Jacob): “The LORD has an indictment against Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways; he will repay him according to his deeds” (Hosea 12:2). As you read Jacob’s life, watch how God simultaneously blesses out of His sheer grace but also punishes him by seeing that the very things he did to other boomerangs back on him. Jacob gets a “dose of his own medicine.” The cunning Jacob has met his match in Laban who cheats Jacob 10 times of his rightful wages (Genesis 31:7). In a word, Jacob is “out-Jacobed” by Laban.
2.1 Seven Years for Rachel
Laban has something Jacob wants dearly and so the negotiation begins. It is said that to be successful at negotiation, you allow your opponent to state his terms. Jacob blurted out, “I’ll work 7 grueling hard years in the hot and the cold for the hand of your daughter, Rachel.” Jacob should have read the fine print before signing on the dotted line. Surely, Rachel must have been flattered that he would pay such a high price. I wonder if Rachel throw this fact up in the face of her sister, Leah? Rachel hit the genetic lottery while Leah did not turn any heads.
Jacob felt the seven years fly by – they felt only like a week (Genesis 29:20). Jacob demands Laban given him his daughter, Rachel: “Give me my wife that I may go in to her” (Genesis 29:21). Laban throws a wedding feast for his daughter and future son-in-law. Yet, the “feast” probably involved drinking wine and Jacob may have very well been inebriated on his wedding night. He would regret his drunkenness the next morning. Plus, a betrothal period probably required the wearing of a veil, even to the wedding night itself. The whole thing was a ruse and Jacob fell for it, “hook, line, and sinker” as we say. By the next morning, the die had been cast and Leah and Jacob’s fates were tied together.
2.1 Leah
I feel for Leah here, don’t you? The Lord took pity on her, too: “When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb…” (Genesis 31:31a). Surely, she was crushed the next morning to see her Jacob’s reaction. Yet, I pause to consider, she must have been in on the ruse. Perhaps she wanted to feel wanted the way her sister had men seeking her? Leah will go on to have 8 sons by Jacob – yes, I said 8. A son was coveted for everyone in those days (as a son is coveted in much of the world today).
You could literally trace Leah’s journey by simply knowing the meaning of the names of her children. Reuben was his first-born and the boy’s name shows a wife seeking her husband’s attention: “Because the LORD has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me” (Genesis 31:32b). And then there was Simeon, whose name sounded like: “Because the LORD has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also” (Genesis 29:33). And don’t forget about Levi, who shows just how desperate Leah was for husband’s affection: “Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons” (Genesis 29:34). Every time she had a child it was as if she were saying, “Now maybe, he will see me.”
The Boomerang of God’s Ways
Go back to Jacob again for a moment. I wonder if Jacob’s throat hung on the words “Why have you deceived me?” Did his mind immediately go back to seven years before and the scene with his father and brother? Here he is trying the marry the youngest daughter of two and being told he cannot have her because she isn’t the FIRSTBORN. “The LORD has an indictment against Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways; he will repay him according to his deeds.” (Hosea 12:2) Oh, the irony of it all.
I wonder if Jacob ever saw himself in Leah. After all, both sought the attention of man – where he sought the attention of his father, she sought the attention of her husband. God humbles Jacob all the while showing him tremendous grace.
Conclusion
Only God could bring light to a mess like this family - a family that uses sex and children like bartering tools. Great things can come from broken families. Do you know that Leah is the mother of Jesus? No, she isn’t Jesus’ direct mother but she is in Jesus’ family tree. For Leah has an important child, a boy named Judah.
A few moments ago, I was tracing out Leah’s children and making comments on how her husband’s withheld affection marker her. Yet, did you notice I stopped a little early? In fact, Leah has one more child whose name is very different, Judah. “This time I will praise the LORD” (Genesis 29:35b). Judah’s name sounds like the Hebrew word for “praise.” And you need to underscore the word she uses for God. While everyone around her would have used the generic Elohim, Leah refers to God with the special name that God had revealed to Abraham – Yahweh. She grabbed God by faith. She had experienced a conversion. In place of seeking the affection of her husband, she discovered God’s grace and love. You can almost here her peaceful sigh of relief when the Bible says, “Then she ceased bearing” (Genesis 29:35c). All of her hardships had introduced her to the rich, extravagant grace of God. God comes to Leah and says, “You’ll be the mother of my Son, Jesus.” Leah gave birth to Judah and who is Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
You Are Rachel
You might be thinking of yourself as Leah - unwanted. But to Jesus, you look gorgeous. God’s grace seeks out the ones who are unloved and makes us all “Rachel’s.” God is telling you, “You’re no Leah to me. You’re Rachel.” The cross of Christ is the lengths God goes to in order to make His you, His bride. In order to make you beautiful, He became Leah to make us Rachel.
The Effects of the Cross
If your sins were on a computer, then Jesus hit delete. If your sins were written in the sky, then the wind blows the clouds of sin away. If your sins are written on an etch-a-sketch, then Jesus shakes it. If your sins were written on the sand of shores, then Jesus sends a big wave.
Prayer
Father, the truth is there’s nothing about us that is lovely or becoming. We have ruined our lives by the sinful choices of a thousand rebellions. Yet, here You are loving us and offering us grace through Your Son, Jesus.
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