A donkey and a fox went into partnership and sallied out to forage for food together. They hadn’t gone far before they saw a lion coming their way, at which they were both dreadfully frightened. But the fox thought he saw a way of saving his own skin, and went boldly up to the lion and whispered in his ear, “I’ll manage that you shall get hold of the donkey without the trouble of stalking him, if you’ll promise to let me go free.” The lion agreed to this, and the fox then rejoined his companion and contrived before long to lead him by a hidden pit, which some hunter had dug as a trap for wild animals, and into which he fell. When the Lion saw that the donkey was safely caught and couldn’t get away, it was to the fox that he first turned his attention, and he soon finished him off, and then at his leisure proceeded to feast upon the donkey.
Through the ages, Aesop’s Fables have provided a moral guide in his timeless stories. These are simple truths that every generation must learn; pride goes before the fall, that one can be too clever for his own good, and in today’s story, that you do reap what you sow. In the end, the fox sealed his own fate. He was trapped by his own treachery, and he got what he deserved. The trickster was tricked and he got what was coming to him.
This is a principle we all learn at an early age. If you put in the work, you will receive your wage. If you go the extra mile, you will find success. But if you only do just enough to get by, that is all you will do, get by.
This is also a life principle that we learn from Scripture. 2 Corinthians 9:6 teaches us that “the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” Job tells us that “those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.” The truth is this, you get out of life exactly what you put into it, justice is served, and we all receive our wages according to our labor.
This principle is also evident in our reading this morning from Genesis. Jacob has made his way in the world by deception and trickery. He displaced his brother, deceived his father, but now the table has been turned. The trickster is tricked, the fox is trapped, Jacob’s past has finally caught up with him.
The way that Jacob was snared in Laban’s trap was really quite ingenious. Jacob had come to live with his uncle Laban, escaping the wrath of his brother, Esau, so Laban put him to work. As they set up their contract, Laban said to Jacob, “I can’t have you work for free, so tell me, what will be your wage for your service?”
Implied in his question we can find the groundwork for Laban’s trap. The Hebrew word for wage implies a reward for faithfulness, a payment for the moral quality of an action. By entering into the bargain, Jacob’s history of moral deficiency predetermined what his reward would be.
When Jacob offered to work seven years in exchange for Laban’s daughter Rachel in marriage, Laban’s replied with a carefully worded answer. “It is better for me to give her to you than to give her to someone else.” Notice that he never mentioned Rachel’s name. Laban intended from the very beginning to give Leah away first, and if he had to do it by deceiving his own nephew, so be it. So when Jacob worked his seven years, he is trapped into marrying Leah, and then forced to work another seven to receive Rachel.
This is justice. Jacob got his due, he received exactly what he deserved. He had lived a life of dishonesty, and his reward, his payment, was dishonesty. Jacob received payment for the moral quality of his life. Even though he had been chosen by God and blessed by his father, Jacob could not escape God’s justice.
Is this fair? Is it right for God’s chosen one to be treated so? Nowhere does scripture allow that the elect are immune from God’s discipline and punishment. In fact, it is just the opposite. The Lord says to his chosen people in Amos, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” Hebrews encourages the chosen of God saying, “My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.” Because God loves his children, he disciplines them, often allowing them to experience the result of their sinful ways and desires, allowing them to know the depravity of their being.
But this is not where God leaves us.
Even though Jacob got a taste of his own medicine, God continued to bless him, and in turn, to bless the world through him. Through what he considered his misfortune, his marriage to Leah, the ugly sister, 8 of Jacob’s 12 sons were born. Despite all that Jacob and Laban had done, God’s purposes were advanced; God’s plan was fulfilled.
Jacob received the justice of God, the just payment for his lack of faithfulness; but God’s justice was tempered with mercy. God’s promise to Jacob was accomplished and Jacob got precisely what he did not deserve, he got more than his due. Jacob received the grace of God’s blessing and the assurance of God’s good favor.
More important than the first principle we learned from Jacob’s story is the second; in the Christian life we get exactly that which we do not deserve.
Years ago am minister named Harry Morehouse was walking in a poorer section of a large city, and he watched as a boy of five or six came out of a store carrying a pitcher of milk. The little boy made his way carefully along the street; he slipped and fell; the pitcher broke, and the milk ran all over the sidewalk. The boy let out a wail, and Morehouse rushed to see if he was hurt. There was no physical damage, but the youngster would not be consoled; he kept crying over and over, “My mama’ll whip me! My mama’ll whip me!”
Mr. Morehouse said to him, “Maybe the pitcher is not broken in too many pieces; let us see if we can put it together again.” The boy stopped crying at once; he watched Mr. Morehouse place the base of the pitcher on the sidewalk and start building up the pieces. There were one or two failures and each time the boy started crying again but was silenced by the big preacher. Finally the whole pitcher was complete except for the handle. Mr. Morehouse handed the piece to the little boy; he poked it toward the place it belonged, and knocked the whole thing apart once more. This time there was no stopping his tears, so Mr. Morehouse gathered the boy in his arms and walked down the street to a nearby crockery store. He bought a new pitcher; then he and the boy returned to the milk store and had the pitcher washed and filled with milk. He carried the boy on one arm and balanced the pitcher of milk in the other hand until they arrived at the boy’s home. Very gently he deposited the lad on his front steps, put the pitcher carefully into his hands and asked, “Now will your mama whip you?” A smile broke on the streaked face. “Aw, no sir! ‘cause it’s a lot better pitcher ‘an we had before.”
Whether you accept the fact or not, the pitcher of your life and its milk were once spilled beyond regathering. In our sin, we are as bas off as we could possibly be. We were beyond all self-help, because, as Paul put it, we were born into this world “dead in trespasses and sins” and “walking according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience… fulfilling all lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:2-3). We could spend our entire lives trying to patch the pieces together again, but God assures us that we were broken beyond repair. Paul says in Romans that there are none that seek after God, and that all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.
When we were thus, broken and hopeless, in the despair of our lost soul and crashed hopes the Lord Jesus intervened to save us. He may have watched our efforts at patching for a while, until we came to the place where we believed beyond question that it was impossible for us to repair our lives in a way that would ever satisfy the holiness of God. It was then that he carried us in his arms and purchased for us an entirely new nature, a new life, which he imparted to us on the basis of his loving kindness and tender mercies. It was not because there was good in us, but because there was grace in him.
We have today, like Jacob so long ago, like the boy with his broken pitcher, received a gift that we never could deserve. Remember again Romans 6:23 which says that the wages of sin is death, but, and this is good news for us today, the free gift of God is eternal life. In God’s justice, we were dead to God because of our sin, undeserving of any special favor. But God, in the richness of his love, tempered his justice toward us with mercy, extending to us the grace of salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have not received what we deserve, we did not collect our wage, instead we got something so much better. We have received God’s promise of eternal life through the grace of Jesus Christ.
All glory and honor and praise be to God the Father, God the Son, and the God the Holy Spirit, now and forevermore!
