Well, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and take them and open them to Genesis chapter 30. We'll be looking at verses 25 through 43. And I would invite you to stand for the reading of God's Holy Word in Genesis chapter 30, verses 25 to 43. As soon as Rachel had born 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. 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. Name your wages and I will give it. And 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? 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. Everyone that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me shall be counted stolen. 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 and everyone that had white on it and every lamb that was black and put them in 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. Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plain trees and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. 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. 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. And Jacob separated the lambs and set the faces of the flocks toward the striped and all the black in front of the flock of Laban. And 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. Thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants and camels and donkeys. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Let's begin with the word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we come to this passage that, from a modern perspective, seems so far distant from our experiences today, seems so strange in certain details that we just read. Lord, we ask that you would open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, our minds to understand, and our hearts to receive what your word has for us this morning. Lord, take what is unfamiliar to us and make it familiar. Oh Lord, we pray that Your Holy Spirit would be working to take Your Word and to write it upon the tablet of our hearts this morning. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. When you hear the phrase, the American dream, what comes to mind? Most people, as far as I can tell, this means that we have the freedom to succeed and attain a better life than the life that we've had in the past. In fact, in my opinion, this is a secularized description of why our Puritan forefathers came to the shores of what became this country in the first place. They were looking for a better life. Now for them it was for religious reasons, religious persecution and the freedom to worship God as they saw fit in their consciences based in God's Word. Well the secularized version of that is seeking a better life. kind of taking God out of the equation, but seeking a better life. In fact, when you really stop and think about it, this American dream and the concept that is laid before people, this idea, this value, is what has brought many, many people from around the globe to this country seeking a better life. from the life that they had, whether it was because of coming from a war-torn country, where they just physically were not safe, or maybe economic conditions were not stable enough for them to provide for their families, whatever the case may be, it is the American dream that has brought many people to this country. And when we boil it down further, the American dream is really the dream to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As far as I can tell, the idea of the pursuit of happiness in its original context refers to being able to pursue material property, possessions, and wealth. However, there's one thing about wealth, which I think is a huge part of the American dream, there's a huge thing about wealth that It has the ability, if you really stop and think about it, to really bring to the surface the true state of someone's heart as it relates to the blessings of God. There's no doubt that wealth, biblically considered, is one of the expressions of the blessing of God. And at the same time, wealth has the ability and the power to bring to the surface the true state of someone's heart in relation to those blessings. And that really is the main idea, I think, of this passage this morning, and it's this. The blessing of God can reveal either a heart of greed or a heart that trusts in His promises. Now, if you're visiting with us this morning, you'll see on page four at the end of the liturgy, you'll see that idea typed out there for you, the sermon idea. The blessing of God can reveal either a heart of greed or a heart that trusts in His promises. And those are the two things that I think we need to unpack this morning from this passage. And I want to begin with you looking at verses 25 to 36 Our first point is the Lord's blessing and a greedy heart. We see in verses 25 to 26, first of all, the request of Jacob here, the request of wages, and it's a request given to a greedy man. Notice our passage in verses 25 to 26 picks up. As soon as Rachel had born Joseph, we saw that last week, 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. Now interestingly enough, this comes at the end of 14 years of service. We saw that last week when Jacob was working for these two wives and then had children by them. He worked for 14 years total to get Leah first and then Rachel. Now the idea of him saying, give me my wives and my children for whom I've served should take us all the way back to chapter 29 verse 15. You remember there that Jacob agreed to serve Laban for the wages of a wife and the wife that he was looking for was Rachel. Remember he agreed to serve seven years for Rachel. Rachel was the wages to be paid, so to speak. He's working off his dowry. He gets duped. He marries Leah and then has to work seven more years for Rachel. Well, guess what? Fourteen years is up. The term of the agreement is over. Give me my wives as my wages and my children and I will go. He's earned it. And I think we would probably agree, reading the story, that he has earned his wife and his children and the right to go home. However, there's a little bit of a problem. And the problem is more of a cultural custom that was really familiar in the ancient Near East at that time. In Mesopotamia it was common for wives and children that were acquired or born while someone was serving or in servitude to belong to the master and not to the husband and the father who is doing the serving. That may seem like a strange arrangement to you. In fact, it wasn't all that strange in that day and age. We see it actually repeated in the law of Moses. In Exodus chapter 21 verse 4, this is what the Lord lays out for Moses. This is part of the covenant stipulations for Israel's life. As a nation, God says, if his master, his master being his, being the slave, if his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her masters. And he, the slave, when he is freed, shall go out alone. Kind of a strange arrangement to our modern ears and our modern sensibility. And clearly Laban has that customary mindset in his mind when Jacob finally leaves. We'll see next week in Genesis 31 verse 43 when Jacob says, or he says this to Jacob, the daughters are my daughters. The children are my children. The flocks are my flocks. And all that you see, Jacob, is mine." Laban is thinking in terms of his customary day and age. There's nothing that would have been strange about that even to an Israelite reading this or hearing this read to them for the first time. But the difference here is that Jacob is not his slave. This is kind of the kink in Laban's chain here. Jacob is not Laban's slave. He is his son-in-law. And how do you know he's not a slave? Well, yes, he's serving him, but a slave does not serve to earn wages, at least in that day and age. Jacob, on the other hand, as we saw from Genesis 29, verse 15, is, in fact, serving for wages. And so he clearly requests to return to Canaan. In fact, that double phrase, my home, my own home and my country highlights that Jacob is referring to Canaan where he fled from in the first place when he came to Mesopotamia. Why would Jacob ask that? Because he remembers back in Genesis 28 as we should when he was in Bethel and he had that vision of God and the ladder going from the earth to heaven and the Lord standing at the top of the ladder and the angels descending and ascending on there. God made a promise to him to preserve him in Mesopotamia and to bring him back to the land of promise to the land of Canaan. Well guess what? Jacob, after 14 years, has seen the providence of God. He has seen God protect him from Laban. He has seen the blessing in, well, we saw the difficulty in it too, but he comes out with four wives, and at this point, 12 children, 11 sons, and one daughter. And he's got some kind of means where he can return home and begin to build his own household. And so Jacob's request to Laban really is nothing more than Jacob taking God at his word and looking to go home. I think that's a pretty reasonable request that Jacob wants his wages. He wants to go home. But remember, he's making this request to a greedy man. And so in verses 27 to 31, you see the counter offer of a greedy man, that greedy man being Laban. In fact, if you look at verses 27 and 28 and then skip to 31, you see Laban's initial greedy offer. Look what he does in verse 27. He actually admits, "...if I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you." That's quite a statement. In other words, this greedy man is acknowledging in some sense his debt to Jacob and realizes that the Lord is with Jacob. Again, something that he promised back in Genesis 28. Now, it would not be uncommon for somebody in the ancient Near East to use divination to discern or determine what the will of the gods was. In fact, a modern, I guess, contemporary analogy of that would be like going and getting your palm read or, you know, going to the tarot card place and trying to figure out what your fortune is going to be. It was the same kind of mindset back then. They're trying to get insight into what course of action they should take moving forward. It shouldn't surprise us that Laban would do that. But one of the things I want you to understand here is the word in Hebrew for divination, ironically, is the same word in Hebrew that is used for serpent or snake. How about that? Kind of an interesting connection, an interesting linguistic and thematic wordplay there. It's the same word used in Genesis 3.1 when it says, now the serpent was crafty more than the other beast of the field, right? It's the same word used for divination, for serpent. It's the same word that's used for the one who tempted and deceived Eve. It's the same word that's used to the one whom God said in Genesis 3.15, if you remember, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Boy, that background really sheds some light, doesn't it, on the true source of Laban's pagan divination. His insight comes ultimately from Satan. It's interesting that even Satan has to acknowledge the blessing of God on Jacob. But the point is that Laban is acting like the serpent seeking to bite the heel of Jacob, whose name means heel grabber in the first place, by deceiving him with a bad offer. This is what the enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, Jacob representing the seed of the woman, Laban representing the seed of the serpent, this is what that interplay looks like, where one is trying to bite at the heel of the other. And even as he does this, he has to acknowledge that the Lord has blessed him. And so look what he says in verse 28. He says, name your wages and I will give it. You skip to verse 31, the first part of it. What shall I give you? Now those are strange kind of questions or statements to make when you've said right from the beginning, if I have found grace or favor, you could translate that grace or favor from Hebrew into English, if I found grace in your eyes, name your wages and I'll pay it. if you've received grace, you're not paying for it. Laban seems to misunderstand in the blindness of his greed, he misunderstands what the grace of God is and how it's working through Jacob. He even misunderstands how he has received God's grace even though he doesn't deserve it through Jacob. Why is he blind? Because of his greed. Look at Jacob's response to this greed. His response reminds Laban that he had very little when he arrived and God is, look, God has blessed you through me these 14 years. You had so little and look how your flocks have fared. You've actually increased because of me. But he points out something that I think most couples in this room probably understand from firsthand experience. There comes a point where when you're married and you have children, you have to focus on building up your own household. That is your God-given ministry, that is your God-given responsibility, to build up your own household and look to those who are yours, right? That's what God will hold you accountable for. So Jacob understands that. When will I build up my own household, he asks. And so because he responds, he's asked in verse 31, what shall I give you? Notice how he responds ultimately, you shall not give me anything. Okay, that's very direct. A careful reader who's reading this or hearing this and has heard The rest of the story up to this point in Genesis would remember that the king of Sodom back in chapter 14, you remember Abraham comes back from his battle with the kings and he's got spoil and wealth and riches and all the captives. And do you remember what the king of Sodom said? You keep the wealth, Abraham. Just give the people to me. And we know why he said that because we get to chapters 18 and 19. He was perverted. Remember what Abraham said to him? No. I'm not taking anything from you. Why? Why did Abraham say that? Because Abraham knew that wealth was a blessing from the Lord and he knew that true blessing came from the Lord with whom he was in covenant with. And so we see the same thing here. Jacob refuses to take anything from Laban lest Laban hold it over his head that he made him rich. Jacob knew that if there was anything that would make him stay, it would only be from the blessing of the Lord, which comes by grace, rather than the wages from Laban. It's interesting how Jacob does not put himself as a debtor to Laban here. Very wise. Very wise. But it does lead him to strike up a bargain, which I think reveals Laban's greed. But it also requires Jacob to trust the Lord because of on the surface how bad this deal looks for Jacob. And so we see in verses 32 through 36, the bargain that Jacob makes with a greedy man. Look at verse 32, you see the terms of the bargain. Jacob says, let me pass through all of 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." Now why does this sound like a bad deal for Jacob? Well because in the ancient Near East, black lambs were very rare compared to the more common white ones among the sheep. And it was opposite with the goats. The goats were usually darker in color, but with both sheep and with goats, spotted or speckled were also usually very rare and few in number. And so I want you to think about this. Jacob chooses as his wages such an unlikely option that if he's going to succeed it's going to be coming from the Lord. I mean on the surface this looks like a very poor deal and you can imagine Laban's response. Laban's, he agrees to it, and we see that in this compromise of this bargain. There's greed involved in Laban's heart in verses 35 through 36. He agrees to it, he assumes it's going to work in his favor, but yet he leaves nothing to chance, because notice what he does in 35 and 36. Jacob is not the one who goes out as he says he will do and take these spotted and speckled out. Laban does it, and then he gives what is supposed to belong to Jacob into his son's hands. I don't know, as I think about this, it's almost like taking Jacob's wages and putting them in escrow, to use modern terms, but the point is he's preventing Jacob's cut of the flock here. He prevents them from mating and producing with the rest of the flock. In other words, he wants to do everything he can so that Jacob's flocks don't multiply so that he protects his own investment, diminishes Jacob's chances of coming out on top. That is what is going on here. The greed in this man is so despicable. He's doing this to his own son-in-law. And yet, as we're dealing with God's blessings through wealth, as we take a step back, and we look at this and we seek to apply it to ourselves, we have to ask, what are some of the dangers that wealth can bring for God's people? Are we really that different from Laban? I think the idea here by way of application is the blessing of wealth can lead to forgetting the God who has given that wealth or blessing in the first place. Why is that? Because greed exchanges the value of the giver for the value of the gift. Now in this first application to this point here, what I wanna do is I wanna use Laban as kind of our sounding board of application. And our second point, we'll use Jacob as the sounding board. But let's focus first on Laban here. As Laban could acknowledge the blessing of the Lord, his heart was still hardened to try and bargain with Jacob through his greed to gain even more from Jacob's labor. In other words, here's what's interesting. Laban cares more about the benefits and the wealth that he can get from Jacob than he did about the God whom Jacob was in covenant with, or more than he cared about Jacob himself. And this is what the blessing of wealth has the power to do to people. And as Christians, we have to understand we are no different fundamentally. We have these same temptations as we think about the blessings of God and the blessing of wealth. I want you to think about this. In Deuteronomy 8, verses 11 through 20, no, I'm not gonna read that whole section for you, but the point of it is, Israel is about to go into the promised land, just like Jacob here wants to return to the land of promise. They're about to go in and receive what God has promised to give them. and they were going to receive all kinds of things, and God names those things, houses that they did not build, fields that they did not plant, vineyards also that they did not plant, wealth in terms of gold and silver and copper in the hills, material blessings, and that was part of their covenant relationship with God. They were about to receive all of that freely by God's grace when they go in and took the land. And God acknowledges here in that passage in Deuteronomy 8, their temptation would be that when all of their needs were met and that they were satisfied and filled, that they would forget the God who gave them all of these things in the first place. In fact, God warns them that they will come to care more and value the gifts that He gives more than valuing Him as the giver. Now, just put yourself... We don't have to jump very far to understand that today in the United States. We have all of our basic needs, for the most part, met and satisfied, as we were just probably reminded on Thanksgiving. Many of you probably over eight, if you're like me. and maybe even regretted it when you had a stomach ache later on. But we're reminded that our needs are satisfied and met. We have the same temptation. And when we forget the Lord is the giver and the source of blessing, and we try to satisfy ourselves with the material blessings that He gives us, understand, saints, that we will never truly be satisfied. And in our dissatisfaction, we will always come to demand more and more and more, which is essentially what greed is. And sadly, that more and that more and that more will never be enough because we're trying to satisfy an otherworldly, God-shaped longing and need with something that is earthly and worldly. You ever wondered why money is never enough? Pleasure is never enough? Entertainment is never enough? Stuff and things that we could own materially are never enough to truly satisfy us. It's because we have a deeper yearning than that made in the image of God that can only be filled by Him. But when we try to fill that hole with things, it's never enough. And sadly, when it's never enough, the second part of this application is that greed can lead to cheating and manipulating others to come out ahead. Boy, that's kind of like the next step fruit of greed, isn't it? It's not just that you have an internal problem or you seem to worship stuff. It's then, what does this greed do to relationships around you, those that are closest to you, those that you should love the most? I mean, this is the natural result of the idolatry of stuff. When we value the blessings, the material blessings, over the one who blesses, the obvious result is that we devalue those who are made in the image of the Lord who blesses. And when we devalue other people, it can lead to cheating them, seeking to manipulate them so that we get our own gain and profit and come out ahead. Because after all, we come to see them as only means to an end. And that end, it could be more wealth and riches, it might be more pleasure, it might be greater fame. But I want you to understand this. Either way you look at it, either way you splice this, it is no better than the satanic divination of Laban that seeks to strike at the heels of the seed of the woman. And so the question you have to ask this morning, does this greed, does it describe your heart this morning towards wealth and the blessings of God? Especially as we think about coming out of Thanksgiving, where we just, if you're like me, you just stuffed yourself for a whole day with food. And then we go into Advent season, and we're consumed with buying stuff. for people and getting stuff from other people. Does this greed describe your heart this morning towards wealth and money and blessings, which in and of themselves are not bad. It's what our hearts do with them. If that's you and you're like Laban, The call of this passage is to repent of the sin of idolatry because it's characteristic not of the seed of the woman which you are called to through faith in Christ, but it's more characteristic of the seed of the serpent. And that leads us to our second point, which is really kind of the contrast here in verses 37 to 43. The Lord's blessing and trusting His promises. The first point was the Lord's blessing and greed. Now it's the Lord's blessing and trusting His promises. And, you know, verses 37 through 42, which is kind of the bulk of that section, really reveals an unusual trust on Jacob's part. It's almost a trust that has not characterized him to this point. In a surface-level reading, you could almost miss how this is trusting the Lord. Call it unusual because if you remember when I just read the story from the beginning, from a modern, western perspective, I don't know about you, this seems very bizarre to me. So I'm going to do my best to explain this to you and what's going on in the background. And as we do that, we're going to also take a sneak peek into chapter 31 to see the background so we know what Jacob is doing and why he's doing it. But verses 37 to 42 show these unusual methods of Jacob's trust. Look at verse 37. This is kind of weird. Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plain trees and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. All right, so the best way I can explain this, you get these sticks, and anyone knows, like, the bark is usually like a dark color. You start carving into it, you're exposing the white wood underneath, and so what's going on here is he's putting these white streaks into the sticks. It's a mix of the dark bark and the white underneath, and so what he's... Remember, what are his wages? His wages are the striped and the spotted sheep and goats. And so he's making the sticks look like what he's trying to get the goats and the sheep to become, striped and spotted. That's the best I can do with that. Verses 38 and 39 tell us what he does with these. He puts them in front of the watering places where the flocks would drink from. And it explains that when they would go and drink there, they would also breed. And if the sticks were there, they're breeding in front of the sticks. Now, this is where it gets strange, and I'm going to do my best. In the ancient Near East, OK? In the ancient Near East. most people thought that whatever the flocks were focusing on while breeding, so whatever they're looking at while they're breeding, whatever they're looking at kind of stamps its imprint on the offspring. Okay? And so Jacob being in that cultural milieu of the ancient Near East in Mesopotamia, would have naturally reasoned that if the animals fixed their gazes on sticks that resembled the stripes and the spots that he was after producing, their young that would be born would be born with stripes and spots. Now, if that happened, think about it, his wages would increase, much to Laban's chagrin. And we find He takes a further precaution in verses 40 to 42. He separates what becomes his flock from Laban's. And he put the striped and the black among the goats together to make sure that the stronger bred with the stronger in front of the striped sticks. And then when the weaker would come of the flocks to breed, he would take the sticks away so that the weak would breed with the weak. Now again, it's interesting that difference between the strong and the weak of the flock. How would you know the difference? Well again, this is just kind of like how the ancients thought at that time. They believed that the flocks that were conceived in the spring and born in the autumn were stronger than those conceived in the autumn and born in the spring. Now, I am not an expert in animal husbandry, and I can only give you my best guess as to why they thought that. You know, if you really think about it, if they're conceived in the spring, that means that in the warmer climate of the spring and the summer leading up to their birth in the autumn, the mother carrying them would have a greater chance of, you know, grazing more successfully and breeding a stronger offspring, whereas if they're conceived in the autumn and then they go through the winter and the rainy season where the ground is not as plentiful, they're probably not eating as much and then the flocks born in the spring would be weaker. That's the best spin I can put on that, but that is what's going on here in this passage. Now, you're asking yourself, okay, one, does that make sense? And two, how did this work? Right? Well, you have to look at chapter 31, verses 1-11 to see a little bit of the background of this unusual trust that Jacob is demonstrating. Because, I don't know about you, the question in my mind that comes up first is, you know, does this really work or not? I mean, at that time in history, they didn't have, they're not living after the scientific revolution, where we have all this knowledge of genetics and dominant and recessive genes, and we know how this works today. In fact, you could probably clone some of these animals in a laboratory and get a really good result. Right? I like what Dr. John Currid, professor of Old Testament at RTS, says about this. He says, we have to acknowledge that this was really just an ancient superstition or wives' tale. In other words, this is a bunch of hooey. Jacob was trusting in a bunch of hooey. So how is that trusting in the Lord? In order to answer that you have to look at chapter 31 and particularly in verse 5 he's talking to his wives Rachel and Leah trying to convince them to go back to Canaan. This is the end of six years of doing this. And he says about his treatment that he received from their father Laban, he says this to them, but the God of my father has been with me. Now that's interesting. But God did, and then verse 7, but God did not permit him, Laban, to harm me. So notice as Jacob is doing this whole breeding, gymnastic tactic thing that he's working with for six years, he ultimately is trusting in the Lord who promised to be with him all the way back in chapter 28. Then you look at verses nine through 12 of chapter 31. It says this, it gives us really the key of how this worked. Thus, God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me. In the breeding season of the flock, I lifted up my eyes and I saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped and spotted and mottled. Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, Jacob, I said, here I am. He said, lift up your eyes and see all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted and mottled. For I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. So Jacob, by divine revelation via a dream, understands that what he is doing, it's not just this ancient Near Eastern breeding trick that is really causing the result, it is the Lord causing the result. And here's the point I want you to take away from this. God made the process that Jacob used to work, but here's what's most important. We see the transfer of Laban's wealth and Laban's blessing to Jacob, and this transfer was a result of the Lord. Why? Because the Lord saw the sin and the injustice of Laban towards Jacob, and he affects a transfer that results in Jacob's blessing. I say sin and injustice because when you get to chapter 31, Jacob is going to complain to Laban, you have changed my wages ten times. Every time you saw that this was working out in my favor, you changed it to work in your favor and God saw that. And God worked against you. How about that? And so we see this as a fulfillment of God's promises to Jacob all the way back in chapter 28 when he was in Bethel. And it shows that God, it shows God in His sovereign and providential power. He gets the credit, not some weird, backwooded, ancient Near Eastern breeding superstition. And that leads to the summary here, the unexpected result of Jacob's trust in verse 43, which says, Thus the man increased greatly, and had large flocks, female servants, and male servants, and camels, and donkeys. That's interesting, you would expect him to just say that the flock increased, but he's got all these other things. Male and female servants, camels, and things like that. Now again, if you're a careful reader, This highlights really the blessing and the faithfulness of God. And it does so because back in Genesis 12, 16, if you remember when Jacob was in, or when Abraham was in Egypt and he duped the Pharaoh, remember that? And then the Pharaoh blesses him on behalf of Sarah, it uses the exact same words. You see it when Isaac was in Gerar with the Philistines back in Genesis 24, verses 12 through 14. Again, it's almost the same exact words. the same blessing, the same result, and this is the result of trusting the Lord, not relying on greed, but trusting that God will bless richly. So it's interesting, on the surface it looks like Jacob's trying to cheat all in this process, and we find out he's not cheating, he's actually trusting the Lord. We find out that Jacob is not greedy like Laban, and God has rewarded him. The question by way of application is what does God's blessing of Jacob in a material sense have to do with the message of the gospel and the fulfillment of God's promises? Well, it's simply this. It points forward to the spiritual riches that we have in Jesus Christ that comes when God makes a saving transfer on our behalf that leads to eternal blessing. Take that to the spiritual bank and cash the check. Let's look at what that means. We have to first understand the difference between material blessings and spiritual blessings. There is an important distinction to make between how God was operating under the Old Covenant. You've got to remember it was Israel who received the Old Covenant with Moses that would have had this revealed to them the first time at Mount Sinai. There's a difference between them and there's a difference between us in the New Covenant, right? There's a lot of false teachers out there who will preach a prosperity gospel. If you only have enough faith, God will bless you and make you prosperous and wealthy. And maybe you too could afford a Learjet. Right? And it is so easy to look at a passage like this and on the surface come to that conclusion. Oh boy, if only I have enough trust and faith. Like Jacob, God will make me rich. Is that what this is saying by way of application? No, because of the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. We have to understand that this first audience that heard this from the mouth of Moses were hearing this at the foot of Mount Sinai. And this is the same audience who would have received in the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 28, verses 1 through 14, the covenant blessings as well as the curses. Now, if you read those blessings and those litany of blessings, they're largely material. Things like abundance of flocks and herds, fruitful fields, and the promise of many children as the fruit of the womb. Jacob's material prosperity in our passage, it was a foreshadowing of God's covenant faithfulness to Old Testament Israel, which in nature was tied largely to the land that they were going to inherit. But here's the thing. In the New Covenant, distinct from the Old Mosaic Covenant, the focus, at least this side of eternity, is much more on the spiritual realities that we receive here and now before we get to glory. Those distinctions are important. In fact, listen to this. This is what Paul writes in Ephesians 1.3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. You know what those spiritual blessings are as he goes on to describe them? In verses 4 and 5, he talks about the blessing of divine election, predestination, and adoption. In verse 7, he goes on to talk about the forgiveness of sins. In verses 1, chapter 1, verses 13 through 14, he talks about the blessing of the Holy Spirit who seals us until we acquire possession of our eternal inheritance. Think about that for just a moment. All of those blessings that we receive in the here and now, which Jacob's blessing was just a forward-looking picture of, a shadow of, are spiritual in nature in the here and the now. Now the corresponding physical side of these blessings will be realized in the new heavens and the new earth, which will be just as physical as they will be spiritual. This is why in Revelation chapter 20, 21, excuse me, verses one and following, it describes the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven onto the earth like a bride prepared for her bridegroom. I think I got that right. Heaven and Earth will one day be reunited. And then the physical things that we see of Jacob's blessing will become a physical reality just as much as the spiritual things we already enjoy now. This is why I have a problem with things like Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now. Really? What about glory? We are on our way, just like Jacob wants to return to his home in Canaan here. We ourselves as God's covenant people today also persevere, trusting that one day we will enter our eternal inheritance in the heavenly and the eternal Canaan. But this leads us to ask, how do we receive those blessings like adoption, forgiveness of sins, Being sealed by the Holy Spirit, how do we receive these things today? Well, this is where, this is the second part of our application, a divine transfer is what is needed. And I wanna be careful and state right up front, it is very difficult and sometimes dangerous to make a one-to-one correspondence in every detail when you make these connections, okay? We're talking about the connection in principle. Just as Laban's sin and injustice towards Jacob was the means by which God transferred his wealth and his blessing to Jacob who received it by faith, so this is the same manner in which God works on our behalf today. The only difference is it was our sin that led Jesus to the cross where God transferred our sin and our unrighteousness to Jesus, who paid the penalty for it, while transferring the righteousness of Christ to our account, which is received by His divine grace through faith. Again, what does Paul say in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21? It summarizes that transfer principle. For our sake He, being the Father, made Him, Christ, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. And so while our first application relating to greed is the call to repentance, what's the application ultimately driving at in this second point? Faith in Christ, the greater Jacob. And it's through faith in Christ that we receive the true riches that begin with the wealth of receiving the gift of Christ's righteousness, which leads to the forgiveness of sins and the being sealed with the Holy Spirit, a new relationship through adoption so that we can call God our Heavenly Father, through our faithful and heavenly brother, Jesus Christ. only to one day receive an inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth of a new home in an abiding kingdom which will never come to an end. So this week, as we've just celebrated Thanksgiving, as you can see, we're now entering into the season of Advent. As God's people this season, let's seek the true riches of the kingdom in Christ to which we truly belong. I began this message highlighting the American dream. Well, you know what? We have a different dream to pursue. It's a kingdom dream through Christ. Let's remember that and put Christ at the center of all that we value and hope for this Christmas, because that really does bring us back to our initial idea, doesn't it? The blessing of God can reveal either a heart of greed or a heart that trusts in His promises. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we do come before you today and we are thankful, O Lord, for the fact that you have given us that which was most precious to you and your very Son, Jesus, who gave what was most precious to him, his life, pouring out his blood, having his body broken for us on the cross, Lord, so that we might receive the blessing of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. the forgiveness of sins, eternal life. Lord, we pray that as we come to the table of the Lord's Supper this morning that you would bless us and that you would seal these promises onto our very hearts and soul and you would nourish our faith even more. This morning we ask in Jesus' name, amen.