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Let us now heed the voice of
our Lord as He speaks to us from Genesis 29 verse 31 on through
chapter 30 verse 24. 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. When
Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister.
She said to Jacob, Give me children, or I shall die. Jacob's anger
was kindled against Rachel, and he said, Am I in the place of
God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? Then she
said, Here is my servant Bilhah. Go into her so that she may give
birth on my behalf, that even I may have children through her.
So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob went into
her, and Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then Rachel
said, God has judged me and has also heard my voice and given
me a son. Therefore she called his name Dan. Rachel's servant
Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel
said, With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister
and have prevailed. So she called his name Naphtali.
When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her
servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Then Leah's
servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. And Leah said, Good fortune has
come. So she called his name Gad. Leah's servant Zilpah bore
Jacob's second son. And Leah said, Happy am I, for
women have called me happy. So she named his name Asher.
In the days of wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes
in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel
said to Leah, Please give me some of your son's mandrakes.
She said to her, Is it a small matter that you have taken away
my husband? Would you take away my son's
mandrakes also? Rachel said, Then he may lie
with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes. When
Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to
meet him and said, You must come in to me, for I have hired you
with my son's mandrakes. So he lay with her that night.
And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob
a fifth son. Leah said, God has given me my wages because I gave
my servant to my husband. So she called his name Issachar.
And Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son. Then
Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my
husband will honor me because I have borne him six sons. So
she called his name Zebulun. Afterwards she bore a daughter
and called her name Dinah. Then God remembered Rachel, and
God listened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore
a son, and said, God has taken away my reproach. And she called
the name of his son Joseph, saying, May the Lord add to me another
son. The grass withers, the flowers
fade, but the word of our God endures forever, and so let us
ask His blessing upon this reading in the word of prayer. Lord,
we come tonight to this story. of how you brought about a growing
nation, the people of Israel. You formed for yourself a son
out of this very sinful situation. And Lord, as we have been forced
to reckon with so many times in Genesis, we are forced to
reckon with it here that you, God, can make amazing things
come out of such a mess. So we pray, Lord, that you would
help us tonight to see how that was done in the life of Jacob
and the women in his household. And we pray, Lord, that you would
help us to see how you might do that with us. We pray this
in Jesus' name. Amen. It was love at first sight. Shortly
after meeting her at the well, Jacob was head over heels in
love with Laban's daughter, Rachel. She was beautiful, we were told,
in form and appearance, and Jacob preferred the thought of marriage
with her to money. If he had to work, then she could
be his wages. In fact, Jacob loved Rachel so
much that he was willing to do back-breaking labor for seven
years in order to secure her hand in marriage. We saw that
earlier in Genesis chapter 29. But we've also seen how her father
Laban tricked Jacob with the help of his eldest daughter Leah
when he deceptively sent Leah to Jacob's tent on the wedding
night rather than the sister whom he had bargained for. Without
knowing what was happening, Jacob was married off to a girl that
he had not desired, perhaps never would desire. Nevertheless, Jacob
was so smitten with her younger sister that he was willing to
work seven more years for their father Laban if only he could
have, still yet, his one true love to be his bride. And thus, as our sermon text
closed last Sunday night, Jacob was married not to just one,
but to two women, sisters of the same father. Now you might think that you've
experienced a messed up home life in the past, and maybe you
have. But I would be surprised if it was more messed up than
the situation in Jacob's household. Because in a week's time, he
went from being the husband of one woman that he didn't love
to the husband of her and her sister. And on top of this, both
of his brides had been supplied with a female servant by their
father as part of a dowry. Really, Jacob went from zero
to four women in a matter of days. And as we're about to see
here in the text, any notion of a peaceful honeymoon period
was quickly shattered as the four women get wrapped up in
something of an arms race wherein they tried to see who could have
the most children the fastest. And the result is that our text
tells the tale of 12 children born to Jacob and the women of
his household over several years. This might seem at first like
a passage that's a little more than a list of names. This child
was born, here's her name. This child was born, here's their
name. But really, if you pay attention to what's happening
here, this is a story of polygamy, and concubinage, and anger, and
jealousy, and vengeance, and even superstition. There's a
lot here. But it's also the story of how
God raised up a people for himself. The 12 tribes of Israel, which
would one day, not too long from now, when we come to the books
of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, these 12 tribes,
they would originate, and they would grow up, and they would
be numbered in the millions. And no longer would the covenant
blessing be focused on one person. That's what we've seen so far.
First, it was Abraham. And then it was Isaac, not his
brother. Then it's Jacob, not his brother. As we get to this point in the
story that the covenant blessing is not going to be something
to fight over anymore. Jacob's sons would not have to
scheme to get the upper hand that Jacob had done to his brother
Esau. Instead, what God's going to do, He's not going to treat
them all exactly the same, partly due to the way that they act,
and we'll see more of that in Genesis. But He's going to use every one
of Jacob's many sons to build the nation which had been promised
to Abraham back in Genesis 12. They're all part of His plan.
And this is important because, truthfully, God is still building
this same people. He's still building it using
sinful people. He's still doing it using sinful
families. And He's doing this as work which
will not be completed, finally, until we get to heaven. as we
discover in the New Testament. We will refer back before we
get done here this evening to that passage we read in Revelation
chapter 7. So God built something beautiful
out of this ugly scene. And as we come to the text now,
here's one thing to remember. This text, again, describes something
like an arms race as Jacob's women sought to have as many
children as they could. So in order to wrap our minds
around the progression of the text, we need to see that this
competition really progresses through five rounds. Five rounds
which we will identify as we move through the passage. Chronologically,
some of these rounds may have overlapped with one another and
probably did to some extent. But we're not given enough information
to know where. And so, for ease of understanding,
we're just going to treat them sequentially, as if they happened
exactly in order, with no overlap, even though there probably was
overlap. Round one. This is chapter 29, verses 31
through 35. And round one is about how God
opens Leah's womb, but not Rachel. The competition begins with the
pretty sad situation described in verse 31. When the Lord saw
that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Just as Jacob's parents had had
favorite children, so also Jacob had a favorite wife. And it was
not Leah. The text tells us that in fact
Jacob hated Leah. And we don't necessarily have
to understand this to mean that he actively despised her. That's
possible. And it may well be that he harbored negative feelings
towards her after she was willing to go along with her father's
trickery. But the real point here, and what we should at least
conclude, is that he did not have the same love for Leah that
he had for her sister. Whatever he felt towards Leah
was hatred in comparison to the love that he had for Rachel.
And that's a very sad set of circumstances. Leah had gone
on with her father's plans, yes. She had participated in tricking
Jacob, but Laban was the one who had actually orchestrated
the whole thing. Leah had not intended to harm Jacob. She just
wanted to be loved. She wanted to have children.
She wanted to build a life. It was within the custom of their
society, but No matter how good her intentions were, marriage
had not changed Jacob's feelings towards her. When Jacob looked
at Leah, what he saw was her inferiority to Rachel. Nevertheless, when God looked
at Leah, he saw something different. God here, in verse 31, shows
love towards the woman that Jacob left unloved. God had compassion
on her. God opens her womb while Rachel
remains barren. And that's the dynamic. If you
want to understand why all of this is happening, here is the
dynamic which drives the conflict in this whole passage that we
have read. Leah can have children, but what she really wants is
Jacob's love. Rachel has Jacob's love, but
what she really wants is children. And thus the grass is greener
for both women, and the two women go at each other because of their
mutual envy. And this dynamic and the resulting
conflict even rears its head in the way that the women name
their children as we're about to see. First we come to Reuben
in verse 32. Leah draws first blood by having
Jacob's first son. It's a little boy named Reuben.
And I'm not doing anything fancy here. If you have an ESV, maybe
you have another translation that supplies footnotes. Those
are going to help you here because these names all sound like something
the women said when the child was born. Reuben's name means
something like, see, a son. I don't know how creative that
is, but that's what she names him. And when her firstborn arrives,
she actively chalks it up to the care of the Lord. She believes
that Yahweh has looked upon her affliction and has given her
a gift, the gift of a child. She receives it gladly. She's
glad to be a mother. But her real hope This is going
to be more evident. Her real hope is that the birth
of this child will lead not just to Yahweh looking at her, but
to Jacob looking at her as well. Leah thinks that by bearing Jacob's
children, which were so highly prized in the ancient world,
rightly so, she thinks that by bearing these children, she will
become precious in Jacob's society. Jacob will finally love her.
But this is an expectation which is going to repeatedly leave
Leah disappointed. Because after having Reuben,
nothing changes. And so she has another son, verse
33, Simeon. The second son's name is Simeon,
and that sounds like the Hebrew word for heard. Why? Because the God who had looked
on Leah in her affliction has now heard that she was hated. Her husband is ignoring her.
He does not appreciate her. He does not fill butterflies
in his stomach for her when she comes in a room. But even if
Jacob has largely ignored her, the Lord would not. And so he
gives her a second son, which has got to stir Jacob's appreciation
for her, right? Evidently not, because we come
to the third son in verse 34. Leah is still seeking her husband's
affection when she bears this third child whose name is Levi. And her explanation for that
name can be found in this line, which is here in the text, which
is really an embodiment of her wishful thinking. She says, and
now this time my husband will be attached to me because I have
born him three sons. Levi sounds like the Hebrew word
for attached. And that's exactly how she hopes
this little boy will cause Jacob to be towards her. Surely a woman
so fruitful and abundant and blessed by God will be prized
like a precious jewel by her husband. His attachment to her,
he won't be able to resist that anymore. But his response, or
lack thereof, seems to leave her hopes fading, and we see
that when she names her fourth son. Verse 35, she names her
fourth son without a reference to Jacob. His name is Judah,
which sounds like one of the Hebrew words for praise. And
Leah intends to praise the Lord and give thanks for the gift
of a fourth child, because if Jacob will not give her what
she longs for, then she will have to look to the Lord alone. She's going to have to look to
the Lord alone. She says, this time, I will praise the Lord."
Her husband had left her disappointed. Then she ceased bearing. In round
one of the motherly arms race, Leah clearly comes out ahead.
One after another, she bears four children for her husband.
But tragically, her real desire, love from Jacob, remains unfulfilled. And it's worth reflecting and
asking ourselves, how often do we resemble Leah? We fail to appreciate the rich
blessings that the Lord has given us because our heart is too frequently
consumed by whatever blessing He's not given us. We're discontented. We're dissatisfied. Not because everything is in
shambles, though sometimes it may be, but we're discontented
and dissatisfied because we have made an idol out of that one
thing that we can't attain. We ignore everything else in
pursuit of our precious. Gotta have her. That's not to say that what Leah
desired was wrong. Jacob should have loved her.
He owed her that. She was his wife. And likewise,
many of the things that we desire, they're good and they're proper
too. We should learn from Leah that
the problem comes in when we refuse to be satisfied with what
the Lord has seen fit to provide. And when we refuse to be satisfied
with what the Lord has seen fit to provide, that becomes destructive. That becomes consuming. It grips
our heart. It darkens our horizon. Life
seems much worse than it probably is. Let us not walk the path
of Leah and, as we're going to see, Rachel. We have to make
a choice to hope in God and give thanks for what He does give,
lest we fall into despair, as is Leah's case, or anger, as
will be Rachel's case. And so we come actually to round
two in chapter 30, verses 1 through 8, where Rachel offers a surrogate
to Jacob in anger. That's the emotion she's going
to feel because she's not gotten the one thing she wants. Leah
was unloved, but fertile. And on the flip side, Rachel
was loved, but infertile. And consequently, in verse 1
of chapter 30, we're told that when Rachel saw that she bore
Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob,
give me children or I shall die. Leah was depressed. Rachel's
mad. She envied the children. Really,
she envied her sister for the children that had been born to
her husband. And so she takes it out on her
husband. In the Old Testament, having
children was seen as a sign of blessing. And so not having children
was often interpreted as being under something of a curse. It
was a frightful thing. Women were obsessed over procreating
and it was viewed as a very tragic affair when a woman was barren.
And Rachel is a clear-cut picture of that paradigm. The barren
woman who feels as if she's under a curse and thus falls apart. She falls to pieces. She gives
Jacob an ultimatum. Give me children or I shall die. Her heart was so set on what
she didn't have. that she was prepared to die if she couldn't
have it. She's mad. But understandably, I think,
Rachel's anger is met by Jacob's anger. How dare Rachel put an
ultimatum on him when he had no power to do anything about
it? It's not as if he didn't love her. And so he responds,
he says, am I in the place of God? He's the one who has withheld
you from the fruit of the womb? We have an interesting contrast
here. Because if you'll recall, Jacob's mother went through a
long extended period of barrenness as well. And when she was barren,
Jacob's father Isaac, what did he do? He prayed to the Lord
for Rachel. He prayed to the Lord. for Rachel. Jacob doesn't pray. Maybe he
did. We're not told he does, though.
We were told that Isaac did. He doesn't pray, but he does
appeal to God. He does appeal to God. He appeals
to Him, not to ask His help, but to deflect blame. He opens
and closes the womb, Rachel, not me. Blame Him. Don't be mad
at me. And Rachel evidently accepts
this answer. So she devises a workaround. She's not going to die. If she can't have a baby on her
own, at least not right now, she will offer her female servant
as a surrogate mother in her stead. Bilhah will serve as Jacob's
concubine wife. Sharing the marriage bed without
the full rights of a normal one. To be precise, she says that
she wants Bilhah to bear a child on her behalf. Or there's actually
a sort of a Hebrew saying here. She wants Bilhah to bear this
child on her knees. Which is the more literal approach
to the Hebrew. What she's saying there is after
birth, the baby is to be placed not on Bilhah's lap, but on Rachel's
lap. As if she were the mother. something
like an adoption which is going on. It's going to be counted
as Rachel's child. Bilhah would give birth and then
the baby would be given to Rachel to raise as her own. That's Rachel's plan. And since
he's already got two wives, Jacob does not object to this plan.
He goes to Bilhah and she conceives and actually has two sons for
Jacob. The first is Dan. This is verses
5 and 6 of chapter 30. The first son born of Bilhah
is named Dan and his name resembles the Hebrew word judged because
Rachel declares that God has judged me and has also heard
my voice and given me a son. Now that sounds negative, but
it's probably Rachel here is saying that God has judged in
her favor. He's judged in her favor. She
views Bilhah's baby as an indication that the Lord is responding to
her desires for children. She thinks that God has given
her a son through her servants. And so Rachel counts Bilhah's
son Dan as her own. And then comes Naphtali in verses
7 and 8. Bilhah conceives and bears this
second son. This one's named Naphtali. His name sounds like
the word for wrestling. She believes that she's won the
latest round of her wrestling match against Leah. the introduction
of another son via Bilhash, here's what she says, with mighty wrestling
I have wrestled with my sister and it prevailed. Notice that the servants are
little more than pawns in the fight between the two sisters. In the girl's mind, and perhaps
even in the legal mind of the day, Bill's children are Rachel's
children on the scoreboard. They're wins for Rachel. And
Zilpah's children are Leah's children on the scoreboard. They're
wins for Leah. The feelings, the emotions, the
desires of the servants, they don't enter in. This is about
the two sisters. And these servants, sadly, are
being used as pawns, as tools, as surrogates, and nothing more.
And that's not going to stop as we come to round 3, chapter
30, verses 9-13. Rachel had offered Jacob a surrogate
in anger, but now, round 3, Leah offers Jacob a surrogate in desperation. Leah sees what Rachel's done,
and she figures what's good for the goose is good for the game.
If Rachel is going to give Bilhud to Jacob, well then Leah's going
to give Zilpah. Not to be outdone. And she deemed this as necessary
because for some reason, we were told earlier at the end of chapter
29 that Leah ceased bearing for some time after the birth of
Judah. It's hard to know for certain whether this was something
physically wrong with her or whether Jacob simply was not
spending time with her. Both are possibilities. But either
way, she needed backup. Now, thinking on reflection,
a bit of an odd strategy to introduce a fourth woman into the picture
when you're seeking the love of a man. But that's what she
does because she's desperate. And so the strategy quickly leads
to two more children because the two from Bilhah are matched
by two from Zilpah. First you have Gav. His name
sounds like the word for good fortune. And Leah views the arrival
of Jacob's Seventh, as a sign of good fortune for her. And
Gad is paired with Asher, whose name means happy. Leah's happy.
And Zilpah has given birth to a second boy that she can raise
as her own. So she says, happy am I, for
women have called me happy. And so round three, short and
sweet. Out of it, out of this relationship, this physical relationship
at least, between Jacob and Zilpah, we have Gad and Asher, who go
on the scoreboard not for Zilpah, but for Leah. Then we really
come to the biggest round of them all, which is round four.
This is chapter 30, verses 14 through 21. This round, we might sum it up
by saying that here, Rachel's going to make a deal to try to
get ahead, but Leah's the one that bears again. Leah bears
again. When we come to round four, the story is seemingly
interrupted by a fight. A fight between Rachel and Leah.
This gives us maybe a window into the contention that was
going on in this household at this time. because here in these
verses we have the description of an argument which they had
over fruit. It's amazing what we can arguing
fight over, this one was over fruit. At least that was the
presenting reason for the argument. It obviously went much deeper
than that because during the wheat harvest, Jacob's firstborn
Reuben, he's grown some now, he's a boy and he's out in the
field ostensibly participating in the harvest when he comes
across some mandarins. Now, I don't believe I've eaten
a lot of mandrakes myself, and so I'll give you a little bit
description of them. Mandrakes are related to potatoes, I'm
told. And they grow close to the ground like potatoes do,
though not under the ground in that same way. The plant has
wrinkly green leaves, and when they blossom, there's a small
yellow fruit about the size of a cherry tomato that grows at
the center. And that small fruit, that's
the mandarin. or at least that's the part of
the mandrake that you eat. They were rare in Mesopotamia, where
Jacob was located at this time. They had a strong scent. It's
mentioned in Song of Songs in a somewhat romantic setting.
And one of the common superstitions of the day, it seems, was that
mandrakes aided fertility, which probably helps to explain the
big blow up over them. And so it goes a little deeper
than who's going to get to eat this fruit after all. Anyways,
Reuben found a bunch when he was in the field harvesting wheat,
and he brought them in to share with his mother, Leah. But when
Rachel sees them, she's suddenly in the sharing mood, and so she
politely asks Leah, would you please give me some of your son's
mandrakes? Surely Reuben won't mind. However, when Leah hears this
request, she flies off the handle. It doesn't take much to set us
off if the frustration has been building for some time, does
it? Frustration grows and grows like a pile of kindling and then
all it takes is one well-placed spark and everything is set ablaze
and that's really what's happening here. Lee has been frustrated. And this request for mandrakes,
it's the spark which sets her anger on fire. When Rachel asked
for mandrakes, Leah says, is it a small matter that you have
taken away my husband? You know, when you hear that
after a simple request, you know you've kind of stepped in it.
And she has, she says, you've taken my husband, so you want
the mandrakes too. You want to take the food off
of our table. From Leah's perspective, she was first, regardless of
how she became first. And Jacob was supposed to love
her, but Rachel had ruined all of that. She'd taken all of that
away. And to top it all off, she wanted to eat the mandrakes
that her son had found. Rachel just cannot keep her hands
off of Leah's stuff. That's how Leah feels anyways.
But rather than fighting fire with fire, and there's, not that
we're told anyways, no hair pulling, no scratching, none of that.
Rachel tries to buy Leah off. If Rachel can have what she wants,
if she can have some of those mandrakes, well Leah can have
what she wants. Evidently Jacob hadn't been spending too much
time with Leah. He'd been spending time with
the one that he loved. And so Rachel proposes a trade. Reuben's
mandrakes for a night with Jacob. Now that's a wicked way to approach
things. But Leah does not hesitate to accept this bargain. She doesn't
even wait for Jacob to get home. She goes out to meet him on his
way from the field. And here's what she says. You
must come into me for I have hired you with my son's man's
race. You see just how transactional
and mercenary this arms race has become by around four. It's
wicked. Jacob's wives have devolved to
the point that they are willing to treat his time like a commodity
which can be bought and sold. And I think this is a good reminder
that sin hardens us. Sinning deadens our sensitivity
to sinning more. It calluses our conscience. And really it, I think in a way,
makes us less human when we continually give ourself to sin, because
we were made to obey, not to rebel. And at this point, as
one commentator put it, Rachel and Leah had gotten to the point,
they were so deep in their sin and their pride and their selfishness,
their idolatry, they'd gotten to the point that they were treating
Jacob like a breeding stud. And that goes to show us that
the longer that we harbor sin in our heart, The less human we act, at least
as those made in God's image, and the less humanely we treat
others, we begin to resemble animals with their base instincts
rather than creatures made in the image of the Lord. Continue feeding your sin. Continue
nursing your resentment and your envy and your greed and your
fill in the blank. This is what you become. Someone
who's willing to do things that, from an outsider's perspective,
are unimaginable. But again, Jacob evidently does
not mind too much. He spends the night with Leah.
And God listens to the desires of Leah's heart. He allows her
to conceive again. There's no sign that the mandrakes
had anything to do with her success. We're told that God hears her.
That's why she conceives. God's blessing is what matters.
And therefore, at this point, she bears three children in succession. First, we have Issachar in verses
17 and 18. His name sounds like wages. Now,
God may not have seen it this way, but here's how Leah saw
it. Leah saw it like this. This boy
was her wages for being generous enough to give her servant Zilpah
to Jacob. This was her reward. God probably
didn't see it that way. I don't think so. But that's
how she saw it. So she names the boy Issachar.
Then comes Zebulun, verses 19 and 20. His name sounds like
the word for honor. And here's what she has to say
about him. God has endowed me with a good endowment. Now my
husband will honor me because I have born him six sons. God's endowed her with a good
endowment. She believes that Jacob will surely honor her now,
and so she names the boy Zebulun from the word honor. And then
something strange happens in verse 21. Something, well, maybe
not strange, interesting. Maybe it's strange that it's
not happened until now. Because what happens next is
that finally a girl enters the picture. Leah's seventh child
is a girl named Dinah. Nothing is said about her name.
And nothing is said about Leah's feelings at her birth. And so
you sort of get the sense that at this point, she's peripheral
to the story that's being told. But she's included here still
for probably two reasons. For one thing, she's going to
play a major role in a story which we're going to hear in
chapter 34. And so we need to know about her now and her relation
to her siblings. And for another thing, she is
going to bring Jacob's total descendants to 12. in Mesopotamia. He's not yet going to have 12
sons, but he will depart from this land with 12 children as
the diner kind of stands in for Benjamin, who will be born after
the return to Canaan. But for now, a diner wraps up
round four. And at the end of this round,
let's take the score. Leah has seven children of her
own, two adopted through Zilpah, nine. And Rachel has two, not
her own, adopted through Bilhah. But that's going to change as
we come to round five, which is verses 22 through 24 of chapter
30, where God remembers Rachel and finally grants her a son. In His mercy, God finally gives
to Rachel the thing that she had perpetually dreamt of. The
text tells us in verse 22 that God remembers Rachel and He listens
to her and He opens her womb. Once again, please note Regardless
of the superstitions of the day, it's not the mandrakes that make
the difference. It's the Lord and time. Now he
remembers her and now he opens her womb. The note that God remembered
Rachel does not mean that he had forgotten her. This is one
of those things that we talk about anthropomorphism or an
anthropopathism, meaning that God is described in the Bible
in human ways. We forget things and remember
things. God does not forget and remember, but when we're told
that God remembers it, it does tell us something true, it reveals
something true to us about God. And what does that reveal to
us here? When we're told in the Old Testament
that God remembers someone, it's often describing that moment
at which God delivers his servant from a long and grievous trial,
out of his sense of steadfast love. Here's a well-known example. Think back, if you can, it's
been a long time now, on the way that God remembered Noah.
That's the beginning of chapter 8, and that's really the turning
point in the flood story. God remembers Noah and the flood
begins to roll back. That's the point at which God
looks on his servant, remembers his covenant, his covenant promises
and applies his love and therefore delivers them from their trial. So God had remembered Rachel
now and the day had arrived on God's calendar for her to conceive
and bear a son. And that son comes in the form
of Joseph. And when Joseph is born, Rachel
exclaims, God has taken Weigh my reproach. Again, remember,
there's this belief in the Old Testament, and sometimes it's
true. It's one of those things where it's hard because sometimes
it's true, sometimes it's not. Because think of the book of
Deuteronomy. Sometimes barrenness was a curse within that covenantal
context, but not always. Not always. It's dangerous to
read into that. But Rachel believes that the
reproach, the curse has been rolled away. So she feels that
the Lord has opened a new door for her, and so she expresses
her wish for another son, saying, may the Lord add to me another.
So appropriately then, the boy is named Joseph, which means
may he add, and which sounds like taken away. This name does
double duty here. And with Joseph, with Rachel's
child, now that the Lord has remembered her, the family is
complete for now. And as we'll see next week, Lord
willing, it is from this point forward that Jacob is going to
set his sights on a return to Canaan. God has given him the
wife. He's given him the children. All the building blocks are in
place for God to do all that stuff in regards to inheriting
the land and making him a nation within that land. And so he's
ready to go home. He's ready to go home. Now that
the Lord has remembered Rachel. Good news. that the Lord remembers
his servants, that the Lord does not forget us. Even when he allows
us to go through many years of heartbreaking grief, the Lord
does remember us and he will deliver us, whether in this lifetime
or in eternity. He will not let our pain go on
forever. And Rachel's story is a reminder
that that is so. Now, at the end of this story,
what should we be struck by? Well, there's a number of things
we should be struck by, but here's what I want to focus on tonight as we close.
While the members of Jacob's household had not acted nobly
at all times, far from it, God was, during this period, exceedingly
kind to them. You can pick a number of points
in this story where you think, well, God should have brought
the hammer down. He doesn't do it though. He doesn't do it though. In accordance with his covenant
promises, he determined to bless a very messed up household. Jacob
sinned by taking so many wives and then treating them in an
unloving way. The women sinned in their anger and in their envy
and in their backbiting, their idolatry even. And if anything
like this, even anything coming close to this happened among
God's people today, we would be appalled. we would be appalled.
But God graciously uses this outwardly appalling period in
the life of the patriarch Jacob to build a nation for himself.
These sons will become the bedrock of Israel. Right here you have
the building blocks for the rest of the Old Testament. And the
Lord is going to use these sons to set them apart for his own
purposes, and he's going to grant to them, collectively, the covenant
inheritance. He's going to grant the covenant
to the people as a whole, rather than to a single individual.
That's going to be a change. As God is finally ready to widen
the circle of his covenant arrangement. And in reality, it is this family
to which we are added when we come to faith in Jesus Christ
today. What's happening here is, from a certain perspective,
simply a continuation of what happens here in the text. Jesus descended from this family,
and he is redeeming a people still, the church, which stands
today as the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel, the fulfillment
of his work among the twelve tribes coming from these twelve
sons. Now is the time to think again
of our New Testament reading from Revelation chapter 7. In Revelation chapter 7, what did
we see? Well, we read first of how John
heard a voice. He heard a voice announcing the
number of those who would be sealed from among the tribes
of Israel before the judgment came. And the list there substantially
overlaps with the list of the sons in this chapter. There's
a couple of tweaks, and those tweaks will be better understood
as we progress through Genesis and see the introduction of Manasseh
and Ephraim and things of that nature. But what I want you to
know for now is that John hears the announcement that 144,000
are sealed from the judgment, 12 times 12 times 1,000 or 12,000
from each trough. That's what he hears. But then he looks up. Let's read. And we'll read the
whole list. 12,000 from all the tribes. That's
what he hears. And then, verse 9. After this
I looked, and behold, a great multitude. Behold a great multitude
that no one can number, from every nation, from all tribes
and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before
the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God
who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. He hears 12,000 from each tribe,
and then that's what he sees. This is debated, but I think
this is pretty clear. You see, the point is not that these are
two hermetically sealed groups which remain sealed in eternity.
The point, actually, is that they are one and the same. They are one and the same. John hears of the redemption
of Israel. All these people from these 12
tribes, 144,000. I think that's very clearly a
symbolic number. 12 tribes, 12 times 12 times
1,000. You have this picture of the
perfected people of God. He hears of the redemption of
Israel, and what he sees is the church in its completion. He
hears of the redemption of Israel, and he sees the church in its
completion. And so here's the upshot. If
you are sinful and imperfect, and you are, you can, if you
believe this, take heart because by faith in Jesus Christ, what
Revelation chapter 7 is showing you is that you too, no matter
your tribe, your tongue, or your nation, you too can be joined
to spiritual Israel, the church which has descended in the fullness
of time in the plan of God from the 12 tribes. The Gentiles have been brought
in. They've been grafted in. And they join in the worship
around the throne. They're the ones who have passed
through the tribulation of this world into the heavenly rest
and paradise above. And so you can be joined to this
people because Jacob was not perfect. His wives were not perfect. We're going to learn this. His
sons definitely weren't perfect. But a perfect God chose to extend
His mercy to their family and to other imperfect people who
looked to Jesus. The consummate Israelite. And
therefore, if you have sin in your life, And as we've made
some notes along the way, I think you'll if you really reflect
on yourself, you'll realize you have some of those sins like
Jacob and like Leah and like Rachel. You have that in your
life. If you've not kept God's law
perfectly, even mistreating those that you love the most or ought
to love the most. And the good news of this text
is that you can look to Jesus Christ, the descendant of Jacob
through Judah, who continues to multiply the number of God's
people. You too. You, too, can be a redeemed
sinner from a messed up family. And frankly, the Lord can redeem
your family, too, so don't give up. Continue to pray, because
if you were going to give up on a family, you might give up
on this one. The Lord didn't. The Lord used it. And so listen
to the words of the Apostle Paul from Ephesians, chapter two,
verses 19 through 21. This is the good news for Jew
and Gentile alike. And he says it specifically to
Gentile Christians, among which we are numbered. So then you
are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with
the saints and members of the household of God, built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself
being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined
together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. If you're in Christ,
you are a part of this household which was formed so long ago,
and God dwells in your midst. You're numbered among the 12,000
times 12,000. The Lord seals you, you are his,
and you will stand among the great multitude who stand around
the throne, saying, salvation is from the Lord. Glory be to
God and to the Lamb. So seek his grace, seek his face,
and give him thanks for the work that he is doing among us. Though
we be very sinful, like our forefathers in the faith.
The Story of Jacob's Many Sons
Series Genesis
| Sermon ID | 73125171149410 |
| Duration | 49:31 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Genesis 29:31-30:24 |
| Language | English |
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