going to be preaching on the 14th of our series of Women of Faith. And it does not have a pretty beginning. This is Leah. We're going to be reading from Genesis 29, verses 15 through 30. And Laban said to Jacob, because you are my relative, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what should your wages be? Now Laban had two daughters. The name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah's eyes were delicate, but Rachel was beautiful of form and appearance. Now Jacob loved Rachel, so he said, I will serve you seven years for Rachel, your younger daughter. And Laban said, it is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to another man. Stay with me. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love that he had for her. Then Jacob said to Laban, give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled that I may go into her. And Laban gathered together all the men of the place and made a feast. Now it came to pass in the evening that he took Leah, his daughter, and brought her to Jacob, and he went into her, and Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah as a maid. So it came to pass in the morning that behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, what is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you? Why then have you deceived me? And Laban said, it must not be done so in our country to give the younger before the firstborn, fulfill her week, and we will give you this one also for the service which you will serve with me still another seven years. Then Jacob did so and fulfilled her week. So he gave him his daughter, Rachel as a wife also, and Laban gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as a maid. Then Jacob also went in to Rachel, and he also loved Rachel more than Leah. And he served with Laban still another seven years." Father God, I thank you that you have called us to live by every word that proceeds from your mouth. Every portion of scripture is edifying, and I pray that as we dig into this passage, we ourselves would find our own hearts changed and conformed more and more into the image of Christ. We commit this time to you and pray for you to anoint the preaching. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I have felt the importance of preaching on Leah for a long time, but I just didn't know how in the world I was going to approach this topic. After all, Leah treacherously defrauded both Jacob and her sister, Rachel. She took her sister's place on the night of her wedding, pretending to be Rachel. I mean, this is an act of deception that was appalling and audacious in its boldness. And this is supposed to be a series on women of faith. So why in the world would I preach on Leah? Well, I'm doing so for five reasons. First of all, the Lord's been prodding me to do this and I couldn't get away from it. But second, God honors the faith of Leah. He really does. And he says precious little about the faith of Rachel. Though Leah didn't start from a position of faith, Leah definitely grows in faith in her older years. Third, Leah's story addresses many of the issues that people face in our messed up world. I am so thankful that God has included the stories of messed up men and women in the scriptures because it enables a broad section of people to identify with them and identify with God's grace. It gives much more hope than if this had been a fairy tale, you know, that everything worked out perfectly, right? It is a powerful story, but it's a story of redemption where God brings untold blessing out of a wretched beginning. It was from Leah, not Rachel, that God brought many of the great people later on in Scripture, Moses, David, our Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. It was from Leah, not Rachel, that we have the best testimony of trust in God. And though God provided for both, God definitely shows that He has a heart for Leah. And so, yes, despite our prejudices against her, she was a woman of faith. Fourth, Leah stands as a symbol of the disappointments that all of us have when we expect the things of this world, no matter how good those things might be, to satisfy our hearts. Only God can do that. And for many of us, it takes years and years and years to figure this out. The earlier we can figure this out, the better. Life has a way of disappointing us on that score and driving us to the Lord. Verse 25 says, so it came to pass in the morning that behold, it was Leah. What understatement. I love the words. that are in a commentary I have by Derek Kidner. He says, the words, behold, it was Leah, are the very embodiment of anticlimax, and this moment A miniature, it's a little portrait is what a miniature is, a miniature of man's disillusion experienced from Eden onwards. In other words, this fallen world is constantly disappointing us by promising us a fulfillment that only God can give to us, okay? We have great expectations from a job, it looks like the perfect job, and we're going to find fulfillment in this job. Only a few weeks into the job, behold, it is Leah. It's not what we expected, right? And we complain, and we argue, and we try to figure out how we can make this job change so that this job will fulfill us. Well, Jacob, Rachel, and Leah all faced these anticlimax experiences of disillusionment, and all of them finally came to find their satisfaction in God. For Jacob, it happened after his wrestling with God, and we won't get into that today. With Rachel, it happened after she destroyed all of the physical idols. And with Leah, it happened much, much earlier. She learned this lesson much earlier. The fifth reason I'm preaching on this passage is because it powerfully illustrates how idolatry can creep into any of our hearts and can do so so easily. Jacob made an idol of Rachel. Rachel made an idol of children. Leah made an idol of Jacob. Rachel had literal idols, but all of them had idols of the heart. And it's really not until Genesis chapter 35 that everybody recognizes we've got to make a definitive break with these idols. You know, we tend to shake our heads at the flagrant idolatry of Rachel in this passage. You wonder, how could anybody do this? And we're blind to the fact that idols really do take deep root in every one of our hearts if we are not careful. And so I pray that for those five reasons, this sermon will be used by God for our own sanctification. Let me start by giving a little bit of background. And I want you to look, first of all, at the huge disadvantages that Leah had. I want you to feel sorry for her. Now, you might initially have a hard time feeling sorry for her, but I really want you to feel sorry for her. She had a tough upbringing, and this is not to excuse her sin. There are no excuses for the sins of any of the characters in this story. But I want you to understand why it is that Leah fell into the sin that she did. I believe she was a desperate woman. First off, her dad was a messed up dude. All the way back in chapter 24, Laban showed his manipulative ways with Jacob's mother, Rebekah. Rather than letting his dad, Bethuel, speak, Laban takes charge. He tries to manipulate the servant into staying another 10 days. No doubt hoping to get more money out of this servant, but God providentially sets it up where Rachel can leave right away if she agrees to it. Laban was probably surprised, but she agrees without any hesitation. She does not want to remain one more day. You know, here's the opportunity for another 10 days with your family. No, she wants out of there. This shows her desire to be done with her brother Laban. The key verses that reveal Laban's idolatrous love for money back in Genesis 24 are verses 29-31 of that chapter. These three verses say this, and Laban ran out to the man by the well. So it came to pass, and here's the key clause, when he saw the nose ring and the bracelets on his sister's wrists, and when he heard the words of his sister Rebekah saying, thus the man spoke to me, that he went to the man, and there he stood by the camels at the well. And he said, come in, O blessed of the Lord, why do you stand outside? For I have prepared the house and a place for the camels. He saw the gold ring and the gold nose ring, and the bracelets, and he came running. Wealth was his main idol, and accumulation of wealth was what drove his relationship with Jacob. and with his children, and his constant going back on his word concerning wages. Now, of course, God was going to use this. If I was going to give a biographical sermon on Jacob, we would say, God's using this to sanctify Jacob, because he was a cheat, right? Well, God introduces to him to a person who's a much more masterful cheat than he ever could be, his uncle Laban. But Laban cheated Jacob constantly, changed his agreements, manipulated, tried to get more out of Jacob. And when Jacob finally ran away with his family and all of his stuff, Laban chased after him for seven days. I mean, this is a serious trip. And when he finally caught up to Jacob, despite the fact that God in a dream had warned Laban, don't you dare touch my servant Jacob or take anything that is in Jacob's hands. He still claimed that if he wanted to, he could take back his daughters, he could take back these children, and everything that he saw there belonged to him. Let me read that section. His speech in chapter 31 is a good summary of what a piece of work Laban was. Genesis 31, beginning at verse 43. And Laban answered and said to Jacob, these daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children, and this flock is my flock. All that you see is mine. But what can I do this day to these my daughters or to their children whom they have born? Now therefore come, let us make a covenant, you and I, and let it be a witness between you and me." And even that covenant was a fake covenant because Laban never kept any of the covenants he had previously made. If there was ever a male who had a Jezebel spirit, it would be Laban. He was manipulative, controlling, greedy, willing to destroy anything that he could not control. And I doubt any of the people who lived around him would be foolish enough to marry his daughter. Because you marry his daughter, you're marrying Laban for all practical purposes. He's going to control you the rest of your life. So I feel sorry for people who marry into families like that. So here's the point. What's a daughter like Leah to do? It's clear from the words of both Leah and Rachel in chapter 31 that they would love to leave Laban far behind. That's one thing they could both agree on. So right from the start, both Rachel and Leah had huge disadvantages. What man would touch these two girls with a 10-foot pole when Laban is in the background? And there are women today with similar disadvantages. It has made some women run away. has made some women seduce a very worthy man only to have it backfire on them horribly. Others have settled for less than God's ideal in marriage because, wow, marrying anybody is better than staying at home. It's their ticket to freedom. It's a tough spot to be in. John Calvin's session in Geneva faced men like Laban, and on behalf of their daughters, their session threatened church discipline if the fathers continued in their behavior of depriving their daughters of marriage. It's very interesting when you read the minutes of that session, but many Christian women nowadays don't have elders who are willing to come to their bat, who are willing to confront Laban's. And so you've got to keep Laban's control of his daughters in the background when examining Leah's story. I've already alluded to the second disadvantage. that there were likely no eligible bachelors who were interested in Leah and in Rachel. Why does Laban agree to settle on Jacob as a son-in-law in chapter 29? After all, Jacob's a pretty old dude. I'm not going to settle the debate between Floyd Nolan Jones and Usher and most other chronologists. Floyd Nolan Jones claims that Jacob married the two sisters at the beginning of the first seven years of service. Almost all other chronologists say it's at the end of the first seven years. I think the text does not side with Jones at all on this, but we don't need to get into that. If Jones is correct, Jacob was 77 years old when he married them. And if all of the other chronologists are correct, he was 83 years old. I mean, what's with that? You know, here's beautiful Rachel, and he's going to marry her off to a 77-year-old and then make them wait another seven years before they can actually get married. What's with that? Maybe he was hoping that Jacob would croak before the end of that seven years, and he'd be able to marry her off to somebody else and get even more money. But this is the kind of dude that Laban was. In any case, in verse 19, Laban says, it is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to another man. Stay with me. For Laban, marriage was about wealth accumulation, and other men who were in that area probably knew it. They knew there's no way that they could out-bargain Laban. He was the master bargainer. But Jacob is new. He's older. He's obviously lovestruck. Laban believes he can take advantage of Jacob. They're both cheaters, but Laban is a better cheat. The point is that Leah, the older sister, and Rachel are getting on in years, and it doesn't appear that any prospects are likely to come along, at least prospects who know Laban very well. A third disadvantage that Leah had was that she was a plain Jane at minimum or somewhat ugly at worst. Everybody noticed Rachel. Who wouldn't? Genesis 29.17 says that she was beautiful of form and appearance. In other words, everything about her was beautiful. She caught your eye. In contrast, the only thing that people noticed about Leah was that she had strange eyes. There was something about her eyes that made people do a double take. The Hebrew is a little bit unclear, and commentators are just not sure what it means for sure. If it is somewhat positive, it means that she had delicate eyes. If it is negative, it either means that she was dull-eyed, as one version has it, or cross-eyed, or that she had weak eyes. But either way, She lacked the beauty of form and appearance that Rachel had. And in the story, you can tell that it bothered her a lot. She was majorly insecure. And I think it's very important that we learn how to help each other in our insecurities and help each other to find our security. in the Lord. Personally, I think it's very sad when men emphasize the outward beauty over the inward beauty. Even as a kid, I remember shaking my head at some of my classmates who would whistle and say, wow, what a gorgeous babe. And I knew the ugly character that that woman had, and it so overshadowed the outer beauty that she just seemed ugly to me. I just didn't understand how these people could be attracted to that. But obviously Jacob was enraptured by Rachel's beauty. Now it's nice if you can get both like I did, but it's far better to marry a person with inward beauty than to marry a person who's gorgeous outwardly but hard to get along with. Now the fourth disadvantage was that Jacob only seemed to have eyes for Rachel. It's obvious from later passages that we'll look at that Leah had always loved Jacob, had always wished that Jacob would love her. And this, too, has been a heartbreak for many a girl who has given her heart away too prematurely. I think it's so important, so important that We not allow our emotions to blind us or desperation to make us have foolish decisions. So important we not give our hearts away to another person until we know we're headed toward marriage. OK, but it appears both Leah and Rachel had done so. Now, if Usher is correct, there were seven years for Leah to hope and pray that Jacob would see her good work ethic, her loyalty, her perseverance and her other good characteristics. And there are a number of good characteristics in Leah. If Jones is correct, then Leah didn't have much time at all. But it's clear that Jacob was blind to anything but Rachel's beauty. She was a looker. Genesis 29, 18 through 20. Now Jacob loved Rachel. So he said, I will serve you seven years for Rachel, your younger daughter. And Laban said, it is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to another man. Stay with me. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her. This is your typical American love story. It's two people falling madly in love at first sight. What's not to like about this story? Well, I say there's a lot not to like about this story. And the chiefest thing to not like about this story was that Jacob was blind to Rachel's idolatry. She worshipped other gods, and believe it or not, she continued to worship other gods for 24 more years. Okay? So Jacob was about to be unequally yoked with a woman who worshipped different gods, and I think this is in part what made Jacob bury Leah with himself and with the patriarchs of faith, rather than Rachel and rather than the maids. Only Leah gets buried in the tomb of the patriarchs. I think toward the end of his life, he began to recognize that this is a faith issue. And he had come to recognize that Leah shared his heart. And I will try to demonstrate that later. Anyway, turn to Genesis 31. And verses 30 through 31, this is a confrontation that occurs 20 years after Jacob met Rachel. 20 years. Beginning to read at verse 29, Laban is caught up with Jacob after a seven-day chase, and he's now speaking. It is in my power to do you harm. But the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, Be careful that you speak to Jacob neither good nor bad. And now you have surely gone, because you greatly long for your father's house. But why did you steal my gods? Then Jacob answered and said to Laban, "'Cause I was afraid, for I said, "'Perhaps you would take your daughters from me by force. "'With whomever you find your gods, do not let them live. "'In the presence of our brethren, "'identify what I have of yours and take it with you.' "'For Jacob did not know that Rachel had stolen them.'" And Laban went into Jacob's tent, into Leah's tent, into the two maids' tents, but he did not find them. Then he went out of Leah's tent and entered Rachel's tent. Now Rachel had taken the household idols, put them in the camel's saddle, and sat on them. And Laban searched all about the tent, but did not find them. And she said to her father, let it not displease my Lord that I cannot rise before you, for the manner of women is with me. And he searched, but did not find the household idols. Then Jacob was angry and rebuked Laban. And Jacob answered and said to Laban, What is my trespass? What is my sin that you have so hotly pursued me? Although you have searched all my things, what part of your household things have you found? Set it here before my brethren and your brethren, that they may judge between us both. These 20 years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the rams of your flock. That which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was. In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes. Thus I have been in your house 20 years. I served you 14 for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night." It's clear that Jacob is clueless about the fact that Rachel had secretly been trusting foreign gods. Otherwise, he wouldn't have said, hey, kill anybody that's got these foreign gods. He doesn't know they're there. Not at all. He's clueless. Leah did not trust those gods. Consistently, right from the beginning, you see Leah praying to Almighty God, the true God, Yehoah, and trusting Yehoah God. But Rachel trusts these gods And we won't get into that too much. And when they don't come through for her, in chapter 30, verse 1, she puts her trust in Jacob. It says that Rachel envied her sister and said to Jacob, give me children or else I die. Verse 2 says, and Jacob's anger was aroused against Rachel. And he said, am I in the place of God who was withheld from you the fruit of the womb? So it was a rebuke that was actually calling Rachel to put her trust in God. Now she later does, but she doesn't at this point. She instead comes up with a different solution in verse 3. So she said, here is my maid Bilhah. Go into her and she will bear a child on my knees that I also may have children by her. Then she gave him Bilhah, her maid as wife, and Jacob went into her, and Bellah conceived, and bore Jacob a son." Now, I will say that Rachel does come to faith. Rachel begins to call upon the Lord for the very first time, at least as far as recorded in the scripture, in chapter 30, verse 22. And from that time on, God begins to answer her prayers. But sadly, it's not until Genesis 35, verse 2, that Jacob finds and buries the foreign gods that Rachel had brought with them. They had been in her tent and perhaps in the tent of her maid for a long time. Let's read Genesis 35, one through four. Then God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make an altar there, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother. And Jacob said to his household, and to all who were with him, Put away the foreign gods that are among you. Purify yourselves, and change your garments. Then let us arise, and go up to Bethel, and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and has been with me in the way which I have gone. So they gave Jacob all the foreign gods which were in their hands, and the earrings which were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree which was by Shechem. This changing of clothing, bathing, washing, putting away all of these occult symbols was a typical dedication process, and the instantaneous result of putting away idols is given in the very next verse, verse 5. It says, the terror of God was upon the cities that were all around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. So God encamps round about them, and others could no longer control and manipulate and intimidate them. Instead, the terror of God comes upon them. This was the result of putting away the idols. Now, here's the sad reality. Genesis 35-2 is 24 years after Jacob first met Rachel. That's an astonishingly long time for Rachel and her children, and maybe her maid's children, to be having those gods with them. Now, maybe they no longer worship the gods, We aren't told. But they still had them for some reason. By allowing those idols to stay in their midst, she was giving demons legal ground to mess around with the whole family. Even after she first started trusting Yehovah, the idols were not dismissed. And the impact of the demonic can be seen in the bad character of the children, the rape of Dinah, the guilt of murder, and the seeds of later conflicts and problems that arose between Jacob's ten sons and his two favorites, Joseph and Benjamin. And I attribute most of those problems to two things. There are obviously a lot of other peripheral sins that go into it, but I attribute those two problems to the complications that come from the sin of polygamy, and secondly, to the influence of those occult symbols or the demonic in their lives, in those artifacts. Now interestingly, I just want to point out one thing. Verse 4 doesn't just have Jacob getting rid of the obvious carved idols, but also the earrings. Apparently those earrings were in some way associated with the occult, even though they were not idols. The text very clearly distinguishes between the idols and the earrings. So they weren't idols, but Jacob gets rid of them anyway. Okay? He got rid of anything that might in any way be associated with the demonic. It was a clear break. And in the same way, there are many artifacts in Christians' homes today, such as occult comic books, occult novels, games, curios that have given strongholds to houses in the two churches that I have pastored. Sometimes the demonic comes into their home after they have started engaging in occult alternative medicine. They didn't realize it was occult, but all of a sudden they began to be demonized. In my 34 years of pastoral ministry, I have had several occasions when the head of the household has come to me in tears and said, You've got to help me. I don't know how it is, why it is, but we are being afflicted by the demonic continually. We've prayed and we've prayed and we've prayed about this. We've dedicated our house. We've dedicated our children. We've dedicated everything to the Lord. But we're still being afflicted by these demons. Well, I would go to their house to pray over it. But before doing so, I would explain that anything that would give demons a legal ground, a legal basis for staying would have to be removed. They'd have to agree to that. There's no point in my even praying if you're not going to agree to that. I would give them a theology of spiritual warfare and of how demons take advantage of God's legal, covenantal framework. And if those demons can find legal ground, they don't have to leave. No angel can force them to leave. They can stand their ground. Sometimes the family would remember, oh yeah, we do have some really off-color comic books, and they would get rid of those. But I remember it was at least probably half a dozen times where people said, no, we don't have anything in our home that would be legal ground. And so I came, and as I was praying room to room, suddenly the Lord would impress upon me strongly that there was something that was occult in this cupboard. They'd empty out the cupboard, and sure enough, one time it was a novel or something, anyway, it was a book. The other time it was a game. They said, well, there's nothing wrong with this game. It said, oh, yes, there is. This gives legal. And so once they got rid of it, destroyed it, we confessed the sin, we pled the blood of Jesus Christ, we got rid of those things, they were completely freed from the demonic. They didn't have to deal with it anymore. And this is an issue that some of you young people need to take more seriously. Don't give demons any reason to stay in your home because of the games you play or the occult t-shirts that you wear Sure, it might have been a fun movie But if it's an occult t-shirt get rid of it or the books you read or the occult curios you collect Anyway, back to the main point, I believe Leah was a true believer and Rachel did not become a true believer for several years into the marriage. Because of beauty, Jacob became unequally yoked. But Leah had her own sin in Genesis 29, and that was defrauding Jacob and defrauding her sister. So we're backing up again in the story. We're jumping around, aren't we? But in chapter 29, it's clear that Leah went along with Laban's deception. She could have spilled the beans on the wedding night. She could have said to Jacob, Hey, Jacob, I just want you to know I am not Rachel and don't get mad at me. This was not my idea. It was all my dad's fault. She could have spilled the beans, but she did not do so. She was no doubt hoping that this plan would work out. Surely Jacob will learn to love me once he has sex with me on my wedding night. But no, Leah later realizes that Jacob sometimes hated her for what she had done. Let's read of her audacious deception and the betrayal of her sister and the defrauding of both. This is chapter 29, verses 21 through 25. Then Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife for my days are fulfilled that I may go into her. And Laban gathered together all the men of the place and made a feast. Now it came to pass in the evening that he took Leah his daughter and brought her to Jacob, and he went into her. And Laban gave his maid Zilpah to his daughter Leah as a maid. So it came to pass in the morning that behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, what is this you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served you? Why then have you deceived me? This is so painful to read. Jacob's dreams are dashed to the ground. And I've always wondered, where in the world was Rachel? Did Laban have her tied up in a back room somewhere? Why was she not screaming her head off? We're not told. By the way, chapter 30, let's look at that. Chapter 30 gives us a clue as to what Leah was thinking right from the beginning. She accuses Rachel of taking Jacob away from her. Chapter 30 verses 14 through 16. Now Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest 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. But 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? And Rachel said, therefore he will lie with you tonight for your son's mandrakes. When Jacob came out of the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, You must come in to me, for I have surely hired you with my son's mandrakes. And he laid with her that night. But notice the bitter words of Leah in verse 15. Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Whoa, whoa, whoa, wasn't it Leah who took away Rachel's husband? But this is the way bitterness can completely skew our judgment and turn things upside down, make reality unreality. Anyway, it's also one of several hints that we have that Leah always had eyes for Jacob. Even though he was older, maybe he was good looking. Fun personality, who knows? But back to that first night, in my books, what Leah did in chapter 29 is one of the most serious forms of defrauding that you could think of. But we need to treat all defrauding as sin. all defrauding is serious. We tend to take some defrauding way too lightly. For example, the kind of sexual foreplay that 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 6 condemns as defrauding. 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 6 tells every couple that is courting to avoid defrauding in the area of sexual passions. Now defrauding means to take something that is not yet yours to take. Paul said that with respect to this matter of sexual passions, the suitor must not take what is not yet his to take. And commentators point out that this is anything even short of a sexual union, such as petting and sexual kissing or anything else that arouses desires you cannot lawfully fulfill. That is a form of defrauding. Now, it's much less defrauding than Leah did, but it's not yet yours to take until marriage. So even her defrauding has applications for today. Anyway, Leah may think that she's won. She's got her husband. I'm going to have a whole week of honeymoon, if you can call it a honeymoon. Verses 26 through 28. And Laban said, it must not be done so in our country to give the younger before the firstborn. Fulfill her week, and we will give you this one also for the service which you will serve with me still another seven years. Then Jacob did so and fulfilled her week. So he gave him his daughter Rachel as wife also. Leah knew Knew the love and the passion that Jacob was capable of Because she experienced it on that wedding night when Jacob thought she was Rachel Every word he spoke to her every caress every hug every longing of the heart Every description of her beauty that came out of Jacob's mouth was not for her. It was for her sister It must have won one of the most miserable nights for Leah and I would not have wanted to be Leah. I when he found out in the morning and blew up. Oh, wow. Well, the text indicates that Jacob fulfilled his duty as a husband and slept with her every night during that week. But it was not like the first night. Not at all. Jacob can perform, but there is no heart in it. There are the actions of love, but not the heart of love. And this is what Leah will experience for years. Duty, but not with any zeal. And this, too, is what many husbands and wives have experienced when there is not genuine confession of sin, genuine asking of forgiveness, genuine granting of forgiveness, forsaking of sin, genuine desire to please the Lord in our marriage relationships. But there is hope. I have seen God changing even that to the point where duty gives way to full-orbed love. And I believe that happened over the course of Jacob's marriage with Leah. It's only a hint of that, but I believe the scripture indicates that after Rachel died, the two became closer and closer, and Jacob realized what a gem he had in Leah. But before that could happen, God was going to have to do a deep work of grace in Leah's life. He was going to have to change some of her expectations, and let's trace this through. First, it is clear that Leah had the pain of not being loved. Year after year, Leah longed for the love, affection, and security that Rachel obviously had in Jacob, and yet she's not able to find it. So look at verses 30 through 34. This is chapter 29 again. Verses 30 through 34. Then Jacob also went into Rachel, and he also loved Rachel more than Leah, and he served with Laban still another seven years. When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb, But Rachel was barren. This is God doing both. This is not accidental. There were reasons why Rachel's womb was closed and reasons why Leah's womb was opened. And if you look at the margin of your Bible, you'll see that the word for unloved is literally hated. Jacob blamed her for the mess that they were in, and polygamy is a mess from start to finish. There is constant competition, vying for love, frustration, arguments, friction, kids playing one parent against another. It was not God's design, okay? But God was going to work through this mess to produce several lines of remarkable people. Here's the point. God's redemption can help you no matter how messed up your life is. God's redemption can help you. That is, if you are willing to do things God's way from that time forward. It's not automatic. We see with Leah. It takes faith and work. God not only has ideal solutions, but he has also solutions for messed up lives. But this longing for acceptance continues. Chapter 29, verse 32. So Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, the Lord has surely looked on my affliction. Now, therefore, my husband will love me. Notice that Leah does put her trust in Yehovah God. Anytime the word Lord is in all capital letters in the New King James, it's Yehovah God. And repeatedly, Leah prays to him. But this child did not produce in Jacob the love and the affection that she had hoped for. She had longings of the heart that only God can fill. And she's still looking to man to fill them. Verse 33. Then she conceived again, and bore a son, and said, Because the Lord has heard that I am unloved, he has therefore given me this son also. And she called his name Simeon. She conceived again, and bore a son, and said, Now this time my husband will become connected to me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi. Though Jacob is willing to engage in occasional sex with Leah, it's not satisfying when the heart is not in him. There are husbands who feel this way about their wife, someone who does her duty but without much enthusiasm. And I've run across wives who wish their husbands would fulfill their conjugal relations with all their hearts, and they complain, the husband just seems like he's doing his duty. Such situations are heartbreaking, but they can be remedied. I have seen marriages restored to joyful relationships far better than when they began, but it takes work, It takes changes in attitudes, faith in God's message, methods, and the actions of agape love. But there is something else that must take place first, and that's the next point. In verse 35 of chapter 29, we begin to see a transition. Instead of making it her goal for her husband to love her, she begins to find joy in Yehoah. Verse 35, and she conceived again and bore a son and said, now I will praise the Lord. Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she stopped bearing. Some translations translate that this time I will praise the Lord. This time as opposed to the previous time. Now she had faith before, but these are new words. This is a major step of growth for her. She is able to praise the Lord despite her miserable circumstances. She is able to find joy in the Lord despite her miserable life that she is going through. God is filling the empty hole in her heart, and she refers to her children through God first and foremost. Leah is finally able to find security, worth, acceptance, and love in the Lord rather than in her husband. Now, it's not as if a husband's love, praise, acceptance, and value is not a good thing. Song of Solomon says it is a good thing. You know, if the husband's following the Lord, he's going to do that, right? But as Paul David Tripp points out in his book, Lead, which by the way, I do recommend people read that. The elders and the deacons are going through that. We're finding it very, very valuable. But anyway, as Tripp said in his book, God's good gifts become idols when they are out of balance in our hearts. It says, idolatry is when things take on greater weight in our hearts than God does. Every good thing that takes on more weight than God intended becomes a bad thing, something disruptive and dangerous. And so we can turn our husbands or our wives into idols. We can turn sex into an idol. We can turn the success of our children into an idol. Anything good can become an idol when it becomes more important to us than following God. And keep in mind, God is in the business of idol destruction. It's miserable to keep holding on to idols, because you're not going to win that contest with God. He's got all the time in the world, and you don't, right? So that's the interesting thing to note. While Rachel had literal idols that she stole from her father, Leah had idols of the heart that God was systematically breaking. Leah will later revert to some of the same thinking because bad habits are hard to break. But you do see a progressive security that she finds in God as over against increation. And if I had more time, we could draw this progressive growth in her life out in more detail. But let me just point out just the naming of her kits alone shows this progress. Reuben, her firstborn, means, look, it's a boy. It was addressed to her husband, and she said, God has granted me children. Now Jacob will love me. Well, Jacob is an idol who let her down. Simeon, boy number two, means God heard. She said, God knows that I'm hated. So he has given me this child in consolation. She looks to the child. So since the husband has let her down, she looks to the child for fulfillment. Well, Simeon is an idol who lets her down. You look at Simeon and Reuben. They were a mess. They were a mess. They were trouble. So with a third child, she goes back to hoping that Jacob will connect with her. Levi means connect. She said, now Jacob will connect with me. But Jacob was not that interested in connecting with Leah. Little by little, God was weaning her from finding her life in Jacob. And so the fourth child, Judah, means praise Yehovah. She said, this time I will praise Yehovah. And interestingly, it's when her focus changes to God that God gives her a son through whom the Messiah will come. Jesus came through this son, Judah. This is the spiritual lesson that Jesus was trying to teach us in Mark chapter 10. Verses 29 through 31. I've preached on that a number of times in the past, but he said, when you put yourself first, you will always have disappointments. You will always be last. But if you give your wife or your husband or your children or your house and everything that you have to the Lord and say, Lord, I abandon everything to you. I give up everything to you. I'm putting you first in my life. God says he will start to give back those same things 100 fold. It doesn't mean 100 husbands. It means you're going to enjoy your husband 100 times more, right? So that would be a curse. But anyway, obviously, this spiritual insight did not mean that Leah no longer struggled. The Bible is so realistic. We have our ups and downs spiritually, right? The messes of polygamy continue to sow bad seeds. But Leah seems to grow less dependent upon the attitudes of others. She's able to love without being loved. She seems to find her security in the Lord, and I believe Jacob and Leah found great comfort in each other in their older years. I find it interesting that Rachel isn't buried in the family tomb. Leah is. Leah was buried with Jacob and his parents and his grandparents. Now let me end with two more lessons. First lesson is that God must be our supreme love. This was the lesson that Leah was learning. When God is our supreme love, we begin to be able to love others through thick and through thin, like Leah did. In Matthew 22, 37 through 38, Jesus said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, but he doesn't end there. If you truly love God supremely, then you're going to relate to others the way God calls us to relate to them. So, the next verse says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now, that's not a poor standard. That's a very high standard. As 3 John 6 words it, it's loving in a manner worthy of God. Or as Matthew 25, 40 indicates, it's loving Christ by loving others. And so, there's nothing critical in this sermon about Leah wanting Jacob to love her more or wanting to love Jacob more. But it wasn't high enough. The more we passionately love God, the more His love will supernaturally transform our love for each other. And I believe Leah experienced that. So when 1 Corinthians 7, 3 through 5 says that our bodies are not our own, but they belong to our spouse, we need to render them affection that is due to them, does not contradict the fact that God must be our supreme love and that our bodies belong to God. Okay? We keep improving our love for our spouses and our service for them as we draw closer to the Lord because we want to do what the Lord wants us to do, and we want to please Him. Same is true in verses 33 through 34 of the same chapter. It calls husbands to think about how they might please their wives, and calls wives to think about how they may please their husbands. Why? Because God's the supreme Lord of our life, and we want to love Him by serving others. Now, the last application I would make is that once we are married, we should not wish for a different spouse or in any other way allow a different spouse to intrude into our marriage, whether it's a fictional spouse or not. Some couples bring another woman or another man into their marriage through pornography or romance novels. Others are constantly wishing. I wish my husband was different or my wife was different physically or had a different personality or had different gifts. It was more relational. No, don't focus on a different person. For the Lord's sake, just seek to be the best spouse to your real spouse that you can be and leave the changes of your spouse up to God. Imitate Leah in her later years. Leah's perseverance and tenacious following of the Lord enabled her to become more relaxed about the results and more focused upon loving. And she did win her husband. If the story of Jacob's life was told by a novelist, they would have them united in life and united in death. He'd be buried side by side with Rachel. But Jacob refused any other burial site than where he had buried Leah. And previously, he had gone out of his way to bury Leah in the tomb of the patriarchs that's pictured in your outlines. In chapter 49, verses 29 through 33, Jacob tells his sons that he buried Leah in the tomb where all of his other ancestors had been buried, and he wanted to be buried in that same tomb when he died. Now, that would have been an extraordinary trip for all of Jacob's clan, but they honored his with. And both his burial of Leah and his solemn charge regarding his own burial had eschatological significance. It was a statement of faith that his descendants would indeed inherit the land of Canaan. Like post-millennialists, he didn't have it yet, but he believed, he believed it. Machpelah, where the burial site was made, was their family's toehold in Canaan. And if God has only given you a toehold on a future promise, claim it. But back to Leah, she was a wife who had proved her loyalty to him, had overcome every obstacle, and had faithfully ministered to him, and she did so by serving Yehovah. And the fact that Jacob mentions Leah last, right next to the mention of his own death, shows a change of attitude toward this woman of faith. His God-given faith lined up with her own God-given faith, and she continues to be an inspiration to women in tough situations. May she inspire us to be God-focused, God-loving, God-praising, God-satisfied, and to give our all to Jesus. Amen.