Continuing our study of Genesis, we're in chapter 29, beginning in verse 31, and we're going to read through chapter 30, verse 24. Genesis 29, beginning in verse 31, this is God's word. When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, He opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, it is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now. She conceived again. And when she gave birth to a son, she said, because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too. So she named him Simeon. Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son, she said, now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have born him three sons. So he was named Levi. She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son, she said, this time I will praise the Lord. So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children. When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, give me children or I'll die. Jacob became angry with her and said, am I in the place of God who has kept you from having children? Then she said, Here is Bilhah, my maid servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and that through her, I too can build a family. So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her and she became pregnant and bore him a son. Then Rachel said, God has vindicated me. He has listened to my plea and given me a son. Because of this, she named him Dan. Rachel's servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, I have had a great struggle with my sister and I have won. So she named him Naphtali. When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her maid servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. Then Leah said, What good fortune? So she named him Gad. Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. Then Leah said, how happy I am. The women will call me happy. So she named him Asher. During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the fields and found some mandrake plants, which he brought to his mother, Leah. Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes. But she said to her, wasn't it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son's mandrakes too? Very well, Rachel said, he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son's mandrakes. So when Jacob came in from the fields that evening, Leah went out to meet him. You must sleep with me, she said. I have hired you with my son's mandrakes. So he slept with her that night. God listened to Leah, and she became pregnant and bore Jacob a fifth son. Then Leah said, God has rewarded me for giving my maidservant to my husband. So she named him Issachar. Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. Then Leah said, God has presented me with a precious gift. This time, my husband will treat me with honor because I have born him six sons. So she named him Zebulun. Sometime later, she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah. Then God remembered Rachel. He listened to her and opened her womb. She became pregnant. and gave birth to a son and said, God has taken away my disgrace. She named him Joseph and said, may the Lord add to me another son. May God add his blessing to this reading from his holy and inspired word. Every word in scripture is true. But that does not mean we're supposed to do everything these people did. There are places in scripture where we have a true record, an inerrant, inspired record of what someone said that wasn't true. I thought everything in the Bible was true. The Bible is true. And the Bible gives a true account of what people say and do. But that doesn't mean that all the people in the Bible always said and did the right thing. That's why we don't just rip a verse out of context and say, well, the Bible says it, so that's what I believe. Well, what is the Bible saying? Did you read the passage? Did you read the other scriptures? We have a number of examples of that in this passage. This is a continued description of sinners and a sovereign God who is gracious even to sinners. We see in this passage a dysfunctional family that was a man married to two women. Not the way it's supposed to be. God's plan from the beginning was that a man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. Be united with his wife. That's God's plan. One man, one woman for life. But over and over and over in the scriptures we see people who deviate from God's plan. This is, in modern therapeutic terminology, a dysfunctional family. If you go all the way back to the first family, one of the sons killed the other one. Definitely a dysfunctional family, right? So we are dysfunctional. That means not working properly. Things aren't as they should be. And the reason is because of sin. Everything was great until sin entered the world. And we're the ones who opened the door. So I was not there, Pastor Wood. You may be that old, but I'm not that old. I was not in the Garden of Eden. We were there in our parents, in terms of biology and in terms of The federal authority, we were there. That was our family. That is our family. I mentioned from time to time my wife's tremendous knowledge and skill as a genealogist. And because of that, I'm so pleased to know that I'm related to certain individuals and embarrassed to know that I'm related to certain other individuals. But the fact of the matter is, even though I'm more closely related to some people than to others, everybody in this room is related to each other. We're all family. We're all family. We need to remember that. and treat each other accordingly. But you see a guy who's married to two wives, not the way it's supposed to be. And by the end of this passage, he's married to four wives. How did that happen? Well, you know how the two wives happened, and that is it wasn't Jacob's plan. It was his father-in-law's plan to get the older daughter married off before the younger one. And so Jacob ended up with a woman that he's obligated to, because he married her, but he doesn't love her. They have intimate relations. But it's not out of love. And she is horribly hurt by being in a loveless marriage, where even though there's physical intimacy, it's not love. There are multitudes of people in our culture who are in that situation. Yeah, they got married. but this person doesn't really love me. It's evident that they don't love me. And you see her pain over and over as Leah keeps hoping. And in fact, we see that God gave her children because God saw that Leah was not loved. Verse 31, when the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he opened her womb. but Rachel was barren. Well, Rachel was loved. Yeah, but she's miserable too. You got one who wants love and gets children, and the other one who is loved, but is not able to have children. Why does this happen? I don't know all the specifics in every specific situation. I do know that Jacob was exactly right when he says in verse two of chapter 30, am I in the place of God who has kept you from having children? They knew what people today don't know, and that is that ultimately God is the one. God is the one who decides you can have children. The reason that's so important is because that says something about every child. Every individual life is to be treated as a gift from God. We're at a time of year when it's been 50 years since the highest court in this land declared that all the protections against the slaughter of children in the womb be vaporized. 1973, Roe v. Wade, hideous, evil, unjustifiable decision by the Supreme Court, removed the protection of children in the womb. Different states had different laws regulating abortion. Supreme Court said no more restrictions. And the way that they combined it with the Doe v. Bolton decision, which was the companion decision, they made it so that based on the woman's health, which is defined as anything that two doctors agree would negatively impact her, including emotionally, you can kill a baby through all nine months. That can't be right. I've had doctors say, that's not true. I've said, read the decision. Well, that got overturned, OK? The Supreme Court, 2022, said, not OK. States can regulate abortion. States can limit. the circumstances in which children can be killed in the womb. And the country reacted with paroxysms of misunderstanding carefully orchestrated by politicians and the media, with a whole lot of help from a bunch of celebrities, some of whom claimed to be Christian. You know what? Everybody on this planet just deserves to go to hell, me included. We have been a mess ever since the fall. And here we see God is the one who gives life. God is the one who forms that life in the womb. And Jacob knew that. He knew that if you have a baby, it's because God said, okay, this person can have this baby. What if it's an illegitimate child? It's not the child's fault. What if it's the product of rape? Well, punish the rapist. Don't execute the child. Children are a gift from the Lord according to God's word. We see jealousy. We see unreasonableness. Rachel saying to her husband, give me children or I'll die. Life isn't worth living if I can't have what I want. I've heard people say that about something a whole lot less significant than a child. If I don't get what I want, I just don't want to live. Well, that's crazy, wicked thinking. But it's not new. It's not just the narcissistic culture of today. It is a manifestation of the wickedness in the human heart. We see bargaining. We see the repetition of the sad example set by Sarai before she became Sarah. who said to her husband Abraham, Abram back then, hey, I've got an idea. I really want to give you a child. So I've come up with a solution. Take Hagar, my servant, have sex with her, and the baby will be mine. OK? Because, I mean, what's Hagar? She's just my property. People being used selfishly as if they were property is wicked. Thinking that we can just move people around like chess pieces on a chessboard, use them to get what we want, and call that which belongs to another ours, that's wicked. It's ancient, and it is still widespread today. It is the way that lots of things in life all around the world are still happening today. But like Abram, Jacob says, OK, you want to give me another woman to have sex with? I can live with that. What made him think it was okay? He made that wonderful statement about God's the one who gives children. He's the one who's closed your womb. But now, it's like, well, if you say it's okay, honey. She's not in charge. But more and more, we're gonna see Jacob acting as if these women are in charge. And that's not right either. Instead of his being the husband, the leader, He becomes the guy who can be hired with mandrakes. Do you see that that's a problem? He's saying, yeah, I'll have sex with whoever. That's not the way it's supposed to be. So, they're messed up, aren't they? Yeah. And in the midst of it, There's a lot of misunderstanding as to why things happen the way they did. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. The text tells us that the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, so he opened her womb. And she said, in verse 32, it is because the Lord has seen my misery. Bingo, that's right. Surely my husband will love me now. That's what she longed for. The child is just something that makes her hopeful that her husband's finally going to love her. But it doesn't work. The next child, she says, because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too. Verse 34, now at last my husband will become attached to me because I born him three sons. Verse 35, when she gives birth to a son again, she says, this time I will praise the Lord. So she names him Judah. And then she stops having children. Rachel's jealous. She gives her servant To Jacob, they start having children. And Rachel totally misinterprets what's going on. She's going to say later, I know this is happening because I did the right thing in giving my husband my servant as a wife. No, that's not really, you didn't get that right, sweetie. I mean, you know, I can see where you could come to that conclusion because your plan worked. Have you ever done something wrong and because it seemed to go well, you feel like the Lord is fine with it? I have. Now think about it. There was a guy in the late 1800s who professed to believe that there is no God. And he would travel around the country giving lectures promoting atheism. And in every one of these lectures, he would pull out his watch, a pocket watch, not a wristwatch, and hold it up. And he would say, if there is a God, may he strike me dead in the next 60 seconds. And he would stand there very dramatically for 60 seconds. Can you hear the Jeopardy thing playing? I mean, he's standing there looking at his watch, and people would sit and wonder, is God going to do it? I mean, this man has blasphemed God. He's ridiculed the idea of faith. He's said horrible things, and now he's daring God to strike him dead. I hope God strikes him dead. Then we'll be vindicated. And of course, at the end of 60 seconds, he puts the watch back in his pocket and says, see, there is no God. Eventually, someone would point out that you cannot exhaust God's patience in 60 seconds. Folks, you and I don't set the timetable. But God has promised. Vengeance is mine. I will repay. And if you think that just because you seem to be getting away with something, I haven't been caught and I haven't been struck down, lightning didn't strike me, the ceiling didn't fall in, I guess it's okay, you're fooling yourself. You want to know whether or not it's okay, see what God says about it. And if God says it's wrong, it's wrong, even if you seem to succeed. I mean, what's the deal with the mandrakes? Do you all get that? This is a plant that some people believed would make you more likely to conceive. This is a superstition. It's not medical. But you put the mandrake plant under the bed, and then you have relations in the bed, and somehow that's going to make it so that you conceive. And they really believed it. And God went ahead and gave them children. See, if I was God, I'd be like, OK, no kids for you for the next, I don't know, year at least. We've got to get you over this superstition. On the one hand, they knew that God is the author of life. On the other hand, they behaved as if they could control it. Don't do that. I've known precious couples that never had children because God didn't see fit to give it to them. I've known other scoundrels who had lots of children because God and His sovereignty decided to give them those children. I've seen couples who desperately wanted to have children and finally gave up and adopted And then God said, OK, here you go. After the doctors had said, we've run the test, you cannot have children. We got to know a couple when we lived on Cape Cod, because our son was born with birth defects. We were put in touch with this couple who had a child with the same birth defect. And what we found out about their story was quite remarkable. They had tried and tried and tried to have children, and there was no way they could. And so they decided to adopt. And when the adoption was almost complete, they found out she was pregnant. How was that possible? The doctor said, you can't get pregnant. But she did. She had an ovary on one side and a fallopian tube on the other. No fallopian tube on this side, no ovary on this side. In order for her to get pregnant, an egg had to migrate from her ovary on one side to the fallopian tube on the other side and meet up with a sperm that was very aggressive at just the right moment so that she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a child that had the same birth defect as our child. So God works a miracle to give them a child with a birth defect? Yeah. Why would he do that? Maybe so that they would end up meeting us and we could talk with them about Jesus. Because that's what matters. Your relationship with him. Everything else is temporary. God's the one who gives life. And we see not only that God is the author of life in this, and that all the people are sinners who sometimes get it right and sometimes get it wrong, but we see something else. God's graciousness and sovereignty is displayed in the birth of Judah. Judah, I mean, he's just one of the boys, isn't he? No, not really. Judah is going to be a sinner who's gonna mess up, and even in his mess ups, God is going to work in order to give us one day the Messiah. Are you serious? Yeah. Jesus was from the tribe of Judah. So which one of the boys was Judah? He was Leah's boy. Leah was the one that Jacob didn't want to marry, right? Yeah, he wanted to marry her sister. But he got stuck with her Even though he didn't love her, and even after they were married, and even after she's having kids, he still didn't really love her. Right. But he kept having relations with her. Yeah, because that's part of being a husband. And God chose him? Yes. We see over and over and over that just as God chose Jacob, who was not the elder son, God, over and over, chooses the one who doesn't get chosen by others, the one who is unloved by others. And that, beloved, is how he chose us. He didn't choose us because we were so good looking, so intelligent. so powerful and talented and all these wonderful qualities and God looked down and said, you're just irresistible. No, God chose us in order to display his great grace. You don't have to be smart to go to heaven. You don't have to be good looking to go to heaven. You don't have to be athletic You don't have to come from a good family. You need Jesus. If you're trusting in Jesus, you have eternal life. You're adopted into God's family, a child of the King. You're royalty on this planet. And that will last for eternity. But I, Pastor Wood, you don't know me. Okay, but he does. He does. Yeah, but there's stuff in my past. He knows all about it. And he doesn't say, if you can clean up your act and improve yourself, then I'll consider your candidacy. He says that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. And that is marvelous. And that is true. Are you trusting in him? Are you still hoping that maybe if you work harder at it, you can measure up? Our only hope is Jesus. He is all we need. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much that throughout the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, we see that salvation is of the Lord. You are the one who saves. You are the one who chooses us. And it's all grace. So we come to you this day and we ask that you would forgive us for all the stupid, sinful things we do, trying to manipulate people and circumstances in order to cause our kingdom to come and our will to be done. Help us just to rest in you and rejoice in you and obey you. And we'll give you all the praise in Jesus' name, amen.