SIN & GRACE: A ONE-SIDED CONTEST
GRACE OVERCOMES CHAOS
Genesis 29:31 – 30:24
INTRODUCTION
Some of you may remember my telling you about a visit I received one
Friday afternoon last year. I was studying in preparation for my sermon
when I heard the outer door to our office open. I poked my head out the
door of my study to discover a woman I had not met before standing there.
I asked her if I could help her. She asked, with tears in her eyes, if
I had a few minutes to talk. Our office is next door to the "Janesville
Psychiatric Clinic". She had gone to the clinic hoping to find her
counselor but discovered that she was out of the office. She said that
she really needed to talk with someone. We sat down at the table in our
outer office and I asked her what was troubling her. She told me her life
story. She had a very unhappy childhood. Her first marriage had ended
in a bitter divorce and she was left as a single mom, struggling to get
by. She met another man, fell in love, they had a child together and then
they got married. She had hoped that he would help bring some financial
and emotional stability to her life. However, he continually made poor
financial choices and they were always fighting. Her life was more miserable
now than when she was a single mom.
We talked for some time about her situation. I discovered that while
she had no interest in church, she assured me that she believed in God.
She knew that he had helped her get through the many difficulties in her
life, though she felt that God had given her more trouble than she deserved.
I began to ask her questions about what she wanted out of life. I also
began to talk about God’s purpose in giving us life. I said something
like this, "God made us so that we would desire him and love him
above all things. The amazing thing to me is that God is so kind to us
in spite of the fact that I constantly ignore him and sin against him."
She angrily denounced me for saying that God loved me in spite of my sins.
She said, "I would never say to my daughter, ‘You don’t deserve my
love, but I’m going to love you anyway.’ I’m a good person and it’s right
that God loves me." I began to try to get her to examine that claim
but she said, "I don’t have to listen to this anymore." She
got up and left the room. I went back to my study and around 5 o’clock
I heard a knock on the door. It was the woman. She apologized for getting
angry and leaving. She had just talked with her counselor and was feeling
better about her situation. I told her that I was sorry she was offended
by what I said but my goal was to help people know God because life is
about God and not about anything else. She assured me that she believed
in God and that we all had different, but equally true, ideas about how
to know him. We politely said goodbye.
In many ways, this woman is no different from you or me. She had a very
clear set of expectations for what she needed from her husband in order
to be happy. He was not meeting her expectations but was in fact frustrating
her hopes for happiness. This caused anger and despair in her life. She
was not interested in hearing about God’s purposes in her life. She merely
wanted relief from her pain and some practical help in getting her husband
to do what she wanted him to do. Her life was a history of one chaotic
and overwhelming situation after another caused in part by her sin and
in part by the sins of others against her.
I am convinced, based upon our study here in the book of Genesis that
God is at work, even in the chaos of our lives. I can think of only one
or two stories in the Bible that are more chaotic than the one we are
going to examine this morning. We are about to plunge into a cauldron
of human passion run amok. Yet in the midst of this chaos, God is working
out his salvation. Here is hope for all who are faced with knotty, messy,
relational problems. The hope offered is not an easy fix to the relational
problem but the opportunity to see what God is doing and to find your
hope in him, not the solution to your problem.
Here also is a rebuke to everyone who believes that God blesses people
because they obey him. God is always at work in spite of human sin, not
because of human obedience. This story shows that whenever humans display
faith, it is the result of God’s work, not the cause of it. The twelve
sons born in this story are the "fathers" of God’s chosen people,
the nation Israel. This story shows that all those whom God chooses as
his children are chosen not because of any good thing in us, but purely
out of the kindness of his own love. He creates a holy people for himself
out of unholy stock.
MAIN POINT
God works in and through the chaos caused by your sin and the sins
of others against you.
NARRATIVE BLOCK 1 (29:30-35)
Jacob picked at his food as Leah talked about her plans for fixing up
their humble home. Zilpah, her maidservant, poured fresh cups of wine.
Jacob mumbled his replies to Leah and kept his eyes fixed upon his plate.
He could not bring himself to look at her. Looking at her only reminded
him that she was not Rachel. He had served seven long years to get Rachel
as a wife and now, here he was, sharing his home with a woman he did not
love, who had willingly conspired to trick him into marrying her. His
heart churned with emotions. He hated Laban for his deception. He at times
pitied Leah but mostly felt indifferent to her and at times hated her
for her part in the conspiracy. He longed to be with Rachel. He could
hardly bear the thought of having to share their life together with her
sister, Leah. He comforted himself with thoughts of tomorrow evening when
Rachel would be given to him as his wife. He felt a twinge of guilt for
agreeing to marry two sisters. But mostly he was broken hearted over the
fact that he could not return to Canaan with Rachel at his side and enjoy
the life of being Isaac’s heir. He was in despair over the fact that he
had to serve his lying uncle seven more years. He couldn’t understand
how God had allowed this to happen to him. God had promised to watch over
him and to bring him safely back to Canaan. How could he have allowed
him to be tricked like this?
Leah hid the hurt of Jacob’s rejection and did everything she could to
show him what an excellent wife she was. She made sure, during their first
and only week together that his every need was attended to. She was sure
that she could win his affections through her attentiveness, if he would
give her a chance. She knew she could not compete with Rachel’s beauty
but she could win Jacob’s approval through her thorough management of
their home and through her attention to his needs and desires. She told
herself over and over that what she had done in deceiving Jacob was not
wrong. Jacob had been wrong to prefer the younger daughter to the older
one. It was only fair, that she, the oldest daughter have Jacob as her
husband. She was still horrified as she recalled Laban’s suggestion that
Jacob take Rachel as his wife in addition to Leah, in exchange for seven
more years of labor. She was betrayed by her father and wounded by Jacob’s
agreement to marry Rachel. It was hard, during this last meal they were
sharing together, to not give way to her fears and hurt and burst into
weeping and pleading with Jacob for his love. That evening as Jacob slept
beside her, Leah quietly cried to herself and began what was to become
a nightly ritual of prayer, "O God, please give me favor in the eyes
of Jacob. I am unloved by my husband. Please turn his heart towards me."
Jacob was gone from the tent before Leah awoke the next morning. He spent
the day putting the finishing touches on the tent he had acquired for
he and Rachel, in preparation for their wedding night. That evening, Leah
ate the first of many meals, by herself, without her husband Jacob. She
tried to busy herself with chores and conversation with her maidservant
Zilpah, to keep from thinking about Jacob and Rachel, together, in their
tent. Thus it was that every evening Leah prepared herself, her tent and
a meal for the arrival of Jacob after a days work among the flocks of
her father. Every evening she ate alone and went to bed alone and prayed
alone. Each day she would work beside her sister Rachel on the chores
of maintaining Jacob’s tents and preparing his meals. Every day she was
forced to listen to her beautiful, younger sister talk about what she
and Jacob discussed and planned. She knew that Rachel delighted in rubbing
her face in Jacob’s love for her and his indifference to Leah.
A month after their marriage, Leah began to notice changes in her body.
By the end of two months, she knew she was pregnant. She could hardly
contain her joy. She worked up her courage and made a special invitation
to Jacob to join her for supper. Jacob could not help but notice Leah’s
almost giddy attention to him. She showed none of the moroseness and self-pity
that he had come to expect whenever he saw her. Rather she exhibited a
confidence and happiness that did not fit her condition. Finally, he asked
her why she had invited him to come to dinner. With a fluttering heart
she told him that she was pregnant with his child. Jacob swallowed and
looked down at his plate. He could not believe what he was hearing. The
woman who had tricked him into marrying her was carrying his child. God’s
promise to give him as many descendants as the dust of the earth was beginning
to be fulfilled in a woman he was treating like dirt. Jacob, after an
awkward silence, muttered that he needed to go finish some work and quickly
left the tent. Leah, broken-hearted at his indifference to her, wept herself
to sleep again.
But with the news of Leah’s pregnancy a change came into the relationship
of Jacob with his wives. Jacob began to spend one evening each week with
Leah. He would eat with her and sleep with her. While Jacob was dutiful
in his weekly visits, he still made it clear that his love was reserved
for Rachel alone. He stayed with Leah out of duty, not delight. Rachel,
for her part, became more vicious and intentional in flaunting her favored
status in front of Leah. Nine months after the bigamist marriage Leah
gave birth to their first son. She told Zilpah, her maidservant and the
midwife who assisted her, "The Lord has given me a son because he
has seen my misery. Surely, now my husband will love me. I am going to
call him Reuben." When Jacob was told of his son’s birth and of his
name and of Leah’s words, he smiled and then he frowned. He was happy
to have a son and happy that Leah saw that the Lord, the God of his father
Isaac and his grandfather Abraham, had given her the son. But her naming
Reuben saddened him because his name was a daily reminder that Leah was
miserable and that she desperately wanted to be loved by Jacob.
A year later Leah gave birth to another son whom she called Simeon because
she said, "The Lord gave me this son also, because he heard that
I was unloved." Again, Leah affirms that the Lord is the one who
is blessing her with children but also she shows that she hopes that the
birth of another son will win Jacob’s love. His name is a daily reminder
to Jacob and Rachel that Leah is unloved and yet God is fulfilling his
promise to Jacob through her. In the fourth year of their marriage, Leah
became pregnant and gave birth to another son. She called him Levi, saying,
"Now at last my husband will join himself to me because I have given
him three sons." Another child who daily reminds that Leah wants
her husband’s loyalty and affection, but she does not get it. Now, in
the fifth year of this painful bigamy Leah gives birth to a fourth son.
The pain caused by Rachel’s scorn and Jacob’s dutiful indifference has
done a work in Leah’s heart. She names this fourth son, Judah, because
she says, "This time I will praise the Lord."
Application:
It would be hard to imagine living a more painful life than the life
that Leah is living. Talk about feeling like a fifth wheel. She is daily
reminded of her second-class status. While her younger sister enjoys all
the benefits of a happy marriage she lives her life alone but daily staring
at what she longs for. What grief, what agony must she have endured? But,
it is quite clear that this suffering is having its intended effect on
her soul. She knows that her pregnancies are the result of the work of
God in response to her miserable condition. She sees God’s hand caring
for her. But, it takes 5 years for her to realize that her hope for a
husband that loves her is futile. In the naming of these sons we see both
her faith and her idolatry. The first three sons bear names that show
her knowledge of God’s work but also are a rebuke to Jacob and Rachel.
Their names flaunt God’s blessing and chastise them for excluding her.
The names of the first three sons are an attempt to make Jacob pay for
his rejection and Rachel for her scorn. However, with the birth of Judah,
we discover that, "This time I will praise the Lord." In other
words, she has come to realize that knowing and loving God and being loved
by him are what make life worth living. She repents of her false hope
in the love of Isaac and expresses in a very beautiful way that God is
whom she loves and hopes in now. Suffering has broken her. She now sees
that it is good to be near God, not Jacob.
There is no pain quite so exquisite as the pain of being rejected by
one’s spouse. There are few earthly pleasures as intense as that of a
harmonious marriage. Because this is so, it is easy to presume that we
deserve to be treated well by our spouse. It is easy to believe good treatment
from the one to whom we are married is a right. This is especially true
among conservative Christians. There are dozens of ministries and seminars
and hundreds of books that describe how to have the kind of fulfilling
marriage that God wants you to have. But don’t you see that Leah had the
marriage that God wanted her to have? In fact, without this marriage,
she would never have come to know the love of God for her. God kept her
from obtaining the love of Jacob because it was her idol. So he showed
her his love in giving her children but he kept her from getting what
she craved so that she eventually was satisfied with God’s love for her.
While husbands that love their wives and wives that submit to their husbands
honor Christ, it is not God’s will to give every Christian a pain free
marriage. In fact, God often frustrates our desires for happy homes in
order to create in us a desire for him. While Leah craved the love of
a husband, Rachel craves other things.
God works in and through the chaos caused by your sin and the sins
of others against you.
NARRATIVE BLOCK 2 (30: 1-13)
Rachel did not fail to notice that while Leah was not loved, yet she
was bearing children for Jacob. It was becoming harder to flaunt Jacob’s
preference for her while she watched her sister surrounded by these happy
little boys. She begins to get a taste of the bitterness that Leah has
lived with. As the years go by and she has no children, she becomes even
more vengeful and spiteful. How often does she mock Leah’s appearance
and her poor parenting skills to Jacob? Finally, she insists that Jacob
not sleep with Leah anymore. So Leah stops having children. One day, Rachel
watches as Jacob greets Leah’s sons and plays with them and holds the
youngest, Judah in his arms. She watches his pride over these sons and
sees the tenderness with which he looks at Leah. Jacob enters his tent
for dinner to discover Rachel waiting for him with her arms crossed. She
coldly says to him, "Did you enjoy playing with your wife and her
sons? I suppose she invited you to spend the night again? Well why don’t
you go? She has everything you want. She is the one that your God is blessing
with your children." At that, Rachel covered her face and burst into
tears. Jacob moved to embrace her but she pulled away and screamed in
fury, "No. I don’t want your love. I want children. Give me children
or I’ll die." Now it was Jacob’s turn to be angry. In a cold fury
he said to her, "Am I in the place of God who has kept you from having
children?"
As soon as he spoke, he knew he had uttered the truth. God was the one
who was keeping Rachel from having children and he was the one who was
giving children to Leah. But he had no idea why God was doing this. Rachel,
with Jacob’s furious jab, had thrown herself down on their bed and was
sobbing. Jacob’s anger quickly turned to pity for the suffering of his
lovely wife and he lay down next to her and held her in his arms. Slowly
Rachel’s tears ended and then, in the quietness after the storm she said
to Jacob, "Jacob, I’d like you to take my maidservant, Bilhah, as
your wife and have intercourse with her. I will adopt any child she bears
as my own. In this way, I’ll be able to bear sons and take my rightful
place as the mother of your children and the queen of this household."
Jacob, wanting only to please his wife, agreed to her plan.
So he took Bilhah as his third wife and lay with her and she became pregnant
and bore him another son. As soon as the boy was born, Rachel took him
as her own son. She called together the entire household, including Leah
and her boys and said, "God has finally vindicated me; he has listened
to my plea and given me a son. So I name him Dan, to remind us all of
how God has proven that I am the favored wife." A few months later
Rachel told Jacob to sleep with Bilhah again, because she wanted another
son by her. He complied and nine months later another son was born. This
time, when she adopted the boy she said, "God has placed my sister
and I in a great wrestling match for the favor of our husband and a place
in God’s promises. I have wrestled with her and I am victorious. I will
name this son, Naphtali, to daily remind all of us that I have won this
struggle."
Every day, Rachel made a point of bringing her two sons out to the edge
of the camp to greet Jacob as he returned from work. She made sure he
had no time to be with Leah’s boys. She sought to do all she could to
alienate Jacob from Leah and her sons. Leah watched this injustice and
finally, in order to regain some status, because she thought it would
please Jacob, she played Rachel’s card against her. She brought her maidservant,
Zilpah, to Jacob and gave her to him as another wife, making the same
proposal to him that Rachel had made. During the next two years Zilpah
gave birth to two sons for Jacob and Leah. When the first was born Leah
said, "How fortunate" and so she named him Gad to remind everyone
that God was still showing her favor. The second one was called Asher
because at his birth Leah said, "How happy I am! The women will call
me happy."
Application:
The millionaire, Nelson Rockefeller was once asked, "How much is
enough?" He said, "Just one dollar more." That’s how it
is with us humans, isn’t it? We can have all we need but the minute we
see that someone else has something more than us, we become dissatisfied,
we want more also. That was Rachel’s problem. She was not content to be
loved by Jacob; she had to have children as well. She was unwilling to
accept the condition in which God had placed her and demanded that she
be given children just like Leah. Her command to Jacob, "Give me
children or I’ll die", would be humorous if it were not so wicked.
The point is that she had no children because God had made her barren.
Rather than ask God to change her condition as Leah had been doing, she
angrily demands that her husband fix the problem. She is in open rebellion
to God. She has a right to have children and no one, not even God is going
to keep her from getting what she wants.
But notice her hypocrisy. She not only does not seek God’s help but she
proposes a solution that is in itself sinful. Then, when God graciously
gives Jacob children through this adulterous union, she declares that
God is vindicating her. In other words she is making God the author of
her sin. She then proudly boasts that she has won the victory over her
sister in the birth of the second son through her maidservant. She acts
like she is in a poker game. How does a barren but loved wife with two
sons of an adulterous relationship "trump" an unloved wife with
four sons of her own? Who says so? Rachel’s mind, twisted by jealousy
says so and that’s all that matters. Sadly, Rachel’s sin tempts Leah into
adding more sin to the pot. She cannot tolerate her younger sister’s plotting
and so she joins in the sinning.
Jealousy is the source of all manner of sin and misery in the world.
The only way to fight off the sin of jealousy is to believe and live as
if these two things are true. First, you don’t deserve anything. You have
no right to be treated well. You and I ought to be dead and in hell for
how we have treated God. Therefore, everything is a gift. Second, God
is good and sovereign. He gives every person exactly what he or she needs
in order to know his love and delight in it, which is the purpose of life.
Jealousy evaporates when we depend upon these two things. But, Rachel
and Leah still have more to learn about God’s grace.
God works in and through the chaos caused by your sin and the sins
of others against you.
NARRATIVE BLOCK 3 (30:14-24)
One day, Leah’s oldest son, Reuben was out playing in the fields around
Jacob’s camp. He came upon a rare and strange looking plant that had fruit
hanging from it. He pulled off his outer garment and picked as much of
the fruit as he could carry. He slung it over his eight-year-old shoulders
and headed back to his mom to show her what he had found. Leah and Rachel
were doing laundry together when he arrived. He went up to his mom and
spread his makeshift sack on the ground with the fruit laying on it. He
proudly pointed at his plunder and said, "Mom, look what I brought
for you." Both his mother and his aunt Rachel gasped as they recognized
the fruit of the mandrake plant. Everyone knew that this fruit would make
barren women fertile and unloved women, loved. Before Leah could speak,
Rachel coyly asked, "Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes."
She was sure that with the mandrakes her infertility could be ended.
Leah could not take her impetuous request. She snapped back, "Wasn’t
it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son’s mandrakes
also?" Rachel was about to reply that it was Leah who had taken her
husband, not she who had taken Leah’s husband. But her hope that the mandrakes
would end her bitter infertility made her bite her tongue. Instead, she
said, "I’ll make you a deal. You give me the mandrakes and I’ll let
you sleep with Jacob tonight." Leah quickly gathered up Reuben’s
cloak with the mandrakes in it and gave it to her sister. She hurried
to her tent to prepare for spending the night with Jacob, something she
had not done in over three years. While she prepared the tent she asked
the Lord to enable her to get pregnant again.
The Lord heard her prayers and gave her another son. She named him with
a strange name showing again her confusion over what was happening in
her life. She said, "The Lord has rewarded me for giving my maidservant
to my husband. I will call him Issachar to daily remind us that God has
rewarded me." Again, she knows that God is the one who is blessing
her with children. But she somehow sees that the giving of her maidservant
as a fourth wife was a sacrifice that God now repays. She gets part of
the situation right, "God rewards" but she misses the reason,
which is, "God is gracious to sinners like me." Rachel is so
confident that the mandrakes are going to solve her problem that she permits
Jacob to resume his weekly visits to Leah and her tent. Thus during the
next few years, Leah bears a sixth son. At his birth she says, "God
has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will honor
me. I will name him Zebulun to remind us that Jacob now honors me as the
mother of six of his sons." Later she gave birth to Jacob’s only
daughter, Dinah.
Then, finally, God remembers Rachel. At least 12 years and perhaps as
many as 15 years after the marriage of Jacob to Leah and Rachel, God remembers
her barrenness. At the same time we are told that he listened to her prayers.
The order is significant. God remembers, Rachel prays, God answers her
prayer. Salvation, including our faith, is God’s gift. He is the author
and perfecter of our faith. It took many years of barrenness, years of
jealousy and strife with her sister, the failed dependence on superstitious
remedies before she finally was broken and would call out to God for salvation.
When God gives her a son she talks like a person of faith. She says, "God
has taken away my disgrace. May the Lord add to me another son. I will
name him Joseph as a daily reminder of God’s past grace and his promise
of more sons in the future."
Application:
Leah is such a very human person. We see her still bitter over Jacob’s
preference of Rachel. She uses Rachel’s lust and superstition against
her. We see her "hire" her husband to come and sleep with her.
We see her praying for God’s blessing. We see her clearly misunderstand
why God has blessed her. We see her give a clear statement of God’s favor
towards her. She is growing in faith but still falls into sin. She is
just like us. This story isn’t here to encourage Christians to sin with
impunity, as if it doesn’t matter. It is here to show us that God is not
kind to Christians because they don’t sin but because he has punished
Christ for our sins and credited Christ’s righteousness to us. God fulfills
his promises by grace through faith, not through our works or performance.
Paul says in Romans 4, "It was not through law that Abraham and his
offspring received the promise that they would be heirs of the world but
through the righteousness that comes by faith." In other words, God
does not bless Leah because of her obedience. She trusts God because he
has blessed her and she grows in her faith as she sees God continue to
bless her in spite of her ongoing battle with sin. The righteousness that
gains us standing with God is not our own. It is the righteousness of
Christ that gets God’s favor for us. God loves us for the sake of Jesus,
who is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Leah’s son.
In Rachel we see a person who has all that is admired in the world, beauty,
a loving husband and wealth. But she doesn’t have the blessing of God
for a long time. Her pride keeps her from seeing God’s purposes and plans.
She refuses to submit to him and his ways, instead depending upon her
own force of will and then superstition. Not until God remembers her does
she submit to his dealings in her life and ask for his help. When she
does, he answers her by taking away the disgrace of her infertility. God
gives her a son, who in the near future becomes the greatest of Jacob’s
children. She should stand as a signpost to all who are depending upon
themselves and their own resources to find a happy life on planet earth.
All that you are and are able to do is going to fail you, if not in this
life, then in the life to come. God is opposed to the proud and either
you will submit to him here, voluntarily or you will be forced to your
knees and into eternal punishment at the final judgment. So I tell you
to turn from your pride and self-reliance and call out to God to remove
the disgrace of your sin for the sake of Christ.
God works in and through the chaos caused by your sin and the sins
of others against you.
© Copyright
2001 John Swanson.
You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material
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