Genesis 30:25 - 43
Jacob's Faith

Here again we see Jacob, a deeply conflicted man. Will he serve the Lord or his own interests? Will he trust in the Lord or his own abilities? Will he desire what the Lord has promised (as a man of faith) or will he love the world and what it promises? He is the seed of Abraham and Isaac! Yet he fails to live up to that name, to that title, to that lineage, to that destiny.

The passage is complicated and difficult to follow. Parts of it are obscure and seem to make little sense. Because Jacob is complicated and difficult to follow, his actions and motives are at times obscure and almost senseless. Given what he knows - the appearance of God at Bethel - why does he behave in this way.

The story makes us long for a clean uncomplicated story of a clean uncomplicated man. The story makes us long for the story of one who resolutely focuses on the promises of God, forsaking everything else. The story makes us long for Christ.

The Temptation of Jacob
1. Jacob's Righteous Desire
  1. The story begins promisingly enough.
  2. Jacob's seven years of service for Rachel are done.
  3. So Jacob requests that Laban let him go so that he may return to his own country.
    1. He sets his eyes on the promised land
    2. Too long he has dwelt as a stranger in a strange land in the household of Laban.
    3. Now he would go home to Canaan, to the country God promised him as an inheritance, to the country God promised to bring him back to.
  4. This is the request of a man of faith.
    1. He believes and values the promise of God.
    2. He trusts that life in the land God is giving him is worth seeking.
  5. How glorious the story would be if it ended here, with Laban saying yes, and Jacob returning to the land of promise, just as God had sworn!
  6. Instead the tempter enters in and dangles the world in front of Jacob to see if he will love it more.
2. Laban's Temptation
  1. Laban appeals to Jacob to stay
  2. He asserts truly that the Lord has made him rich and blessed him for the sake of Jacob
  3. What lesson should Laban learn from this?
    1. The Lord, he is God!
    2. He should forsake all and follow Jacob back to the promised land
    3. He himself should set behind him all his worldly goods if only he may be found in covenant with the one who is in covenant with God.
  4. Instead, Laban tries to keep Jacob around
    1. If Jacob stays, Jacob's Lord will stay
    2. and if Jacob's Lord will stay, then Laban will be made even richer.
    3. Thus the Lord is made the servant of his own worldly schemes.
    4. He has turned the Lord into a household idol that one carries around for protection and blessing
  5. And in return, Laban offers Jacob a cut
    1. Name me your wages and I will give it (28)
    2. Such a deal! The Lord will bless Laban through Jacob and Laban will make sure Jacob is generously rewarded.
  6. Thus Jacob's thoughts are turned to his own earthly possessions. He stumbles and falls.
3. Jacob's Failure
  1. Why does Jacob not say, "I need no wages from you! The Lord, he has made promises to me. He shall supply all my needs. Only let me return to the land he promised me as an inheritance."?
  2. Remember back to the life of Abraham
    1. The 5 kings from the east came and conquered the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and took them captive along with Abraham's nephew, Lot.
    2. Abraham went after them, defeated the 5 eastern kings, and returned with Lot, the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, and tons of booty - great wealth.
    3. And the king of Sodom wanted to split the wealth with him.
    4. Abraham replies "I have sworn to the Lord, God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, 23 that I would not take a thread or a sandal-thong or anything that is yours, so that you might not say, 'I have made Abram rich.'"
      1. His head is not turned by this earthly wealth. He thinks through the implications.
      2. He puts all his trust in the Lord's ability to provide.
  3. Oh, why could Jacob not imitate the faith of his grandfather Abraham?
  4. What does he need with Laban's wealth?
  5. Instead, he allows his thoughts to be turned from the heavenly to the earthly
  6. He stops looking at the promised land so far distant, and starts looking at how he might profit from the situation here.
  7. Suddenly he is saying, you got rich off the Lord's blessing to me. When is it my turn? "And now, when shall I also provide for my own house?"
  8. Go Jacob! Go!
    1. Return to the promised land and the Lord himself shall provide for your own house!
    2. You have no need of Laban
    3. You have no need any longer to live as an exile outside your home in Canaan in the presence of God.
The Blessing of Jacob
1. Jacob's Opportunism and Unbelief
  1. Jacob buys into Laban's understanding of God
    1. God is a cash cow to be milked, a great Santa Claus in the sky who will serve men who desire to get rich.
    2. He uses this view of God as a bargaining chip with Laban
    3. "The Lord has blessed you since my coming," he reminds Laban. Therefore be generous to Jacob because Jacob has an in with the Lord.
    4. Together they will conspire to take God for all he'll give them.
  2. So Jacob postpones his trip back to the promised land in order to tend Laban's flocks some more.
  3. He's a free man, but he voluntarily enslaves himself!
  4. What Laban offers seems more attractive than what God offers.
  5. What he can get out of this world seems better than the riches of heaven!
  6. Oh Jacob! How far have you fallen?
  7. Jacob makes a modest proposal
    1. Let me removed the speckled and spotted sheep and the brown lambs from your herd.
    2. At first it seems that he is asking for these as his wages.
    3. But soon it becomes clear
      1. He's saying remove all the speckled and spotted sheep and the brown lambs
      2. Take them away so they can't mate with the white sheep
      3. Let Jacob tend the white sheep
      4. And then - in the future - anything born that is speckled and spotted or brown shall belong to me.
  8. Laban leaps at the proposal
    1. Speckled and spotted sheep and brown lambs are not as valuable as the white kind
    2. And they are unusual
    3. It doesn't seem likely that a herd of white sheep will bear young that are speckled, spotted, or brown
  9. So he immediately removes the speckled, spotted and brown sheep
    1. Laban is as much a deceiver as Jacob
    2. Already he shows that he doesn't trust Jacob
    3. Jacob says, let me remove them
    4. But Laban removes them himself to make sure he won't be tricked
    5. And he sends them three day's journey away.
    6. Otherwise, he figures Jacob would try to sneak the spotted and speckled sheep in to mate with the white ones, thus producing spotted and speckled offspring. And those would belong to … Jacob!
    7. Laban's too smart for that.
  10. Jacob has fallen into unbelief.
  11. Rather than trust God for all the sheep he needs, he seizes an opportunity to secure some for himself, even if it means putting off his return to the promised land.
2. Jacob's Trickery and Unbelief
  1. Jacob thinks he knows a way to make the white sheep have speckled and spotted young.
    1. He takes some rods of green poplar and almond and chestnut and peels white strips in them
    2. Can you picture that? The sticks are green or brown, but he peels off some of the bark so that the white wood underneath shows forth.
    3. What do these sticks, these rods, look like? They look like a the fleece of a sheep that is speckled or spotted.
    4. How does he hope to use these?
  2. He sets the rods, these speckled and spotted rods, in front of the sheep when they come to mate
  3. What's the reasoning?
    1. When the sheep mate, there will be this vision before their eyes, this idea in their heads:
    2. Speckled and spotted, speckled and spotted
    3. So, of course they'll conceive speckled and spotted young
  4. And … they did! They actually conceived speckled and spotted young!
  5. Time for phase 2
    1. Jacob separates out the speckled and spotted (for they belong to him) and has them mate with each other to produce more speckled and spotted.
    2. Meanwhile, he takes Laban's flocks - the white sheep - and makes sure that when they're mating they're looking at speckled and spotted sheep.
    3. So again while they mate, they think speckled and spotted speckled and spotted
  6. And we learn from v. 41ff. that he did all this selectively.
    1. He didn't just let any old sheep see the speckled and spotted rods
    2. He made sure it was the strong sheep
    3. So only the strong sheep bore speckled and spotted and Jacob ended up with the strong flock, Laban with the weak.
  7. What is Jacob doing?!
    1. Isn't this just like the mandrakes in the last chapter?
      1. Remember how Rachel wanted the mandrakes because they were thought to give fertility?
      2. Mandrakes look like little people - you eat little people and you get to conceive little people.
      3. It's a ridiculous idea!
      4. Jacob knew that then. He said to Rachel "Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?"
    2. But now he's doing the same thing
      1. It's a little magic ritual: make them mate in front of speckled and spotted stuff and they'll bear speckled and spotted young!
      2. (Just like eating a mandrake that looks like a little person will help you bear little people)
      3. Why doesn't he just trust the Lord!?
3. God's Blessing of Jacob the Unbeliever
  1. Nevertheless, God blesses Jacob (v. 43)
  2. God is true to his promise
  3. But Jacob is, in a sense, robbed of the benefit
    1. He doesn't understand how fully this was in the Lord's hands
    2. He thinks he has somehow manipulated the outcome
    3. So the production of Jacob's wealth was a cooperative effort between Jacob and God.
What It All Means
1. Israel's Identity in the First Jacob
  1. How Israel would boast in the flesh about this lineage!
    1. Yet how humble their beginnings are
    2. faith mingled with doubt
    3. love of the promises of God mingled with love of this world
  2. They take on this identity in the wilderness
    1. Moses goes to Pharaoh as Jacob went to Laban: "Let my people go."
    2. Yet when they are gone, they long for Egypt which they left behind.
  3. Their faith is like his faith
    1. They want the promised land, sort of
    2. But they also want the things of this world
    3. And they look at God as the one who is going to give those things to them
    4. Only they need to help God out a little
  4. And God does bless them and overlook their sins.
  5. Israel needs a better identity, a better Jacob.
  6. Israel needs Christ.
2. The Superiority of the Second Jacob
  1. The whole world was set before him
  2. Yet he forsook it and sought the promise of God
    1. Though he should suffer and die for it
    2. Yet he set his face like flint toward Jerusalem
3. Our Identity in Him
  1. This is who you are in Christ!
  2. In him you have decisively rejected the earthly and set your sites on heaven.
  3. Then do not hesitate like Jacob
    1. Do not look to God as the one who will serve your earthly desires
      1. a comfortable home, money, security, whatever
      2. God is not the servant to what you want
    2. Rather look to God as the giver of heavenly promises
    3. Indeed, those promises have been won by Christ
    4. He is even now in heaven at God's right hand
    5. Seek him there, forsaking all else
  4. We have spoken of Bethel as the central fact of Jacob's existence
    1. And well we should…
    2. So Christ is the central fact of yours
    3. Jacob's actions are mysterious in light of Bethel
    4. See to it, then, that you walk in the light of Christ.
  5. Believe that what he offers is better than all the riches of the world
  6. And trust in him to provide what he offers
  7. Do not imitate Jacob
    1. The Lord doesn't need your help; you'll only boast
    2. And you'll deprive yourself of the joy of seeing the Lord do it all

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Genesis 30:25 - 43 Jacob's Faith

Genesis 30:25 - 43
Jacob's Faith