Jacob's sons & material blessings
Genesis 30 · Vern Peterman · Oct 19, 2008
Genesis, No. 40
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926114432006

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're going to proceed into Genesis chapter 30 here this morning. And we want to kind of back up and take a sort of a bigger view here as we look at this passage. And one of the questions we want to ask is what are we to make of these Old Testament scriptures? Why are we reading these scriptures that are actually, what we're reading now took place almost 4,000 years ago? Why are we reading this? So do you wonder about that?

Romans 15.4, Paul wrote to the church at Rome and he said this, for whatever was written in earlier times, obviously referring to scriptures, was written for our instruction so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

He wrote to the church at Corinth this way in 1 Corinthians 10.11. Now these things happened to them as an example and they were written for our instruction.

Upon whom the end of the ages has come. Do you realize that the end of the ages has come? Wow. Rolling ages. We're getting close to the end. And I have to tell you that it is possible. I'm not making predictions here. It is possible. If the Lord were to come before we're done with the service, the very last age on this planet could be just seven years from now. Isn't that amazing? The Lord could come today. I hope it's today.

I hope we don't get to finish this service, even though I planned for it, thankfully. Now, I need to tell you that as we finish chapter 29 and begin chapter 30, Jacob is in a real mess. And I'm not just a kid. Here's Jacob, tied up by this contract into working for his own masterfully deceptive father-in-law by two marriages, not one but two. This father-in-law is also his uncle. in order to make things more complicated, and he's 550 miles from his home. Let's add to that, he's married to a wife that he does not love, that's the oldest one, but she does bear sons for him, hoping that bearing the sons will earn his love. Additionally, he's married to another wife, he does love her, but she is so far barren So there's frustrations in both behalves and frustrations and strains between them.

This is the picture that we left it at at the end of chapter 29. You have on the supplement to your handout here today a portion of this chart. We'll be referring to it from time to time. I believe it's in color in the lower half of that supplement there.

So here, the way we left it was Leah with four sons and Rachel with none. Jacob, the father of all four sons and the husband of both wives. That's the way it was left. Here is Leah, unloved but with children, four sons. And Rachel, loved but without children. So you have this handout.

One of the additional things, we won't be making detailed reference, but you certainly will have it, is in the top page of the supplement. We have the listings of the sons of Jacob, all of them, in order of birth, and there'll be some other things there that we'll refer to a little bit later as we continue our study of the book of Genesis. So, now, Looking at Jacob's situation, we could use a few descriptive words. Some of them would come out with words like tension.

Lots of tension in his situation. Nepotism. Imagine this family where everybody's tightly interrelated to everybody. His father-in-law is also his uncle. He's married to two wives. who are both his cousins and they are sisters to one another. A lot of frustration in this situation. A great deal of it as a matter of fact. Entrapment. He can't leave as long as he's working off his debt for the second wife. He actually was intending to marry her the first time around but now it's become a seven-year debt payoff. and pandemonium with having kids, not having kids, not being able to have kids, when you want to have kids, not being loved, when you wish you were being loved but not having kids along with the love.

I mean, it's just a mess. Now, on the positive side, we could also use words prolific. We're going to see in this next chapter, boy, between the wives and the wives' maids, just popping out the kids. Blessed, oh boy, lots of blessed. Blessed with not only a large household, but kids one after another.

Assured, assured of the Lord that the Lord would be with him. Assured of the Lord that the Lord would carry him through this process. Yes, Jacob, you will get through this. Disciplined. By that I don't mean he's self-disciplined. He may have been some of that. But disciplined by the Lord in the sense that he's being faced up with some of the very issues that he had not faced up with in his growing up years.

Enlightened, being brought to those aha moments. Ever have one of those? Aha! Now I see. Now I understand. Three questions I presented to you verbally before and sent out in an email this week. I'd like us to take this Sunday at one of them, the second one.

Does Jacob ever appear to love either of his wives unconditionally? Now, it's been said quite clearly, it said he loves Rachel. But is it unconditional? Does he love either Leah or Rachel unconditionally? Let's kind of keep an eye and an ear open for that one. Certainly lots of dramatic tension here. Jacob and Rachel exchange words that reflect intense and deep-seated feelings. They don't just have some sort of mild sentiment here. This is intense. Rachel is deeply frustrated by her infertility. She lives in a culture that says, that's your problem.

Even into the time, and this is some centuries later, when the Jews are under the law, The Jews had a teaching on top of this kind of general cultural sentiment that being fruitful and multiplying was a requirement, one of the 613 laws that you had to follow. A man who was finding that his wife did not produce offspring was expected to divorce her, to find one that did. So that would have even added to it. But we can see there's actually a legal obligation for the wife, even in the culture we're talking about here, to have children.

And if she is not able to provide a woman that will. A surrogate. Jacob doesn't like Rachel expecting him, as we see in those first few verses, to control human reproduction as if he were God, and he puts it that way. He says, I'm not God, I don't make you have babies and not... I don't control that.

The culture looks down on her for being barren, but still says she has a legal obligation to produce children. We're talking a really intense, uptight culture here. Lots of cultural pressure. Now, move on to the next point. We have a saying in our culture, like father, like son. We see patterns from one generation to the next. Certainly we do, don't we? Various patterns. Now, that being the case, we're going to stretch that a little bit and say like grandfather, like grandson. And so that's the pattern here.

From Abraham, who had a wife, Sarah, who could not bear a child, at least so it seemed, and then the culture came along and said, oh, well you, Sarah, must provide your maid so that by your maid, Abraham can have a child. That's what the culture said was the thing to do. Well, so what happens? has two wives, and each of them goes through a period of barrenness. And so the culture says, oh, each of the wives then takes a turn providing a maid by each one, a different one, by each one, in order that Jacob has children. That's what the culture said, and that was actually built into the law of that time. This isn't the law of Moses, this is just the law of the land in that country that they were living in.

So in keeping with the law and the culture of that time and place, Rachel offered her maid Bilhah, I wouldn't suggest you call any of your kids that name, but Bilhah, to her husband Jacob, since Rachel had so far been barren. So Bilhah bore Jacob's sons Dan and Naphtali. Leah then went through a time of barrenness. As well, even though she had four sons, what was interesting is the law required not that she have some sons, but that she continue being able to bear them. The fact that she could not meant that the law of the land required that she produce a maid who would act as a surrogate and have children. And so in keeping with that, she offered Jacob, her maid, Zilpah. Again, another name I wouldn't recommend. But Zilpah bore sons Gad and Asher.

Notice as we go through this passage the intense emotions that are expressed in multiple directions. The first one, she, Rachel, became jealous of her sister. So that's one thing is this jealousy between the two. Surprise, surprise. And look at the way she puts it to Jacob. Give me children or else I die! Okay? So she's being intense here. Jacob's anger was mild. She was slightly perturbed. No. Burned against Rachel. Lots of intense emotion here. Verse 8, so Rachel said, with mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with who? My sister. Now somehow I don't sense that that was a physical wrestling. They weren't in arm wrestling or leg wrestling or any of that. No mud wrestling, I hope. But rather, This was an intense emotional wrestling between them.

Here is Rachel, the one loved, and as we'll see a little bit later, Leah challenges Rachel and says, you took my husband. The arrangement was just fine with the culture. The world, if you will. The culture said that that's fine. Go ahead and have two wives that are sisters. Go ahead and have that. That works just fine. It brought about, as we can see from these little brief quotes here, intense emotions between Rachel and Jacob, intense emotions within Rachel herself, or else I die, and between Rachel and her sister Leah. Mighty wrestlings.

One of the things we'd want to point out here is beware the culture. In our own culture, I mean, we may look at this and say, well, of course, that's a weird culture, okay? Hey, our own culture is weird, okay? That's one of the things we frequently don't recognize. Our own culture has, of course, a number of things that are just neutral, okay? It really doesn't matter, you know, what color of the different Crocs that you wear, you know? I mean, it really doesn't matter much. Or if you don't wear them. Those are things that are morally and spiritually neutral. But our culture does convey some things, and matter of fact it does it consistently and conveys it very well, that are simply unbiblical and false. Here's an example that we brought up in our biblical counseling class recently.

A recent survey of young people indicated that over 60% of them thought that shacking up, living together, cohabiting, the different terms, before marriage was a good idea. You may have used the word wise. The idea generally was this, it kind of tests out the relationship before stepping into something more permanent, like marriage. Well, two things.

One scripture, of course, calls that porneia. Any sex outside of marriage is porneia. 1 Corinthians 6 being one of those passages that lays that out. 1 Thessalonians 4 is another one. And those two passages say that this sex outside of marriage does not glorify God, and it stunts a believer's growth. It stunts a believer's spiritual growth.

One of the other things that's not brought out by those, and notice here's 60% plus, almost two-thirds in our culture of today with the young people, have thought that this is a good idea. But look at this. A study recently showed this. For those who do this cohabiting, jacking up, living together, there is a percent increase in probability of divorce. of the subsequent marriages. So rather than improving the chances, hey, we're going to check this out. The truth is, it increases the chances for divorce. It doesn't guarantee it, but it increases the chance. It doesn't make it better. That's something people aren't being told. People are being sold a false bill of goods.

Sexually active unmarried women are almost four times more likely to be under psychiatric care. Not saying that the person, if they need it, shouldn't be under it, but the point is, is that something you'd volunteer for? Cohabiting, that is living together, shacking up women, have rates of depression three times higher than married women. Now, again, is that something you'd volunteer for? Let's ask another question. Is this something that a guy would want the gal in his life to have to go through? And the thing is, I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad. In fact, what we're trying to avoid is somebody feeling bad, right?

But it's simply bringing out the truth of Scripture and even what has been studied and shown to be the truth here. The reality is our culture will convey things to people that are simply not true. We've got to come back to God's Word and say, what does God say? What does God say about this? And there's good reason behind it. God is not just being arbitrary. All right, Genesis 30 and 31 talk also about pagan superstitions.

The culture of that time and place, even lingering into the Middle East and in magic today, on through the alchemy of the Middle Ages, mandrake plants were thought to both stimulate desire and to make a woman fertile. Turns out mandrake plants are not recommended to eat at all. As a matter of fact, one of the things that they will do is make you throw up if you eat them. So just having them was supposed to make people more desirous, affectionate, and make women fertile.

That was the folklore belief. Here's some idea of what they look like. Of course, when they're pulled up, that's how they look. Something like a man. So the idea is that if you have them, that it makes you produce people. Anyway, that's the thought. So here are these mandrakes. Sometimes the roots would be carved with little faces on them and things like that in order to give it more of an implication that would make you fertile and produce a person.

So, we're going to find that and other pagan superstitions and even pagan religious ideas show up in this and the next several chapters. One of the things we're going to find out is in chapter 35 Because the Lord speaks to Jacob, Jacob comes to his family and his household and says, hey, enough of this. We'll see that just a few chapters away here. Chapter 35, put away the foreign gods which are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. And then in verse 4, so they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods which they had in the rings that were in their ears. And it isn't just a matter of you can't have those, but it's a matter of they put special magical belief in those rings and special symbols on the rings. What we find in this passage, we go through chapter 30 verses 14 through 21.

Leah's son, Reuben, brought Leah some mandrakes from the field. He's out there, oh look, mandrake plants. So he brings those in and they're supposed to bring fertility to the woman who has them in her possession. Rachel bargains for these mandrakes. Again, this is just pagan custom. This is superstition. And so she's bargaining. And one of the bargain principles is that, okay, Leah, let me have the mandrakes. You get to have Jacob for the night. So, Leah says, okay.

So, Leah bore two sons, Issachar and Zebulun, and then a daughter, Dinah. The mandrakes did nothing for Rachel. And so the scripture mentions this incident and shows that the superstition, the magic, the pagan religion, and the belief in these Mandrakes, no kids. Now, something does come out of verse 15, but she, Leah, said to her, Rachel, is it a small matter for you to take my husband? Isn't that interesting? We find here again evidence of this mighty wrestling that Rachel referred to earlier. The two wives arrangement may have been something that's culturally acceptable at that time and place.

It's clear it did not work out well. It didn't work out well, as a matter of fact, for anyone in the relationship. Jacob had married his cousins who were sisters. So what a mess. But the problem here is not just But it's also because his relationship with the two of them was not the same.

Leah, I know you have kids, but I really don't love you and never will. Rachel, I love you, but I sure wish you'd have kids. So here's the different treatment. Obviously, as we mentioned last week, having two wives is not a biblically recommendable thing. And what we have here is a very good bad example. It makes me think of one time. This was a long time ago, you know. Randy was, I think, four and Ed was two. Becky wasn't born yet.

And I told the boys, I said, I need to go and leave the room for a minute, but when I come back, you two boys, I'm going to tell you which one of you boys I love the most. Well, I had their attention. And so I went off and did something and I came back in the room and of course their eyes were just glued on me, really big. I said, okay boys, are you ready for me to tell you which one of you I love the most? Really big eyes, not saying a whole lot. My recollection, nothing at all. But just yeah, we're ready. I said, okay, I'll tell you. You guys ready?

Okay, the one I love most is that one. Oh, the relief was tremendous. The point being that that favoritism within the family is really bad and I can't tell you the look of relief even almost humor and joy coming out of my two boys when they found out Dad's not picking which one he loves the most. He loves them both the same. And that's one thing that comes out of this. Certainly scripture isn't recommending two wives, and I can't either. But the favoritism aggravated the problem all the worse.

One of the things that comes out of this passage, verses 14 through 21, is Scripture and Leah both give God the credit. God gets credit for allowing Leah to bear children again. As a matter of fact, Scripture puts it very explicitly. Verse 17 says, God gave heed to Leah and she conceived.

A couple of things. One, God was responsive. God was responsive. Now, it may not have been responsive in Leah's time, but responsive in the Lord's time. And I think that's one key thing. The Lord is not just sitting up there randomly making decisions and saying, well, you just get whatever you get.

He is responsive, gave heed to her and she conceived. Furthermore, verses 18 and 20, Leah herself gives God the credit in those two verses for her ability to bear more sons for Jacob. Gives the Lord the credit as she has done previously. Magic and superstition, though they're involved in that passage, receives no credit at all. God receives it all.

Ephesians 3.21, to him be the glory. May he be glorified in all that happens.

Something else that we put in as kind of an aside, Jacob likely, I have to say likely, had other daughters. just by the odds, you would say, likely had some others. In Genesis, we certainly hear the names of the sons, and we hear the name of the one daughter, Dinah, may well have had other daughters also. Dinah is central to the events of Genesis 34, which is why she is named. So in the patriarchal culture of the time, daughters were named when they were central to the recording people and events. So it's likely that Jacob also had other daughters.

I would point that out. Now, the next set of verses there in verses 22 through 24, just three verses, says, God remembered Rachel. It starts off with that very passage there in verse 22. God remembered Rachel. Now, we've got to wonder, had God forgotten all about her in this process? And we would say, hardly. This God remembered is a phrase that is used not for God going, oh no, I forgot about Rachel. Oh, heavens. But rather, God taking special notice.

We saw it earlier in Genesis 8.1. Here is Noah in the ark. And it says God remembered Noah.

It wasn't like he'd all of a sudden thought, oh heavens, I forgot about him and now I just remembered. I was supposed to do something? No. It's taking special notice, special care to look at the circumstances, to care about what's happening in hearts. In Genesis 19, we saw a similar phrase. God remembered Abraham. Again, it was not that God had forgotten, but that God took special notice and special care.

And notice this thing with Rachel. This was a condition of her heart. Yeah, she'd expressed it to her husband. She'd expressed her frustration even to her sister Leah. But isn't it comforting to know here's a girl in some kind of remote part of civilization and God is taking special care, taking particular note of her heart and condition.

Now, did Rachel have everything squared away spiritually? Nah, she didn't. She'd already been pleading for the mandrakes. And we're going to see again that there's some other areas that she didn't have quite squared away. But you know the Lord paid particular attention to her. The Lord remembered Rachel.

And what's interesting is that's the last time that this phrase is used in the book of Genesis, at least quite in this way. So here's Rachel. Imagine The names where this has showed up. Noah, pivotal biblical figure. Abraham, pivotal biblical figure. Now the Lord remembers this young lady.

All for the issue of, I desperately want a child. God was taking special notice of Rachel and her heart's longing. Rachel then bore Joseph. Joseph will be the eighth and final major figure or event in Genesis, and we'll come to Joseph actually as being a personality in the forefront just seven chapters from now, chapter 37. Rachel then prayed. It's interesting. She knew that the Lord had responded to her, and so she prayed for another son. May the Lord give me, she said, another. Her prayer was answered.

We'll find out about that when we read Genesis chapter 35. We've been through these eight words, because remember we told you we want you to memorize the book of Genesis. And so we've been through these eight words, creation, fall, flood, nations, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. So here, Joseph, the last one, he's just now been born.

It'll be chapter 37 when he will take a place of prominence in the book. And we'll, of course, see that when we get there. Now, looking at chapter 29 and chapter 30, here's all those that we see born. Basically 11 of the 12 sons and the daughter Dinah are mentioned now in chapters 29 and 30. And we made note last week of these people who were born from these.

Levi, the third son of Leah. is the one from whom Moses and Aaron are descended. All the priests and the Levites are descended from him. From Judah, the fourth son of Leah, is born King David and descended from David, Jesus Christ. And then King Saul is born from Benjamin, yet to be born. And we'll find out about that five chapters from now. And we point out, too, Paul is of the tribe of Benjamin that he brings out in Romans and Philippians. Now let's get back to this question that we asked earlier.

Does Jacob ever appear to love either of his wives unconditionally? Thought about that one? Now looking at that, I'd say the answer so far is no. So far is no. Here is Rachel whom it says he loves and yet he is really upset with her and anxious about this not having children and her expecting him to produce. There's no evidence so far that he shows unconditional love even to Rachel, the one about whom it says He loves.

And Leah, she's still pleading. Perhaps now my husband will love me. Perhaps after all these, my husband will be attached to me. She is even willing to have her husband love her conditionally because I have had sons. At least she would have that. But no, she's not gotten it. I would say the answer is no, so far, for each of his wives. No unconditional love.

We have this from 1 Peter 3.7. You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way. Understanding what God's Word reveals. Understanding them. Understanding their hearts and their longings. That's how love is expressed, as Peter puts it.

As with someone weaker, and I think the key there is vulnerability. We're not talking about arm wrestling contests, although that might be included. The key there is there is a vulnerability, since she is a woman. But notice he's not saying inferiority at all.

Because what does he say in the next line? And show her honor as a fellow heir of the joint grace of life. We have those insights then from the Apostle Peter. He is to show her honor because she spiritually holds the same position as He. Show her honor. That's the equality. It doesn't say male and female are the same. They have different place and a different role. Their position in Christ for a believing husband and wife is identical. Show her honor.

Now, we turn a corner here in the passage. This is kind of part two. Now, Jacob is kind of feeling, I guess you could say, sort of homesick. He is going to be approaching his father-in-law, who is also his uncle, Laban, with this expression of desire to return to his homeland. He says, I've been away for a long time here, and I'd like to get back to my homeland and return there, make this 550-mile trip, Laban knows quite well, and he says so, he says, I've only prospered since you've been here, Jacob, and of course I don't want you to go because I would like to keep being prosperous and even more so. So I'd rather you stayed here. So Laban counters with this statement, Jacob, what would it take? How much would I have to pay you for you to stay? What would make it worth your while? Jacob says, well, I'll tell you what, I'll make a deal.

He would have the dark and speckled and spotted ones from Laban's flocks. He says, if you do that, hey, we're good. So as agreed, Jacob picks his pay from Laban's flocks. Here's verse 35. So he removed on that day the striped and spotted male goats and all the speckled and spotted female goats and all the black ones among the sheep. So if they got colors or spots or speckles or anything of that sort, he says, then I'll keep those. As we look in the cultural records of the day, shepherd's pay was typically up to about 20% of the flock. But Jacob went and used this unusual markings thing and used that as the basis instead of a percentage.

So that's kind of interesting. It turns out as we look at it, he used a combination of sort of common sense genetics and folklore magic. He relied on both things that made some kind of good sense and some things that didn't make any sense at all. So here's this folklore magic in verses 37 through 39. He took these rods of poplar and almond and plane trees. I don't know what those are. Maybe they make planes out of them.

Anyway, and peeled white stripes on them. So he's peeling off the bark there and exposed the white which is in the rod. So he'd make these alternately dark and light striped rods here. He set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks and the gutters, even in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink. And they made it when they came to drink. So the flocks mated by the rods and the flocks brought forth stripes, speckled and spotted. And the rods didn't have anything to do with anything. I don't know whether he's trying to confuse somebody or what, but it didn't obviously have any real difference.

So here he is, Jacob separating the lambs and he's playing both common sense genetics as well as just nonsense tricks. And so he ended up with a goodly flock out of Laban's by this little criteria that he'd cooked up. And so it says there in verse 42, but when the flock was feeble, he did not put them in. So the feebler were Laban's and the stronger were Jacob's. So he used this strange criteria to end up with stronger animals. Nothing about the rods could impact the outcome of breeding the sheep. It was all pure trickery. Maybe it was to try to cover something up or make people wonder. Make him think that he had wisdom and power when he didn't.

In verse 43, that ends the chapter. And so it says, so the man, Jacob, became exceedingly prosperous and he had large flocks and female and male servants and camels and donkeys. Now, it's very clear, and we're going to continue to see that, Jacob and his family still have much to learn, spiritually speaking.

And as we've seen, they're still holding on to pagan ideas. We've seen the Mandrake roots. We've seen this foolishness with the striped rods and having the sheep mate by them, which didn't do any good. We're going to see more evidence of some of this pagan magic, superstition, good luck charms, amulets, all sorts of things of that sort. We're going to see further evidence of that. At the same time, we're going to see them learning and God teaching them up until the place where God speaks to Jacob and has Jacob rid himself and his family of all this nonsense. God graciously allowed Jacob to prosper materially.

I'd like to go back to one thing here. Remember about two chapters back. Here is Jacob, and he had a dream. And in that dream, the Lord spoke to him. And He says, Jacob, I'll be with you. Right? What Jacob was learning, and in fact, he's going to say so pretty quick here as we continue our study. What Jacob is learning is, yes, the Lord is with me. I can count on the Lord. I still have some things yet to learn and some things yet to face up to. But I can count on the Lord. He will be with me. And the Lord had also said, I'm going to get you back here safely. You'll be back. You'll come back. You'll be here just fine. And Jacob learned that he could count on that too.

And I think as we go through circumstances and situations, and boy do we go through them, that we can continue to look upon the Lord to be faithful for those same kinds of things. He will be with us through all sorts of things. And as we've seen in the New Testament, He'll be in us and we in Him through all sorts of things. And He will be faithful all the way up until the day when we see Him face to face.

I hope it's today. Let's pray. Lord, as we look in this passage, much to learn from, and yet we still see the learning process in Jacob and his family continuing, going on. And we do look to You, Lord, to be faithful in our own lives. And we look to You, as we see in Jacob's life and in the lives of his wives and the rest of his family. We look to You to continue to teach us. We look to You to be faithful. Continue to be with us and we look to you to take us home on that wonderful and faithful day. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.