Genesis 29:14b-30
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Scripture Reading
(Gen 29:14b-30) After Jacob had stayed with him for a whole month, {15} Laban said to him, "Just because you are a relative of mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be." {16} Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. {17} Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel was lovely in form, and beautiful. {18} Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, "I'll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel." {19} Laban said, "It's better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me." {20} So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. {21} Then Jacob said to Laban, "Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her." {22} So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. {23} But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her. {24} And Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter as her maidservant. {25} When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, "What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you deceived me?" {26} Laban replied, "It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. {27} Finish this daughter's bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work." {28} And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. {29} Laban gave his servant girl Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maidservant. {30} Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years.
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SERMON
The Baltimore Orioles of 1894-96 was, at the time, considered the best team in baseball. It was also one of the craftiest. One of Baltimore's favorite tricks was to plant a few extra baseballs in strategic spots in the tall outfield grass. Hits that looked as if they would go for extra bases were miraculously held to singles. These are tactics that remind me of Jacob, his conniving mother Rebekah, her scamming brother Laban and her con artist family. Jacob's name comes from the Hebrew for "heel" and means "he cheats". Little wonder that no one else in the whole Old Testament was named Jacob. Can you imagine naming your baby boy Heel or Sneaky Little Cheater?
One day, however, during an Orioles game, an opposing batter drove a ball into left-center field where one of those balls was hidden. The left fielder picked up the hidden ball and threw it in. The center fielder picked up the legitimate ball and also threw it in. When the umpire saw two balls coming into second base he called time and awarded the game to the opposing team by forfeit. Their cheating ways caught up with them.
Jacob swindled his lame-brained brother Esau out of his birthright for a bowl of red lentil mush. With mother Rebekah's prompting, he then conned the blessing from father Isaac, playing the blind old man for a sucker. Esau was the loser again. Crass lies and deception. Jacob even approached blasphemy when he used God's name to make his case- Isaac sent Esau off to hunt some game for food for him. Jacob, posing as Esau, entered the tent with a bowl of savory meat. Isaac asked, "Esau, my son, how did you get back so fast." Remember Jacob's reply, "Because the Lord Your God granted me success." The weird thing is that he seems to have gotten away with it. Esau was ready to kill little brother as soon as Isaac died. But Jacob even made good his escape to the home of Rebekah's brother in Haran in the land called Paddam-Aram. Free at Uncle Laban's.
Grandfather Abraham passed through Haran when he left Ur near the Persian Gulf. He traveled west the length of the Euphrates River and left his father Terah in Haran as he turned south from Northern Syria into Canaan. So Jacob had family in the land of Aram- of the Arameans. The Arameans spoke Aramaic, a language similar to Hebrew. The language persisted and, in the later form of Jewish Aramaic, was the language Jesus spoke 2000 years later. Well, Rebekah told Jacob to go to Paddan-Aram for a little while until Esau's anger cooled. It was a 450 mile trip. Jacob didn't return for 20 years.
So, at age 40, Jacob fled his home. On the way he camped at Bethel. He left without much camping gear so he put his head on a rock for a pillow. Instead of staying up into the night with a guilty conscience, he dropped right off to a deep sleep. Suddenly on that lonely night his life was interrupted by a vision from God- angels going up and down the stairway to heaven. God then spoke to Jacob. It was not the chewing out that one might expect but something very different. He was promised that the land he was lying on was to belong to him and his descendants who would be a great nation and a blessing to the whole earth. And then the Lord threw this in- "I am with you and will keep you wherever you go." The swindler, con artist found that night that there is something you can't get but can only be given- grace. God's love and grace. For free. Like the gift of Jacob's descendent Jesus. God loves us because of who He is not because of who we are. Jacob met God. The real God. Jacob made an oath, committing and binding himself to God. It was conversion. It was the night that changed Jacob's life.
Well, not all at once. Change and growth take time and effort and is often painful. We don't suddenly become who we should be all at once. Old ways die hard and the old man, the old self, inside us dies hard. People, believe it or not, have told me- what's so wonderful about being a Christian? You are not so great. My answer to that is: you are right but you should have seen me ten years ago.
Jacob's first lesson in integrity was a hard one. It came in the person of Laban, his uncle. In Aram the deceiver Jacob met with deception. The cheater got cheated. The con artist conned. Jacob met Laban's daughter Rachel by a well and he fell in love with her. It was love at first sight. It reminds me of the old saying- "Never kiss girls by the garden gate, for love is blind but the neighbors ain't". Rachel was the younger and prettier of two sisters. Leah was her older sister- plainer and she had "weak" eyes. What in the world does that mean? It could mean she needed glasses. It could mean she had delicate eyes- pretty. We don't know.
Jacob wanted to marry Rachel and offered to work seven years for her hand. The seven years zipped by and the wedding day came. There was a feast and evening came. It was time to consummate the marriage and Laban slipped his older daughter Leah into the tent with Jacob. It wasn't until morning when Jacob got a good look at her that he realized that he had been had. It is beyond me how in the world it could have taken all the way until morning for Jacob figure this out. It sounds like he was the one with the "weak" eyes! What an amazing piece of irony! The younger son who had posed as the older was taken in by the older daughter who posed as the younger! Laban and Leah are lifting a mirror up to Jacob so he can see himself. He is experiencing in himself what he had done to other people. "Why have you deceived me?" was Jacob's cry.
Sometimes we need a Laban- someone to embody for us what we cannot see in ourselves- things that God is determined to change. Who is your Laban and what change will that Laban show you to make? The cheating ways of his dysfunctional family had caught up with him.
Laban gave a shaky, lame explanation that it was customary for the first daughter to be married first, no matter what. Leah got one week to be the one and only wife of Jacob. At the end of the week Laban gave Jacob Rachel as well- for seven more years work. To be married to two sisters simultaneously is not recommended even under the best of circumstances. In this situation it was disaster. The anger, bitterness and competition were terrible. The sisters fought with each other. And when they weren't they were fighting with Jacob. The next to last sentence of our reading tells the source for all the trouble and heartache. "Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah."
Remember, there was no Moses and no Law yet. The marriage customs in the ancient Near East permitted more than one wife and concubines which are servant women or slaves to provide children and serve the household. The size of a man's harem was seen as a symbol of his prosperity. But Law or no Law, reality is what it is. God intended us to be married to one person. In Genesis 2 Adam and Eve became one flesh. Ominously, the first man to take a second wife was a great grandson of the murderous Cain, the murderous Lamech of Genesis 4. Throughout Scripture, taking more than one wife has led to nothing but trouble. Wives and their children agonizing over who is loved and who not favored. To this day, there is deadly sibling rivalry between the children of Abraham's son though Hagar- Ishmael and the children of Abraham's son through Sarah- Isaac. The nations of Israel and the Arabs each assert that they are the special ones and each hates the other 3000 years later.
Well, it is a long time yet before the changes in Jacob's life grew to the point that God would change his name from Heel and Cheat to Israel, a new name meaning "the one for whom God strives". Those stories are yet to come. In closing let me make three quick applications. First, work as hard for God as you do for your own schemes- in the end we stand before God, the God that Jacob met, the Real God. Our grand deals and schemes add up to little before the God whose we are. A man was terribly curious when John D. Rockefeller died about how much he left behind. He finally got to talk to one of Rockefeller's aides. "How much did he leave behind." He asked the aide. The aide answered, "All of it". Second, the sentence right after our reading says, "The Lord saw that Leah was not loved." The Lord sees and cares. His eye is on the sparrow. One of the main reasons for the existence of the people of God- your and my very existence on this earth- is to look around and see who is not loved. That is why we have busy Deacons and Stephen Ministers- people looking for the hurt and the loneliness on behalf of God and bringing God's might care and healing. Loving the unloved is not optional- it is God's heart. Third and finally, a lesson from a Persian rug. When a Persian carpet is being made there are planks on one side of the carpet on which little boys sit who are working away. The artist is on the other side. He shouts instructions to the boys and tells them what to do. As he speaks to them they move the colors and change the patterns. A man once asked a Persian friend, "What happens when one of the boys makes a mistake?" "Well," he replied the Persian, "quite often the artist does not make the boy take out the wrong pattern or wrong color. He weaves the mistake into his pattern." God had a plan for Jacob, for his good and his blessing. He has a plan for you, too. Our mistakes and the mistakes of those around us spoil the pattern. We put in the wrong color. Jacob put in wrong colors. Lots of wrong colors and patterns. But God is such a great Artist that He can take our mistakes, our childish ignorance, our foolish scheming and deception, and weave them into His perfect purpose and plan. Nothing can divert His purpose ultimately, or finally spoil His plan. And, I believe, when we put our lives into His hands He will weave in us a thing of great power and beauty.
Amen. Play ball. |
