September 24, 2004
Genesis 29-31
WHERE IS GOD WHEN LIFE GETS MESSY?
We all start out with our dreams and expectations in life. Those dreams and expectations vary widely from person to person, but we all have them. As children and young people we envision how our lives will turn out: education, career, possibly marriage, family, life achievements, and so on.
Let me ask you a question for you to answer to yourself. Has life turned out the way you planned? Have you and the other players on the stage of your life followed the script? I suspect that most of us would probably smile ruefully and admit, “Not quite!” Most of us, when reflecting on our lives, would tell a tale of unexpected detours, wrong turns and washed out bridges. For most of us, the tidy patterns and neat edges we envisioned for our lives, have become decidedly blurry. Life has been considerably messier than we had anticipated.
The title for the sermon this morning is: WHERE IS GOD WHEN LIFE GETS MESSY?
We are tracing the story of Jacob in the book of Genesis. We are taking a fairly large chunk of his life this morning. In time period, it covers 20 years, the time he spent in Haran, in Paddan Aram. In terms of text, we’ll be covering 3 chapters (29-31). During these years, Jacob’s life gets decidedly messy. It’s a very human story, filled with drama. It’s a love story and a story of requited love. It’s a story of treachery and betrayal. It’s a story of deceit and broken promises. It’s a story of jealousy and competition. It’s a story of human chaos and disfunctionality. Why is it in the Bible? And where is God in this messy story? Where is God when life gets messy?
We left Jacob in Bethel, on his way from his father’s tents in Beersheba to Haran in what is now Syria. God has just appeared to him in a dream and promised to fulfill the promises of Abraham to him and to be with him and take care of him throughout his journey, and to bring him back safely to his father’s home.
With these promises ringing in his ears, he continues his journey in good spirits. The text literally says: “He lifted up his feet.” After several weeks of traveling, he drew near a well around mid-day. He found several flocks of sheep gathered around the well, waiting to be watered. He strikes up a conversation with the shepherds and discovers that they come from the town of Haran. With rising excitement, he asks if they are familiar with his uncle Laban. They respond positively. “In fact, that’s his daughter approaching now with that flock of sheep.”
The next scene is filled with emotion. When Rachel approaches with her sheep, Jacob first rushes with unusual strength to single-handedly roll the stone from the mouth of the well and then busies himself watering her flock. Then we’re told “he kissed her and began to weep aloud.” I think we should take this in the middle-Eastern sense as a kiss of greeting, rather than a romantic kiss. While there is certainly romance in the air, Jacob’s emotional response is more comprehensive. He is expressing his joy and relief at having traveled so far and having been alone or among strangers so long, and now, suddenly he has found his relatives. He has arrived. His long journey has been successfully concluded. When Laban is informed of his arrival, he also rushes out to meet him and to welcome him warmly with the words: You are my flesh and blood.
So far, it’s a happy, feel-good story, isn’t it? And it continues in a similar vein. After a month’s stay, Laban suggests that Jacob remain on as his employee. When Laban asks about wages, Jacob requests the hand of Rachel in marriage, for whom, as a dowry, he is willing to work for 7 years. The agreement is made and the writer adds the memorable words: the seven years seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.
At the end of the seven years, Jacob requests that the marriage take place, and Laban holds a large wedding feast. But now, the story gets messy. Laban is not the honorable character he first appeared to be. He violates his agreement, and deceives Jacob. On the wedding night, it is his eldest daughter, Leah, whom he sends into Jacob’s tent. Under the cover of darkness, possibly with clever use of veils, appeals to natural shyness, and the use of whispered conversations, the marriage is consummated without Jacob detecting the deception. In fact, we’re told that it isn’t until morning light dawns that Jacob looked over and “there was Leah!”
We can only begin to imagine the raw emotion that coursed through Jacob. Anger, disappointment, dismay at what this meant to his future, even embarrassment at having been so cleverly tricked. I can’t help but also wonder, though, if there may not have been a sense of dawning awareness and shame, as he remembered another act of deception, when he, taking advantage of the darkness of his father’s blindness, came into his father’s presence. That time it was the younger pretending to be the older, when he took by deception what his father intended to give to his brother. Maybe for the first time he was faced with the awfulness of his own act of deceitfulness.
When he confronts Laban with his action, Laban rather haughtily dismisses his actions. It’s not our custom to give the youngest daughter in marriage before the older one. One might suggest that this should have come up in the conversation 7 years before! But rather than repent or show any sign of penitence, Laban presses his advantage. Complete your honeymoon with Leah, and then I will also give you Rachel as your wife. And, oh by the way, you can work for me for another 7 years to pay off the dowry for your second wife.
Remember what I said about life getting messy? It’s hard to imagine anything much messier than this, isn’t it? But Jacob agreed, and a week later, he and Rachel were married. Instead of one wife, whom he loved, he now had two wives, one of whom he loved, the other one he didn’t. At least not in comparison to his love for Rachel. And he’s got himself another contract to work for another seven years essentially without wages. Talk about detours and alterations to one’s life plans!
The next part of the text records the story of the birth of Jacob’s sons. The main characters in this part of the story are actually the two sisters, now Jacob’s two wives. I won’t take the time to go into the details of the story, except to say that it is a very complicated and messy one. We’re told that when God saw that Rachel was getting all the affection, he chose to give Leah the children. Leah bears 4 sons in quick succession. Each of them is given a name that reflects her desperate struggle to win the affection and attention of her husband. By this time, Rachel is consumed with bitter jealousy. She picks a fight with Jacob. Give me children or I’ll die! she tells him. That provokes an angry response from Jacob. I’m not God. I don’t control the conception of children.
In her desperation, Rachel resorts to a time-honored strategy, the same one Sarah had used when she could not bear children. She gives her maidservant to Jacob as a wife. As we mentioned in that account, by law, any children born of such a union became legally the offspring of the slave owner, in this case Rachel.
The strategy works and Bilhah bears two sons whom Rachel names Dan (vindication) and Naphtali (struggle) as the two sisters continue to compete for their husband’s affection through child-bearing.
As soon as Leah sees this, and also recognizes that she has stopped bearing children, she in turn gives her maidservant to Jacob as a wife. The maidservant, Zilpah in turn bears two sons.
There is a rather sad, rather poignant incident recorded in chapter 30 that kind of sets the tone of what poor Jacob’s home life must have been like during this time. The oldest son, Reuben, comes home one day with some local fruit, known as mandrakes, that were thought to have aphrodisiac properties. He presents them to his mother, Leah. Rachel asks for some, and after a bitter exchange, Leah gives the mandrakes to Rachel in exchange for Jacob spending the night in her tent. It is a small, almost humorous exchange. But it indicates just how far their whole family life had deteriorated. Jacob is reduced in the story to a harried, harassed figure, pulled in all directions by the jealousy and competition of his wives. Interestingly, though, out of their union that night, God again opened Leah’s womb and she conceived another son, and later a sixth.
Finally, almost with a sense of relief, the narrator tells us that God also remembered Rachel, and she also gave birth to a son whom she named Joseph. A second son would also be born to Rachel later in the story, to eventually give Jacob 12 sons.
Well, that is the account of Jacob’s marriages and the birth of his sons. But while this was going on, he was also carrying on with his career as a businessman and herdsman. The first 14 years of his stay in Haran he worked without wages for Laban, as a means of paying off his dowry. At the end of the 14 years, when Joseph was born, he announces his intention to depart and return home. Laban is reluctant to lose such a valuable employee. After all, I have learned through divination that my prosperity during these 14 years has come because of God’s blessing on you.
There follows a very detailed, almost humorous account of the finagling and negotiating that goes on between these two men. Neither trusts the other, both are intent to get the best deal, both are willing to work any angle for their advantage. Jacob agrees to work and, for his wages, only keep the speckled, spotted and striped sheep and goats for himself. Apparently, under normal circumstances, the majority of animals would be solid in color. So Laban agrees, thinking he’ll get the better of the bargain. Jacob immediately sets up a scheme of selective breeding, based on the rather interesting theory that vivid impressions at breeding time would influence the offspring. Regardless of the theory, the flock began to produce lots of speckled, spotted and striped sheep and goats! When Laban saw he was losing out, he kept changing the deal. First he’d say: Only the speckled ones. When that didn’t work to his advantage, he’d say: Only the streaked ones.
The key to this passage, I believe, is found in Jacob’s retrospective, when he looked back on what had happened: In verse 5-9 we read his words: the God of my father has been with me. You know that I’ve worked for your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me by changing my wages ten times. However God has not allowed him to harm me. If he said “The speckled ones will be your wages,” then all the flocks gave birth to speckled young; and if he said, “The streaked will be your wages,” then all the flocks bore streaked young. So God has taken away your father’s livestock and has given them to me.
The conclusion of the matter is described in 30:49: The man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks and maidservants and menservants and camels and donkeys.
The rest of Genesis 31 is rather sad. Jacob, under God’s instructions, decides to leave and return home. But rather than do it honorably, he gathers his family and flees while his father-in-law is away. When he hears about it, Laban pursues him. But God appears to Laban in a dream and warns him not to harm Jacob. So when he catches up, what ensues is a bitter exchange of charges, and then a kind of uneasy truce, in which they establish a heap of stones, and both agree not to pass it into the other’s territory to do the other harm. And so the two long-time adversaries and antagonists are finally separated and go their separate ways.
Like I said, it’s a messy story, isn’t it? It starts out well, but then it gets messy and stays messy. There is not even a happy ending, at least in terms of Jacob’s separation from Laban. So why should we study this passage? Where is God in this story? Where is God when life gets messy?
In fact, God is everywhere in this story. If we read the story carefully, and connect these chapters with what has gone before and what comes after, we find God everywhere. Sometimes he’s just below the surface, out of sight, but nonetheless working. When you were a kid, did you ever pour iron filings on a piece of paper, and then put a magnet underneath the paper? As you moved the magnet around, what happened? The iron filings moved, and followed the magnet around. You couldn’t see the magnet, but you could see the effect it was having on the filings. It’s like that in this story. God is at work. We can’t always see him directly. But we can see the effect he is having as the story unfolds. And he is there in our lives as well, even when life gets messy.
I want to highlight three truths from this story this morning.
If we don’t pick out anything else from these chapters, let’s not miss this. Remember these chapters follow on from God’s appearance to Jacob in a dream. In that dream, God made some strong promises. I will be with you. I will bless you. I will multiply your descendants. I will protect you and bring you back to your father’s tents.
Do you remember those promises? Now think through what takes place in Genesis 29-31. Jacob is guided directly to his mother’s family in Haran. He becomes incredibly wealthy. He produces 11 (soon to be 12) sons. This is the true beginning of the great nation that God had promised would come from Abraham’s descendants. These 12 sons would become the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. God’s plan is unfolding. And God is not only with Jacob, he also protects him. Even when Laban meant him harm, even when he follows him threateningly, God protects Jacob, even appearing to Laban in a dream to warn him against harming Jacob. And now God is working to take Jacob back to Canaan and to his father’s tents.
God keeps his promises. He may not have done it in quite the way Jacob had in mind. Life was a lot messier than Jacob had anticipated. But through it all, and often in spite of Jacob’s own foolish and wrong choices, and certainly in spite of Laban’s deceitfulness and trickery, God kept his promises. Everything he said he would do, he did.
Last week, we discussed the process by which family faith becomes personal faith. We saw Jacob’s family faith blossoming into personal faith when he became aware of the presence of God. We also saw that his family faith became personal faith when he put his trust in the promises of God. He saw that God’s promises were being made to him and he declared: Therefore you will be my God.
There is something we need to recognize though. And that is, family faith becoming personal faith is not a single, point in time, event. There may be significant events, and mile-stone experiences that crystallize faith. But for most of us, the journey to personal faith is a long, sometimes twisting road. In Genesis 28, Jacob personally owned the promises of God. And as we have just seen in our review of Genesis 29-31, God kept those promises. But there is another lesson here that Jacob was very slow to learn. Here it is.
Jacob was a schemer. His name meant “heel-grasper”, one who is always seeking and grasping for advantage. This aspect of his character was deeply seated in his soul. Even when he knew the promises of God, he found it very difficult to trust God to keep those promises. He kept trying to help God out. I think Jacob’s life verse was: God helps those that help themselves. The only problem is, that verse isn’t in the Bible!
Jacob’s scheming, of course, began in his strategies to obtain the birthright from his brother Esau. His schemings continue in this chapter, with his bargaining with Laban, and his various breeding strategies. His scheming is certainly echoed in Laban’s reverse efforts to cheat him. The scheming carries over into his family and his wives, as they seek every advantage to try to better their place in the family and obtain children and Jacob’s affection. But the bottom line is that the good things that happen in these chapters come from the blessing of God and not from those human strategies. It is God who grants conception and gives children. It is God who blessed Jacob’s flocks rather than Laban’s. And even Jacob’s strategy to flee from Laban secretly was totally unnecessary. God is the one who protects Jacob through the warning he gave to Laban in a dream. In fact, all that the human strategies and schemes did was to complicate the situation and sow discord, strife and distrust in the family.
That is always the reality. Whenever we attempt to “help God out” with human schemes and clever, dishonest or unethical strategies, we simply add to the messiness of life, and reap unpleasant consequences. God doesn’t need our help! He will keep his promises without our strategies. Jacob had a very difficult time learning that lesson. But there are glimmers of hope in these chapters that Jacob is getting the message. In his own words, he acknowledges that it is God who has blessed him and given him sons and given him wealth and protected him. He hasn’t mastered the lesson yet, but he’s starting to get the message.
If you tend to see yourself in Jacob, this is a lesson you need to contemplate and ponder. True blessing comes through trusting the promises of God and not through human scheming and attempts to manipulate events.
Jacob’s life in these chapters is a mixture of bitter and sweet. We see his joy at finding his relatives. We see his love for Rachel. We can feel his pride at the birth of each son. We can sense his feelings of accomplishment and well-being as his flocks multiplied. These are good things. These are sweet experiences. And they came from God.
But there are bitter experiences here as well: The deep sense of betrayal when he discovers Leah in his bed, rather than Rachel; the sense of injustice when Laban kept changing his wages; the frustration over the constant bickering in his household.
Where is God when life gets messy? God blends sweet and bitter experiences in the life of his children to bring us to mature faith.
God is always at work in our lives. He has one clear agenda: To bring us to mature faith. He wants us to trust him, and, based on that trust, to walk in obedience to him. To accomplish that, he blends sweet and bitter experiences into our lives. We all like the sweet experiences. When we receive them from his hand and acknowledge him as the giver, these experiences serve to draw us to God in gratitude and praise.
We are not so sure about the bitter experiences. But the Bible tells us that both the sweet and the bitter are expressions of God’s love for us. In Hebrews 12:5-7 we read: My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons.
Then in the same chapter in verses 10-11 we read: Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
I believe we see God’s disciplining hand in Jacob’s bitter experiences in these chapters. Jacob had some serious character flaws. His act of deception against his own father is a prime example of one of those flaws. I do not think it is a coincidence that he in turn is later on the receiving end of an uncannily similar brazen act of deception. I believe the vinekeeper is pruning his vine.
In like manner, I believe the whole, long saga of the strife between Jacob and Laban is a part of God’s discipline. Essentially, what God is doing is facing Jacob with someone just like himself; a schemer, a deceiver, one who is willing to take any shortcut and play any angle to gain an advantage for himself.
I think if we are honest with ourselves, sometimes the people we have the most problems with in life, the ones who cause us the greatest frustration and angst, are people who are just like us. Maybe it’s God bringing us to the mirror so we can see what we really look like.
So, sometimes the painful and bitter experiences of life are God’s way of teaching us, getting us to look at ourselves in a different light, to see ourselves as others see us. May God give us the insight and the humility to learn those lessons.
Sometimes, though, the bitter experiences of life are simply intended to strengthen our faith and build our character.
Romans 5:3-5 says this: We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.
Then James 1:2-4 speaks to the same point: Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Where is God when life gets messy? In the words of God to Jacob at Bethel: I am with you.
“But God, if you’re with me, why is life so messy? Why is it so hard?”
I cannot answer in detail. But I would only leave you with this truth to contemplate: God blends sweet and bitter experiences in the lives of his children to bring us to mature faith.