That's Not Fair (Chester UMC)

This is another one of those really strange stories in the

Bible and but it it hits a theme that is, is almost universal,

which is lifes not fair and that's not fair.

There's a lot of things in the story that are not fair.

Now I'm going to say a couple introductory things here before

we get into it. 1 is that I, I really believe as you read this

story, chapters 29 and 30 in Genesis, that it's been it's

meant to be read almost as a comedy.

There's a lot of humor here, and a comedy not in the sense of

trivializing this. These two chapters deal with

some very, very serious issues. Everything from sibling, sibling

rivalry to deception and competition within a family, to,

to, to infertility and to the struggles of of how how do we

live and how to relate and how do we connect and how do we see

ourselves in relation to God and others when we want to have

children but can't have children.

These are very serious topics. And by saying they're comedy, I

don't mean that it treats them as trivial.

The best comedy deals with very serious things and helps us look

at and examine very serious things in a serious way, but

also with some laughter involved.

And sometimes that laughter, like Mary Poppins says, a spoon

full of sugar, helps the medicine go down.

And sometimes that laughter really helps us absorb some,

some hard lessons in the tough realities of life.

And, and the fact that life isn't fair is one of those tough

realities. And, and I got to think that

there were a lot of people in these two chapters that were

saying that's not fair. That's not fair.

When, when, when we'll just talk about the story, the strangest

wedding story that I know of anyway.

When, when, when Jacob says to Laban his, his his uncle, we

think somewhere on there some sort of kin relationship there

with his mother. I think it I think it's his

uncle. And he says I want to marry your

younger daughter Rachel. She's beautiful.

I love her. Let's get married.

I'll work seven years for her. And Laban says, fine, that's

great work. Seven years, seven years later,

the wedding comes and, and at that night, and I don't know, I

got to think there was alcohol involved.

I got to think there was maybe a veil being worn somewhere along

the way. But But when it's time for the

the the honeymoon to begin, Laban sends his daughter Leah,

instead of his daughter Rachel into Jacob's tent.

And that link gives rise to what I think might be the funniest

verse in the entire Bible, which is when the morning came, there

was Leah. And I got to think Jacob said,

this isn't fair. This isn't fair with the Laban.

You've deceived me. Now there's part of us that can

say, well, you know, what goes around comes around.

Karma going on here. Not really a karma person.

But you know, the reason Jacob is here anyway is because he

deceived his father into giving him his brother's blessing.

And, and, and now, now Jacob is being deceived.

And, and again, there's a lot of names for that in the Bible.

We talk about it being the principle of sowing and reaping.

You reap what you sow And Jacob has reaped the life of deception

and now he's getting deceived and he's not happy about it on

the receiving end. He's not happy about it.

But Laban says, oh, you know, it's just tradition around here

and you can't marry the younger daughter before the older one's

been married. So I tell you what, work another

seven years, you can marry. Rachel didn't make him wait.

He just made him wait a week. Finish your week with Leah, and

then I'll give you Rachel. So Jacob gets married for the

second time a week later. And now he has two wives and

each of his wives has a female maidservant.

And and it's clear that Jacob loves Rachel.

Leah, not so much. Leah could say that's not fair.

That's not fair. But God saw that Leah was not

loved as much as Rachel, and so God blessed Leah and and she

conceived. Well, yeah, that's not fair.

Already jumping ahead, life isn't fair.

I already said that God sees and God is faithful.

God sees Rachel or God sees Leah and her distress.

And it really wasn't fair. We don't really know what the

relationship between Leah and Rachel is.

We don't know whether they were friends.

We do know that they were rivals.

We see that rivalry going on in the next chapter.

We'll talk about that a little bit here too.

But but we know that Jacob loved Rachel more than he loved Leah.

And we see that that's not fair. And we see that God sees that

Leah didn't ask for this. Leah's put in the middle of

this. I can't imagine what was going

through her head when her dad says, hey, you know, why don't

you go? I'll keep Rachel in the tent at

home. And I have no idea what was

going on in re in Leah's hat when he sent Leah and Rachel's

place. But now she's married and now

she's married and her husband, her husband is also married to

her younger sister and he loves her more than he loves.

He loves her sister more than he loves her.

And God sees, God sees Leah in this situation, a situation that

that as far as we know, she didn't ask for, she didn't

desire she's in and it's not fair and God doesn't make the

situation go away, but God sees and God blesses Leah.

God makes her fertile. When the Lord saw that Leah was

not loved, he enabled her to conceive and she gave birth to a

son. And and and it didn't stop there

because she conceived and she conceived and she conceived.

She had four sons, gave birth to four sons for her husband Jacob.

Still Rachel has not gotten pregnant.

But then Leah didn't get pregnant again either at that

time. And so she says, ah, I'm going

to got to keep going here. So well, Rachel, who couldn't

get pregnant, Rachel couldn't break pregnant, says, well, I'm

not getting pregnant. So she goes to her mate and

says, hey, Bill Ha, want to have a baby with my husband.

Bill Ha says, all right, sounds good to me.

She goes in and she gets pregnant and she has a son.

And then she gets pregnant again and she has another son.

And so now Jacob has six sons, 4 by Leah, 2 by Bill Ha.

And Leah's going. I got to get back in the game

here. So Leah says to her servant

Zilpah, hey, you want to have a baby with my husband?

All right, I'm thinking Jacob must have been good looking.

I, I don't, I don't see how this would have worked if Jacob

wasn't good looking and, and, and, and reasonably, you know,

more than reasonably attractive. So what's that?

Probably had hair. That's low.

That's low. Oh, my goodness, it's not fair.

So Zilpah gets pregnant. She has a son and then she gets

pregnant again and she has another son.

So now Jacob has eight sons, 4 by Leah, 4 by Bilpa or two by

Bilhah, 2 by Zilpa. And at this point, and again

this is years are passing here. Rachel still has not conceived,

still has not had a child. And, and Ruben, the oldest son,

Jacob's first born, Leah's first born, is out in the fields doing

whatever he's doing in the fields, and he discovers some

Mandrake plants. Mandrakes, you know, if you're

watching Harry Potter, they're not going to kill anybody in the

ancient world. And this is well documented in

that region, in the ancient world, mandrakes were believed

to be both aphrodisiacs and aids to fertility.

And so Leah's son discovers some Mandrake plants and brings them

back. And Rachel sees the mandrakes

and she's like, this isn't fair. I want to have a baby.

And so she goes to Leah and says, hey, tell your son to give

me the mandrakes or to give me some of the mandrakes.

Which gives rise to the second funniest and maybe the strangest

verse in the Bible. Ah, yeah, Rachel, the strangest

verse in the Bible, which is. But she said to her, wasn't it

enough that you took away my husband?

Will you take my son's mandrakes, too?

This is Leah's response. Bad enough you stole my

husband's affection, my husband's heart.

You're going to take my son's mandrakes too?

But Rachel wants the mandrakes because she wants to get

pregnant. And Leah says, all right, you

can have the mandrakes, but I get Jacob tonight.

So Jacob come in, comes in from the fields and Rach and Leah

comes up to him and says, hey, you're sleeping with me tonight.

I bought you for some mandrakes. Check it.

That's exactly what she says. It's right there in the Bible.

Jacob goes in, sleeps with Leah, boom, she's pregnant again.

Rachel still not so much. And then Leah gets pregnant one

more time. Six sons she's now had for

Jacob, and Rachel is still barren.

And then finally we are told this, that God then remembered

Rachel and he listened to her and he enabled her to conceive.

And Rachel gave birth to Joseph, you know, the, the Technicolor

dreamcoat Joseph, the Joseph who saved his people from starvation

and gave them a place in Egypt. We'll get to Joseph later, but

this was Joseph's origin story here.

All of these things happen. And all along the way it's

possible to say it's not fair. It's not fair.

Wasn't wasn't fair for Leah, it wasn't really fair for Rachel

either to not be able to have a baby just because her husband

preferred her to her sister. And in all of this, God sees

life isn't fair. This is, I think one of the most

important lessons we can teach our children is that life isn't

fair. I think, I think that that's one

of the reasons why the Internet is such a hot mess and social

media is such a hot mess is because there's a lot of folks

that that don't get that life just isn't fair.

And God doesn't seem to be interested in making it fair as

much as God is interested in justice.

And that is a theme throughout the Scripture.

Justice for the poor, justice for the needy, for the

vulnerable, for the orphan, for the widow, and for the

foreigner, justice for for all folks.

God doesn't seem particularly interested in making life fair.

But God sees in the middle of the unfairness.

God sees now. I, I don't know what unfairness

is going on in your life right now.

And unfairness can come from a lot of different directions.

Unfairness can come at work, being treated differently for

the wrong reasons or, or, or whatever.

Unfairness can come in school. Unfairness can come in personal

relationships. It can seem that way in your

family. Anyone, I don't know anyone with

young children that hasn't heard the word, that's the phrase,

that's not fair in the past week.

Unfairness comes all over the place.

Unfairness comes in natural abilities.

Some people have to have hair. Yeah, there.

All right. God made a few perfect heads.

The rest he covered with hair. That's my story.

I'm sticking to it. When life seems really, really

unfair, God invites us to look for his blessing because even

when life is unfair, God is not blind.

God sees, God notices and look for God's blessing.

And I don't mean that to trivialize the realities of

unfairness. Again, this this one of the

major themes of these two chapters is infertility.

And, and that alone can be very devastating to couples, women

and men both. And, and it can be emotionally,

socially, relationally, psychologically and spiritually

devastating. And I don't mean to trivialize

that by saying, well, God will. You know, if God closes the

door, he'll open a window. Or if God takes away one

blessing, he'll give you another.

It's not simplistic like that. Sometimes we have to really look

for the blessing. Sometimes the blessing doesn't

come for years. Joseph, Joseph who was sold by

his brothers into slavery, I'm thinking said this isn't fair.

And it was, it was years later, probably decades later before he

was able to see the blessing that was in all of that and

through all of that, one of the extraordinary things about our

God. And, and I think this is

captured in the word redemption. God doesn't make everything

fair, but God will redeem the unfairness.

And one of the things about redemption is, is it isn't just

fixing something. It's not just taking a broken

thing and mending it. It's it's redemption is

resurrection. It's, it's a new life, but it's

not just a restoration of the old life.

When Lazarus, when God raised, Jesus raised Lazarus from the

dead, it wasn't a resurrection. He just restored his whole old

life, and that life continued much as it had before.

When Jesus is resurrected from the dead and the resurrection

that we await, it's a new life and it's different in some way,

and we don't know exactly how it will be.

We just know that we're going to be like Jesus because we'll see

him as he is. But we know that that after that

resurrection, Jesus was like he could be in one place and then

another, that he had scars, but he wasn't bound by the scars.

He had an incredible amount of peace, amazing power.

There is glory, Paul says, waiting for us in the

resurrection. It's a new life.

It's a different life and it's a life that God gives us back and,

and in redemption, God makes the moment and then going forward

better than it would have been had it not been for the pain and

the sorrow and the unfairness. I'm not saying that very well.

When we go through a bad thing, maybe a horrible breakup, maybe

a life shattering illness, maybe the death of a loved one on the

other side of that, God has the power to make life even better

than it was before, even better than it would have been had the

bad thing not happened. And that's a thing that's

difficult for us to wrap our brains around because it doesn't

mean that God wants the bad things to happen to us.

Doesn't mean that we should want unfairness to happen to

ourselves or to happen to those we love.

Well, just because then you know, what it means is that

somehow God has the ability to make life better even than it

would have been. God did that.

He did it for Rachel. He did it for Leah, He did it

for Zilpa and Bilhah, and all of this too, did it for Jacob, did

it for Joseph, He did it for Jesus, and he'll do that for us.

So when we go through those unfair, unfair times when we are

experiencing these things and we're in the middle of them,

it's worth stopping and pausing. Or God invites us to stop and

pause and remember that God sees that.

We're not lost to God in that. And then to look for that

blessing, however it may come and whenever it may come.

Here's a simple fact. We really don't want God to be

fair. We really don't.

If God were fair, it would not go well with anybody.

There's another great story of unfairness in the Bible, and

it's a story that Jesus told of the prodigal son.

Remember that? And the one son, the older son

who was dutiful and obedient and loyal and faithful to his father

all through his life. And then the younger son who was

kind of a scoundrel and a waste roll, just a knucklehead that

that took everything his father gave him and wasted and found

himself destitute in a foreign land and, and, and he had

squandered his inheritance. He'd insulted his father

horribly by asking for his inheritance before his father

died. He said that culturally, he was

in effect saying, father, I wish you were dead.

Give me my inheritance. Now he takes that inheritance

and he squanders it all. And then he comes back, and you

know the story. The father sees him from a

distance, and the father runs out to greet him, and he

welcomes him. And he puts his robe on him,

puts his ring on his finger, has the fatted calf killed.

And he has a big feast to welcome his son home.

And his older son comes back and sees what's going on and says,

that's not fair, that's not fair.

I've always been faithful. I've always been working for

you. You haven't had this kind of

party for me. But this son of yours who's

wasted your wealth, shamed you and our whole family, You're

throwing a feast in a celebration for him.

It's not fair, the father says. But my son was lost and he's

found. He was dead to me.

And now he's alive again. We're going to celebrate that.

And he invites the older son. He doesn't say, you know, he

just invites. He said, come in, celebrate with

us. The story's left open in it.

We don't know whether the older son goes in or not.

We don't know whether he joins in the celebration or he stays

outside pouting about life being unfair.

But the good news is, is if God insisted on fairness, that

younger son would never have gotten welcomed home.

The younger son would never have been forgiven.

The younger son would never have been restored and redeemed.

But because our God allows and sanctions and at times even

blesses unfairness, He was restored and He was redeemed.

Because of that, we can be too. That one day we can be, we can

and will be welcomed home by God, who will receive us as his

sons and daughters. Even when we failed, even when

we've sinned, even when we've wasted good things that God has

given to us, even when we spent a lot of time moaning and

groaning about how unfair life is.

When we return to God, God receives us, and we'll make our

life even better than it would have been had we never left

before. Had we never fallen away?

And that's not fair. That's not fair.

But it's good news for all of us.

I can tell you what wasn't fair. Jesus dying on the cross was not

fair. Jesus, the only truly sinless

person, the only completely and wholly good person to ever live,

hung on the cross, abused and rejected and shamed and scorned

by the very people that He was giving life and breath to at

that very moment. And they were using that gift of

life and breath to kill the one who gave it to them.

And they stripped him, and they put a crown of thorns on his

heads, and they threw him down on the cross, and they drove

nails into his hands and his feet, and they hung him up there

in the air to die publicly shamed and disgraced.

That wasn't fair. That wasn't fair that Jesus's

body was broken in that way. And it wasn't fair that Jesus's

blood was shed, that that the one who said life is in the

blood poured out his life's blood for all humanity.

The one who has blessed us with the love of family and friends

and children and snow and sunshine and rain should see his

blood fall to the ground hanging from a cross.

But Jesus did that, and he did that willingly so that we could

be redeemed, so that somehow life will be better.

Not only better after Jesus's crucifixion, but better than it

would have been had Jesus never been rejected and crucified.

How God does that, I don't know. That's the power of a mighty God

to redeem and to save, and fairness has nothing to do with

it. One of my favorite movies.

This doesn't really go there anyway.

I got a couple extra minutes, might as well use it.

One of my one of my favorite movies is Unforgiving.

You ever seen that? It's an old Clint Eastwood

movie. If you haven't seen Unforgiven,

watch Unforgiven. Got one of the best lines in

movie history. So Will Money is Clint

Eastwood's character and he's the the anti hero.

He's a bad guy that's trying to change and finds himself going

out on one more bad deed to try to save his starving family.

And his good friend gets killed in the process.

And he gets killed by Little Bill, who's the sheriff of the

town. Little Bill is supposed to be

the good guy, but he's not really a good guy.

And Will comes back to seek his revenge.

And he walks into the bar and he kills a bunch of folks and he

wounds Little Bill and Little Bills lying there on the ground.

And William Money walks up to him and he loads his shotgun one

more time and he points it down at him and little Bill says it's

not fair. I was building a house and Will

Money looks at him and says fair's got nothing to do with

it. He kills him.

It's not a Jesus thing to do, right?

We could all agree on that, that that's not the take away from

this. The take away from this is that

God with a the polar opposite attitude looks at us and says

fair's got nothing to do with it, nothing to do with it.

For will money it was revenge. For God it's redemption, it's

love, it's forgiveness and fair's got nothing to do with

it. Let's pray together.