Faithful Then, Faithful Now | Grace in Conflict - Genesis 29:31-30:24(May 14) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, we praise you for that truth.

God, we thank you that you bring life to every heart that is broken.

And God, if we're honest with our lives, if we look in the mirror and we see things correctly, Lord, each of us.

God, each of us acknowledge that we are broken.

And so, God, thank you that we are in the presence of the God who gives life.

Thank you that we are in the presence of the God who saves the weak while they are enemies and who grows the weak, Lord, in ways that we could never grow ourselves.

And so, God, we give you all the praise because of what you can accomplish in this moment, in this time, because you are here, Lord.

Not because of our strength, not because of our power, Lord, but all because of your grace, all because of your glory.

And so, God, it's in this time that we pray, God, that you would accomplish much in us.

God, this is not just another Sunday.

Lord, this is not just routine.

Lord, this is an opportunity that you have to speak to each of us through your word.

And so would you take this moment, Lord, to change us and transform us, God, we submit our lives to you.

God, thank you for this time.

And pray this all in the name of your son.

Amen.

Amen.

You guys can grab your seat.

As you grab your seat, you can open up to Genesis chapter 29.

Genesis 29 · chapter mention

And on the morning when everything goes wrong and all of us are looking back at the sound guys and making awkward eye contact with them.

Can we just give a round of applause to the sound guys who have to always deal with this stuff?

I see them taking off layers, they're sweating back there, they've been working hard all morning.

One of those mornings where everything goes wrong, and it seems that nothing stops going wrong.

It just keeps going wrong this morning.

I'm incredibly thankful for them as they serve very diligently week in and week out.

And uh so thankful for the ways that they serve.

Uh, if we're honest, that first song that we sang, which by the way, it was so sweet singing with you guys this morning, uh, and especially at the beginning when we were singing a cappella, I started to realize, like, you know why nothing's working back there?

And we we can't like explain why the soundboard's not working this morning.

I said, I wonder if it was for this moment.

Like maybe God has cut out the you know all the sound equipment so that we can just bask in the glory of this moment of just our voices praising God, giving glory to God, because that's all we need.

That's and that brings so much joy to God.

And yet, as we sang that song, I reflected on this thought that that sometimes, if we're honest with ourselves, don't we come to church on a Sunday morning and sing a song like, This is amazing grace?

And declare how amazing God is, declare how amazing grace is, but then when really, you know, you sometimes you can sing that with kind of like uh a stain of like, you know, life isn't really amazing right now.

Sometimes you sing that and like, yeah, your lips are moving, and and sound is coming out of your mouth, but it's not coming from your heart because as you reflect on your heart, you're you're you're kind of looking at your life and you're saying, nothing is the way that I would plan it right now.

Life's not going the way that I would plan it.

And there are times where we're forced to sing these songs about God's amazing grace when grace doesn't seem so amazing to us.

Maybe it's times when life is difficult and you had kind of charted out this course for your life, whether it was who you would marry or the job that you would have or the neighborhood that you would live in, where life would be easy, where life would be free from difficulty, but now you find yourself in this place where it's just like every day is hard, every day is difficult.

Some of us question the amazingness of grace because we constantly face the consequences of our own sin, and we've been a Christian for so many years, and we've been struggling with the same sin, and it just doesn't seem like we can get over it.

And we wonder, is like grace really the thing?

Is grace really the thing that can change and transform me?

Some of us we we we read the news, we we look around and we see all the suffering and the injustice, and we think, how could a God who is good, how could a God whose grace is so amazing allow such injustice to happen in our life?

See, there's times when grace doesn't seem so amazing.

There are times when life just doesn't go our way, and so we struggle to sing words like that.

Whether it's relationship struggle or financial difficulty or difficulty in raising kids, there are times when life just does not seem to be going well.

And the question is, how do we worship a God who supposedly his grace is amazing?

In those times when grace does not feel so amazing, what do we do?

How do we respond?

Well, as we reflect on God's word this morning in Genesis chapter 29, verses 31 to chapter 30, 24, that's the very question I want to ask.

Genesis 29:31

I want to ask this question how do we respond to God's amazing grace when grace does not seem so amazing in our situation?

And this morning we're gonna see a right way and we're gonna see a wrong way.

And we're also gonna see every way in between the right and the wrong way.

And as we do this, we're gonna kind of be able to do diagnostics on our life right now.

To ask ourselves this question, this brokenness that each of us experience, this difficulty that each of us experience, this trial that each of us as human beings constantly walk through.

If we're not now, we will be soon.

How are we responding?

And how should we respond?

Let's read this chapter together, starting in Genesis 29, verse 31.

Genesis 29:31

It says, When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.

And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me.

She conceived again and bore a son, and said, Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also, and she called his name Simeon.

Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.

Therefore he called his name Levi.

She conceived again and bore a son, and said, This time I will praise the Lord.

Therefore she called his name Judah.

Then she ceased bearing.

When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister.

She said to Jacob, Give me children, or I shall die.

Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?

Then she said, Here is my servant Bilhah.

Go into her, so that she may give birth on my behalf, that even I may have children through her.

So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob went into her.

And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son.

Then Rachel said, God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son.

Therefore she called his name Dan.

Rachel's servants Bilhah conceived again, and bore Jacob a second son.

Then Rachel said, With mighty wrestlings, I have wrestled with my sister and have prevailed.

So she called his name Nephtali.

When Leah saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife.

Then Leah's servant servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son.

And Leah said, Good fortune has come, so she called his name God.

Leah's servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son, and Leah said, Happy am I, for women have called me happy.

So she called his name Asher.

In the days of wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah.

Then Rachel said to Leah, Please give me some of your son's mandrakes.

But she said to her, Is it a small matter that you would have taken away my husband?

Would you also take away my son's mandrakes?

Rachel said, Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes.

When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him, and said, You must come in to me, for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes.

So he lay with her that night.

And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.

Leah said, God has given me my wages, because I gave my servant to my husband.

So she called his name Issachar.

And Leah conceived again, and she bore Jacob a sixth son.

Then Leah said, God has endowed me with a good endowment, but now my husband will honor me, because I have borne him six sons.

So she called his name Zebulun.

And afterwards she bore a daughter and called her name Dina.

Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.

She conceived and bore a son and said, God has taken away my reproach.

And she called his name Joseph, saying, May the Lord add to me another son.

Now here in this passage, we see two things at play.

On one hand, we see the conflict that we've been waiting for so long to bubble to the surface in Jacob's life.

Jacob in his life has done nothing but to deceive person after person.

And it's been kind of like watching a movie where, you know, everything in the first few minutes is going right, but you know, this movie's got to be about something.

There's got to be some sort of plot.

I mean, we've all seen those movies where the plot never comes and then the movie ends, and you're like, oh wow, that was interesting and a big waste of time.

And yet with Jacob, we kind of have this music, this overtone playing of like something bad's gonna happen.

And really the conflict in Jacob's life, it goes on pretty enduringly and always surrounds his family.

And so in these passages, we see conflict of Jacob and especially of the of Jacob's wives, of Rachel and Leah.

And yet, in the midst of this conflict, we also see God graciously working in their midst.

Which at the very beginning, before we even get into how we respond to conflict, you and I need to take a moment just to worship God.

Because you know what God does in the mess that is so often our lives?

You know what God does in the conflicts that you have and the trials that you have and the struggles that you have?

He gets right into the messy middle.

What do you and I love to do with conflict?

When conflict arises in our life, what do we like to do?

We like to walk away.

I'll be done with that.

I don't want that to be part of my life.

What does God love to do because of his love for you?

He loves to get right in.

And this is what we see is that God's grace and the conflict that Rachel and Leah and Jacob and Laban and all this family are enduring, they go hand in hand, and God's grace is shining through all of this conflict.

And so the question then for us is how do we respond?

And the first way that we must respond in the conflicts of our life, in the brokenness of our life, and the messiness of our life is this we need to lean into God's care.

We need to lean into God's care.

Now look at verse 31.

Look at what Moses writes for us in Genesis 29, verse 31.

Genesis 29:31

It says, When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, we should stop right there and take a moment to acknowledge how horrific this verse is.

Leah, as the wife of Jacob, is hated.

And as Leah sits in this position where she knows that she is not the beloved wife, she knows that she's not the wanted wife.

She looks at this situation and she recognizes it's not her own doing.

She didn't choose Jacob.

It was her own father who chose Jacob for her.

And her own father did that knowing that Jacob didn't love her.

She's been thrust into the situation that she didn't choose for herself.

Now she's in a situation where her own husband, her very life source, the very man that she loves so greatly, hates her.

This is not a good situation.

This is one of the saddest verses, I think, in all of Scripture as we consider Leah's position here.

And I think it needs to be said as we consider this that this ought not to be in the people of God.

And yet the sad reality is that in our midst, and I I would say, even no doubt in this church, there are spouses, whether wives or husbands who in their relationship feel hated.

And can I just commend you?

Can I especially commend the men that it not ought to be so?

This is why the command of God is husbands, love your wives.

Husbands, love your wives.

This should have never been so for Leah.

Leah should have had a husband in Jacob who had been so transformed by God's grace that he could do nothing but drip love for his wife.

And yet Leah finds herself in a position where she is hated.

This could never happen if Jacob was willing to lean into God's grace.

This would never happen in the church if we were willing to lean into God's community, if we were willing to allow people to speak into our life, if we were humbly able to expose ourselves to other people and live in vulnerability with other people and allow them to speak into our sin and speak grace into our life.

Yet here it happens with Jacob and Leah, and it ought not to be so in our own life.

Now it's theology time as we consider this verse, it's theology time.

Because as horrible as this verse is, as brutal as it is that Leah is hated by Jacob, look what is also true for Leah.

Look at this in verse 31.

When the Lord saw, it all starts there.

You got to take a pen and circle that like eight times in your Bible.

That is an amazing verse.

Because in the most horrific situation that Leah could be in, Moses is reminding us of this truth.

God sees it.

God sees it.

And it's theology time for us because we're building from this text right now a theology that tells us no matter how hard your life gets, no matter how rough you feel your situation is, no matter how much you feel like your life has derailed from the plan that you had for it.

No matter how much you feel like you just can't get that one thing that you've been working so hard to get, you just cannot get it, it never comes to you.

You need to know that God sees your situation.

God is not in heaven shocked at the way that your life is going.

There's no surprise turns for him, there's no plot twists for him.

God knows.

And God sees.

And what we find in this passage is that God cares.

His heart is filled with compassion.

And so, church, what are we doing in this moment as we're hearing God's word, as we're sitting under God's word?

What should be happening in our heart right now is this praise.

Like what just happened in worship time when we're singing praise to God.

That should be happening silently in our heart, where we're reflecting on God's goodness.

We're saying, God, thank you for how good you are.

No matter how hard my life is, God, I'm giving you praise right now in this moment because you're so good to me.

You know, you see, you care.

Especially relevant, I think, to reflect on God's care for us on Mother's Day.

I'm reminded that there is no often not a more caring person in the world than the care of a mother.

And I'm especially reminded of this as I reflect on my own care.

I mean, often I think my family, you know, and our as I'm a father and my wife is a mother, it's probably pretty stereotypical of this, but as you think of the care of a father for their children and the care of a mother for their children, those are often worlds apart, aren't they?

And the way that you often see that is when a kid is hurt.

I have a gut reaction.

I'm working on it, but I have a gut reaction when my kid is hurt.

I immediately do everything to disprove that it is a real injury.

And mothers have the opposite ability.

Mothers have the ability to be like a hundred meters away from their kid and hear a cry, and it's like spidey senses.

They're like, something's wrong.

They know.

And while I'm working to disprove every possibility that this could be, could could be her.

I mean, the worst that ever happened, I don't think I could top this.

One time my my uh second daughter was hit in the face with a rake.

I'm talking metal rake.

And the gash on her face was was open, and it was like a moment away from squirting blood.

And she brought home, brought her home, and I was like, I think it needs a band-aid.

And then they went to the hospital, and it was three stitches later that she came home.

And so I realized there's something qualitatively different about the care of a mother and the concern that a mother has for her kids and me as a father.

And I praise God that when it comes to God's care for his children, when it comes to God's care for you, he is a God who cares, and he is a God who knows.

All the difficulty you walk through, God knows and cares for.

Now it's significant that we think about the context of this passage and that we especially think about the hearts of Leah and Rachel.

And we need to ask this question: what are Leah and Rachel after?

Well, it's an interesting story because Leah is unloved and she's longing for love, while Rachel is infertile and longing for fertility.

Each of these women long for something and don't have it.

For each of these women, life is not going the way that they desire it to go.

And there's something in their life that they do not have that the other person has that they're saying, if I could just have this thing, then I would truly be happy.

And so we see for them, in this place where they do not have the things that their hearts really long, we see their responses.

But I think it's really important for us just to stop at this moment and do some heart reflection and to ask ourselves this question: Do I know what my heart is really after?

Do I know what I really believe in the depths of my heart will satisfy me?

See, for each of us, that answer will be different.

For some of us, what will what we think will really satisfy us is power.

We think that like if we just have power, if we're able to control the situation, whether it's our home, whether it's our job place, whether it's just like all the small little details of our life, this is where why many of us are so controlling and why many of us are so perfectionist about everything, because we just have this longing for power.

We want every detail of our life to go according to our way.

Some of us, the things that we long for is just comfort.

And everything in life points to this desire we have to be comfortable, to for life to be easy, to be able to rest.

For others of us, it's praise.

We want the praise of people.

And so everything in life is directed towards this end.

To receive the praise of man.

For others, it's for satisfaction, for the sense of entertainment, for the sense of being pleased by the things of earth.

And the question I have for you this morning is do you know your own heart?

See, as I list those things, the love of the Holy Spirit in this moment is for you in this moment immediately to say, that one's me.

That's me.

And you see, I look at this, and in a moment of vulnerability, I can tell you that my thing is so often the praise of man.

I can be I can so easily slip into this tendency to want to live in a way that pleases other people, and to think that true joy and happiness will come to me once I have the praise of other people.

And so there have been times in my life where uh criticism has been so destructive to me because I've set my heart on this thing and it's the praise of other people.

And when you're criticized, it's actually the opposite of praise.

It can be really constructive if you're if you're standing on a firm foundation, but if you're living for the praise of people, it can be really destructive.

And yet, what I've found is the more that God is able to make me aware of my heart's tendency to live for the praise of other people, the better I am able to combat it.

Because I'm able to walk into situations and say, this is what I'm after.

And if Leah and Rachel were able to stop for a moment and to reflect on their own life and to consider what is it that I'm actually after, and can I live without this thing, then they may have been able to be in a better place.

But instead they're kind of blinded by it.

And the worry I have is that many of us are kind of blinded by our desires.

We're just living life, seeking this thing, and we never stop to actually ask if that thing can truly satisfy, if that's actually a good thing.

Now, all those things are good things, aren't they?

God doesn't want you to be uncomfortable your whole life, God doesn't want you to never be praised by people.

In fact, if you're never praised by people, there's probably something wrong.

Like if ever Everyone's just giving you criticism.

I don't think that means that you're like free from the praise of man.

See, some of those things are good things.

The question is, are they becoming primary things to you?

And as we consider the context of Leah and Rachel, part of the problem is that they never stop to discover their own heart.

And I'm reminded of the proverb, Proverbs 4.23, where it says, keep your heart with all viligence, for from it flow springs of life.

And let me just suggest this that you cannot keep your heart with all diligence if you don't know your own heart, if you don't know the tendencies of your own heart.

And if you don't keep your heart with all diligence, the the proverb says clearly that you cannot from your heart flow springs of life.

But if you do know your heart, if you do keep your heart, then you become a blessing to people around you.

So what then?

Well, then in Leah and Rachel here, you have examples of how to lean into God's care and how to lean, how to not lean into God's care.

And we see this especially in Leah as she names her first three sons.

We we see an example of how to lean into God's care.

Now I want you to understand that Leah's not gonna be a perfect example throughout this chapter.

And that makes sense because you know who Leah isn't?

Leah isn't Jesus Christ.

She's not perfect.

And none of us are either.

None of us are ever gonna lean into God's care perfectly.

But the amazing thing that I think should be encouraging for us is that God still graciously provides for Leah.

He still graciously provides for Rachel, even though Rachel's even farther off than Leah.

And the reason that he does that is to remind us is that God pours out his grace on the weak.

You do not have to be perfect before God is willing to lavish his grace on you.

In fact, you need the very opposite.

Isn't this the story of Jacob?

He's taking wicked people and he's transforming them.

So if you come to him wicked, you come to him weak, he will transform you.

And this is the work he's doing in Leah's life.

Now we see that as Leah begins to have children, she's really leaning into God's grace.

And so there's some interesting things happening in this passage.

Notice that in verse 31 it says, When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb.

And then in verse 32 it says, And Leah conceived and bore a son.

It's an amazing work of God.

God knows, God cares, and so God works in Leah's life.

Now Leah conceives the son and she names him Reuben.

For she said, it says in verse 32, because the Lord has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me.

Now there's some really interesting things that are going on here.

The name Reuben is adding two Hebrew words together.

One is Rua, which means sea, and the other one is bin, which means son.

And the naming of the children in this whole chapter is very interesting as we reflect on it.

But here it's interesting that Leah kind of has this act of worship.

She recognizes God has looked on me, and so now I look upon this son.

This is amazing that in each of the births of these four children that Leah first has, Leah is giving all the praise and the glory to God, something that Rachel is unwilling to do.

It says in verse 33 then that she conceived again.

She conceived again and bore a son.

And said, because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.

And she called his name Simeon.

Which means that she's been heard.

Now it's really interesting.

We need to ask this question: what is Leah after?

Remember that Leah is after the love of Jacob.

So it's almost like with the birth of Reuben, what does she say as Reuben is born?

She says, Now my husband's gonna love me.

And yet at least a whole nother nine months goes, and Jacob still doesn't love Leah.

So she gives birth to another son.

And Leah still has this hope that Jacob could love her.

So she says, Well, here's Simeon.

God's heard me.

Now Jacob's gonna love me.

And yet, even after the second son, God still doesn't love her.

And there's a lesson here for us.

The lesson is when you place your hope for satisfaction in the things of earth, you will never reach it.

It will always feel like it's around the next corner.

That's what it is for Leah, isn't it?

Leah thinks that the love of Jacob will truly satisfy her.

And so she has a son and she thinks that will be the thing, but it's not.

So she has another son, and she thinks that will be the thing, but it's not.

So she has another son, and she thinks that will be the thing, but it's not.

And so it is with us.

We think that promotion will finally be less busy once we get that promotion.

We'll be able to give more time to the church and to our family once we get that promotion.

Once we get that bigger house, then we'll be able to start inviting people over to the church and exercising hospitality.

We think that life will be better once this next thing happens.

But can you just take a moment to look back on your life and look at all the things that you thought would make your life better and recognize that that the satisfaction that you are longing for, if it's not in Christ, never actually is realized.

And so it is with Leah, she has another son, believing that maybe Jacob will love her, believing that this is what God has provided so that Jacob would love her, and yet Jacob doesn't love her, so that it says again in verse 34, again she conceived and bore a son, and said, Now this time, now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons, therefore his name was called Levi, which means attached.

Now it's interesting that these are the names of the kids.

The third kid is especially, I think, significant to Leah.

I think she probably was doing some theology in this moment and thinking about Adam and thinking about Noah, thinking about Terah, who each had three sons and were blessed by God.

And as she had this third son, I think there was even some maybe false theology that she was building that, like now God has truly blessed me because I finally had three sons.

And it's interesting that throughout Leah's entire life, she had named these kids in ways that she thought was proving God's works.

And every time she would call Levi, she would be reminded that even though Levi's name is attached, Jacob never attached to Leah because of Levi.

It would be this constant reminder that would bring up the pain of her life time and time again.

Notice what Leah does.

She has she gives birth to a fourth child, and by this point I think she's convinced that Jacob isn't going to give her love because she's bearing children.

And so in verse 35, this is really instructive for us.

It says she conceived again and bore a son and said, This time I will praise the Lord.

Therefore she called his name Judah.

But then she ceased bearing.

And this is really instructive for us.

See, when Leah recognizes that these children will not produce joy, she stops and she praises God.

Isn't this the opposite of what we so often do?

When things don't go well in our life, when our life is not being lived out the way that we desired it to be, often what we do is we come be we become like uh ransom worshipers.

You know what a ransom worshiper is?

It's a person who holds their worship as a ransom to God.

And we kind of say to God, we make this pact, almost like a terrorist deal.

God, I'm gonna worship you once you do this thing in my life.

And I will not worship you until you do.

And we set up this deal with God.

God, you save my kid.

Then I'll give my life to you.

God, you do this work in my life that I've been praying for, then I'll give my life to you.

We hold our ransom as worship.

And we need to be reminded that God doesn't need our worship.

Instead, what Leah does, when she realizes that these sons won't be the thing that brings satisfaction to her, she praises the Lord.

And it's a beautiful moment where she realizes that her life is in shambles.

She's had kids, it was a thing that she thought would cause Jacob to love her, and yet she's still hated.

She is still hated, but in this moment, at the very bottom of her life, she's giving praise to the Lord.

My question for you is: do you have such a love for the Lord that if everything was stripped from you, everything was taken away from you, and all you had was Jesus Christ, would you still proclaim his praise?

This is incredibly difficult to imagine in our North American society where we have so much, where so many of us have beautiful families and big homes and amazing jobs.

And the question for you this morning is to do searching in your heart, and I'm praying that in this moment the Holy Spirit helps you do this.

But is it true that you can sing a song that we're about to sing in a few minutes, that Christ is enough for you?

That if all else was stripped away, if everything like Job was taken away from you, would you be able to proclaim the praise of Jesus Christ?

Are you in that place right now where your love is so good, so so great for Jesus, that you would sing his praise even if everything were taken from you?

Notice how Rachel responds to God's grace.

It says, when Rachel saw that she, being Leah, sorry, sorry, that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister.

Remember that Rachel's desire here is to have children.

Rachel is the loved one.

Now, Rachel's theology here, I think Rachel's theology is very North American.

It's very much like our theology of God.

It's a false theology.

And it's this theology that God's highest end is our pleasure.

We have this kind of theology that God's greatest purpose is to make our life easy and comfortable and good.

And it's a gospel that's preached in many churches.

In some churches, it's as far as to call it the prosperity gospel, which say that God's highest end is your health and your wealth, your prosperity.

In other churches, it's a little more secret than that.

Where it's just kind of that idea that like God's greatest desire for you is for your life to be easy and free from pain.

And this is kind of what Rachel's theology is.

Look what she says to Jacob, give me children, or I shall die.

And Jacob, it's interesting.

So, as much as Jacob gets everything wrong here in his anger, which is a sin against God, he actually says something that's pretty instructive.

He says, Am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?

See, Jacob recognizes what Rachel needs to recognize, that the only way that Rachel can get children is from the Lord.

You know what Rachel's about to do?

In a few verses, she's about to go to Leah and try to get some, she's gonna work a transaction where she kind of like prostitutes her husband off for some mandrakes, believing that these mandrakes can give her children.

Rachel is just not convinced that the thing that is holding her from having children is the Lord.

She's convinced of these worldly measures.

You remember when Rebecca was barren?

What did Rebecca do?

It's a beautiful verse.

It says Rebecca prayed to the Lord, and the Lord gave Rebecca a child.

And this is the theology that Jacob has.

Jacob was born out of this very theology.

And she tried, he tries to give it to Rachel, but Rachel will not believe it.

Instead, Rachel, she's more like Sarah and Hagar.

Again, this has happened.

This has already happened.

And so what Rachel does, not believing Jacob's word, it says in verse 3, it says, then she said, Here is my servant Bilhah, go into her, so that she may give birth on my behalf, that even I may have children through her.

So she gave him her servant, Bilhah, as a wife, and Jacob went into her.

Now it's really interesting what's happening here.

In verse 5, Bilhah conceives this son for Jacob.

And Rachel considers this a victory.

But there's some irony.

And the way that Rachel names her children, there's a lot of irony.

Notice what Rachel names, this child that Bilha gives birth to.

In verse 6 is as God has judged me and has also heard my voice and given me a son.

Therefore she called his name Dan.

Now, the way that Rachel means this is kind of like this sense of like, God's vindicated me.

I did this thing.

I went and got Bilhah and gave her to Jacob, and now she's borne a son to Jacob on my behalf, and God has vindicated me.

I did this thing, and I got what I wanted, and so God is telling me that I'm good.

God is telling me that that was the right thing to do.

And her kind of theology is like, well, if it was the wrong thing to do, then she wouldn't have a child either.

And so she names her God has judged me.

This kind of idea of like she's been vindicated.

Now I think that what Moses is doing for us here is showing us that surely she has been judged, but it's not in the sense that she's been thinks it is.

I think that she's been judged in the sense that God is not happy with this decision.

God already wasn't happy with Jacob taking two wives.

The command for man was that man shall leave his wife, singular, sorry, leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, which is singular.

And yet here Rachel goes even deeper to disobey God's command.

And because Bilha conceives a son, she believes that God has affirmed that action.

And yet, what Moses is showing us is that following our own ways will never lead to good.

Even if it gets the intended result, even if it gets what we are looking for, it will never accomplish anything good.

Any of this instruction as well.

So this is why the second thing I want you to understand this morning is this.

If we're gonna respond well to the conflict in our life as God graciously pours himself out for us, the second thing we need to do then is stick with God's plan.

We need to stick with God's plan.

Now it's another morning that nothing goes right here.

The lights have cut out.

I'm starting to get worried that next it's gonna be like the roof caving in or something like that.

Because it just continues to go wrong.

I think we're good though.

I think we're good.

It's only been technical so far.

So if anything, my mic's the last thing standing.

Is that it?

I think that's probably it.

So all right.

Well, let's keep going and let's see what the next thing is.

Stick with God's plan.

Stick with God's plan.

If we're gonna experience God's grace in the conflict of our life, we stick with God's plan.

See, the issue here is Rachel's straying outside of God's plan.

And so she names Dan Judgment.

In verse 8, she has another child.

She names him Nephtali, which means mighty wrestlings.

And it's that it's kind of like this Jacob-esque idea that Rachel has as she names the son Neftali.

Rachel has this idea of like, I wrestled for this.

In verse 1, you remember, Rachel envies Leah, so then she gets to work, just like Jacob did.

When things weren't going right in Jacob's life, he got right to work.

Apart from God, he got right to work.

He did it his own way.

And now Leah looks at the son Neptali and she says, I wrestled and I got this son.

Now I think it would be incredibly awkward, again, as for the rest of their lives, Dan and Neptali would be called by their mother and son.

And their name essentially means God's judgment and wrestling.

And it would be this reminder every time that they use the name, this reminder that Rachel did this the wrong way.

But what we what we see then is that Rachel, she does this the wrong way, but she kind of influences Leah in verse 8.

Sorry, verse 9.

This is a situation of bad company, corrupting good character.

So that Leah, look what it says in verse 9, saw that she ceased bearing children, and so she does what Rachel did.

She took her servant Zilpa and gave her to Jacob as a wife.

And now this servant will bear to Leah two children.

I think there's something really instructive here for us, as we consider sticking with God's plan when things aren't going right in our life.

And the thing that's really instructive for us is this.

Here is how we can apply this text.

Let me give it to you, okay?

One of the ways that we can apply this text is this: don't build your theology of how God works off of the experience of other people.

Let me say that again because I have a really pastoral concern in this.

And it's this don't build your theology, don't build your understanding of who God is based off the experience of other people.

And what I find so often is happening is that I talk to many people, and they've kind of built this theology of how God works based off the testimony and the stories of things that have happened in other people's lives.

So that they say, well, God works like this because I heard of a story of a person who this happened with them.

And so that's how God works.

And I want you to make sure that in your life you do not allow experience to be the primary way that you come to know how God works.

Experience is not the primary way that we come to know God.

Scripture is.

So the first thing that we need to do, if we want to understand how God works, if we want to understand who God is, the first thing we need to do is go to God's word.

Leah could have done that.

Leah could have gone to God's word.

Instead, what she does is she sees Rachel's experience.

She sees that Rachel's sinfulness led to good results.

So Leah follows in suit.

Leah does the same thing.

The question we need to ask is this.

What does God's word say?

What does God's word say?

That should be the constant refrain in our church.

Constantly, constantly, we should be saying to people, what does God's word say?

Even for things that are just like basic Christian needs, like we always say, the question should be like, what does God's word say?

What does God's word say?

You know what I you know what kind of happens as we um, you know, probably have grown up in the church and spent a lot of time in the church, we start to build this theology that's not connected to scripture.

And the theology may be right, but then when we're challenged on that theology, we actually don't understand where it comes from in scripture.

This is why I love, and we're doing this now with a group of guys in our church, going through, it's called systematic theology, where authors will compile through a system asking questions of scripture, an understanding of what God's word says on subjects like prayer or atonement or the miraculous gifts or things like this.

So you take all of God's word and you say, What does God's word say about this?

And what you find as you dig deep into theology is that these things that you've always heard and believed, you start to realize that you never really had an understanding of how Scripture argued for them.

And so let me compel you, church, let me encourage you, church, to constantly be asking this question: what does God's word say?

Here's another danger that I notice.

That it's possible that in trying to discern God's will for our life, many of us will lean on experience rather than scripture.

And so we notice that maybe there's some sort of decision that we have to make in life, maybe there's some sort of thing that we're thinking about, some major life change.

And we're kind of we have this kind of theology of like, well, I'm just gonna wait for God to open a door.

I'm gonna wait for it to feel right.

I'm gonna wait for something significant to happen that tells me that this is the right thing to do.

And it's this kind of theology that like God leads us according to our experience.

And what God constantly wants to ingrain in us is that the thing he leads us by is by his word.

That means that when I have a major life decision, I'm gonna be consulting God's word for anything, any principle it gives me that helps me make that decision.

It means I'm gonna be consulting God's people, asking them, what do you think God's word says about my situation?

See, we can't know God's plan apart from God's word.

And one of the things that we understand from this passage is that just because something goes right doesn't mean that the action we took is right.

See, Leah also would receive children from the servant.

What does this highlight for us?

Well, it definitely doesn't highlight that whatever we do is okay as long as we get the intended result, but it certainly does highlight God's grace that even though Leah follows the wrong example, she is still given children that would be inherited into the covenant, promise, and blessing of Abraham.

God still works through these people that are broken.

God still blesses these people that are broken.

Why does He do that?

We gotta be really careful here because we see God blessing people who are making wrong choices and believing wrong choices.

Things.

So we can kind of slip into this theology of like, well, it doesn't matter what you believe, all roads lead to heaven.

The God of Islam, the God of Buddhism, it's all the same.

God is so gracious that He's gonna cover you no matter what you believe.

That's not what's happening here.

What is happening is that each of these people who are doing the wrong thing but still experiencing God's grace are part of God's covenant family.

They're part of the covenant blessing of Abraham.

So the reason why they're experiencing God's grace is because they are part of God's family.

They're part of his children.

And what this is teaching us is this when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, God still pours his grace out on us, even though we are not perfect.

Now, some of us are perfectionists in here, and we need to hear this.

Because we're kind of like incapable of moving forward in our relationship with God because we kind of have this perfectionism where we say, like, I'm gonna make the next step for God once I am right with God.

Some of us have it with salvation.

Where we have this kind of like sense of like, I don't think that God's gonna accept me unless I get my life together.

And I've heard people say that about coming to church, like, oh, I gotta, I gotta get a few things right before I come to church.

As though it's the idea of like, you gotta hit a certain standard before God's gonna accept you.

And the gospel is this that God is not gonna accept you if you think that you can come with some sort of righteousness that you can contribute to him.

Instead, what God is looking for from you is nothing but your sin.

We come to the cross and we have nothing to bring but our own sinfulness.

And God takes weak people like Jacob, weak people like me, weak people like you, and transforms them.

Some of us are saved understanding that, but then we think that our growth can only happen when we reach a certain point.

And so we'll hold off things like baptism, thinking like, I just gotta be in a different place in life.

I just have to get some over some, I just have to be more obedient, I gotta figure out this thing in my life, and then I'll take that next step.

Then I'll step into a small group, then I'll start serving.

And we have this kind of idea of like we need to be, there needs to be like this certain level of righteousness before we can really serve God.

And God's showing us here that if we place our faith in Him, He works in us no matter where we are.

He pours and lavishes His grace out on us.

This is why in Ephesians it says that through faith, God's grace is lavished out on you.

Do you notice that Paul doesn't have to stop there to work out like the mathematics of everybody?

Okay, well, you have like, you know, 70% faith, so God only lavishes a little bit of grace on you.

And you, you know, you're at like 7% grace, so God's giving you like a little sprinkling of grace, and you are at 100%, so it's like full Niagara Falls lavishing of Jesus Christ's grace.

There's none of that.

You know what he says?

If you have faith in God, the grace of God is lavished on you fully.

It doesn't matter if your faith is strong, it doesn't matter if your faith is weak.

God is like, I'm giving it all to you.

I'm giving it all to you.

And here it is, we see that Rachel is blessed by God, and Leah is blessed by God, and neither of these people are perfect, and yet they are blessed by God.

Now, in verse 14, we see Rachel and Leah get even deeper into trouble.

It says, In the days of the wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah.

And Rachel said to Leah, please give me some of your son's mandrakes.

Now, what's going on here is mandrakes were kind of seen as like a fertility, uh, a way to make a woman fertile.

And so Rachel is placing her hope in these mandrakes.

Now, I want to take a moment just to consider that there are some things, as we consider in fertility, there are some things that God has blessed us with as a society that can lead to fertility.

And those are God-given things.

It is not wrong to go down that road, if maybe you're uh married and trying to have kids and not able, to go down that road of seeing a doctor and trying to figure out what's going on.

What's wrong here is that Rachel is again trying to do this outside of God's help.

Remember that Rachel has the exact uh the exact example from her mother who was barren and then prayed and God answered and cured her infertility.

Rachel has that example, but she's unwilling to turn to God.

Now she's turning to all these other places where God is so willing to open up her womb as she would turn to her, to him like Leah does.

Rachel's turning to all these other things.

So she goes to these mandrakes, which were thought by other cultures that maybe they would heal infertility.

But Leah said to her when she asked for them, Is it a small matter that you would have taken away my husband?

Would you also take away my son's mandrakes also?

And Rachel said, Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes.

And when Jacob came in from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, You must come into me, for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes.

So he lay with her that night.

Now something really interesting and ironic happens in verse 17.

It says, God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.

That's ironic because you know why this whole deal was set up?

This deal was set up so that Rachel could have a son.

And here it is again, like digging the wound deeper into Rachel's heart.

Leah gets another son.

Leah gets another son.

And I think this is so instructive.

Rachel is having so much trouble getting what she wants because she's unwilling to turn to the Lord.

She's only willing to do it her own way.

This should be eye-opening to us.

This should cause a hunger in some of us to say, I want to make sure every detail of my life is lived out God's way.

Because when you live according to God's way, life goes well for you, even if it's difficult, even if it's hard.

And when you live according to your own way, everything ends up in shambles.

This is the principle.

No matter how smart you are, no matter how wise you are, you cannot outsmart and outwisdom God.

His way is always higher than our ways.

And so the wise one constantly asks God, What do you want me to do?

Notice in verse 17 something really interesting.

It says, And God listened to Leah, and God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.

There's something going on here.

See, in order for God to listen to Leah, Leah needs to be speaking to God.

So even in the midst of Leah doing all these things wrong, we still get the sense that Leah's crying out to God.

And the reason why Leah is having so many children is because God is blessing her.

When she cries out to the Lord, the Lord answers.

This is who our God is.

And Leah says, God has given me my wages.

She still doesn't fully understand.

She thinks that it's because she set up this deal.

She set up this deal with Jacob.

God has given me my wages because I gave my servant to my husband.

So she called his name Issachar.

These people continually do things their own way.

And yet God continually pours out his grace.

And the last thing I want you to see here as we consider God's grace in the conflict of our lives and the mess of our lives is that we need to trust in God's promise.

See, in verse 19, Leah conceives again.

And then in verse 21, she conceives again.

And it's not until verse 22 that Rachel is finally given a child.

And again, notice God keeps driving us to Himself.

It is God who provides.

It's God who provides.

It's so instructive for us.

In the midst of conflict, what do we need?

What do you need more of right now?

We listed all those things: comfort, praise, power, pleasure, all these things we listed.

And my question for you is what do you need more of?

And the answer is the thing that we need more of is God.

Each of us, each of us.

We need more of God.

The thing that's going to satisfy us the most is if we walk out of this place closer to God.

And so many of us are convinced it's like, I just need that new thing, I just need that relationship to be restored.

I just need that thing that I've been praying for forever.

But what God is saying, what you need is to be closer to me.

So every time God's, it's constantly God who's providing.

We see that again in verse 22.

See, Rachel's womb is open not because she goes to the mandrake, not because she sinfully goes to the servant.

Rachel's womb is open because God remembers her and God listens to her and opens her womb.

And we get the sense here that Rachel still doesn't understand because she conceives and gives birth to a son, saying, God has taken away my reproach.

But then look what she does.

She calls his name Joseph, saying, May God the Lord add to me another son.

This is what Rachel's been waiting for her whole life.

All I want is a son.

And as soon as she gets it, she's like the child on Christmas morning who's like, okay, where's the next present?

And you're like, oh, listen, you little brat, you greedy brat, there's nothing more.

That's it.

And yet Rachel's kind of got this like position with God, like, God, well, you better give me another one.

You better give me another one.

And here, you see your own sinful heart here?

You will never be satisfied by the things of earth.

It will only create a hunger in you for more.

It's like John D.

Rockefeller, who was the richest man that ever lived, one time a journalist asked him, when are you gonna have enough money?

And he said, When I have just a little bit more.

And that is that that sinful desire for just a little bit more is in you, and it is in me, and it is in Rachel.

I just need more.

And it's you know what?

You know why it doesn't satisfy Rachel and it will never satisfy you?

Is because you were not created to be satisfied for it.

If you are a believer or you are an unbeliever, there is one thing that you were created for, and it was for satisfaction in Jesus Christ.

And the astounding thing is that in our weakness, in our brokenness, God loves us to such a degree that he pours his grace out on us.

And he did this for Rachel, who still doesn't respond right, and yet God is chasing after her.

As we take communion this morning, we're reminded by the cross that this is what God has done for us.

Romans says that God died for the ungodly.

Jesus died for the ungodly.

And you should have a communion cup with you if you don't.

The ushers are gonna come to the front and they're gonna make their way back.

You can just slip your hand in the air and they'll make sure that you get one into your hands.

But we're reminded that by the cross that God died for the ungodly, that God came when we were not deserving of his grace, and he in the most significant way poured out his grace.

He lavished it on us in Christ.

And so we take this cup as an acknowledgement in weakness that we need this cup.

We take this cup because we say, God, my works can't do it.

It's got to be your works, my righteousness can't do it, it's got to be your righteousness.

I can't pay my own penalty.

It's got to be the blood of Christ and the flesh of Christ being pierced.

You'll notice that on this cup there are two layers.

There's one layer that gets you to the bread, and another layer that gets you to the juice.

And as we take this, I just want to ask you if you're here and you're not a believer, if you haven't placed your faith in Jesus Christ, I would just ask you not to take this.

This is a time for believers to reflect on the work that Christ has done for them.

And if Christ hasn't done that work for you, then just hold off until you place your faith in Christ, and that work becomes applied to your life.

If you're here and you are living in sin that you're unwilling to confess and unwilling to repent of, then I ask that you would let this pass as well.

Paul says that we when we take the cup in that kind of way, we bring judgment upon ourselves.

Let me pray as we enter into a time of communion.

Father, God, we thank you for this time.

And Lord, we thank you for this cup.

And God, I pray that in this moment, Lord, the weight of what we're doing would be impressed upon us.

That this is not just another thing to do, that this is not just a routine, Lord, would this not be a kind of a religious ceremony?

But God, in every way, would this be a moment that we acknowledge our weakness and acknowledge your grace in the mess and conflict of our life?

And so, God, we praise you for this time.

The Lord Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and he said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for the blood and the sacrifice of Christ.

And God, I pray that you would be growing in our hearts a love for you that is so great that we would be able to declare what we're about to say and that you are more than enough for us, God.

We pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.