Jacob Fathers Twelve Tribes

Good morning, Good News Church. Last week we took a break from our series on

Genesis to cover the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

So today, that's exciting. One person was like really excited about Easter.

So today we are picking up where we left off before Easter.

So we're continuing in our series on in the book of Genesis from Abraham to Joseph.

Our text this morning is Genesis chapters 29, 30, and 31.

Genesis 29 · chapter mention

Earlier this year when I was outlining the book of Genesis, I thought it would

be fine to preach all three of these chapters together.

But when I arrived to the text this past week, I thought, that is a lot of verses.

And a lot of strange things happen in these verses that's going to require a lot of explanation.

So I went home and I discussed it with my wife. I said, honey,

can I tell you this week's Bible story? And she said, sure.

So this is what I told her. This is actually, this is not word for word what I told her.

This is a summary of what I told her. Okay, I said, all right,

you ready for the Bible story? She said, yes, I said, okay.

A dude falls madly in love with his cousin. His uncle tricks him into marrying

both the cousin and her older sister, who he does not want.

And a breeding contest breaks out between these two sisters that are both married

to him that includes their servants giving them to, they give their servants

to their husband as additional wives in the breeding contest.

And my wife said, that sounds dysfunctional.

And I said, I agree. Then, the guy has a wage dispute with his uncle slash father-in-law slash boss.

And he ends up making a lot of wealth. And one story involves him putting these

striped branches in front of his sheep as they mated.

And it seemed that he believed that if the sheep would look at striped branches

as they were mating, they would like make striped and speckled sheep.

Heidi said, that sounds like an old wives' tale. I said, I agree.

Then at the end, the father-in-law gets so angry at the guy,

and he accuses him of stealing, and they get away with it because the wife takes

the stolen goods and puts them underneath her and then says,

I can't get up. I'm on my period.

And so the stolen goods are not found in the search, and they get away.

She gets away with it, and then they settle their differences,

and they go their separate ways. The end.

And Heidi said to me, good luck.

So here's the plan um i am not going to read all 131 verses in these chapters

but rather i'm going to read some excerpts and summarize as we go along so we're

going to begin in genesis chapter 29 we're going to begin with verse 9,

Genesis 29 · chapter mention

and it starts off this way. It says, while he was still speaking with them, okay?

So the he here is Jacob, and the them is a group of shepherds that he ran into.

So if you don't, if you haven't been here, let me review what has happened a

little bit in the story so far, so you can see how we got to this point.

And even if you were here, let me remind you.

A few weeks ago, we learned the part of the story where Jacob deceives his father

and steals a blessing that was intended for his brother.

And so his brother gets so mad at him that he wants to kill him.

Remember that? So the brother wants to kill him. So then the mom says,

Jacob, now would be a good time to get out of town.

So I guess at some point she probably wanted him to go out of town anyway,

because she wanted him to go back to the land that they were from in order to find a wife.

So she said, I think finding a wife right now would be a good idea.

Why don't you go back to where we're from and find a wife?

So Jacob is fleeing his homeland for the land of his ancestors in order to find

a wife and in order to get away from his brother. That's what's happening.

Well, he gets there. Once he gets there, he comes into contact with a group

of shepherds at a well, okay? And then this story happens.

While he was still speaking with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep,

for she was a shepherdess.

As soon as Jacob saw his uncle Laban's daughter, Rachel, with his sheep,

he went up and rolled the stone from the opening and watered his uncle Laban's sheep.

Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept loudly. He told Rachel that he was her father's

relative, Rebecca's son. She ran and told her father.

When Laban heard the news about his sister's son, Jacob, he ran to meet him,

hugged him, and kissed him. And then he took him to his house,

and Jacob told him all that had happened.

Laban said to him, yes, you are my own flesh and blood. After Jacob had stayed

with him a month, Laban said to him, just because you're my relative,

should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be.

Now Laban had two daughters. The older was named Leah and the younger was named Rachel.

Leah had ordinary eyes, but Rachel was shapely and beautiful.

Let me go ahead and stop right there. Just, I want to point something out.

I don't know what this means. Leah had ordinary eyes. The Hebrew word for ordinary,

it could also be translated delicate or weak or tender, but I don't know that

that helps me understand it any better.

I don't know what it means to have tender eyes or delicate eyes or ordinary eyes or weak eyes.

But when you take it in context with the rest of the sentence,

I think it's sort of obvious what the author is trying to say,

even if you don't know what the word is.

Okay. Leah had blank eyes, but Rachel was shapely and beautiful.

Do you see what he's saying? Whatever it is, is negative.

All right. So there was something wrong with Leah's eyes. And so Jacob's like,

oh, she's fine, but oh, this one, she's hot.

Okay. And so, so he likes one of them more than the other. I just want you to

notice that because it might not be obvious with the phrase Leah had ordinary

eyes, but Rachel was shapely and beautiful.

Verse 18, Jacob loved Rachel.

So he answered Laban, I'll work for you seven years. for your younger daughter, Rachel.

Laban replied, better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay with me.

So Jacob worked seven years for Rachel and they seemed like only a few days

to him because of his love for her. Let me stop there.

So I guess the first thing I'm going to point out about this passage is the

cousin thing was not a problem back then. Okay. Like I realized like culturally

for us, it's a big problem.

But back then it would have probably been considered a plus and not a negative.

Okay. In our culture, the whole cousin marriage thing is frowned upon, right?

I'm hoping you know this. Maybe I'm letting you know. Maybe there's going to

be a few breakups this afternoon.

I thought it was well-known that cousin marriage was sort of frowned on in our

culture. I've heard people make jokes, you know, where they're like,

oh, you know, people in West Virginia, blah, blah, blah, you know, or whatever.

In Kentucky, they go to family reunions to date, blah, blah, blah.

So in our culture, it's frowned upon. It is legal. It's legal in 18 states, okay?

But it's sort of frowned upon in our culture. But back then,

that was not the case culturally.

It was actually considered better to marry from among your own people than to

marry outside of your tribe.

So as far as the story goes in its own time period, there's nothing sort of

unusual or weird happening here from their perspective.

Now, the one thing that I think is weird for their time period that,

like, it's different, another thing that's different from ours would be this,

verse 20 is much more romantic by biblical standards than most,

like, love verses that are in the Bible.

So I'm gonna reread it to you in case you didn't catch it, verse 20.

So Jacob worked seven years for Rachel and they seemed like only a few days

to him because of his love for her.

Yeah. So what I'm telling you is, you may have read that kind of thing in a

book before because that's a very modern way of talking about love.

It wasn't the way that they talked about it back then, it seems to me.

Like in ancient times, love was not the only reason you would marry someone.

A lot of the times, love was not even the main reason that you would marry someone.

Lots of marriages were done for survival, for family honor, for procreation.

For financial reasons. So this particular sentence sticks out to me as especially

sentimental by like Bible standards.

It's especially romantic, it's especially hallmarky compared to a lot of the marriages in the Bible.

All right, here's what happens next. After that, I mean, so beautiful.

You can make a little movie out of that part. And then Laban tricks Jacob into

marrying Leah, Rachel's older sister.

Jacob marries her and sleeps with her and does not figure out that it is the

wrong woman until the next morning, okay? You can read it for yourself, but it's in there.

There's some sort of celebration or wedding or marriage ceremony,

and then they go into this tent, and then they consummate their marriage,

and then they go to sleep, and then he wakes up the next morning and the sun

comes up and he looks over and he goes, hey, you're not Rachel.

Like, what's going on here? So he's upset.

And I guess I wanted to address this because it's in the passage.

How is it possible that Jacob married someone and it was the wrong person and he didn't know it?

So my official answer to you is, I don't know, because the story does not say.

But there are four theories that I want to give you, four things that people say about this.

And none of these are mutually exclusive, which means it could be any one of

these or any combination of these four things that could have happened.

But here they are. Number one, sometimes people bring up this,

that there may have been a veil involved, okay?

It seems to me highly likely that Leah would have worn a veil during the wedding

ceremony, so that part makes sense.

The only thing for this to make total sense with the story, though,

is she would have had to continue wearing the veil even once they consummated

their marriage, and I do not know how likely that was because I don't know enough

about sex and veils in that culture.

Hard to believe. I have not researched a lot about veil usage and sexuality from 4,000 years ago.

So I don't know how likely that would be that she would have continued wearing

it and that that would have been part of it.

The second theory is that there was drinking involved, okay?

That there was this marriage ceremony and maybe Jacob drank more alcohol than

he should have and his judgment was impaired, okay? The story does not say that.

That's just a theory that people have. It doesn't mention alcohol in the story

at all. Just the theory is, well, there was this wedding and they woke up with

the wrong woman. Maybe he drank too much.

A third theory is that Darkness plays a big role in this, and in fact,

that one is sort of hinted at in the story.

It is nighttime, I think, when they go into the tent, and the sun comes up when

he realizes that it's a different person.

And you might go, yeah, but I don't know, I think I ought to figure that out. Well, I don't know.

It might be helpful for you to realize like how dark the world was before electricity.

It never has to be dark in your life if you don't want it to be.

At nighttime, you can drive around on roads. There's streetlights.

There's headlights on our cars.

You get home, there's lights on the outside of your house. There's lights on

the inside of your house. There's lights in your ceiling. There's lights in the lamps.

There's got alarm clocks glowing in the dark. You got your cell phone that glows.

Like you can see anytime you want to see.

But for most of human history, when the sun was up, you could see.

So you did stuff. Then when the sun went down, you couldn't do anything for a long time.

That's why you slept for most of it. because there was just nothing you could

do. And then you had to wait for the sun to come up and you could get back to

doing what you were doing.

Okay, so it could be that it was very dark and he couldn't see.

The fourth thing is, and I did not know this one until this week,

but as I was looking it up, I found someone that mentioned this,

that perhaps Jacob did not know them, Rachel and Leah, very much in the meantime.

If you remember in the story, he shows up and meets them, whatever age they

are, and then he works for Jacob for seven years.

I think that there was an assumption, at least on my part, maybe you do this

too, there were the assumptions, is, well, they must have hung out that whole

seven years. So they would know each other really well, right?

She's a shepherdess and he's a shepherd. And so maybe they were all just doing

sheep stuff all day, every day.

And so they knew each other so well, especially in our culture.

If someone is engaged for seven years, we would say, well, they know each other very well.

Back then, they didn't do dating, okay? Dating was not a thing.

I do not know how much contact Jacob had with Rachel or Leah during those seven years, okay?

But we probably should not imagine our kind of engagements, where they're holding

hands and walking through the field together and whatever, going to movies and

making out. Like, that's probably not what happened.

I don't know how much contact he had with either sister during the seven years,

but if they were teenagers when he met them, and if they were in their 20s when

the marriage finally happens, it could be that they looked quite a bit different.

So for perhaps one or more of those reasons, Jacob was tricked.

Whatever the reason, it's the next morning that Jacob figures it out and he

goes to Laban to check on Laban's return policy.

He says, he sees what happens. He goes to his father-in-law.

He goes, what is your problem?

This is not the one I picked out. Okay.

And then Laban says this to him. This is Genesis 29 verse 26.

Genesis 29:26

Laban answered, it is not the custom in this place to give the younger daughter

in marriage before the firstborn.

That would have been very helpful information to know seven years ago.

But he just, after the marriage, he throws this on him.

And it's not the custom in this place to give the younger daughter in marriage before the firstborn.

Complete this week of wedding celebration, and we will also give you this younger

one in return for working yet another seven years for me. It doesn't even use

her name, isn't that terrible?

We'll give you the younger one too, in return for working yet another seven

years for me. Now look at this. And Jacob did just that.

He finished the week of celebration, and Laban gave him his daughter, Rachel, as his wife.

So Jacob goes along with this. The deal was seven years for Rachel.

So then he ends up with Leah and he goes, well, that's fine.

Why don't you just do another seven years? He's already worked seven years for Rachel.

Another seven years for Rachel. Leah will just be bonus for you.

He goes along with it. He takes two wives and he works an additional seven years

for the wife that he was originally promised, 14 years total.

At this point, I would like to point out something that I noticed about Jacob

as I was studying the book of Genesis this year.

This is just my opinion. I did not read this anywhere. Maybe I'm overstating the case.

But as I read through Genesis and as I studied it, Jacob stuck out to me,

among the other characters in Genesis, Jacob stuck out to me as quite passive.

He seemed to me, at least at times, he seems to be one of the most passive characters

in the book of Genesis, one of the most passive personalities.

At least at times, he seems quite passive.

Earlier before this story, for those of you who are here, you might remember,

his mother told him to lie to his father.

And she had this like elaborate plan to deceive the father.

And she said, let's do this. And Jacob said, what? Okay.

Right? It wasn't his idea. It was the mom's idea to deceive the father.

And Jacob just went along with it.

In this story, Jacob is tricked into marrying two women and he just goes along with it.

In a little bit, we're going to see that each of his wives gives him an additional

wife as part of the childbearing contest, and he just goes along with it.

Later on in Genesis, we're going to see that two of his sons commit mass murder.

They literally, they're mad at this guy, so they go kill that guy and everyone that he ever met.

And when Jacob finds out this about his sons, Lord willing, we will get to this passage.

It seems to me what happens is Jacob complains about it a little bit.

And then doesn't really do anything about it until the very end of his life.

And it seems to me that Jacob, in the book of Genesis, is often acted upon.

And he goes along with unwise and sinful things. And so I wanted to use this

as an opportunity to point out to you this.

That while it is possible to be overly aggressive, I wanted to remind you it

is possible to be overly passive. Amen?

In our culture, it seems to me that people are very aware that you can be overly aggressive, okay?

We all know that people can be too disagreeable. People can be too complainy.

People can be too dogmatic or feisty or demanding, okay?

But it is also possible to be too passive and bad things are happening around

you and you just do nothing.

Okay, the next section of the story is Genesis 29, verse 31,

Genesis 29:31

going all the way to chapter 30, verse 24.

You can read it on your own time. But it involves a description of the breeding

competition that I talked to you earlier about Rachel and Leah.

Leah tries to get Jacob's affection by providing him with children.

She knows that she is the unloved wife. She knows that her dad had to trick

Jacob in order to get him to marry her.

So she knows she's at a disadvantage when it comes to her sister, Rachel.

And so she thinks, if I can have lots of children for my husband,

maybe that will like get him to love me. He'll love me because I'm the mother of his children.

And so she's trying to sort of get his love that way.

And for a while, she has a whole bunch of kids before Rachel ever has her first

one. So there's a long period of time where Rachel is jealous of her and also

tries to win him with children.

As I've already mentioned, this involved him taking on two additional wives

named Bilhah and Zilpah.

And this eventually results in Jacob fathering at least 13 children across four

women, 12 of whom become the 12 tribes of Israel.

So as far as biblical history goes, this is a very significant passage.

The 12 tribes that come from these 12 sons form what becomes the nation of Israel

and they are mentioned hundreds of times throughout the rest of the Bible.

The next section is the labor dispute that I mentioned earlier.

I'm going to read to you from Genesis 30, starting in verse 25.

This is the beginning of the labor dispute. So Genesis 30, verse 25.

Genesis 30:25

After Rachel gave birth to Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, at this point,

Jacob's lived with Laban for, I think, about 14 years.

After Rachel gave birth to Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, send me on my way so

that I can return to my homeland.

Give me my wives and my children that I have worked for and let me go.

You know how hard I have worked for you. He's saying, I've done everything that

was required of me. I've worked here for a long time for you.

I want to go back home now.

Verse 27. But Laban said to him, if I have found favor in your sight, stay. Stay.

I have learned by divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you.

Then Laban said, name your wages and I will pay them.

So Jacob said to him, you know what I have done for you and your herds.

For you had very little before I came, but now your wealth has increased.

Then the Lord has blessed you because of me.

And now, when will I also do something for my own family? Laban asked, what should I give you?

And Jacob said, you don't need to give me anything. If you do this one thing

for me, I will continue to shepherd and keep your flock.

Let me go through all your sheep today and remove every sheep that is speckled

or spotted, every dark colored sheep among the lambs and the spotted and speckled

among the female goats. Such will be my wages.

In the future, when you come to check on my wages, my honesty will testify for me.

If I have any female goats that are not speckled or spotted or any lambs that

are not black, they will be considered stolen.

Good, said Laban, let it be as you have said.

So what's happening here, Laban agrees to this arrangement. And I think the

reason why is because thinks this is a very good deal, okay?

And this is what I believe is happening here, okay? I read about it and looked into it this week.

It seems to me this is what's going on. I think back then, most sheep were white,

and they would produce more white sheep.

And most goats were black or dark brown, and they would produce more black or dark brown goats.

A black sheep would be a rare occurrence, and a multicolored sheep or multicolored

goat, streaked or spotted or speckled, that would also be a rare occurrence.

So I think when Laban hears this, he goes, this is a bargain.

This guy's going to shepherd all my sheep and I get to keep all of them except

for like on the rare occasion that an unusual one is born, like he gets the

stuff that happens rarely.

So I think Laban thought, this is a bargain. The answer is yes.

However, the next section depicts Jacob doing some kind of selective breeding

to produce a large amount of multicolored sheep.

And there is, I assume there is, I mean, people do this. They do selective breeding

to have certain animals happen. That part's not unusual.

But part of the plan involved him using these striped branches.

It doesn't make much sense scientifically that he has these branches and he

makes cuttings in them. So you have the dark bark and then you have the light

wood that's underneath.

And so he has these striped branches that he puts in front of the sheep during the mating period.

The idea being that if the sheep looks at it, then they're gonna have these

speckled or spotted or whatever striped sheep because that's what they were

looking at at the time, okay?

Like I said, that doesn't make any sense scientifically, but that's what he

does, and it's what happens.

Like they start having a whole bunch of streaked and speckled and spotted sheep.

So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna skip to chapter 31, starting in verse

four and following, because those verses explain more about what took place

during this period of time, because it turns out this period of time was about six years.

So we could find out more of what was going on. And these verses that I'm about

to read to you, Jacob gives God the credit for why Jacob's sheep outbred Laban's sheep.

And that makes more sense to me, okay? It doesn't seem to me that a branch with

stripes on it's going to do anything.

But if the Lord has decided, I am going to bless this one and not this one,

that makes more sense to me that God could just intervene and cause Jacob's

sheep to be more blessed than Laban's.

And so that's what is explained in this section. Let me read it to you.

This is Genesis 31, starting in verse 4.

Jacob had Rachel and Leah called to the field where his flocks were.

He said to them, I can see from your father's face that his attitude toward me is not the same.

Okay. This is a way of saying like, your dad's mad at me.

After six years, my sheep have multiplied and multiplied and his have not.

I have become like, we set up this deal and I have become a lot richer than

him and he's angry at me. Okay. He doesn't like me anymore.

I can see by his face, his attitude toward me is not the same.

But the God of my father has been with me.

You know that I've worked hard for your father and that he has cheated me and

changed my wages 10 times.

But God has not let him harm me. If he said the spotted sheep will be your wages,

then all the sheep were born spotted.

And if he said the streaked sheep will be your wages, then all the sheep were born streaked.

God has taken away your father's herds and given them to me.

So at this point, he's explaining what's going on to his wife,

and he gives us information that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

Like when he talks about your father has changed my wages 10 times,

that was not mentioned in the earlier chapter. But I assume that we're supposed

to read it and go, oh, that is what had been happening.

Like as Jacob says this, I think that it informs us that that's what had been happening.

I assume that we're supposed to believe what Jacob is telling his wives here,

because he says it to Laban later on in the chapter, and Laban doesn't dispute

it. I think he really did try to change his wages 10 times.

So when I put it all together, it seems what's happening here is he's saying

to Hey, I set this thing up with your dad and I just keep getting blessed and

the kind of sheep that I'm going for just keep multiplying.

So then your dad comes and renegotiates the terms of my pay.

And he's renegotiated the terms of my pay 10 times.

And every single time he does it, God blesses my part of the bargain.

So verse 10, when the flocks were breeding, I saw in a dream that the streaked,

spotted, and speckled males were mating with the females.

And in that dream, the angel of God said to me, Jacob. And I said, here I am.

And he said, look up and see all the males that are mating with the flocks are

streaked, spotted, and speckled.

For I have seen all that Laban has been doing to you.

I am the God of Bethel, where you poured oil on the stone marker and made a

solemn vow to me. Do you remember that from a few weeks ago?

Get up, leave this land, and return to your native land.

So Jacob explains that Laban has been cheating him, that God has been blessing

him, and that God told him, it is now time to go home.

The wives, Jacob's wives, agree with him, and they leave to go to his homeland

with him without even saying goodbye to their dad.

So just one day, they wait until Laban's not paying attention,

and they all just get up and leave and go to move back home.

Apparently, both wives' daughters, like Jacob's wives, Laban's daughters,

were also frustrated with their dad, because they were like,

let's go. and they had no kiss goodbye, nothing. They just left.

Now the story ends with Laban figuring out that his son-in-law and his daughters

and his grandchildren all left without warning, okay? And he is furious.

So he goes and hunts Jacob down and he finds their little camp as they're heading back home.

And when he gets there, he accuses him of stealing some idols from him, okay?

Idols meaning like statues of other gods, right? So apparently Laban had some

statues to some sort of gods in his household. and then when Rachel and Leah

and Jacob and all the grandchildren all left, Laban said, hey,

who took my gods? Who took my idols?

So he chases them down and he says, give me back my idols.

Why would you, I can't believe you left. I can't believe you'd steal stuff from

me as you left. Now here's the thing. The accusation was actually true.

His daughter, Rachel, the younger one that was beautiful and shapely,

she was the one who stole those idols and took them with her on her way out.

So Laban says, let me search. Jacob doesn't even know that happened.

So he's like, search all our stuff all you want. We don't have your stuff.

We didn't take your stuff.

So he starts searching from tent to tent to tent, doesn't find it,

doesn't find it. It finally gets to Rachel's tent. Rachel's tent is in there

and she's put them in a bag and she put the bag underneath her and sat down.

He's searching all around the tent. And when he's like, hey,

can you get up? She goes, sorry, I'm on my period, okay?

And he, this is his daughter, he's a dad. I think he's like, ooh, all right.

And he walks out and she gets away with it. And so then after that,

Jacob and Laban reconcile and they go their separate ways. And that's where our passage ends.

So, as I prepare to land this sermon, I want to go back and I want to point

out some of what God did in this story.

So far, there has been a lot of like Jacob did this and Laban did that and Rachel

did this and the sheep did that.

But what does this passage teach us about God?

I want to read to you four verses in this passage that talk about God's role

in the story. They're all going to come up on the screen at once. Okay.

Genesis 29 verse 31 says, When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved,

Genesis 29:31

he opened her womb, but Rachel was unable to conceive.

God's paying attention to what's happening. He knows everything.

He sees that Leah is unloved and he opens her womb.

God was behind Leah's children. That's important. That's going to be very important

for something I say later.

God is the one who causes Leah to be able to have the children that she has.

Genesis chapter 30, verse 22 says this. Then God remembered Rachel.

Genesis 30:22

This would be years later.

He listened to her. I guess she had been praying to him about this.

He listened to her and opened her womb.

God gifted Rachel with children as well.

Genesis 31, verse 3. Then the Lord said to him, go back to the,

Genesis 31:3

oh, the hymn there, by the way, is Jacob.

Go back to the land of your fathers and to your family, and I will be with you.

So God guided Jacob.

And then Genesis 31, 29, and in this case, Laban is the one speaking.

He says, I could do you great harm. The I there is Laban, the U is Jacob.

This is after they've left, and then Jacob went and found him,

okay? And he's so angry at him, and I think he, I don't know what harm he intended,

but I think he really wanted to do harm to Jacob.

He says, I could do you great harm, but last night, the God of your father said

to me, watch yourself, don't say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.

Laban basically said, like, I found you, and I wanted to hurt you,

but your God showed up last night and told me to leave you alone.

God protected Jacob.

Another thing that I wanted to tell you, like explain to you that this is something

that I read about this week. And so I wanted to point it out to you.

The Israelites would have heard this story or would have read this story hundreds of years later.

The land that we have been talking about, you know, this whole series, like the promised land.

The promised land hundreds of years later became the we settled it and we live in it land.

And the people who were living in the we settled it and we live in it land,

they would have heard these stories.

And they would have been read these stories. And they would have understood

like, oh, this is the origin of our people.

And those people hundreds of years later would have known their genealogies a lot better than we do.

And so it is very possible that people in Israel, the Israelites in Israel years

later, as they go back to this story and read it or hear it read to them,

that they would have noticed that Moses came from Leah.

Like their big hero, Moses, like, oh, Moses, right?

Kenan read from that verse earlier how Revelation talked about the song of Moses.

Okay, they would have known, oh, Moses came from Leah, the unloved one that God opened her womb.

Aaron, the first high priest, came from Leah.

King David, the greatest king over Israel, probably in their opinion,

was from Leah, not Rachel.

King Solomon, who built the temple, from Leah, not Rachel.

Years later, Christians would find out that Jesus Christ came from the line of Leah.

The tribes of Judah and Levi came from Leah, not Rachel, which means every high

priest that Israel ever had came from Leah.

It means the Davidic line of kings, they were all from the tribe of Judah.

The Davidic line of kings came from Leah, which means the Messiah came from Leah.

The unlovely and unloved Leah

was the source of blessing for Israel and for the world, for you and I.

And Jacob wouldn't even have married her unless he had been tricked into it.

So the concluding thought for today, and this is not original to me.

I think lots of people have said stuff like this.

The concluding thought for today is that God can even use deception and jealousy

and family dysfunction to bring about his plan.

God can even use deception and jealousy and family dysfunction to bring about his plan.

And that is good to know. In the midst of the deception and the jealousy and

the family dysfunction in our lives.

God is bigger than all of that.

Let's pray.

God, when a bunch of people in a room like this, I'm aware that there are people

who've been deceived, some of whom maybe very recently betrayed.

I'm sure that there's jealousy in this very room.

I'm sure that when I preach a sermon like this, there's a lot of family dysfunction

that comes up in people's minds where they go, yeah, this is like this hopeless,

crappy part of my family.

I don't even know what to do about it. I hardly pray about it anymore.

Like I know those thoughts come into our mind.

And it's incredible to think,

that Moses and the high priest and even Jesus Christ would come from the line

of the person who Laban tricked into marrying Jacob.

The fact that you can use everything, not just good things, everything for your

plan is very comforting.

And so I guess I wanted to pray particularly for the people in this room who

are going through a really difficult time right now with deception or jealousy or family dysfunction.

I pray that at the very least they would be able to acknowledge,

that you are bigger than that, you are able to do whatever you want with everything,

that you are trustworthy.

And therefore, we can trust you without knowing what the outcome will be.

We can just trust you in the meantime and love you.

And so we thank you for the protection and the guidance and the care that you have for us.

We ask that you would guide us through our problems and help us to think about

them and act toward them and feel about them the way you want us to.

Thank you, Jesus, for coming to save us. Thank you for the gospel.

Thank you for your grace, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Let me end with these good words from God's word. This is from Romans chapter eight, verse 28.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God,

those who are called according to his purpose. That is good news.