Peace From The Lord

Today's reading is from Genesis 31, verses 1 through 16.

Genesis 31:1–16

Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, Jacob has taken all that was our father's, and from what was our father's he has gained all his wealth.

And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before.

Then the Lord said to Jacob, Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.

So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah into the field where his flock was, and said to them, I see that your father does not regard me with favor as he did before, but the God of my father has been with me.

You know that I have served your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times, but God did not permit him to harm me.

If he said, The spotted shall be your wages, then all the flock bore spotted, and if he said, The striped shall be your wages, then all the flock bore striped.

Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me.

In the breeding season of the flock, I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted, and mottled.

Then the angel of God said to me in a dream, Jacob, and I said, Here I am.

And he said, Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you.

I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me.

Now arise, go out from this land, and return to the land of your kindred.

Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, Is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father's house?

Are we not regarded by him as foreigners?

For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money.

All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children.

Now then, whatever God has said to you, do.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us.

This morning, my name is James Rathran.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church.

Let's take a moment and pray, and then we'll move through our text today.

Holy Father, let all these real say, unless the Lord had been on our side, we surely would have been devoured.

Lord, we see your working and movement in our world in a circumstances that seem so dire and so uh difficult to discern.

But Lord, you are on our side.

Lord, you are on the side of your people, you're on the side of your church.

Lord, you have committed yourself to your church.

Lord, we pray that today you would attend this morning, and by your word, you would provide us with a vision and with comfort and with encouragement to set out to the places that you've called us to, because you promised to be with us.

Lord, I pray that you would show us how to discern when to follow you, and that you would teach us to be wise to seek after you in all that we do.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So when does a job get bad enough for you to finally leave?

When do you know that the partner that you're working with is is corrupt enough that you actually have to move on?

When do you know that the relationship that you've started has become uh finally so detrimental and is not working?

You can see that there's no future there and that it's time to cut this off and to move on and form new relationships elsewhere.

Have any of you ever faced decisions like that?

Yeah.

Well, this one's for you, Heidi.

These can be some of the most challenging decisions that we make in our lives.

And we're on the front end of these, we're considering, okay, what is the Lord's leading in this?

And we think of the Lord's leading as something that we can just figure out and then move on.

And we think, okay, now the most important thing here is for me to just figure out what the Lord wants me to do here, and then I'll move in that way.

Now, in our story today, we see Jacob finally discern after six years of serving under his wicked, terrible father-in-law, that it's time to finally head back to the land of promise, to his own people, and to take his family with him.

Now, this is something that the Lord had called him to and had promised would take place in his life.

So he has this direct calling from the Lord.

But the decision to make that move was a difficult one.

And the Lord's, we'll see how the Lord structured things to inform his decision and bring him to that moment of its time to set out.

But as we follow the story, we'll see that this thing that we spend all this time mulling over and thinking about and wrestling through is this decision of when, when is the time, when is the time to set out, has this other component, which is follow-through.

It's not just when or if we will set out in this new direction, but it's also how.

And we'll see that Jacob, once he makes this decision, he plunges himself into unknown territory, into a really stressful place in his life.

It's relationally stressful, it's logistically stressful because of all the camels and stuff.

You know?

And it it's relationally and emotionally stressful as well.

And we see that Jacob, when he's in that moment of stress, he doesn't rise to the occasion.

Instead, he starts acting in some of the worst ways that we see Jacob act.

He becomes a trickster again.

And we see that type of trickery actually flow into his wives as well.

And it brings them into this dangerous place.

But behind it all, behind the trickery, we see that the Lord continues working.

And that's the bright light that shines in the back of this story.

As we see that the Lord continues working through this process, even in the messiness, even in the blurriness of Jacob's character.

We see the Lord continues to work.

So the Lord will be the hero of this story, not to give away the ending.

All right, so we're going to look at Jacob deciding to move, and then we're going to look at the dangers of moving in the wrong way.

And then we'll finally see that with God on our side, there is a hope of peace, even in the most dire circumstances.

Genesis 31, 1 through 3.

Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, Jacob has taken all that was our father's, and from what was our fathers, he has gained all this wealth.

And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before.

Then the Lord said to Jacob, Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.

This is the decision moment.

It's been six years that Jacob remember, our what we covered last week was Jacob coming to Laban and saying, Hey, it's time for me to head back to my father's house, and I'm going to need to uh have something to take with me to support my family.

I'm going to need some flocks and some herds so that my family is supported as we head out.

Because, you know, he had two wives, eleven sons, one daughter.

It was a big move.

And during that, uh, so he he comes and he sets this direction with Laban.

I'm going to move.

But it's not for another six years until he finally moves.

The direction has been set.

He had heard the call from God on his life previously, but we see that Jacob tarries, to use an old word.

Jacob waits and waits.

He knows the call that's on his life.

He knows the direction that he should be going, and instead he just continues waiting under this terrible circumstance with Laban.

But then these three things come to a head.

The first is Laban's sons.

So Laban's sons were saying of Jacob, he just catches wind that Laban's sons are saying this.

Now, here's the thing with Laban's sons: that's not true.

Jacob had gained incredible wealth through working with Laban, but so had Laban.

Laban had gained incredible wealth by Jacob working with him.

And so everybody has risen in this story.

Everybody has gotten greater flocks, greater herds, bigger camels, two hump camels.

And they've all grown in this story, but here's what Laban's sons don't like.

They don't like everyone to grow together.

They like it when they grow.

And they would rather have had less themselves and Jacob had had less than them than have more themselves and Jacob stand on equal footing.

Do you see that?

Now, this is very much like Laban, because we see that Laban himself also, this is the second thing that Jacob sees.

Well, notice that comparison.

So they only the their wealth is purely prideful.

And the second thing is when Laban's sons are no longer on your side, that's a good indicator that you have no future here.

Because what are the king's sons?

They are the future.

So this is a way of Jacob saying, Jacob recognizing this can't continue.

There is an end to this present state.

And it it is it is worth recognizing that.

That is part of the discernment of when is the time to go.

Being able to recognize there's no future here.

Next, Laban, it says that, and Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before.

Last week Jacob went to Laban and said, Hey, I'm gonna need some herds and stuff to take my family away.

And Laban said, You know, I've actually discerned the way that he discerned it is like by augery, you know, watching birds, which is strange.

But, you know, how do you guys make your decisions?

He had discerned that Jacob was the reason that he had gained so much wealth.

And so Jacob was actually in good standing with Laban.

But now Laban doesn't care anymore because Laban and his sons are the same.

They would rather they would, they would they can't both win.

In order for them to win, they have to see someone lose.

This is the character of Laban and his sons.

And so no longer, because because of the blessing that Jacob has received from the Lord, he is just gaining the ire of this family.

So in the sons, we see that the future is cut off, and then in losing Laban, we see that the present is likewise cut off.

There's no way to continue here.

And then finally, we see that the Lord speaks directly to Jacob.

But what's in what's interesting about the Lord speaking here is it's not new information that's given.

What the Lord offers is just a reconfirmation of what he had already told Jacob.

But our Lord is kind.

He comes to us in moments of need, he will make things clear when it's time.

Then the Lord said to Jacob, Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.

He's heard this promise multiple times.

He's heard this promise when he was first setting out from his father's house and headed to live with Laban.

And the Lord met him at Bethel and promised him that I will bring you back from this land and I will be with you.

He heard it again when he was first sent off to go inspired to uh to meet with Laban and ask for the funds.

And here again it's confirmed again that there is this call on Jacob's life to return to the promised land.

It is an honoring of the promise.

The Lord makes that explicit again here.

So what we see is that the Lord is working to bring Jacob to this critical moment where now is the time to leave.

And Jacob finally discerns it appropriately.

Now, I want us to just imagine what would have happened to Jacob if Laban's sons and him were really hitting it off.

And every time they had a new flock that came back and all of the, you know, young goats, kids survived and grew up and were healthy and you know, had incredible milk and things that you get from goats.

And they they were all high-fiving together, and Jacob was having this wonderful time, and he was continuing to grow in favor with Laban.

You know what likely would have happened in Jacob's heart?

He would have said, Look, I'm just gaining this wealth.

There's this ease and prosperity of where we're living, and he would have just settled there and denied the call that was on his life.

But God would not allow that to happen.

And so what we see in this is there is a kindness in the Lord's allowing for this persecution of Jacob where he was.

God would not have made it let up.

In fact, Jacob might have prayed.

You know, we can imagine.

Think of how we pray about these things.

Lord, would you just please bring peace in this family?

Would you allow me to get along with Laban and to get along with Laban's sons?

Could you please establish this peace here?

And God said, No, I won't.

Because this is actually accomplishing something better.

You see, God is working on behalf of Jacob by making him uncomfortable in this situation.

He's bringing him and guiding him to this decision point.

It's worth being able to discern those things.

Recognizing it.

The future has been cut off here.

The present has been cut off here.

I recognize a place that the Lord has calling has been calling me to go that I have been waiting to move to.

Now is the time.

I need to go.

So Jacob finally has eyes to see it, and he goes to his two wives.

He goes to Leah and Rachel, who are the daughters of Laban.

And he re he recites to them something that we looked at last week, which is the whole story of his time in Laban's household.

And he says, Look, your father has changed my wages ten times, which is uh basically like a Hebrew way of saying, he's constantly changing my wages.

You know, I I I never know, I can never count on receiving anything.

Your father is always stacking the deck stacking the deck against us, but the Lord always sees to it that we are protected.

And so we've gained this great wealth, but consider this has only been in spite of your father.

This has only been in spite of your father's work against us.

Now Rachel and Leah hear this and they receive it clearly, and they see the call that was on Jacob's life, and they see the Lord's blessing as this manifest uh uh care that the Lord has given under the abuse of Laban.

And so Leah and Rachel answer him in verses 14 and 15, and said to him, Is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father's house?

Are we not regarded by him as foreigners?

For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money.

Now we see that the way that Laban had lived has used up all his good will with his daughters, that they are willing to hear this story of Jacob, their husband, and then reflect back on their own lives and say, We've we have to get out from under our father's house, because he's a wicked man.

Now their reasons are different from Jacob's, but they still confirm the wicked character that we saw in Laban.

Is there any portion or inheritance left for us in our father's house?

No.

Are we not regarded by him as foreigners?

For he has sold us and has indeed devoured our money.

Do you remember how Leah and Rachel became the husband of Jacob?

It was because instead of like receiving an appropriate dowry that the the wives would have that Jacob's wives would have been able to participate in, instead they sell him to Jacob just for Jacob's labor alone.

And so he literally, Laban literally treated his daughters as though they were foreign slaves, as though they were a commodity to be traded for another man's labor.

And this did not his daughters didn't miss this fact.

They recognized you have treated us like foreigners.

You've shown no love for us.

You looked at us, your own daughters, and you just thought, what can I get for you?

And then you tried and manipulated to get as much for us as possible.

That's what Jacob did by tricking, excuse me, that's what Laban did by tricking Jacob into first marrying Leah and then marrying Rachel.

Okay, so the whole family is united on this front.

It's time for us to leave.

And in their leaving, they've arrived at that moment which is the sometimes the hardest moment to get to.

We've made the decision.

But now the way that they move on in having made this decision brings a lot of danger and a lot of strife.

And so we see the process of moving on is not complete at just having made the decision.

But how we move on is to is just as important in this process.

For Jacob's family, uh, this is a real mixed bag.

So let's let's follow how they leave.

In 31, uh verses 19 through 20.

It'll just be 20 up here, so just listen to 19 as well.

Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father's household gods.

So that's bad.

And Jacob tricked Laban, the Aramean, by not telling him that he intended to flee.

So we've made this decision.

We see our futures cut off here, our presence cut off here, we have a call from the Lord to go elsewhere.

We've heard the promise from God that He will be with us.

And yet, how are we acting in our flight?

What we see is that Rachel goes and she steals the household gods of her father.

Now, these weren't just like collector's items or like a little, you know, souvenir to remember that great childhood under Laban's house.

What this is, uh, household gods, the ones who held them were the ones who were entitled to receive the inheritance of the family.

So that's what the household gods represented in this sense.

And we heard Rachel and Leah speaking earlier, and what was their reason for fleeing?

Our father has given us no inheritance here.

He has cut off our inheritance.

So she recognizes that, but she's still playing the game.

And instead of seeing what was true of their lives, that the Lord had been the one that prospered them, the Lord had been the one that cared for them, she still feels so vulnerable and so fearful, without any trust in the Lord, that she says, I'll take care of this myself.

I will ensure that I am cared for, because I know my father won't care for me unless I force it.

And so she forces it.

And she steals her father's household gods.

I don't know what she thought would happen, as though Laban would somehow honor that when he hasn't honored anything else in his life.

But we see her acting in this stressful situation, moving to thievery in an attempt to protect herself because she doesn't trust the Lord to protect her.

Now Jacob gets paired again with this terrible word.

They're right next to each other because Hebrew writers like to do things like that.

And Jacob tricked Laban, the Aramean, by not telling him that he intended to flee.

In this stressful situation, Jacob, instead of going to Laban and saying, Hey, here's the deal.

We've got these flocks and these herds, we're taking them, and creating an opportunity for them to leave with some sort of peace here.

Jacob leaves instead the only way that we see him know how, which is he flees.

He's running away from an enemy, and he's doing it in secret.

So now, Jacob's family, Jacob doesn't know that the household idols have been stolen.

But he is the one who is fleeing, and Rachel flees with him, having stolen the household items.

So now, when they leave, they are leaving as thieves who have fled in the night.

This does not leave a good impression when he is leaving.

This does not leave a good impression on Laban.

And it kind of makes you wonder, what did they think would happen?

But they weren't thinking like that.

They were just being driven by fear.

Genesis 31, 22 through 23, when it was told Laban on the third day that Jacob had fled, he took his kins his kinsmen with him and pursued him for seven days and followed close after him into the hill country of Gilead.

Now the first time that we saw Jacob leave his home was after he had tricked his brother into, and his father, actually, he tricked them both, into receiving a birthright.

And so his brother was set to kill him and was in hot pursuit of him.

And so that's why Jacob had to flee.

Here, once again, Jacob is fleeing from his household, having tricked the person that he was with, and is now being pursued again to be killed once again.

So here's what's strange.

The first time was just the outcome of Jacob's sin.

From start to finish, that's why he was being pursued.

But this time, it was a decision to follow the clear will of the Lord.

He had made the right decision.

But then he had executed it in a way that was faithless and instead informed just by fear, just by a fear of laban.

And so they leave like thieves.

Especially in family dynamics, we will endure long periods of chronic stress in order to avoid moments of critical pain, which might lead to peace.

I'll say it again.

Especially in family dynamics, we will endure long periods of chronic stress in order to avoid moments of critical pain.

This is the way that Rachel and Jacob are acting.

Instead of creating the moment, hey, we're leaving, you owe her some inheritance.

And we're gonna head out, and we can still talk, you know, there can still be peace between us.

We'll get together at, well, there was no Passover yet.

We'll get we'll come up with some new feasts.

And we'll get together once a year for those feasts, you know.

They could have come up with something.

So that you can still see your grandchildren, Laban.

Instead of pursuing any peace, they said they would rather just endure the chronic stress that they knew their ordinary patterns of living would bring.

Rachel's ordinary pattern of living was self-protection.

Jacob's ordinary pattern of living was trickery.

It had always resulted in terrible outcomes.

But those terrible outcomes seemed less scary than depending on the Lord to act differently.

So now Laban is pursuing Jacob.

He's obviously very angry.

He's been stolen from, he's been tricked, his family has been taken from him.

And in this pursuit, the Lord comes to Laban and says this in Genesis 31, 24.

But God came to Laban, the Aramean, in a dream by night and said to him, Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.

Okay, so it's been seven days of pursuing Jacob.

The Lord comes to him in a dream.

Laban has this dream where the Lord speaks to him and says, Don't say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.

All right, well, what's this pursuit all about?

You know, you can see this difficulty, this dangerous moment is averted by nothing that Jacob did, by nothing that Laban does.

Instead, God just comes into this dangerous moment, and no one on any side of it deserves to be protected, and God says, I'm protecting Jacob.

In Psalm 124, verses 2 through 4, it says, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive when their anger was kindled against us?

Psalms 124:2–4

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel now say, that's the way that Psalm starts.

What if our God was different than he is?

What if our God, when we were faithless to him, acted faithless towards us in return?

What if our, excuse me, what if our God intervened in our lives by saying, Who deserves to be protected and cared for here?

That's the person I will protect and care for.

Then we would have been left and destroyed and hunted down by enemies who deserved, uh who were within their rights to attack us.

But that is not the way our God is.

When God promised Jacob at the beginning of the story today that he was with him, God would remain faithful to that promise.

Can you imagine if Jacob had internalized that?

Can you imagine if Jacob had operated in a way where he believed that God's word to him that he would be with him was true?

Perhaps he would have talked more clearly to his wives when they had said, Yeah, we'll go with you on this journey because our dad has denied us the inheritance.

Maybe Jacob would have said something like, Yes, that's true.

Your dad has denied us this inheritance, but let us leave with the Lord because he has protected us through all of that.

Let us remember that if your father had given us the inheritance that he had, we would have less than we have now, because of the Lord's great provision towards us.

So don't seek to, don't flee from your father out of a place of self-protection.

Instead, let us go towards the call of the Lord into the promised land, because he is the one who is with us and cares for us.

Then perhaps Rachel would not have become a thief.

Maybe he would have gone to Laban.

Instead, I have served you righteously, and I have stolen nothing from you, and the Lord has prospered us both greatly.

Look at this conflict that is apparent between me and my household and your sons and their households.

Let us not create this conflict, but instead let us part ways.

So I go back to the home of my father, and you continue on in peace here as well, and we can have peace together.

And he might have faced that fear because he trusted that if the Lord was in this, he might even bring peace with someone as wicked and awful as Laban.

And he could have approached that, trusting that the Lord would be with him.

Now imagine if he had known the Lord will be with me.

How much will he be with me, even if I deny him in my actions?

The Lord will not be faithless to me.

Do you see who the hero of this story is?

Do you see the unstoppable, unshakable faithfulness of the Lord amidst these wicked transactions?

Could you allow your mind to imagine that God was this faithful towards you?

That when he says he is with you, that when Christ says, go make disciples of all nations, and lo, I love that.

I just like it.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Well, what if that were true?

You know, we have that very promise now.

And you think, well, he must have abandoned me because this situation has simply become too complicated because I am the one whose sin has corrupted it.

Do you know what opportunity you have in Christ?

Yes, my sin has corrupted it.

But the Lord is with me.

I turn to Christ, I repent of my sins.

He will attend this and can even intervene now in this place for good.

There's this quote that I keep in my phone.

I'll read it.

I've got a big phone right here.

It describes leadership, and I think this is really good.

It's relevant to this what we're talking about.

It says, we who lead know that things happen that make little sense and that seem to have no immediate solution, yet involve some failure on our part.

We who lead know that things happen that make little sense and that seem to have no immediate solution, yet involve some failure on our part.

To be in leadership, you're constantly discovering situations like that.

When you set out on a course, you will be constantly discovering yourself in situations like that.

This is complicated.

This is a difficult family dynamic.

And now I'm involved with this problem where I'm being hunted by a man who has been terrible and wicked towards me.

And the reality is that I'm being hunted here by this man who is terrible and wicked towards me because, in large part, or in some part, because of my own sin.

Can we hope in God in situations like that?

Or does our own sin discount our ability?

Now are we left abandoned by Him?

Sure, we made the right decision.

We can see some faithfulness in the beginning, but now I've created this terrible complexity by my own deceitfulness, my own lying, my own greed, my own self-protection.

Can I still hope in God in the midst of that?

Look at how God intervenes.

Look at how he intervenes on behalf of Jacob.

If we can't hope in God in the midst of those situations where our own corruption is involved, where are you going to hope in him?

You're involved in all kinds of things.

If you think that the Christian life is making the right decisions and then not making any mistakes after you've made the right decisions and then God attending you because you've done the right thing and you've never done the wrong thing in the way that you've executed it, then you'll never move.

You never would have left.

You would have just endured the chronic pain.

I'm calling you, as a Christian, move.

Get involved in some of your own mistakes.

And trust that the Lord is with you there.

If you can't trust him there, we will be paralyzed as a church forever.

Now the Lord works this incredible peace in the rest of the story.

It's a very strange way that this ends up panning out because that uh moment of critical pain, which can often lead to peace, which Jacob and his family had avoided by fleeing in the night and instead opting for a chronic pain that would have been more comfortable, perhaps.

God brings that moment of critical pain.

Laban catches up to Jacob after the Lord told him, Don't say anything good or bad to Jacob.

They meet.

And Laban goes on this tirade against Jacob.

In 31, 26, there's a little sample.

And Laban said to Jacob, What have you done that you have tricked me and driven away my daughters like captives of the sword?

That word trick, Jacob's name means a deceiver.

It means a trickster.

So it's like you've got to hear Jacob, Jacob, why were you just like you to me?

You know?

This is so like you.

And this is exactly the way that you acted.

And Jacob would have known.

He would have, he would have thought, it's not wrong.

This is not a good part of me, but it is a real part of me.

Jacob would have had good reason to never move.

Because he knew how dangerous he could be.

Jacob gets pinned by Laban.

Laban takes the self-righteous approach of saying, I he plays the victim when this is one, we've got to keep this in context.

This is one flight in the middle of the night that he had warned him was coming after 20 years of treating Jacob terribly.

So for Laban to come in and play the victim here just shows how Laban is the worst.

He is the worst.

He's implying, look, you never really cared about going back to this promised land you talk so much about.

What you cared about was just winning one over on me.

And you know what, to Laban, who's just been stolen from and left in the middle of the night, it looks like that.

That story checks out.

I thought that you would take your daughters from me by force.

Anyone with whom you find your gods shall not live.

Now remember, Jacob doesn't know that Rachel is the one who had stolen the household gods.

And we see Jacob here, we see this critical moment is happening right now because Jacob is starting to speak truthfully.

Why did I flee?

I was afraid.

And I was afraid because you're not trustworthy.

Things are getting plain here.

This is a moment, it's critical and painful.

But there could be something good on the other side of this.

He makes this claim because he's so sure in his mind that they didn't steal anything when they left.

He says, if anyone with whom you find your gods, anyone with whom you find your gods shall not live.

Now Rachel has the household gods.

And this becomes the most like, you know, Velociraptors in the kitchen scene, where you're just on edge and you're sneaking around and you're just hoping that they don't look in the right place.

And so uh Laban is moving through all the tents and looking for these household gods.

It turns out that Rachel had hidden them under her camel's saddle.

And when Laban comes to her, she says, I can't move because the way of women is with me, as a man who was horrified.

She just went home and the story was over, and Rachel said, I knew I had him.

But it was enough, and Laban no longer, Laban no longer pushed the point.

And so the idols weren't discovered.

Now, consider this in Jacob's mind.

I knew it.

I knew we were innocent.

I knew we didn't take anything, and so Jacob takes this opportunity to lay into Laban.

He takes out his last 20 years, all in this like paragraph against Laban.

He gives this one summary.

He says, There I was, by the day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and the sleep fled from my eyes.

That's what it was like to be a shepherd.

You know, we have these beautiful images of shepherding in scripture.

What is it actually like?

The heat consumes you by day, the cold by night, and you're unable to sleep.

He relays that he had never stolen anything from Laban, and that the Lord had prospered him.

And then he says that unless the fear of the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac had not been upon you, you would have destroyed me and taken everything from me.

It sounds an awful lot like, let Israel say, unless the Lord had been on our side.

Now, Jacob, now Laban, after hearing this, he he kind of has this strange, unexpected moment where it's like being exposed in front of Laban being exposed in front of his whole household.

It's like he takes a deep breath and he says, you know what?

Your wives are my daughters, and your children are my grandchildren.

Let there not be anger between us.

You know, he he comes to his senses.

This is not a conversion of Laban.

Laban does not stop worshiping false gods.

He does not come to the God of Abraham and repent of these last 20 years.

No, it's it's much more pragmatic than that.

God had worked in such a way where He had He had cornered Laban.

And Laban said, realizes if there is any hope of connection here at all with my family, then I just need to make peace.

And so in that muddy circumstance, they build an altar, and they say, Let neither of us cross this, let this be a border between our households, let neither of us cross this in order to do harm to the other.

But instead, let there be peace here.

Laban has Jacob swear that his daughters will be protected, that he won't take any more wives.

And they say, Let the Lord be a witness between us.

And then in making this covenant, they're making a covenant.

So what do they do next?

Any guesses?

That's right.

They have a meal, they break bread, they eat together.

That's what a covenant is.

It's always about peace.

Peace between enemies.

Why was there this peace made between these enemies?

Was it because of what Jacob did?

Was it because of what Laban did?

We can see so clearly that this was just the Lord's doing.

Who is our God?

He is the one who brings peace between enemies.

He is the one who makes covenant with his enemies so that they might dwell in peace together.

We look at Jacob, and he is the hero of our story right now.

He's the protagonist, the one that we're pulling for.

But don't you just have this sense of longing when you look at Jacob's story?

Why don't we have a hero we can count on?

Why don't we have a hero who we don't, who instead of having these muddy covenants that are made just to not do harm?

What if we saw real friendship because of the goodness of the way that we could count on our hero to act?

When is the story going to happen in Genesis where we can just tell a whole good story about one of our heroes?

Where we're able to say he made the right decision and then he did the right things after making that right decision, and the Lord blessed it and attended it, and it accompanied Accomplished all that was meant to happen.

What happens here?

They he makes the right decision after waiting too long.

He goes back to the promised land in flight, in trickery and deceit, and it brings them to the precipice of death by what Jacob and Rachel had done.

And then when they move back into the promised land, it is not as though they go back in purity.

They are literally ushering idols back into the promised land.

It is just muddy all the way through.

That longing is the longing for Jesus.

There's one true champion in Scripture that these point towards.

The one who left his house not because he was pushed out, but left his home of glory, to go to the dangerous land which is here on earth.

Not so that he could thrive, but so that he would be killed on behalf of us, although he lived perfectly.

And in that there would be nothing tainted.

There would be no ounce of sin that he committed, and he would accomplish our salvation, our rescue, our being brought into the promised land perfectly.

In all of this muddiness of what our lives look like, where is the stability and the hope?

It is in Christ.

We can move on and press into the pains and the difficulties and the stories that seem to be like even when a good thing happens, it's tainted by this wickedness that's in the midst of it.

The ways that we move in to try and help issues, and we realize we've caused five more problems on our way in the door.

You know what life is like?

We can move in those places with trust in God because we know that Christ has accomplished it all and he has promised us, I am with you.

That is why we can move.

Ultimately, that is why we are not pinned down, even paralyzed by our own mistakes.

We can move because Christ is the one who we hope in.

That is why.

That is why.

So with that, let's see if there are any questions.

Are there any questions today, Matthew?

Great.

The Lord brings us to the covenant table as his enemies.

He makes a covenant with us, one that was an accomplishment of perfect peace between him and us.

Why?

Because he satisfies the demands of the covenant for us.

He lived righteously in Christ on our behalf.

He paid the punishment for our sins in violating the covenant with him.

And so both sides of the covenant are fulfilled by him, and we take that up by faith.

We say that we will walk with Christ as he has promised to be with us.

He will be our God, we will be his people, and we participate in table fellowship with him, knowing that if we are faithless, he is faithful, that when we sin and go against him, he holds fast to us.

So come to the table to have peace with God, that you might walk back into the complexities of your life, into the things that perhaps you've tried to help and made worse, into the situations that you've thought God had abandoned you in because you had corrupted them by your own sin.

Learn to trust God even there, because He's shown Himself trustworthy there.

That is what it means to hope in the gospel.

Holy Father, we pray that you would bless this meal.

Lord, that you would work in our hearts to put our hope and our trust in you.

And that that would mean that we move into all sorts of areas of our lives that we would have otherwise neglected because you are the one who brings our success.

You are the one who is able to bring this peace.

It is you who makes the fruit of your kingdom happen.

Lord, let our faith in you drive us outward.

Not our self confidence, not our self protection, Lord, but our faith in you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.