The Struggle for Blessing

But now, here in chapter 29, we see something very instructive for us all. That though he's begun his life in relationship with God, having received this blessing from God, that does not create an immediate solution for his emptiness. Deep inner emptiness is not fixed quickly, even when someone chooses to live in relationship with God. So what we see here is a continuing struggle inside of him. Obviously, that is going to affect others, and especially those who are closest to him, his wives.

What we're going to see this morning is three things. One, Jacob's hope for true love. Two, the anger and confusion that true love brings. And then, lastly, what will actually fulfil Jacob's hope, his inner void, his emptiness? Jacob's hope for true love.

Now, at the beginning of a new year, I dare say that each one of us has aspirations and certain hopes for a new year. Each one may have a passion or a real desire, a longing that needs to be fulfilled somewhere, somehow, and if 2020 didn't deliver, 2021 is the year we're looking for. And if we've got it together and we're functioning well, that's a good thing. If we're a passionate person, we're motivated, we're encouraging, we're even inspiring other people along on our journey. But those people who are messed up, who struggle with their emotions, people who are hurt, people who operate out of pain and self-doubt, people will look at their passions and desires and try to make these things work for them in positive ways.

They find they only work for themselves in an effort to fix up the mess that their lives are actually in. And so, they'll remain angry and confused. They have no basis on which to engage with their passions. In fact, they just need to feed their passions, their hopes and desires. Enter Jacob. And we see this in Jacob.

When we look at the beginning of the passage, we begin to see how Jacob is still caught in those things that are so familiar to him: his own emptiness, his own pain, and his own hurt. The passage starts off with Laban, his uncle, saying to him, you've been working for me, but just because you're family doesn't mean you should work for nothing. What do you reckon you're worth? What should your salary be?

And now, when Jacob answers Laban, we see how Jacob is coping with his messed up life. And we see it immediately. And Jacob says, well, I'll tell you what my wages will be. I'll work for you for seven years, and in return, I'll get what I want. I want your daughter, your younger daughter, Rachel.

And we know from verse 17 that Rachel is described as beautiful, absolutely stunning, sexually attractive, very appealing to look at. When it says she's lovely in form, it's the Hebrew word for figure. She's well proportioned, let's say. And we see that because of that, Jacob is smitten. His self-worth, filling that emptiness in his life, is going to depend on just one thing.

His passion will be for Rachel. Having her, being with her, taking her as his wife. These are the things that he'll hope for. These are the things that he'll strive for. Then, when Jacob negotiates a price, he comes right out and says, I'll work for you, Laban.

I'll work for seven years. And we know that from archaeology and history that 30 to 40 shekels was a normal price that a man would pay a family to take his bride. But if you add this up, one and a half shekels is the normal wage per month of a typical labourer. And therefore, what is Jacob offering? He's not negotiating.

What he's actually doing here is providing an exorbitant amount of money for Laban, which means that he's utterly out of his head with love. I mean, he's not pushing, he's not driving for a hard bargain here. Absolutely not. And then, when we read about those seven years, how they went by, we read that it was just like a few days to Jacob because he was so much in love. But it is actually, in verse 21, that we would ordinarily miss, I think, that he really shows us what Jacob really wants here.

It says, then Jacob said to Laban, give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her. And that's it. He thinks that if he gets this, if I can do this with Rachel, if I can have her, my life will be fixed. And somehow, she's gonna make all the difference in the world. She'll give me the significance and the value that I need to function as a human being.

The text is saying something very simple here. He is a man who, on the inside, is empty. Emotionally, he's vulnerable. Sexually, he's overwhelmed with desire for Rachel, and he will do everything in his power to get her, to have her as his own. Why is he like this?

Well, this is telling us how he's dealing with the failure of his own life. Everything in his life has fallen apart. But, ah, Rachel, the most beautiful woman in the world, if I got her, if only she was my wife. Finally, something in my life would be going right, and I would be worth something. What happens next involves his boss and father-in-law, Laban.

He's also, by the way, Jacob's mother's brother, his uncle. So it's not necessarily a good relationship to have with your boss, to have family, to be employed by family. Do you see what Laban is really doing here at this point to Jacob? It's really a case of what goes around comes around. We've identified Jacob for who he is in the past, and we described him at one time as a con artist.

We said last time, he's like the guy on Gumtree that wants to sell you his mate's car. Yeah, like it's not really his car to sell you. Or Jacob is the deceiver. He's like the guy in the shopping centre car park who hits your car but never leaves a note, and he seems to have got away with it.

But not this time, not with uncle Laban. Jacob has met his match because the minute he says, I'll work seven years for your younger daughter Rachel, Laban is one step ahead. Laban's scheming mind goes to work. And Laban is saying to himself, now, here's a guy who'll do anything. Here's a guy who is so vulnerable.

He's not really negotiating a good price. Family or not, here's a man who is at my mercy. So what does Laban say in response to Jacob's offer? Well, I'll tell you what Laban doesn't say. He doesn't come right out and say, yes, you can have my daughter.

Do you see that? He's way more cautious. In a sly, backhanded way, he wants to tease this out and milk the situation for all it's worth. Laban says, It's better that I give her to you than to some other man. That's not a yes. But Jacob wanted it to be yes.

Desperately, he wanted to hear the word yes. So what he heard was, yes. And so he works his butt off for seven years. And the seven years are up, and he says, now I'll have my time. And then, the wedding.

Now, it should not be too hard for us to be aware of the cultural practices of the day. We need to know that the bride is heavily veiled on her wedding day, and no man was to look upon her face until she was married. So first, there's a procession from her home to the place of the ceremony. Then, there is the ceremony, and then there's this huge party afterwards. A party that by today's standards, would last for hours and hours.

And she's still veiled. She's still wearing the veil. That's the custom. And then, finally, at night, on their honeymoon night, the bridegroom takes the bride into his tent, and a few things are common sense. In those days, there's no electric lights, and after hours and hours of drinking, they lie down together.

And Jacob is thinking, ah, Rachel. But then, in verse 25, it is Leah. Now you see, the trickster, the deceiver, has been deceived. Laban has given him his older daughter. And in the morning, Jacob wakes up and says, behold, it's Leah.

Angry and confused, he runs to Laban and says, what have you done? I've often wondered how did Laban think he was ever going to get away with it. Because when Jacob comes back, you see what he says. He says, why have you deceived me? You knew which daughter I had worked for.

What does Laban say? Well, excuse me, he says, it's not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. You see, I'm just playing by the rules here, Jacob. But that's a fairly lame legal argument, don't you think? Whatever way you look at it, it is still fraud.

You didn't tell me about this. But Jacob never defends his case. Jacob is told to finish off the affairs of the bridal week, and then he would have Rachel in return for another seven years of work. And the text simply says, and Jacob did so. So why does Jacob give in so quickly?

He's being duped big time, and there's clearly anger there when he goes to Laban. Why? Well, this is a little bit of speculation on my part, but I think the reason why is in what Laban is saying. Well, around here, it's not the custom to put the younger before the older. The younger before the older.

And suddenly, Jacob hears alarm bells ringing in the back of his mind. The younger before the older. And his conscience has exploded. He's humbled because, you see, Jacob can remember a time when he was the younger, and he stole the birthright that rightfully belonged to the older. So I think he made a connection here.

He understood. And even with Rachel as his prize, his promised prize, I think he was suitably humbled. Remember, he pulled the same stunt on his father Isaac years ago. He would have known, this is exactly what I did to my father. Last night, when I reached out in the dark thinking it was somebody that it wasn't, that was just like me when I played dress-ups in front of my father.

He was blind, he was in the dark, and I was somebody that I wasn't really. Jacob the con artist has been out-conned. His own sin has come back to bite him in the bum. But that's not all. It's not all just about Jacob.

Now, we have a wife, two wives, in fact. And the text seems to draw us in to Leah. And in Leah, there is some sense, some measure of hope attached to what is going on. Leah is now married to Jacob, and what are we told about Leah? Verse 17, Leah has weak eyes.

Rachel was lovely in form and beautiful. The fact that Leah had weak eyes, is that the point of the sentence, do you think? Does this text record that she had less than twenty-twenty vision, but that Rachel could see a long way off? That Rachel had good eyes? No.

It's not talking about their eyesight, but talking about their appearance. Either she had crossed eyes, or bulging eyeballs, or something similar, but here's the point. Leah was unattractive. Leah grew up in the shadow of a younger sister who was utterly stunning. Just as an aside now, back in the day, we used to play a game at youth group.

I don't know if at youth group in this church, you still play games, but we would play a game that would take off Leah, Rachel, and Jacob. We'd roll up a newspaper, make it into a baton, and every one of us would form, would link hands and form a huge circle. All of us except one, that is. That would be one of the guys, and he would be blindfolded. He would be Jacob groping in the dark. Now, Rachel was one of the girls standing around in the circle, and every time Jacob called out, Rachel, Rachel, where are you?

She was required to answer, oh, Jacob, come and get me. But the moment she says that, all the other girls are there pretending to be Rachel, wannabe Rachels, and you can imagine the confusion and the chaos. All the Leahs in the room tried to distract Jacob, calling out to him. Jacob has to listen very carefully, and if he moves where he thinks she is, and if he can strike her with a baton no less, then the game is over, and he claims her as his prize. More often than not, Jacob ended up feeling very frustrated.

You see, every girl wanted to be Rachel, and especially when I was Jacob. Leah is the unwanted one. She's the ugly duckling. Rachel is the swan, the beautiful one. Now, look at verse 31. I'm following.

What was going on? How does Leah handle this brokenness in her life? The years of living in the shadow of her more popular, more beautiful younger sister. Consider what Leah does to deal with her anger and confusion. Consider how she deals with this man Jacob in her life.

She's having babies, lots of babies. And every time she has a son, she chooses a Hebrew word for the name that expresses her desire for Jacob. She wants Jacob back. So, the name of her first born, Reuben, is a name taken from the word that means to see. And what she's saying in naming him Reuben is, maybe now I will finally become visible to my husband.

Maybe he won't look through me, but he will actually see me as who I am. Son number two comes along, Simeon is born. His name comes from the word to hear. And she says, now finally, my husband will listen to me. And when Levi comes along, it's the word for attach, which means that with each birth, she's trying to say something to her husband: make him love me.

I'm having all these babies, sons no less. I'm being the perfect wife. What does she do? How is Leah handling the emptiness in her life, her inner emptiness? Well, in some sense, she's not that dissimilar to Jacob.

The same way that Leah has to handle the fact that Rachel is preferred over her. Now, she's looking for her one true love. And she's saying, if only this man would love me, if only I could be the wife of this husband, then my life would be fixed. I would be a happy mother and a wife with lots of children, and I would finally be someone. But she's in hell.

This is worse than if she was never married. Because the one person upon whom she has put the affections of her heart, the one person whom she's looking to for redemption, the one person is in the very arms of her younger sister, someone in whose shadow she's had to grow up her entire life. Unbelievable. She is in hell. So where should she go?

What should she do? Her problem is not that dissimilar from Jacob's. Where should they go? Where should we go? Two things to say that are really important.

The first thing, in the most vivid way, when Jacob wakes up in the morning, it is Leah. And when the text says that, we're being taught something. That in all of life, through every event, through every aspect of your life, there will always be an undertone, a ground swell that will reveal its ugly head from time to time, and there'll be times of disappointment and frustration, and you're not going to live a wise life. You're not going to be able to count your days with wisdom until you know that, until you accept that. You see, the night before, Jacob goes to bed with the one.

He finally got the one. Seven years, and it only seemed to him like a few days. The one who's going to fix his life, to make him feel okay. But what we're told is, in the morning, it was Leah. Now, I love Leah.

I want to be protective of her. I love what we're about to learn from Leah. But for a moment, I've got to tell you this. Leah represents something. Every time you get started in a relationship, at the time you got married, are now at the beginning of new year, and you may be starting a new job, or maybe you've enrolled in a new course of study.

Or maybe you've got a new project or a new hobby. Or you think, finally, this is the year I'm going to retire, and I have my passions, and my hopes, and my aspirations. Finally, if I get around to doing these things, my life will be better. Better than it was in 2020. But here's the rub.

I want you to know that in the morning, it will be Leah. You go to bed with passion and hope. You think you're taking Rachel to bed. But in the morning, it will always be Leah. Nobody put it better than C.S. Lewis, who said, most people, if they really learn to look into their own heart, would know that they do want something this world can never give them.

How true. There are all sorts of things in the world that if they offer to give them to you, they never keep their promise. Watch out if those words, if only, are familiar words in your own vocabulary. At the beginning of a new year, if only I can do this or that. At the end of the year, it will be Leah. Think of an overseas holiday with all the trappings. If only I could do that.

Go about that this year. At the end of the year, it will be Leah. Or, if only I had that house or this car, my life would be different, so much better. Jacob was feeling that, and when he woke up in the morning, it was Leah. And Leah felt that not even giving birth to all these sons for Jacob made things any better between her and Jacob.

And if you've written off your partner, or despised your own children, or hated your job, can I say this? It's because in the morning, it was Leah. Doesn't matter whether you're a Christian or not in church this morning. We all do it. It's part of our human nature.

It's how we identify with Jacob and Leah for that matter. For Jacob, it was all about having sex with the right woman. For Leah, it was Jacob having the right husband and the right father for her children. But in the end, it was never going to be about having the right wife, or having the right father for the children, or being a good mother. It was never going to be about being like Esau, being a man's man, being out there in the bush, bringing home the game.

What went wrong? Their passions and desires were all but destroyed. And now, that inner emptiness remains. But with that thought, there's a glimmer of hope in the text. And if we would end the message at this point, it would be no message at all.

Let me say at the outset that if you are a Christian, there'll be a fundamental difference to what you do with this. What is the hope? What is the solution there in the text? And the answer is, let's have another look at what's happening with Leah. And this is the reason why I love her.

Look at what happens to her and in her. Or to put it another way, look what God does for her, and look what God does inside her. In her, you see an interesting progression. Even though she's calling out and using the names of the kids to reach out to Jacob, thinking that Jacob is the one to fix her, to save her, and give her a good life. Then, finally, this fourth child, a breakthrough, and do you see what happens?

The fourth child comes along and the word Judah means praise. This time, I will praise the Lord. So she named him Judah. And there's no mention of a husband. No mention even of the child in a sense.

This time, what does she mean by this time? She means to say, this time, it's different. This time, I'm going to praise the Lord. And look, the text goes on to say, then she stopped having children. The implication being, I don't need to have children anymore.

I'm not going to work at being a slave to this like I once was. She takes the deepest, deepest passionate desire of her heart, takes it away from her husband, and puts it before God. She puts it before the Lord, and she actually praises Him. And to praise means to give all your affections, all your desires, and all your hopes to God in praise. Jacob and Laban had stolen her life really.

They'd been ripping her off for years. But the moment she has this fourth son, she calls him Judah. She took her life back, and she's free. Why did she do that? Why did she say this about this fourth born?

What happened in her was because of what happened to her. What happens to her when Judah is born? What is God doing when Judah is born? Who is Judah after all? Well, the writer of the book of Genesis knows, and there's an interesting prophecy about him, in Genesis 49, very near the end of the book when Jacob gives blessings to all his sons.

Jacob says that Judah is the one through whom the king will come. Judah is the one through whom the sceptre will come. Through Judah comes the promised messianic seed. The Messiah is going to come through Judah. Let me put it in a nutshell.

God looks down at a beautiful woman and an ugly woman, and then He looks at the one who is unloved and says, you are going to be the mother of Jesus. The messianic seed is gonna come through you. Verse 31, then the Lord saw that Leah was not loved. Let me paraphrase it. God loved her.

God opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. In a way, we can say that the Lord revealed Himself as her true bridegroom. And not just for Leah, but for all of us. In that sense, He is the ultimate spouse that can fulfil you and me. Because He's the only one who will never ever let you down. And no human being can possibly give what only God can give.

And Leah is free from her idolatry, from her idolatry of Jacob, of having a family, or lots of children because God is her true bridegroom. Now, if we've been saying we all have this inner emptiness that we struggle with, Christian and non-Christian alike, it exists in your life and mine, but it's a void that can only be filled by God. Only He can fulfil your hopes, your passions, and your desires always. Finally, Leah realises this. God is the one.

He gets the praise. And God gave Leah, the rejected one, the one with weak eyes. He made her to be the mother of Jesus because, well, that's how the gospel works. God comes into the world Himself and He becomes weak, despised, ugly. He knows Himself what it's like to be rejected.

So I say, in 2021, don't set yourself up for failure in your relationships, in your work, in your studies, in your retirement, or in your own family, or your business, or your career moves, or whatever it is we're talking about. These things will never fill that deep inner emptiness. That place belongs to God. Only He can fill it. And if you really want to be married and stay married, can I ask you the question, who comes first in your life?

Can I say this, if you are married and really unhappy, even mad about your marriage, it's good to want your marriage to be better, but you're going to put too much weight on it unless you see this? The Lord knows our hearts. The Lord knows our misery. The Lord knows whether your partner is attracted to you, yes or no. But finally, in His time, praise the Lord because He's given you His Son, the Lord Jesus.

Make Jesus the one. Make Him the prize, the answer, the goal of all your desires, hopes, and dreams. And amazingly, the rest of your life will be put in perspective, and you'll have that overseas holiday, or you'll have that beautiful relationship working for you and your family. You'll have the most wonderful children and you will be free because you put Jesus at the centre of your life. Let's pray.

We pray, Father in heaven, that You'll help us to understand the wonderful working power of the gospel and the difference that Jesus makes. We thank you, that you used real people in the history of the Old Testament with real lives that in curious ways we can relate to. We know in that sense our human nature has not changed. But we know, Lord, that with You, change is possible. And that through Your agent of change, Your Holy Spirit, You will and can and do work in our hearts.

Come into our hearts this day, we pray. For we ask it in Jesus' name. And we pray together when we say, amen.