Well, good morning. For our sermon time this morning I thought that I would spend most of it just telling you a story. My sermon text is actually 3 very long chapters, 29, 30 & 31 from Genesis. And I could have picked out just a verse or two out of that to use as a sermon text, but that would have done violence to what was really intended to be a single long story.

And so I want to tell that story. It’s a great story. It’s got a little bit of everything in it. It’s got a couple of con-men who are working to out-con each other. It’s got romance and jealousy and humor and anger. It’s got sex. It’s got a chase scene. It’s got near violence. And it’s got a bad science on genetics all thrown in into one story.

And so I really want to just tell it to you. I am going to mostly paraphrase. I’ll dip down into the text here and there. You’re welcome to follow along. But if you find it easier, you might want to just sit back and listen.

The story begins with the 29 th chapter and it starts this way. It says,

Then Jacob continued on his journey.

Now as he continues on his journey, we’re reminded right off the bat that he is actually in a story that is already in progress. You’ll recall that Jacob has tricked his brother and his dad not once, but twice, and his brother didn’t take it kindly and began to say, “I’m going to kill him,” at which point Jacob decided he needed to run off.

His mother suggested that he go to her ancestral home, that he might find community there, and while he was there he might look for a wife. So that’s the journey that he’s been on.

And our story picks up as he comes to the end of this journey. You don’t get the sense that he’s been there before, but there’s a chance meeting with his cousin Rachel. And when they discover who each other is, she runs off to her dad Laban, his uncle. And Laban runs out, throws his arm around him, gives him a kiss, welcomes him into his home, and hears his story.

And at the end of his story Laban says, “Surely, you are my bone and my flesh.” Kind of a nice way of saying, “You’re kin. You’re part of our family.” And perhaps, at a deeper level saying, “Oh, Jacob, you and I are cut from the same cloth,” as we will see here in a moment.

So this is a family that is making its living by raising sheep – sheep herding. And for about a month, Jacob gets up with the family each day as they go out to do their work, and he works alongside them.

Now we’re not told exactly how this unfolds, but I imagine that over dinner about a month later, Laban looks up and he says, “Jacob, you know just because you’re my nephew, it doesn’t mean that I should be able to get all this labor from you for free. I should pay you for your work.”

But Laban is very shrewd and he doesn’t want to make the first offer, so he says to Jacob, “What do you think a fair wage would be?”

Now, I imagine (again, we’re not told this ) but Laban’s two daughters are in the room somewhere. And Jacob looks up and he sees the older daughter, Leah.

We don’t know very much about Leah. Her name comes, technically, from the same Hebrew word that means weary. And if said out loud sounds a little bit like the Hebrew word for cow. And the only thing we’re told about her is she has weak, or delicate, or lovely (the Hebrew is a little unclear) eyes. And so I kind of imagine her as kind of squinting because she’s near-sighted, a little tired-looking Leah.

The second daughter is Rachel. In Hebrew this comes from the derivative of ewe, like baby lamb. And we’re told in our scriptures here that she is gracious and beautiful.

But that’s actually not the most accurate translation. Really the most accurate translation was she was beautiful in face and in body. She had a fine body.

And so here is Jacob looking at weary, cow-eyed Leah and little-lamb, hot bod’, Rachel. And he says, “You know, I go for what’s behind door number 2. I’d like to work for 7 years, and in exchange for that you give me Rachel to marry.” And Laban says in effect, “Deal.”

So, Jacob goes to work, and the Scripture tells us for him the time flies by because he loves Rachel. He has his mind on Rachel. He keeps checking Rachel out. He’s waiting for the day he’s going to get to marry Rachel.

And the 7 years finish and it says that when they finished (and you can imagine maybe it was like the minute they finished), he runs to find Laban and he says, “Laban, my time is out. Give me my wife Rachel. I want to have sex with her. I want to lie with her.

Very physical. This is what he’s been waiting for.

So Laban schedules the big wedding feast. Is is to be a week-long feast. Lots of food. Lots of drink. Lots of music. Lots of company. But the first night is what we would typically think of as the wedding night.

So the feast has been going on. Near the end of the evening Jacob retires to his tent, and Laban brings his daughter appropriately covered with the veil to the tent with Jacob there. He leaves her there. They’re intimate. They have sex. They fall asleep. And then, actually my favorite verse in the whole story – chapter 29, verse 25 reads this way, “When morning came it was Leah!” “When morning came it was Leah!” Jacob wakes up, rolls over. It’s not Rachel laying next to him. It’s Leah!

Now, some of the commentators said this is possible because she was veiled. And how could he have seen behind the veil? And certainly, she would have come veiled. And note in this a wonderful little irony: remember that Jacob tricks his dad by putting on a disguise so that his dad will give to the 2nd what was intended for the 1st. Now, Laban out-foxes Jacob, puts Leah in a disguise so that Jacob will give to the 1st what he intended to give to the 2nd. It’s this wonderful little twist here.

Personally, though, I am not totally buying the veil theory. Because even though she would come with the veil, if they’re going to have sex, a lot of veils are going to come off. And he has been checking her out for 7 years.

What I suspect has been going on here is that Jacob has been enjoying himself at the feast beforehand, had a fair bit to eat and a fair bit to drink. And he was not perhaps at the top of his perceptual game on his wedding night.

In any event, he wakes up and it’s Leah. And he’s horrified. And he jumps out of bed and he runs to find Laban. And he says,

What is this? We’ve had a deal. I was to work for 7 years for Rachel!

And Laban, knowing that he has Jacob, says,

Oh, really? In our culture we would never marry off the younger daughter before the older.

This is a cultural norm apparently being shared with Jacob for the first time. And Laban then says,

You know, I can throw Rachel in. If you complete this week with Leah, then I’ll let you marry Rachel in exchange for another 7 years worth of work.

And somewhat reluctantly but full of love for Rachel, Jacob says,

Deal.

And he then stays with Leah for the balance of that week and then we’re told in verse 30 he has sex, he goes in to Rachel, he marries her, and – in case we didn’t get it – the text goes on to say, “And Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.”

Now imagine for a moment what it must have felt like to have been Leah. Leah probably has lived her whole life in the shadow of her younger sister – her attractive, probably vivacious, certainly curvaceous sister. And now she’s married, but she realizes that the only reason she has a husband is because her father got her husband so drunk that he didn’t recognize her on her wedding night. And that when he woke up and saw who she was, his first thought was to swap her out for her younger sister. Just imagine the extent to which she would feel unloved and unloveable.

It can break your heart if you really think about it. And it seems to have broken God’s heart. Because the first time we see God intervening in this story is now. God saw that Leah was unloved, and so He opens her womb. And she begins to bear children. She in fact bears 4 children right in a row.

She gives each of them a name that is in some sense to correlate to her own emotions. And you can read through these names this pathos that comes through the names of the children are things like, “Now surely my husband will love me.” Now that I’ve give him three suns, “Surely now he will love me.” This desperate desire for a husband’s love. But there is never any indication in the whole story that Jacob ever grows in affection for Leah. She remains the unloved one.

Now things are not all peaches and cream for Rachel either. Rachel who is used to being kind of center of attention, sort of the attractive one, into this great marriage discovers that she is the next in the scriptural line of barren women. Sarah was barren. Rebekah was barren. And now it turns out that Rachel is likewise infertile. She can’t have children. And this in a culture where much of a woman’s value and worth was tied up in her ability to bear children.

Now you can imagine, any of you (and many of you have struggled with issues of infertility) the frustration and the desperation. But add to that now that you’re married to a husband who is also married to your sister, who seems to be popping out babies just like clockwork.

You can just feel her agony, her frustration, and it wells up in anger. And one time she finally shouts at Jacob, “Give me a child or I will die!” Rachel may have been given to histrionics a little bit. “Give me a child or I’ll die!” And Jacob will have nothing of this. Jacob shouts right back at her, “I’m not God! This is between God and your womb.”

He doesn’t say this actually out loud, but you get a little bit of the impression that he’s saying, “It doesn’t seem to be my problem. I mean, look at me and Leah over here.”

So Rachel adopts, in a sense, the Hagar strategy. She says, “Well, I’ve got a handmaiden, Bilhah. I want you to have sex with Bilhah, and her child can be born – and the phrase is – “on my knees,” which means in effect, “It will be as if it were mine.”

And Jacob says, “Well, okay. You want me to have sex with Bilhah, I’ll have sex with Bilhah.” And Bilhah produces a child, and then produces a second child.

With the second child, you can get a sense of the tension and the animosity between Leah and Rachel. Rachel names the 2nd child "Naphtali" and she does that because she says this means, “I have struggled mightily with my sister, but now have prevailed.”

You kind of wonder about how she’s scoring because Leah has 4 of her own and she only has 2 by her handmaiden. But anyhow Rachel says, “I have prevailed.”

Now during this period, Leah has become somewhat less fertile. She’s not bearing children but she sees this thing going on with Bilhah and she says, “Woa, hoa. I’ve got a handmaid too. I’ve got Zilpah over here. Why don’t you sleep with her?”

And Jacob says, “Well, you know, okay.” And he sleeps with Zilpah, and Zilpah matches Bilhah child for child. So if you’re counting we’re up to 8: 4 from Leah and 2 from each of the handmaidens.

We have a brief break in the fertility war, and during this time Reuben, Leah’s oldest son goes out into the fields. And in the fields he finds a sort of very rare but precious plant, a mandrake. A mandrake, one commentary said, has roots that look like legs, and perhaps as a result of that was viewed as having kind of magical powers; at least as an aphrodisiac and possibility as something that would nurture fertility.

And so Reuben brings the mandrake to his mom, Leah, and she begins to make mandrake cakes. Rachel, who’s desperate, as you know, sees this and (really with echoes of Esau and Jacob around the stew) Rachel says, “Give me some of your mandrake cakes.” And Leah says, “Are you kidding? You who have stolen my husband (suggesting that Jacob’s principally sleeping with Rachel)? You who have stolen my husband, you now want my mandrake cakes?”

And Rachel says, “Let’s make a deal. If you give me your mandrake cakes, I’ll tell Jacob to sleep with you tonight.” Leah says, “Deal." Gives her the mandrake cakes. Goes out into the field. Finds Jacob and says, “You’re not going to Rachel’s tent tonight. You’re coming to mine. And the phrase she uses, “because I have hired you for mandrake cakes.”

Jacob says, “Well, alright.” And he goes and he sleeps with Leah.

Leah’s now fertile again and she in quick order has 3 more children, so we’re now up to 11. You can imagine Rachel’s pain in the middle of all of this. And so God finally ( in a sense in the same way that it was early with Leah, His heart is breaking for Rachel), intervenes a 2nd time in the story. It says He remembers Rachel and she has her own child for the first time. Joseph.

So there’s now the 12th child and the 12th child is Joseph. And she names him Joseph because it means somewhat like, “God remembered me.”

Rachel of course immediately says, “I’d like another.” But Jacob at this point doesn't quickly agree. It’s been about 7-10 years. He’s had 4 wives. He’s had 12 kids. He’s worked every day out in the fields with the sheep. He says, “You know, it may be time for a change of scene. I think maybe we should move.” And so he goes to Laban.

You get the impression that there’s a bit of a power thing here - that it’s not quite clear that Jacob could just take off and leave without Laban’s permission.

So he goes to Laban and he says, “Laban, I’d like to take my family and depart.” Now Laban says, “Woa. Woa. This is not a good thing. I’ve just been to a magician, and the magician has divined for me the truth of the matter, which is that all of my great prosperity is attributable to you! And if you go, it might go away, and I really don’t want you to go. What could I give you to stay?”

Now Jacob in his characteristic modesty says back, “Yes, you’re right. Everything you have done and all the ways you have prospered is in fact because of me, and you can’t give me anything. But I think I’ve earned some things and this is what I would like. I will stay if you will go through your herd and pull out all the speckled and striped sheep and put them over here, and that will be my herd; and all the monochrome sheep, those can be yours.

And this will be good, he says, because if you ever walk through my herd and see one that is not striped or speckled, you’ll know that I stole it from you. This will be a good way for us to make and keep them separate.

And Laban says, “Deal.”

Laban thinks he’s got a great idea. He’s gonna take all these sheep and he’s gonna stick them over in this herd. But he knows that whatever Jacob tends tends to prosper. So instead of letting Jacob manage his own flock, Laban puts his children in charge of Jacob’s flock and he sends Jacob 3 days distance away to watch Laban’s own flock.

Now normally this would have irritated Jacob, but it’s okay, but Jacob has his own plan. (This is bad genetics.) Jacob says, “If sheep mate while looking at a screen of speckled and streaked colors they will produce sheep of speckled and streaked colors.”

And so he takes his knife and he cuts streaks into poplar branches and so on, and he creates this big screen, and he puts it where the sheep will go to water and where they will mate, and he’s very judicious. He puts it up when the strong sheep come. He takes it down when the weak sheep come.

And gradually, he indeed (we know now, probably because of recessive genes, but he thinks because of his screen) produces these sheep of many colors and these sheep that are all one color. The weaker ones become the one color. The stronger ones are the multi-colored. And in fact, in a very short period of time, we’re told by the end of chapter 30 that Jacob had grown exceedingly rich and had large flocks and male and female slaves and camels and donkeys. This is really paying off big for him.

Now as we move into chapter 31, Jacob gets an insight in a great understatement he says out loud, “You know, it seems to me that Laban doesn’t think as much of me as he used to.” This is probably because Laban’s sons are going to Laban and saying to Laban, “He’s stealing from us. He’s taking all our wealth and making himself wealthy.” And Laban and his sons are getting mad, and Jacob is starting to pick up on this.

And in the midst of this, God intervenes for the 3rd time. God speaks to him in a dream and says to him, “It’s time for you to go. I’ll be with you. Go back to your father’s house.”

Now this time Jacob knows better than to go ask Laban. He waits until Laban and his folks are all in the midst of sheep shearing season, a very busy time. And while they’re all preoccupied, he takes his family and all his assets and he slips away and he gets a 3-day headstart before the word gets back to Laban.

But then the word does get back to Laban, and Laban is really furious. So he gathers up his kinsmen (this kind of a family militia) and the chase is on. Jacob going as fast as he can, but with a big, big retinue, and this smaller militia chasing after him. And in about a week they catch up with him.

The night before they catch up with him, God intervenes for the 4 th and last time in this story. God now speaks to Laban in a dream and he says to Laban, “You are not to threaten Jacob.”

The last day arrives, they get together, there’s this huge confrontation, they catch up. Laban says to him, “How could you do this to me? How could you take my daughters without me having a chance to say goodbye? Without me being able to kiss my grandchildren? I wanted to have a big party! How could you possibly have behaved this way? Do you know what I could do to you? (reference, the militia) But God told me that I was not to threaten you.”

And then a series of accusations and recriminations go back and forth. It ends in this enormous spate of self-righteousness. There’s no reconciliation. Jacob says, “I worked for you for 20 years. You cheated me. You changed my wages. I was always honorable to you. God caused me to prosper. Now at least you’ll see that God was on my side.”

And Laban will have nothing of it. He responds right back. “No way, your wives are my daughters. Your children are my children. Everything I see here belongs to me.” But, what are we gonna do? I can’t attack you. God says I wasn’t supposed you. Let’s put a stone here. And you go that way, and I won’t cross the stone. But if you ever come back on this side of the stone, you’re dead.

And Jacob says, “Deal.”

And that’s how this story ends. It’s actually, if I had told you the story outside of this context, I have a suspicion you might have thought it was the script for a daily soap opera, which is actually one of the reasons why, tongue-in-cheek, I chose this name for our sermon: Days of our Lives. A wild story. A story about Jacob, and Laban, and Rachel, and Leah.

But here, just for a minute, if you’ll indulge me is also a very quiet way a story about God. As I’ve read and reread these stories in anticipation, I’ve just been struck by a couple of attributes of God that come out:

1. God is willing to wait.
2. God works while He waits.

God is willing to wait. Jacob is a really pretty bad guy. I mean, he cheats his brother, he deceives his dying and blind father, he takes advantage of the hospitality of Laban, he’s abusive to one of his wives. He’s not a good guy.

And yet one of the things that struck me is that up at least until this point in the story, never has God critiqued him. Never has God come in and said, “You shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t be this way.”

It’s not, I think because God feels like the way Jacob is is the way He intends him. I think God has plans for Jacob to be transformed, to be a different person. What I think is that God knows Jacob is not ready yet, and God is willing to wait until he’s ready.

One of the interesting things about the story is that it begins with Jacob running away from Esau, and it ends with him running away from Laban. But when he’s running away from Laban, he’s running back toward Esau. He basically has put himself now in a situation where he has no safe place to land. He’s stuck in the middle. He’s vulnerable. And that’s where God is finally able to touch him and transform him.

And that’s next week’s sermon. This week, God is patient. God is willing to wait.

You know, I think for those of us that are parents, this concept isn’t that hard. You know that when you have a kid and you watch your son or daughter trying to do something, and your instinct is to jump in and just do it for them because you could do it so much for quickly. And in our best moments we don’t do that. We stand back and we let our child struggle a little bit and fail and then get frustrated and then succeed and get the sense of what that feels like.

We sometimes see our children making wrong decisions. Bad decisions. Decisions that we know will hurt them. And sometimes we need to call them to account and say, “Don’t do that.” But sometimes we know that that will be counter-productive. That they won’t hear it. That they’re not ready. And so we actually have to step back and let them fail. And we see them here and we want them to be here. We think God wants them to be here. But we recognize in our best moments, it’s not a straight line. They can go backwards. They can go up. They can go down on the way.

And it seems to me we sometimes get that as parents. But we don’t get it as often within the context of our faith. I think a lot of times as Christians we see somebody else whom we want to see mature in Christ and we want them to be fixed. We want them to change if they’re doing something wrong.

I remember once I had a conversation with a friend of mine who’s a pastor at another church. And, you know I’m making a little of this up because I can’t quite remember the conversation, but it was something like this. He had a couple in his church that he had discovered were engaged in sexually immoral behavior.

And I said to him, I said, “Look. You’re the pastor. You know that they’re engaged in this behavior. It’s wrong. It’s breaking God’s heart. You need to go tell them to stop.”

And he said to me, “Jeff, you know I agree with you that it’s wrong. I agree with you that it’s breaking God’s heart. And I agree that in some instances going and telling them to stop might be exactly the right thing to do.” But he said, “In this case, this couple is almost brand new to the faith, and if I were to go to them that way, I might push them out of the boat. Wouldn’t it be better, Jeff, if I accepted them where they were and I kept introducing them to Jesus so that they would fall in love with Jesus, and so that their love of Jesus would lead them to righteousness? Wouldn’t that be better?” He was pastorally willing to be patient, to wait. And God is willing to wait on Jacob.

The other thing though is that God works while he waits. There’s little signs of God at work in this passage.

One way that God works is that He sets boundaries.

I kind of mentally think of this as like a swimming pool, and God is willing to let Laban and Jacob thrash around in the pool, and they can cheat on laps, swim, and they can do cannonballs on each other, and they can not answer when it’s Marco Polo time. But He’s still going to put boundaries around the outside of the pool to hold it.

Twice, He intervenes out of compassion for Leah and for Rachel, that they would not be hurt anymore. Another time, He intervenes so that Laban cannot destroy Jacob. Another time, He intervenes so that Jacob will not settle outside the land He has intended. He sets boundaries.

He also, in this story, finds a way to take what seems insignificant and use it for His great historical glory.

If this was a Hollywood movie, you would expect beautiful Rachel who at the very end gives birth to her own child, Joseph, that Joseph would become the protagonist in the next scene; that he would become the main character that would carry this story forward.

And in a sense it looks that way in Genesis because the whole next section of Genesis focuses on Joseph. But from God’s big plan, Joseph turns out to be a bit of a dead end. His descendents don’t, essentially, carry forward God’s great history.

You know who carries forward God’s great history? Two children. Two children insignificant in the story – the third and fourth child of the unloved Leah. The third child, Levi, becomes the parent of the priest, the ancestor of Moses who leads his people out of slavery to the Promised Land. The fourth child, Judah, becomes the ancestor for the great king of Israel, and through him to Jesus Christ, who leads his people out of slavery to sin to the Promised Land. Two seemingly insignificant children become used by God to carry its history forward.

And the last way I would say I see God working in this is that God takes the very messiness of the product of this sinful, sort of mess, and uses it in great ways for His kingdom.

You know these 12 children that are born in this sort of ferticility war, this great competition back and forth, these 12 children actually become the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. And all of Israel’s history is mapped around these children as it unfolds. And even more than that, we are told that at the very end of time when the New Jerusalem is brought, the city where we will be able to live forever in God’s presence and enjoy him forever, that the gates are wide open so that the whole world can come in. And every gate has a name. And you know what they’re named? They’re named after these 12 children.

God takes the seemingly messy by-product of sinful behavior and in His mercy transforms it for His glory.

This is a story about the days of their lives, but the other reason for my sermon title is frankly that it’s about the days of our lives too. We are, in so many ways, like Jacob, like Rachel, like Leah in this story. We cheat. We twist the truth. We fail to disclose things we should. We introduce competition into relationships where there shouldn’t be competition. We ignore what God seems to want to do. We try to take charge ourselves. We are in this story.

But the good news is that for us, too, God waits. And with us, God works. We have a very very good God. And He is very good to us.

Let us pray.