Now, as we read this account, so strange to us in some ways, let us appreciate the so very human story that it is. It is the narrative of the sinful rivalry of two proud and very unhappy women. Each sister has what the other needs. Leah needs Jacob's love; Rachel needs children. They go about seeking their own happiness and fulfillment in all the wrong ways -- as human beings so often do --, but, though they suffer much pain along the way, God is at work in the midst of all of this foolish and destructive envy and grasping after what each did not have, and he is accomplishing his will.

v. 31 "The Lord saw..." often introduces God's action in defense of the weak and the needy. When God "saw" Israel's plight in bondage in Egypt (Exodus 2:25), he intervened to deliver her.

v. 33 Leah hoped that the birth of a son to Jacob would win her husband's love, but it did not. Her bitter disappointment is expressed in the name of her second son.

v. 34 She still has the hope that her children will bring her husband's love.

v. 35 Judah, like the first two names, acknowledges God's mercy to her, but now there is no expression of hope for Jacob's love. Is she coming to terms with her situation? She has four sons, she will have to be content with that. She stopped having children either because she became infertile -- temporarily as it will turn out -- or because, far from bringing Jacob closer to her, her children drove him still farther away and marital relations ceased.

v. 1 When God saw, it led him to act in mercy. When Rachel saw, it produced envy and jealousy. And, like Sarah before her, she adopts the desperate expedient of having children through her servant. "Or I'll die..." The irony is that she will eventually die in childbirth!

v. 2 Jacob's angry retort compares very unfavorably with Abraham's and with Isaac's prayers for their barren wives. In any case, one commentator [Westerman in Wenham, ad loc.] writes: "To think that after the beautiful and gentle love story of 29:1-20 this angry exchange is our first and only experience of their marriage."

v. 3 She uses the same argument, even the same words, Sarah had used (16:2). The words "bear children for me" is literally, "to give birth over my knees" -- which is a picturesque way of saying that the child would be adopted, born for Rachel. This is surrogate childbirth before technology made it possible to do it without sexual relations. Truly, nothing new under the sun.

v. 6 "God has vindicated me." A tragic name, really. A name that is expressive of Rachel's ego and her bitter struggle with Leah. The child exists for her! We have a good deal of this in our culture nowadays.

v. 8 More of the same sad view of her life and her children. Everything is seen in terms of herself and her unhappiness.

v. 11 Rachel's triumph is short lived. Whatever Rachel can do, Leah can do as well. Leah is preening too!

v. 14 Reuben is a boy still. He picks some mandrakes -- a Mediterranean plant that bears bluish flowers in the winter and a yellowish plum-sized fruit in the summer. In those days the mandrakes were thought to heighten sexual desire and to help women conceive. It was an aphrodisiac. There is a reference to them in an erotic context in Song of Songs 7:13. In any case, both women see the mandrakes as a kind of fertility drug.

v. 15 The bitterness pours out. Jacob sleeps with Rachel and now she has the gall to ask Leah for the fertility drug. So Rachel proposes a trade: Jacob for the mandrakes. Rachel's offer shows both how completely Jacob has favored Rachel over Leah and how desperate Rachel is for children. The warring sisters strike a bargain, with each getting what she wants most: Leah the love of her husband and Rachel the chance for children.

v. 16 As his relationship with Laban, now even his relationship with his wives has been degraded and denatured and made a commercial bargain.

v. 18 Even Leah seems to know that it wasn't the mandrakes, it was God who gave children. Leah now seems less sure or less happy about having had children by Zilpah. But she takes the birth of Issachar as proof God approved her doing so. Rachel who has the mandrakes remains barren for several more years.

v. 20 She is still thinking that another son is going to make the difference when the five sons before have not and when she had to buy her husband back. But, perhaps the fact that she had relations with Jacob a second time means there had been some warming on his part to her.

v. 21 Dinah is mentioned primarily because of the large part she will have in the later history.

v. 24 The timing cannot be explained. But God was merciful to her. She prays for another and she will get another son, Benjamin, but she will die giving birth to him. Such are the mysteries and the ambiguities of our life in this world. God's way are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts; his ways are far above us and past our finding out.

All the polygamous marriages of Genesis turn out to be disasters, reminding us again and again that God gave but one wife to Adam, and that he never intended for marriage to be anything but the union of mind, heart, and body between one man and one woman. In the other cases we are not given much detail. Here we get the full, dismal picture. Jacob never loved Leah in the first place and, perhaps, he also never forgave her for her part in the deceit that had been perpetrated against him. There is a lesson in that, of course. But we pass it by.

Now, remember, when this was written in its final form by Moses, the nation of Israel already existed in its twelve tribes. It was a great nation, almost certainly already delivered from bondage in Egypt on eagles' wings. She is the people of God. Nations tremble before her. So, for them, this is the story of their origin, this is their family history. And what is that origin and that family history? Well, the twelve tribes were "fathered by a lying trickster and mothered by sharp-tongued shrews" [Wenham, 250] and, in some cases, by slave girls and not the matriarchs at all.

I tell you, anyone of you here who looks back on the circumstances of your own birth or your own upbringing or your own family history with regret -- if you wonder how God could love or use you with all that has gone into you in the past -- take comfort and encouragement from this history.

I mean, the whole story is just awful! And when I use the word "story" I do not mean that it is fanciful or made-up; only that it is a narrative, an account of things that happened.

You have children born more to satisfy the jealousies of their mothers, as weapons with which to best another woman, than as gifts of God and a sacred stewardship to be raised to love and serve the Lord.

Jacob, himself, whose other name, Israel, becomes the name of the nation itself, appears in this history as a complete buffoon. He is reduced to a stud. He exercises no moral leadership over his wives, he helps them not at all to deal with their griefs. In his indifference to them he is the prototypical man and husband! How many wives have found their husband to be a Jacob in such ways, unable or unwilling to enter into her suffering, uninterested in cultivating her heart, squandering his role as the leader in his marriage and home and leaving his wife to fend for herself.

And, then, Rachel completely abandons any trust in God, any true submission of her heart to God, and resorts to what is effectively "magic." She tries mandrakes. Like most magic, mandrakes are a crock and don't do a thing for her. But the effort is a sordid act of dismal unbelief and pagan foolishness.

And, to be able to put her magic to work, she has to sell her husband and his love to her enemy, Leah, and so reduce the sacred relationship of husband and wife to commerce and selfish pandering for one's own fulfillment.

And out of this come the twelve tribes, and the nation of Israel, and the twelve disciples, and the people of God. This is the family history of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.

Through all of this sordid nonsense, the promises that God made to Abraham and through Abraham to the world, take a "great step toward their fulfillment." [Wenham, 250]

And what is the lesson of all this but that where sin abounded, grace much more abounded. And that God's mercy, coupled with God's sovereign power, can take even our worst and make something beautiful and wonderful from it.

This past Friday night I preached at our Liberty Bay Presbyterian Church in celebration of the 20th anniversary of that congregation. And in that message I recollected the origin of that church because it was a story I felt should not be forgotten. For the fact is, the beginnings of that church cannot be remembered with unmixed pleasure. An Assemblies of God church had outgrown their very nice and substantial church building -- this was the day of explosive growth in the Assemblies of God -- and were offering it for sale. Some men in the Presbytery proposed that we buy it and establish a church in Poulsbo. We had never done this before -- borrow money to buy a church building when we didn't have even the beginnings of a church or an organizing pastor chosen -- but they were sure that it would be easy to get a church up and growing with such a lovely property to give the new church a presence in the community and a public face.

And so, just a few months before I arrived in Tacoma in May of 1978, the decision was made to borrow the money -- actually to sell bonds to raise the purchase price and some more thousands for start up costs. There were a few men in the Presbytery who voted "no." They felt it was unwise to borrow $300,000 when our little presbytery, composed of small churches with small benevolence budgets couldn't be reasonably sure that we would be able to repay it on time. $300,000 is still a lot of money, but it was even more money in those days. But I remember distinctly that we thought those men had too little faith!

Well, the deed was done, the church was purchased, a pastor was called, and we were off and running. It was really quite amazing how easy it was to raise the money. Christian folk nearby and all over the country were quite ready to lend us money to help us build the kingdom of God.

The plan was that the new church, which we were sure would grow rapidly, would almost immediately undertake to repay the interest on the bonds that had been sold. And, in fact, the church did grow quite nicely, some sixty folk were worshipping there by the end of the first year.

But, from day one we were never anywhere near having enough income to meet our obligations to pay the interest on those bonds. Imagine yourself an organizing pastor, trying to attract new folk to your church, but having to tell them at the same time how much they would need to give if the church was to be able to repay its immense debt!

Because I was a rookie in the Presbytery and couldn't say "No," I was assigned to what was then called "The Church Extension Committee." We met every month in those days and each month we spent most of our time wondering whether Liberty Bay was going to take the entire Presbytery down with it when it went bankrupt!

Well, the church never did collapse. Presbytery reassumed some of the debt, many bond-holders graciously consented to exchange interest due them for promissory notes to pay much later; and an individual presbyter came to our rescue with a large loan.

But that does not, by any means, tell the whole story. The personal cost of all of this was terrific. I know it was for the organizing pastor, who left after some years, in part because of the strain of living under that terrible weight of debt. And it was for others as well, especially a very faithful ruling elder by the name of Mel Harless, who had come to Poulsbo from Colorado Springs and suddenly somehow found himself in charge of a disaster that was of someone else's making. Imagine being the one who night after night would have to call up bond holders, all over the country, to tell them that there was no money to pay the interest due them and to ask them if they would consent to exchange the money owed for a promissory note. It was the Presbytery who had made this foolish decision, but it was some good men in the church who had to face the consequences of that decision.

And, then, there was one thing still worse about it all. The thing I remember with the acutest sense of guilt. In the face of our financial crisis, there were some bondholders who, in Christian kindness, simply gave their bonds back to the church, made a gift out of what had been a loan. They hadn't intended to do that, of course. They had thought they were helping us and investing for their future at the same time. But our crisis caused them to abandon hopes of a return and simply give up their money. That was wonderfully generous of them to do that, of course, and I hope the Lord has rewarded them for it. It is the great advantage of dealing with Christians in such a situation. We could have been sued for non-payment and, instead, brethren here and everywhere went out of their way to make it easier for us to deal with the mess we had created by foolishly borrowing money without a reasonable plan to ensure timely repayment.

But, of course, since they hadn't intended to give us a gift, but gave it simply because they felt they had to, that they had no other choice, from our vantage point, without intending to, of course, we had extorted money from the saints.

Looking back on the entire story I'm ashamed about our foolishness, about the glib way in which we, who of all Christians should have known better, confused faith with presumption, and about the way we foisted the mess we had created upon an innocent congregation and its elders.

But you know Liberty Bay is fine church today. Their beautiful building is paid for. The gospel is being ministered to the lost; the saints are being built up. They are thirteen years into their second minister's ministry. God proved faithful amidst our unfaithfulness. And through the pain he brought something truly fine and worthy into being.

Well, perhaps you think that doesn't have much to do with you. Well, the history of this congregation, our very own church, has in it a great deal that should make us hang our heads. Do you know that there was a congregational meeting in this very sanctuary some twnety-two years ago in which angry church members cursed one another -- cursed one another in the very house, in the very pews, in which they supposedly had worshipped God the Sunday before! God forbid that such should ever happen again in this place!

But that is our history as a church, that is our past, that is our upbringing as a church.

But, then, as an American individualist, you may still be thinking that what others did twenty-two years ago is none of your business. That is not the way the Bible teaches us to think, but be that as it may, the fact is, what is true of churches in general is true of every individual life as well. Dr. Waltke tells of learning that his grandmother had come to the United States as an immigrant because she had conceived a child out of wedlock and, in those days, they still felt such a shame over such a thing, that she left her homeland to live her life in another part of the world.

And in one way or another that is true of every one of us. Everyone of us has skeletons in his or her closet. In our own past, in our own family history, in the circumstances of our birth, our upbringing, in the things we have done already in our lives that perhaps no one else is even aware of.

But here is the promise of the gospel, of God's forgiveness, of his compassion coupled with his sovereign power that enables him to take our sins and the tawdry circumstances of our past and our family's past and make something pure and good and important and pleasing to him out of it. The minister who has had the greatest effect on me through his books is Alexander Whyte. What a great man he was. I so look forward to meeting him. I have stood in his Edinburgh church and wondered what his magnificent sermons sounded like in his own Scottish brogue. Whyte was a man I admire for so many things, a man I wish I could be like in so many ways. And you will remember my telling you that he was born out of wedlock, that his father left the country soon after, that he was raised by his mother alone, in a time and a land when illegitimacy was a greater shame and a greater obstacle than it is today.

There was pain along the way, to be sure, but where sin abounded, God's grace and mercy much more abounded.

Here is Moses narrating for us the origin of the twelve tribes of Israel and from beginning to end it is a disgusting story. But out of it, by the grace of God, comes the people of God, the "Israel of God" as Paul calls the Christian church in Galatians 6. That is your history and mine -- an absent and irresponsible father, shrewish mothers, disgusting bargains, bizarre forays into childish dependence on magic in complete indifference to the will and honor of God. And it is also a picture of everyone of our individual lives and individual histories.

And what is the lesson, but that in the world of God's grace no one is bound by the past, by the sins of the past, even by the worst and most ugly and destructive sins of the past. They may bring pain, to be sure, but they are no hindrance to God. Levi whose name "attached" stems from his sinful mother's vain hope of her husband's love, did finally become attached -- but his attachment was to the sanctuary of God. He became the father of every faithful priest and minister who have served the church of God. God sanctified his name and made something beautiful out of something tawdry and pathetic. And so with the rest, Judah especially.

Your task, brothers and sisters, and my not yet Christian friends, is not to mourn your past, but to look to God to make, by his grace and power -- for you cannot transform your past in your own strength; that was what Leah and Rachel tried to do -- but to look to God to build, by his grace and power, out of the ashes as it were, something beautiful and strong and good and pure and fruitful. God's mercies are new every morning and our lives are to be lived open to the future, to the possibilities that God's grace, love, and power set before us.

You search your mind and heart and be sure that you are not living in bondage to your past -- for whatever reason -- but in openness to God's future and to the new thing and the beautiful thing that he can do with your life as you trust in him, because great as he is, mighty as he is, abounding in love and mercy as he is, even our worst sins, the most shameful parts of our past, are nothing to him. He delights to show mercy and no one can shorten his hand!

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