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"The Journey of Faith" We have another lengthy reading this morning and, moreover, one that will require some extensive comment on the text. We must have the whole before us, to understand the parts. Text Comment v. 25 Jacob worked fourteen years for the wives and the children; now six years follow in which he works for Laban to build up his own flocks. So, 31:41. Now that Rachel, his beloved has a child, she will be ready to accompany him home to Canaan. The "my" before homeland should probably be taken as expressing Jacob's faith, it is the land that God had promised him. Since the Lord had fulfilled the other promises he made to him at Bethel -- protection and a wife and children -- Jacob now looks to God to fulfill the last promise, return to the Promised Land. v. 26 This seems strange to us, asking for his wives and children. But, even the Mosaic law (21:3-6) required slaves to leave their wives and children behind when they left the service of a master, if they had acquired those wives and children during their time of service, and both Jacob (here) and Laban (31:43) seem to view Jacob as Laban's slave. That is the way he treated him, nephew or not. v. 27 Laban's reply, one commentator writes, "is a model of oriental courtesy and cunning." He rejects Jacob's request though makes the rejection sound like a request made to a superior. [Wenham, 255] "divination" was a widespread practice in the ANE. Most texts that have been recovered from that time and place are divination texts, purporting to show how to discover the mind and will of the gods. Divination presumes the presence of other spiritual forces controlling the world that are not under God's control, hence it was forbidden in Israel. However, God can use pagan practices to accomplish his own will (as with Balaam later). This is one of several places where pagans are forced to acknowledge that having the covenant people in their midst has been a cause of blessing to them. But, of course, this is, for Laban, a reason to keep Jacob, not to let him go. v. 28 "Name your wages" sounds very generous; but later we will learn that Laban changed Jacob's wages ten times (31:7,12). v. 31 Laban sounds agreeable, but he has already indicated that he does not intend to let Jacob go, as subsequent events will confirm. v. 33 Jacob knows his man and offers a proposal that seems entirely to Laban's advantage. Normally sheep are white and goats are black. It is rare to get black sheep or speckled goats, certainly nothing like the 20% of the newborn of the flock that was the shepherd's normal hire. So it looks like a very good deal for Laban. It is made even better by Jacob's offer to cleanse the gene pool of the speckled animals and dark sheep at the outset. v. 36 Laban not only takes up Jacob's offer to cleanse the gene pool, but, a cheat himself, he takes extra precaution to ensure that he isn't cheated. He separates the animals himself and then separates all the speckled and dark sheep from Jacob's little flock by a distance of three days journey, to prevent Jacob from any inbreeding of his animals with the speckled and dark animals. The distance Laban put between himself and Jacob was to backfire, enabling Jacob to escape later and, meantime, to practice his breeding unnoticed and unhindered. We read of the dishonest man in Psalm 7:15: "He makes a pit...and falls into the hole which he has made." v. 43 The stratagem of the branches is, in all probability, just Jacob's weak faith laying some of his hope for success on magic, as Rachel had done with the mandrakes before. Later we will learn that the basic plan was God's not Jacob's and further that Jacob himself ascribed his prosperity to God and nothing is said about the peeled branches. Whatever the method, Jacob succeeded in breeding multi-colored sheep and goats from monochrome stock and so transferred them into his ownership. What is more, he ensured that the strong kids and lambs were his and the feeble were Laban's. So, like Abraham and Isaac before him, he became rich while in exile, a stranger among strangers. v. 2 Trouble is brewing. Jacob's prosperity worries and infuriates Laban and his sons who see it, as cheats always do, as Jacob prospering at their expense, no matter that he did it himself according to a plan Laban had agreed to. Jacob sees that he is persona non grata and realizes he needs to leave for home. v. 3 At just the right time the Lord appears to him and tells him to go. But, Laban still sees his daughters and their children as his. Jacob must secure the loyalty of his wives before attempting his escape and the speech that follows is his effort to do that. He needs to know that his wives will side with him and not their father. It is a long speech, which is a demonstration of its importance, in part because it shows us a very different Jacob than we have seen so far, a Jacob who is a man of faith. This is his confession of faith in a God who blessed him in spite of Laban's efforts to control him and use him. v. 4 The countryside was a better place to be sure that the conversation was not overheard by the wrong people. Note that Rachel still comes first. v. 12 What is said connects the vision to what happened as a consequence and to let us know that the breeding and its consequences were God's doing. The whole explanation does not need to be repeated here. v. 15 It is not entirely clear what the women mean by "used up what was paid for us." Perhaps they only mean that Laban did in fact cheat Jacob during those years he worked for him. In any case, the daughters are under no illusion about their father -- "he sold us..." They are quite happy to follow Jacob elsewhere. v. 19 This detail explains how Jacob got away without Laban knowing it. It was sheep-shearing time, a very busy time for sheep ranchers. It is not certain what the "teraphim" were that Rachel stole: household gods is the common interpretation; but there is some evidence that they may be images of ancestors whom the living were to honor and to consult (hence perhaps the means of Laban's "divination" mentioned earlier). Rachel stole them, probably, with the thought of their added protection for herself and her son. Her faith was not so pure that it excluded pagan notions. But, then, we've seen in all of this material God blessing very imperfect faith! v. 21 "The River" is the Euphrates, Paddan Aram lying to its north; Gilead is the area east of the Jordan between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. Probably most attentive readers of this part of Genesis wonder why so much time and space has been devoted to these stories. There is a great deal of material. And it is worth our asking why. And it seems that, whatever the entire explanation may be, chief among the reasons for the detail we are given at such length is that these accounts are illustrations of a fundamental "motif" of Genesis' account of the life of faith. A motif is a main element or feature that is to be elaborated or developed. Or, it is a figure that is repeated over and again in a design. Well, you have a motif in Genesis that is repeated several times and then repeated climactically again in Exodus. And that motif is what we have here, being elaborated again, built upon and developed, a further illustration of the life of God's covenant for those who believe. The detail serves both to emphasize the motif and make it stand out. Let me show you what I mean. Jacob here is summoned by God to leave Paddan-Aram and go to Canaan and when Jacob does so he nearly retraces the pilgrimage his grandfather, Abraham, had made many years before from Haran to Canaan, and he does so with the twelve sons with him, the nation of Israel in the seed. What is more, for Jacob, as for Abraham, it was a summons that had to be answered in faith: in Abraham's case because he didn't know where he was going, in Jacob's because Esau awaited him at home. Later on, Israel in Egypt would be given a similar summons and would have to launch out in faith, not knowing where they were going exactly, what would meet them when they got there, or, how they would escape the threat of Egyptian reprisals. Further, superior enemies are ranged against them in every case, seeking to prevent this pilgrimage of faith that they are making. In Abraham's case it is famine and the Egyptians, in Jacob's case it is Laban, and in Israel's case later it is the Egyptians again. And in each of these three cases, not only does God protect his people from their enemies, but, by his provision and protection, they come away from their times of difficulty and out from under their enemies not only safe and sound, but having plundered their enemies and their gods. Abraham came out of Egypt a wealthy man; Jacob leaves Paddan Aram a wealthy man -- with Laban's gods --; and Israel plunders the Egyptians on her way out of the land of her slavery. Indeed, it is very interesting that the word the NIV translates "took away" in 31:16 ("all the wealth that God took away from our father") is the same word used in Exodus 12:36 of Israel plundering the Egyptians the night of the passover and the exodus. The miraculous demonstration of the divine providence in the breeding of the animals is matched with the miraculous plagues by which Israel was delivered from Egypt. And Laban's following of Jacob to bring him back -- which we did not read today -- will be, of course, matched by the effort of the Egyptian army to recover the Israelites after they had left. In each case God frustrated that effort and preserved his people safe and brought them to the Promised Land. These cycles of the history of the patriarchs, as we will read in the NT, as for example in Hebrews 11, are intended to set a pattern, to show us the nature of the Christian life. The detail, the repetitiveness all adds weight to the lesson, makes the picture being painted more vivid and more impressive. And what is that picture? It is of the Christian life as a pilgrimage, a journey to the land where they will worship and serve the Lord most completely and freely. Enemies of superior strength seek to prevent them, but God not only protects them, but by his strength enables them to plunder the world and its gods as they go. We are, you and I, on that same journey, to heaven of course, not to Canaan, but even the patriarchs understood that, so we read in Hebrews 11. We too have adversaries ranged against us, but we have God to protect us, and so completely to bless us that we will carry the glory of the nations with us into the heavenly country. It may not seem so; it often does not indeed seem so to us. After all, Jacob was in Paddan Aram twenty years and had to endure a great deal of mistreatment during his stay. Israel would be in Egypt four hundred years and suffer terribly in abject slavery the latter years of her sojourn there. But, at the end, it was just as God had promised: for Abraham; for Isaac, for Jacob, and for Israel! And what is required of us is to see our lives in these same terms and no others; or, in other words, what is required of us is just faith, trust in God and God's Word, and acting on that trust in obedience to God's call as Abraham did, as Jacob did, as Israel would later do. But we all find that very difficult to do. Jacob did, so did Abraham and Isaac before him and Israel after him. When Paul, in Colossians 3:1 tells us, "Since you have been risen with Christ, set your mind on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God," he is just saying in the way of the NT what we are being taught here as well. To see our lives as having a particular meaning because of our connection with God and with heaven and then to live out of that connection and on the strength of it. That is, for example, what 17-year old Cassie Bernall did a week ago last Tuesday. When reading her Bible in the library of the Columbine High School she was asked by one of the teenaged gunmen "Do you believe in God?" According to Time she quietly replied, "There is a God and you need to follow along God's path." The shooter looked down at her. "There is no God," he said, and shot her in the head. According to another account a witness remembers the gunman asking her, "Do you believe in God?" to which she replied, "Yes, I believe in God." The gunman then asked, "Why?" but shot her dead before she had a chance to reply. According to her classmate, Mickie Cain, the killers had first asked the whole room if there was anyone who believed in God and, knowing that an affirmative answer would identify her for death, she spoke up anyway. [Colson, Breakpoint, April 26, 1999] Though having herself dabbled in Satanism and the occult, she had become a Christian some two years before. The Boston Globe reported that on the night of her death, her brother, Chris, found a poem she had written just two days before her death. Now I have given up on everything else But, you see, no one with Christian faith, no one who sees life in the terms it is taught in the history of the patriarchs and Jacob's own life history in particular, can think that Cassie made a mistake, that she won't be everlastingly grateful for the strength God gave her to stand up for him when it counted, or that the entire company of the saints won't agree with her, now and forever, that she did the right thing and that it was her privilege to share the sufferings of Jesus Christ. For her life was a pilgrimage, a journey from this world to the next, it would require of her, whatever her circumstances, to answer God's call with faith on her part, and a faith that led her to obedient action. That pilgrimage was the meaning of her life, the only meaning! The great question is not whether Cassie lives 17 years or 87, or whether Jacob spends a few days as a virtual slave in Paddan Aram or twenty years, the great question is whether she, whether he, blessed by God, was answering his summons to go to the Promised Land. Events like that two weeks ago in Colorado do not really alter any fundamental reality. Those two evil young men, with their brutish and hateful vengeance, did not increase the frequency of death. Everyone of us dies. They didn't even, in all likelihood, increase the rate of painful death. Those who die old and sick have a much harder time of it. Spread over a population as large as that of the United States, fifteen deaths in a school would not produce a blip on the statistical screen, even as a measure of the death of teens, who die in numbers every month and every year from disease or suicide or traffic accidents and the like. What an event as horrible, as genuinely vicious and sinister and dreadful as the massacre at Columbine High School does is to concentrate our minds on the issues of right and wrong, life and death. It forces on us thoughts that otherwise we keep at bay. Without it the kids at Columbine would have gone without reckoning with the meaning of life through graduation, to college or work, to marriage and family and career, in all likelihood many of them to divorce, to a life centered around their entertainment and the pursuit of pleasure in the world. Many of them, perhaps most of them by far will do so still, once the horror has receded and life gradually returns to normal. Theirs will, alas, be an aimless walk through this world, going nowhere in particular, so far as they know. Cassie did not want her life to be that aimless walk in any case. But, you and I, brothers and sisters, find it far too easy to be like them. To dither instead of purposively placing one foot before another on that way that God has summoned us to walk, on that journey that faith takes us from this world to the next. Too often we are not consciously on this pilgrimage. We are not cultivating our devotion to God, our soul's communion with him; we are not hard at work putting our sins to death and practicing, putting into practice the new life Christ has given us. We are not redeeming the time, short as it is, in loving our wife or husband, in loving, teaching, training our children for Christ's sake, in bearing witness to Christ for those we know, in offering our love and help to others, in contributing to the brotherhood and the ministry of the church. Too often it is not obvious from the way we invest our time and money, and by the subjects that fill our speech, that we are on pilgrimage to another country. Putting it in the simplest terms, this is the Christian life: giving answer to God's summons, walking a way made difficult by opposition of many kinds -- both within and without --, trusting in Christ to enable us and to keep the promises he has made to us, and keeping our faces set like flint toward the promised land, "our land", as Jacob has taught us to call it. This is the Bible's motif and it is found here in Jacob's life in Paddan Aram and in a 1,000 other texts. What the massacre in Colorado ought to do for everyone of us who calls Jesus Lord is to send a shudder down our spines for fear that the end might come sooner than we think and catch us dithering instead of striding, thinking of this world instead of the next, caring more about the world's diversions than the summons of God, and timidly slinking before the opposition of the world, the flesh, and the devil rather than refusing to let our Labans call the tune, in the confidence that the Lord, as he promised, will protect, provide, and prosper. Here is the reason for all this detail, for the long story. There must be enough of a description of Jacob's life of faith for us to find our own in his, and to tell whether we are authentically living the life of a man or a woman, a boy or a girl who is in covenant with the Living God and walking at a brisk pace toward the Promised Land, our land, that lies just ahead, closer than any of us knows. |
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