God’s Design to Bless Despite Blunders

I hope that this series has been really profitable for you in your personal relationship with the Lord as a mother, teaching your children, as a Sunday school teacher, as a voting citizen. There's a lot of reasons that we need to know and understand God's plan. And there was a verse that we began in our introduction this entire series with, and it was Psalm 119, verse 130, that says, the unfolding of your words gives light. It imparts understanding to the simple. And that's one of the reasons, you can tell, I captured that word, unfolding, and we continue to use it over and over again, because it is the unfolding of God's words in our heart and mind. It gives us understanding. We are simple. I can admit that. I am simple compared to the knowledge of the Lord. And so for Him to give understanding is a wonderful thing for me. And we've tried to look for that unfolding of His plan through person by person, chapter by chapter, through Genesis. And I've enjoyed the study a lot. We're going to wrap it up today with a lesson titled, God's Design to Bless Despite Blunders. And we ended last week noting that that is sort of the underlying theme of Jacob's life. We said that God chooses to bless us not always because of what we do, but often in spite of what we do. God pursues us, He loves us, and He blesses us and chooses to bring us close to Him. So we're going to finish this series with Jacob. I suppose it would have made sense to finish it at the end of Genesis, which would take us all the way through Joseph and the captivity in Egypt. But in a way, it makes a lot of sense to finish it here, because this is the birth of the nation of Israel. Jacob is the end in terms of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And now we launch into the birth of this family that God has chosen. So we're going to pick up the narrative in chapter 28. You can have your Bibles open there. And as we left off last week, Jacob is ready to flee from his home at his mother's suggestion. And with his father's blessing and with his father's instructions, that he go and find a wife and not take a Canaanite woman, as Esau did. Esau has already now taken two Hittite wives and now a wife from Ishmael. But Isaac says, go to Patamaran and go to Laban. Go to your mother's brother. Go check out those daughters. See what you think about there. And now before you think that this is a terribly romantic young man leaves home to find a wife, remember he's in his 70s. So let that sink in. And he takes off and I want to read in chapter 28, verse 10. I want to read about God meeting with Jacob. And this is going to be a theme. We're going to read this three times. Chapter 28, 32, and 35. So this is the first time.

So Jacob does realize that God has gone out of his way to pursue him. To come to him in this place. To give him a dream. To speak to him. To share those same things that we have. Is that not familiar to us? That God said to Abraham and then to Isaac. And on and on. And Jacob always being the contract maker. He says, okay, tell you what. So if you indeed will help me. And you'll give me food and clothing. And bring me back to this place in peace. Then you'll be my God too. You know? If you do this, I'll do that. It's been his nature. And it's still his nature. And he says, in fact, I'll give you a tenth. I'll even give you a tenth as a bonus. So here in his 70s, Jacob is still Jacob. He's still the man that we've known throughout this time. Making deals. Making life happen his way. And now what I see is trying to fit God into his life. It's like, I'll fit you into my life. We'll do it this way. So as the story goes, then in the next chapter, Jacob does indeed find a wife from the daughters of Laban. In fact, he finds two of them. And so he makes his way there. It says he successfully came to the land of the peoples of the east. In verse 5, he meets these shepherds. And he says, hey, do you know Laban, the son of Nahor? And they go, well, yeah. Of course we know. In fact, here comes his daughter, Rachel, right now. And verse 10 tells us, as soon as Jacob saw Rachel, he rolled the stone from the well's mouth. He watered the flock of Laban and his mother's brother. And then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud. Which is extremely awkward. It's not the suggested way to find a girl. But that's how it happened. And so he tells her that, you know, he's her father's kinsman and that he's Rebecca's son. And she ran and told her father. And to make a long story short, Jacob stays there for a month. He stays there. And after a month, Laban says, hey, you know, I should be paying you. You know, you're here. This isn't right. And so Jacob, the contract maker, says, I have an idea. Tell you what, I'll work for you seven years for Rachel. The one I cried over. The one I love. And Laban says, that's a pretty good deal. You guys read the chapter. I'm going to need to summarize this because there's different points that I want to get to. So we have the wedding. We have the wedding night. And then we have that verse, verse 25. It says, and in the morning, behold, it was Leah. Which is even more awkward than what had happened before. And so Jacob, the deceiver, he asks, what is this you've done? Why did you deceive me? And Laban has some lame excuse about it's not their custom to give the younger daughter first. And so that's why I did it. And he says, but I tell you what, you know, finish the wedding week. I'll give Rachel two for another seven years. So that is exactly what happened. And so now we have Jacob married with two wives. And the women begin to have children, begin to have sons. And I hope you had the opportunity in your study guide to list those all and to kind of go through that narrative of how those sons came about. What I want to do, we don't have time to academically go through that text. What I want to do, trusting in the fact that you've read it, is I want to bring out four points from this time period in Jacob's life. And the first point is about brokenness and blunders in life. Jacob ends up now with a family of ultimately it's going to be 12 sons and one daughter that we're told about from four different women. Not ideal. Again, we've said this multiple times, just because the Bible narrates something that happened doesn't mean that this is God's design or a good thing at all. But also, God has chosen Jacob, and he's chosen to craft a family through Jacob. And another Bible truth, particularly about Jacob that we read, is I will not cast you off. So even though Jacob ends up in a situation that is not God's design, God does not chop him off and say, that's it, I'm turning the corner. He continues to pursue, to work with him, and to bless him. And that should be good news for us. And the blunders that we've made in our life, that God does not chop us off and say, That's it, I'm no longer with you. And so we see that in this story and it gives us hope. The next Bible truth we see in the story is that we reap what we sow. The man Jacob who once deceptively passed himself off as the firstborn in order to receive the blessing that went along with the birthright, was now deceptively given the firstborn as his wife. That's interesting, isn't it? The man who grew up competing with his brother Esau, contending with him from birth, heel catcher, has now begun to live under that spirit of competition in his own home with his wives competing for his affections and his attention. And so we see Jacob living out a Bible truth that we reap what we sow. Another thing that we see throughout this story of the women giving birth is the truth that husbands and wives are designed to listen to one another and to pray for and with one another. Do you remember last week that we talked about when Rebecca could not conceive, Isaac prayed for her, he interceded for her, and the Lord listened and answered that prayer. Well, now in this context, when Rachel is not having children, she's four to one with her sister, Leah's had four, Rachel's had none. She says in Genesis 31, when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister and she said to Jacob, give me children or I shall die. That's not a good way to ask your husband to pray for you. We talked about last week that the Lord can give you the wisdom to know how to inspire him and not nag him, and this is not the model that we want to use at all. And so, and what is the result? Because she's approached him that way, the result, it says Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel. And he said, am I in the place of God who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb? And so when men, and this is just a life truth, maybe you've observed it, maybe you've not, not all men are the same. But in general, when men are backed into a corner, especially by women, the result is anger. And this is what she did to him. Give me children or I'm gonna die. And he just turned around and said, got angry. He's like, no, do you think I'm God? Which also I think for Jacob himself, because he's been the boss of his life all these 70 plus years, and so to now be confronted with something that there's no possible way he could scheme, deceive, or manipulate his way into that his wife would bear children. It was a special dagger in his heart. So anyway, the result, their quick fix was just, well, I've got this servant, Bilha, lying around. We'll just have children through her. And so that's how they fixed it. But I wanted to bring that up as a contrast between what we had seen with Isaac and Rebecca, which was quite a beautiful thing, and what happens often in life, which is this type of a scenario here. The last thing that we learn from these childbearing years is that God is truly the one who sees and who hears. We talked about that in the life of Hagar, and now I wanna talk about it in the life of Leah. I wanna sidestep just a moment and take a look at Leah for about three minutes here. Sometime I'd love to do a Bible study on the marginalized women of the Bible, and pick up Hagar, and Leah, and Tamar, and all these kinds of women. But what we see in the Bible is that God sees and God hears those who are distressed, those who are in trouble. Here's Leah. She's not a beautiful woman. It had told us that Rachel was lovely, and warm, and beautiful. And it said Leah had weak eyes. And because of the context of that passage, I don't think she had trouble with her eyesight. I think she had weak eyes, like she wasn't pleasant to look at. She was a contrast to her sister. So here's this firstborn girl who's not just a terribly pleasant, beautiful looking girl. And along comes girl number two, or wherever she is down the line, and she's lovely. And so now imagine being in that situation. This is your lot in life. You're compared with this other person, and she lived under Rachel's shadow. What do you think it was like when Laban said to her, you're gonna go in to that bridal chamber instead of Rachel? I mean, what did she think? Was she happy about that? Was she like, what? She was a marginalized woman. She was told what to do. And she may have thought, I get Jacob. And then she remembered, I know what's gonna happen. I know how this is gonna go. Yeah, I'm gonna get Jacob, but she's coming. My sister's coming. I know how our culture works. So I'll get him for a night, a week. And then my sister's, now I'm linked with my sister forever. I don't even get my own husband. I'm with her forever. It's a sad life. It's a very difficult life that she had. But what we see in this passage is that God reached out to Leah in some really special, significant ways. First of all, it says in verse 31, when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, and that's just the opposite of loved, not loved, he opened her womb. So God went, all these women from this family have had womb trouble, right? From Sarah through Rebecca, all of them. But look it, God opened Leah's womb first. He gave her children. And Leah must have begun to sense in some way that God was pressing on her, pursuing her, because she prophetically names her sons. The first one she has is Reuben, which means God has seen my affliction. So she responded, her next son is Simeon, meaning one who hears. And those are the two things that we learned about with Hagar. You are the God who sees, you are the God who hears. Ishmael was called he hears. And so this is a Bible that our God sees the distress of those who are poor in spirit. He sees and he hears and he is desirous to lift the humble from their distress. Now Leah's third son was, she named him Levi, meaning attached. And I think that she felt that now Jacob would finally be attached to her. She has born him three sons. And of course, he wasn't. But prophetically, who are the Levites? They are the tribe that is attached to the Lord in a special way that none of the other tribes are. It says the Lord is their inheritance. They don't get land, they get the Lord himself. And then her last son is Judah, which means praise. But there's something more special about Judah. And that is that he is the line of the Messiah. You got 12 sons and only one of them bears the seed of the promised Messiah. And it is Judah, and God chose Leah to be the one that bore the son that would be, that the promised Messiah would come from. Now, in her lifetime, in her existence of breathing air, she never knew that. Her story did not fully resolve in her lifetime. We know it. We can look back and say, oh, look at the Lord blessed you. It is from your seed that our Messiah comes. She didn't know that. And there are things in our life that will never be resolved in our lifetime. We may draw our last breath and never know exactly how God is working through our lives. But he's working. He's doing a good thing. And this should comfort us to know that our lifespan is pretty tiny scope of the whole story, but God is in charge of the whole story. So we better keep going here. Laban and Jacob craft an exit strategy after these 20 plus years. And Jacob begins to head back now with all of his wives, all of his children, but he makes kind of a error. And he doesn't tell Laban he's leaving, he just leaves. So he leaves, knowing Laban is behind him, and probably he didn't leave with good feeling, where is he going to? He's going toward Esau, so there's bad juju on both sides of him. He's got himself kind of penned in here, and so he's about 100 years old now. And the thing is about Jacob is that God has been with him all this time and blessed him in so many ways. We can see the material blessing that God has bestowed on him. But God has also been blessing him in working through his character, the slow, steady realization that I think Jacob has begun to absorb that he's really not the boss of his life. But it's a slow process. Have you had things in your life that God has worked very slowly over decades with you? Well, this is the story of Jacob here. And so now God is just getting ready to sort of seal the deal with him and really help him to reveal. things he's been blessing him with all along. And so we remember, God first appeared to him at that place that he named Bethel, in that dream. And God spoke those words of encouragement that echoed what he'd been saying to Abraham and to Isaac all along. And it was there that Jacob acknowledged Jehovah. He acknowledged him, and in fact promised to make him his God if he'd give him food and water, and bring him back here in peace. Well, Jacob needs some peace right now, because he's squeezed between some difficult situations. And sometimes that is exactly where God wants us to be, is squeezed between some hard places. Because it is then that we begin to listen and understand some things. And so, I'm gonna be in chapter 32, Jacob needs this peace. He sent his wives and his servants, his 11 children, everything that he had, he sent him away to ford the Jabbok River. And now he's spending another night all alone in the desert, just like he did that night at Bethel. And in verse 24, it says, Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day, pause for a minute. Now, Bible scholars tell us that this isn't just a man, that this is the pre-incarnate Christ that came and wrestled with him. And God has a way of showing up and revealing himself to us in ways that we can understand. To Abraham, when those three travelers came to his tent, God revealed himself. He approached Abraham as a traveler, just like Abraham was a traveler. And if we go forward in the story of the Bible, when we get to Joshua, who is this military man, God is going to appear to him as the commander of the Lord's army, but right here, the contender, Jacob the contender, God shows up as a man who wrestles with him all night long. And then we get to the morning and it says in verse 25, when the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, and it wasn't because he was weaker, it's because he did not want to prevail. He wanted to wrestle with him all night long. Finally, by morning, he touched his hip socket, one touch, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. And then he said, now let me go, for the day has broken. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. So Jacob asks for another blessing. Jacob has been interested in blessings all along. And he says, I'm not gonna let you go unless you bless me. And he wanted the blessing. And so the man says to him, what is your name? And this time, he says, Jacob. My name is Jacob. I'm a deceiver. I'm a heel catcher. That is my name. Last time he asked for the blessing from his father, Isaac. And Isaac said to him, who are you? He said, I'm your firstborn, Esau. He wouldn't admit who he was. But now, meeting with God, he admits who he is. And you know what? When God puts us in that place where he squeezes us, he wants us to admit who we are in relationship to who he is. He wants us to admit, sinner, I'm the person who's not the boss of my life. I'm the person who needs your intervention. I'm the person who needs your blessing, or I won't breathe. And that's what's going on here. And so the man says, he said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. For you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. And then Jacob asked him, please tell me your name. But he said, why is it that you ask my name? And there, he blessed him. And so Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, for I have seen God, Elohim, face to face, and yet my life has been delivered. So Jacob names God. Jacob says, I know who you are. You don't have to tell me your name. You are Elohim, meaning that all powerful creator, sustainer, righteous judge of the earth. And Jacob here recognized God in a powerful way and began that process of gaining an intimate knowledge of who God was. I love this name change. Typically, Israel means one who wrestles with God. But I think in your study guide, I put the G. Campbell Morgan says, a God mastered man. And I like that because do we not want to be and need to be God mastered women? We need to come to a place like this where God masters us. And in the story of my life, and I've shared this with you before, if we were to take these two geographic places, Bethel, where we begin to understand of God's existence, that he is Jehovah God. And Peniel, where we bow our knee, where we surrender to the Lord, where we admit our need, admit who we are. If we were to take those, I got to Bethel when I was eight years old. And I recognized that there was a God who was pursuing me. And I think I asked Jesus into my heart way back there, but it took me 14 years. Now, Jacob's got 20 plus years going here between these. Took me 14 years until I was 22, and I had my Peniel experience where God pressed me. Like I had bad juju coming from all sides, and I was squeezed in. And I had to wrestle with God and admit I was not the boss of my life. I was not going to squeeze him into my life. I was going to serve him the way he wanted me to. And he didn't give me a new name, I don't know. But in a way he did, because I had that renewal, that new birth. So I think that there are some lessons for us to see. Where are you between Bethel and Peniel? Have you already surrendered to the Lord like Jacob did? Or are you in the process? I'll just give you a little piece of advice. If you're between there, don't waste the years. They're precious years, get right here to this place. And I think it's interesting too that at Bethel, those last words that God had spoken to Jacob before he left him. And there was silence for 20 years. He said, behold, I am with you, and I will keep you wherever you go. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. And that is a Bible truth for us. God says, I will not leave you until I have finished the work that I started off. And God is so patient with us, isn't he? Some of you who can look back from all those experiences go, how sweet that God continued. He was patient, he waited for me to get there. And to make sure that God's plan unfolds in our life. Okay, we've got one last passage that I did not put in the study guide, but I wanna end our study with this, and it's gonna be in chapter 35. After this night of wrestling, Jacob does meet up with Esau. And then after meeting, they part ways again. Jacob ends up living in Shechem for a season, which ended up being a very dark season in their family life. I don't know if you read that chapter, but the situation with Dinah. It was a very bad situation. We got to the end of that, and now in Genesis 35, God is gonna tell him to go back to what he knew first. In verse 1 says,

Do you see Jacob's character completely transform? He goes, I'm gonna go get rid of, if we have any gods, if there's anything in my household that is not good, get rid of it. This is the time to get rid of it. And we're gonna change our clothes. We're gonna make a fresh start here. And I'm going back to that God who answered me in my distress. That God who's been with me, he followed me wherever I went in my life. That's where I'm going back. In verse five, as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the city that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. And Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. And there he did build an altar and called the place El Bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. And so God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Padam Aram and blessed him. And God said to him, your name is Jacob. You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. And so he called his name Israel, and God said to him, I am God Almighty. This is El Shaddai. This is the exact same thing God started off with when he approached Abraham and changed his name. He said, I'm God Almighty. I am El Shaddai. Be fruitful and multiply. Now, where did we hear that before? We have another rhythm in Genesis. God first said to Adam when he He created the world, I want you to be fruitful, multiply and fill this. And then after we have the destruction of the flood, he says to Noah, I want you to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And now after God chooses a family, a particular family to represent him in this world, he says to them, be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you and kings shall come from your own body. The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you. I will give the land to your offspring after you. And so the nation of Israel is launched now from this point. And it's kind of interesting that it's less than 30 years from this point until they all go into captivity in Egypt. And I think until recently, I have seen that as a bad thing. Who wants to be a slave in Egypt 400 plus years? But think about it this way. They only had 30 years for more blunders. And then God tucked them safely away in a place where they could not intermarry. They couldn't get into any trouble for hundreds of years. So that they could do what God told them to do, be fruitful and multiply. You have one job to do, have babies. That's what I want you to do in Egypt. It's really kind of a neat part of the story when you think about it that way. Because God wanted the seed of the promised Messiah to come from this people. He wanted them to be a particular people of his own. So God's design was to choose his family, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. In his unfolding story of redemption, because salvation is of the Jews. But we also are chosen from the foundations of the earth to be adopted as sons. We aren't natural sons. I don't think I'm as Jewish here. But we are adopted as sons. And we receive an inheritance that has been planned for us. And we are serving God's purposes in this generation that we're living in. So that wraps up divine design from beginning to end. I'm just gonna close. If you wanna, on the last page of your study guide where your notes are. I have the Romans doxology from chapter 16, and I'm just gonna read that and pray. I think it's a good ending to this study. It says, now to him who's able to strengthen you according to my gospel. And the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery that has been kept secret for long ages. But now it's been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations. According to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith. To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ, amen. And Father, we thank you for your kind and generous words, Lord. That you have revealed this mystery to us. You've given us so much information about your character, your intentions. Lord, I just ask that you would help us to live up to it. I ask for your spirit to be with us and in us. And to unfold these words for us in each of our lives. That we will know how to represent you properly. That we will know how to love you. We will know how to serve those in this generation that you've placed us in. So Lord, we just ask that you would take these nine weeks of study that we've done. And Lord, breathe life into them and cause them to be fruitful. In Jesus' name, amen.