Genesis 29:1-30

October 23, 2016

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 18:00 in the audio file.

And, Other Courtship Clichés

On his way to see his mother’s family in Haran, the LORD met Jacob in a special place and assured him that he would be blessed with offspring and land that he did not deserve. God did not tell Jacob at the time that he would also get some of what he deserved.

Saving grace does not eliminate all consequences. In fact, saving grace gives us a Father (though the Hebrew patriarchs didn’t refer to God as “Father”), and every loving father disciplines his children. So does our Father in heaven. Yahweh will be Jacob’s God. Yahweh will go with Jacob and guard him. And Yahweh will also mature Jacob. Each of them will be associated with the other forever, and all the families of the earth will be blessed in Jacob, so he has some growing up to do.

The LORD would discipline Jacob with more than he bargained for, including a crazy, selfish, deceitful uncle. Jacob wouldn’t realize how deceitful Laban was until later, but that’s part of the problem with deception. Also, what goes around comes around. Jacob deceived, now he is deceived, and ironically ruined under the pretense of priority for the firstborn.

The blessing of finding family is mixed with the nature of the family he found, or at least the head of that household. The blessing of finding work is mixed with a steep price paid by that work. The blessing of finding a wife is mixed with finding one but getting two. It was more than Jacob bargained for.

In verses 1-14 Jacob meets family and in verses 15-30 Jacob marries sisters.

Meeting Family (verses 1-14)

Then Jacob went on his journey is an unfortunately flat translation. The Hebrew says that “Jacob lifted up his feet” (Tyndale’s accurate translation) which is a comment on his resolve to keep going based on the LORD’s reassurance, or at least his eagerness to increase the distance between himself and Esau.

He came to the land of the people of the east, though Haran is more north than east. So far in the book of Genesis, going to east is less preferable, and often an sign of separation. For Jacob he will find what he was looking for and some of what he wasn’t.

Jacob came upon three flocks of sheep near a well with a large stone across it. Somehow he could identify the separate flocks, perhaps by their positions or by the fact that there were too many shepherds for it to be only one. The flocks were near a well that was protected by a stone that usually took more than one man to move.

When Jacob saw them he said to them, “My brothers, where do you come from?” He plays up the politeness, though they don’t give him much more than the minimum reply. ”We are from Haran.” This is encouraging. So he asked, ”Do you know Laban the son of Nahor? How big was Haran? Or is this the eternally human response? “Oh, you live there? Do you know So-and-so?” Their reply is too short to get a definitive sense of their perspective, but enough to get a hint. They said, “We know him.”” What else did they want to say? Laban was not the kind of man who could avoid a reputation.

Then Jacob asked how Laban was doing? Did he have shalom? This wasn’t being well in the peace-of-soul in God way, but a general, “is he alive?” He was. And the shepherds were happy to have a way out of the conversation because, as “luck” would have it, ”see Rachel his daughter is coming with the sheep!” From this moment Jacob’s attention was distracted for at least the next 14 years.

Jacob saw enough that he knew that he wanted a little alone time with his cousin. So he tells the men to get back to work. They were waiting around when they could have been letting their flocks graze. It was too early in the day to fold them together; that was done for the night for warmth and protection. Jacob tells them to give the sheep a drink and go back at it for a while which would give him a [...]