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The Place of Prudence in Providence
If you spend enough time reading the Bible over the course of years, and there’s different ways you can read the Bible. A lot of us, if we do read the Bible, a lot of us, we just leave the Bible on the shelf and let other people read it for us. But even if you’re reading it, it’s very easy to fall into the habit of just, I need a little bit of a nugget to get me through the day, some kind of encouragement, some kind of a pick-me-up.
Ideally, what we’re doing when we’re reading the Bible is we are listening to what God has to say. God has revealed himself through the scriptures. And so as we’re reading, we want to understand what the author who is inspired by the Holy Spirit is intending to communicate. If you do that over the course of time, there’s going to be certain places where you feel like there is tension.
And one of those tension points is between the principle of grace, of self-giving love, self-sacrificing love on the one hand, and the call on the other hand to wisdom, to prudence, to thinking decisions and actions through very carefully. Now these two things, wisdom, prudence, and self-giving, self-sacrificing love, they aren’t actually intention. They are not opposed to one another because they’re both expressions of God’s own character.
And one of my favorite classical doctrines of God in the history of Christianity is the doctrine of God’s simplicity. Not that God is easy to understand, but what that means is that God is not divided. God is one. And so his attributes, his characteristics are not fighting against one another. In the mind and heart of God, his justice and his love aren’t fighting a war. And it’s like, oh, is God’s justice going to win here or is his love? No, both are just ways that we describe how God is all of the time toward us as his creatures.
And so the same thing here, wisdom is not opposed to love, but sometimes it can feel that way, especially living this side of the fall. We face circumstances, we face times when it is hard to tell. Do I need to emphasize love here? Do I need to emphasize taking a risk? Or do I need to emphasize walking wisely, considering my steps?
The Proverbs say that the wise man looks and he sees the pit that’s coming, but the fool just stumbles right into the pit. Well, how do I know? Am I supposed to emphasize looking for the trap, looking for the pit, or am I supposed to emphasize I’m just going to trust the Lord and do the loving thing? It’s hard to know sometimes.
Let’s read our passage this morning. It’s Genesis chapter 30, verses 25 to 43. And if you do have a bulletin, the title is different than what I have in the bulletin. The title of this sermon probably more accurately would be the place of prudence in providence. The place of prudence in providence. Genesis chapter 30 beginning in verse 25 says this:
So there’s some weird stuff in here, but we’ll get to that. The first thing we should see in verses 25 to 33 is that prudence is necessary to protect your family. Verse 25 says, as soon as Rachel had born Joseph, Jacob goes to Laban and says, send me away, which means he has fulfilled his seven years of service to Laban.
So Joseph is the 11th son of Jacob, his 12th son. Benjamin won’t be born until he is returned to the promised land. So his last son born here in Paddan Aram is the son Joseph, which means that he has 11 sons and at least 12 children born in the space of seven years.
You think sometimes when you get later to the story of Joseph and you think of his older brothers, you think, wow, you know, this is a huge family. These guys are 15, 20 years older than him. They’re not. They’re all born together in a pretty tight window. All 11 of them are within seven years of each other.
And Jacob sees that he has this burgeoning responsibility with this large family. He needs to take care of them. And God has promised him that the land of promise, the land of Canaan is where God is going to bless him. And so he sees a need, like I need to get back to the land of promise, to the land where God has promised to provide for me in order to take care of this family.
And it’s kind of a side note here, but I think I mentioned in an earlier sermon, one of the things you notice with Jacob is that he is at his best when he is taking proactive steps. When Jacob is sitting back and letting other people make decisions for him, his mom telling him what to do, his wives telling him what to do and kind of pulling him around all over the place. If he’s letting other people make decisions for him, things go poorly. But when he takes initiative, things tend to go much better. Things tend to be moving in the right direction.
Jacob recognizes here at this point, after seven, this is 14 total years of service, right? He had served seven years for Rachel before Laban snuck Leah in and he married Leah. And then after a week, he gave him Rachel for seven more years of service. He’s been serving Laban for 14 years, seven years with a family. And now he wants to move back to the land. And so he goes and he tells Laban, hey, send me away. Give me my wives and my children. I’ve served you for this long. And now you know, you know that I’ve served you honestly. You know the service that I’ve given to you.
But here’s what Laban says to him. Laban does not want to lose Jacob’s service. He doesn’t want to lose his work. He says, if I have found favor in your sight. So he’s trying to curry some favor with him. Like, hey, listen, listen to me for a minute. I’ve learned by divination, and that’s not entirely clear in the text what that means, but maybe he’s used some kind of witchcraft, or he’s gone to someone who gave him an omen, or maybe the Lord just appeared to him in a dream, and it’s not super clear in the text how this happens.
But he has learned somehow that his blessing, the prosperity of his flocks, has come through the presence of Jacob. And we know from a few verses later that this is accurate. Jacob shares that assessment that the blessing of Laban, Laban didn’t have very much when Jacob showed up. But after 14 years of Jacob serving him, Laban is now a wealthy and prosperous man.
And Laban says, hey, here’s the deal. You’re really valuable. Name your wage. I’ll give it to you. Name what you want. And it’s yours. This is a great place to be in as a worker, right? You tell your boss, I want to leave. And he says, I’ll pay anything to keep you. You tell me the wage and I will give it to you.
And so then Jacob, Jacob is shrewd. You can tell as he starts into his reply to Laban’s offer here, name your wage and I’ll give it to you. Jacob’s setting it up to drive a pretty hard bargain. He says, you yourself know how I have served you and how your livestock has fared with me. You had little before I came and it is increased abundantly. And the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned.
So as he’s replying, he’s setting it up to like, I am going to make a big ask here. And you need to remember, you basically wouldn’t have any of this if it weren’t for me. You’d still be dealing with shepherds who wouldn’t even roll the stone away for your daughter when she showed up with the sheep. That’s who Laban had working for him before. Now he has Jacob and he’s become wealthy and prosperous. And Jacob says, remember that before I set this up.
Now, how am I gonna provide for my own household? I’ve made you rich. I’ve made you prosperous, Laban. But now what am I gonna do for me? And Laban comes back very quickly with, what shall I give you? What can I give you to make up for this? What can I give you to sweeten this deal, to make you want to stay?
And Jacob, this is where I see his prudence and his shrewdness come in here. He says, you shall not give me anything. Jacob knows who he’s dealing with in Laban. Laban’s not a trustworthy man, obviously. Laban’s proved that multiple times, and he’s going to show that again. And Jacob does not want to take a gift from someone he knows is not trustworthy.
Why is that? Like, if that person’s not trustworthy, but they’re giving you a gift, what’s it matter? It’s a gift, right? But what Jacob understands, what they understood in the ancient Near East, and what we as modern Americans tend to deny, but we still know, is that gifts come with obligations. Gifts come with obligations. There is always a string attached. That string may not be negative, but it exists with literally every gift that is given.
Advertisers know this. So you get those little flyers in the mail. We’ll give you this free gift if you listen to our presentation and you’re gonna feel obligated because they gave you that gift to listen to the presentation, the sales pitch. Like they’re not dumb when they say, I’m gonna give you this $40 thing to try to sell you something that costs $3,000, right? They know that that gift gives you a sense of obligation to that person, to that company.
This is true even in families where there is genuine love. But if you give a gift to someone and you don’t at least get a thank you, do you not feel wronged? If you give a gift and that person then turns around and relationally stabs you in the back, they start talking poorly about you after you’ve just done something kind for them, do you not feel wronged? Because you have been wronged. That gift came with an expectation of a reciprocal relationship.
This is true even in salvation. Some people would throw up salvation as a counter to this. Well, God gives us his grace freely without any expectation in return, but that’s not true. His grace is completely freely given without condition in us. We don’t do anything to earn or deserve God’s favor. But if we have received salvation from him, there is a reciprocal piece of this.
The apostle Paul says in Romans 12 verses one and two, after he’s spent 11 chapters of the book of Romans unfolding the freeness of God’s grace, the extravagance of God’s grace towards those who by nature are his enemies. Like we don’t do anything to earn or deserve salvation through Jesus. But he says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind and in view of God’s mercies, the reasonable, the acceptable sacrifice in return is to offer yourself as a living sacrifice. This is your reasonable act of service. The reasonable response to the gift of salvation is to give your whole self to God.
And so then the rest of the book of Romans is Paul explaining how you then live as a Christian in light of having received the gift of salvation. So even salvation is a gift and the string that is attached is glorious. It means living as God’s child. But if you refuse to live as if you are God’s child, then it’s perfectly fine to question whether you actually receive the gift of salvation to start with.
All gifts have expectations attached to them. And Jacob here prudently knows, I don’t want ambiguous expectations of relationship attached to my interaction with Laban. Everything needs to be clear cut. Everything needs to be written down. I don’t want, well, I did this favor. I gave you this gift in the past. And so, you know, maybe you really ought to stick around. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want that expectation of reciprocal kindness attached to someone he knows he can’t trust further than he can throw him.
So Jacob prudently refuses the gift and says, instead, let’s make another business deal. You give me all the striped and speckled of the flock and all the black lambs. So these are going to be less common colors of the goats and of the sheep. He says, you pull those out of the flock. They’re mine. And for the extent of this time, it’s going to be six years that he works for Laban for these flocks. All of the goats and the sheep that are these colors belong to me. All the rest belong to you, Laban. And I’ll keep shepherding your flocks. I’ll keep growing your business as long as I get to grow mine on the side. And you’ll be able to look at my flocks and see if I stole anything that belonged to you. It’s going to be pretty obvious.
And Laban says, that sounds like a great idea. And then immediately, the second thing we see here is that dealing with deceitful people demands prudence. Because Laban immediately then pulls all of those colors of goats and sheep out of his flocks and gets them three days journey away from Jacob. He immediately undercuts the deal. But nonetheless, there is clarity in what was agreed upon.
Laban is exceedingly shrewd in a way that’s unhinged from obedience to God. In the gospel of Luke chapter 16, Jesus tells a parable about an unjust but shrewd business manager. He owes his employer a large sum of money and he’s about to get fired because he hasn’t done a good job managing. He’s the opposite of Jacob. He’s got all these accounts that haven’t been collected because he hasn’t done a good job as a manager. But then he goes, he knows he’s going to get fired and he thinks he might face some pretty severe consequences. So he goes to each of the people who have these open accounts. He’s like, you owe, we’ll put it in our terms, you owe $1,000, here, pay $100 and we’ll call that account good. And he goes and he does this with all of the creditors. And the guy who’s about to fire him says, you know what? That was pretty shrewd. Like, I’m not crazy about how you just did this, but I’ve kind of got to hand it to you. That was the right thing to do. Because what did he do? He then made friends with all of these other people who owed his employer this money.
And Jesus says then in Luke chapter 16 and verse eight, that the sons of this age, the people of the world, those who aren’t driven by righteousness and the desire to honor God are wiser, they’re shrewder, than the sons of light, than the children of God. They’re more likely to act in a way that is wise in this world. And then Jesus tells his disciples, use unrighteous mammon, use your earthly wealth and talents and gifts in a way that is shrewd so as to win friends in this world.
Now, as Jesus is saying this, he’s not endorsing dishonesty. He’s not endorsing doing things that are foolish or sinful, but he’s saying just because you’re a Christian and called to love doesn’t mean you need to be an idiot. Like that’s what Jesus is trying to get across here. Use wisdom in how you deal with people in this world and use the things of this world, the money that God has given you, the skills that he has given you to curry friends, to win favor with those around so that when you come to them with the gospel, they know you’re not just some crazy person. Like you’re an intelligent human being that if they’re saying this, maybe they’re living differently than me, but I can kind of trust what they have to say. They’re not dumb.
So, Laban is someone who is shrewd in a way that’s unhinged from obedience. By trying to remove all of Jacob’s wages, we see that in verse 35. But I think the question is put to us as we read about Laban, who is the Laban in your life? Who do you deal with, either occasionally or regularly, maybe you’re related to them, that you need to be more careful about how you deal with them? You probably should trust them less than you do.
This is, again, where we can feel that tension as Christians. Love is motivated by the good of the other. It’s motivated by doing what’s best for someone else. Isn’t that intention with being prudent and wise and looking out for the dangers in relationships with people? It can feel that way, but it’s not. Love does take risks, but loves must be ordered. This is in classical Christian theology, like the understanding of the order of loves, Ordo amoris. That’s actually kind of come up in politics a couple months ago when JD Vance started talking about the orders of loves in how we relate to people in different parts of the world. Like we can’t actually love everybody the same right? You only have so much capacity and sometimes loving this person would seem to be in conflict with loving this person and so you have to order starting with your own family and then your own immediate community, your church and your town. Like you’ve got to order your loves and it starts with loving God first.
I want to use a couple of examples here. Think of an addict in your life. This may be an obvious one, but one thing that people with addicts in their life often do is enable them. They don’t act wisely towards them. They try to be loving and they try to keep them on their feet and they’ll give them a place to land, a place to stay, no matter how they respond to that because they want to be loving.
But if you keep enabling behavior that is destroying someone’s life, is that actually loving? Are you motivated by doing what’s best for that person or are you motivated by the discomfort it gives you to see them suffering from their own decisions? That’s an important question to ask. Are you motivated by the discomfort that you feel or are you motivated by what’s actually best for that person?
Same thing with someone in your life who’s dishonest. They don’t tell the truth and you can try to skirt around that and try to keep everything smooth relationally. Not bring up when they lie to your face or when they’re doing things that violate the nature of your relationship. You can be afraid of the conflict that will come if you call that behavior out or when you just refuse to go along with their lies. Like, if you contradict those things, it will create tension, it will create conflict, especially if they have more explosive personalities. But are you driven by what’s actually right for them, what’s good for them, or are you driven by what will keep everything calm? Those aren’t the same thing most of the time.
One of my favorite verses, I quote it all the time, Leviticus chapter 19, where Moses says to reason frankly with your neighbor, reason frankly with your brother if he’s offended you, if he’s wronged you, and do not hold bitterness in your heart.
Our fundamental responsibility in this world as Christians, is to be godly. It’s to honor the Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second commandment’s like it, love your neighbor as yourself. Those two things are never truly in conflict, honoring the Lord and loving our neighbor. They sometimes feel like they are, but we always have to pull ourselves back to, regardless of how I feel, objectively what will honor the Lord in this situation. We are responsible to the Lord to trust in his direction for that. His direction through his word, his direction as we come to him in prayer, not to try to judge how others are going to feel or respond to that.
Other people’s responses to our attempts to live wisely before God are not our responsibility. And so as long as you’re trying to calculate and figure out how am I going to act based on how I think they will respond, you are living based on the fear of man rather than the fear of God.
Jacob here is okay with offending Laban. I’m sure Laban, well, Laban, to be honest, probably doesn’t take the time to feel offended because he’s just figuring out how he’s going to get the upper hand, which is often the case. We think people are going to be offended by the way we act, but really they’re just busy trying to think, how do I deal with this situation? They’re not actually thinking about what’s inside of you. That’s another topic.
The third thing we see in this text when we get to verses 37 to 43. So we’ve seen that for Jacob to protect his family, he has to act in a way that is prudent. And we see that that’s necessary because of who he’s dealing with. And we often deal with people like Laban in our lives. So we too must act with prudence. The third thing we see in this text, though, is that we have to remember God’s providence in every situation.
Jacob makes this deal with Laban and Laban immediately undercuts it. And now Laban is given Jacob a flock that has none of the things that they’ve just agreed will be given to Jacob. There’s no more striped and spotted goats. There’s no more black lambs. And Jacob is not an idiot. He knows he has been double-crossed. But that doesn’t really seem to faze him at all.
Instead, he does this really weird thing. He goes to the place where they water the flocks, and he goes there with some sticks that he has peeled, and he puts the sticks down, and the sheep and the goats would breed where they went to water. There’s basically three ideas that commentators give associated with this. That as he’s put these sticks here, thinking that as the sheep and the goats breed, they’ll be looking at these sticks. He only does this for the strong ones. The weak ones, he pulls the sticks away. Like, I don’t want the weak ones affected by this. I only want the strong ones affected.
Some people think, number one, first possibility, he’s basically participating in some kind of witchcraft, that this is like a voodoo deal, that if you put these sticks out here, it will magically make the babies turn the color associated with the peeled sticks. I basically completely reject that option because Jacob has shown he’s turned a corner here. He’s not all the way turned towards like sold out, worshiping God, serving God, but he clearly is acknowledging the presence and power of God in his life. He’s in his interaction with Laban credited God with the fact that the flocks have become prosperous.
Later on in the next chapter, when he’s dealing with Laban again, he’s going to respond to Laban’s accusations that Jacob was stealing from him or that everything still really belonged to Laban. Jacob’s going to say, no, God has prospered me. So Jacob understands God’s providence in all of this. So I don’t think he’s turning the opposite direction and going towards witchcraft.
The other two options are variations of the same theme. In the ancient Near East, it seems that there was an idea, and this actually carried on through not just to the ancient Near East, but really until within the last couple centuries as we started to understand genetics, which is not even the last couple centuries. That’s really within the last few decades. But there was this idea that if animals were breeding and they had a visual focus on something, whatever they were visually focusing on would affect their offspring.
So some of the premier biblical commentators in the 19th century were Keil and Delitzsch. And they cite several references to this, like examples from people who were professional sheep breeders that they would use this same technique. And this is in the 17 and 1800s where they would set these peeled sticks in front of them and it would affect the coloring of the animals.
So the two variations of this are, number one, Jacob was doing this because he knows something that we as modern people don’t know. We chalk everything up to genetics and he’s actually got information that we would just reject because, well, ancient people are superstitious. And he’s right and we’re wrong. That’s a possibility.
The third possibility is that that’s what’s going through Jacob’s mind, that he’s setting these sticks out here because he thinks it’s going to affect the coloration of the animals. And it doesn’t actually affect the coloration of the animals, but God in his providence still allows those animals, the stronger ones, to produce the coloration that Jacob needs to grow his flocks.
Either one of those, I think, are acceptable from the text. I lean towards the last one. I am a modern person. I do believe in genetics. But Jacob certainly, he sees that he’s taking an action here beyond just selective breeding, but trying to more quickly impact the coloration of his flocks by putting these sticks out here. I don’t think they probably do affect anything.
There’s one word in verse 39. It says the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled and spotted. But that word so in our English Bibles is inserted by translators. It’s not actually there in the Hebrew text. The Hebrew text just gives you the order. He did this and then they gave birth to these speckled, spotted and striped offspring. It doesn’t tie his actions directly to the result. It just tells you this happened and then this happened. And I think we probably should just follow the Hebrew presentation of it there, that this is what happened. Here are Jacob’s actions. Here’s what happened afterward. The flock gave birth to these different colors from the stronger of the flock.
So I don’t think Jacob’s technique here does anything for him, to be honest. God is blessing him. But I also don’t think we should judge him for it. He’s just acting in a way that’s consistent with their understanding of breeding animals at the time. And so he’s just doing something that’s in line with how any other sheep or goat herder would have acted at that time. And he still seems to have trust that it’s God’s providence that brings him the blessing that he needs.
And we get to the end of the chapter and in verse 43 it says thus the man increased greatly and had large flocks, female servants and male servants and camels and donkeys. So his flocks have grown to the point where not only does he have a massive amount of sheep and goats but he’s obviously able to turn around and sell enough of them that he’s able to acquire more servants, acquire donkeys, acquire camels. Like he has become enormously rich through this process. God has continued to bless him.
The narrator doesn’t pass negative judgment on Jacob here for doing what seems to us very strange with the peeled stick deal. So I don’t think we should pass judgment on him either. Instead, we should see a positive and needed example in Jacob in this chapter. It’s that he is seeking to live in a way that is prudent and wise. Not depending on the efficacy of his own prudence and wisdom, but depending on the providential care of God.
Those are two things. Again, they feel like their intention, but biblically they’re not. We are required, we are expected to live with the most wisdom that we can. Book of Proverbs. How do you get wisdom? Seek wisdom. That’s what Ryan talked to us about last week. Pursue wisdom. And in all of that, don’t trust that your wisdom is what’s going to save you. Trust that God has a plan for you and he will protect you and he will provide for you.
Pursue wisdom and trust in the providential protection and care of God. That’s what he calls us to on this earth. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And the end of wisdom, the telos, the goal of wisdom is to live a life that brings honor and glory to God. And that’s the direction that Jacob is turning here. His narrative arc has moved from just like doing things his own way. And then he’s kind of getting pulled around by other people. But he started to turn towards desiring, not perfectly, but desiring to honor God. And God is caring for him. And God is keeping his promise to Jacob. And that’s the most important thing of all.
Jacob’s imperfect and he fails. We are imperfect and we fail. But God had given promises to Jacob and God fulfills those promises. And God gives promises to us that if we trust in him, he will be there for us. He will be our rock and our fortress and our deliverer. And so we can trust in him as well.
Would you pray with me? Father God, thank you for your kindness towards us. Thank you for your provision. Thank you for your care. Help us to be wise in how we deal with those around us. We want to put your love on display, Father. But help us to have love that is governed by biblical wisdom, not by feelings, not by emotions, the emotions of ourselves or others, but rather ordered by a right attention to what your word teaches. We need your help in this, and so we ask for it in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.
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